Several battleground states passed election reforms after the 2020 election, but those laws might be only as good as state supreme courts allow them to be.  The states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, and North Carolina all enacted election reforms that include enhanced voter ID laws and bans on private money funding administration of elections.  “In most of the battleground states, state supreme courts have gotten worse,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told The Daily Signal. “Also, some of the executives in those states—the governors, attorneys general, secretaries of state—may not defend existing election laws.” After the 2023 elections, Democrats have a grip on the high courts in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. But Republican justices have majorities in Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina. Nevada is split, according to Ballotpedia.  Control of state supreme courts could have a significant impact on the outcome of the Nov. 5 presidential election and other down-ballot races, said Hans von Spakosky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation.  “Unfortunately some state supreme courts have become just as political as some of the idealogues that have been confirmed to federal judgeships,” von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at Heritage, told The Daily Signal. He added: “If it’s a close election, I have no doubt we will be inundated with litigation.”  Republican-leaning justices on state supreme courts hold an edge across all states, with 27 to 17 courts, according to Ballotpedia. However, the seven battleground states likely will decide the future president and makeup of Congress for the rest of the country.  Because so many state judicial races are officially nonpartisan, Ballotpedia established a “State Partisanship” index for each state supreme court and measured the “confidence” each of the two major political parties had in judges.  Among executive branch officials who supervise elections, Democrats had big election wins in 2022 for secretary of state seats in Arizona, Nevada, and Michigan. Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger is the only Republican elected to that office in a battleground state. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, appointed Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a former Republican election official from Philadelphia. Two battleground states, North Carolina and Wisconsin, have state boards overseeing elections.  Since the 2020 presidential election, the North Carolina Supreme Court flipped from Democrat to Republican and the Wisconsin Supreme Court flipped from Republican to Democrat.  After Democrats won a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2023, the court reversed decisions by the prior conservative majority, notably on the legality of ballot drop boxes.  “I am concerned. You never know what the [Wisconsin] Supreme Court will do; there are such activists on the courts,” Annette Olson, CEO of the MacIver Institute, a Wisconsin-based think tank, told The Daily Signal.  In the 2020 election, Pennsylvania was among the most controversial states.  State law says absentee ballots must be postmarked and received no later than 8 p.m. on Election Day. But then-Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, wanted to allow ballots to be counted as long as they arrived by Nov. 6—three days after the election. Wolf used the COVID-19 pandemic as a rationale. Republican legislators challenged the policy in court.  But the Democratic majority on Pennsylvania’s partisan elected state Supreme Court decided 4-3 to allow mail-in votes to be counted if they arrived by Nov. 6,. The high court declared that if postmarks or dates are missing or illegible, ballots still would be “presumed to have been mailed by Election Day” unless evidence showed otherwise. “Many of the judges on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court acted unethically,” Heritage’s von Spakovsky said. “They made promises during their elections on how they would rule on issues, which is per se unethical, and nothing was done about that.” Wolf’s extension of time for mail-in ballots was expected to be an emergency measure that wouldn’t affect future elections; the deadline for mail-in ballots has returned to the close of polls.  However, a Pennsylvania state appeals court recently ruled that mail-in ballots must be counted even if a voter puts the wrong date on the return envelope.  In 2023, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin each had elections for a single seat on their high court. Democrat Daniel McCaffery won the Pennsylvania seat, which was being vacated by Justice Max Baer. More significantly, Democrats flipped the Wisconsin Supreme Court when Janet Protasiewicz ousted conservative Justice Patience Roggensack. Wisconsin’s judicial elections are officially nonpartisan, but parties and organizations endorse candidates and it is widely known who is liberal and who is conservative, according to Ballotpedia. In 2022, Republicans flipped the North Carolina Supreme Court by winning two seats. Ahead of the 2020 election, Democrats had a 6-1 majority on the court, according to Ballotpedia. With that election, Republicans shaved the margin to a 4-3 Democratic majority.  After the 2022 flip and heading into the Nov. 5 election, Republican justices hold a 5-2 majority on North Carolina’s high court. Some of the key issues in the supreme court contests of 2022 were voter ID, felon voting, and redistricting maps, The Carolina Journal reported.  Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada also had state supreme court elections in 2022, but the majority didn’t change as a result.  In the 2021 election in Pennsylvania, Republicans had a seat on the state Supreme Court but Democrats held the majority.  “Conservatives who spend a lot of time trying to get individuals elected into political posts, for example on state legislatures, have neglected state courts—particularly in states where judges are elected, they need to focus on a concentrated effort to elect good, conservative lawyers to state judgeships,” von Spakovsky said.  The Heritage legal fellow added that several studies show that electing judges doesn’t make the judicial process more or less political than appointing state judges.  “The difference is with judicial appointments in states, it’s a small group of people who influence who gets appointed, whereas if judges get elected it’s voters who make that decision, not a powerful lobbying group,” he said.  The post How Swing State Supreme Courts Could Swing the Presidential Election appeared first on The Daily Signal.

News consumers are often unaware of just how friendly the power players in Washington are, and those relationships are often undisclosed. You can tell that Trump haters have a common cause, but it can go much deeper than that. On CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” on Sept. 3, the host brought on Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to promote his new book (of old essays) titled “On Heroism: McCain, Milley, Mattis, and the Cowardice of Donald Trump.” These two men are obviously allies. But they’re also good friends. This made me recall the newest season of the Netflix food show “Somebody Feed Phil,” starring Phil Rosenthal, the creator of the sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond.” In an episode touting food spots in Washington, D.C., he had dinner with Goldberg and Tapper at the Indian restaurant Rasika. The first clue of the friendship is Tapper walking in and tickling the back of Goldberg’s head. Tapper announced, “His kids babysat for my kids.” This doesn’t appear in an on-screen graphic when Goldberg appears on Tapper’s show. Later, he mocked Goldberg when he started talking about his visit to a nuclear bunker. That’s a Washington flex, Tapper said, like saying, “Once I was talking to Fidel Castro over mojitos … ” Tapper clearly thrilled Goldberg when Rosenthal asked if they were optimistic or pessimistic about the future. Tapper declared: “I’ve just never been in a time where, like, things that I’ve took (sic) for granted—like democracy, and respecting the right of people to vote and all that—were so just, like, nakedly being torn down by major leaders.” He clearly wouldn’t include Democrats trying to tear Trump’s name off the ballot and forcing Joe Biden out of the race and then trying to keep third-party leftists Jill Stein and Cornel West off the ballot while, at the same time, trying to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name on the ballot after he left the race and endorsed Trump. In Tapper’s latest Goldberg interview, they discussed John McCain’s son Jim endorsing Kamala Harris. Goldberg implied that’s how McCain would have voted this year. Then they decried Trump visiting Arlington Cemetery with grieving Gold Star families and filming the visit. Neither man acknowledged uncomfortable truths, such as McCain filming a campaign advertisement at Arlington, not to mention the professional photographs Biden had taken there. All this gave Goldberg the license to repeat his magazine’s most hostile Trump stories: “He obviously, very famously got out of Vietnam. He equally famously has referred to people who get killed on behalf of the country as suckers and losers.” Goldberg mused to Rosenthal that social media is a “vast unregulated experiment,” but no one regulates Goldberg for repeating claims for which he has no evidence—nothing recorded, just claimed. Many people around Trump said it never happened. Tapper then asked why Trump-hating generals like [Mark] Milley and [James] Mattis won’t openly come out for Harris. “The military is apolitical,” claimed Goldberg without giggling. Because soon he admitted that generals “let it be known, through journalists and through other means, what happened inside the White House in Donald Trump’s first term.” “The military is apolitical,” except when it leaks to anti-Trump news outlets about how horrible Trump is. Which makes it political, especially the staying-anonymous part. It’s about as apolitical as Goldberg and Tapper. When the interview was over, Tapper announced Goldberg’s Trump-the-coward book title again and said, “Congratulations. I read them when you first wrote them. And I’ll read them again. This nice little book, good!” All we were missing was Tapper tickling Goldberg’s head. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Jake Tapper and Jeffrey Goldberg, Good Buddies Who Hate Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Kohberger’s Defense Team Wants the Death Penalty Off the Table

Kamala Announces 100 Police Officers Endorse Her; Trump Got the Endorsement of All the Rest

A Jewish liberal who hosts for CNN just found out how her fellow leftists actually feel about her… “WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE!” screeched a mob of hamassholes as they crashed a book event for CNN anchor, Dana Bash, Thursday night. “YOU BELONG BEHIND BARS,” a woman shouted in her face, before announcing to the audience that Bash “lives in a house alone.”  “YOU ARE A KILLER!” she added. “YOU ARE COMPLICIT IN GENOCIDE!” BREAKING: CNN's Dana Bash had her event, America's Deadliest Election, at DC Bookstore, Politics and Prose, interrupted multiple times by pro-Palestine protesters who accused her of being complicit in genocide. Bash's response: "Take off your mask." pic.twitter.com/mSPk4MFAbK — Stu (@thestustustudio) September 6, 2024 The event was held in a D.C. bookstore to promote her new book, “America’s Deadliest Election: The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History.”  In this tale, Bash implies there are “parallels” between Louisiana’s violent gubernatorial election in 1872, and a certain party protesting America’s most recent elections today. You can already guess by her synopsis and place of work, what groups she’s warning us about… Bash probably didn’t mean the terrorist sympathizers on the Left, whom her outlet continues to gloss over. In fact, her recent CNN special on antisemitism blamed “white nationalists radicalized online” for the rise in Jew-hatred. She briefly mentioned one or two transgressions committed by the Left, just enough to appear balanced while trying not to anger her ideological “allies.” But she accidentally crossed that line by daring to say controversial things like “Making Jewish students feel unsafe at their own schools is unacceptable.” Bash never expected the Leftist lynch mob to come for her too.  Perhaps she’s now learned the lesson that the ideology she’s pandered to throughout her career does not care. At the end of the day, they still “know who” she is… a Jew.

For the Dana Bash interview on CNN, we made a list of 30 questions we'd recommend to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. CNN only touched on five of them, especially the fracking-ban question. Bash asked a very open-ended question on Harris and Biden's mental decline. Before Tuesday's night's big presidential debate, we'd like to reprise most of these questions and add a few ones based on the latest news. Harris-Walz is arguably the most liberal ticket ever, but they are trying desperately to cover that up, so here are a wide variety of 25 questions that moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis could ask that might actually help voters make an informed choice in a couple of months. Should death row inmates have the right to vote? Do you support the elimination of private health insurance?   How can you claim to unite the country when you were named the most liberal senator in 2019? Should biological males, who identify as women, be allowed to compete in women’s sports? Do you support any limits on abortion? When does life begin?  Do you support the efforts of Democrats to keep some candidates (Jill Stein, Cornel West) off the ballot and try to keep some candidates (RFK Jr.) on the ballot after they've left the race? Is this pro-democracy? Now that Hunter Biden has pleaded guilty to tax evasion, do you have any regrets about your advocacy of Trump's impeachment over seeking more information on Hunter's influence-peddling? Would you overturn President Biden’s ban on LNG exports? If not, how can you really claim to be tough on Russia? What is the greater national security threat? China or climate change? Who will be more prevalent in a Harris Administration: environmentalists or unions with EV concerns? How can voters trust your national security judgement when, in 2019, you said Donald Trump was the greatest threat to U.S. national security? Given October 7 and everything that has happened since, was it a mistake for President Biden to take the Houthis off the terrorist organization list? Do you support ending the Senate filibuster? Do you support adding justices to the Supreme Court?  How can voters trust you on the economy when even liberal Washington Post columnists are attacking your price control plan? How do you plan to tackle the national debt without serious spending reforms? Did President Biden overspend, causing inflation? Did colleges violate Title VI by not ending anti-Israel and often anti-Semitic demonstrations earlier this year? Is America a systemically racist country? Did you conceal anything about Biden’s mental or physical condition from the American people? How can you claim to be the pro-democracy candidate when you were essentially appointed as nominee? Did you really work at McDonald's? You never mentioned it until you decided to run for president?  How can you complain about Trump exaggerating his record when your running mate Tim Walz has claimed to have won awards he never won?  Why are you suggesting Trump will cut Social Security and Medicare when he has explicitly promised not to cut it, and he didn't cut these programs during his presidency?  Asking the questions on this list will be a good test of ABC's desire to make the election about issues rather than personalities.

We’re a mere two months away from the 2024 election, which Glenn Beck says is “the most consequential election in our lifetime and the most consequential election for freedom the world has ever known.” Naturally, Americans are already questioning the integrity of our voting system, granted the alleged fraud that in many ways defined the 2020 election. But what’s fueling citizens’ fear perhaps even more this time around is the illegal immigrant crisis our country has been embroiled in since Biden took office. - YouTube www.youtube.com Our borders have been left wide open for nearly four years, and now we face the prospect of people who have broken the law to be here being given the opportunity to vote in an election that should only belong to the American people. But Americans aren’t alone in this fear. European countries are facing the same problem of open borders. Floods of illegal immigrants — many of them with ideologies that put them in diametric opposition to Western culture and values — have overrun entire European cities. But when citizens speak out, they’re censored — even jailed in some cases. Western governments don’t want us talking about elections or illegal immigration. Why? “This is a global operation,” says Glenn. “The strategy being deployed here is very simple: overwhelm and collapse.” Join Glenn as he connects the dots and delves into the data to answer two vital questions: Are illegal immigrants voting in our elections? And if so, are the numbers meaningful enough to actually choose the next candidate? Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a California bill passed by Democrats that would have provided up to $150K deposit money to illegal aliens to buy a home in California. The bill had garnered national headlines and inspired angry responses from critics on social media. 'He’s the master of gaslighting ... I’ve been here 12 years, and all they do is politics.' Newsom cited budgetary concerns in his decision to oppose the bill. “Expanding program eligibility must be carefully considered within the broader context of the annual state budget to ensure we manage our resources effectively,” he wrote. The move comes after former President Donald Trump said on the campaign trail that he would work to ban illegal aliens from buying any homes if he were to be elected in November. The legislation would have allowed illegal aliens to apply for the California Dream for All program, which already provides no-interest loans to California citizens of up to $150K for their 20% down payment on a mortgage. However, that program had limited funds and ran out quickly. “The bill that was sent to me was [on] a program that had no money, and it was expanding eligibility to a program that had no money,” the governor continued. “It seemed rather curious to me. So it was unnecessary and completely consistent with prior vetoes along those similar lines.” Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle told Politico that Newsom had merely read the tea leaves and went with popular opinion on the bill. “He’s the master of gaslighting,” he said. “I mean, they’ve been doing it forever. I’ve been here 12 years, and all they do is politics.” Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Burning Man is a week-long event that describes itself as being focused on “community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance” that’s held annually out West in the desert. The event centers around the symbolic burning of a large wooden effigy that is referred to as the “Man," and Allie Beth Stuckey is calling it what it is: pagan worship. “It’s about self-expression, self-reliance, self-discovery, self-fulfillment, self-liberation, and even self-worship,” Stuckey says. “Ultimately, that’s what all paganism is.” “It’s no surprise that this event has grown in popularity over the years. It really is just a celebration of the carnal celebration of sex, drugs, perversion,” she continues, noting that attendees adopt “new names,” lay their burdens on the wooden effigy, and eliminate monetary transactions on the philosophy of shared resources when they enter the event. “This is like an upside-down world of Christianity, that when we come into Christianity, we also become new creations, and we take on an easy yoke and a light burden when we follow the way of Christ, and we cast all of our cares upon the Lord because he cares for us,” Stuckey explains. “This is a cheap and pagan imitation of that because it is pretending to offer its attendees freedom, while really attaching them and bounding them to the heavy burden and slavery of sin,” she adds. Burning Man holds sessions that you can participate in like a rope-bondage suspension, orgies, marriages, crafting, and getting branded. “You can get branded, you know, like a cow,” Stuckey says, shocked. “These people so badly want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, they want to be marked for something more, they want something indelible on them and even in their hearts and souls.” “And they are looking for all of that in the wrong place, of course, which is exactly what Satan does,” she adds. Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

There’s nothing worse than getting deep into a dungeon, defeating foe after foe, finding a big bag of loot and then dying, losing it all and making you feel like you’ve wasted hours of time. Of course that’s hyperbole as there’s plenty of worse things than that, but it does definitely suck. In Dark and Darker Season 4, however, the addition of a new feature means while it’s still risky out there, there’s a good chance you can save your loot - but only if you’re fast enough. Continue reading New Dark and Darker season makes getting your loot home much easier MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best RPGs, Best multiplayer games, Best fantasy games