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The Republican who memorably resisted Donald Trumps attempt to overturn his election defeat in Georgia has said he will run for re-election on a platform of integrity and truth, against an opponent who as a churchman should know better than to advance the former presidents lies.

Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, became a household name after he turned down Trumps demand that he find 11,780 votes in order to overturn Joe Bidens win in the southern state. It was the first victory by a Democrat in a presidential race in Georgia since 1992.

The call is among subjects of an investigation by the district attorney of Fulton county into whether Trump and others committed crimes in their push to overturn election results in the state.

On Monday, Fani Willis told the Associated Press she expected to make a decision in the case in the first half of this year.

Were going to just get the facts, get the law, be very methodical, very patient and, in some extent, unemotional about this quest for justice, she said.

In this years elections, Raffensperger will face off against Jody Hice, a pastor, US congressman and Trump acolyte.

Congressman Hice, hes been in Congress for several years, Raffensperger said on Sunday, on CBSs Face the Nation. Hes never done a single piece of election reform legislation.

Then he certified his own race with those same machines, the same ballots [that were used for the presidential election]. And yet for President Trump, he said you couldnt trust that.

Thats a double-minded person. And as a pastor, he should know better. So, Im going to run on integrity and Im going to run on the truth. I dont know what hes going to run on.

Hice played a key role in legal and political attempts to overturn the 2020 election result.

Writing for the Guardian to mark the anniversary of the 6 January Capitol attack, in which Trump supporters failed to stop Congress certifying the election result, the former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal said that as the riot unfolded, Hice raced by a Democratic colleague, who told me Hice was screaming into his phone: You screwed it up, yall screwed it all up!

Hice, Blumenthal wrote, was tasked to present a challenge to Georgias electors as part of the far-rightwing Republican faction, the Freedom Caucus, directed by Congressman Jim Jordan, of Ohio, who was in constant touch that day with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff and former Freedom Caucus member, and a watchful Trump himself.

Just as the violent insurrection launched, and paramilitary groups spearheaded medieval style hand-to-hand combat against the police and burst into the Capitol, Hice posted on Instagram a photo of himself headed into the House chamber with the caption, This is our 1776 moment.

Hice deleted that post and said he condemned the violence at the Capitol.

In an email to the Guardian, a spokeswoman for Hice said the congressman denied any phone calls on 6 January remotely similar to what Mr Blumenthal describes. The spokeswoman also said Hice was not in the Capitol when it went into lockdown.

But Hice formally objected to results in Arizona and Pennsylvania and voted against investigation of the attack. The select committee is reportedly interested in his own phone records as Hice remains a vocal proponent of the lie that Trump lost due to electoral fraud, a lie believed by clear majorities of Republicans.

Hice announced his run to be secretary of state in Georgia, last March, later gaining Trumps endorsement. Should he win, he will be in charge of state election counts.

Many outside the Republican party fear the prospect of Trump allies filling such posts in battleground states, preparatory to another attempt to overturn a presidential election.

Its certainly not by accident that were seeing individuals who dont believe in democracy aspire to be our states chief election officers, particularly in the states that were under the greatest spotlight in 2020, Jocelyn Benson, Michigan secretary of state, told the Guardian earlier this month.

Raffensperger and Governor Brian Kemp, however, have placed Georgia among Republican-run states which have implemented election laws which critics say aim to restrict Democratic turnout.

Asked about visits to Georgia this week by Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, to promote federal voting rights protections, Raffensperger told CBS: 6 January was terrible, but the response doesnt need to be eliminating photo ID and then having same-day registration.

If you dont have the appropriate guardrails in place, then youre not going to have voter confidence in the results.

Pressed on claims by figures including the Georgia gubernatorial candidate and voting rights campaigner Stacey Abrams that state election law is skewed against people of colour, Raffensperger heralded provisions for early voting and said: I think that we have shown that Georgia has fair and honest elections. We have record registrations. We have record turnout.

He also said he was confident Hice would not take over the elections process.

The results will be the results, Raffensperger said, and those will be the results that will be certified. You cannot overturn the will of the people and so that wont matter.

But at the end of the day, I will be re-elected, and he will not be.

Original post:
Georgia Republican who resisted Trump insists he stands for integrity and truth - The Guardian

HARRISBURG, PA (WSKG) A proposal to redraw Congressional boundaries in Pennsylvania is one step closer to going to Gov. Tom Wolfs desk. The House approved the boundary lines almost along party lines Wednesday.

But the finish line still appears a long way off: Wolf is not happy with the proposed map and state courts are poised to intervene in the process.

Analysis shows the way the 17 districts were drawn may structurally favors Republicans. Wolf cited that in a letter to House GOP leadership outlining his opposition last month, in which he called the process that produced the map disgraceful.

Wolf has not changed his mind since then, even though Republicans have tried in vain to get him to talk about it. That signals he may veto the proposal if it reaches his desk.

The state Supreme Court has also left the door open for the courts to approve a map but only if Wolf actually vetoes it. If that panel doesnt weigh in, Commonwealth Court judges have said theyd pick a map if state lawmakers cant come to an agreement by months end.

David Thornburgh, a redistricting advocate and Senior Advisor to the Committee of Seventy, said it would be a shame to go that route.

I think people would have more confidence in a process where the legislature did its job and the governor did his job, Thornburgh said. I think were better off for all concerned if we can get this done[and] if the governor can sign a bill that shows evidence of bipartisan cooperation.

Sen. Dave Argall (R-Berks) chairs a committee that will weigh in on the Congressional map and said he is working with and Sen. Sharif Street (D-Philadelphia) on changes that could get Wolfs signature.

Its not a pro-Republican map, Argall said. Its not a pro-Democratic map. Its a bipartisan compromise that respects as many local government and county municipal boundary lines as is humanly possible.

One version leaked to the public last month creates a GOP-leaning district around Pittsburgh while eliminating Philadelphia Congressman Brendan Boyles (D, PA-2) district.

Argall said the changes arent quite completed and could be publicly discussed as early as Friday. Any plan would also have to gain Senate approval.

Were not quite there yet, but I hope to be there soon, Argall added.

The biggest factor in all of this is time.

If a final map isnt produced soon, the primary election date set for May may have to be pushed back. Beyond that, state Supreme Court Justice David Wecht alluded to the possibility that voters would have to elect members of Congress to at-large districts if mapmaking ends up deadlocked.

Federal law spells that out as a last-resort option for states that cant agree on a map but have to change the number of districts they host. Pennsylvania is losing one Congressional district because the states population didnt grow fast enough in the last decade.

The courts and the Department of State have said theyd like a final map in place by next month so candidates can begin filing nomination petitions.

More here:
Republican-flavored congressional redistricting plan passes PA House, but theres still a long way to go - WSKG.org

In the last two months, thousands of American workers walked off the job, sometimes without official permission from their union leaderships. Thats the big story of 2021 not just what didnt happen in the halls of power in Washington, DC, but what happened in workplaces in Iowa and Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.

These strikes should hearten socialists. After all, a militant working class is at the heart of our theory of social change. But they should also make us think about how we can better connect the socialist movement to these kinds of working-class fights.

Todays socialist movement is still getting its sea legs. Our ideas about socialist strategy are hazy at best. Our leaders and politicians struggle to articulate a full explanation of how we get from capitalism to socialism, or even what socialism is. All of that is understandable after decades of dormancy, were just getting started. But if we want to link up the nascent American socialist movement with the brewing movement of the working class, we need to get our act together.

Without being dogmatic, we would do well to revisit our foundations. And two old theorists of socialism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, are the place to start. They were among the first to identify the unique interest working-class people have in socialism, and the first to recognize that workers have the potential power to win it. And they set down the principle of working-class self-emancipation that socialists should embrace today.

The working class is at the center of Marx and Engelss theory of socialist transformation. Workers will form the core of the movement to overcome capitalism, Marx and Engels argued, for three reasons.

First, after carefully studying the past, they observed that one class one group of people who share a similar role in the economy has always exploited another. The exploiter class lives off the labor of the exploited, taking from them the fruits of their work. That exploitation has led to resistance by the exploited and then, from time to time, class struggles.

The class struggles between masters and slaves shaped the ancient world, while those between lords and peasants shaped the feudal world. The struggles between capitalists (the bourgeoisie) and workers (the proletariat) similarly shape the capitalist world and will eventually lead to its transformation. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat.

But that only explains why Marx and Engels expected workers to come into conflict with capitalists. They also expected this conflict to move humanity forward toward a better, freer, and more humane way of organizing society.

This is the second reason Marx and Engels were confident workers would play the decisive role in social transformation. Workers, they reasoned, share similar interests, and those interests will lead them to struggles that will strengthen their own forces and transform the world for the better. Exploited by the capitalist class, workers are constantly being driven to fight back. Through conflict, they can win better working and living conditions for themselves and their families, but their victories are often precarious and unsatisfactory, and the basic fact of exploitation remains unchanged.

In the course of their struggles, workers can come to realize that they have an interest in changing the economy itself, for everyones benefit. (Though the realization will not happen automatically and socialists have an important role to play in bringing it about.)

History and interests alone, though, arent enough to change the world. Marx and Engelss third reason for believing the working class would be the ultimate agent of social change was that workers also have potential power. That power comes from workers strength in numbers and their concentration and function at the heart of capitalism: the workplace. In the Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote, With the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more.

As the vast majority of society, workers can potentially overwhelm the small capitalist class. And more importantly, workers can control the flow of profits. By striking or slowing down production, they can force the capitalist class the ruling class in our society today to negotiate. That power gives workers enormous leverage, which they can use to force capitalists to make changes in society. Eventually, they can also use their strength to throw the capitalist class out of power entirely.

In summary, Marx and Engels reasoned that workers 1) are destined to clash with societys ruling class, 2) have a compelling interest in transforming society, and 3) have the power needed to do so. That is why Marx and Engels believed workers could change the world.

They never rejected the need for alliances, of course. They saw middle-class people shopkeepers, intellectuals, farmers, and others as potential allies of the workers movement. In fact, they were quite concerned about winning sections of other classes over to socialism. But they recognized that the socialist project couldnt get anywhere without a base in the working class.

Marx and Engels were not interested in elite plots or coups, as many radicals had been before them. They insisted that a transition to socialism can only be carried out by the vast majority of society, a coalition of the working class and its allies with the former playing the leading role. This was their theory of how society can emancipate itself from the domination of a ruthless capitalist class.

Marx made this point most famously in the Rules of the First International: The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. Its a critically important principle, and it points to the democratic nature of the socialist project. But what did Marx really mean by the self-emancipation of the working class?

Marxs principle of working-class self-emancipation was a call for a participatory and democratic movement. The fight for socialism must involve the participation, in some form, of the vast majority of society.

That may not sound like a shocking insight to us today. But its so important and its a principle that in practice most socialist movements, from the social democrats in Western Europe to authoritarian communists all over the world, have been quick to flout.

Rather than building up the leadership and participation of regular people, social democrats and authoritarian communists have all too often tried to lead exclusively from the top. Theyve built undemocratic parties and relied on state violence to try to transform society. In doing so, theyve fallen far short of their initial objectives, and all too often have been corrupted by their power.

An effective socialist movement must call on regular working-class people to be leaders in struggles, and it must ensure democratic control of the movement and party members. From the very beginning, that will require building parties, unions, and social movements that include millions of working people and are led by workers.

If our movement is to succeed, our organizations cannot remain the preserve of middle-class activists who fight on behalf of workers but not alongside them. Not for moral reasons if a better society could be won that way, so be it! but for strategic reasons.

Nowhere in the world has a small middle-class movement been able to fundamentally transform a society for the better. It takes mass working-class movements to win transformational changes. Workers alone have the numbers, the interest, and the power that is needed to force ruling classes to make concessions and eventually depose them.

Bringing in millions of working-class people is no easy feat. It requires a strong commitment to democracy. Thats why democratic socialists are so committed to transforming the labor movement through the rank-and-file strategy both so we can include more people in the movement and so we can start to democratize the workplace, while in the process training a new generation of worker leaders.

Its also why were so committed to building democratic political parties and social movements. Training a new generation of worker leaders involves bringing many people into struggle not just as foot-soldiers, but as strategists and decision-makers with bosses, employers, racist cops, and the state. Its through struggle (plus debate and discussion with comrades) that people learn about the limits of capitalism and the need to go beyond it. Its how peoples consciousness is shaped and developed in a socialist direction.

Our commitment to self-emancipation also determines the kind of democratic reforms we fight for. As socialists, were committed to transforming the state through reforms like proportional representation, the public financing of elections, and rewriting constitutions changes that empower regular people to exercise more control over the state. This commitment to democratic reform is based on the same theory that more democratic participation will only yield a greater desire for self-governance and a greater capacity to achieve it.

Eventually, we will need the vast majority of working-class people workers in the tens of millions in the United States and in the billions globally to be involved in the process of actually building socialism.

In a complicated and protracted transition out of capitalism, there will be hundreds of thousands of conflicts both small and large. In every city and town and in every workplace, the conflict between the capitalist class and the working class will break out into the open. It will rest on the shoulders of individual workers to occupy shop floors, lead mass demonstrations, plan strikes, capture city councils, win elections, negotiate alliances, decide on tactics, and so on.

Only a movement that is alive at the base, and that has adequately trained a generation of working-class leaders, will have the power needed to uproot the old order and build a new one on democratic lines. Nor does the process of self-emancipation end with the death of capitalism. A socialist world will be one in which everyone is empowered in some way to help shape society. In winning socialism, the working class will win the right to determine its own fate.

The principle of working-class self-emancipation is one of the few real rules for socialist organizing that Marx and Engels ever laid down. And they were insistent on it from the start. As Engels wrote in a preface to the Communist Manifesto: Our notion, from the very beginning, was that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself. Hard coding that commitment into the DNA of our movement remains an essential task.

The strikes of 2021 remind us that working-class struggle is really possible. If tens of thousands of workers can risk everything by walking off the job when the labor movement is practically on its knees, imagine whats possible when we really get organized.

Ultimately, it wont be enough to win wage increases and better benefits. Those are essential demands, but the bosses and the ruling class wont let us keep them for long without a fight. Theyll be back sooner rather than later demanding new cuts to contracts. We dont want to have to keep fighting these battles over and over again and all while we live through a climate catastrophe.

Thats why we still need democratic socialism. We need a society where the owners and bosses have lost their power, where regular people rule in politics and the workplace, where we have the right to remake the world.

To prepare ourselves for this monumental undertaking, we need to drill down deep into questions about democracy, responsibility, and leadership. We need to flesh out our demands. We need a real conception of what democratic socialism might look like and what the transition to that better world might take.

But most of all, the socialist movement needs power. The strikes of last year show us where that power is already located, latent and waiting to be organized: in the working class. They remind us of what the best strategists and theorists of the socialist movement once said: The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself. Workers will win a better world. No one else can do it.

Read more:
Socialists Believe in Workers Democratically Liberating Themselves - Jacobin magazine

National politics seeped into governors races years before Trump came onto the political scene and gubernatorial campaigns still have maintained a degree of unique detachment. But Trumps influence over the GOP has rapidly pushed his signature policies and rhetoric into 2022 governors races especially his false, conspiratorial claims that election integrity is under threat or even that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Republican candidates are parroting those claims while running for offices that will have significant influence over election procedures in their states, potentially including certification of future elections.

I tell [Trump], the only way we can guarantee that, in 2024, we have a Republican president, is we need a leader here in the state of Nevada that understands our election laws and [is] willing to change them, Dean Heller, a former Republican senator now running for Nevada governor, said during the recent debate. He called the states current laws corrupt and said that he will make the state elections fair.

Republicans win when the process is fair, said Heller, who occasionally clashed with Trump during the presidents first year but later pulled Trump close during his losing 2018 campaign. I want a Republican president in 2024. It is going to take a Republican governor to make the necessary changes in order to make that happen.

In Pennsylvania, state Sen. Doug Mastriano who rose to prominence by parroting Trumps lies about the election and pushing for an election audit in his home state trotted out two Trump associates during his campaign launch last weekend: former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis. Both have been among the most vocal proponents of conspiracies about the 2020 election.

Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano speaks to supporters of President Donald Trump as they demonstrate outside the Pennsylvania State Capitol. | Julio Cortez/AP Photo

A slate of operatives with connections to Trump are finding work in the state. State Senate President Jake Corman announced that his team included Kellyanne Conway, Trumps final 2016 campaign manager, while former Rep. Lou Barletta hired the firm of Bill Stepien and Justin Clark, who led Trumps campaign into Election Day 2020. Bill McSwain, who was a U.S. attorney during the Trump administration, hired former Trump campaign aide James Fitzpatrick to run his campaign.

Pennsylvania where the primary field is so large that forum organizers had to cram two parallel rows of lecterns onstage at an event last week typifies the expansive roster of Republican gubernatorial hopefuls running in swing states including Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada. Democrats control the governors mansion in all those states except for Arizona.

The exception to the crowded-primary rule has been Wisconsin, where former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch is the only credible GOP challenger to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers so far. But even there, Trump tried to draft former Rep. Sean Duffy before he passed on a campaign last week, and former Senate candidate Kevin Nicholson is actively considering jumping into the race.

Candidates across the map are vying for Trumps endorsement. So far, Trump has largely sat out open GOP gubernatorial primaries in the most competitive 2022 states only weighing in in Arizona to back former TV anchor Kari Lake.

He is, however, giving Lake some early political muscle. Trumps political committee announced on Tuesday that Lake would join the former president on stage at his rally in the state on Saturday alongside prominent election conspiracy theorists Mike Lindell and state Rep. Mark Finchem, who Trump has backed for state secretary of state. It is Trumps first rally of 2022.

But even for candidates who dont score Trumps endorsement, winning over the former presidents supporters will still be key in a Republican primary.

Not only do you not run away from that, you embrace that without hesitance, said Arizona-based Republican operative Barrett Marson, who is working for an outside organization supporting former Rep. Matt Salmons gubernatorial bid in the state.

Former Rep. Ryan Costello (R-Pa.), who has been critical of Trump since leaving office three years ago, said there will be a concerted attempt by some candidates to consolidate Trump-first supporters, so in that regard there's a Trump lane. But Costello warned that that many candidates vying for the same group of voters could fracture the vote in a primary, and that the field is unsettled in his state.

Its important to note not all Trump-first voters are reliable off-year primary voters, he added.

It's unclear whether Trump will endorse in Pennsylvania's gubernatorial primary. He previously backed Army veteran Sean Parnell in the state's open Senate race, only to see Parnell suspend his campaign after he lost custody of his children following his ex-wifes allegations of abuse. He is now staying out of that race for the time being, though that could change.

But Pennsylvania Republicans expect a Trump endorsement, if it comes, to play a big role in deciding the primary for governor, said former Trump administration official Mick McKeown, a Pennsylvania native.

"He's still the biggest name in politics, whatever you think about him. And for Republican primary voters, I think he can still resonate with a significant portion of the base," he said. "In a crowded primary like this, an endorsement from President Trump, while weighty, would carry even more weight."

Democrats, meanwhile, have cleared a path to replace the term-limited Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, with state Attorney General Josh Shapiro being functionally unopposed for the nomination.

Democrats across the battleground states have sought to further highlight the candidates ties to Trump. The Pennsylvania Democratic Party routinely refers to the GOP contest as the super MAGA primary. And Nevada Democrats warned on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that the Republican field continues to embrace those dangerous lies and instill doubt about the integrity of Nevadas elections.

Republicans also warn that battleground candidates will need to do more than link themselves to Trump if they want to win in November.

Bill McCoshen, a well-connected Republican lobbyist in Wisconsin who briefly considered his own gubernatorial run, highlighted Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor-elect in Virginia who upset former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe late last year to flip the state, as having the perfect template for how to run in the general election in a battleground state.

Take his endorsement, keep him at bay unless you absolutely have to have him for a rally, and run your own race, McCoshen said.

And national Republicans argue that candidates tying themselves to Trump wont come back to hurt them in what is shaping up to be a strong Republican year.

The thing to keep in mind is right now the messaging and the issues that matter to voters are still on our side, said Joanna Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the Republican Governors Association. At the end of the day, we still think that regardless of who comes out of some of the most competitive races, were still going to have an effective message for them to carry into the general, especially when youre looking at the states with incumbent Democratic governors.

Trumps influence isnt just confined to open gubernatorial primaries in swing states. He has also increasingly sought to bring incumbent Republican governors to heel. Most consequentially, he endorsed against Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, backing former Sen. David Perdues primary challenge.

Trump has been at war with Kemp, an otherwise down-the-line conservative politician, for not supporting his efforts to overturn Trump's loss in the state. Even before endorsing Perdue, Georgia was expected to be one of the most expensive gubernatorial races this year, with Democrats rallying behind Stacey Abrams. But the endorsement there rips open still-healing wounds among the party in the state and could drain the bank account of whomever is ultimately the nominee.

But even with Trump playing an increasingly prominent role in gubernatorial races, some Republican strategists believe that it wont last through the general election in November. There is still some delineation between the almost uniformly nationalized congressional races and gubernatorial contests, they say.

"In most cases, governor's races are less Washington, D.C.-focused and thus less about the candidates' Trump orientation," said Christopher Nicholas, a longtime Pennsylvania-based GOP consultant advising gubernatorial candidate Charlie Gerow in Pennsylvania. "Because governors have to, as the old saying goes, make the trains run on time.

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Trump lost these states. Republican candidates for governor are emulating him anyway. - POLITICO

Ten years ago, a visitor would have had little to do in the city, but Nowa Huta has learned to capitalise on its communist heritage. The city offers foreigners and Poles alike a snapshot of communism as it once was. "Young [Poles] nowadays have no idea what it was like," said Marchocki. Stepping into parts of Nowa Huta is like stepping into the worlds of their parents and grandparents: from the fully renovated People's Theatre with its Egyptian-inspired Socialist Realist style and bright neon sign, to the monuments to the Solidarity movement, which would bring down communism across Poland in 1989, and some 250 nuclear bunkers that lie beneath the city, relics of a time when people worried about nuclear apocalypse.

Besides its history, which can be explored at the Museum of Nowa Huta, opened in 2019 at the site of the old movie theatre, the main draw for tourists today is Nowa Huta's remaining Socialist Realist architecture. As one of only two planned and built Socialist Realist settlements in the world, besides Magnitogorsk deep in Russia's interior, Nowa Huta is something different from the bland modernism and grey brutalism usually associated with Eastern European socialism. Exemplified by the buildings on Central Square ironically renamed in Ronald Reagan's honour in 2004 the Socialist Realist style can also be seen inside Nowa Huta's few original shops. For example, the highly decorative interior of the folk-art shop Cepelix, located on the city's north-east side, designed by the top Polish interior designers of the time.

You may also be interested in: The secrets hiding in Warsaw What can Poland teach us about freedom? Why Polish people hate rules

But the jewel of Nowa Huta's Socialist Realist architecture is in the former Administrative Building of the Steelworks, whose faux Renaissance exterior and luxurious interior still display the style's ideal. Though technically closed to the public, the Promotion of Nowa Huta Foundation offers tours of the building, with Marchocki describing it as "the most iconic building in Nowa Huta." With all its pomp, it's a testament to the utopian ambitions that birthed the city ambitions that the workers themselves would challenge.

In 1980, when the country was rocked by strikes called by the Solidarity trade union, the Vladimir Lenin Steelworks of Nowa Huta would boast the largest workplace chapter of the union, with a membership rate of 97%. The Catholic church resolutely supported the union and the protests, forcing the ruling communists into the incredibly awkward position of standing in opposition to the workers they were meant to represent.

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Nowa Huta: The city that went from communism to capitalism - BBC News