Dear friends,
It feels as though everywhere we look, democracy is at stake. This is keeping us on high alert, which is hard to sustain, AND there is light.
Ukraine’s military counteroffensive has resulted in victories in territories that Putin has claimed and Russians forces have had to withdraw. Russian supply lines are threatened as Ukrainian troops advance.
I don’t usually attend to or report Twitter wars, but this one was too entertaining. Elon Musk decided to go all Jared Kushner and try to negotiate terms for peace, only to invite some choice abuse from the diplomatic community.
In response to his proposal for Ukraine to give up Crimea — which Russia seized in 2014 — and to submit to UN-supervised elections in the four provinces that Russia just held sham referenda to claim, Musk asked folks to vote yes or no.
“Which @elonmusk do you like more?,” Zelenskiy tweeted, offering two responses: one who supports Ukraine, or supports Russia.
The Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak suggested a “better peace plan” under which Ukraine took back its territories including Crimea; Russia was demilitarised and denuclearised; and “war criminals” faced an international tribunal.
“Dear @elonmusk, when someone tries to steal the wheels of your Tesla, it doesn’t make them legal owner of the car or of the wheels. Even though they claim both voted in favour of it. Just saying,” Lithuania’s president, Gitanas Nausėda, tweeted in response.
A Ukrainian-born reporter who was under house arrest in Russia after waging an on-screen protest against the war, has escaped with her daughter. Run Marina Run!
In Brazil, as the nation prepared to vote Bolsonaro out, Lula came up short of the majority of votes he needed to win without a runoff. Lula led by more than 5 percent and the runoff is a month away.
A friend in Brazil wrote yesterday to say:
I spoke with friends this morning, and it is clear that this cannot sadden us for more than one day, because our country needs the best efforts of its children at this time.
My thoughts exactly.
Yesterday, I went into classrooms to help some high school juniors and seniors get excited about registering to vote. The goal is to take advantage of NYS’s provision for pre-registration — available to 16- and 17-year-olds — so that when life hits new adults full on, they’ve got one of their important boxes already ticked.
An important message I carried is that politicians are more likely to listen to you if they have reason to think that you’ll vote: voting makes you someone who must be listened to.
Stronger student turnout strengthens democracy and increases the likelihood that policymakers will pay attention to issues important to students, like student debt. Political science research explains how these initiatives made a difference.
There was a massive uptick in voting among college students — a 14 percent increase from 2016 to 2020, and a doubling of participation in the midterms.
Wisconsin's voter ID law, which passed in 2012, allowed student IDs as an acceptable form of identification for voting, but the IDs had to have signatures and a two-year expiration date.
The result was that student ID cards from only three of 26 University of Wisconsin campuses and seven of 23 private colleges were acceptable for use as IDs in the 2016 election. That meant many young people were turned away at the polls.
The University of Wisconsin addressed the issue by providing students with special voter ID cards and proof of enrollment, but students in private colleges have continued to be turned away at the polls.
A lack of accessible polling places has also proved to be an obstacle to student voting.
Tell Secretaries of State to end voter suppression of students. This quick action is from Rise.
Getting out the vote is critical. I remain hopeful. That the Republican candidates are an unbelievably sorry lot increases our opportunity.
There are receipts and other evidence to show that anti-abortion — with no exceptions! — Georgia candidate for the US Senate, Herschel Walker, pressured and paid for a former girlfriend to get an abortion. And we’re not surprised.
In interviews, Senator Marco Rubio said he didn’t vote for the bill containing disaster relief funds:
it contained “a bunch of things” unrelated to disaster relief, like additional funding for Ukraine, low-income heating assistance, and relief for Jackson, Mississippi, which is recovering from a historic water crisis.
Sign up to get out the vote with The Frontline!
with love,
L