I trust everyone watched the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and that shambolic former president last night. If you didn't here's a spoiler alert: she crushed, humiliated, and shamed him all night long. It's not just me saying it. Here's Steve Schmidt, former Republican operative: "Trump looked like a schlub for most of the debate. His shoulders were crumpled into a position of loserdom and weakness. His eyes were lowered and his head down because that is the position of subordination, defeat and humiliation. He was disemboweled by Kamala Harris, who destroyed him by becoming the first American in a decade to stand toe-to-toe with him, and call him out with eloquence, precision and devastating examples. [She] did what none of the men Trump rolled over could do. She emasculated him, shamed him, humiliated him, held him to account, expressed contempt, dismay and wonderment, while dismissing him with a look that was worth ten million words."

I could round up dozens of similar takes, but I don't have to because a diarist at Daily Kos has already done the work. He cites a wide variety of media outlets with links. So give yourself a little treat and cruise through the list. Of course if you have the time, you might want to watch the whole thing. Maybe even again! It was that thrilling. If you have less time, you might want to watch the Washington Post's ‘I’m talking now’: Most memorable lines from the Trump-Harris debate (about 10 minutes).

The New York Times has published a long article — 2024 Presidential Election Calendar — that details the dates for absentee balloting and early in person voting in pretty much every state. Though, oddly, Wisconsin does not make the list of states with voting by mail options, it does list October 31 for the last date to request an absentee ballot. If you want to vote by mail in this state, you should know that absentee ballots begin to be mailed on September 19. And you probably should request one at My Vote now. The article is a reminder that Election Day starts NOW and ENDS on November 5!

The Brennan Center has a great piece on How Voting Laws Have Changed in Battleground States Since 2020, including in Wisconsin. Here's their account: "Lawmakers in Wisconsin have made multiple attempts over the past few years to enact restrictive legislation. They would have succeeded but for Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who vetoed at least seven restrictive bills that the Republican-controlled legislature passed. Four would have restricted the mail voting process, making it harder to apply for, or have a mail ballot counted. The fifth would have made it more difficult to join and remain on the state’s permanent mail voting list. The sixth and seventh would have mandated the Wisconsin Elections Commission to verify with the Division of Motor Vehicles that registered voters are citizens. Motor vehicle data is often outdated, meaning that people who have become naturalized citizens may be wrongfully purged."

One of those last two, verifying the citizenship of voters, is going to appear on your November 5 ballot as a potential Wisconsin Constitutional Amendment. It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote and the instances of such voting are vanishingly rare. So from the jump, the amendment is unnecessary. If passed, it would change the current language — "Every United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district" is a qualified voter — to say "Only a United States citizen age 18 or older who is a resident of an election district is a qualified voter." The League of Women Voters explains why this apparently meaningless change is nevertheless "harmful and can diminish our voting rights." The League will hold a webinar on the topic on Tuesday, September 17 at 7pm Central Time. You can register here.

Also the League has now published its Voter Guide — VOTE411.org — with essential information for Wisconsin voters ahead of the November 5 election. It has also published a podcast — This is What Democracy Sounds Like — with Carlene Bechen discussing the new maps.

The Milwaukee Chapter of the League is providing Voter Registration Training on Thursday, September 12, from 3:00 - 4:00pm at No Studios, 1037 W McKinley Ave. You will learn how to register people to vote using MyVote.WI.gov, including what is acceptable photo ID. Registration is required. You can also use the online tutorial, both in a text version and in a video version.

Three additional ways to DO SOMETHING have come to my attention this week:

1. The Jodi Habush Sinykin campaign is seeking places to put large Jodi signs. So, do you have a high-visibility yard, or a friend who does? We want to put the 8' x 4' and 4' x 4' signs all over the district!! Please reach out to [email protected] for sign requests.
   
   
2. Become part of the DPW Voter Protection program. It's critical, and there are many opportunities to help, including observing, manning phones, etc. Sign up for training. The highest priority for the VoPro team is recruiting poll observers. They are the eyes and ears around the state. Sign up to be a poll observer. And here is a document with all their volunteer opportunities.
   
   
3. Apartment and condo buildings are hard to reach when canvassing. We are looking to have a Democrat in every building in Shorewood to be the point of contact. You will be a given a list of building tenants and a script to reach the Democrats in these residences and invite them to be a part of this innovative program. To be a recruiter, contact Keith Schmitz.

And as usual, there's a copious list of events you can participate in over the next few weeks.

Michele Obama exhorts us to DO SOMETHING!! OK, but what can each of us do? Here's what:

• Volunteer for a canvass, taking place pretty much every Saturday and Sunday from now until November 5:
      Fox Point / Bayside
      Glendale
      Lakefront
      Shorewood
      Whitefish Bay
      Mequon
      Grafton and Cedarburg
      Jodi Habush Sinykin campaign
  
  If you are physically unable to canvass but would volunteer to drive canvassers through their turfs, send email to Nancy Kaplan. If you can, include the dates you would be available. Shifts run at 9am, 12noon, and 3pm.
  
  
• Volunteer to write postcards: We're targeting likely Democratic women with a goal of informing them of key candidates and to encourage them to vote. Grassroots North Shore will provide the postcards, names/addresses, stamps, and easy instructions. Send email to Norma Gilson.
  
  
• Volunteer to make phone calls: We will be following up our initial postcard mailing with phone calls to women voters who lean toward Democratic candidates. We've expanded our mailing target to just under 9,000 voters. Grassroots North Shore will provide names, phone numbers, scripts to use, and brief instructions. To reach such a large number of voters, we will REALLY NEED YOUR HELP. Send email to Nancy Kaplan.
  
  
• Volunteer to handout voter information at UWM, MIAD, and possibly other colleges and universities in the area. Grassroots North Shore will provide you with flyers and schedule specific days and times with you. Send email to Norma Gilson.
  
  
• Volunteer to write letters to those Republican women who probably voted for Nikki Haley in our April 2 presidential primary. Grassroots North Shore will provide a printed letter with a space for a hand-written note and a signature line, names and address, envelopes, and stamps. Send email to Nancy Kaplan.
  
  
• If you can't volunteer for some reason or just because you hate knocking on doors or calling/texting strangers, you can help Grassroots North Shore's efforts to elect Democrats and Progressives by donating to our fund for stamps, postcards, envelopes, printing, and the data that allows us to target our efforts.

Finally, though more in the semi-distant future, WAVE is holding a statewide Emergency Gun Violence Summit at the Baird Center (400 W Wisconsin Ave, Milwaukee) on Thursday, October 10. Register for Wisconsin's largest gun violence prevention event, organized by Forward Latino and the 80% Coalition, a group of nearly 40 advocacy, business, faith-based, and service organizations! WAVE has generously offered supporters of Grassroots North Shore an opportunity to attend the event, including the luncheon, free of charge!

Now to the news: In case you missed Tuesday's ballot access news, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has you covered. In addition to Vice President Harris and the Butternut Berlusconi, the also-rans will include RFK Jr, Jill Stein, Cornel West, and one or two others. According to the MJS article, "the latest Marquette University Law School poll released in early August and before Kennedy dropped out, Vice President Kamala Harris had a two-point lead over Trump when third-party candidates were factored in. Polling for Kennedy has declined to 8% from double digits earlier in the year, and other third-party candidates are polling at 1% or less in Wisconsin."

Third party candidates, frankly, never succeed. But they can cause mischief. In The Guardian, David Daley articulates a solution that respects what third parties represent but also drains the mischief from their effects: "We need a modern fix that recognizes that third parties are here to stay, but also that a nation with a guiding principle of majority rule deserves winners who earn more than 50% of their fellow Americans’ votes. The best solution to the urgent 'spoiler' problem – which we’ve been exhaustingly debating since Ross Perot’s run in 1992 – is ranked-choice voting (RCV)."

Of course there are other, perhaps more reliable, ways of causing electoral mischief. The news from Georgia's Election Board is, for example, concerning since it seems as if it's just the most visible of widespread efforts to delay certifying vote counts in several states in an effort to stymy Congressional certification on January 6, 2025. Here's how Ian Millhiser explains the situation on Vox.com. "The Georgia State Elections Board recently enacted two new rules that seem designed to allow local election officials to sabotage the state’s vote-counting process.... The rules seek to alter the role of local election officials known as superintendents, whose job is to gather the vote tallies from the polling places within their jurisdiction, add up the tallies, and report those numbers to Georgia’s secretary of state. For at least a century, the Georgia Supreme Court has held that this duty is 'purely ministerial' and that these superintendents 'have no right to adjudicate upon the subject of irregularity or fraud' in an election."

Rick Hasen (Gary T. Schwartz Endowed Chair in Law and Professor of Political Science in the UCLA School of Law) will be publishing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on August 31 titled Why It Will Be Harder for Trump to Challenge This Year’s Election. He's put part of the essay on Election Law Blog, which he curates.

His full text will be behind the Journal's paywall, but even his excerpt is well worth a read.

Perhaps, like me, you were unaware that the Electoral Count Reform Act basically removes the threat of the so-called "contingent election," a process which would almost certainly anoint Benedict Don-Old. So it is important to know that the Act is "a strong bipartisan bill and major victory for voters’ ability to make their voices heard in future presidential elections" (Campaign Legal Center, February 15, 2024).

And then there's the joy that cometh in the morning! The New York Times opinion section offers Joy Can Do More Than Beat Trump by David French: "After nine years of confronting Donald Trump and facing a MAGA movement that has remade the Republican Party I once belonged to, I believe that fear may be sufficient to beat Trump, but only joy can push MAGA back to the periphery of American life." He goes on to wonder "if we’re leaving the era of the nasty snarl in favor of the broad smile. And it’s not just the Harris surge that’s made me wonder about this." The link above should get you past the paywall and the opinion is also worth a full read.

And on those hopeful signs of a nascent sanity in our political stew, how about a little Randy Rainbow to sing us out: The Lawyer or the Conman.

What a wonderful convention the Democrats are putting on! I was unable to hear many of the early speeches because I was in Fiserv Forum for the Harris/Walz rally. We did see part of the roll call, though, with our own Jason Rae presiding. Each state had its own "walk-on music." Ours, of course, was Jump Around. And we had our own DJ! The place was truly rockin'. But because of the hours I spent there — from roughly 3:30 to about 9:30pm — I have also been unable to gather as much newsy information as usual for this edition of this newsletter. So short shrift today, I fear.

I don't usually include photos or graphics in these communications because they sometimes make accessing the emails more difficult. But I'm sending you this joyful one of Vice President Kamala Harris bringing the house down in Milwaukee last night:

For those of you who missed some or all of the great presentations last night, here are links to some of the best:

• Representative Jamie Raskin's charming and forceful presentation, about 7.5 minutes
• Representative Jasmine Crockett skewering the MAGAites with a big grin, about 10 minutes
• Michelle Obama who is decidedly like no other, 20 minutes
• the inimitable President Barack Obama, 35 minutes

There were a lot of newsworthy presentations but I also want to commend to you the brief remarks by Mesa, Arizona, Mayor John Giles, a self-confessed lifelong Republican. It's only a few seconds longer than two minutes.

Governor Tim Walz was a convention night's version of Where's Waldo. He was in Chicago one minute and in Milwaukee the next. Or so it seemed. His speech was nearly drowned out by the jubilent crowd a good deal of the time, but I did clearly here him say: "They [the GOP] left here riding high. Well, trust me, a hell of a lot can change in four weeks. You run a campaign based on fear, you’re going run into a little trouble when you run into a campaign that’s based on joy." You can find his entire talk at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's YouTube channel (12 minutes).

Every journalist and podcaster has a take on the Michelle and Barack show but one of the best that I have seen is David Kurtz's on Talking Points Memo. Kurtz includes a clip of President Obama's physical gestures that accompany his take-down of the Groper-in-Chief. It's not enough to read the words. You've got to see it!

Michelle Obama's speech was nothing short of superb but one line really stood out to me: Kamala Harris "understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth." You can watch a brief clip of that central moment here.

Tonight, Governor Tim Walz will accept his nomination to be the next Vice President of the United States. Former President Bill Clinton, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg are also scheduled to speak Wednesday. Then the grande finale tomorrow night: Kamala Harris will accept the Democratic Party's nomination to be the next President of the United States. You can join other Milwaukee County Democrats at a watch party to close the momentous Democratic National Convention.

I'm going to end this paean to the Democratic Party and the Harris/Walz campaign with a a note about resources in the month since our great President Biden stepped back from the race and endorsed his Vice President as his successor. The sour grapes crowd is calling this change a coup. Absolute balderdash! We're calling it a switch. And since Harris began her sprint, the campaign has really switched on the fund-raising gas, apparently amassing about half a BILLION dollars: "U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris' election effort has raised around $500 million since she became the Democratic presidential candidate, sources told Reuters, an unprecedented money haul that reflects donor enthusiasm going into the Nov. 5 election" (Reuters, August 20, 2024).

We may have the big MO (momentum as some folks call it). But we still need to follow Michelle Obama's exhortation: DO SOMETHING! This coming weekend, August 24 and 25, is a vital Weekend of Action. You will find links to the closest canvass locations in the list below. Even if you can't do the walk and knock thing, you could drive people who can. So let's go win this thing!

So the primary election for partisan offices except for president (which was included in the April 2 election) is tomorrow, Tuesday, August 13. If you have not voted yet, or even if you have, please contact your network of family, friends, and co-workers to turn them out to vote. Usually this kind of summer primary is not well attended, but this year the August election features TWO constitutional amendments that if passed will cripple this state's government in its response to emergencies, slow the budgeting process, and promote gridlock and a standoff between the legislative and the executive branches of government.

Learn more about these ballot questions at our website or the more extensive page from the League of Women Voters. You can see a sample ballot for your specific location at MyVote.WI.gov. That site will also tell you what your polling place is. Since we have new maps, it would be wise to check as your voting districts and your polling place may have changed.

Make a plan to vote! Make a plan to VOTE NO on both ballot questions!! They can be easily overlooked since they are on the back side of the ballot at the very bottom.

This missive is not a substitute for a real newsletter, but it will have to do until Thursday, a day later than usual. I'll be able to bring you the results of the voting on the ballot questions in our North Shore and Ozaukee communities as well as other news in our local, state, and federal elections.

Meanwhile rejoice for a moment or two: the latest polls in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin show the Harris-Walz ticket ahead by 4 in each of those states. It's early days yet, so don't sit back thinking we have this thing in the bag. We don't. We'll need EVERYONE to play a part in electing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

You can start by planning to attend Glenna Cose Brin's Political Engagement Party on Tuesday, August 20, and/or the Milwaukee County Democratic Party's Acceptance Speech Watch Party on Thursday, August 22, when Vice President Kamala Harris will take up the presidential candidate mantle and propel us on the way to victory. I hope that by the time I write this week's real newsletter, I will have more information and links to sign up for these two events. Until then, though, pencil them in your calendar.

And while you're making a note of some near-future events, add the in-person Grassroots North Shore event, What Future Do We Want? It's up to us!, on Sunday, September 8, at Maslowski Park, 2200 W Bender Rd, Glendale. News of the speakers and other information about the event will be coming soon.

For an uplifting piece, read Reed Galen's substack "Irrational" Exuberance. The subhead for the piece is "Happiness is a Good and Necessary Thing in Politics." Give yourself a five-minute treat. Then go to our 2024 Election Volunteer page to figure out how you can best help the cause.

It's Governor Tim Walz for Vice President! The news outlets are filled to overflowing with the announcement and with details about the man and his life story. Here's how Talking Points Memo's David Kurtz succinctly summed up the choice: "A former teacher and coach and longtime National Guardsman, Walz has not been a prominent figure on the national Democratic stage. He was not known to have presidential ambitions. But in the weeks since President Biden ended his re-election bid, Walz’s solid record as a progressive governor, his perceived appeal in the critical Blue Wall states, and his direct, folksy manner had catapulted him into the top rank of vice presidential contenders for Harris."

Here's the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel approach: "after Harris' announcement [Wisconsin Democrats] pointed to Walz's working-class background as a former high school teacher, his military service and his six terms in Congress as experience that could appeal to voters in a key swing state like Wisconsin."

A lot of other news has been relegated to the virtual back pages by the sudden burst of excitement surrounding the presidential campaign. So here's a short list of stories you might find newsworthy. In the Arizona fraudulent electors case, former Orange Julius attorney Jenna Ellis is now cooperating with prosecutors. You can see coverage and a video of her statement at Politico.

In a sign of how potentially violent and intimidating our elections seem to have become, Arizona's Maricopa County "public school district isn’t opening its schools to voters as polling sites." It's not clear from the article in the Washington Post (gifted to you) exactly how widespread this phenomenon is: "Heightened school safety protocols and sustained attacks on voting systems and the people who run them — largely by Trump and his supporters — have prompted school leaders across America in both red and blue states to close their doors to the democratic process, according to interviews with nearly 20 school district leaders, county officials, school safety officials and election experts."

Don the Con is scheduled to be sentenced on September 18. Roger Parloff, Senior Editor of Lawfare, has taken A Close Look at Trump’s Immunity Objections to His N.Y. Convictions. "With the filing of Donald Trump’s reply memorandum on Aug. 1, briefing is now complete on whether the former president’s 34 felony convictions, handed down by a Manhattan jury on May 30, can survive the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 1 presidential immunity ruling. New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan has pledged to rule on that question by Sept. 6 and, if he rules for the People, to then proceed to Trump’s sentencing on Sept. 18." Parloff recognizes just how fraught the territory Judge Merchan must cover and foresees the case traversing the trial and appellate courts in New York only to land yet again at the Supreme Court of the United States.

Before turning to more immediate and proximate matters, let's take a minute or two to poke the bear! The one RFK Jr. dumped in Central Park a decade ago. Unfortunately he posted his strange confession video on X(Twitter). But you really should hold your nose and go see it. He's telling this story to Roseanne Barr and some unnamed and unseen others, and they're all laughing it up. But it should not be funny. RFK recounts how he saw coverage of the bizarre events on the news, with "a mile of yellow tape, 20 cop cars and helicopters flying over it." So, the dead bear discovery involved an extensive public safety response. Ha ha?

The euphoria around our new Democratic ticket cannot blind us to the work we need to do in our own backyards. So here are some immediate ways for you to engage: On Saturday, August 10, and Sunday, August 11, we are volunteering with the Democratic Party to Get Out the Vote for next Tuesday's election. Even if you don't have a lot of contested races on your ballot, it is imperative that we all vote and VOTE NO on the two ballot questions you will find at the bottom of the second side or your ballot. In addition, we are knocking on as many doors as we can. So please pitch in. In general, you can find events near you by going to Mobilize, but here are some happening in the North Shore:

If you can't canvass, show up for a shift and offer to navigate and drive for a canvasser. It will make a huge difference.

As you know, Jodi Habush Sinykin is running to represent state Senate District 8. The district encompasses Assembly Districts 22, 23, and 24. And Democrats have candidates running in all three of those districts, too. Jodi's campaign is already up and running and she needs our support for the five canvasses she has scheduled in August. (These are in addition to canvasses organized by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.)

• August 7th @ 5:30 - Germantown
• August 9th @ 4:30 - Menomonee Falls
• August 14th @ 5:30 - Port Washington
• August 20th @ 5:30 - Menomonee Falls
• August 26th @ 5:30 - Mequon

If you have not seen Vice President Kamala Harris's first ad for her campaign for president, give yourself a brief treat, complements of The Guardian. The spot is called "We Choose Freedom." Beyoncé's song "Freedom" provides the musical accompaniment as Kamala Harris frames the election: "the freedom to get ahead; the freedom to be safe from gun violence; the freedom to make decisions about your own body." She defines herself as a prosecutor versus a felon. Most importantly, she is looking toward a hopeful, joyous future as opposed to the MAGA agenda taking us back to an age of illegal abortions and an era of manifest inequality before the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act became law. As she exclaimed in her speech in Indianapolis last week, “These extremists want to take us backward, but we are not going back.”

Here's another great Harris ad. Our fearless VP and presidential candidate calls Benedict Donald out for nixing the bipartisan border bill this past spring. Although she's only 10 days into this project, her campaign team is apparently in full swing. I don't usually recommend this but keep your eyes open for more of her campaign ads!

So, have you heard about "weird" as an epithet for The Big Lie-bowski and his Mini-Me JD? What do you think? Here's what Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo thinks. And here's a whole blog post (kinda crude) documenting just how weird the MAGA set are. It's a surprising way to define your opponents in a political race, but it seems to be catching on and, more to the point, working. An AP story explains how it came about and why it seems to work.

On the local scene, early in-person voting began yesterday, July 30. Generally, early voting takes place in your town, village, or city hall. If you have not requested an absentee ballot already, you should consider early in-person voting. Voting by absentee ballot or early in person has a significant upside: they're much more flexible ways to vote than planning to vote on Election Day. To see the early voting information for your community, visit our page Early Voting Information for August 13 Primary. You might also want to prepare for voting in this election by viewing a sample ballot and by reading up on the candidates. Our Elections 2024 provides the names of candidates and links to their online sites. And if you live in Glendale, Shorewood, or the part of the city in Senate District 4, you might want to review information about the two candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for SD4.

As those of us in Glendale and Shorewood know, Dora Drake has now been elected to Senate District 4 to fill out the term for that senate seat, vacant since February when Lena Taylor became a Milwaukee County Judge. Now as the incumbent, she is running in the August 13 primary to be the Democratic nominee for Senate District 4 on the November 5 ballot. You can find election information about Senator Drake and her opponent Representative LaKeshia Myers as well as other candidates on the August 13 ballot. Those of us in Assembly District 10 should also know that Grassroots North Shore enthusiastically endorses Senator Drake. So if you live in Glendale or Shorewood — or in Assembly Districts 10, 11, or 12 — you can vote for her again!

The 10 days or so since Vice President Harris became the presumptive nominee for president have been amazing and joyous. Filled with energy and enthusiasm. In the next week or so, we can carry her message of freedom and opportunity throughout our area. Here are some of the canvasses and other volunteer events you should really sign up for:

• High Traffic Canvassing in Glendale, Thursday August 1, 6:00 - 7:30pm. Stone Creek Coffe, 6969 N Port Washington Rd, Glendale
  
  
• Fox Point Volunteer Recruitment Phonebank, Thursday August 1, 7:00 - 8:30pm (repeats Thursday August 8) Address provided on sign-up.
  
  
• Weekday Canvassing in Fox Point Thursday August 1, 4:30 - 7:30pm (repeats on Friday August 2, Monday August 5, Tuesday August 6, and August 7 - 13 )
  
  
• Fox Point Canvass, Saturday August 3, 9:00am - 12:00pm and 12:00 - 3:00pm (repeats Sunday August 4, Saturday August 10 and Sunday August 11) Address provided on sign-up.
  
  
• Shorewood Canvassing, Saturday August 3, 9:00am - 12:00pm and 12:00 - 3:00pm, 94516 N Newhall St. (repeats Saturday August 10)
  
  
• Glendale Canvassing, Sunday August 4, 9:00am - 12:00pm and 12:00 - 3:00pm (repeats Saturday August 10 and Sunday August 11)
  
  
• Social / Relational Organizing Glendale & Fox Point, Tuesday, August 6, 6:00 - 7:30pm
  
  
• John Zarbano Meet and Greet, Tuesday August 6, 6:00 - 7:00pm, Cedarburg Library Community Room
  
  
• Get Out the Vote in Grafton and Cedarburg, Saturday August 10, 9:00am - 12:00pm and 12:00 - 3:00pm (repeats Sunday August 11), address upon sign-up
  
  
• Get Out the Vote in Port Washington, Saturday August 10, 9:00am - 12:00pm and 12:00 - 3:00pm (repeats Sunday August 11), address upon sign-up

As you know, Jodi Habush Sinykin is running to represent state Senate District 8. The district encompasses Assembly Districts 22, 23, and 24. And Democrats have candidates running in all three of those districts. Jodi's campaign is already up and running and she needs our support for the five canvasses she has scheduled in August. (These are in addition to canvasses organized by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.)

• August 7th @ 5:30 - Germantown
• August 9th @ 4:30 - Menomonee Falls
• August 14th @ 5:30 - Port Washington
• August 20th @ 5:30 - Menomonee Falls
• August 26th @ 5:30 - Mequon

It's great if you can canvass. But if you can't, you can really assist a canvasser by volunteering to drive the canvasser through the route. Because her district includes a large chunk of Ozaukee County — some of it very difficult to walk without a driver/navigator — and chunks of Washington and Waukesha counties — areas with which most of our canvassers are unfamiliar — having a driver and navigator makes knocking on doors more efficient. So please sign up for one or more of the Habush Sinykin events above.

There are lots of ways you can help get out the vote for this very low turn-out election in just under two weeks. Here's one. Rideshare2Vote Wisconsin: Help drive voters on a Ride2Vote! At Rideshare2Vote, our mission is clear: Our complimentary Ride2Vote Program creates access to the polls for voters and boosts Democratic voter turnout. Join the only team in the nation making sure voters cast their ballots. Our team contacts and schedules a Ride2Vote for nonvoting Democrats year-round to stave off the MAGA assault at every level of our government. You can learn more here, then sign up for training now. Sign up.

There's a lot of news to get to, including the drivel from the RNC, but first things first. Grassroots North Shore really needs a few more good people! Norma Gilson has 5 or 6 packages of flyers to be dropped off at houses in Glendale and Shorewood. This action differs from canvassing in that we are not asking you to knock on doors or talk to strangers if you don't want to. These turf packets are easily walkable. And they are part of our "VOTE NO on the ballot questions" campaign. To deliver flyers, contact Norma Gilson.

I have 20 some phone lists that have not yet been assigned. These are really easy calls to make to strong Democratic women who live in the new Senate District 8. These women have recently received a postcard from us alerting them to the August 13 election. The phone call reinforces the postcard message and provides a chance to give more information about the ballot questions. I started my call list yesterday and had two wonderful conversations with women who were only dimly aware of the election and were grateful for the call, and especially on the information about the ballot questions. We are leaving messages and/or texting people too. To sign up for a phone list, contact Nancy Kaplan.

Jody Habush Sinykin is recruiting people to canvass for her, separately from the canvasses the Democrats are hosting. She's running for the tipping point state senate seat (formerly held by Dan Knodl). Winning this senate seat is vital to the strategy for winning the state senate majority in 2026. Vying for that seat is the execrable Duey Strobel who is new to the redrawn Senate District 8. So it's a very winnable race and Jodi is a fabulous candidate. We need to give her all the support we can. To kick off her campaign in earnest, she is holding a campaign launch party for anyone who will canvass for her. The kickoff party takes place on Monday, July 29, at 5pm. To sign up, please email Talia Gottlieb or go to her Volunteer Sign Up page.

And the last ask of this week: The Democratic Part of Milwaukee County shoulders the responsibility for the Dems State Fair booth. The Fair runs from Thursday, August 1, through Sunday, August 11, with three shifts per day: 10am - 2pm; 2 - 6pm; and 6 - 9pm. In exchange for volunteering, you will be mailed a free admission ticket for each shift you sign up for. Sign up.

Now for the news! The Republican Convention is in town, of course. Tonight's big keynote speech will come from the newly anointed VP pick, Senator J.D.Vance. Republicans seem to be ecstatic about the choice. In the coming days, we will learn more about his positions on the issues, though he has been known to be something of a chameleon. Here's the Biden-Harris campaign's substack on his positions: DONALD TRUMP AND J.D. VANCE. Contrast those positions with President Biden's accomplishments.

In the past few days we saw two truly astonishing events. First, Don the Con's close call with a bullet from an AR-15 style weapon wielded by a 20 year old, apparently conservative, young man. As yet, the authorities know very little about the shooter so we should not speculate about even the most innocuous detail. The fact that he was able to get into a position close enough to attempt an assassination is troubling.

CNN is producing live updates on the House investigations into how such an event could have happened. CBS News notes that "a sniper from a local tactical team deployed to assist the U.S. Secret Service at the rally took a picture of the gunman and saw him looking through a rangefinder minutes before he tried to assassinate the former president, a local law enforcement officer with direct knowledge of the events told CBS News." We might be shocked, but not surprised, that we continue to witness such political violence. Now The Former Guy is both a fomenter and a victim of it. You can bet on the play his victimhood will get, both in his campaign and in its coverage.

Oddly enough, what Judge Cannon ruled in the Mar-a-Lago documents case is, to me at least, considerably more concerning. She has ruled that the special counsel, Jack Smith, "was illegally appointed by the Justice Department" (AP, July 15, 2024). "The dismissal by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon brings a stunning and abrupt halt to a criminal case that at the time it was filed was widely regarded as the most perilous of all the legal threats the Republican former president confronted." Andrew Weissmann and Mary McCord discuss both the attempted assissination and Jack Smith's options for the case on their podcast "Prosecuting Donald Trump: An Unsettling Few Days." Apparently Jack Smith has already indicated he will appeal, either to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals or directly to the US Supreme Court.

If it stands, the Cannon ruling will cast doubt on 25 years of special counsels, including the work of the odious Ken Starr and the cases against Hunter Biden. But more seriously, the ruling would mean much more difficulty appointing special counsels in the first place — as I understand it they would have to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. So the Department of Justice would have no other mechanism to try to structure an investigation so that it is removed from political pressure. That, after all, was the purpose of the Special Counsel statute in the first place. Here's Wikipedia's explanation: "In the United States, a special counsel (formerly called special prosecutor or independent counsel) is a lawyer appointed to investigate, and potentially prosecute, a particular case of suspected wrongdoing for which a conflict of interest exists for the usual prosecuting authority."

So last week there was no newsletter. It turned out to be a bad week to take a vacation! As I'm sure you're all aware, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that presidents and former presidents enjoy absolute immunity for "official acts" that are within the "core powers" of the presidency and "presumptive immunity" for other, unspecified acts. Many gallons of ink, pixels, and oxygen were consumed with analysis, but the bottom line of all of it is this: it's a terrible ruling that gives The Former Guy a lot of shelter. Exactly how much remains to be seen, so I'm not going to spend a lot of the newsletter's pixels with summaries and links to those analyses.

Also national attention, in the media anyway, has been consumed with the meaning of President Biden's terrible debate outing: his age, whether he suffers from some neurological disorder, whether he's capable of doing the job — not just for the next four years but NOW. Again, I will not spend time and energy on this story. You can find it everywhere. And it just leads to despair. Let's face it: President Biden, as AOC said yesterday, is the Democratic nominee. (I'm not linking to any of the coverage because the media embed the AOC and Bernie Sanders's expressions of support in the narrative journalists prefer: 'these officials are supporting him, for now' they opine.)

We need to stop wringing our hands, what-iffing, worrying. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work! President Biden has been one of the best presidents of my lifetime. When I told him so, he kissed me on the top of my head. We need to extoll him for the masterful way he has handled governing at home and rallying our allies abroad. So as far as I am concerned, I'm tuning out all the efforts to persuade him to release his delegates and step aside. He's not about to do that. End of story.

What I want to foreground here is one of the other egregious rulings from SCOTUS that was handed down in the last days of the term. The case for which this ruling was made — Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo — demolished the so-called "Chevron deference," a precedent decided in 1984 that required the federal judiciary to let experts in federal agencies interpret laws that broadly regulate various aspects of our lives but do not spell out every jot and tittle of the rules the laws are meant to engender. In short, Chevron deference meant that people deeply versed in, say, the science of air pollution or food-borne pathogens could make the specific rules that would govern in those areas.

Amy Howe, writing for SCOTUSblog explains: "In a major ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday cut back sharply on the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should rely on their own interpretion of ambiguous laws. The decision will likely have far-reaching effects across the country, from environmental regulation to healthcare costs."

In an article titled "Here’s What the Court’s Chevron Ruling Could Mean in Everyday Terms," (link gifted) the New York Times article states that the decision "could lead to the elimination or weakening of thousands of rules on the environment, health care, worker protection, food and drug safety, telecommunications, the financial sector and more." It is likely also to prompt "a rush of new litigation, while also injecting uncertainty into businesses and industries."

The 6-3 ruling in this case not only overturns settled law — Chevron deference has been the law of the land for 40 years, after all — it also provides the blueprint for dismantling any and all regulations that have protected our lives, our liberties, and our sense of living in a just society. Rather than relying on experts to determine what rules in the public interest can "limit toxic smog, ensure that health plans cover basic medical services, ensure the safety of drugs and cosmetics and protect consumers from risky corporate financial behavior," judges will have to make the rules themselves. Or not. And of course they lack the requisite knowledge to do so. Also worth noting: the ruling transfers power from the executive branch of government to the judicial branch and to the tender mercies of people who are appointed to lifetime tenure!

On a brighter note, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled that drop boxes can be used for returning absentee ballots. But two words of caution about the ruling. One, what the court did was return the issue to the discretion of municipal clerks. So not all municipalities in the state will use them. And two, even where municipal clerks choose to use them, drop boxes will not be available for the August 13 election. The ruling will go into effect for the November 5 election. As WisPolitics explains, "This decision is a major win for Wisconsin voters and will make voting in Wisconsin easier, more reliable, and more secure in this year’s general election and beyond."

And speaking of elections, we have a vital one coming up SOON. On August 13, or in the weeks preceding that date, you will have an opportunity to vote in the partisan primary for a range of offices including for US Senator, Congressional Representative, State Senators, State Assembly Representatives, and some county offices. But the most important thing on your ballot comes at the very end, where you're least likely to see it. And that is the pernicious ballot questions that, if approved by the voters, will amend the Wisconsin constitution. Both ballot questions deal with who has the authority to appropriate or allocate federal moneys. You can see the text of the questions on our website. Grassroots North Shore urges you to vote in this election and to VOTE NO on both ballot questions.

Here's why:

Learn more about these proposed amendments and why YOU MUST VOTE in this election this Sunday, July 14, at Doctors Park (1870 E Fox Ln, Fox Point) from 4:00 - 6:00pm. Grassroots North Shore has three dynamic speakers on tap — Maggie Daun, the dynamo political radio talk show host of The Maggie Daun Show on the Civic Media Network; Sarah Godlewski, Wisconsin State Treasurer; Ian Schmitt-Ernst, Southeast Organizer for Wisconsin Conservation Voters — to explain exactly what these amendments will mean to us and to our government. Please don't miss this opportunity to get the information you need: Sign up.

By the way, you should soon be able to see what will be on your ballot at MyVote.WI.gov. You can also request an absentee ballot at that site, either for the August 13 primary or for both the August and November elections.

Finally, another must-attend event is coming on Thursday, July 18, at 3900 Estabrook Parkway at 4:00pm. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin will have what I'm told will be an "amazing speaker" to headline the event. And it will be a great occasion to meet fellow liberals from the area. Stay tuned for more details. And meanwhile, sign up for something, okay?

It's going to be a big week in national politics. The Adolph Twitler news is thick, as in molasses or mud. Judge Aileen (Loose-y) Cannon is hearing some ridiculous motions that began on Friday, June 21, with an all-day hearing on whether special counsel Jack Smith's appointment is constitutional (asked and answered multiple times in various courts already, but could always use one more trot around the track). Today (Monday, June 24) she's hearing arguments about whether funding for his office is constitutional (ditto). Also on Monday, she will hear the prosecution's request to "restrict Trump from making more incendiary claims that falsely suggest FBI agents were 'complicit in a plot to assassinate him.'" On Tuesday, she will hear arguments "on Trump’s efforts to bar from trial the audio notes that investigators got from one of Trump’s attorneys, Evan Corcoran." In that same hearing, Dolt 45's lawyers will also argue that "investigators gave misleading statements on the affidavit to obtain the warrant to search his Mar-a-Lago property" (Washington Post, June 24,2024).

Meanwhile the whole country awaits long-delayed major Supreme Court decisions (from Wikipedia):

1. Fischer v. United States, argued on April 14, 2024: Did the D.C. Circuit err in construing 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) ("Witness, Victim, or Informant Tampering"), which prohibits obstruction of congressional inquiries and investigations, to include acts unrelated to investigations and evidence?
2. Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, argued January 17: Whether the court should overrule Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.
3. Trump v. United States, argued on April 25, 2024: Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.

These are only three of the most consequential pending cases in a Supreme Court term that normally ends on June 30! According to The Hill, 14 cases that were argued this term are yet hanging fire. Reuters reports that "the court is having its second-slowest term since 1946, according to Adam Feldman, a legal scholar who tracks court data on his Empirical SCOTUS blog."

The Fischer case has to do with whether one of the January 6 insurrectionists can be charged with obstruction of justice if the congressional procedure he and others disrupted was certification of the electoral college vote and not an inquiry or investigation. The statute Fischer is challenging was used in many other Jan 6 cases and is also one of the charges Benedict Donald faces.

The Loper case is notable because another longstanding precedent — familiarly called Chevron — might be overturned or significantly curtailed. If decided the wrong way, it would jeopardize the entire regulatory apparatus of the government. That's because the Chevron case granted to the agencies and their experts the ability to develop and deploy the means to carry out the laws Congress has passed even if those laws do not fully specify the means by which they are to operate.

The third case is of course the presidential Immunity case. The length of time it is taking for the Court to render judgment is cause for alarm. As the set-up to her conclusion that the US Supreme Court needs substantial reform, Jennifer Rueben, in today's Washington Post, begins "Another day of Supreme Court decisions passed on Friday, another day without an opinion on presidential immunity. No better evidence of the bad faith and bias on the part of the right-wing Supreme Court majority exists than its foot-dragging on the decision concerning whether felon and former president Donald Trump can be prosecuted for an insurrection. In deciding to delay the case for more than six months, the court itself commits election interference." Strong words, eminently justified.

On Thursday, we'll have the Great Debate. Not only should you not miss it; you should watch it with your fellow Democrats at the Debate Watch Party the Democratic Party of Milwaukee County is hosting from 7 - 10pm at Broken Bat Brewery Co. (135 E Pittsburgh Ave, Milwaukee). Be surrounded by friends and fellow Democrats as we cheer on President Biden and get motivated for our 2024 general election campaign. To join in on the fun RSVP to let them know you’re coming, and don’t forget to bring a friend or family member! Alternatively, invite a like-minded friend or two over to your place so you can laugh at the gaffes and cheer at the zingers together. The debate begins at 8pm CDT and runs for 90 minutes.

Maybe some time soon we'll get a decision from the Wisconsin Supreme Court on the issue of using drop boxes to return absentee ballots. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign is pre-planning rapid response rallies in Madison and Milwaukee either to celebrate the return of drop boxes to Wisconsin elections or to respond to an adverse decision. Stay informed about ballot drop box issues and/or RSVP for the rally.

On the home front, I hope you are still reading this missive because Grassroots North Shore has truly VITAL INFORMATION for you about the otherwise ho-hum primary election on Tuesday, August 13. In our presentation on Sunday, July 14, "Hot Topics," experts will explain what the two ballot questions (aka constitutional amendments) mean and what they will do to governance in this state. We're going to meet in Doctors Park (1870 E Fox Ln, Fox Point) from 4:00 - 6:00pm. Maggie Daun (host of the radio talk show The Maggie Daun Show), Sarah Godlewski (Wisconsin Treasurer), and Ian Schmitt-Ernst (Conservation Voters organizer) will fill us in. So please RSVP. Also please bring your own water bottles and lawn chairs if possible.

The newsletter is a couple of days early this week and will be AWOL altogether next week as I'm taking a little R & R to visit with our grandson. But if things really blow up this week, you'll undoubtedly hear from me again.

Before I sat down to write today's newsletter, I was running a few errands in the course of which I saw a bus displaying, not its destination, but an exhortation. "Juneteenth today: Celebrate Freedom." It's an uplifting message in the city our Trumpelthinskin calls "miserable."

But it's also sobering when we realize that our imperfect but beloved country practices slavery by another name. An essay by Andrew Ross, Tommaso Bardelli and Aiyuba Thomas in today's New York Times — End Legal Slavery in the United States (a gift to you) — explains "that Emancipation did not legally end slavery in the United States. The 13th Amendment — the culmination of centuries of resistance by enslaved people, a lifetime of abolitionist campaigning and a bloody civil war — prohibited involuntary servitude 'except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.'" Thus our prison systems use forced, and largely uncompensated, labor. "Today, a majority of the 1.2 million Americans locked up in state and federal prisons work under duress in jobs that cover the entire spectrum, from cellblock cleaning to skilled manufacturing, for wages as low as a few cents per hour or, in several states, for nothing at all."

Of course we face a multitude of crises both at home and abroad, including the presidential election racing towards us. And we may perforce have to attend to them first. But on this joyous holiday, spare a thought for those who, while incarcerated, are also compelled to involuntary labor. And that's just slavery by another name.

Meanwhile, it's June 19th and the US Supreme Court has still failed to issue a ruling on the ludicrous arguments that Don the Con offered to claim that presidents, after they are no longer in office, are immune from prosecution for any and all acts they committed while in office. Noting the delay this dilatory opinion causes, Laura Litman's opinion piece at the New York Times (a gift to you) titled Something’s Rotten About the Justices Taking So Long on Trump’s Immunity Case, begins "For those looking for the hidden hand of politics in what the Supreme Court does, there’s plenty of reason for suspicion on Donald Trump’s as-yet-undecided immunity case given its urgency. There are, of course, explanations that have nothing to do with politics for why a ruling still hasn’t been issued. But the reasons to think something is rotten at the court are impossible to ignore." She notes that "some two dozen [cases] remain undecided that were argued even before the April 25 oral argument over Mr. Trump’s immunity."

Still, she goes on to note that "seemingly mundane, process explanations overlook some of the particulars in the immunity case. Mr. Trump’s lawyers put together a set of arguments that are so outlandish they shouldn’t take much time to dispatch. Among them is the upside-down claim that, because the Constitution specifies that an officer who is convicted in an impeachment proceeding may subsequently face a criminal trial, the Constitution actually requires an impeachment conviction before there is any criminal punishment." Read the piece and see what you make of it.

Also notable in the presidential campaign is President Biden's latest ad: "Character Matters." TPM notes that initially the New York Times story about the ad "takes on the kind of weird distancing that political reporting sometimes offers up as objectivity. The headline — 'Biden Campaign Ad Paints Trump as a Felon' — suggests maybe it’s an open question whether Trump is a felon. Sure, the Biden campaign is painting him that way, but who is to say, really?" The Times story continues in the same vein: "President Biden’s campaign on Monday began its most aggressive effort to brand former President Donald J. Trump a felon." The point, of course, is that Agent Orange IS A FELON, having been convicted on 34 counts.

A few hours after TPM published its critique of the Times story, a new headline appeared: "Biden Campaign Ad Calls Attention to Trump’s Felon Status." The story's text remained unchanged, still asserting that the president's campaign is trying "to brand former President Donald J. Trump a felon." So I repeat: FELON TRUMP is awaiting sentencing in this New York City case and faces another three criminal cases charging him with an additional 54 criminal counts. We need to call Dirty Don what he is: A CRIMINAL who will be sentenced on July 11. And we need to confront the claims of a "rigged" or partisan trial, passionately and without waffling. So here is what North Shore Fair Maps, working off messaging research by the Research Collaborative, recommends.

Those of you who participate in social media might post the four statements as a retort for those who scoff at TRE45ON's verdict.

We're steaming into summer, literally. It's pretty hot for mid-June by Wisconsin standards. The whole east half of the country is broiling. Because of the abnormal heat in the Atlantic ocean, on May 23, NOAA predicted that the hurricane season, which began June 1 and lasts to November 30, has an 85% chance of becoming an above normal season. "NOAA is forecasting a range of 17 to 25 total named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher). Of those, 8 to 13 are forecast to become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including 4 to 7 major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5; with winds of 111 mph or higher)" (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, May 23, 2024).

Hurricane activity is not the only dire threat. Already this year, the world has experienced widespread coral bleaching: "Along coastlines from Australia to Kenya to Mexico, many of the world's colorful coral reefs have turned a ghostly white in what scientists said on Monday amounted to the fourth global bleaching event in the last three decades. At least 54 countries and territories have experienced mass bleaching among their reefs since February 2023 as climate change warms the ocean's surface waters, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch, the world's top coral reef monitoring body" (Reuters, April 16, 2024).

Of course, we're immune to hurricanes here and there are no coral reefs in the Great Lakes. But we have our own serious threats, albeit not related to the outdoor temperatures. We're facing a different kind of heat from our soon-to-be-transformed legislature: the MAGA Republicans are racing to alter the political landscape before their grip on legislative power wanes. They're trying to enact pernicious ballot questions that, if passed by voters on August 13, will amend the Wisconsin constitution to seriously alter the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches. In short, these two measures will BURN us. To address this danger, Grassroots North Shore is presenting "Hot Topics!" Sunday, July 14, from 4:00 to 6:00pm.

We're gathering in Doctors Park (1870 E Fox Ln, Fox Point) to unpack the consequences of these two ballot questions. We'll serve light refreshments but we do ask that people bring their own water bottles and lawn chairs. RSVP here. Come meet some of the candidates on the August 13 ballot and learn why everyone needs to vote NO on the ballot questions.

Next week, on Thursday, June 27, President Biden will debate a man with a gag order from a New York City court and who is out on bail in four jurisdictions. The Democratic Party of Milwaukee County is holding a Debate Watch Party. It's going to be at Broken Bat Brewing Co., 135 E Pittsburg Ave in Milwaukee from 7:00 to 10:00pm. If Benedict Donald deigns to engage — after all Sean Hannity is providing a range of rationales for skipping out of the event — I'm sure it will be fun and energizing. I'm just not sure what will happen if the The Cowardly Lyin’ doesn't show.

A final note for residents of Shorewood, Glendale, and everyone who lives in the 10th, 11th or 12th Assembly District. There is a special election taking place right this minute to fill the vacant seat in Senate District 4. To find out more about the candidates, visit our page for the special election. Absentee ballots are already being mailed. In-person early voting began yesterday, June 18, and continues through Friday, June 28. NOTE: In Shorewood, there is no early in-person voting today because of the Juneteenth holiday. See the full in-person early voting schedule for Glendale and Shorewood.

You should be aware that the primary for this seat is tantamount to the election itself. Only Democrats are competing for the seat. Find out more about them before you vote. One of the two women on the July 2 ballot will be the only candidate on the ballot for the general election on July 30. So the July 2 primary will determine who fills the remainder of the Senate District 4 term.