Democratic Georgia Senate candidate Jon Ossoff Jon Ossoff Stacey Abrams calls on young voters of color to support election reform bill MLB calls lawsuit over All-Star Game 'political theatrics' Georgia agriculture commissioner launches Senate campaign against Warnock MORE said on Sunday that the close race in the Peach State was due to the turnout of Black voters in this year’s election. “This was the closest Senate race in the country, Martha. And that really reflects the power of Black turnout here. The determination of Black voters in Georgia to make a change in this country,” Ossoff told Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “This Week.” “Georgia's Black community has been hit the hardest by COVID-19, Georgia's Black community is demanding access to affordable healthcare, demanding civil rights legislation, to secure criminal justice reform,” Ossoff said. Georgia Democratic senatorial candidate Jon Ossoff tells @martharaddatz there's "massive enthusiasm" … [Read more...]

Lawrence Norden is the director of the Election Reform Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. Matthew Weil is director of the Elections Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. The views expressed in this commentary are those of the authors. View more opinion on CNN. (CNN) As states around the country pass laws that will limit access to voting in the name of baseless election integrity concerns, they have almost entirely ignored a very real existential threat to our democracy: the intimidation of and attacks against election officials. Scapegoated as villains by those who believe the Big Lie of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, these officials have become routine targets for harassment and death threats. Lawrence Norden Matthew Weil According to a national survey commissioned by the Brennan Center for Justice, one in three election officials report feeling unsafe because of their job. And one in six reported … [Read more...]

The author of this article recently moderated a panel hosted by the National Science Foundation and the International Space Station National Lab. Discussion from that panel is quoted in this article. (CNN) Humans have been living, working and conducting science experiments on the International Space Station for nearly 20 years -- but even this feat of engineering needs upgrades sometimes, like a new toilet. Among the 8,000 pounds of supplies launched to the International Space Station Friday night is a new space toilet called the Universal Waste Management System, which was designed using astronaut feedback. A new 360-degree virtual reality camera that can be used to capture spacewalks in all their glory, so that we might know what it's like to walk outside the space station, is also launching. Here's how astronauts vote from space Northrop Grumman's Cygnus cargo spacecraft is also carrying a wealth of new experiments with … [Read more...]

I was a liberal once upon a time and supported the American Civil Liberties Union when it defended Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. A lot of liberals understood that even vile members of our society have First Amendment rights. And that if you deprive them of their rights, then no one is safe. Skokie, Ill., was a big test for liberals. In the late 1970s, neo-Nazis wanted to march through the city, a place they picked precisely because many of its residents had survived Hitler’s Holocaust. Had my own grandparents not packed what little they had and got out of Eastern Europe before Hitler’s storm troopers marched in, they would have been among the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis. But I still believed — as did the ACLU — that Nazis in America, despicable as they were, had the same rights as every other American. Now I learn from a recent story in the New York Times that old values at the ACLU are in the progressives’ crosshairs, that there are forces at the organization which … [Read more...]

With jobs rebounding and isolation-weary Americans opening the spending spigots, the economy seems well on its way back from the costly setbacks during the Pandemic. There may be some long-term economic casualties — small businesses that shuttered permanently, maybe commercial real estate — but the outlook is a return to the pre-COVID situation in a year or so. Much more worrisome is recovering from the catastrophic social costs: young kids missing a full year of school; a sharp rise in drug overdoses; horrendous stories of spousal and child abuse. All these disproportionately hurt poorer families. ADVERTISEMENT The only way to alleviate the long-term consequences will require more resources from the federal, state and local governments. The scars are so deep it can't be done on the cheap. The missed in-person school time, especially for young children, will have an “ absolutely stunningly large economic cost that just keeps piling up ” predicts Eric Hanushek, a … [Read more...]

President-elect Joe Biden Joe Biden Mellman: Trump voters cling to 2020 tale FDA authorizes another batch of J&J vaccine Cotton warns of China collecting athletes' DNA at 2022 Olympics MORE ’s incoming deputy chief of staff called GOP lawmakers are “a bunch of f---ers” and said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnell On The Money: Schumer to trigger reconciliation process on Wednesday | Four states emerge as test case for cutting off jobless benefits GOP senator: I want to make Biden a 'one-half-term president' McConnell presses for 'actual consequences' in disclosure of tax data MORE (R-Ky.) is “terrible,” but expressed optimism that the new administration could still work with Republicans to pass legislation. In a new interview with Glamour , Jen O’Malley Dillon, who also served as Biden’s campaign manager, defended Biden from criticism from the left over his insistence that Republicans would warm … [Read more...]

WASHINGTON (CBS4) – The U.S. House voted on Tuesday to award Congressional Gold Medals to the United States Capitol Police for their response to the attack at the Capitol on January 6th. Nearly two dozen Republican representatives voted no on the measure, including Colorado’s Lauren Boebert. Representative Boebert, who represents Southern Colorado and the Western Slope, joined 20 other House Republicans in voting “no” to awarding four Congressional Gold Medals to the United States Capitol Police officers who responded to the insurrection on January 6th. READ MORE: Drinks & Dinner On The Beach? Changes At Boulder Reservoir Upset Neighbors (credit: Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images) In a statement provided to CBS4, a spokesperson for Boebert said the medals are a tool to score “political points.” “Once again Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats prove that there is no level they won’t stoop to,” the statement reads. “Using the death of an officer in April to try and … [Read more...]

NASHVILLE — In a dramatic showdown on Tuesday, Southern Baptists elected a moderate pastor from Alabama as their next president, narrowly heading off an attempted takeover by the denomination’s insurgent right wing. The election of the pastor, Ed Litton, was the result of what was effectively a three-way standoff for the leadership of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. In the first round of voting on Tuesday afternoon, Southern Baptists rejected a prominent mainstream candidate and onetime favorite for the presidency, Al Mohler Jr., who received 26 percent of some 14,000 votes. The race then headed for an immediate runoff vote that pitted an ultraconservative pastor from Georgia, Mike Stone, against Mr. Litton, who has largely avoided the culture wars. When officials announced the results from the stage — Mr. Litton bested Mr. Stone by just 556 votes, or four percentage points — the floor erupted in a mixture of cheers and boos. At a news conference after his … [Read more...]

Allen Nelson IV walked to the front of his small church in central Arkansas, stopped in front of the communion table with three large crosses behind him, and unfurled a giant black flag with a white skull and crossed swords. For several years, the pastor and father of five had felt that too many of his fellow Christians were drifting unmistakably leftward on issues of race, gender and the strict authority of the Bible. The flag was a gift from a friend, energized — like Mr. Nelson — by the idea of heroically reclaiming the faith. It was time, he believed, to “take the ship.” “We’re fighting for the very heart of the Southern Baptist Convention,” Mr. Nelson said in an interview. “For a long time what I thought a good Southern Baptist pastor should do was to send money and trust the system. We can’t do that anymore.” Mr. Nelson is not alone. He is part of an ultraconservative populist uprising of pastors from Louisiana to California threatening to overtake the country’s … [Read more...]

LONDON — Early next year, a portrait of Barack Obama will go up on the walls of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, produced by an artist who was chosen by Mr. Obama himself in the closing months of his presidency. The artist, Kehinde Wiley, is known for picturing young black people in stylized portraits that are deliberate throwbacks to earlier traditions of painting. His “ Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps ” (2005) shows a young man in hiking boots and camouflage riding a rearing stallion the way the French emperor does in an early-1800s painting by Jacques-Louis David. In the 2010 “ Equestrian Portrait of King Philip II (Michael Jackson) ,” the pop superstar Jackson, in a cape and elaborate armor, mimics the monarch in the Rubens work it references . So will Mr. Obama be depicted on horseback, wearing breeches and a plumed hat? Mr. Wiley said he had been sworn to secrecy by the National Portrait Gallery. “I wish I could say more,” he … [Read more...]