Florida Republicans think so. That’s how batshit insane they are. And Ron DeSantis has empowered them: The Brevard County Republican Executive voted by a supermajority this week to call upon Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to ban sale and distribution of Covid “and all related vaccines” in the state, Florida Today reported. The nonbinding resolution also demanded that “Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody seize all remaining doses in the state for safety testing, ‘on behalf of the preservation of the human race,’ the resolution states,” the report said. The resolution is part of a trend among GOP county officials in the state, and “closely mirrors” a measure advanced in February in Lee County. Last month a similar resolution was passed in Tampa Bay Hillsborough County, bringing the total to more than half a dozen counties, the outlet reported.
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Wait. The Insurrection Act? Where did that come from? Trump did amend that post later to say Espionage Act, but it appears that the Insurrection Act is on his mind. You have to wonder if maybe he’s gotten a target letter from the Special Council. There is good reason for him to worry about that. Jennifer Rubin looked at a new prospective prosecution memo which sees Donald Trump potentially facing some very serious charges based upon the public evidence. One of them is the likelihood of being charged under the Insurrection Act: Building on a prior prosecution memo, a group of seven former prosecutors and defense attorneys — lawyers with decades of collective constitutional and criminal law experience — published at Just Security a voluminous updated memo giving their best estimate (and advice to Smith) as to what to expect. The authors at Just Security consolidated the seven-part conspiracy the House select committee set out into three essential prongs. They explained the first prong: “Trump knew he lost the election but did not want to give up power, so he worked with his lawyers on a wide variety of schemes to change the outcome.
Asa Hutchinson is lustily booed before the Turning Point crowd He’s a hard right establishment Republican. And it’s just not good enough. Why? During the event, Carlson asked the former governor about his veto of the first-in-the-nation gender-affirming care ban for minors. Hutchinson said at the time of his veto that he believes the law went too far and was an example of government overreach. On Friday, the former governor said that he believes only two genders exist and he would not personally support a member of his family changing genders, but he does not think the government should be involved in the decision. “There should not be any confusion on your gender. But if there is confusion, then parents ought to be the ones that guide the children,” he said.
Quick dispatch from Netroots-Chicago Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones related his experience with being expelled from the state House, reinstated by constituents, and returning to the state Capitol to encounter the white men who voted to expel him. “I walked in with the energy that they are in the ‘find out’ portion of our movement,” Jones said to applause. Later, the Rev. Jesse Jackson made a surprise appearance with Jones. Jackson announced his retirement from leadership of Rainbow PUSH (NPR): He announced in 2017 that he had begun outpatient care for Parkinson’s disease two years earlier. In early 2021, he had gallbladder surgery and later that year was treated for COVID-19 including a stint at a physical therapy-focused facility. He was hospitalized again in November 2021 for a fall that caused a head injury. Before another tornado blew through town last night, a few notables under 35 found each other at Netroots Nation. Jones, Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida, NC Democrats’ state chair Anderson Clayton, David Hogg (A March For Our Lives) and other young activists shared dinner. Networking is why we come.
They’re beyond being embarassed Shamelessness was just for warm-ups. Sometimes the gibberish is less offensive than what’s behind it: Robinson’s latest comments come as he has been the subject of national attention for his long history of racist, antisemitic, and anti-LGBTQ+ comments. In February 2018, he penned an attack on the film “Black Panther” because the title character was created by Stan Lee, whom he called “an agnostic Jew,” and “put to film by a satanic marxist. How can this trash, that was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets, invoke any pride?” He received bipartisan condemnation in October 2021 for a sermon in which he referred to “transgenderism” and homosexuality as “filth.” I’d like North Carolina to go blue in 2024. Even more, I’d like to keep the governor’s mansion out of Mark Robinson’s hands.
Dems are winning swing voters From Nate Cohn at the NY Times on the 2022 election. Yes, the Republicans turned out as they always do. But something else happened: Ultimately, the Democratic performance depended on something that went far beyond turnout: A segment of swing voters decided to back Democratic candidates in many critical races. For all the talk about turnout, this is what distinguished the 2022 midterms from any other in recent memory. Looking back over 15 years, the party out of power has typically won independent voters by an average margin of 14 points, as a crucial segment of voters either has soured on the president or has acted as a check against the excesses of the party in power. This did not happen in 2022. Every major study — the exit polls, the AP/VoteCast study, the recent Pew study — showed Democrats narrowly won self-identified independent voters, despite an unfavorable national political environment and an older, whiter group of independent voters.
Surprised? I would hope that this puts him in the category of Alex Jones and normal people stop dealing with him as if he’s a serious person. But I’m not getting my hopes up. This is on par with Donald Trump and the MAGA crazies so I think that’s just the way things are in our political culture: Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dished out wild COVID-19 conspiracy theories this week during a press event at an Upper East Side restaurant, claiming the bug was a genetically engineered bioweapon that may have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. Kennedy floated the idea during a question-and-answer portion of raucous booze and fart-filled dinner at Tony’s Di Napoli on East 63d Street. “COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people.
This piece by David French in the NYTimes makes the point that the right’s bully strategy as exemplified by Donald Trump and Elon Musk is predictably creating a backlash. I think this is a particularly apt observation: Any form of domination and bullying will create a backlash, and that backlash will gain particular momentum when the bullies are both aggressive and absurd — and that’s exactly the world that both Trump and Musk built. When I watch the world’s richest man take “Catturd” seriously, traffic in conspiracy theories and interact with a menagerie of right-wing trolls, these words come to mind: Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Who can forget when the legal team of the president of the United States, including Rudy Giuliani, promoted its alleged examples of voter fraud at a landscaping business in Philadelphia almost adjacent to a crematory and a porn shop? The only thing that keeps one from laughing at episodes like this one, and at Musk’s juvenile tweets, is the depressing realization that both Trump and Musk possess immense power and maintain loyal followings in the tens of millions.
Back in 2004 I recall a lot of complaints when the Dean campaign had a lot of young out-of-state volunteers coming in to Iowa to canvass for their guy. They wore orange wool hats and t-shirts, making them stand out in a crowd, and the locals were not impressed. It was, I thought, a lesson learned by everyone. But at least the Deaniacs were true believers. Guess who’s doing it again not even ten years later. And this time they’re just random people being paid to do it: With his foot on a front porch of a stately home in Charleston, S.C., a canvasser for a $100 million field effort supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) vented on July 7 about a homeowner who he said had told him to get off his lawn. Speaking on his phone while wearing a T-shirt with “DESANTIS” in big letters and a lanyard representing the Never Back Down super PAC, he used lewd remarks to describe what he would tell the homeowner to do to him.“And I’m a little stoned, so I don’t even care,” he added, holding materials and appearing to wait for another homeowner to come to the door.
He’s such a God-fearing man… The evangelicals seem to love his agenda more than the Republicans running for office: One by one, Republican presidential hopefuls took the stage at this year’s Family Leadership Conference for one of their biggest opportunities so far in this cycle: The chance — without Donald Trump in attendance stealing the show — to win over religious conservatives in Iowa, a state increasingly seen as key to having a shot at winning the nomination. And one by one, they were met with Tucker Carlson, who repeatedly turned to his favorite topics. Mike Pence sparred with Carlson on January 6 and Ukraine, with the conversation getting noticeably tense as the former Fox News host repeatedly pressed him over claims that the Ukrainian government “has arrested priests.” “I just told you I asked the religious leader in Kyiv if it was happening. You asked me if I raised the issue and I did,” Pence replied after one lengthy back and forth about Ukraine.