As anti-Israel protests
have spread across many of the country’s most prestigious
college campuses this week, several Republicans in Congress have sought to burnish their pro-Israel credentials by calling for the U.S. military to respond.
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton exhorted President Joe Biden
to send in National Guard units, while obliquely encouraging motorists to run over protestors. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley similarly demanded a militarized federal response “to protect Jewish Americans,” while Mitch McConnell and John Thune penned a letter
, signed by 25 of their fellow GOP senators, calling the demonstrators “anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist mobs” and demanding that “federal law enforcement” respond.
Meanwhile, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson paid a visit to Columbia University’s campus on Wednesday where he was greeted by catcalls and boos. Upon leaving, Johnson also declared
he would be demanding that Biden deploy the National Guard to quell the protests if they continued.
As Adam Serwer, writing for the Atlantic
, observes, these reflexive calls by Republicans for a military response to protests seem to be less rooted in genuine concern that the protests pose a serious danger to the public or Jewish people than “because these powerful figures find the protesters and their demands offensive.” Serwer points out that school administrators have, when necessary, called in local police to address potential violence, harassment, and property damage, and thus far, the protests do not evince the kind of “mass violence and unrest” that would normally suggest the need for federal involvement. He also notes that such a deployment of federal troops would likely escalate the protests.
Without debating the relative merits or lack thereof of the protests themselves, then, it’s important to note that these demands for a federal militarized response are coming almost entirely from one side of the political aisle. As Serwer points out, they echo the same sentiments Republicans expressed
in 2020 in response to the protests by Black Lives Matter over the police murder of George Floyd.
In other words, thus far we have seen a markedly asymmetrical, political response by Republicans to campus protests this week. But we are also witnessing something else: an explicit acceptance of a militarized solution to protests where Republicans find it politically advantageous.
Notably, another well-known Republican has also proposed sending the U.S. military and National Guard units to quell anticipated public protests, albeit of a far different nature, should he be afforded another term in office. That person is Donald Trump, and the people he proposes to target are those Americans he suspects would turn out in the hundreds of thousands to protest the policies he intends to implement.
Trump has been a magnet for vociferous and impassioned public protest since his inauguration in January 2017. On the first day following that inauguration, he was by greeted by three times the number of people who had attended his swearing-in ceremony, and they were not there to welcome him to the job. Based on crowd estimates
at the time, the Jan. 21, 2017, Women’s March in Washington, D.C., comprised some 470,000 people. Simultaneous marches across the country were estimated to have drawn 3.3 to 4.6 million
more Americans collectively, nearly all of whom were united in opposition to Trump’s misogyny and policy pronouncements. At the time, those protests were believed to be the largest single-day protests in American history.
Women’s March, 2017
One week later, Trump signed Executive Order No. 13769, colloquially known as the “Muslim Ban.” This action also prompted protests in the thousands
, mostly situated at U.S. airports where the ban was to be enforced. And in June of 2020, Black Lives Matter protests drew an estimated 15 to 26 million protesters in cities, towns, and small communities around the nation, outdrawing even the Women’s March numbers in what was described as the largest movement in U.S. history.
Trump later said he regretted not deploying the military to crush those overwhelmingly peaceful
protests.
These are only a few highlights
of what Trump has planned for Americans
if he’s president again. Obviously, even if only a tenth of Project 2025 is actually implemented, nationwide protests will follow, almost certainly dwarfing those generated in response to his 2017 inauguration. Those protests will be massive, ongoing, and most definitely not limited to college campuses.
Last year, The Washington Post’s
Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Devlin Barrett reported on Trump’s plans to respond to such anticipated protests. Those plans include “potentially invok[ing] the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations” by American citizens who might oppose the measures detailed in Project 2025. Pre-drafted executive orders “to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement” are helpfully suggested.
As noted by Areeba Shah, writing for Salon,
one of the key figures responsible for crafting the Project 2025 plan to invoke the Insurrection Act is none other than Jeffrey Clark, tapped by Trump for a potential role as attorney general in the wake of Trump’s 2020 defeat. Clark, one of the prime cheerleaders of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election—and currently facing criminal charges and potential disbarment
for his role—infamously advised
that Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to put down any protests should he refuse to leave office.
Another primary architect of Project 2025, Russell Vought, is already widely assumed to be slated for a high-level position—possibly chief of staff
—in a new Trump administration. Vought is the president of a right-wing think tank called the Center for Renewing America.
As Politico
reported in February, Vought’s organization has already submitted plans for Trump’s implementation that include “invoking the Insurrection Act on Day One to quash protests.”
Oddly, few commentators
have actually taken the implications of these plans seriously enough to tease out exactly what they mean.
Or perhaps they are unable to conceive of an administration actually doing this. As noted by Elizabeth Goitein, writing for the Brennan Center for Civil Justice
at the time of the George Floyd protests, the last time a president called in federal troops to quell protests occurred in 1992, when President George H. W. Bush, at the request of then-Gov. Pete Wilson of California, ordered troops to respond to rioting after the police beating of Rodney King. Calls to reform the Insurrection Act to clarify exactly when a president is authorized to invoke it have thus far been unsuccessful.
As Goitein explains, there is a good reason the Insurrection Act has been so rarely invoked.
“Simply, Americans don’t like the idea of armored tanks rolling into their cities. It smacks of authoritarianism; it goes against our values and our national self-concept,” she says. “And so, even in cases where the Insurrection Act might provide a legal opening—for instance, in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
—the fear of political blowback has been enough to stop presidents from exploiting it.”
There’s also the fact that using the military for the civilian population can escalate the violence. Goitein further explains that “as badly as many police officers have behaved
during the recent protests, they are at least nominally tasked with protecting the communities they serve.” But the military does not have civilian experience.
“We’re a combat unit not trained for riot control or safely handling civilians in this context,” a member of the Minnesota National Guard told The Nation
. “Soldiers up and down the ranks are scared about hurting someone, and leaders are worried about soldiers’ suffering liability.”
The fact that these Republicans whose motivations are transparently political would so blithely call for federal troops to point their weapons at mostly young college protesters—whatever the merits of those protests—is certainly bad enough. The fact that their standard-bearer, Trump, clearly would have no qualms about using military force to stifle public opposition to his odious policies should he regain office, suggests something even worse.
The Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue saw small-dollar donations for congressional candidates in the first quarter of this year rise significantly from the amount raised during the same period of the 2020 cycle.
For the first three months of 2024, Democratic grassroots donors gave a total of $151 million to House and Senate races, representing a 20% increase in giving to Senate races over 2020 and a 29% bump in total donations to House races, according to Punchbowl News
.
In 2020, ActBlue reported
processing a total of $121.3 million for congressional candidates in the first quarter of the cycle.
Overall, ActBlue processed more than 10.7 million contributions from 2.4 million donors who gave $460 million to different candidates and causes. The average donation was $42.73.
The news comes amid persistent signs of donor fatigue among Republican voters. Small-dollar donations to the Trump campaign
and Republicans are “way down
” since 2019 and 2020, The Washington Post reported earlier this month. House Democrats and Democratic candidates dominated
their GOP counterparts in the first quarter of 2024, as did Senate Democrats in the most competitive races
of the cycle.
President Joe Biden’s fundraising has also roundly eclipsed
that of Donald Trump’s, who has fallen $75 million behind Biden, according to analysis by the Financial Times
.
But beyond the hundreds of millions of dollars that well-heeled donors will lavish on both parties and their candidates, money raised through small-dollar donations like those processed by ActBlue says more about the race than almost any other measure.
First, those donations go directly to the candidates themselves, rather than super PACs, which makes spending far more efficient due, in part, to the ad rates candidates get
in the final months of the campaign.
But second, small-dollar donations are a measure of enthusiasm. Regardless of whether these small-dollar Democratic donors feel enthused by the prospect of electing a Democratic candidate or perhaps defeating a Republican one, they definitely seem enthused judging by the level of their contributions thus far.
After prosecutors’ lead witness painted a tawdry portrait of “catch and kill” tabloid schemes, defense lawyers in Donald Trump’s hush money trial are poised Friday to dig into an account of the former publisher of the National Enquirer and his efforts to protect Trump from negative stories
during the 2016 election.
David Pecker will return to the witness stand for the fourth day as defense attorneys try to poke holes in the testimony of the former National Enquirer publisher
, who has described helping bury embarrassing stories Trump feared could hurt his campaign.
It will cap a consequential week in the criminal cases the former president is facing as he vies to reclaim the White House in November.
At the same time jurors listened to testimony in Manhattan, the Supreme Court on Thursday signaled it was likely to reject
Trump’s sweeping claims that he is immune from prosecution in his 2020 election interference case in Washington. But the conservative-majority high court seemed inclined to limit when former presidents could be prosecuted — a ruling that could benefit Trump
by delaying that trial, potentially until after the November election.
Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to illegally influence the 2016 race through a practice known in the tabloid industry as “catch-and-kill” — catching a potentially damaging story by buying the rights to it and then killing it through agreements that prevent the paid person from telling the story to anyone else.
Over several days on the witness stand, Pecker has described how he and the tabloid parlayed rumor-mongering into splashy stories that smeared Trump’s opponents and, just as crucially, leveraged his connections to suppress seamy stories about Trump.
The charges center on $130,000 in payments that Trump’s company made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen. He paid that sum on Trump’s behalf to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels
from going public with her claims of a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the encounter ever happened.
During the cross-examination that began Thursday, defense attorney Emil Bove grilled Pecker on his recollection of specific dates and meanings. He appeared to be laying further groundwork for the defense’s argument that any dealings Trump had Pecker were intended to protect himself, his reputation and his family — not his campaign.
Pecker recalled how an editor told him that Daniels’ representative was trying to sell her story and that the tabloid could acquire it for $120,000. Pecker said he put his foot down, noting that the tabloid was already $180,000 in the hole for Trump-related catch-and-kill transactions. But, Pecker said, he told Cohen to buy the story himself to prevent Daniels from going public with her claim.
“I said to Michael, ‘My suggestion to you is that you should buy the story, and you should take it off the market because if you don’t and it gets out, I believe the boss will be very angry with you.’”
●Miami-Dade County, FL Sheriff: Donald Trump on Wednesday endorsed Rosie Cordero-Stutz
, an official with the Miami-Dade Police Department, in her quest to win the first election for sheriff of Florida’s most populous county since they were last held in the 1960s. Both parties are anticipating a competitive race for a post that is sure to emerge as one of the most prominent law enforcement offices in the state.
Cordero-Stutz is facing a packed and expensive
primary on Aug. 20, but even before Wednesday’s news, she already had one important supporter in Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a major Trump ally who backed her in February
. The Miami Herald’s Doug Hanks notes that the congressman’s daughter and son-in-law are also key consultants
for Cordero-Stutz.
Trump and Gimenez’s support for Cordero-Stutz could help her overcome a major financial deficit. Former Miami City Commissioner Joe Sanchez, a Florida Highway Patrol Trooper, has led the pack to date, ending March with $289,000 available
between his campaign and an allied political committee.
Two former Miami-Dade Police majors, Mario Knapp and Ignacio Alvarez, respectively finished the month with $214,000 and $181,000 at their disposal. Cordero-Stutz, by contrast, was in fourth with only $125,000, which placed her just ahead of Jose Aragu, a current major with the Miami-Dade Police, at $115,000.
Yet another county police veteran, Ernie Rodriguez, had $82,000, but according to data compiled by Florida Politics’ Jesse Scheckner, none of the seven other Republicans who filed reports had more than about $30,000 banked.
The frontrunner on the Democratic side appears to be Miami-Dade Chief of Public Safety James Reyes, who oversees
the county’s corrections, fire, and police departments. Reyes joined the race in January and picked the endorsement of
County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava the following month.
Reyes’ entry came months after the contest was thrown into chaos after the favorite to win the newly revived sheriff’s office was hospitalized following a suicide attempt. Miami-Dade Police Director Freddy Ramirez, a Democrat whose position was the equivalent of the long-defunct sheriff’s post, was the overall frontrunner until July, when he shot and wounded himself
after what authorities called a “domestic dispute” with his wife.
The news, as Hanks put it, “reset” the entire contest
. Chatter immediately ensued about a Democratic replacement for Ramirez, who ended his campaign in September
. That replacement wound up being Reyes, who was made public safety chief in November.
Reyes made up for lost time with a strong opening fundraising quarter. The $327,000
he had banked at the end of March gave him access to more money than any candidate from either party.
The only other Democrat with a sizable war chest is funeral home operator Rickey Mitchell, a former Miami-Dade Police lieutenant, who had $214,000 thanks largely to self-funding. The remaining two Democrats who filed quarterly reports, former federal investigator Susan Khoury and Miami Dade Police Major John Barrow, had little to spend.
One thing both parties have in common is that their main candidates both live in neighboring Broward County
rather than in the jurisdiction they want to serve. WLRN’s Daniel Rivero says that Reyes, who has touted his upbringing in the Miami-Dade city of Hialeah after leaving Cuba, has been a Broward County resident since 2008. Reyes says he lives “a stone’s throw away from the county line,” pledged to Rivero he’d return to the county he calls “home” should he win.
Cordero-Stutz, for her part, made her own move
from Hialeah to Broward County in 1997, though she did not respond to Rivero’s inquiries about her future plans. (Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago lair is one county north of Broward in Palm Beach, presumably doesn’t care where she resides.)
Several other candidates, though, made it clear they do live in Miami-Dade County. But while residency might become a political issue, it’s not a legal one: Miami-Dade doesn’t require its sheriff to be a resident, which is in line with all but two
of the state’s 67 counties.
The eventual winner will claim a job that hasn’t been an elected post since the Lyndon Johnson era. But following decades of corruption
, including allegations that Sheriff T.A. Buchanan ran a burglary ring, voters in what was still called Dade County backed a 1966 referendum to turn the office into an appointed one. (Buchanan was ultimately acquitted.)
As a result, the county, which was renamed Miami-Dade following a 1997 referendum
, was for decades the only one in the state that did not elect its top law enforcement official. The county mayor instead appointed the director
of the Miami-Dade Police Department, an equivalent post.
However, in a statewide election in 2018, Florida voters approved a measure called Amendment 10 to require
that each county elect a sheriff and several other local offices, including tax collectors and election supervisors. Only Miami-Dade, Broward, and Volusia counties were impacted by these changes.
Gimenez, who was county mayor at the time, denounced Amendment 10 as the product of outsiders seeking to make decisions for his county, but his arguments went nowhere. Amendment 10 passed 63-37 statewide
, which was more than the 60% it needed to go into effect, even though it fell below that benchmark in each of the three affected counties.
Senate
● MD-Sen: Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks’ new ad campaign features an all-star cast
of state Democrats assembled together to offer their support in the May 14 primary to succeed retiring Sen. Ben Cardin.
Alsobrooks’ message begins with testimonials from Gov. Wes Moore and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who holds Maryland’s other seat. Viewers in the Baltimore
and Washington
media markets are each then presented with a different collection of local elected officials. (Each market is home to almost half of the state’s residents
.)
The former version features Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski, who is the frontrunner in the primary for the open 2nd District in the Baltimore suburbs, as well as Rep. Kweisi Mfume, who represents most of the city. Viewers in the Washington suburbs, meanwhile, hear from Reps. Steny Hoyer and Glenn Ivey.
Both versions go on to showcase Rep. Jamie Raskin, who is one of the most prominent progressives in the state, and state Comptroller Brooke Lierman. The audience then sees Alsobrooks standing outside before many rows of backers, who include Rep. John Sarbanes and other local officials. The crowd concludes the commercial by cheering in unison.
Alsobrooks’ main intra-party foe, Rep. David Trone, has considerably fewer Maryland politicians on his side, though he hasn’t been shy about featuring his supporters in his own ads. A new spot showcases Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger
, who is retiring from the seat Olszewski is seeking, while a previous message starred state Attorney General Anthony Brown
. (Cardin is the one member of the state’s Democratic delegation who has not taken sides in the race for his seat.)
Alsobrook is hoping that her superior institutional support will help her overcome a huge advertising disadvantage against Trone, a self-funder who began airing TV spots a full year before the primary
.
New data from AdImpact underscores just how big this particular gap has grown. The firm says that Trone has spent or booked $38 million worth of commercials
, compared to just $2.6 million for Alsobrooks. There hasn’t been any major outside spending
yet that might balance the scales, and it remains to be seen if that will change with less than three weeks to go.
● Utah: Multiple Utah candidates running for either Congress or governor need a strong performance when Republicans gather for their state convention on Saturday—and those who fall short will see their campaigns come to an immediate end, well before the June 25 primary.
That’s because, as we’ve written before
, hopefuls can advance either by turning in the requisite number of signatures or by taking at least 40% of the vote when party delegates gather, but the first option is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming for many contenders.
Even candidates who have already qualified for the ballot, though, almost always still take part in the convention, and there’s no indication that any big names are skipping out this year. Democrats will also hold a parallel convention on Saturday, but there’s considerably less competition for most races in dark-red Utah.
The main event at the GOP conclave will likely concern the race to replace retiring Sen. Mitt Romney. One hopeful, attorney Brent Orrin Hatch, got some unwelcome news Thursday when election officials announced he’d only turned in 21,000
of the necessary 28,000 petitions he needed to succeed with the signature route.
Hatch, who is the son of the late Sen. Orrin Hatch, himself acknowledged to the Deseret News
weeks ago that gathering enough petitions was “daunting” and his status was “up in the air.” The deadline to submit signatures was April 13, so it’s now convention or bust for Hatch.
Another six candidates
, including Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs and conservative activist Carolyn Phippen, are also relying on delegates to keep their campaigns going. Staggs and Phippen, who are campaigning as hardliners, have reason for hope, though, as delegates tend to be more right-wing
than the primary electorate.
Three candidates are guaranteed a spot on the ballot: Rep. John Curtis; former state House Speaker Brad Wilson; and one we hadn’t previously mentioned, businessman Jason Walton, who is CEO of a pest control company. Walton, who has promoted himself as an ally
of far-right Sen. Mike Lee, self-funded $2.5 million
during the first quarter of 2024, which was about ten times as much as he raised from donors, and he ended March with $910,000 banked.
In the race for governor, incumbent Spencer Cox was the only one of the five Republican candidates who successfully pursued the signature route
. State Rep. Phil Lyman initially planned to collect petitions, but he abandoned that effort
in late March. The rest of the field
consists of former state GOP chair Carson Jorgensen and two little-known contenders.
Lyman’s far-right views
may help him win over delegates, though his bid almost crashed to a halt this week because of a strict state campaign finance law
. The Salt Lake Tribune’s Bryan Schott writes that Lyman missed the state’s Monday deadline to submit his latest financial disclosure forms and only turned them in with minutes left in the 24-hour grace period. Schott says that, if Lyman had failed to meet that second deadline, he would have been “disqualified from the race.”
Those tardy reports revealed that Lyman took in a notable $800,000 since January thanks largely to a mysterious new company that appears to be connected to his family. He also benefitted from a loan from a former Texas congressional candidate named Johnny Slavens, who lost the 2016 GOP primary 75-11
against the late Rep. Sam Johnson but later returned to his home state of Utah.
There was a late surprise in the 2nd Congressional District on Thursday evening when Lee endorsed
Green Beret veteran Colby Jenkins over freshman Rep. Celeste Maloy. Those two contenders, along with perennial candidate Ty Jensen, are each depending entirely on the convention
to advance. Even with Lee’s support, though, it would still be a surprise if Jenkins prevented Maloy from hitting the 40% threshold she needs to continue her reelection campaign for this reliably red seat.
There’s less drama surrounding the other two GOP House members who are seeking reelection on dark red turf. Rep. Blake Moore, who has turned in enough signatures to move forward, only faces a pair of little-known intra-party foes in the 1st District, while fellow Rep. Burgess Owens has no opposition for renomination in the 4th.
Finally, the GOP race to replace Curtis in the conservative 3rd District features nine candidates. The four who have submitted the requisite 7,000 signatures
are Roosevelt Mayor Rod Bird, state Auditor John Dougall, businessman Case Lawrence, and former state party chair Stewart Peay.
Five more need to win over delegates
, including perennial candidate Lucky Bovo, former Senate aide Kathryn Dahlin, former state Rep. Chris Herrod, state Sen. Mike Kennedy, and Utah Young Republicans chairman Zac Wilson.
House
● AZ-08: A grand jury has indicted 11 Arizona Republicans
who participated in Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election by serving as a slate of fake electors, a list that includes state Sen. Anthony Kern, one of several Republicans running in the July primary for this GOP-favoring open seat. Kern’s campaign quickly indicated he would remain in the race
.
While the charges against the senator may not be much of a negative with Republican primary voters given their party’s widespread embrace of election denialism, Kern has struggled to raise money so far. He finished March with just $70,000 in the bank
, putting him far behind several rivals, including 2022 Senate nominee Blake Masters and Trump’s pick, 2022 attorney general nominee Abe Hamadeh.
The list of indictees includes another state senator, Jake Hoffman, as well as two former candidates who ran for the U.S. Senate in recent years: far-right conspiracy theorist and former state party chair Kelli Ward and businessman Jim Lamon.
Ward ran in the 2016 primary and held the late Sen. John McCain to a relatively narrow 51-40 win
before McCain won his final term that fall. She went on to lose the 2018 primary for an open seat 55-28 against Rep. Martha McSally
, who herself lost the general election to then-Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. Lamon, meanwhile, lost the 2022 primary 40-28
to Masters, who was defeated by Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in the general election.
●FL-15: Former state Rep. Jackie Toledo announced on Thursday that she wouldn’t join the Republican primary
against Rep. Laurel Lee after previously indicating she was considering a bid. Toledo ran against Lee for the GOP nomination when this district was open last cycle, but she took a distant third with just 12%
; Lee beat state Sen. Kelli Stargel for the nomination by a comfortable 41-28 margin.
Lee already faces multiple primary challengers
after Donald Trump called for her ouster
last month, apparently because she had initially endorsed Ron DeSantis for president. We’ll know soon enough if any late entrants emerge since the filing deadline is Friday.
●KS-02: State House Majority Leader Chris Croft, a Republican, has announced he won’t run
to succeed retiring GOP Rep. Jake LaTurner in this Republican-favoring district.
● OR-05: 314 Action Fund has announced a $500,000
digital and mail buy in support of state Rep. Janelle Bynum, which represents the first notable outside spending of the May 21 Democratic primary to face freshman GOP Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Bynum, who has the support of Gov. Tina Kotek and national Democrats, is going up against 2022 nominee Jamie McLeod-Skinner.
● VA-10: Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chair Deshundra Jefferson has endorsed Del. Dan Helmer
in the crowded Democratic primary on June 18 for this open safely blue seat. Prince William County makes up roughly one-fourth
of the 10th District.
Legislatures
● MI Redistricting: Michigan’s independent redistricting commission has voted to withdraw its appeal
of a ruling by a federal district court that had blocked the use
of the state’s legislative maps after concluding that commissioners improperly relied on race when drawing districts in the Detroit area.
The case had been appealed to the Supreme Court, which had previously refused to stay
the district court decision pending appeal. The commission subsequently passed a new state House map that the lower court approved last month
for use in this year’s elections. Commissioners have begun drawing a new state Senate map as well, though it won’t take effect until 2026 since elections for the upper chamber are held only in midterm years.
Judges
● LA Redistricting: Louisiana’s Republican-controlled legislature has passed a bipartisan bill
to redraw the state’s Supreme Court districts and create a second majority-Black district amid an ongoing Voting Rights Act lawsuit seeking to compel just such an outcome.
Gov. Jeff Landry and other Republicans have argued in favor of the proposal to avoid further litigation costs. Lawmakers previously approved a new congressional map
in January following similar VRA litigation in a separate case.
The current Supreme Court map was last redrawn in 1997 after a previous lawsuit, and only one of its seven districts is majority-Black in a state that is roughly one-third Black overall. The new map would unite parts of the Baton Rouge area and northeastern Louisiana into a new 2nd District that would be 55% Black and would have favored Joe Biden 60-39 according to calculations
from Dave’s Redistricting App using VEST data.
If this map becomes law, the 2nd would very likely elect a Black Democrat this fall to replace retiring GOP Justice Scott Crichton, who is white.
Prosecutors & Sheriffs
● Orange & Osceola counties, FL State Attorney: Florida Politics reports that appointed incumbent Andrew Bain filed paperwork this month to seek a full term as an independent
even though he’d previously qualified as a Republican. GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis picked Bain last year after permanently suspending
Democratic State Attorney Monique Worrell for allegedly failing to seek serious penalties in violent crime cases.
Worrell, who’d previously released data to argue her approach was comparable to her predecessors’, responded to her ouster last summer by blasting DeSantis as a “dictator” and announcing she’d run to reclaim her post. Two Republicans also have filed ahead of Friday’s deadline.
Joe Biden carried this two-county district, which includes Orlando, 60-39, while Democrat Charlie Crist beat DeSantis here 52-47 during the governor’s 2022 landslide win.
Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.
Before Trump’s Big Lie, There Was Trump, the Big Liar
As the current court case continues, the public will be given examples of how Trump lies, surrounds himself with liars, and has made a profession of lying.
The first stages of the trial of the People of New York State vs. Donald J. Trump
have been illuminating in a variety of ways. They have made it absolutely clear that this trial is not the legal non-event Republicans and drinkers of conventional wisdom-flavored Kool Aid said it was.
It is not a case about “paperwork” or “bookkeeping.” It is not a bland little nothingburger of arcane, hard-to-prove white-collar crime. It is not just the “hush money” or the “porn star” sideshow. It is a case about an alleged attempt by a man running for this country’s highest office to systematically defraud voters and use illegal means to gain an advantage in an election.
Steinglass: Were you aware that expenditures by corporations made for the purpose of influencing an election in coordination with or at the request of a political campaign are unlawful? Pecker: I did. Did you report to the FEC? Pecker: No.
Trump’s Trial is Making Him Look WeakFor the wannabe strongman, looking weak is worse than looking like a crook
The political damage to Trump is not what is said in the courtroom; it’s how he looks. After spending his whole life and three presidential campaigns cultivating an image of power and strength, the first week of the trial made the former president look weak, tired, and scared.
More than any testimony or even a conviction, the image of the former president sitting silently and sadly at the defense table, stripped of the pomp and circumstance upon which he has relied, could be his final undoing.
Trump’s courtroom naps really should be a bigger deal.
Trump sleeping in court should amount to more than a brief punchline in the news cycle, but as previously noted in this newsletter
, the fact that Trump is always simultaneously trying to battle off multiple scandals prevents a singular narrative from cementing. The criminal trial for a former president who’s also the 2024 GOP presidential nominee is already a history-making event. Trump dozing off can seem beside the point, but in a sane world it would undermine the notion that he has more energy for the presidency than Biden.
The thing is, you never know which voters pay attention to what.
MAGA Mike sings a chorus of ‘Kumbaya’ with the Democrats, but for how long?
No one could have predicted that the worst Congress
in memory would morph into the Kumbaya Congress. Or that Mike Johnson, the accidental House speaker from Louisiana, would transform from Trump puppet
to statesman.
The two developments are related, of course. Congress was able to veer from the dangerous, dead-end course that the Republican-run House had it on for the past 16 months only once Johnson very belatedly took the keys from his MAGA allies and started driving events himself. Recognizing that he had no choice but to deal with the Democratic-controlled Senate and President Biden, Johnson helped pass overdue government funding
last month and, in recent days, green-lighted votes reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and — finally! — approving aid to Ukraine
to help it defend itself and the rest of Europe from a rapacious Russia.
So, yes, we have a functioning Congress. Enjoy it while it lasts. Because it probably won’t exist after November’s election.
IMO a reason many Dems are upset is that it feels like Calvinball Dems do well in specials? Doesn’t matter. Trump does poorly in primaries? Doesn’t matter. Biden does poorly in primaries? Sign of weakness on the left. Biden polls badly? Awful. Polls already overshot him in 2020.
the legendary 538 average is here, and it shows the national polling as a very close race between Biden and Trump. The race is also close-ish in the midwestern battleground states, but Trump has a lead in polling averages of GA, AZ and NV. https://t.co/3nNVbp7b3Z
ARE DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY? IT DEPENDS WHEN YOU POLL.
Key Takeaways
The variance in horse-race polling is essentially completely one-sided depending how unified the Democratic sample is.
Polling needs to happen consistently right up until the very end (Election Day), which is not normal industry practice, because in recent elections Democrats have not been coming home until the moment they actually vote.
There is a group out there saying they are crossover Democratic voters, but they are either coming home to the Dems in the end or staying home in these off-year elections. Figuring out if their turnout actually means they do vote for Trump – or stay home – is the most important factor this cycle.
When looking at the impact of climate change on the Caribbean, it is important to pay attention to and support local efforts to mitigate it. Our news agencies tend to cover climate disasters only as they are happening—then they move on, rarely returning to see how people are faring, coping, or recovering. The Caribbean countries are no exception to this rule.
That’s the reality for the dual-island Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda
. You may remember that Hurricane Irma virtually wiped out Barbuda (not to be confused with Barbados) in September 2017; you may not know that nearly seven years later, tiny Barbuda—comprising just 3%
of the nation’s 101,489 residents—and its larger sibling Antigua have been facing multiple challenges ever since.
I was elated to see the BBC featuring a group of young women
in Antigua and Barbuda who are addressing climate change. Gemma Handy in St. Johns, Antigua, wrote:
‘I want to erase my own footprint’: The women looking after an island paradise
Kih’Nyiah McKay may be just 11 years old, but she is keenly aware of the climate crisis.
She knows the loss of trees reduces oxygen and that dumped garbage kills the sea turtles that keep the ocean around her healthy. “Young people need to save the Earth,” she says with a solemnity that belies her age.
It is only March, but the sun outside is already blisteringly hot, posing a challenge for the electric fans battling valiantly to keep Kih’Nyiah’s classroom cool.
In Antigua, like the rest of the Caribbean, the impacts of climate change are a daily reality, evidenced in receding beaches, worsening hurricanes, debilitating droughts, and increasingly suffocating summers.
Some islanders, however, are fighting back.
Kih’Nyiah is one of more than 60 girls and young women who have been trained as coastal stewards, tasked with planting indigenous trees to slow coastal erosion, protecting the nesting sites of critically endangered turtles, and making and managing beach bins.
ABS-TV Antigua covered Adopt-A-Coastline and the Planet Versus Plastic Earth Day theme in an interview with Adopt-a-Coastline’s executive director Kat Byles and Kaiesha Joseph, who is featured in the BBC story.
There are ongoing efforts in Antigua and Barbuda to prepare for future hurricanes. The Antigua and Barbuda Department of Environment has been working with the United Nations Environment Programme to institute low-interest revolving loans.
How communal loans are helping Antigua and Barbuda brace for hurricanes
The Caribbean island of Barbuda still bears the battle scars of its most brutal encounter with climate change. In 2017, Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 leviathan of unprecedented power, roared across its pristine turquoise waters. The island’s only storm shelter collapsed, with 300 people hiding inside. Around 95% of Barbuda’s buildings were wrecked, including homes, schools, and critical infrastructure.
“I have just witnessed a level of devastation that I have never seen in my life,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres following a visit to the island.
[…]
The latest science
shows that climate change is accelerating faster than previously thought, and the need for reliable adaptation solutions has never been more urgent, especially in the developing world, where communities are generally more vulnerable to climate shocks. According to UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report,
the current adaptation finance flows to developing countries are 5 to 10 times below estimated needs, which are around US $160 to $340 billion by 2030 and US $315 to $565 billion by 2050.
[…]
Traditional home insurance is practically out of reach due to escalating climate risks.
[…]
Addressing this, the Antigua and Barbuda Department of Environment has been working with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to roll out a revolving loans program, which allows residents to obtain low-interest loans for hurricane-proofing their homes. Once repaid, the funds assist another family, perpetuating a cycle of community resilience.
In November, UNEP posted this short video, talking with recipients about how the loans empowered them to change both their houses and their lives.
Diann Black-Lane, director of Antigua and Barbuda’s Department of the Environment, explains that the program “offers the homeowner a very long period of time to pay back” the collateral-free loans. “The default rate is very low in this community-run system.”
Join me in the comments for more on climate projects throughout the Caribbean, and for the weekly Caribbean News Roundup.
Eric Hovde is a deeply patriotic Republican who desperately loves the U.S., and he’s running for Senate. How do we know he loves the U.S.? Because he’s a Californian
running in Wisconsin, which means he loves the U.S. at least twice as much you unwashed single-staters. And he regularly flies over a big chunk of America when he’s not counting his money at his bank in Utah
, so there’s that too.
He also likes to tell everyone how patriotic he is. In fact, he’s outraged—outraged!—that anyone would dare disparage the Pledge of Allegiance, whose recitation has long been a compulsory exercise for schoolchildren who don’t know what a republic is and dimly wonder why we should give two shits about an invisible one.
But Hovde, who’s running as a member of a party that pledges allegiance to an (alleged!) documents-stealing
wad of id, is angry that anyone would ever sully these sacred stanzas, which as far as his MAGA-fried supporters know came down from Mount Sinai in the glove compartment of Moses’ Escalade.
Just look at how insistent he is that pledging fealty to the flag is the only way to honor that sacred symbol and the values it represents. (This two-pack tweet features a shot and a chaser, and a transcript of both videos is provided below.)
— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) April 23, 2024
Shot:
We said the Pledge of Allegiance tonight. My wife knows a teacher in Madison who taught elementary school. She would have the kids do the Pledge of Allegiance. You know what she was told by school administration? ‘You can’t. And if you do it you will be punished. All you’re doing is indoctrinating young Nazis.’ Think of that thought process. This is the country that fought a World War, sacrificed our young to save Europe to beat the Nazis. They have no concept of what they are talking about, so they have eroded the patriotism in our country. That’s the first thing they’ve done.
Chaser (from a separate event at a Wisconsin racetrack):
We’re all so blessed to be part of the greatest country in the history of mankind, America. America’s given more prosperity, freedom to its people than any country in the history of the world. It not only saved the world once, but twice in the last century from oppression and tyranny. I’m proud to be an American. I love my country, so let’s say the Pledge of Allegiance together.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, indivi … undiv … indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Of course, if you can find anyone over the age of, say, 80 who cares whether kids in school recite the Pledge of Allegiance, you’re an ace detective. Which is why Hovde’s two-pronged election strategy of publicly butchering the Pledge while saying that people in nursing homes shouldn’t be allowed to vote is so incredibly canny.
According to recent reports, Sunwest Bank, where Hovde serves as CEO, has been named as a co-defendant in a lawsuit alleging elder abuse on the part of a senior living facility that’s partly owned by the bank.
And, yes, it hardly seems fair to tar a candidate over the actions of a company his bank foreclosed on. Or it would, anyway, if he hadn’t, as The New York Times wrote
, “boasted recently of having gained expertise in the nursing home industry as a lender to such residences.”
But that’s actually a bit of a MacGuffin meant to set up the money quote.
You see, because it’s apparently impossible to run as a Republican these days without pretending Trump had a point about the 2020 election, Hovde recently claimed there were “irregularities” in the vote (psst, there always are, but they’re rarely significant enough to matter
).
Then Hovde suggested eligible voters should be prevented from voting because of all of that cheating he’s sure is happening.
“Well, if you’re in a nursing home, you only have five, six months life expectancy,” said Hovde. “Almost nobody in a nursing home is at a point to vote, and you had … adult children showing up and saying, ‘Who voted for my 85- or 90-year-old father or mother?’”
Got that? If you’re in a nursing home, your brain is mush. Maybe it’s not quite mushy enough to trick you into voting for a Californian running for Senate in Wisconsin, but it’s concerning nonetheless. But never mind that. Hovde loves the Pledge of Allegiance, just like the three elderly men in Hayward
who actually still give a shit about it. Hope he hasn’t lost their vote!
Then again, he may be able to coax them back into his camp by also forgetting the words to The Star-Spangled Banner, like the über-patriotic Trump
. After all, he has to do something to distract Wisconsinites from the fact that he owns a $7 million home in Green Bay Laguna Beach, California
:
Most GOP senators have fallen in line with Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign to return to the White House, starting from the top
with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. They’re with him despite everything, including Jan. 6 when he unleashed a mob on the Capitol that threatened their physical safety, if not their lives.
But they are hanging on to the pretense
that they’ll be able to constrain him by continuing to refuse to nuke the filibuster for him, something Trump demanded
when he was in the White House.
Axios reports that they “are locking arms to defend the filibuster,” pointing out that both senators vying to replace McConnell as leader when he steps down next year—John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota—continue to defend the filibuster as a Senate institution needing to be maintained.
The would-be No. 2 leader, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, told Axios “the filibuster is the character of the United States Senate. I continue to support the filibuster.”
Sens. Joni Ernst
of Iowa and Tom Cotton
of Arkansas also robustly defended the filibuster, attacking Democrats who were considering eliminating it in 2022 to restore voting rights. And the current chair of the Senate GOP campaign arm, Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, says he’s “evolved” his position on protecting the filibuster “because we see what the Democrats would do.”
Even candidates who Trump has endorsed for 2024, like Kari Lake
in Arizona, David McCormick in Pennsylvania, and Tim Sheehy in Montana, say the filibuster has to be preserved. McCormick told Axios the “filibuster protects America from being subject to the whims of the majority,” and a spokesperson for Sheehy said he “believes in preserving the filibuster.”
McConnell and GOP leadership could be trying to keep the team together on Trump, as a few Republicans are on record
saying they will not vote for him. Republicans need a united front to win back the majority, and they know that they must find a way to make Trump seem less of a threat. Maintaining that they’ll continue to fight him to keep the filibuster could be GOP leadership’s way of trying to convince waverers—and maybe even themselves—that they’d have any power over Trump.
If they truly think they could constrain Trump, they have very short memories, and they are not paying attention to what Trump and his team are planning for a potential second term. Even in 2019, Trump was threatening to bypass Congress
and assert his unitary executive authority to get his border wall. He also issued an executive order
in the last days of his term to gut the civil service and replace workers with Trump loyalists.
Since then, the Heritage Foundation and a team of other extremists have been creating the blueprint for Trump to dramatically expand presidential powers
and install a fascist theocracy
. Under Project 2025
, Trump wouldn’t have to bother trying to get legislation through Congress; he could just destroy democracy by executive actions.
