All posts tagged: Autocrats

Vance, after rallying in Hungary for Orbán, says he wasn’t surprised by the autocrat’s defeat – POLITICO

Vance, after rallying in Hungary for Orbán, says he wasn’t surprised by the autocrat’s defeat – POLITICO

Published by Sam Flores

But the Hungarian election had been a major priority just days earlier. JD Vance had traveled to Budapest last week and while Trump didn’t make the trip himself, he did call into the rally. And that eleventh hour campaign push came weeks after another visit by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump, in his remarks via telephone during Orbán’s rally aside Vance last week, credited the autocrat for his strict immigration policy in particular, stating that he “kept your country strong, and he kept your country good, and you don’t have problems with all of the problems that so many other countries have.” Beyond his own immigration crackdown with an expanded and hyper-aggressive core of immigration agents deployed in dozens of American cities, Trump has modeled other aspects of his governance on Orbán’s own actions, be it vociferously attacking judges, bullying the media into greater submission or hollowing out the government by firing career civil servants. But in Hungary, voters revolted amid a heightened focus on Orbán’s endemic corruption during a period of economic stagnation. “This is …

The Rev. William Barber II: Fighting Autocrats Starts at the Grassroots

The Rev. William Barber II: Fighting Autocrats Starts at the Grassroots

Published by Sam Flores

“This Is Our Selma”—and a debate challenge to Speaker Mike Johnson. Turn out 1,500 more voters per county in North Carolina. That’s the threshold. The Reverend William Barber II has analyzed the numbers and believes that’s where districts flip. Gerrymandering typically assumes 45% turnout. At 50%, the map changes. Barber’s ‘s launching “This Is Our Selma” February 11-14 in Raleigh—a mobilization focused on organizing around voting rights, healthcare, and wage policy rather than resistance messaging. RELATED: Rev. William Barber takes up Mike Johnson’s challenge to debate immigration theology Barber, who led the 2013 Moral Monday protests, contends the strategy requires state-based county-level organizing rather than federal action alone. In every battleground state, voters earning low wages make up 36-42% of the electorate. Last cycle saw a notable shift: for the first time, voters earning under $50,000 favored Trump over Democrats by roughly 1%. The campaigns took different approaches. Trump visited rural Eastern North Carolina counties. Democrats focused on Charlotte and Greensboro. Barber says former candidate Pete Buttigieg confirmed that consultants discourage using the word “poor,” …

How Autocrats Meddle With Elections

How Autocrats Meddle With Elections

Published by Sam Flores

The following is a transcript of the episode: Dawn Baldwin Gibson: For more than 35 years, I have been a registered voter and I have been casting my vote. To this day, months later, I still don’t know why my vote was being challenged. [Music] Anne Applebaum: From The Atlantic, this is Autocracy in America. I’m Anne Applebaum.  This season, we’ve been talking about the Trump administration’s unprecedented accumulation of power. But we’re still missing one piece of the story: the elections themselves. We’ve heard people talk about how they fear soldiers on the streets could intimidate voters, or how crypto barons could try to manipulate campaigns. But the [Donald] Trump White House is also very interested in elections: how voters are registered, how they vote, how those votes are counted. Across the country, state governors and legislators, sometimes inspired by Trump’s false claims about the 2020 elections, are enacting new voter-ID rules; they’re changing registration requirements and crafting lists of voters to purge from the rolls. Dawn Baldwin Gibson is a pastor in New …