|
 |
I love to draw people. While in Washington, DC, I drew these two women talking and working. The above sketch could have been drawn anywhere, it’s not specific to DC. But when I can, I enjoy capturing cities and the people, and try to reflect what makes the place unique.
We desperately need to keep in mind: Trump is attacking our voting rights and doing so in all kinds of ways.
He and his people are using Justice Department lawsuits, FBI investigations, and an executive order to limit voting by mail. To add to this multi-pronged approach, Trump and cronies continue false claims that he lost the 2020 election due to voting fraud, and call other elections “rigged” if they don’t go his way. In an excellent front page story (which I quote from below, but suggest you read because it’s so good), the Guardian reports: “Since Donald Trump began his second term, numerous 2020 election denialists have been installed in key agencies such as the DoJ, the FBI and elsewhere to pursue widely discredited claims of fraud, which can intimidate election workers and voters in swing states that Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020.”
The DOJ is filing lawsuits to get voting data.
This is a systematic attempt to kill democracy.
“The Department of Justice has no authority to sweep up the voter rolls, which contain private information like drivers’ licenses and social security numbers, from every state in the nation,” Eileen O’Connor, a senior counsel with the Brennan Center, one of the many places keeping an eye on this. “The department has 30 active lawsuits against states and the District of Columbia to force the turnover of these sensitive records. So far, eight courts have issued rulings in these cases, and the DoJ has lost each one.”
“These attempts are clearly unconstitutional. States run elections, not the feds. One executive order even directs the US Postal Service to decide which voters can receive mail-in ballots and which not, as if they could manage such an assignment,” said veteran Republican consultant Charlie Black.
“Trump’s executive order requiring the Department of Homeland Security to compile a list of verified US citizens eligible to vote and the Postal Service to limit mail-in voting, could very well disenfranchise millions of voters while doing nothing to eliminate virtually non-existent voter fraud,” former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission who now teaches law at the American University, Larry Noble said. “Trump is using lies to justify an unprecedented effort to have the federal government take over the administration of elections, despite the constitution giving the states that power.”
Trump’s ballroom project is now estimated to cost $600 million, with half of that to be paid with taxpayer money. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit group chartered by Congress to oversee preservation of historic places, brought the lawsuit in December about the project. Trump is rushing to construct the building while the legality of his actions are being litigated in court.
Speaking of spending too much money, Heather Cox Richardson reports today that the renovations of the reflecting pool on the Washington Mall that Trump said would cost $1.5 million appear to have cost almost $16 million. The pool is now full of green algae. Trump continues to claim he’s fixed the pool (which never needed fixing in the first place), yet anyone can see it’s now green with algae, not the crisp blue that he wanted.
Can this please be a symbol of his presidency?
Remember that a court ordered Trump’s name to be taken off the Kennedy Center? Just days ago, the night of the deadline for that to happen, crews took down the scaffolding they were going to use, and then put it back up— but this time with a huge tarp covering the side of the building with the names. A photo from the NY Times taken from a sliver of an opening on the side of the tarp appears to show Trump’s name being taken off. Yet the tarp remains still. Apparently, Trump people are playing childish games. Heather writes: the court ordered them only to take down Trump’s name; it did not order them to show that his name was down, or to keep Kennedy’s name visible. Currently, the Kennedy Center portico facade is covered with a giant tarp through which workers have created passageways to make the center’s doors accessible while keeping the portico covered.
I think someone needs to verify that the name has indeed been removed, and the court should demand the tarp be taken down. We need to see Trump’s humiliation.
Thank you for being here, see you tomorrow. Let’s hope Trump encounters more green algae.
Stay strong!
Here is the video grab of my live drawing above.
