He added later that he “ran for president one time and won!” I’m not sure why anyone ever thought Trump’s puerile nicknames were so clever to begin with but to the extent he has a real “nickname” talent, he’s certainly lost it now: The former president, who rarely mentioned Harris until after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, tried out “Laffin’ Kamala” before pivoting to “Lyin’ Kamala,” then jettisoned that for “Crazy Kamala,” which he interspersed with misspellings of her name. In the last few days, he has abandoned those monikers — even as he continues to use nicknames for other adversaries. Demeaning nicknames have been core to Trump’s political brand since he first jumped into the political scene, a tool he has leveraged against both Republicans and Democrats to humiliate his opponents and rile up his supporters. But he’s struggled to adjust to run against Harris, even as he has leaned into personal attacks. He’s been repurposing his insults from the very beginning.
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Trump plans to send in the troops this time I wrote below about the militias that are working up a froth over the possibility of Trump losing yet again. It’s pretty unnerving. But we should also be unnerved by what will happen if Trump wins, especially if his “win” is due to the courts validating some right wing scheme to invalidate the election results in his favor resulting in widespread protests. The NY Times reports (gift link): During his time out of power, allies of Mr. Trump have worked on policy papers to provide legal justifications for the former president’s intent to use the military to enforce the law domestically. In public, they have talked about this in the context of border states and undocumented immigrants. But an internal email from a group closely aligned with Mr. Trump, obtained by The Times, shows that, privately, the group was also exploring using troops to “stop riots” by protesters.
Baby penguin! There are few certainties in life, but alongside death, taxes, and the arrival of hot weather in July, at least one other thing is inarguable: baby penguins are almost impossibly cute. Guests visiting the Tennessee Aquarium during the Fourth of July holiday can join Aquarium staffers in excitedly welcoming the newest addition to the Penguins’ Rock gallery — a fluffy (and shockingly fast-growing) Macaroni Penguin chick. The chick hatched on June 2 from an egg laid in late April by parents Bacon and Merlin. This baby bird is the first offspring ever produced by Bacon, who hatched in 2015 to two other Aquarium penguins, Hercules and Little Debbie. Though Little Debbie now lives at another facility, the newest chick’s grandsire, Hercules, still calls Penguins’ Rock home. With this latest arrival, the Aquarium is home for the first time ever to three generations of Macaroni Penguins. The new chick is the Aquarium’s first hatchling since the 2021 arrival of Carla, a Gentoo Penguin. This latest baby is the first Macaroni Penguin chick since Pedro hatched in 2019.
Doubling down on misogyny Rebecca Traister, writer-at-large for New York magazine, is a treasure. Appearing last night on “The Daily Show,” Traister embraced the uncertainty and exhilaration of electing a woman president. That feeling is appropriately driving people to action. Shared anger at the demise of Roe is bringing people together. And it’s a joyful fight. The right-wing manosphere’s inability to hide their loathing for women and scorn for woman is stunning, Traister offers. The RNC convention was an ickier, grosser pageant of misogyny. As stunning is Democratic men’s embrace of women’s issues, she continued, “in a way I have rarely seen Democratic men be comfortable before.” They’ve made women’s reproductive freedom and “full civic participation a clarion, moral call of the Democratic Party.” Traister calls it a remarkable phenomenon on the left. Embrace the future. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
More from the new NY Times poll on those battleground states: Vice President Kamala Harris has stormed into contention in the fast-growing and diverse states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, not long after Donald J. Trump had seemed on the verge of running away with those states when President Biden was still the Democratic nominee. The new polls from The New York Times and Siena College show how quickly Ms. Harris has reshaped the terrain of 2024 and thrust the Sun Belt back to the center of the battleground-state map. Ms. Harris is now leading Mr. Trump among likely voters in Arizona, 50 percent to 45 percent, and has even edged ahead of Mr. Trump in North Carolina — a state Mr. Trump won four years ago — while narrowing his lead significantly in Georgia and Nevada. […] That marks a significant improvement for Democrats compared with May, when Mr. Trump led Mr. Biden 50 percent to 41 percent across Arizona, Georgia and Nevada in the previous set of Times/Siena Sun Belt polls, which did not include North Carolina. The new polls provide more evidence that Ms.
If you have time to read any long form piece this weekend, read this one from Pro Publica about the militia movement. They have been following one large national militia group that has avoided scrutiny up until now called APIII (American Patriots Three Percent) for several years and it’s enough to make the hair on your neck stand up. Perhaps the biggest threat comes from the fact that they have indoctrinated many members of law enforcement: AP3 has expanded at a dramatic pace since Jan. 6, while keeping much of its activity out of view. This rise is documented in more than 100,000 internal messages obtained by ProPublica, spanning the run-up to Jan. 6 through early 2024. Along with extensive interviews with 22 current and former members of AP3, the records provide a uniquely detailed inside view of the militia movement at a crucial moment. The messages reveal how AP3 leaders have forged alliances with law enforcement around the country and show the ways in which, despite an initial crackdown by social media, they have attracted a new wave of recruits. A change in the political climate has also helped: In a matter of months after Jan.
Jill Filipovic analyzes the latest JD Vance atrocity: The latest unearthed audio has him agreeing with a conservative podcast host on what women are for once we hit menopause: Helping to raise children is “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.” The whole purpose. Vance has opinions about many different kinds of women. Those who don’t have kids are “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too” and lack “a direct stake in the future of the country.” Women who care about their work and plan their families are suckers: “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had,” he tweeted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Step mothers (and step parents generally), he has suggested, are not real parents.
It sure looks like someone is thinking about it Things aren’t going well in the Trump campaign. And, as has happened in both of his previous campaigns, he’s likely looking to fire someone: Donald Trump has privately expressed faith in his campaign leadership and no firings are currently expected, but senior advisers find themselves in the most vulnerable moment as they struggle to frame effective attacks against Kamala Harris, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The past month, starting with Joe Biden’s withdrawal and his endorsement of Harris to succeed him, which propelled her to draw roughly even in key swing state polls, has easily been the most unstable moment for the Trump campaign since its formal launch in late 2022. In that period, Trump has often committed one unforced error after another as he tries to frame arguments against Harris, struggled to break through the news cycle hyping Democrats’ enthusiasm, and suddenly found himself on the defensive with a narrow window left until November.
Good news from Pennsylvania: Recent polling shows Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is beating Republican nominee Donald Trump among Pennsylvania voters — a brand new poll by Quinnipiac University, for example, puts her four points ahead. That represents a significant change from when President Joe Biden was still at the top of the ticket. However, a poll by TelevisaUnivision’s Strategy & Insights provided to WHYY News prior to its publication reveals that shift may have been particularly significant among Hispanic voters in the state. Whereas 39% of Hispanic voters in the Commonwealth said they definitely planned to vote for Biden just before his announcement, 49% now say the same about Harris. That checks out, according to Sarina Torres, 23, of Allentown. “I think a lot of that shift comes from Latina voters,” Torres, a college student and movement politics organizer, told WHYY News. “It’s more exciting to vote for a woman of color.” The TelevisaUnivision poll provides a rare look into voter reactions to Biden being replaced by Harris atop the Democratic ticket.
Harris unveils populist economic plans Ahead of her planned speech today in Raleigh, North Carolina, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a dozen proposed policies for “lowering costs for American families” (Washington Post): The most striking proposals were for the elimination of medical debt for millions of Americans; the “first-ever” ban on price gouging for groceries and food; a cap on prescription drug costs; a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers; and a child tax credit that would provide $6,000 per child to families for the first year of a baby’s life. The last item followed a suggestion earlier this month from JD Vance, the GOP vice-presidential nominee, that the credit be raised from $2,000 per child to $5,000. Harris is also calling for restoring the Biden administration’s child tax credit that expired at the end of 2021, which raised the benefit for most families from $2,000 per child to $3,000.