Kari Lake is in full retreat. Photo: Rebecca Noble/Getty Images
“Incrementalism” has been a standard feature of anti-abortion activism, both before and since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. While Roe was in place, many anti-abortion advocates and their Republican allies sought to chip away at abortion rights at the margins with bans on rare late-term abortions and various efforts to make life difficult for abortion providers and their patients. Just before Roe fell in 2022, some red states put into place the kind of limited bans they were used to proposing but then moved as quickly as possible to total or near-total bans that would take effectas soon as SCOTUS green-lit them (known as “trigger laws”). A good example was Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers first enacted a 15-week ban when it was clear Roe would fall, then passed a six-week ban the following year.
As a backlash to abortion restrictions swelled across the country, voters prevented or forced roll-backs of bans wherever they could, even in red states like in Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio. For the most part, however, Republican stayed in the trenches, tried to change the subject, or argued over abstractions like a proposed national abortion ban (impractical so long as enough Democratic senators were in office to kill or filibuster it). But now a court decision in Arizona has created a new phenomenon: Republican politicians at the state level rushing to dismantle a total abortion ban and replace it with something more “moderate.” It’s anti-abortion incrementalism in reverse.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Republicans in competitive congressional districts are already denouncing the court’s decision and the law it revived, as Axios reported:
Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), who represents a seat President Biden won in 2020, called the ruling a “disaster for women and providers” in a statement posted to social media.
Ciscomani said the 15-week ban “protected the rights of women and new life,” but the territorial law is “archaic.”
Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), another Biden-district Republican, said the issue “should be decided by Arizonans, not legislated from the bench,” urging the state legislature to “address this issue immediately.”
Kelly Cooper, a Republican running to challenge Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.), called for the state legislature to “begin work immediately on reinstating” the 15-week ban.
But the call for a retreat has extended into the heart of MAGA country, as illustrated by U.S. Senate candidate (and narrowly defeated 2022 gubernatorial candidate) Kari Lake, who is also backing restoration of the 15-week ban. And pressure on legislators to kill the 1864 law may soon become intense as prior abortion extremists back-track, suggests the Guardian:
Some of the criticisms of the Tuesday ruling came from politicians who had previously supported the 1864 ban or cheered the end of Roe v Wade. Lake previously called the ban a “great law”, according to PolitiFact. David Schweikert, an Arizona congressman who is facing one of the most competitive House races in the country this November, said on Tuesday that he does not support the ruling and wants the state legislature to “address this issue immediately”, but in 2022 said the fall of Roe “pleased” him….
“This is an earthquake that has never been seen in Arizona politics,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican consultant in Arizona, of the decision. “This will shake the ground under every Republican candidate, even those in safe legislative or congressional seats.”
Hanging over Arizona Republicans and anti-abortion advocates isn’t just the political backlash to the restoration of a total ban, but the high likelihood that the November general election ballot will include a citizen-initiated state constitutional amendment restoring abortion rights as they existed under Roe. If Republicans don’t quickly dial back abortion restrictions, voters may well go further than allowing abortions up to 15 weeks and pregnancy and take down some GOP candidates while they are at it.
This is a whole new world for the anti-abortion movement and the GOP. It’s not just a matter of being decisively on the wrong side of public opinion nationally and in most states, wherein a majority of voters reject the abolition of abortion rights. It’s that after decades of tactical advances in the fight to put the law of the land behind forced birth policies, they’re now having to engage in tactical retreats. And in November and beyond, voters will have an opportunity to give them a swift kick to continue in that direction indefinitely.
For nearly 30 years she was a feisty, outspoken booster of women through her Elle magazine advice column. It heralded our untapped powers and advised us to plow ahead despite rejections and not to center our lives around men…
The Social Security war is on, as it is during every presidential election. The format is always the same: Democrats say Republicans want to wreck the popular retirement plan for seniors, while Republicans say Democrats want to keep the program going through unsustainable tax increases that will kneecap the entire US economy.
It’s mostly gobbledygook, on both sides. But there’s an important grain of truth in the latest Republican plan to shore up Social Security, which President Biden calls “extreme.” It’s not extreme at all. It’s actually sensible — and inevitable.
The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which represents most Republicans in the House of Representatives, recently published its blueprint for federal spending in 2025. One measure would be “modest adjustments to the retirement age” determining eligibility for Social Security “to account for increases in life expectancy.”
Sound crazy? It shouldn’t, because it has happened before. In 1983, Congress passed legislation gradually raising the retirement age to qualify for full Social Security benefits from 65 to 67, over a span of 30 years. During the same period that the Social Security retirement age rose by two years, US life expectancy rose by more than four.
Biden, however, called the GOP proposal an “extreme budget” that would cut Social Security and healthcare benefits for millions. “I will stop them,” he declared. Other Democrats are piling on. Biden’s close ally, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, lambasted the RSC targets as “cruel” and said they “read like a wish list for Donald Trump and the GOP hard right.” Instead of any changes to benefits or eligibility, Biden and his fellow Democrats want to raise taxes on businesses and the wealthy to keep Social Security fully funded.
Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) speaks during the Republican Study Committee news conference to unveil their FY2025 budget proposal in the US Capitol on Thursday, March 21, 2024. (Bill Clark via Getty Images)
This, in a microcosm, is why Washington never solves solvable problems until it’s nearly too late. Each side vilifies the other and the mudslinging makes it impossible for ordinary voters to know what’s logical and pragmatic. Incendiary politicians appeal to fear rather than common sense, and a lot of the time it works.
Back to Social Security. Within the next 10 years, the program is likely to run short of the money needed to pay all benefits in full. That’s because it will exhaust the Social Security trust funds, which are basically banked money, leaving only incoming payroll taxes to cover benefits. At the same time, enrollment in the program is swelling, and a declining birth rate is leaving fewer working people to pay for retiree benefits. Without any changes, the program will only be able to pay about 75% of obligated benefits by 2033, according to the latest estimates.
Medicare, the health program for seniors, is in a similar position, for similar reasons. That could actually run short of money a couple of years sooner than Social Security, with 2031 being the latest estimate of D-Year.
There are three ways to address these imminent funding shortfalls: Raise the taxes that pay for Social Security and Medicare, reduce benefits, or redirect money from general tax revenues to retiree programs. The last option would cause other problems, such as leaving far less money for all the other things the government pays for and pushing up the national debt when it’s already uncomfortably large.
That leaves tax hikes and benefit cuts. Whenever Congress gets around to it, bolstering Social Security and Medicare will almost certainly require both. There are many proposals for how to do this. The compromise position is likely to involve gradually increasing the retirement age again, as Republicans want to do, while also raising the payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, as Biden wants to do. The bar for eligibility could go higher, to exclude wealthier Americans who don’t need the money. Tweaking other benefits could help close other budgetary gaps.
Political reality will likely prevent any changes that drastically harm voters. Any tax hikes will start with the wealthy first, such as lifting the ceiling on the Social Security payroll tax, which currently applies only to the first $168,600 in income. In fact, one “progressive” change would be lifting the income ceiling, so the payroll tax applies to all income, while exempting workers below a certain threshold from paying any payroll tax at all.
Any change in the eligibility age will occur gradually, as it did before. Any outright reductions in benefits would likely apply to future generations, not to people currently enrolled in the programs. That’s a time-tested way to ensure nobody loses anything they already have, which tends to upset voters, and especially seniors who vote in the highest numbers. It’s less of a problem if it affects future beneficiaries who may not even be aware of the cutbacks.
Why don’t politicians just come out and say, “This is what it’s going to take to solve our problems”? Because compromise solutions usually involve everybody giving up something, and most politicians are afraid to tell voters the truth. To some extent, that’s rational. Democratic voters don’t want to hear about benefit cuts, and Republican voters don’t want to hear about tax increases. So their elected representatives tell them what they do want to hear.
When crunch time comes, and it’s no longer possible to delay the benefit cuts and tax hikes it will take to fix the nation’s retirement programs, politicians of both parties will tacitly admit the simple fixes they peddled for years were never going to be enough. By that time, however, they will have won another election, or two, or three, and they’ll be telling themselves that fibbing to voters actually works.
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) will not rule out ditching her party as Donald Trump coasts to the 2024 nomination, she revealed in an interview with CNN that aired on Sunday.
“I wish that as Republicans, we had … a nominee that I could get behind,” Murkowski told CNN’s Manu Raju. “I certainly can’t get behind Donald Trump.”
“Oh, I think I’m very independent-minded,” Murkowski said when asked whether she’d consider becoming one of a handful of independents in Congress. When Raju pressed her a bit more on whether she’d consider registering as an independent who would caucus with Republicans, she simply replied, “I am navigating my way through some very interesting political times. Let’s just leave it at that.”
Murkowski jumped late into the Republican presidential primary with an endorsement of former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley just ahead of Super Tuesday in March. But, after a lackluster performance, Haley dropped out a few days later, leaving Murkowski to declare her “regret that our party is seemingly becoming a party of Donald Trump.”
The Alaska Senator regularly broke with her own party during the last two years of Trump’s term, voting in line with Trump’s position just 57.5 percent of the time. (The only Senate Republican who did so less frequently was Maine Senator Susan Collins, who also endorsed Haley ahead of Super Tuesday.) In a number of major moments, Murkowski went against Trump’s wishes: she voted against his nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018, supported Joe Biden’s nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2022, and cast a ballot to impeach Trump for his conduct on January 6, 2021.
These votes put Murkowski in the crosshairs of Trump and his allies—the GOP frontrunner dubbed her a RINO and called her “worse than a Democrat”— she successfully won re-election to a fifth full term in 2022, fending off a Trump-endorsed challenger (“Get any candidate ready, good or bad, I don’t care, I’m endorsing,” Trump wrote on Twitter ahead of that election. “If you have a pulse, I’m with you!”)
In recent months, Murkowski has stepped up her criticism of Trump. In December, she described Trump’s anti-immigrant comments, in which he characterized immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the United States, as “hateful, harmful rhetoric.” She has also criticized his description of January 6 prisoners as “hostages” and “patriots.” And she recently took aim at Trump’s comments calling Jewish Democratic voters people who “hate” their religion, telling CNN that the statement was “incredibly wrong” and “awful.”
Yet despite her refusal to cast a ballot for Trump, Murkowski has maintained that she will not be voting for President Joe Biden in 2024, telling NBC earlier this month that she “can’t vote for Biden.”
When President Biden flies into Nevada on Monday and to Arizona the following day, he’s likely to compliment the West’s natural beauty, pay homage to the unmatched political power of the Culinary Workers Union and nod to local Democratic elected officials.
Another truth about his visit to the two Southwestern states may remain unspoken: Though together they are home to only about 3% of the U.S. population, Arizona and Nevada are expected to have an outsize influence on the outcome of the 2024 presidential race.
With Arizona’s 11 electoral votes and Nevada’s six, the states collectively hold more voting power than Georgia, another closely contested state that both Democrats and Republicans believe they can win — as Biden and former President Trump engage in the first rematch of presidential contenders in nearly 70 years.
Having secured enough delegates last week to become their parties’ presumptive nominees, the two oldest major-party candidates in American history are facing off in a presidential rematch that most people saw coming and many hoped to avoid.
The race pits a president languishing in the polls against a challenger facing multiple criminal indictments. It gives citizens asking for change a chance to vote for more of the same, unless they opt for a long-shot third-party candidate.
Many Americans have said they don’t like it. They wish the stress of a country that feels perpetually at odds would just stop.
“Everything is kind of haywire and crazy,” Trevean Rhodes, a security guard at a Las Vegas supermarket, said last week. “Normalcy is a thing of the past.”
Nevada has gone to the Democrats in four straight presidential elections, but by thin margins. Biden won Arizona in 2020, though Republicans prevailed in all but two of the last 12 presidential cycles there.
Recent public polling in both battleground states shows Biden trailing Trump, but both sides have said they expect close contests. And both states have already received substantial attention, especially from the Democrats.
Vice President Kamala Harris visited Phoenix recently to talk about abortion, and in late January stopped in Las Vegas, where she called Trump a threat to democracy. Biden’s trip this week will take him to Reno, Las Vegas and Phoenix.
His events in Arizona are expected to focus on Latino voter engagement, sources familiar with his travel told The Times. The trip comes amid a $30-million advertising barrage from Biden’s campaign across all of the battleground states. (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia are the others.)
Former President Trump, in Las Vegas for the Nevada GOP’s caucuses last month, blasted his rival’s handling of migrants entering the U.S. from Mexico.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
Trump, stopping in Las Vegas before Nevada’s GOP caucuses in early February, slammed Biden’s handling of the mounting number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, and called human trafficking of migrants “a weapon of mass destruction” against the U.S.
Even as the candidates gear up for their marathon to election day with more than seven months to go, interviews with more than two dozen voters, elected officials and political consultants in Arizona and Nevada revealed a collective ennui about Biden vs. Trump 2.0.
“There’s a voter fatigue, I think,” said Arizona House Minority Whip Nancy Gutierrez, a Democrat. “People are just sick of being bombarded, with no bipartisanship and no working together on many of the same issues.”
Democrats say Biden must do more to highlight what they claim as his accomplishments, including job creation tied in part to an infrastructure law that brought public works to Nevada and Arizona, and passage of a bipartisan gun control measure that increases background checks for younger firearm buyers.
They also cite the president’s efforts to protect access to abortion and contraception via executive orders after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe vs. Wade, and his support for a robust U.S. presence internationally, including through aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Republicans plan to rely on what they contend was America’s stronger standing during Trump’s four-year tenure in Washington, citing high levels of employment and lower inflation as hallmarks of his administration.
Trump, working to stay connected to his base in Arizona after his failed efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat, appears at a right-wing gathering in Phoenix in 2021.
(Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)
Trump also claims credit for building up the wall dividing the U.S. and Mexico to reduce illegal crossings, as well as for pushing through $3.2 trillion in tax cuts, appointing Supreme Court justices who rejected the nationwide right to abortion, pulling the U.S. out of trade agreements he said hurt American workers, and clearing the way for the U.S. to become the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas.
The state of the economy, a perennial centerpiece of presidential electioneering, is cited more than any other issue as the top concern in Nevada, which saw its unemployment rate spike to more than 30% during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unemployment in the state is just over 5% now, still the highest in the country. But even some with jobs express concern that high inflation has made it harder for them to pay their bills.
At a supermarket on the east side of Las Vegas last week, two men demonstrated the breadth of the disagreement about how the economy is doing.
Alberto Cardona said he didn’t care about all of the economists saying inflation had tapered off.
The electrician said they were “lying,” and he saw proof, literally, in the pudding. He said he paid 99 cents for a carton of pudding at the supermarket when Trump was president. Now it costs $1.47. He blamed Biden and other Democrats for the upswing, saying they supercharged inflation by overspending “and printing money that they don’t have.”
“Everything’s terrible right now. I’m living paycheck to paycheck, trying to support my family,” said Cardona, 50. He said he would vote for Trump.
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A few minutes later, Fernando Alcazar pronounced himself ready to vote for Biden.
“Look at what he’s done and where the country is headed,” said the 52-year-old gambling industry consultant. “The economy is good, and we’re going in the right direction.”
Though inflation has climbed much higher in earlier eras, the low inflation of the last two decades or so has made the recent upswing feel disabling, especially to younger people, said Stephen Miller, research director at the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
But he said people’s views of the economy could be reshaped in the coming months.
“Between now and early fall, if grocery prices come down and gasoline prices come down, the mood will change,” Miller said. “We’ll see.”
Rep. Steven Horsford, a Democrat who represents Clark County in the U.S. House and chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, said that’s why it’s key for Biden to remain on point.
“You can’t only focus on the accomplishments, of which there are many,” Horsford said. “You’ve also got to talk about what you plan to do going forward.”
Biden smiles for supporters’ selfies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, last week after speaking on improving healthcare and lowering prescription drug prices.
(John Locher / Associated Press)
In both Nevada and Arizona, Democrats say access to abortion should be a winning issue for Biden. They described a wave of anger among their voters that followed the reversal of Roe.
Organizers hope to put measures supporting abortion access on the ballot in both states. Though a Nevada law protects access to abortion there, a political action committee is gathering signatures to qualify a measure that would enshrine abortion access into the state Constitution. The measure would apply for pregnancies of up to 24 weeks. Activists in Arizona are charting a similar course.
Republicans have a ballot measure of their own in Nevada: one that would require voters to present identification when they go to the polls.
The proposal responds to belief among conservatives that elections have seen widespread tainting by ineligible voters casting ballots. Though claims of such voter fraud have seldom been substantiated, they are accepted as a matter of faith, and are therefore highly motivating, to many in the GOP.
Immigration is a major campaign issue again. Here, migrants from Colombia wait at the southern border for U.S. officials to transport them to apply for asylum.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
With migrant crossings from Mexico to the U.S. hitting a high in recent months, even Democrats in cities well north of the border have expressed concern about the burden newcomers put on infrastructure and public services.
Republicans plan to focus intensely on the issue.
Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who is running for U.S. Senate in Arizona’s Republican primary this summer, said Biden’s policies supporting migrants underscore an inherent unfairness in the minds of voters he’s met. Along with the economy, Lamb said, nothing angers his constituents more than the sense of disorder at ports of entry and in communities where migrants enter the country.
“They’re very angry with the misappropriation of tax funds used to put these people up in hotel rooms, to give them transportation on airplanes and to give them, in some cases, gift cards, while we have American veterans and we have Americans who are homeless and are struggling,” Lamb said.
Democrats like Alcazar, the gambling industry consultant in Vegas, said it’s unfair and inaccurate to blame Biden for the surge of migrants. He noted that the White House had hammered out an immigration overhaul deal with congressional Republicans that included increased border security, only to have the GOP back away when Trump signaled his opposition.
“It was their chance to step up and do something about the issue,” Alcazar said. “But they didn’t follow through. Instead, they wanted Trump politics.”
In a nod to Arizona’s many Republican voters, Biden honored the late Sen. John McCain last fall in remarks on democracy in Tempe, Ariz. The two served across the Senate aisle from each other for over two decades.
(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)
As the oldest president at 81, Biden has faced repeated questions about his mental acuity and fitness to serve.
Robert Bailey, a political independent, said he has voted for candidates of both parties in the past, but wouldn’t consider Biden this time.
“He can’t remember things he needs to remember,” said Bailey, 57, a street performer in Las Vegas. “People just help him stay in office and get his job done.”
Some say Trump, 77, also shows signs of aging.
But more challenging critiques grow out of the dozens of criminal charges he faces — on allegations of illegality related to his attempts to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia and his stashing of classified government documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and of obstruction of justice; of having a role in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to prevent Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory; and of falsifying records related to hush money allegedly paid to porn star Stormy Daniels.
“We understand that Trump wants to take us backwards,” said Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, a Democrat. “You have Donald Trump running a campaign of creating doomsday scenarios and seeking retribution against his political opponents.”
Romero said Biden has a list of accomplishments that her constituents will feel the benefits of for decades. She cited the nearly $100 million that’s flowed to her city from the infrastructure and inflation-reduction measures he’s championed.
In Nevada, meanwhile, the Biden campaign will remind 12,000 residents about the student loan relief they got from the administration, and tell 22,000 seniors not to forget how Democrats capped the price of their insulin prescriptions.
Diane Farajian, 65, said that Trump was slow to respond to the coronavirus surge, and that he makes her uneasy. The retired Las Vegas blackjack dealer plans to vote for Biden, though she said she usually supports Republicans for the White House.
“We need good people in there,” Farajian said. “There was just so much trouble when Trump was in office.”
Republican lawmaker Ken Buck announced last November that he would not seek reelection and would leave Congress at the end of the year. But apparently his GOP colleagues have become so intolerable that he’s decided he can’t waste another second of his life in Washington and is getting out of there just as soon as he can pack up his office.
On Tuesday, Buck said he would leave Congress at the end of next week rather than stick out the remaining time on his term. While the Colorado representative kept things cordial in his official statement, he let it be known how he really feels in interviews with reporters. Speaking to CNN’s Dana Bash about dysfunction on Capitol Hill, Buck said, “It is the worst year of the nine years and three months that I’ve been in Congress and having talked to former members, it’s the worst year in 40, 50 years to be in Congress.… This place has just devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people.” Specifically referring to his fellow Republicans, Buck said, “We’ve taken impeachment, and we’ve made it a social media issue as opposed to a constitutional concept—this place keeps going downhill, and I don’t need to spend more time here.”
Buck has long criticized the House GOP for attempting to impeach Joe Biden and Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—the latter of whom they just barely impeached last month—saying his colleagues had no legitimate basisfor doing so. In a video announcing his retirement in November, he lambasted his colleagues for spreading the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and that January 6 wasn’t a shameful day in this country’s history, saying, “Too many Republican leaders are lying to America, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen, describing January 6 as an unguided tour of the Capitol, and asserting that the ensuing prosecutions are a weaponization of our justice system.”
Buck’s departure will leave the GOP with a razor-thin majority in the House. Given that he decided to flame Republicans on the way out the door, you might have expected him to give GOP House leader Mike Johnson a heads-up about his plans. And he did! It was just a very, very small heads-up:
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recently approached the NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers and the former Minnesota governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura about serving as his running mate on an independent presidential ticket, and both have welcomed the overtures, two people familiar with the discussions said. Mr. Kennedy confirmed on Tuesday that the two men were at the top of his list. It is not clear if either has been formally offered the post, however, and Mr. Kennedy is still considering a shortlist of potential candidates, the people familiar with the discussions said.
I ask you just how hard is it to be a card-carrying Christian these days? I mean we’ve got card carrying Democrats and Republicans. You can get a membership card for every organization from the NAACP to the ACLU. The more I study the more I’m moved to realize that being a professed, in the spirit card-carrying man or woman of faith, is tantamount to putting a bullseye on your back and inviting a artillery barrage on your location. Scripture tells us that accepting Jesus Christ as a way of life was no easy task for early practitioners of faith. Being criticized,thrown to the lions for fun and games, beheaded or ostracized were all very real possibilities for those who believed and then lived according to the Word of God. Is today so different? Once you take up the standard of revolutionary thinking, once you commit your life to Christ, once you decide to live humbly in mercy and love and forgiveness isn’t it interesting the kind of attention you attract. “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.” 1 Peter 5:8-9
Looking around the world today, it is ludicrous not to recognize that religious persecution is still the number one cause of war and man’s inhumanity to man. CNN will attest to the fact that people all over the planet are being systematically annihilated. We sometimes take for granted the religious freedom we have in this country and I believe it has lulled us into a sense of being a Christian is somehow easy. Well it’s not and it never has been. It’s empowering. It’s enlightening.
It’s eternal but it is not easy. The good news is we are not alone and never have been. Living for God is probably the quintessential reality of human existence. Its reward is an inner understanding of the working of the universe that affords us to take physical life for granted in favor of life everlasting. Many of us believe in life after physical death. Christians have some insight into what to expect. Life as we know it is imperfect and cruel. Eternal life as we have come to believe is just the opposite. Rationalizing the difference is where faith resides. Is it any wonder then that belief in a deity that invites humility, demands love and recognizes mercy is cause for ruthless and radical reaction among those who would live otherwise? Is it any wonder that love for Christ Jesus invites the wrath of Lucifer in all of his forms? That target, that bullseye on your back should indeed be worn like a red badge of courage, because courage is what it’s going to take to withstand first the ridicule of the world and next the scorn of those who would tempt you with the weakness of your passions. And lastly, courage is the prerequisite for the certain death that will befall us all. If life after death is a fact that most of us agree upon, then I belive it stands to reason that that badge Christians wear is most certainly a ticket into a kingdom blood bought and faith preserved for believers; the same believers who are shunned and persecuted and murdered today and yesterday in the name of God.
I continue to be moved by the acts of faith in the Bible where a simple profession that Christ is the true Son of God invited certain and immediate death. Let me at least paint that target on my back and tell the world; come on with it.
May God bless and keep you always.
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A 2019 National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Legacy Award winner, Washington is a communications practitioner in all forms of media for over four decades. He has served on numerous boards in…
More by James Washington
Barring divine intervention or the West Coast falling into the sea, President Biden will handily win California in the November election.
But should he — or presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump — secure a second term in the fall, the future of either’s policy agenda rests heavily on which party controls Congress, where Republicans currently hold a wafer-thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
With the Golden State home to some of the most hotly contested swing districts in the country, the House’s fate will almost certainly come down to California.
The battle for the next two years of partisan political control will be waged door-to-door, from California’s beachside suburban cul-de-sacs to the tiny farm towns in the state’s fertile Central Valley.
Those battlefields will look a lot like Bridgecreek Plaza — a sun-bleached shopping center a few hundred yards from a freeway onramp in Orange County’s Huntington Beach. The mall is home to a crystal store, several insurance brokers, a dentist and the local Republican Party headquarters.
It’s also where about two dozen GOP faithful gathered on the morning of election day, bowing their heads for a quick prayer and pledging allegiance to a portable flag before turning their attention to Jessica Millan Patterson, chair of the California Republican Party.
Patterson was in a very good mood.
When she was first elected to lead the party, in 2019, California Republicans were “essentially the third-largest party in the state,” having sunk below the share of voters registering “decline to state” under party preference.
But Patterson had presided over a massive voter registration drive over the last five years, and the party had moved back into second. People across the country liked to dismiss “blue California,” she said, but they were forgetting that California has more registered Republicans than any other state.
“California Republicans are the reasons why we have a House majority,” she added, to raucous cheering.
That majority was what they hoped to hold on to, and the group would spend the morning of the March 5 primary election canvassing for Scott Baugh, a Republican attorney and former state Assembly member vying to push Democratic Rep. Katie Porter’s soon-to-be-open congressional seat back from blue to red.
Scott Baugh is trying again to flip Orange County’s 47th District back to the red column. The seat is a chief target of state and national Republican efforts to maintain control of the House.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
The latest round of redistricting put more conservative enclaves such as Huntington Beach and Newport Beach into California’s 47th Congressional District, and Baugh lost to Porter only narrowly in 2022 despite being vastly outspent, making the coastal Orange County district one of the most competitive in the nation.
The charismatic Porter will be out of the House picture after a failed Senate run; her seat is one of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s three offensive targets in California and top priorities. And it’s equally prized by Democrats.
In a country where enmity and distrust separate the two major political parties on most issues, California’s utmost importance to any November House strategy is one of the few things on which Republicans and Democrats can agree.
California is home to 10 races rated as competitive by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report — five of them in districts that are represented by Republicans but that President Biden won in 2020. In the months to come, both parties will be investing significant resources in those races, as national attention inevitably turns west.
With an expected Biden-Trump rematch, voter turnout in 2024 is also likely to be supercharged compared with the 2022 midterm election. That could give an edge to Democrats, given the registration advantage that they hold in many of the competitive districts. Republicans gained one California House seat in the 2022 midterms, a nonpresidential election when turnout was substantially lower than when Biden and Trump topped the ballot two years prior.
“At the end of the day, the path to 218 runs through California,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Dan Gottlieb, referring to the number of seats needed to garner a House majority.
Dave Min will face Baugh in November’s runoff for the 47th District seat, which Katie Porter is vacating. Min’s bruising primary battle for the crucial seat has already cost Democrats millions.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
Gottlieb was bullish on his party’s chances, citing the high turnout expected for the presidential election, along with strong Democratic candidates and “a bunch of dysfunctional and out-of-touch Republicans enabling the worst of their party’s chaos and dysfunction and extremism.”
But Gottlieb’s GOP counterpart was equally roseate in his outlook, with National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Ben Petersen reveling in the ugly and expensive primary fights that consumed Democrats in several of the state’s most crucial swing districts.
In the O.C. district where GOP volunteers fanned out for Baugh on primary morning, Democrats had sunk millions into a bruising primary battle between state Sen. Dave Min and fellow Democrat Joanna Weiss. Min ultimately emerged victorious, but only after surviving a barrage of negative advertising centered on his 2023 arrest for driving while intoxicated — arguably a gift to Republicans ahead of his fall battle with Baugh.
“Extreme Democrats are stumbling out of their vicious primary fights broke and bested by Republicans, who saw a groundswell of support for a commonsense safety and affordability agenda,” Petersen said, adding that the primary results made clear the GOP was “playing offense in California” in a way that would set the stage for victories in November.
Baugh, though, is not expected to go unscathed. In 2022, Porter’s ad campaign ripped the Republican for his antiabortion stance, as well as his work as a lobbyist and criminal charges he faced over campaign violations, for which he ultimately paid $47,000 in fines.
In the San Joaquin Valley, there were last-minute fears that a bruising primary battle would lock Democrats out of one of the races where they have the best chance of flipping a seat, but those concerns proved overblown.
Rudy Salas, backed by the Democratic establishment, vanquished fellow Democrat Melissa Hurtado to secure a spot in the fall against incumbent Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) in the 22nd Congressional District, but that race also put a dent in Democratic coffers.
The November race will be a rematch of the pair’s 2022 runoff, when Salas lost to Valadao by several thousand votes. And Salas and Valadao won’t be the only rematch on the November ticket.
In a heavily agricultural San Joaquin Valley district that includes all of Merced County and parts of Fresno, Madera, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties, incumbent GOP Rep. John Duarte will once again face off against Democratic challenger Adam Gray. Duarte won the 13th Congressional District in the midterm election by fewer than 600 votes, one of the closest races in the nation.
Several hundred miles southeast, in Southern California, Democratic challenger Will Rollins will again take on GOP incumbent Rep. Ken Calvert, the longest-serving member of the California delegation. The recently redrawn 41st Congressional District stretches from the suburban Inland Empire, where Calvert has long lived, to Palm Springs, where Rollins and his partner make their home.
The district’s new boundaries — which now include one of the largest concentrations of LGBTQ+ voters in the nation and liberal pockets of Californians in the desert — are far more friendly to Democrats. They also set up Rollins, who is gay, as a potent challenger to Calvert, who voted against LGBTQ+ rights in the past, but who says his views have since evolved.
One race that will have some new blood this year, after the same pair of candidates dueled in three previous elections, is California’s 27th Congressional District in northern Los Angeles County.
Once solidly Republican, the district has been reconfigured by redistricting, and has undergone a political transition driven by younger, more diverse transplants from L.A. seeking affordable housing in Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley. The district briefly switched from red to blue with former Rep. Katie Hill’s victory in 2018, but the young Democrat’s very public scandals and ultimate resignation helped hand the seat back to the GOP.
Now-incumbent GOP Rep. Mike Garcia beat Democrat Christy Smith in a 2019 special election to fill the seat, then twice more for full terms in 2020 and 2022. He will face off against George Whitesides, a fresh Democratic challenger, in November.
Ludovic Blain, executive director of the California Donor Table, a progressive group that pools donor funds, said his organization hopes to invest about $10 million in California House races in the fall, working with local nonprofits in key areas to turn out voters of color.
They’ll be focusing on seven key races: the three aforementioned rematches, Porter’s open seat and two other Orange County races, and the Garcia-Whitesides matchup.
One point of concern Blain raised is that Republican Steve Garvey’s place near the top of the ticket, facing off against Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) in the Senate race, might affect Democrats in House races.
Schiff engaged in a controversial strategy in the primary, boosting Garvey to lock out Porter and his other major Democratic challenger, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), whom Blain’s organization supported.
It was a gambit that some in the Democratic establishment said would actually help Democrats in other tight races, since a less-competitive Senate race would siphon away far less money from the party’s coffers.
But others, like Blain, argue that Garvey’s presence could hurt down-ballot Democrats. Plus, having him on the ballot may draw in moderate Republican and independent voters who remain sour on Trump.
“Having Garvey, I think, does spike or further encourage Republican voters to turn out, and more importantly, to vote down the ticket,” Blain said.
Patterson agreed. Unlike Trump, Garvey will likely campaign across the state, providing a lift for other Republicans while he’s at it.
Even before Biden started speaking, the topic of border security was certain to rise as one of the most tense moments in the State of the Union address.
Biden was confronted as he walked into the House chamber by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hardline Republican, decked out in a red Trump MAGA hat and a t-shirt emblazoned with the message, which was also on a button she pressed into his hand.
“Say her name,” it said, the phrase evoking the language used by activists after the death of George Floyd and others at the hands of police.
The death of Laken Riley, a nursing student from Georgia, has become a rallying cry for Republicans, a tragedy that they say encompasses the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S-Mexico border amid a record surge of immigrants entering the country. An immigrant from Venezuela who entered the U.S. illegally has been arrested and charged with murder.
Midway through the speech, Biden started talking about border security and called on Congress to pass legislation to secure the border and modernize the country’s outdated immigration laws, praising the bipartisan effort that collapsed when his likely Republican presidential rival, Donald Trump, opposed it.
Greene interjected, “Say her name!”
The congresswoman from Georgia yelled, pointing a finger, and jabbing it toward Biden.
And then Biden did just that.
He held up the white button, and said: “Laken Riley.”
Biden spoke briefly of her death and he made reference to his own family’s trauma — his first wife and young daughter were killed in 1972 after an automobile crash. His son, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015.
And then he urged Congress to work together to pass a border security compromise.
“Get this bill done!” Biden said.
He even called on Trump to stop fighting against any border deal.
Hours earlier, the House voted to pass the “Laken Riley Act,” which would require the Department of Homeland Security to detain unauthorized migrants who are accused of theft.
Authorities have arrested on murder and assault charges Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan man who entered the U.S. illegally and was allowed to stay to pursue his immigration case. He has not yet entered a plea to the charges.
Trump has used Riley’s death to slam Biden’s handling of the border and at one event this month told the crown that the president would never say her name.
Biden has also adopted some of the language of Trump on the border, and on Thursday night, he called the man charged with murdering Riley an “illegal.”
That was disappointing to Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “I wish he hadn’t engaged with Marjorie Taylor Greene and used the word illegal,” she told the AP after the speech.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, the speaker emeritus, said afterward on CNN, “Now he should have said ‘undocumented,’ but it’s not a big thing.”
Greene had handed out the buttons earlier in the day. Biden also looked up to the gallery where many guests were seated, but Riley’s parents were not there.
Rep. Mike Collins, a Georgia Republican, said this week that he had invited Riley’s parents to the State of the Union address, but they had “chosen to stay home as they grieve the loss of their daughter.”
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Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri and Jill Colvin contributed to this story.
After winning the GOP primary on Tuesday, North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson now has a very real chance of being elected governor of the state next November. What should voters know about Robinson before then? Well, for starters, that he’d like to go back to a time in American history when half of the population didn’t have the constitutional right to cast a ballot.
Yes, as HuffPost reports, a recently unearthed video from 2020 shows Robinson publicly declaring, “I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote.”
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While this is obviously shocking, it’s merely a drop in the bucket of the completely wild comments Robinson has made over the years. (Neither Robinson’s campaign nor his government office responded to HuffPost’s requests for comment.) As my colleague Abigail Tracyreported last July, the amount of disturbing remarks that have come out of Robinson’s mouth—on everything from women to LGBTQ+ people to Jews to feminism—could fill entire volumes. A mere sampling of that commentary includes:
A 2017 Facebook post trivializing domestic violence, in which Robinson wrote, “So if someone beats the bird dog hell of their spouse at the mall….is it still ‘Domestic Violence?’”
A 2018 Facebook post in which he wrote, “So if a woman who ‘transitioned’ into a ‘man’ marries and abuses a man who ‘transitioned’ into a ‘woman’ is it still ‘violence against a woman?’ Will the feminist raise hell over it? I’m asking for a British Cigarette.”
A post in which Robinson claimed that “feminism was planted in the ‘Garden,’ watered by the devil, and is harvested and sold by his minions”; one in which he wrote that “lesbianism and feminism” are destroying the family; another saying feminists are “as bad, if not worse, than racist[s]”; and one declaring that any man who refers to himself as a feminist is “about as MANLY as a pair of lace panties.”
The declaration that people who support equal rights for women are “sexist, hairy armpit having, poo-poo hat wearing pinkos.”
A series of remarks in which Robinson called women “whores,” “witches,” and “rejected drag queens,” and women who breastfeed in public “shameless attention hogs.”
Oh, and Robinson is a conspiracy theorist to boot, saying, among other things, that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if 9/11 turned out to be an inside job or if the 1969 moon landing had been faked; that he’s “SERIOUSLY skeptical” JFK was assassinated; and that Parkland shooting survivor David Hoggwas a paid actor.
Trump, of course, wants Robinson to be the next governor of North Carolina, endorsing the guy for the job and absurdly calling him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
GREENSBORO, N.C. — He’s argued his four criminal indictments and mug shot bolstered his support among Black voters who see him as a victim of discrimination just like them.
He’s compared himself to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison imprisoned by Vladimir Putin, and suggested that he is a political dissident, too.
And in nearly every public appearance, he repeats falsehoods about the election he lost.
Candidates on the verge of winning their parties’ nominations generally massage their messaging and moderate positions that may energize hardcore primary voters but are less appealing to a broader audience. In political terms, they “pivot.”
Not Donald Trump. The former president is instead doubling down on often-incendiary rhetoric that offends wide swaths of voters, seeming to be doing little to rein in his most irascible and oftentimes self-defeating instincts. That’s even as some of his most loyal allies have suggested he shift his focus and tone down rhetoric that risks offending independent voters and people outside his base.
“Donald Trump is Donald Trump. That’s not going to change,” said senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita. “Our job is not to remake Donald Trump.”
LaCivita and other top campaign officials instead say their role is to provide the organization “to amplify and to force project” Trump’s message.
The campaign, he said, had already assumed a general election posture before voting began, running ads attacking President Joe Biden before the Iowa caucuses. So while Trump is now talking less about his last remaining GOP rival, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, his campaign is focused on building out a general election infrastructure as it turns its focus from early voting states to November battlegrounds.
That includes efforts to take over the Republican National Committee, with plans to consolidate the party’s and campaign’s fundraising, political operations, communications and research operations. LaCivita is in line to become the RNC’s chief operating officer while retaining his role on the campaign.
“The campaign’s pivot,” LaCivita said, “is just a realization that we’ve already secured what we need to win. That manifests itself in not only the messaging but the mechanics.” He said to expect “more of the same” after Trump clinches the nomination, which is expected later this month.
Trump’s hardest edges, no matter how familiar to Americans nine years after he first ran for president, produce welcome fodder for Biden’s reelection team, which wants to motivate disaffected Democrats and independent voters by warning about a second Trump term.
Trump’s speeches at rallies can stretch for two hours as he meanders between policy proposals, personal stories and jokes, attacks on his opponents and complaints that he is being persecuted by the courts, and dire warnings about the country’s future. Trump often adds asides that were not in his prepared remarks. But some of his most divisive comments are part of his script.
He has bragged about nominating three Supreme Court justices who voted to end a national right to abortion, even as he urges Republicans not to be too extreme on an issue Democrats have credited for several victories. In promising to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, he has talked about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” echoing Adolf Hitler. And he once described his enemies as “vermin,” language opponents deride as authoritarian.
At one rally this past weekend, Trump went so far as to cast Biden’s handling of the border as “a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.”
“Donald Trump is still Donald Trump — the same extreme, dangerous candidate voters rejected in 2020, and they’ll reject him again this November regardless of the team he has around him,” said Biden spokesman Kevin Munoz.
Trump’s advisers have at times encouraged him to speak less about grievance and retribution and more about his vision for a second term. But after three campaigns for the White House and four years in office, Trump is set in his ways. Former aides learned long ago that trying to pressure Trump to rein in his impulses often only led him to dig in deeper. And his campaign team seems to respect and trust the former president’s political instincts, pointing to his sweep of the GOP primaries so far.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said Trump would not change. Americans “deserve a president who will not sugarcoat what’s happening in the world,” he said.
Interviews with Republicans, including Trump supporters and those still backing Haley’s beleaguered bid, reflect concerns that Trump risks fumbling a clear opportunity against Biden, who faces low approval ratings and widespread voter questions about his age and readiness for a second term.
“At some point (Trump) needs to take the spotlight off himself,” said Tom Davis, a former Virginia congressman who backs Haley. Davis noted improving economic indicators but said Biden remains burdened by concerns about inflation and “has been bad on the border” and “terrible on the deficit.”
Even Trump voters seem to recognize the problem: According to AP VoteCast data, about half of Republicans in conservative South Carolina — including about a quarter of Trump’s own supporters — are concerned he is too extreme to win the general election. While Trump dominates among conservative voters, those voters represented just 37% of the electorate in the November 2020 presidential election.
Trump held rallies Saturday in North Carolina and Virginia, two states that hold primaries on Super Tuesday but are also potential swing states in November’s general election.
Both states highlight Trump’s potential problems in November: He dominates among conservatives, especially in rural and small-town America, but struggles with more moderate voters in more urban settings.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who was re-elected in 2020 even as Trump won his state, said he welcomes the contrast between Trump and Biden.
“Do you want a president who wakes up every morning thinking about the American people?” he asked in an interview. “Or do you want a president who wakes up every morning thinking about himself?”
Biden won Virginia in 2020. A year later, Virginians elected Republican Glenn Youngkin as governor. Youngkin emphasized education and economic policy, and attracted urban and suburban moderates who rejected Trump. Some of the states’ suburban and exurban congressional districts have become more favorable to Democrats in the Trump era.
Notably, Youngkin has not endorsed Trump. He declined an interview request through aides.
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally who sometimes speaks to the former president, compared 2024 to 1980, when Republican Ronald Reagan won a landslide over Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, who was saddled with inflation, high unemployment and international conflict. Reagan, dubbed “the happy warrior,” won 44 states and a new Republican Senate with “a positive vision,” Gingrich said, that was about more than Carter’s record.
“When you have the kind of numbers Biden has, what people need is about 70% positive, 30% anti-Biden,” Gingrich said, insisting Trump could usher in a Republican wave like when he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Just as possible, however, is a repeat of 2018, when Republicans lost the House majority, or 2020, when Trump lost and Democrats reclaimed Senate control, or 2022, when Republicans lost winnable Senate races and failed to flip the chamber.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham suggests Trump and his campaign should “just keep doing what they’re doing.”
But Graham himself has pivoted. After he ran for president in 2016, Graham vowed that “if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.” Now, he is a Trump confidant.
“Everybody that wants to give him advice, he beat like a drum,” Graham said at Trump’s South Carolina victory party.
By MEG KINNARD and WILL WEISSERT (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON — Nikki Haley has won the Republican primary in the District of Columbia, notching her first victory of the 2024 campaign.
Her victory Sunday at least temporarily halts Donald Trump’s sweep of the GOP voting contests, although the former president is likely to pick up several hundred more delegates in this week’s Super Tuesday races.
Despite her early losses, Haley has said she would remain in the race at least through those contests, although she has declined to name any primary she felt confident she would win. Following last week’s loss in her home state of South Carolina, Haley remained adamant that voters in the places that followed deserved an alternative to Trump despite his dominance thus far in the campaign.
The Associated Press declared Haley the winner Sunday night after D.C. Republican Party officials released the results. She won all 19 delegates at stake.
Washington is one of the most heavily Democratic jurisdictions in the nation, with only about 23,000 registered Republicans in the city. Democrat Joe Biden won the district in the 2020 general election with 92% of the vote.
Haley held a rally in the nation’s capital on Friday before heading back to North Carolina and a series of states holding Super Tuesday primaries. She joked with more than 100 supporters inside a hotel ballroom, “Who says there’s no Republicans in D.C., come on.”
“We’re trying to make sure that we touch every hand that we can and speak to every person,” Haley said.
As she gave her standard campaign speech, criticizing Trump for running up federal deficit, one rallygoer bellowed, “He cannot win a general election. It’s madness.” That prompted agreement from Haley, who argues that she can deny Biden a second term but Trump won’t be able to.
While campaigning as an avowed conservative, Haley has tended to perform better among more moderate and independent-leaning voters.
Four in 10 Haley supporters in South Carolina’s GOP primary were self-described moderates, compared with 15% for Trump, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 2,400 voters taking part in the Republican primary in South Carolina, conducted for AP by NORC at the University of Chicago. On the other hand, 8 in 10 Trump supporters identified as conservatives, compared to about half of Haley’s backers.
Trump won an uncontested D.C. primary during his 2020 reelection bid but placed a distant third four years earlier behind Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Rubio’s win was one of only three in his unsuccessful 2016 bid. Other more centrist Republicans, including Mitt Romney and John McCain, won the city’s primaries in 2012 and 2008 on their way to winning the GOP nomination.
Amash is returning to the Republican Party to run in the GOP primary set for August.
He joins an already crowded field of Republicans vying for a seat held by Democrat Debbie Stabenow, who is retiring.
Other high-profile Republicans running for the seat are former U.S. Reps. Mike Rogers of Brighton, Peter Meijer of Grand Rapids Township, and businessman Sandy Pensler of Grosse Pointe Park.
Retired Detroit Police Chief James Craig bailed out of the race after failing to raise enough money.
“After thoroughly evaluating all aspects of a potential campaign, I’m convinced that no candidate would be better positioned to win both the Republican primary and the general election,” Amash said in a statement.
Amash said Americans are growing disillusioned with politicians.
“We live in the greatest country on earth, but the ideals that have made it great are increasingly taken for granted,” Amash said. “People often feel helpless and hopeless, unheard and ignored by Washington, and trapped between opposing forces who reject America’s principles or don’t understand them.”
The son of a Palestinian refugee, Amash said hyper-partisanship is depriving Americans of fresh, independent ideas.
“Regardless of who wins the White House and Congress, the United States will remain deeply polarized,” Amash said. “What we need is not a rubber stamp for either party, but an independent-minded senator prepared to challenge anyone and everyone on the people’s behalf — someone focused not on extending federal power so Republicans or Democrats in Washington can achieve their political ends, but on ensuring that Americans have the personal and economic freedom to pursue their own ends.”
“Michigan Republicans’ brutal infighting is getting nastier by the day,” Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes said in a statement. “Their caustic showdown will leave them with a badly damaged nominee who is out of touch with Michigan families. Amash has an extensive record of leaving Michiganders behind: supporting dangerous abortion bans, vowing to gut health care access, and backing the 2017 tax giveaway to the wealthy and large corporations.”
While Ken Buck may have absolutely abhorrent views on abortion, gun control, LGBTQ+ people, and climate change, the GOP lawmaker has said and done a number of things over the last several years that could lead one to believe he was relatively sane compared to his Republican brethren. Things like:
Declaring in January 2021 that Congress did not have the power to contest the results of the 2020 election;
voting against the effort to remove Liz Cheney from her leadership position for challenging Donald Trump;
shaming his colleagues for claiming the election was stolen;
calling on Trump to tell his supporters that violence of any kind will not be tolerated;
admitting the GOP had no actual basis for impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas;
publicly stating he is “embarrassed” and “ashamed” of his colleagues for withholding funding for Ukraine to fight Russia.
But now, it unfortunately appears as though Buck—who announced last year he will not seek reelection—is edging closer to the party’s extremists, if his calls for Kamala Harris to boot Biden from office are any indication.
Yes, Politico reports that on Monday the Colorado Republican introduced a measure saying the VP should invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Biden as president. The resolution states that Harris should assemble the cabinet to “declare what is obvious to a horrified Nation: That the President is unable to successfully discharge the duties and powers of his office.” Buck’s argument that Biden cannot do his job include special counsel Robert Hur’s claim that Biden is an “elderly man with a poor memory”; that Biden referred to the president of Egypt as “the president of Mexico”; and that Biden is 81. To be clear, Buck did not call on Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment against Trump after January 6, and is apparently unconcerned about the fact that Trump would be 82 at the end of a potential second term—and have the mind of a 250-year-old.
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Buck is not the first GOP congressperson to declare that Biden should be removed via the 25th Amendment. Earlier this month, GOP representative Claudia Tenney sent a letter to Merrick Garlandclaiming it was “incumbent” upon the attorney general to begin the process of removing Biden from office.
Colorado’s public pension program must continue divesting from companies that economically boycott Israel after a state House committee rejected a bill that would have repealed the requirement.
The 10-1 bipartisan defeat of HB24-1169 late Monday in the House Finance Committee came after hours of emotional and tense testimony. The discussion often spiraled into support or condemnation for Israel and its months-long military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
More than 100 people testified for or against the measure, which would have repealed a 2016 state law that requires the Public Employees Retirement Association to divest from companies that participate in the BDS movement. That movement promotes boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel as a way of protesting the country’s treatment of Palestinians.
Only three companies have been flagged under the law, according to PERA. It applies only to international companies. The law costs roughly $10,000 a year to administer.
Just one member of the Democrat-controlled finance committee, Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat, voted to advance the bill. The measure was sponsored by Rep. Elisabeth Epps, a Denver Democrat. She was reprimanded by House leadership last month for, among other things, disrupting House proceedings and joining pro-Palestinian protesters seated in the House’s gallery during the November special session.
Nearly 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s war with Hamas, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel launched the war in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, which killed 1,200 people and included the taking of about 250 hostages, some of whom are still being held.
Epps told fellow lawmakers Monday that she repeatedly had been told the legislature had no business weighing in on international affairs, but she argued that the 2016 anti-BDS law did just that.
“There is a particularly insidious criticism that is made of folks who are protesting a range of issues,” she said. “The central element of that criticism is that we’re not doing it right. … If you want to petition your pension board to do an economic boycott, that’s not right either. That can’t be how we continue to do business here.”
The bill was widely expected to fail its first vote. Epps attempted a late amendment Monday night to turn the bill into a study of the 2016 law, but she was blocked on procedural grounds.
Supporters and opponents of the measure packed a basement committee room in the Capitol, spilling into the hall and an overflow room.
Epps and the bill’s supporters sought to cast the proposal as protecting a First Amendment right of economic protest, alongside broader criticisms of Israel and its military campaign. Opponents defended Israel and argued that the BDS movement was antisemitic and that the bill’s supporters were unfairly targeting Israel. Several of them criticized Hamas and the broader pro-Palestinian protest movement.
By Clare Foran, Lauren Fox, Morgan Rimmer and Ted Barrett | CNN
There is still no clear path to avert a partial government shutdown at the end of the week, with just five days until Congress runs into a key funding deadline.
Lawmakers had hoped to release the text of a bipartisan spending deal Sunday evening, but the bill has yet to be unveiled. High-level disagreements over policy issues remain as House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, is under immense pressure from his right flank to fight for conservative wins.
As the clock ticks down to the deadline, Senate Democrats expressed anger and frustration Monday at the growing risk of a shutdown as many criticized House Republicans over the impasse.
“What is wrong with these people? This is the central thing Congress is supposed to do,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told CNN’s Manu Raju. “Right now, the Republicans can’t seem to get themselves organized just to sign off on the basic work they’re supposed to do. This is just ridiculous.”
Sen. Jon Tester, a vulnerable Montana Democrat up for reelection this cycle, was livid in comments to CNN about a possible shutdown.
“There better not be,” he told Raju. “We’re doing this every six months. This is bullsh*t. It’s just bullsh*t. And so we need to do what we were elected to do, fund the government, not shut it down.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, said, “I swear to God, it is sinful what is going on, and the games that are being played right now with the American people and all the people that are depending on services of the federal government, and we can’t even get our act together.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, warned of the risk of a shutdown in a “Dear Colleague” letter Sunday, and said that “intense discussions” are underway with Johnson and other key lawmakers.
Schumer blamed chaos within the House Republican conference for the delay, writing, “While we had hoped to have legislation ready this weekend that would give ample time for members to review the text, it is clear now that House Republicans need more time to sort themselves out.”
Johnson later Sunday took a swing at Schumer’s criticism of the House GOP, writing on social media, “Despite the counterproductive rhetoric in Leader Schumer’s letter, the House has worked nonstop, and is continuing to work in good faith, to reach agreement with the Senate on compromise government funding bills in advance of the deadlines.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday warned that a partial shutdown would be “harmful to the country,” and argued that it is “entirely avoidable” if the House and the Senate can work together.
Separately, McConnell told reporters at the Capitol, “We’re not gonna allow the government to shut down.”
Congress is confronting a pair of shutdown deadlines – on March 1 and March 8 – after lawmakers passed a short-term funding bill in January.
President Joe Biden will convene the top four congressional leaders Tuesday as the White House ratchets up pressure on lawmakers to pass additional funding to Ukraine and ahead of the partial government shutdown deadline.
Senators return to Washington, DC, on Monday evening, but the House won’t be back until Wednesday, leaving little time ahead of the fast-approaching Friday deadline.
In the Senate, agreement would need to be reached with the consent of all 100 senators to swiftly move any legislation before the deadline to avert a partial shutdown.
A key question looming over the week’s schedule is when the Senate will act on the articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who was impeached by House Republicans this month.
It’s not yet clear when the articles will be sent from the House to the Senate. A source familiar with conversations told CNN the two chambers are discussing the timing, but no decision had been made yet.
In the House, Johnson has little room to maneuver as he faces a historically narrow majority and an increasingly combative right flank. Tensions are set to rise even further over the government funding fight.
Hardline conservatives have revolted over the chamber’s passage of earlier stopgap funding bills and over a topline deal the speaker struck with Schumer to set spending close to $1.66 trillion overall.
In January, a group of hardliners staged a rebellion on the House floor, tanking a procedural vote to show opposition to the deal Johnson reached with Schumer.
Johnson won the gavel after conservatives ousted former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in a historic vote last year, raising the question of whether the Louisiana Republican may at some point face a similar threat against his speakership.
Funding extends through March 1 for a series of government agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, and Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Food and Drug Administration and other priorities such as military construction.
An additional set of government agencies and programs are funded through March 8, including the departments of Justice, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, State, Education, Interior, and Health and Human Services, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the legislative branch.
That guidance includes information on how many employees would get furloughed, which employees are essential and would work without pay, how long it would take to wind down operations in the hours before a shutdown, and which activities would come to a halt.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Manu Raju, Sam Fossum, Melanie Zanona, Haley Talbot, Betsy Klein, Tami Luhby and Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.
Once again, the federal government has started preparing for a government shutdown. And the blame should fall squarely on the shoulders of Mike Johnson, the election-denying Louisiana backbencher whom Donald Trumpwanted to become Speaker of the House. It seems that MAGA Mike is learning firsthand that being Speaker is a much harder job than it looks, with Johnson trying to lead a caucus seemingly more focused on impeachmentstunts and further restricting abortion access than keeping the government open. Perhaps electing an inexperienced zealot to be second in line for the presidency wasn’t the brightest idea.
Well, now you’ll even find Republicans pointing out that Johnson wasn’t the first draft pick. “We went through five choices and Mike Johnson’s the fifth choice,” Representative Patrick McHenrytold CBS News last week. McHenry, who served as Speaker pro tempore last year after Kevin McCarthy, his ally, was ousted, may feel like he can finally speak freely since he’s not running for reelection. He’s part of a wave of House GOP retirements that includes Cathy McMorris Rodgers,Mike Gallagher, and Ken Buck. (Notably, Gallagher and Buck both voted against the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.) In the CBS interview, McHenry continued to muse about Johnson: “He has not been around these leadership decisions. He’s had a really tough process. We’ve thrown him into the deepest end of the pool with the heaviest weights around him and [we’re] trying to teach him how to learn to swim. It’s been a rough couple of months.” Sounds like McHenry has a little Speaker’s remorse! Or, as Punchbowl put it bluntly on Monday: “Johnson, quite frankly, has been hesitant to lead on any issue at all.”
House members are not back in DC until Wednesday, even as the shutdown clock ticks away. Perhaps cognizant of that, Johnson told House Republicans on Friday evening that he had a plan for avoiding a shutdown, one involving four separate appropriation bills. While Johnson is said to not want to pass a continuing resolution, there may need to be a stopgap measure. On the Friday call, according to Politico, Johnson suggested party disunity was helping the Democrats and took issue with Republicans for tanking rule votes. The House GOP, while under Johnson, recently set a record for failed procedural votes.
Believe it or not, Johnson may have bigger problems than a government shutdown. House Republicans, who currently hold just a two-seat majority, are trying to orchestrate two impeachments based primarily on vibes.
The impeachment of President Joe Biden looks like the brainchild of the guy who helped elevate Johnson to Speaker. “Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION,” Trump urged Republicans last August in a Truth Social post. “THEY DID IT TO US!” It seems pretty clear that Trump hoped a Biden impeachment might help his reelection bid and muddy the waters enough to obscure his own two impeachments, along with the 91 criminal charges he’s facing. (Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.) As he’s racked up primary wins and is poised to become the party’s 2024 nominee, Trump has only ramped up his calls for Republicans to impeach Biden (while also driving them to blow up a bipartisan border bill, presumably to keep immigration in headlines through November).
You’d think Republicans might try to pretend their Biden impeachment crusade never happened following the charging of informant Alexander Smirnov, whose claims they’d been pushing and who’s now been accused of lying to the FBI and creating false records. And yet House Oversight Committee chair James Comer told Newsmax that Smirnov “wasn’t an important part of this investigation—because I didn’t even know who he was.” But Smirnov’s bribery allegations involving Biden and his younger son, Hunter Biden, “were frequently cited by congressional Republicans in their now stalled attempt to unseat” the president, according to TheNew York Times, which noted how right-wing media, having also seized upon Smirnov’s claims, remains “undeterred.” As for the Mayorkas impeachment, even conservative law professor Jonathan Turleysaid on Fox News that he didn’t think Republicans had “established any of those bases for impeachment,” adding, “The fact is, impeachment is not for being a bad Cabinet member or even being a bad person. It is a very narrow standard.”
Republicans did this to themselves by letting Trump call the shots. After Matt Gaetz led the charge to remove McCarthy, they went down the list of possible Speakers. Steve Scalise would have been the smart succession play, but Trump suggested the House majority leader couldn’t handle the job because he was “in serious trouble from the standpoint of his cancer.” Trump backedJim Jordan, one of his most loyal attack dogs in Congress, but the Ohio representative couldn’t get the votes. Trump didn’t want Tom Emmer, who, unlike McCarthy, Scalise, Jordan, and Johnson, didn’t try to overturn the 2020 election. After Emmer won the Republican conference’s nomination to be House Speaker, Trump accused him of being a “Globalist RINO” who was “totally out-of-touch with Republican Voters.” Trump reportedly bragged later that he “killed him.”
Trump has a long history of picking people who kissed the ring but weren’t necessarily very good choices. Just ask Senator Mehmet Oz, or Senator Herschel Walker, or Senator Blake Masters, or Governor Kari Lake. Fealty to Trump may be a prerequisite for Republicans to land the job, but it doesn’t mean they can actually do it.
In his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday, former President Donald Trump cast the 2024 presidential election as a quasi-religious day of reckoning for his political opponents.Â
âFor hard-working Americans, Nov. 5 will be our new Liberation Day,â he said. âBut for the liars, and cheaters, and fraudsters, and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their Judgment Day.â
The line underscored the apocalyptic tone that suffused Trumpâs speech, which was peppered with warnings of âhoards of illegal aliens stampeding across our borders,â Hamas coming to âterrorize our streets,â and the utter âcollapseâ of public services including education and healthcare. âIf crooked Joe Biden and his thugs win in 2024, the worst is yet to come,â Trump said. âOur country will go and sink to levels that were unimaginable.â
âWhen we win, the curtain closes on their corrupt reign, and the sun rises on a bright new future for America,â he added. âI believe itâs our last chance.â
Throughout his campaign, Trump has consistently portrayed himself as a singular bulwark against onrushing tyranny, a theme he reprised on Saturday. âOur country is being destroyed, and the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me,â Trump said. âI stand before you today only as your past and hopefully future president, but as a proud political dissident. I am a dissident.â
The line recalled Trumpâs comments last week comparing his legal woes to the persecution of Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, who died in an Arctic panel colony under mysterious circumstances. President Joe Biden, Western leaders and Kremlin critics have all blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for Navalnyâs death.
Continuing what has become a campaign theme, Trump accused President Biden, without evidence, of orchestrating the 91 criminal indictments against him. âHe indicted me,â Trump said of Biden, adding that his legal cases were âStalinist show trials carried out at the Joe Biden orders.â
Trumpâs speech came as he coasted to victory in Saturdayâs South Carolina Republican primary, besting the stateâs former two-term governor Nikki Haley by more than 20 points. Sensing his hold on the nomination growing even more potent, Trump didnât even utter Haleyâs name during his CPAC speech.
Biden campaign rapid response director Ammar Moussa responded to the speech by calling Trump a âloser.â
âUnder his presidency, America lost more jobs than any president in modern history, women in more than 20 states have lost the freedom to make their own health care decisions because Trump overturned Roe, and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party lost their damn minds putting Trumpâs quest for power over our democracy,â he said.
There are some pretty obvious trends in the data, chief among them that “larger” states — be that in population or geography — are the most willing to secede. Alaska leads the way with 36%, followed by 31% in Texas and 29% in California.
And that desire for secession is driven by Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, who overwhelmingly are more supportive of seceding across the country. (New Jersey was the only state where Democrats were more in favor of secession than Republicans, 17% to 16%.) With 18% of respondents favoring secession, Arizona ranks No. 22 among the 33 states in which at least 100 Democrats and 100 Republicans were polled. While just 12% of Grand Canyon State Democrats backed leaving the Union, 23% of Republicans wanted to ditch the other 49 states.
But Arizonans are much more likely to root for another state to secede. YouGov also asked respondents if there was a state besides their own that they would support seceding from the U.S., and 31% said there was one. Only 12 of the 46 states polled had more residents who wanted another state to secede, led by 37% of New Hampshire adults. Curiously, more Arizonans want to see another state secede than actually believe there is a constitutional right to secession. Nationally, 26% of Americans said there was such a constitutional right — an assertion that many legal scholars say is flat wrong — and about 23% of Arizona respondents agreed.
One glaring omission from the poll is why so many people, and particularly Republicans, want to leave the great American experiment behind.
This story was first published by Arizona Mirror, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.
The former president has swept all GOP nominating contests to date, first beating the field by large margins in Iowa and New Hampshire, before cleaning up in Nevada, where Haley didn’t appear on the ballot, and in the US Virgin Islands.
But his romp in South Carolina, which twice elected Haley its governor, might be themost impressive of this campaign.
“This was a little sooner than we anticipated, and even bigger win than we anticipated,” Trump told a crowd at his election night watch party in Columbia shortly after being projected the winner.
Flanked onstage by a who’s who of Palmetto State political leaders, including Gov. Henry McMaster and Sen. Tim Scott, Trump declared, “I have never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now.”
While Scott’s fellow South Carolina senator, Lindsey Graham, was booed at Trump’s event, Scott was welcomed to the podium by wild cheers. He has emerged, since dropping out of the primary and endorsing Trump, as one of the former president’s favorite surrogates and a potential running mate.
“South Carolina is Trump country,” Scott declared to the delighted crowd.
Saturday’s result now places the onus on Haley, who continued in her concession speech to insist she has no plans to drop out of the race – a move that she said would leave GOP voters in the upcoming primary states with “a Soviet-style election with only one candidate.”
“There are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative. I said earlier this week that no matter what happens in South Carolina, I would continue to run for president,” Haley told supporters in Charleston. “I’m a woman of my word.”
Saturday’s result now places the onus on Haley, who doubled down earlier this week in a speech, declaring, “I’m not going anywhere.”
The next stop on the GOP nominating calendar is Michigan, where Republicans will vote in a primary Tuesday. After a few more scattered contests, March 5 will bring Super Tuesday – and an opportunity for Trump to draw even closer to wrapping up his third consecutive party nomination.
Defeated on her home turf, Haley’s already struggling campaign is likely to come under renewed pressure from Republicans who want her to drop out and allow Trump to focus exclusively on his likely rematch with President Joe Biden, who won the Palmetto State’s Democratic primary earlier this month with more than 96% of the vote.
Still, Haley’s team has consistently said the show will go on. They plan to pour resources into Super Tuesday states, according to campaign manager Betsy Ankney, who told reporters before polls closed that Haley would carry on no matter the outcome.
“We know that Trump is a juggernaut. We know that he is strong. We know that he has been the de facto leader of the party for the past eight years. So, breaking that hold is going to take a lot,” Ankney said. “We are sprinting through the tape here. We have over 12 events planned in those Super Tuesday states, and we’re going to keep fighting.”
