AUDIO:

POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; REGISTER TO VOTE; APPLY FOR MAIL-IN BALLOT; Missouri City renames Bedford Forrest streets due to controversy; Jersey Village breaks ground on $8.72M golf course clubhouse project; Why America stopped building public pools; Texas A&M suspended professor accused of criticizing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in lecture; House Speaker Kevin McCarthy floats an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden; ‘Anger and radicalization’: rising number of Americans say political violence is justified; More.

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1. Missouri City renames Bedford Forrest streets due to controversy; By Joe Edwards | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 3:47 PM Jul 25, 2023 CDT. Updated 3:47 PM Jul 25, 2023 CDT
   1. Missouri City’s City Council recently approved the name changes of two streets in the Vicksburg Village of Shiloh, a suburban neighborhood southwest of Houston, after residents protested the streets’ original names due to their controversial history.
   2. The decision came after Rodney Pearson, a resident and community advocate, led a petition drive among fellow property owners to rename the streets.
   3. The streets in question, Bedford Forrest Drive and Bedford Forrest Court, were named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general during the Civil War who later became the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
   4. Pearson’s efforts were met with overwhelming support from his fellow community members. The community joined together to rally behind the initiative to change the street names to ones that better represent their aspirations and values, according to City Council meeting statements.
   5. Council Member Jeffrey Boney, who represents the area where Vicksburg Village is located, had previously initiated an ordinance amendment in 2020, lowering the threshold for name changes from 90% to 60% consent from property owners on a given street, according to city documents.
   6. This change paved the way for other homeowners in the neighborhood to successfully petition for the renaming of streets like Confederate Drive, Confederate Court, and Confederate South Drive to Prosperity Drive, Prosperity Court, and Prosperity South Drive, respectively.
   7. The lowering of the threshold to 60% for name change petitions demonstrated the council’s receptiveness to the voices of the community, acknowledging the need to address historical legacies that perpetuated racial disparities and discomfort, according to Boney.
   8. The proposal to rename Bedford Forrest Drive as Liberty Way Drive and Bedford Forrest Court as Liberty Way Court received unanimous approval from City Council. …
   9. [This] City Council’s decision was not the first of its kind, as Missouri City has previously addressed similar concerns about street names that bore connections to the Confederacy. As of July in 2020, Missouri City had eight subdivisions and 20 street names that contained the word plantation alone, as previously reported by Community Impact.
   10. ANDREW: The change itself is symbolic, but symbols are important– they wouldn’t have any meaning otherwise. What’s really encouraging to me is how the Missouri City City Council responded to the residents’ opinions here and in previous instances of wanting to change their street names. Council members could have simply chosen to leave the 90% threshold as it was, but they recognized that their threshold was unusually high for other nearby cities and other cities in Texas, considered the symbolic value of and the public support for the desired name changes, and agreed to take action. That’s good, responsive local governance. I hope it continues.
   11. MIKE: I think this is a classic example of why elections matter and why voting matters. A photo of the city council included with the article shows that the council members appear to be majority-minority. Without elections and people exercising their Constitutional right to vote, this never would have happened. This change took multiple election cycles, but it happened because enough people voted.
2. Jersey Village breaks ground on $8.72M golf course clubhouse project; By Dave Manning | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 2:44 PM Jul 24, 2023 CDT. Updated 2:44 PM Jul 24, 2023 CDT
   8. Officials with the city of Jersey Village broke ground on a new clubhouse at Jersey Meadow Golf Club on July 24 to celebrate the start of construction on the $8.72 million renovation that will include converting the existing clubhouse space into an event center.
   9. “It’s going to be not just a resource for our golfers who are out here constantly, … but it’s also going to be a really great resource for the entire community. It may be a golf course clubhouse, but really it is a clubhouse for the entire city—all of our residents and for everyone in the area,” Mayor Bobby Warren said. …
   10. MIKE: I’m just going to let this story sit with you for a moment before we go on to the next one. … “Jersey Village breaks ground on $8.72M golf course clubhouse project”.
3. Why America stopped building public pools; By Nathaniel Meyersohn | CNN.COM | Updated 10:43 AM EDT, Sat July 22, 2023
   1. … Louisville’s public parks were desegregated in 1955, a year before [Gerome Sutton, now 66,] was born. This included the newly built Algonquin outdoor swimming pool on the West Side of Louisville.
   2. It cost 35 cents to swim at Algonquin at the time, Sutton said. [MIKE: About $4 today.] He and his seven siblings took turns going on alternating weekends because the family could not afford to send all eight children at the same time. …
   3. Public pools have played a critical role in American culture over the past century. But as climate change and extreme heat worsen, they are taking on an urgent public health role. Heat kills more Americans than any other weather-related disaster, according to data tracked by the National Weather Service.
   4. Yet just as public pools become more important than ever, they’re disappearing from sight. …
   5. In the early 2000s, Louisville had 10 public pools for a population of around 550,000.
   6. Today, the city has five public pools for a population of around 640,000 …
   7. Algonquin is the only pool left in West Louisville, and residents say the city has neglected basic maintenance and improvements for years.
   8. This summer, as temperatures climb to the 90s in Louisville, Algonquin is closed for repairs, leaving around 60,000 people — most of whom are Black and middle-or-lower income households — without convenient access to the water.
   9. Some will miss out on a chance to learn how to swim, get more comfortable in the water, and build life-saving skills. Kids and teens won’t have a key place to gather and play during the summer months when school is off. And seniors can’t participate in Aqua Zumba fitness classes held at Algonquin during the summer to help them stay active.
   10. “Swimming is mental health. It’s therapy. You have to have activities. It’s bigger than just a pool,” said Louisville Councilwoman Tammy Hawkins, who represents the district.
   11. Access to swimming pools has long been hotly contested in America.
   12. Giant municipal pools were built in the first half of the twentieth century, and desegregating public pools was a key target of the civil rights movement. But, strapped for funding, many local governments have neglected public pools. …
   13. The retreat of government and [the] privatization of swimming pools and recreation has hurt poor and minority groups hardest, historians and public recreation experts say. …
   14. Today, 79% of children in families with household incomes less than $50,000 have no or low swimming ability, according to a 2018 study. Sixty-four percent of Black children, 45% percent of Hispanic children and 40% of White children have no or low swimming ability, the study found.
   15. While public pools are a rarer sight today, governments built enormous pools during the twentieth century.
   16. The New Deal led to the biggest burst of public pools in American history. The federal government built nearly 750 pools and remodeled hundreds more between 1933 and 1938. …
   17. A 1933 survey of Americans’ leisure activities found that as many people swam frequently as went to the movies. …
   18. Before the 1920s, swimming pools in the North were segregated along gender lines but not racial ones. This changed as they became gender-integrated.
   19. Racial stereotypes around cleanliness and safety, as well as intense fears of Black men interacting with White women in bathing suits, turned pools into some of the most segregated public spaces in America, said Victoria Wolcott, a historian at the University at Buffalo and author of “Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America.”
   20. In the late 1940s, there were major swimming pool riots over integration in St. Louis; Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; and Los Angeles, Walcott said. …
   21. Gaining entry to swimming pools was a top priority for civil rights groups, who saw recreation as a fundamental human right.
   22. In Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he described the tears in his daughter’s eyes when “she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children.”
   23. But the success of the civil rights movement integrating pools coincided with a surge of private pools and swim clubs.
   24. Millions of middle-class White families left cities for the suburbs and built pools in their new backyards during the era. New suburbanites chose to organize country clubs with fees rather than build pools open to the public.
   25. From 1950 to 1962, 22,000 private swim clubs opened, mostly in White suburbs. …
   26. Some parts of the South revolted against integration by paving over or draining their pools rather than integrating them. Of the public pools open in 1961 in Mississippi, for example, nearly half had closed by 1972.
   27. As Whites withdrew from public pools and parks, taxpayer funding and support for pools dwindled. In Cleveland, the city’s recreation budget was cut by 80%. …
   28. Parks and recreation agencies tend to be the first area to cut when budgets are tight and the slowest to get money back, said Kevin Roth, vice president of research, evaluation and technology at the National Recreation and Park Association. … Public pools are costly for cities to maintain and insure.
   29. Cities also have struggled to staff pools with lifeguards. High-school and college students have more summer job options and are less likely to pick up a job as a lifeguard over the summer than they once did, he said. …
   30. To give people in West Louisville a place to swim this summer, the city approved $100,000 in funding for free summer passes to the YMCA and an amusement park.
   31. Passes [will only] be available to a limited number of residents, and many residents lack transportation to get to the YMCA or amusement park.
   32. Louisville’s metro government has allocated $6 million to renovate Algonquin and another local pool. But some local residents and leaders say renovating the Algonquin pool is not enough.
   33. They want an indoor swimming pool open all year, like the aquatics center on the predominantly White East Side of the city, so people can access the water, take classes and stay fit.
   34. “I would love for it to be year-round with water safety classes,” said LaShandra Logan, 35, who grew up in West Louisville and has gone to Algonquin since she was a child.
   35. Last year, she learned how to swim through a local non-profit group, Central Adult Learn-to-Swim. Eighty-seven percent of the program’s students are Black and 85% are women. …
   36. She is currently enrolled in a lifeguard instruction class and wants to help other people in the community learn how to swim. Currently, there is a 2,500-person wait list of adults in Louisville who want to learn to swim through the non-profit.
   37. “It’s a life-changing experience,” Logan said.
   38. ANDREW: Another instance of race impacting an aspect of US public policy that many people wouldn’t expect. Swimming pools are just one kind of public amenity that aren’t maintained well or are just closed down in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Schools are talked about often, but hospitals are affected too. Public park space is sold for new development, too. All because these positive, community-focused amenities cost money to build and maintain, and while the quality of life they bring is considered worth it for white neighborhoods, most US public policy was written when the quality of Black life was an obstacle to exploitation more than anything else. 
   39. ANDREW: Police departments and prisons, though, provided the threat of force– a threat often made good on– to keep Black people in line and exploitable. That was considered worth the expense, because it often meant that the local and national leaders would have ample opportunity to use Black labor in their own businesses to line their own pockets. Fast forward a few decades without a thorough rewrite of the policy, and these ideas are still present in our laws and in our concepts of civics today.
   40. ANDREW: So yes, there should be more swimming pools (and parks, and schools, and hospitals) in Black neighborhoods, and the ones already there should get more of the funding from the amenities that are doing just fine. And more funding generally should go towards quality of life instead of threat of force. But as long as we keep addressing these issues as they pop up, we will continue to be surprised by them. Addressing them one-by-one does move us inch by inch to a more equitable system, but to truly get there will require something more.
   41. MIKE: When I was little, we never went to a public pool that I recall, although I remember many trips to Jones Beach in Nassau County. I know that my mom was deathly afraid of polio in those days, and she feared public pools might be a source. She also, emphatically, wouldn’t let me share glasses or containers. This was in the days before a polio vaccine was available.
   42. MIKE: We moved to a new middle-class neighborhood in southeast Brooklyn called Seaview Village in December 1955, while I was still 4.
   43. MIKE: Not too many years after, my family joined a newly-built club called the Seaview Pool and Yacht Club. I always wondered where the yachts were because there weren’t even rowboats to rent, but the name sounded grand, I guess.
   44. MIKE: Because we never went to a public pool, I never connected that with anything special until I read this story. It made me question my memories.
   45. MIKE: I have no idea what it cost to join, but I suspect that my mom’s parents paid for it. I know that not everyone in our predominantly Jewish and Italian neighborhood could afford it.
   46. MIKE: I really have nothing much to add except that I wish my parents were still around to discuss this story with.
4. Thanks to Egberto Willies for pointing this out — Texas A&M suspended professor accused of criticizing Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in lecture; The professor, an expert on the opioids crisis, was placed on paid administrative leave and investigated, raising questions about the extent of political interference in higher education, particularly in health-related matters. by Kate McGee and James Barragán | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | July 25, 2023; 5 AM Central
   1. Joy Alonzo, a respected opioid expert, was in a panic.
   2. The Texas A&M University professor had just returned home from giving a routine lecture on the opioid crisis at the University of Texas Medical Branch in March when she learned a student had accused her of disparaging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick during the talk.
   3. In the few hours it took to drive from Galveston, the complaint had made its way to her supervisors, and Alonzo’s job was suddenly at risk….
   4. Not only were her [A&M] supervisors involved, but so was Chancellor John Sharp, a former state comptroller who now holds the highest-ranking position in the Texas A&M University System, which includes 11 public universities and 153,000 students. And Sharp was communicating directly with the lieutenant governor’s office about the incident, promising swift action.
   5. Less than two hours after the lecture ended, Patrick’s chief of staff had sent Sharp a link to Alonzo’s professional bio.
   6. Shortly after, Sharp sent a text directly to the lieutenant governor: “Joy Alonzo has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation re firing her. shud [sic] be finished by end of week.”
   7. The text message was signed “jsharp.”
   8. For free speech advocates, health experts and students, Texas A&M’s investigation of Alonzo was a shocking demonstration of how quickly university leaders allow politicians to interfere in classroom discussions on topics in which they are not experts — and another example of increasing political involvement from state leaders in how Texas universities are managed.
   9. The revelation comes as Texas A&M is reeling over concerns that the university allowed politically motivated outsiders to derail the hiring of Kathleen McElroy, a Black journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, to revive the journalism school at Texas A&M. The subsequent outcry over how Texas A&M handled the situation prompted the university president to resign last week, and the interim dean of arts and sciences stepped down from that role but will remain a professor.
   10. In an email obtained by The Texas Tribune through a public records request, Alonzo told [Chandler Self, the UTMB professor who invited her to speak, that] the investigation had been kicked off by a student “who has ties to Texas A&M Leadership.”
   11. The Texas A&M system confirmed the series of phone calls and text messages that led to Alonzo’s investigation was kicked off by Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, a graduate of UTMB’s medical school. The Tribune confirmed her daughter, a first-year medical student at the time, attended Alonzo’s lecture. Buckingham served six years in the Texas Senate with Patrick, who endorsed her run for land commissioner last year, and she recently attended Sharp’s wedding in May.
   12. Buckingham declined to comment. …
   13. Ultimately Texas A&M allowed Alonzo to keep her job after an internal investigation could not confirm any wrongdoing. …
   14. Patrick did not respond to a request for comment.
   15. Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit legal group focused on protecting free speech on college campuses, said “it would be highly inappropriate for a university to conduct an investigation if a faculty member says something critical of a state leader or a government official.”
   16. “That is, I think, a misuse of institutional resources, and it’s one that will have a chilling effect and that has a chilling effect even if you wind up clearing the professor,” Steinbaugh said. …
   17. MIKE: The article is a lot longer, but I think this is the core of the story.
   18. MIKE: This last couple of weeks has not been a good look for Texas A&M or for Texas. Two weeks ago, I went on a rant about how the Republican Party is beginning to look a lot like fascists. So, let’s go down a list in no particular order.
   19. MIKE: Banning books? Check. Exercising increasing State control over public speech? Check. Chilling expression in schools and universities? Check. Oppressing vulnerable minorities? Check. Coddling racists and Christian nationalists? Check. Government works hand-in-glove with business as long as government calls the shots? Check. Voter suppression to enable minority rule? Check. Ordering Texas National Guard to push illegal migrants back into the Rio Grande? Close enough; check.
   20. MIKE: Be afraid.
   21. ANDREW: Texas’ crackdown on universities continues to cause concern. If nothing else, these stories highlight the dangers of allowing public university leadership to be gubernatorial appointees. It might be better to have university leaders appointed by panels of leaders from the community that the university serves, perhaps including city and county representatives, as well as state and federal legislators representing the university’s district. That way, university leaders are more likely to reflect the culture that the university is part of instead of the whims of whoever the Governor is.
5. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy floats an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden; By Lisa Mascaro | AP via WASHINGTONPOST.COM | July 25, 2023 at 6:15 p.m. EDT
   1. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says Republican lawmakers may consider an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden over unproven claims of financial misconduct, responding to enormous GOP pressure to demonstrate support for Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
   2. In remarks Tuesday at the Capitol, McCarthy said the questions House Republicans are raising about the Biden family finances need to be investigated. So far, he acknowledged, the House’s probes have not proven any wrongdoing, but an impeachment inquiry “allows Congress to get the information to be able to know the truth.”
   3. An impeachment inquiry by the House would be a first step toward bringing articles of impeachment. Such a probe could be as lengthy or swift as the House determines, potentially stretching into campaign season.
   4. “We will follow this to the end,” he said, first floating the idea late Monday on Fox News.
   5. It’s the strongest comment yet from McCarthy on a potential Biden impeachment after the Republican leader sidelined earlier efforts by House conservatives to launch such an inquiry.
   6. With a slim majority in the House, McCarthy faces demands from Trump allies to elevate their priorities. Trump himself questioned at a Fox News town hall last week why Biden has not yet been impeached.
   7. McCarthy has not yet endorsed Trump, who is the early Republican frontrunner for president, or any other GOP candidates. He denied a report that he is considering House votes to expunge Trump’s two impeachments as another way of showing support.
   8. McCarthy on Tuesday gave no timeline for launching an impeachment inquiry into Biden and said he hadn’t spoken to Trump about it. He declined to say if he would be making a presidential endorsement. …
   9. MIKE: The story is somewhat longer. This is just the first several paragraphs. Following is my opinion on this effort and the history that contextualizes it as I see it.
   10. MIKE: This story, to me, is just another example of Republicans partisans using impeachment as a political weapon rather than as a tool of political justice.
   11. MIKE: I’ve always believed that 24 years after Watergate, the Republicans impeached President Bill Clinton in 1998 out of revenge for Nixon. Given the slim pretexts, I viewed this at the time as an attempted legal coup.
   12. MIKE: In an effort to break this cycle, in 2006, then-incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that impeachment of George W Bush was “off the table”. I’ve long believed that this was the equivalent of a bid in Bridge: Basically, we pushed Nixon from office, you had your shot at President Bill Clinton, let’s call it even.
   13. MIKE: This was in spite of the fact that there were very strong political reasons to impeach Bush related to lying us into 2^nd the Iraq War, and a desire to do so was very strong among Democrats at the time. Pelosi resisted this pressure from within her caucus.
   14. MIKE: Fringe Republicans responded to this olive branch during the Obama administration by constantly trying to round up votes to impeach President Barack Obama for … something or other. No one really knew.
   15. MIKE: Then, the Democrats impeached Donald Trump twice. Initially, Speaker Nancy Pelosi resisted impeachment for reasons including national political divisions and restarting a cycle of revenge impeachment by Republicans. Finally, though, political pressure and reasons too powerful to ignore pushed her toward the first impeachment vote on December 18, 2019 for essentially trying to extort Ukraine into announcing a corruption investigation into then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Trump was eventually acquitted because the Senate could not muster the necessary 2/3 vote to convict. In the Republican-controlled Senate, no Republican voted to convict.
   16. MIKE: Trump was then impeached in January 19, 2021 for Incitement of insurrection (with all Democrats and 10 Republicans voting to impeach) for his alleged roles in the January 6 invasion of the Capitol during the Congressional count of electoral votes.. He was acquitted again for lack of a 2/3 Senate vote to convict, but this time, in the Democrat-controlled Senate, there were 57 Senate votes to convict, including 7 Republicans and 2 Independents.
   17. MIKE: Now, referring back to our story of the moment, fringe Republicans are again at the Impeachment Revenge game, but this time with much less pushback from the House Speaker, Rep, Kevin McCarthy.
   18. MIKE: This attempt at a revenge impeachment is different, though, from efforts to impeach Clinton and Obama. This is an effort from a Republican Party and many of its elected officials who participated in efforts to subvert the electoral vote with fake elector slates; efforts to subvert the counting of the electoral vote with violence; efforts to subvert the electoral vote with meritless objections during the process; and with those who are possibly under investigation for complicity in the planning and execution of various attempts to subvert the electoral voting process, either by scheming or by violence.
   19. MIKE: The current era of fierce political antagonism was inaugurated by Newt Gingrich, considered the effective author of the Clinton impeachment. But we are now confronting a Republican Party that goes far beyond so-called “political puffery”. Republican officials make comments that a reasonable person might consider to be lies; incitements to violence based on politics, race, or culture; passive or active endorsements of White Supremacy and Christian Nationalism; passive or active support of Russian President Vladimir Putin in his invasion of Ukraine; apparent desire and/or efforts to subvert democracy in favor of political and corporate autocracy … even what might be called fascism.
   20. MIKE: This is not your grandfather’s Republican Party, or maybe not even your father’s. But — and this is entirely my personal opinion of party officials and operatives, not Republicans en masse — the Republican Party today is showing many signs of being a party of political subversion and suppression on a scale that might be considered “racketeering”, or at least “conspiracy. Perhaps both.
   21. MIKE: In 2018, the Republican Party was released from a consent decree: “The consent decree, entered on November 1, 1982, prevented the Republican Party “from engaging in activities that suppress the vote, particularly when it comes to minority voters.” It also barred the wearing of armbands at polling places.”
   22. MIKE: In the absence of any legal constraints, the Republicans are back up to their dirty tricks, but now they’re actually anti-democracy.
   23. ANDREW: Have you heard of the “paradox of tolerance”? For the unfamiliar, this is the idea that in order to remain tolerant, a tolerant society must be intolerant of intolerance, thus compromising its status as a tolerant society. I think the Republican Party is very much an intolerant group, and is exploiting the claims of tolerance that the US electoral system relies upon to shield themselves from consequences for their intolerant and destructive campaign.
   24. ANDREW: I ran across a good argument for a solution to the paradox of tolerance recently. A tolerant society has a social contract that establishes mutual tolerance between its members. Intolerant people and groups break that contract, and thus lose the tolerance they would be entitled to under that contract if they followed it. This is how we should look at the Republican Party: they are trying to use force and manipulation to undermine the US electoral system, and so they should no longer be afforded what rights and protections exist under it. 
   25. ANDREW: The problem is that the Democrats are the only other group in the system that could enforce that consequence on the Republicans, and the Democrats don’t have enough of an edge over the Republicans to enforce that consequence. The downsides of a two-party system. Perhaps it’s time for the Democrats to help open the system to some of the minor players so they can take the Republicans down together.
   26. MIKE: Of course, the paradox of our system becoming a multiparty system is that the largest minority would win. In parliamentary systems, this sometimes ends poorly, with coalitions of the extremes to govern.
   27. REFERENCE: Impeachment of Bill Clinton — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   28. REFERENCE: Efforts to impeach Barack Obama — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   29. REFERENCE: McCarthy floats impeachment inquiry into Garland over DOJ ‘weaponization’ — THEHILL.COM, 06/26/23
   30. REFERENCE: Inside the House GOP’s plan to go after FBI and DOJ —POLITICO.COM, 2023/07/05
   31. REFERENCE: Pelosi: Bush Impeachment `Off the Table’ — NYTIMES.COM, 2006/11/08
   32. REFERENCE: First impeachment of Donald Trump — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   33. REFERENCE: Second impeachment of Donald Trump — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   34. REFERENCE: Puffery versus fraud on the political campaign trail — Michael Vaughan is Weber State University’s provost. He accepts e-mail from readers at MVAUGHAN@Weber.edu. Tuesday, June 3, 2008
   35. Reference: : State and Local Governments’ Use of the Treble Damages Remedy Under Civil RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) – A Means of Redressing the Economic Effects of Unlawful Conduct — US Dept. Of Justice, Office of Justice Programs
   36. Reference: Judge ends consent decree limiting RNC ‘ballot security’ activities —POLITICO.COM, 2018/01/
6. And Along Those lines, There’s This Story — ‘Anger and radicalization’: rising number of Americans say political violence is justified; Survey shows a small but significant share of Americans believe in use of force to attain political goals – on both the left and the right. By Kira Lerner | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Tue 25 Jul 2023 06.00 EDT, Last modified on Tue 25 Jul 2023 21.30 EDT
   1. The June federal indictment of Donald Trump is “radicalizing” support for the use of force on behalf of the former president and current presidential candidate, according to the author of a recent survey about threats to democracy.
   2. Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, support for violence to restore the federal right to an abortion has also increased over the last few months, researchers found, although there’s little indication that any organized groups support acting on this belief.
   3. The Dangers to Democracy report indicates that a growing number of Americans support the use of political violence as the 2024 presidential campaign heats up and further indictments of Trump are probably imminent.
   4. “The indictment is radicalizing support for Trump, but that’s not the only source of radicalization,” said Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor who led the research. “You’re seeing growing anger and radicalization on the left as well.”
   5. The number of Americans who believe the use of force is justified to restore Trump to the White House increased by roughly 6 million in the last few months to an estimated 18 million people, according to the survey conducted by the university in late June and shared exclusively with the Guardian.
   6. Of those 18 million people, 68% believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and 62% believe the prosecutions of Trump are intended to hurt his chances in 2024. An estimated 7% of Americans now believe violence could be necessary to restore Trump to the presidency, up from 4.5%, or 12 million people, in April.
   7. But over the same period, Trump’s general favorability slightly decreased among Republicans, the survey found.
   8. The university’s Chicago Project on Security & Threats (CPost) research center has been conducting Dangers to Democracy surveys of American adults on political violence and attitudes towards democracy since shortly after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
   9. The most recent report marks the first increase in radical, violent support for Trump since April 2022, according to Pape, who directs CPost.
   10. “The public is more radicalized than it was in April and it’s really quite significant,” he said. “We’ve been tracking this quite a while, and this is a really big bump.”
   11. Still, a radicalized public isn’t enough for actual violence to occur, Pape said. He compared the support to kindling, but said Trump would have to give a speech or rally inciting people to act at a certain time to light the fire, as he did in Washington DC on 6 January 2021.
   12. Democrats, however, expressed support for political violence for a different purpose. The survey found support for the use of force to coerce members of Congress to “do the right thing” grew from 9% in January to 17% – an estimated 44 million Americans – at the end of June, with the sharpest rise among Democrats. Support for violence to restore the federal right to an abortion also increased during this time.
   13. “Things are definitely heading in the wrong direction in terms of the radicalization of the country and we need to be aware of that because there were some hopes that the Trump indictment would actually reduce support for Trump,” Pape said.
   14. Survey respondents also said they view Trump as a bigger threat to democracy than President Joe Biden, with a difference of 52% to 33%.
   15. Researchers also asked participants about support for dangerous conspiracy theories, including whether they believe that a secret group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles is ruling the US government. The number of people who believe that statement – a major tenet of the QAnon conspiracy theory – increased slightly, although the change was not greater than the margin of error.
   16. The survey also found that nearly 90% of Trump’s most radical supporters believe the federal government is run by a “deep state” of immoral people.
   17. With more indictments of Trump likely to come in the next few weeks, both from the federal government and the Fulton county, Georgia, district attorney, Pape said he was concerned that further radicalization of the public is likely to occur.
   18. As Trump faces more complicated legal trouble and the 2024 election season gets under way with the first GOP debate just one month away, the number of Americans who believe that the 2020 election was stolen from him remains largely unchanged at roughly 20%.
   19. “Things are going in the wrong direction of radicalization, and we haven’t even gotten into the really heated part of the 2024 election season,” Pape said.
   20. MIKE: To my mind, these are concerning numbers, but not yet scary numbers. But the trajectory is certainly something to worry about.
   21. MIKE: I’ve felt for a long time that there have always been extremists of varying flavors at each 20% end of the population; at either end, they would be happy to vote for Communists or Fascists, depending.
   22. MIKE: The purpose of a functioning democracy is to provide a safety valve for activism, expression and — to some extent — representation of diverse views, even extreme views. I believe that violence is more likely to occur when views are silenced and repressed, and those who have those views feel hopeless.
   23. MIKE: In discussions with Conservatives, I’ve occasionally used the argument that a social safety net for the poor is life insurance for the rich. Poor people won’t just starve and die while living under bridges and overpasses simply because some wealthy elite thinks they must deserve it. Those are the sources of violence and rebellion, ala Marie Antoinette.
   24. MIKE: So, if the rich value their property and their lives, they should gladly pay taxes to help the poor to survive, to thrive, and to find increased prosperity.
   25. ANDREW: I think something very important to consider that isn’t mentioned here is that democracy is not an absence of political violence; it is a redirection of that violence. When a state passes laws and sets consequences for breaking them, that is a threat of violence for political purposes. When that state instructs police to enforce those consequences, that is an act of violence for political purposes. We see this even in nations that are considered pinnacles of democracy. Ergo, political violence does not prevent democracy from functioning.
   26. ANDREW: I would argue that, in fact, violence can in itself be a form of democracy. Consider the founding of the United States of America– a violent revolution where a numerically superior settler force overpowered a smaller force representing the English crown. While revolution is not always a true expression of popular will– see any of the various military coups in history– when it is led by a majority of the common people, it is as legitimate as any election or referendum.
   27. ANDREW: But just because it’s legitimate doesn’t mean it’s beneficial. This will be subjective and driven by my own biases, but I believe the left-wing motivators for violence from this article are on the whole good things– they are in service of expanding and defending every individual’s own freedom and control over their own body and voice in politics. Every person benefits from those aims. 
   28. ANDREW: In contrast, the right-wing motivators are about elevating white people above everyone else, suppressing the reality of racial oppression in the US, and enabling further limitations on majority freedom for the sake of enriching a minority of people. Very few people benefit from these aims. Considering that democracy is about majority rule, I would call the left-wing aims, which benefit the majority of people, more compatible with democracy as an ideal, and thus better.

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1. Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter Information
   1. It’s time to snail-mail (no emails or faxes) in your application for mail-ballots, IF you qualify TEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
   2. Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
   3. Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2022
      1. Austin County Elections
      2. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
      3. Chambers County (TX) Elections
      4. Colorado County (TX) Elections
      5. Fort Bend County takes you to the proper link
      6. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
      7. Harris County ((HarrisVotes.com)
      8. LibertyElections (Liberty County, TX)
      9. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      10. Walker County Elections
      11. Waller County (TX) Elections
      12. Wharton County Elections
   4. For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, Consider visiting Vote.ORG.   Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
   5. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
   6. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, HARRIS COUNTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
      1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
      2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
      3. Current utility bill
      4. Bank statement
      5. Government check
      6. Paycheck
      7. A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
      8. You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
         1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
         2. Sick or disabled;
         3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
         4. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
         5. Make sure you are registered:
         6. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
         7. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
         8. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
         9. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
2. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and if eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL NEW MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2023.
   1. Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
   2. Just be registered and apply for your mail-in ballot if you may qualify.
   3. You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking

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