He’s got problems, personally and politically No wonder he’s acting crazy: If President Joe Biden has any advantage going into the 2024 presidential election, it’s that former President Donald Trump’s legal fees and primary challenges are a significant drain on the Trump campaign’s finances. Indeed, with money playing an increasingly prominent role in political campaigns, particularly presidential contests, both Trump and Biden are facing a very similar problem, albeit for different reasons, and to varying degrees.
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Pay no attention to that foreign-born worker “You can’t grow like this with just the native workforce. It’s not possible,” says Pia Orrenius, vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The Washington Post’s online front page this morning blares that immigration is fueling the “roaring” U.S. economy. And you thought there was a border crisis, a crisis hyped by Republicans who believe it can wait for the November election. “About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data,” The Post reports. By the middle of 2022, rapid growth in the foreign-born labor force “closed the labor force gap created by the pandemic“: Immigrant workers also recovered much faster than native-born workers from the pandemic’s disruptions, and many saw some of the largest wage gains in industries eager to hire.
The autocratic shift is not irreversible “Wisconsin may be stepping back from the abyss,” writes Bill Leuders at The Bulwark. New maps passed by the Republican-controlled legislature and signed by Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, mean Wisconsin’s legislative races will be the most competititve in years. Republicans previously engineered years’ worth of lopsided representation in a state in which Democrats like Evers can win statewide races. Now, “more than forty incumbent lawmakers, mostly Republicans, [have] to either move or run against each other.” The change is not because Republicans have had a change of heart. So why did Republicans who rejected Evers’ appointments and refused funding for the University of Wisconsin’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts go along now? Because Democrats wrested back control of the state Supreme Court last April when voters statewide “overwhelmingly elected liberal Janet Protasiewicz” to the court: They feared that the state supreme court’s new liberal majority would choose maps that were even less friendly to their side.
I’ve actually wondered why they haven’t done this bit before. It’s been sitting there waiting for them for years. This was very timely, though. They even had the S. Carolina vote count in the sketch. But they missed Graham being booed and heckled at Trump’s victory party after which Trump called him up on stage to bask in the recriminations and hate. There is no limit to how much abuse these weirdos are willing to take. Here’s Graham being chased through the airport after he tepidly condemned the January 6th insurrection. He’d rather grovel before these assholes than give up his seat in the Senate. It’s pathetic.
Former Democratic operative behind fake Biden robocall in N.H. From the What Were They Thinking Department. NBC News: Steve Kramer, a veteran political consultant working for a rival candidate, acknowledged Sunday that he commissioned the robocall that impersonated President Joe Biden using artificial intelligence, confirming an NBC News report that he was behind the call. In a statement and interview with NBC News, Kramer expressed no remorse for creating the deepfake, in which an imitation of the president’s voice discouraged participation in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary. The call launched several law enforcement investigations and provoked outcry from election officials and watchdogs. A former Dean Phillips consultant, Kramer claims he commissioned the call as an act of civil disobedience to protest the threat of artificial intelligence to political campaigns. He compares himself to Paul Revere and Thomas Paine. “This is a way for me to make a difference, and I have,” he said in the interview.
Don’t want to intrude on your personal decisions, but…. Note: The story below is not about new Missouri legislation to prevent divorce during pregnancy, but efforts by a Democrat to remove the existing state ban. The headline frames it badly, but in a clickbait way. X-user The Volatile Mermaid tweets, “Missouri law says pregnant women can’t get divorced, in case you were under the false impression that Republicans care about protecting life. It’s. All. About. Controlling. Women.” Freedom. It’s another case of Republicans and “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” WDAF-TV: JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – As it stands, Missouri judges cannot legally finalize a divorce if a woman is pregnant. Three other states have similar laws: Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas. While a couple can still file for divorce in Missouri, the court must wait until after a woman gives birth in order to finalize child custody and child support. When it comes to domestic violence, there’s no exceptions. “It just doesn’t make sense in 2024,” said State Rep.
The GOP primaries are giving us some interesting information Of all the 2024 political events I believed were irrelevant, the GOP primary campaign has been at the top of the list. But I was wrong. As it turns out these primaries, which have commonly been touted in the media as decisive evidence of the Donald Trump juggernaut going into the fall election, are illustrating a major weakness in his coalition and its one that we have been seeing since the day after he won the 2016 election. There is a substantial faction of Republicans and Republican leaning voters who simply cannot stand him. Yes, he is overwhelmingly popular among his MAGA base which makes up about three quarters of the GOP and the majority of them are blindly devoted to the man no matter what he does. They are not just enthusiastic about voting for him they are ecstatic. The media sees this as a sign that he is virtually unbeatable even to the extent of pushing the narrative that he is the front runner for the general election and Joe Biden is on the ropes despite the polls saying that the race is very close. It’s not that he is in any danger of losing the nomination.
With the news that the House Judiciary Committee Republicans are a bunch of useful idiots, those former intelligence officials who sounded the alarm about this whole Hunter Biden smear campaign feel vindicated: The allegation that Smirnov was spreading new falsehoods about Joe Biden with an election looming hearkened back to an episode from the 2020 election, when the question of whether Russian spies were trying to smear Joe Biden was first raised. Derogatory information, purportedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop, had surfaced in a New York Post article.
Get that discharge petition going, Democrats.
Magical thinking across the political universe Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cupThey slither wildly as they slip away across the universe To no one’s surprise, Donald “91 Counts” Trump handily defeated former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in her home state on Saturday. If there is any news there it is that Haley did not lose more badly than she did. The New York Times offers five takeaways from the day, the Washington Post only three. The Post mentions an exit poll showing that “31 percent of voters said Trump wouldn’t be fit to serve as president if he’s convicted of a crime. South Carolina becomes the third early state to show that at least 3 in 10 voters said a convicted Trump wouldn’t be fit.” But that doesn’t mean they won’t vote for him anyway. “Today is not the end of our story,” Haley told supporters. “I know 40 percent is not 50 percent, but I also know 40 percent is not some tiny group. There are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative.” Where have I heard that before?