AKA the Republicans David Frum: Let’s say you’re a politician in a close race and your opponent suffers a stroke. What do you do? If you are Mehmet Oz running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, what you do is mock your opponent’s affliction. In August, the Oz campaign released a list of “concessions” it would offer to the Democrat John Fetterman in a candidates’ debate, including: “We will allow John to have all of his notes in front of him along with an earpiece so he can have the answers given to him by his staff, in real time.” And: “We will pay for any additional medical personnel he might need to have on standby.” Oz’s derision of his opponent’s medical condition continued right up until Oz lost the race by more than 250,000 votes. Oz’s defeat flipped the Pennsylvania seat from Republican to Democrat, dooming GOP hopes of a Senate majority in 2023. A growing number of Republicans are now pointing their finger at Donald Trump for the party’s disappointments in the 2022 elections, with good reason.
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DeSantis’ latest move to own the libs is really something. Will it be possible for him to go too far? I wonder. His refusal to allow the AP Black history course resulted in the college board changing the curriculum… sigh: The College Board purged the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism. It ushered out some politically fraught topics, like Black Lives Matter, from the formal curriculum. And it added something new: “Black conservatism” is now offered as an idea for a research project. So much for academic freedom. Wingnuts are now in charge of education, not scholars and educators. What could go wrong?
Democrats codify right to abortion in L’Étoile du Nord It’s surprising that this isn’t getting more notice (The New Republic): One day after the Republican National Committee directed Republicans to “go on offense” against abortion rights, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed a bill codifying abortion rights as a guaranteed right to Minnesotans. The legislation will shield residents from any looming Republican attacks, even those that come from the courts. The Protect Reproductive Options Act, or PRO Act, codifies protections to reproductive health care, including abortion, birth control, sterilization, and family planning and fertility services. The act, just a page long, guarantees that “every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual’s own reproductive health.” The new law comes as Minnesota Democrats now lead all three chambers of the government, as they maintained the state House and governorship, and took control of the state Senate in November. In a midterm election partially defined by backlash against the overturning of Roe v.
Make it stop! Even readers not “of a certain age” have seen the inescapable Medicare Advantage ads on TV promising seniors more health care for less. Why, they’ll even add money to your Social Security check every single month! It sounds too good to be true. You know why. Consumer complaints about the ads have doubled in just the last year, reports Forbes. A Senate committee found “evidence that beneficiaries are being inundated with aggressive marketing tactics as well as false and misleading information.” Congressman Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin and former co-chair of the congressional progressive caucus (CPC), has seen enough. He may be in the House minority, but he’s playing “the long game.” On Wednesday, he will reintroduce the Save Medicare Act aimed at reinforcing traditional Medicare. It may go nowhere this session, but he’s building support for when Democrats regain a House majority (The Guardian): The bill targets Medicare Advantage plans, which Pocan and his allies say the plans have turned into a cash grab for insurance companies.
And he took John Durham down with him One of the most mysterious chapters of former Attorney General Bill Barr’s tenure at the Department of Justice got a little sunlight last week when the New York Times published a deeply reported piece on the Durham Investigation, Donald Trump’s “investigation of the Mueller investigation.” We knew that Special Counsel John Durham, a man whose reputation was one of seriousness and rectitude, had only brought two prosecutions but failed to win convictions in both. And we knew that there had been turmoil in his office with several people resigning at what seemed to be pivotal moments in the case. But, until now, we didn’t know the details — and they are explosive. The Times story, reported by Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner, essentially reveals that the investigation which was supposed to blow the lid off of the Russia investigation by proving that it was a “partisan witch hunt,” was itself a witch hunt — only on behalf of Trump.
Brian Beutler’s analysis is 100% correct: There’s a theory, popular among liberals, that most of politics is downstream from economics, where rising tides lifting all boats should also leave reactionaries treading water—yet America is booming and reactionaries are as emboldened as ever The center-left’s response to this unfortunate reality is to appeal to MAGA voters with manufacturing jobs and culture-war concessions and hope for the best But the best way to deradicalize the GOP isn’t indirectly by softening up its voters with better industrial policy; it’s directly, by making the party’s extremism and corruption a first order liability for all of its candidates BOOM AND GLOOM By certain measures, we’re living through a brighter morning in America than the younger half of the population has ever experienced. Not by all measures. There’s always a great deal of ruin in a nation, and ours is currently experiencing a decrease in life expectancy, excess death from a new endemic disease, the reversal of progress toward social equality on certain fronts, and very expensive eggs.
Apoiadores de atos golpistas, sojeiros lucraram com valorização – e avançaram por uma área equivalente ao território do Sergipe.
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The son of Indian immigrants,convicted drug dealer, Bannon acolyte and George Santos staffer. You have to read this whole thing because it is literally unbelievable. These excerpts alone are enough to make you grab for the tequila bottle. I pick it up in the middle: During his college years, Burra built what he described to TPM as a drug dealing “empire.” It came crashing down in mid-2014 when he was busted with over two pounds of marijuana and a small amount of hallucinogens. Burra said he got into the business in pursuit of “respect.” “I wanted people to realize that I was the best in the room,” he explained. Not long after Burra’s drug bust, Trump launched his first presidential campaign. Burra found himself increasingly pulled to the world of Republican politics. Trump’s contradictory brand of hypercapitalist anti-establishment populism spoke to Burra. “I’ve had my own red pilling experiences slowly over time, but it all clicked with Trump,” Burra said, using an online right phrase for awakening. Criminals do tend to be attracted to him.
The Bulwark did some polling specifically to look at how many Republicans are intractable Trump supporters. As it turns out, he’s pretty weak in the party as a whole but there is a strong minority who are still do or die. And that’s a problem: But, as Sarah notes, we need some historical context here. Even though most Republican voters want to move on from Trump, his solid core of support might be enough to win him early, winner-take-all-primaries. She reminds us what happened in 2016: Iowa 24.3 percent (Trump came in second)New Hampshire 35.3 percent (Trump came in first)South Carolina 32.5 percent (Trump came in first) Trump then went on to dominate the field in Nevada with 45.9 percent of the vote before catapulting into Super Tuesday with enough momentum to win 7 of the 11 states. And with the GOP’s “winner take all” or “winner take most” delegate apportionment rules, in a big field of candidates, devoted pluralities can be telling. The Always Trumpers Here’s the dilemma for the GOP. Despite clear evidence of Trump Fatigue, the “Always Trump” faction of the GOP will follow Trump to the gates of Hell.