Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Trump is personally involving himself in the investigation of the 2020 election. The investigation itself seems driven by Trump’s false beliefs, or lies, that the election was stolen from him. This could be an attempt to undemocratically steal the 2026 midterms, ironically using false claims of election malfeasance to commit election malfeasance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LThTuhI463M
“Trump’s use of the FBI to pursue his obsession with the 2020 election is part of a pattern of the president transforming the federal government into his personal tool of vengeance.
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Georgia has been at the heart of Trump’s 2020 obsession. He infamously called Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, asking that Raffensperger “find” 11,780 more votes for Trump so he could be declared the winner of the state. Raffensperger refused, noting that repeated reviews confirmed Democrat Joe Biden had narrowly won Georgia.
Those were part of a series of reviews in battleground states, often led by Republicans, that affirmed Biden’s win, including in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. Trump also lost dozens of court cases challenging the election results and his own attorney general at the time said there was no evidence of widespread fraud.
His allies who repeated his lies have been successfully sued for defamation. That includes former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who settled with two Georgia election workers after a court ruled he owed them $148 million for defaming them after the 2020 election.
Voting machine companies also have brought defamation cases against some conservative-leaning news sites that aired unsubstantiated claims about their equipment being linked to fraud in 2020. Fox News settled one such case by agreeing to pay $787 million after the judge ruled it was “CRYSTAL clear” that none of the allegations were true.
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As part of his campaign of retribution, Trump also has spoken about wanting to criminally charge lawmakers who sat on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, suggesting protective pardons of them from Biden are legally invalid. He’s targeted a former cybersecurity appointee who assured the public in 2020 that the election was secure.
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“So much this administration has done is to make claims in social media rather than go to court,” Becker said. “I suspect this is more about poisoning the well for 2026.””
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fbi-raid-georgia-highlights-trumps-050231456.html
The US electoral system pushes politicians to the left and right due to primaries, where politicians need to win over a small number of more polarized voters. We can change this system into non-partisan ranked choice elections so that politicians don’t need to bend over for the extremes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ws3w_ZOmhI
“Chile has become the latest country in Latin America to veer toward the right, electing a deeply conservative veteran politician who has long attracted comparisons to Donald Trump.
The president-elect, José Antonio Kast, has expressed nostalgia for the 17-year military dictatorship of the late Gen. Augusto Pinochet, opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage and advocated in recent years for a constitutional ban on abortion.
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Kast, 59, won a landslide victory by tapping into a deep well of resentment at the status quo in a country whiplashed by an unprecedented rise in organized crime and disappointed by the great expectations that President Gabriel Boric raised but will leave unfulfilled.
Experts say this reflects the pervasive anti-incumbent mood that has gripped South America and, significantly, boosted the radical right at time when Trump is seeking to influence the region’s political future.
It’s a dramatic turn from only two decades ago, when the commodities boom brought to power the so-called “pink tide” of left-wing leaders, like the late socialist icon Hugo Chávez, who whipped up voters by railing against U.S. imperialism and vowing to redistribute their nations’ wealth.
“The last decade, it’s been rough,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist. “And the people who get blamed for stagnant economies, rising crime — or, at least, rising perceptions of crime — and not insignificant corruption are those who’ve been in power, and that’s the left.””
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/16/conservatives-victory-in-chile-suggests-a-hard-right-pro-trump-surge-00692370
Sulla lost an election when running based on his successes as a junior officer. Next election, he ran by telling the voters what they wanted to hear and bribing people, and won.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbKMf3I0Vec
Andrew Tate appears to have committed serious crimes in Romania, but Romanian politicians let him off the hook to please the Trump administration.
As more people reject vaccines, we have a Measles outbreak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6eyeOC6Vu0
“Bray also addressed threats of violence against many of his own members received after signaling they don’t support remapping the state ahead of next year’s midterm election.
“It’s unsettling for all of our members and people across the state to endure that,” he said of the dozen or so elected Indiana Republicans who have faced threats of pipe bombings, swattings and unsolicited deliveries of Domino’s pizza.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/08/trump-redistricting-push-indiana-lifeline-00681125
Elon Musk spent 290 million dollars trying to get Trump elected in one election.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NuXpwB2DV4
“sometimes, when it comes to gerrymandering, politicians press their advantages too far. Political scientists have a term for parties spreading their vote perilously thin through redistricting: dummymanders. The idea is that, by spreading a party’s voters more thinly across a greater number of districts in order to pick up more seats, a new map will turn strongholds into potential areas of danger. Instead of having five districts where the party can generally count on 60 percent support, say, they’ll create seven districts where their likely share is more like 53 percent — leaving more of them at risk during a wave election.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/11/10/redistricting-dummymandering-history-1894-election-00643350
Rent control helps the lucky people who get a rent controlled apartment, but screws everyone else as there is less incentive to build more housing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KbGulTc4TY