09/03/26

Title

The Invention Is Invented

Good morning! It’s Thursday, September 3rd.

US Bowling League Day

More like cool shirts day, amiright?

And now, the news.

Minneapolis Shooting

-via The Guardian and Gun Violence Archive

We started how we start here in America – with at least two people dead and an unknown number others injured after a shooter, who is also dead opened fire at a high-rise apartment building in downtown Minneapolis on Wednesday.

A total of seven people were shot. A number that includes two officers. A third officer was evaluated for a non-life-threatening injury, two others were in a car accident on the way to the scene, and four others were exposed to an unknown airborne substance. 

What a mess.

This is the 246th day of the year, and the 324th mass shooting of the year.

Virginia Shooting

-via MSN and K-12 School Shooting Database

And we continue as we start here in America, with an elementary school staff member is injured, and the shooter is dead after the shooter, a 19-year-old, forced his way into a Virginia state elementary school. The shooting happened in the school’s library, and no students were in the library at the time.

The shooter has not yet been named, but police are using pronouns and say the shooter was not a student of the Waynesboro Public Schools system. Best we’ve got.

A website called K-12 School Shooting Database (hate that we need that!) tracks school shootings. Per the site – “All shootings at schools includes when a gun is fired, brandished with intent to harm, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time, or day of the week.”

As a reminder, it’s the 246th day of the year. This is the 122nd incident of the year.

Voting in America

-via NY Times, PBS, Election Law Blog

Those two stories were really heavy, let’s find something we can relax about.

How about voting!!

Uh oh! Buckle in!

Starting with a whistleblower’s blown whistle noting that, although we are just a few days away from the first ballots being mailed out, the USPS has a new delivery system that could disrupt the way election mail works.

The whistleblower had a two-point-five-fold concern.

One: per Trump’s executive order, the Postal Service would have to verify states’ voter rolls. But there’s no system in place to do so, and that’s a problem because the USPS is trying to create a portal to fill that gap but it’s going very poorly.

The other issue is ballot acceptable and that’s where we total up to 2.5 because this is two issues in one:

Verification when ballots come back in and a generally slow mail system as of late. Ballots used to be treated special – they’re very important and so they would be normally be treated as a special little thing, typically routed around normal processing facilities. That’s not going to happen anymore so now they can be stuck in normal mail streams. That can slow things down.

What Trump wants the USPS to be able to do with voting is so complicated that, in theory, it should take years to build out and test. That work hasn’t been done.

The Post Office is a great system, but it’s just not prepared, especially in a turnkey situation like this is here, to take in millions of ballots, with each state having their own special way they run elections. 

In 2024, nearly a third of voters voted by mail. 50 million votes. Now, because we’re in a midterm election, as much as it pains me to say this, the number could drop to 25 million. 

25 million votes – all still able to be cast, but now it’s a question of – will they be processed in time?

Well currently, the answer is… yes. 

States are not currently required to use the portal that the Post Office is creating. North Carolina, for example, says they have no current plans to use the portal. Wisconsin, whose ballots will go out in fourteen days, has called it “virtually impossible” to implement these changes.

On Tuesday, House Reps from California and New York asked the Postal Service’s inspector general to take a gandy and inspect the portal.

That happened the same week that DHS began an who investigation into the so-called fraud by voters that Trump invented. And not unlike the positive polling numbers, six-pack abs, great golfing score, and healthy relationship with anyone he’s ever met, the invention is invented.

It is a fact, a provable, investigable fact, that fraud by voters occurs so rarely that is has never, not once, ever affected the outcome of any election ever. 

EVER.

So here’s the bottom line… all of this is meant to make you question the safety of elections and the purpose of your vote.

But elections are safe and your vote is vital.

They’re doing everything they can to try and get you not to vote.

Screw them. Vote. 

Haitian Boy Dies by Suicide

-via CBS News

And finally, twenty-year-old Pierre Damas Bel, who was born in Haiti but living in Ohio – playing soccer and active in his high school’s ROTC – died by suicide on Monday. His parents believe it happened, in part, because after Trump removed the Temporary Protected Status for 350,000 Haitian immigrants living here in the states, those who didn’t self-deport were forced, by ICE, to wear ankle monitors.

On a recent Instagram post, Bel wrote: “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone. Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience. I came here to study, to build my future, and to live a better life, not to be treated like a criminal. So now, how am I supposed to play college sports with a GPS monitor on my leg? Ice🎭”

I came to this country to pursue my education.

His parents noted that, after being forced to wear the monitor, he felt "embarrassed" and "humiliated."

And on Monday, he died by suicide.

He was 20.

ICE rejects "any attempt” to be blamed for his death.

Of course they do! Absolutely no surprise there. Obviously, they reject any attempt to take blame for anything. 

An absolutely horrific story, all because we have a white supremacist for a president and ICE is cruel for the sake of being cruel. That’s all these policies are. That’s the only reason to get rid of the TPP program for 350,000 people living here. Putting money into our economy. Working. Trying to make their lives better, and our country better. 

And they put an ankle monitor on a twenty-year-old for it. 

Imagine being so cruel.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

Heavy day! Heavy stories. So let me just end with this… we have to vote the people out and we need to elect folks that will want to investigate the crimes this administration has taken part in and reverse these horrific policies. 

We can be a better country, we just need to elect the right people.

Please – go check your voter registration.

I’m proud of you.