Pro-Trump group plans to spend $250M in six battleground states

By Jordan Fabian @ TheHill.com, May 9

[....] The states identified by America First are Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia, none of which has fewer than 15 electoral votes. The group’s leaders believe a Trump victory is virtually guaranteed in 2020 if he wins all six.

“We’re going to alleviate the burden on these six states that are must wins. They are the quickest path to the Electoral College,” Kelly Sadler, communications director for America First Action, told The Hill [....]

By Julie Turkewitz, Jack Healy and Patricia Mazzei @ NYTimes.com from HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo., May 8

• A teenager’s choice to lunge at the gunman cost his life but gave others precious seconds. Two students carried out the attack, the authorities said.

It was the latest act of self-sacrifice by students who are now on the front lines of fighting off gunmen in America’s schools.

Caption: Kendrick Castillo was killed while trying to stop one of the assailants during a shooting at his school in Highlands Ranch, Colo., on Tuesday. Credit: Rachel Short, via Associated Press

By Reid Wilson @ TheHill.com, May 8

[....] Trump became the first Republican to win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in decades, in part on the strength of his performance among a handful of voters who had backed former President Obama in 2012.

Two-thirds of those Obama-Trump voters say they see Trump favorably heading into his reelection campaign — but that number has fallen by 19 percentage points since 2016, according to a new survey by the Voter Study Group.

Obama-Trump voters tend to be disproportionately located in the Midwest. They are most likely to be members of the white working class who never attained a college degree, said Robert Griffin, the Voter Study Group’s research director. Political scientist John Sides has found that about 9 percent of Obama voters chose Trump over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, or about 5 percent of the overall electorate. Trump won those three states by just a handful of votes — 10,704 in Michigan, 22,748 in Wisconsin, and 44,292 in Pennsylvania. The slightest erosion in support could cost him those states in 2020. “Even these shifts that look like they’re pretty small, well, the election margins were pretty small,” Griffin said [....]

By Brad Kutner @ Courthouse News Service, May 7

RICHMOND, Va. –Tensions ran high Tuesday in the Fourth Circuit as a government attorney argued for immunity in a case that aims to hold the FBI accountable for its failure to prevent Dylann Roof from purchasing the gun he used to kill nine black churchgoers in South Carolina four years ago.

Families of the victims tried and failed to convince a federal judge that the FBI failed to do its due diligence when it ran its background check on Roof and is liable for the carnage that ensued [....]

By Aram Roston @ Reuters.com, May 7. Below is Rachel Maddow's take on the story:

Former chief White House ethics lawyer 2005-07 adds:

Discontent is tied to concerns about the economy, individual rights and out-of-touch elites

By Richard Wike, Laura Silver & Alexandra Castillo @ PewGlobal.org, April 29

[....] Across 27 countries polled, a median of 51% are dissatisfied with how democracy is working in their country; just 45% are satisfied.

Assessments of how well democracy is working vary considerably across nations. In Europe, for example, more than six-in-ten Swedes and Dutch are satisfied with the current state of democracy, while large majorities in Italy, Spain and Greece are dissatisfied.

To better understand the discontent many feel with democracy, we asked people in the 27 nations studied about a variety of economic, political, social and security issues [....]

Op-ed by Sede Alonge @ TheGuardian.com, May 6

Nigerian media has been awash with news of a recent police raid in the capital, Abuja, in which dozens of women were arrested in and around nightclubs on charges of prostitution. A city official said one way police assessed the potential guilt of the women was if they were dressed “provocatively”. No men were arrested in the raid. There was also an ominously conspicuous absence of any evidence of soliciting, which is a crime under Nigerian law. Most alarming of all, there are witness reports of rape, sexual assault and financial extortion of the women by the policemen who arrested them. Some of the women were taken to a mobile court and allegedly pressured to plead guilty to charges of prostitution on the spot.

This is not the first time police in Nigeria’s capital have stormed nightclubs, arresting women who were perceived to be violating societal norms. Justifying the arrests, Abayomi Shogunle, one of the country’s top police commissioners, responded on social media to those he disdainfully described as “making noise” about the arrests. He declared that prostitution was not only a crime but also a “sin”, according to the country’s two main religions (Islam and Christianity), and a practice “Nigerian culture frowns at” [....]