DAN FOREST FORCED TO RETURN $15,000 IN CAMPAIGN DONATIONS: N.C. Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, a Republican who plans to run for governor in 2020 against Democrat Roy Cooper, has been forced to forfeit thousands of dollars due to campaign finance violations. An audit of Forest’s campaign by the North Carolina State Board of Elections found numerous violations. In all, Forest resolved the audit by giving up more than $15,000. Most of the money the Forest campaign had to forfeit came from conservative groups that operate in federal politics but weren’t properly registered to get involved in state politics. That included $5,000 from a group whose name appears to have been listed as a misspelling of the EnergySolutions Inc. Fund For Effective Government, which supports electric utility companies, $2,500 from the Susan B. Anthony List, which opposes abortion, and $500 from a group called Citizens for Constitutional Liberties.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article233652187.html

ELECTIONS BILL BEING CRAFTED WOULD EXTEND DEADLINE FOR TOUCHSCREEN MACHINES: House leadership rolled out a wide-ranging election bill Thursday to tinker with early voting hours, let counties that use touchscreen voting machines keep doing so and tighten absentee ballot rules in response to last year's 9th Congressional District scandal. Among other things, Senate Bill 683 would start a pilot project to cover postage on absentee ballots so that voters wouldn't have to buy stamps. There are other measures meant to keep campaigns from trying to collect absentee ballots en masse, including a rule requiring prohibiting outside groups from returning ballot request forms. Those forms would also change every election so groups couldn't simply photocopy old ones and submit fraudulent requests. Initial response from people who follow the nuts and bolts of elections closely seemed positive Thursday, though several said they wanted more time to digest the bill.
https://www.wral.com/proposal-offers-new-absentee-ballot-security-tweaks-early-voting-hours/18558265/

ANOTHER WAL-MART MASSACRE THWARTED IN MISSOURI: A man with a loaded rifle and 100 rounds of ammunition walked into a Walmart in Springfield, Missouri, on Thursday afternoon, alarming shoppers before he was detained by an armed off-duty firefighter and arrested by the police, according to the authorities and local news media. No shots were fired, and it was not clear what the man, who is in his 20s and whose name was not immediately released, was planning to do inside the store, Lt. Mike Lucas of the Springfield Police Department said. Lucas told the Springfield News-Leader that the man had intended “to cause chaos.” In an emailed statement, the Police Department said, “We are working to determine his motives.” The episode came five days after 22 people were killed at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The authorities there arrested a white man who they said warned of a “Hispanic invasion” in a four-page screed posted online minutes before the shooting.
https://www.wral.com/man-with-rifle-and-body-armor-alarms-shoppers-at-missouri-walmart/18558701/

POULTRY INDUSTRY RECRUITED THE IMMIGRANTS TRUMP JUST ROUNDED UP: Advertising in Cuban stores and local papers, it took the poultry processor just one week to fill a Greyhound bus of immigrants eager for work. This experiment marked the beginning of the plant’s formal Hispanic Project, which included not just recruitment and transportation from Florida, but also the provision of housing — mostly in dilapidated and overcrowded trailers — as well as local transportation and leisure activities, all for fees deducted from workers’ paychecks that often reduced their meager earnings to below minimum wage. In its roughly four years of operation, the Hispanic Project dramatically recruited nearly 5,000 workers to two Mississippi towns with a combined population of under 10,000. Not everyone stayed, but this scheme caught on, and other plants began recruiting Latinx immigrant workers from Florida, Texas and even farther afield. And this transformation of the poultry workforce has only continued over time. Today's Mississippi poultry workers are from nearly every part of the continent, hailing from Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Cuba, Honduras, Venezuela and other Latin American and Caribbean countries. They are doing work that is hazardous, painful and often degrading. They work long hours for low pay, scratching out a living so that the rest of us can buy cheap chicken.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/09/poultry-industry-recruited-them-now-ice-raids-are-...

DOXXING OF TRUMP DONORS HAS THEM WHINING ABOUT UNFAIRNESS, OR SOMETHING: “I’ve had people say, ‘Hey, we were going to use you for business, but we found out you’re a racist,’” Mr. Herricks, the owner of Precision Pipe Rentals, an oil and gas services company in San Antonio, said in an interview. “‘We hope that you burn in hell and your business will go with you.’” The reason for the calls was Mr. Herricks’s inclusion this week on a list of 44 San Antonio-area residents who have maxed out their donations to the president’s re-election campaign. That list was shared on Twitter by Representative Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who serves as the chairman of the presidential campaign of his twin brother, Julián. Republicans have accused the congressman of “doxxing” private citizens and trying to incite harassment of the president’s supporters. A similar uproar over Trump donors is playing out in the moneyed enclave of the Hamptons, where real estate developers are hosting two fund-raisers for Mr. Trump on Friday. Progressives looking for a way to express their anger at Mr. Trump — and the people who support him — have threatened to boycott SoulCycle, the popular spin studio chain, and Equinox, a high-end gym, both owned by the billionaire developer Stephen Ross, who is scheduled to host the president at his Southampton home.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/us/politics/castro-trump-donors.html?action=click&module=Top%20St...