THURSDAY, MAY 6, 2021
President Biden continues his campaign to sell his $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan infrastructure package to the public, as well as resistant Republican senators. He visits GOP stronghold Lake Charles, Louisiana, today, speaking in front of a 70-year-old bridge that is 20 years past its designed lifespan, AP reports.
DeSantis Signs Restrictive Florida Election Law – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, R, has signed a state law with new voting rules and penalties that constrain voting by mail, drop box use and handing out food and water to voters standing in long lines, The Washington Post reports. DeSantis says the legislation will ensure “the most transparent and efficient election anywhere in the country.”
Restrictions include prohibition of mobile drop boxes and a requirement that local election officials staff all drop boxes and allow ballots to be dropped only in early-voting hours, subject to a civil penalty to the officials of $25,000.
Note: DeSantis has scheduled a signing ceremony at the West Palm Beach Airport Hilton near Mar-a-Lago, in a rally “for the best governor in the U.S.A.” DeSantis, who polled second in popularity after the ex-president at the CPAC convention in Orlando last February, is considered the lead prospect for running mate if Donald Trump chooses to enter the GOP nomination race in 2024. The Florida voter bill seems designed to lock the state in favor of such a Trump/DeSantis ticket.
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Arizona Secretary of State Complains of ‘Inadequate Ballot Security’ – Workers in a Republican-led audit of the November 2020 Maricopa County vote have left ballots and computers unattended, Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs, says in a six-page letter to her Republican predecessor, according to a report by The Hill. The Arizona GOP has hired Florida-based Internet security firm Ninja Warriors to conduct the second audit of last year’s presidential election ballots in the state’s largest county, which includes Phoenix.
In her letter to former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, R, who is spokesman for the election audit, Hobbs says that auditors have been instructed not to speak with her office’s observers, and to not speak when the office’s observers are near their tables. The Hill quotes a Twitter account by the Maricopa Arizona Audit that says Hobbs was promoting “baseless claimes (sic) about this forensic audit.”
Also on Twitter – Dennis Welch, political editor for CBS5 News/3TV in Phoenix posted video of an official overseeing the audit, John Brakey, saying auditors “are looking for bamboo fibers because of a baseless accusation that 40,000 ballots from Asia were smuggled here.”
Note: U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming is about to lose her post as Republican Conference Chairman for opposing this sort of reaction to Donald Trump’s re-election defeat.
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France Joins Vaccine Waiver while EU Balks – France has joined the U.S. in supporting an intellectual property waiver on COVID-19 vaccines regarding patents and other protections under World Trade Organization rules, but others, including the European Union, have not yet joined in, according to the AP. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are also resistant, arguing that the patents protect against poor-quality knockoffs, and that the secondary drugmakers may not have the necessary manufacturing knowhow. However, the country now suffering a severe crisis over its surge of coronavirus cases, India, also is the world’s largest manufacturer of pharmaceuticals.
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Biden’s $1.8 trillion package polls positive — Fifty-eight percent of all U.S. voters support President Biden’s $1.8 trillion “American Families Plan” according to a Morning Consult-Politico survey. That number is based on 29% who “strongly support” and 29% who “somewhat support” the proposal. There are 13% who had no opinion, which leaves 30% in the “somewhat oppose” (12%) and “strongly oppose” (18%) categories.
Note: No surprise that 52% of Democrats are in the “strongly support” category, but what is a bit telling that things are not necessarily good in Mitch McConnell’s World of Zero Support is that 40% “strongly oppose” the proposal. So there is greater positive support from Democrats than there is negative support (assuming there can be such a thing) from Republicans.
The all-important Independents’ 20% “strongly support” and 34% “somewhat support,” goes beyond the majority mark, to 54%. Given there are 19% with no opinion, this leaves just 27% against it.
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Senior Hill Aides Predict Republicans Win House, Not Senate – Two-thirds of senior Capitol Hill aides polled by Punchbowl News say the GOP will win a majority of the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms, while Democrats will hold the Senate. The new regularly published poll of anonymous aides, which PN calls The Canvass[VJ1] , conducted by independent polling firm Locust Street Group, says 66% of all polled, including 36% of Democrats, agree Republicans will flip the House. The poll says 66% of all polled agree Democrats will retain the Senate majority, with a 50-50 split among the Republicans polled and 82% to 18% among Democrats.
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Trump Ban Follow-Up – Yesterday’s News & Notes reported that a 20-member Facebook Oversight Board voted to retain the social media site’s ban on former President Trump. The board criticized Facebook for vacillating on the ban, however, as Wednesday’s decision keeps Trump off the site for only six months, after which the site may again reconsider. Trump is permanently banned from social media activity on Twitter and YouTube. –Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods