While the Trump regime distracts us with its arch, ballroom, and vile UFC tacky-athon desecrating not just the White House but the Lincoln Memorial, they're also working their sick little hearts out to prevent free and fair elections this fall.
They continue trying to impede access to mail-in balloting, and of course there's all the racist gerrymandering and anti-voting rights work. But the biggest news last week was the FBI raid in Cleveland on Thursday. MSNOW, led by veteran Carol Leonnig, reported agents raided offices of the Ohio Organizing Collective. They also went to the homes of individuals connected to the OOC – without warrants:
“They had agents all across the state going to civil rights leaders’ and community leaders’ doors intimidating them, coming and demanding that they talk about literally anything they would ask... [they] asked them if they’re committing voter fraud, just on their doors, in front of their houses with their children, and just following them to work and school.”
Benjamin McKean, an associate professor of political science at Ohio State University, said of the raids,
The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is, for lack of a better phrase, a completely normal NGO. For the FBI to raid them – and people who are just associated with them – is a serious attack on ordinary civil society and almost certainly an effort to influence Ohio’s midterm elections.
And:
[It] sure sounds like the Republicans are planning to run the ACORN playbook, but this time led by the FBI instead of and James O'Keefe
In his responses to his post, McKean quoted a Cincinnati.com story that said more than 100 agents were deployed across the state of Ohio to question people.
In its coverage of the raid, the Ohio publication The Rooster positioned it in the context of recent polling that found Republican U.S. Senator Jon Husted 8 points behind his Democratic challenger, former Senator Sherrod Brown.
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