Senate GOP super PAC playing a lot of defense for a supposed red-wave environment
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The 2022 Senate map is taking shape after outside groups for both parties placed initial ad buys for their top targets totaling nearly a quarter of a billion dollars.
The GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund super PAC dropped a record-breaking early investment of $141 million centered on seven states. Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC booked ad reservations totaling $106 million in five states. Both parties will surely invest more money later, but below is how the top tier generally shakes out.
| $37 million | $25 million |
| $24 million | $26 million |
| $27 million | — |
| $15 million | $21 million |
| $15 million | $12 million |
| $14 million | $22 million |
| $7.4 million | — |
One thing that jumps out immediately is the fact that the New Hampshire seat held by Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan is nowhere to be found on either list, which is likely due to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s misfire on recruiting the state’s popular Republican governor, Chris Sununu, to run.
Another revelation given a political environment that supposedly favors Republicans by a lot is the fact that they are playing a whole lot of defense to save GOP-held seats. In fact, at $66 million, Republicans are spending roughly the same as Democrats are to defend seats: $68 million. For the GOP, that figure includes open Senate seats in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, plus Sen. Ron Johnson’s seat in Wisconsin. (It does not include Alaska, where Senate Republicans are mainly defending Sen. Lisa Murkowski against Trump-inspired primary challenges.)
Amid all that defense, GOP Senate Leadership Fund President Steven Law is talking up what a “strong” environment it is for Republicans. “This is such a strong year that we need to invest as broadly and deeply as we can,” Law told Politico.
Democrats are protecting three incumbents in Georgia (Sen. Raphael Warnock), Arizona (Sen. Mark Kelly), and Nevada (Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto).
In terms of pickups, Republicans appear to be betting the farm on Georgia, where they are saddled with Trump-backed political neophyte and alleged wife abuser Herschel Walker. Democrats clearly see their best pickup opportunity in Pennsylvania, where Trump recently endorsed fellow TV huckster Dr. Mehmet Oz. In both states, Trump’s meddling has complicated the path for Republicans (not to mention the Trump effect in North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, and Ohio).
“While Senate Democrats have a favorable map and strong incumbents, Senate Republicans have suffered a series of recruitment failures, and their flawed candidates are locked in vicious, expensive intra-party fights,” David Bergstein, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesperson, told The Hill. “All of these factors have contributed towards putting the GOP on defense in Senate races.”
Yep, that about covers it. Also, don’t sleep on Ohio, Florida, or North Carolina, where Democrats are fielding strong candidates who could potentially capitalize on GOP missteps.
Who cares about an insurrection? An interview with Jan. 6 investigator Jamie Raskin
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I last interviewed Rep. Jamie Raskin in October 2020, before the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Our conversation was about the guardrails that the Constitution has in place to stop a tyrant from taking power.
There was no mystery about then-President Donald Trump’s position in public. He had spent months vowing fraud would be overwhelming in the impending election. When he took the stage for the very first night of presidential debates with now President Joe Biden, Trump told the world he would not accept any outcome he believed was rigged.
In the days since then, the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol was formed and it has unearthed staggering evidence that Donald Trump, the nation’s 45th president, not only incited a mob to a bloody insurrection but perpetrated a fraud on the American public so that he could pull off a coup that would install him into the White House against the will of millions of voters and the Electoral College.
Recently, I interviewed Rep. Raskin again. He now serves as a member of the Jan. 6 committee, a role that was arguably an unmatched fit not just because of his experience as a constitutional and legal scholar, but because of his direct experience with Trump. Raskin was the lead impeachment manager when Trump was impeached—for the second time.
Telling the story of Jan. 6 is a formidable task and the passing months have revealed increasingly critical nuances and contours emerging from that day’s chaos.
There is evidence of a crime. A federal judge has agreed with the select committee on that count and over the course of a contentious battle for key documents, a judge determined that, at the very least, the “illegality of the plan” orchestrated by Trump and his attorney John Eastman—the architect of a strategy pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to certify bunk electors—was “obvious.”
Trump and his attorneys stoked claims of bogus election fraud for months and with Eastman, Trump engaged in a “coup in search of legal theory,” Judge David Carter wrote just a month ago.
Judge David Carter Ruling_Trump Eastman by Daily Kos on Scribd
And yet there is still so much more to come.
There are questions that must be aired out about this attempted coup and its abettors.
When the committee finally resumes its public hearings, which it says will be in May, Rep. Raskin told Daily Kos they will be hearings unlike anything Americans have seen come out of Congress.
“We believe every American has the right to observe and participate in this. I believe based on what I have seen over the last several months, these hearings will be not just important but mesmerizing to the public,” Raskin said. “Everybody needs to be equipped with the means of intellectual self defense against the authoritarian and fascistic policies that have been unleashed in this country.”
So far, the probe has released limited information about its findings and it has navigated the course of its investigation with deft yet disciplined transparency, despite regular attacks and goading from those perched atop some of the highest branches of power in Congress like House Minority Leader and Trump ally Kevin McCarthy.
The panel of seven Democrats and two Republicans has largely established its intent and findings on the public record through its court filings and subpoenas and from House meetings on Capitol Hill, where they have forwarded criminal contempt of Congress referrals for members of the Trump White House who have obstructed their investigation.
Those referrals for officials like former chief of staff Mark Meadows, ex-adviser Steve Bannon, and others now live with the Department of Justice, a body ensconced in an entirely separate yet similarly painstaking investigation of the Capitol attack, its catalysts, and alleged conspirators.
“The events of Jan. 6 were breathtaking,” Raskin said by phone, taking a moment to gather his thoughts before considering the scope of what lies ahead.
A daunting amount of information will be parsed, prioritized, and presented from the 800-plus interviews the panel has conducted and the thousands of pages of records it has secured from a wide array of players spanning the Trump White House to the Trump reelection campaign to extremist right-wing activists and others.
That doesn’t even mention everything that was also sourced from the National Archives following Biden’s waiver of executive privilege over presidential records Trump sought to hide.
That bid by Trump, taken all the way to the Supreme Court, ultimately failed to keep documents like White House call logs hidden and more of Trump’s presidential records continue to flood the committee now.
RELATED STORY: Let’s talk about the White House call logs from Jan. 6
But until the hearings play out, the public is left to grapple with important information in bits and pieces as investigators occasionally and, likely strategically, highlight portions of their findings at a schedule of their choosing.
Speculation swirls around the committee’s work on a fact-based narrative it is crafting for hearings and that is to be expected.
There are inherent difficulties in this unprecedented undertaking.
“Well, people still have not yet fully understood the distinction between the violent insurrection and the attempted coup. Even with the insurrection, even within the insurrectionary violence, a lot of people think that this was just a rowdy demonstration that got out of hand,” Raskin told Daily Kos.
And of course, Trump. Raskin added, is “out there telling people his mob greeted officers with hugs and kisses.”
“So there’s a lot of confusion about what took place. And I think people will come to understand that this was a premeditated and coordinated violent attack on Congress and the vice president in order to thwart the counting of electoral votes,” Raskin said.
“But the insurrection is only comprehensible when you understand that it was unleashed as a way to assist this political coup, this inside political coup. Donald Trump and his entourage had been looking for ways to overthrow the 2020 presidential election results for months,” Raskin said.
What the public hearings will do is tell the story of “every step in that process,” he explained.
“And it is a harrowing and gripping and utterly sobering story rooted in the events of the day and the weeks before it,” he added.
RELATED STORY: Tick-tock: A timeline of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol
Millions of Americans have seen footage of rioters beating police, scaling the walls of the nation’s Capitol building, and doing so in everything from homemade to high-grade tactical gear and with makeshift or professional-grade weapons in tow.
Millions of Americans have heard the calls of people shouting for the execution of Pence or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the melee erupted. Many people saw the gallows erected by Trump’s supporters on the Capitol lawn.
But a disconnect seems to persist somehow around how severe and significant Jan. 6 was and remains.
The Pew Research Center, for example, noted this February that more than a year after the attack, fewer Americans believed Trump was responsible for the events of Jan. 6. It was a nearly 10% drop from the year before.
The study found too that people are still largely divided a year later on whether the Jan. 6 probe is even given the “right amount” of attention.
“The difficult thing is that people have a very hard time assimilating something so extreme taking place right at the heart of the Capitol. We saw a violent mob led by insurrectionary violent extremists set upon federal officers and injure and wound and hospitalize more than 150 of them,” Raskin said.
It was the first time in American history that a violent insurrection interfered with the peaceful transfer of power and counting of electoral votes.
“It nearly toppled our system of government,” Raskin added.
The idea of a coup is “radically unfamiliar” to the bulk of the American population, he noted.
“We’re just not—we just don’t have a lot of experience with coups in our own society. We think of a coup as something that takes place against a president. Well, this was a coup that was orchestrated by the president against the vice president and against the Congress,” Raskin said. “It’s what political scientists call a self-coup, not the military trying to overthrow a president but a president trying to defeat and vanquish the constitutional process in order to perpetuate his stay in office and power. Donald Trump was trying to seize the presidency for four more years.”
When Judge Carter issued his ruling about Trump and Eastman on March 28, it was a deeply important finding but it did not shift or change the committee’s trajectory, he said.
It only “solidified” the path they were on.
“It was a powerful warning to the American people about what took place,” he said.
If they missed that warning bell, however, the committee will keep ringing it.
The committee will produce its final report after the hearings are over. Raskin told Daily Kos he hopes it will be a “multimedia report” that will be both easily accessible and digestible.
It will be composed of the committee’s findings as well as recommendations for legislation that would strengthen many of the weak points in the democratic system that the Trump White House undermined or exploited.
“There’s no reason this report has to be a 500-page document written by a computer somewhere. We can write the report in such a way that it really does wake the country up to the nature of the threats that we’ve just dodged and the threats that remain,” Raskin said.
To wit, when the committee holds its public hearings, the Justice Department’s prosecution of those who stormed the Capitol will keep rolling.
At the top of April, the DOJ announced it had arrested nearly 800 defendants and charged over 250 people so far with serious crimes including assaulting police and using a deadly weapon to injure an officer.
More than 248 people have entered guilty pleas, copping to misdemeanors and felony charges alike.
The most serious charges— like seditious conspiracy—have been leveled at some of the president’s most ardent supporters, namely the ringleaders and members of domestic extremist networks like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
Trump told the latter group in September 2020 to “stand back and stand by” when asked on a presidential debate stage if he would condemn white supremacy and militia groups.
“Who would you like me to condemn? The Proud Boys? Stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what. Somebody’s gotta do something about antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem, this is a left-wing problem,” Trump said.
The dog-whistle was well received by Proud Boys and their leader Henry Tarrio.
“Standing by,” Tarrio responded on Parler. “So proud of my guys right now.”
Others, like Proud Boy Joe Biggs, took it as a direct cue to attack those opposed to Trump.
“Trump basically said to go fuck them up!” Biggs wrote.
Tarrio was indicted on March 8 for conspiracy to obstruct congressional proceedings on Jan. 6 as well as several other charges. Biggs—and many other Proud Boys—were indicted alongside him and separately.
Oath Keeper leader Elmer Rhodes’s seditious conspiracy trial is currently slated for September. One of the key members in the group charged alongside Rhodes, Alabama Oath Keeper chapter leader Joshua James, has already flipped.
James admitted he was dispatched to the Capitol on Jan. 6 by Rhodes as part of an organized conspiracy to stop proceedings. James told prosecutors he was prepared to use force to keep Trump in power.
While the committee’s work and the DOJ’s work operate on entirely different tracks and timetables, Raskin said when the committee makes its case to the public, the panel won’t shy away from presenting any of the relevant details shaken loose by the DOJ.
“To the extent there are factual findings related to these cases, yes, we will be able to use those,” he said.
Juries will decide the fates of those charged with seditious conspiracy. The Justice Department will decide the fate of those the committee has referred for criminal contempt of Congress.
These are the facts.
For those cynical or skeptical about what the committee’s hearings will achieve or accomplish, Raskin offered a message for those feeling faint of heart.
Before speaking, the congressman paused for just a moment.
“Look,” he said, “For the greater part—for the duration of the human species—people have lived under tyrants and dictators and bullies and kings like Vladimir Putin and all of his sycophants around the world. Democracy, democratic self-governance is still a very fragile experiment. And democracy thrives on truth. The people need to be armed with the power that truth will give us.”
U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who endured racial slurs and assault for hours while defending the Capitol to the brink of exhaustion told Daily Kos in a recent interview when it comes to Jan. 6: “The truth is the truth.”
If people will believe the truth when they hear it, well, he knows it is not for him to decide.
But he did have one question.
“How the hell is anyone against finding out the full truth?” Dunn said.
Ukraine update: Pentagon thinks big Russian offensive is still to come, because so far this is lame
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Exactly a week ago, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) concluded that “Russian forces will likely continue ongoing offensive operations in the Donbas region, feeding reinforcements into the fight as they become available rather than gathering reinforcements and replacements for a more coordinated and coherent offensive.” That’s exactly what seems to be happening now as Russia pushes broadly across the entire Donbas front lines, but exercises overwhelming force absolutely nowhere.
Ukraine has declared the start of the much-anticipated Russian offensive, but the Pentagon is less sure.
As the Pentagon sees it, Russia is merely softening up the frontlines for something bigger down the line. It could very well be that, because despite the massive artillery barrages, Russia’s gains have been minimal, mostly ground assaults repulsed by Ukrainian defenders. So really, more of the same, just at a higher intensity.
So why are they wasting men and material with these probes? Apparently, it’s what they do.
The source for this information is Oleksiy Arestovych, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Dmitri helpfully translates his regular dispatches. (In fact, Dmitri’s Twitter account is one of the most informative around.) So according to Arestovych, Russians send a probe, see what happens. If Ukrainians blow up the cannon fodder? Good to know! That area is well-protected, let’s avoid it. But hey, this other advance received minimal resistance, and they lay down artillery to soften it up even more. And then? … Seriously, and then? With a competent military, you have a rear force that can then exploit the breach and push forward, taking additional ground while the original spear holds the breach open, protecting it from counter-attack. Here, Russia sends cannon fodder to die, and then sends some new cannon fodder somewhere else, and they’re laying artillery down the entire front anyway.
It’s so weird, it almost seems like fiction. Are Russians really that incompetent, stupid, and callous toward the death of their service members? And yet here they are, still probing, still losing men and equipment to drip-drip-drip attacks, even though their big offensive is supposedly underway. The spigot is yet to open. That’s why the Pentagon must think, “This can’t be it. There has to be more coming down the pike.”
All those troops being thrown into the wood chipper have to be replaced. And the Ukrainian General Staff has an ill view of them:
[S]eparate units of the 103th, 109th, 113th, 125th and 127th [motorized] regiment operate. Their equipment was carried out during the forced mobilization of men from the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The structurally-appointed regimes include up to 5 battalions counting about 300 soldiers each. Only 5-10 percent of the personal composition of the specified units have combat experience. The regiment management consists of officers of the armed forces of the Russian Federation. These formations have significant problems with providing weapons, ammunition and medicines.
So the result is forced conscripts like this guy, with no combat experience, zero training, and only 300 soldiers per battalion that are supposed to have 800 to 1,000. (Remember that when the Pentagon says there are 78 BTGs in Ukraine right now. They’re not all created equal.) Their purpose is cannon fodder in human-wave attacks, to see whether an approach is defended by Ukrainians. They are literally dead men walking. Their best chance of survival is mutiny and desertion … to the west. Russians soldiers pulled out of Kyiv certainly have zero interest in getting thrown back into the line of fire. Others in Donbas are refusing orders to advance to combat. (See here, here, here and here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
Assuming some sort of major offensive will at some point take place (still not convinced it will), its early results will determine the mid-term outcome of the war. If Russia advances and Ukraine is unable to hold, morale will increase and Russia will be able to manage some level of unit cohesion. But if they hit brick wall after brick wall, suffering horrendous casualties in the process, that army could disintegrate overnight. Endless parades of casualties, wet and cold from spring rains, and leadership that treats them as garbage take a toll. More artillery guns and ammo would further compound that misery. As Russia knows, artillery is a powerful psychological weapon, traumatizing more than it’ll ever directly kill.
With American, Dutch, and Canadian artillery starting to flow to Ukraine, their ability to return the favor is getting a huge boost in the coming weeks. Ukraine can withstand the barrages because they have no choice—they’re fighting an existential battle for their survival. But those Russian and Donbas conscripts? They don’t need this shit. They don’t see any Nazis.
As Mark pointed out earlier, Ukrainian forces are actually advancing in several locations, including the eastern front. This is not Ukraine on its back heels. This is a confident, aggressive, smart, and increasingly well-equipped defensive force using its superior intelligence, better-trained soldiers, and tactically smarter command (all the way down to the squad level with a real NCO culture) to bedevil an outclassed, outmaneuvered, and poorly motivated enemy.
Can Russia cobble something together to push harder? Maybe. Lots of war will still be fought. But Russia better hope this isn’t the actual massive offensive they’ve been promising. Otherwise, there’s not much war left.
Morning Digest: Two Georgia Democrats focus on voting rights in incumbent-vs.-incumbent primary
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The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Daniel Donner, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
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Leading Off
● GA-07: Democratic Reps. Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux are facing off against each other in the June primary for this safely blue seat in the Atlanta suburbs, and both incumbents have launched new ads this week that put voting rights front and center.
In McBath’s ad, the congresswoman relays how her father brought her to the 1963 March on Washington as a toddler, and she calls the right to vote “sacred” in a democracy before warning how it’s “under assault by Republicans right here in Georgia.” McBath touts how she has fought in Congress to pass a new Voting Rights Act named after the late civil rights leader John Lewis, who represented a neighboring Atlanta seat.
Bordeaux’s spot has a slightly different emphasis, detailing how she overcame the naysayers who said she couldn’t win in a historically red district. Recounting how her team “sued the state” to make sure every vote counted, Bourdeaux says she was “the only Democrat in the country” to flip a Republican-held House seat in 2020. (While that isn’t entirely right—Democrats did flip two other seats in North Carolina after litigation replaced the GOP’s gerrymander with a fairer map—Bourdeaux was indeed the only Democrat to flip a GOP-held seat without an assist from redistricting.) Bourdeaux then argues that we can prove the naysayers wrong again if we stand together to pass a new VRA.
Voting rights is not a typical subject of ads, but it has become increasingly salient for Democrats this cycle as Republicans have passed a wave of voting restrictions in state after state in reaction to their 2020 election defeats, making diverse communities such as Atlanta the epicenter of their voter suppression efforts. McBath and Bourdeaux have another good reason to focus on Republican attacks on democracy, since they are only facing each other in a primary because GOP gerrymandering drastically reshaped their seats and made McBath’s old 6th District unwinnably red, a gerrymander that would have been illegal if Republicans hadn’t blocked Democrats from passing their reforms in Congress.
We can expect a whole lot more advertising from both candidates, though, judging by their recent first quarter fundraising reports. McBath hauled in $797,000 during the first three months of 2022 and had $2.9 million in the bank as of April 1. Bourdeaux, meanwhile, raised $591,000 and had $2.1 million in cash-on-hand at the start of April. While a third candidate, state Rep. Donna McLeod, is also running, she raised a mere $22,000 and had only $15,000 on hand, which is far below what is needed to effectively get her message out.
Senate
● AZ-Sen: Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Mick McGuire’s first ad ahead of the August Republican primary plays up his military record and likens the candidate to former GOP Sen. Barry Goldwater.
● CA-Sen: Wealthy businessman Dan O’Dowd, who’s nominally running for Senate as a Democrat but is actually using his platform to settle scores with Elon Musk, has released his first TV ad, a minute-long spot featuring a series of clips that show troubling failures on the part of Tesla’s “self-driving” software. Politico reports that O’Dowd’s initial buy is for $2 million, but as befits his bizarre un-campaign, he’s airing the spot in 36 states. Divided among so many media markets, what would be a sizable outlay in a normal race is in fact a pittance.
● IA-Sen: Retired Navy Vice Adm. Michael Franken, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate in 2020, has unveiled his first ad for the June Democratic primary, and it’s a minute-long spot that highlights his rural Iowa roots and his military experience. Franken argues that GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley’s 47-year tenure in Congress is too long.
● NV-Sen: Reporting from the Hill indicates that Senate Majority PAC, the main outside group on the Democratic side, has upped its TV ad fall reservation in Nevada to $21 million from a previously reported $14 million.
● PA-Sen: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s newest ad in the May 17 Democratic primary features testimony from a supporter who praises him as a “salt of the earth” guy. The supporter takes aim at the “billionaires and Washington insiders” who he says are lying about Fetterman, a reference to how a super PAC supporting rival Rep. Conor Lamb recently saw its first ad removed from TV for falsely calling Fetterman a “self-described socialist” on the basis of an erroneous news article that was later corrected.
Governors
● MA-Gov: On behalf of UMass Lowell, YouGov has surveyed the September Democratic primary for governor and finds state Attorney General Maura Healey cruising to a 62-17 lead over state Sen. Sonia Chang-Díaz. The only other publicly available poll of the race so far was a MassInc poll taken in January that found Healey with a slightly smaller but still dominant 48-12 advantage.
● NV-Gov: The nonpartisan Nevada Independent has publicized the gubernatorial portion of its poll conducted by the GOP firm OH Predictive Insights earlier this month, and the survey finds Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak with sizable leads of 9-14 points over several of his potential GOP foes, though with a large share of voters still undecided in each matchup:
44-35 vs. Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo
46-33 vs. former Sen. Dean Heller
46-33 vs. North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee
45-31 vs. attorney Joey Gilbert
Just as they did with the Senate portion of the poll earlier this week, OH Predictive Insights noted how these results were considerably more favorable to Sisolak than a recent Suffolk University poll that found the governor variously ahead or behind by a small margin in large part because it surveyed registered voters while Suffolk queried likely voters.
Meanwhile, venture capitalist Guy Nohra has debuted a TV spot ahead of the June Republican primary blaming Democrats for inflation as part of what his campaign announced was a $2 million buy for TV and digital ads.
● NY-Gov, NY-LG: Gov. Kathy Hochul has gone up with her first TV ad in advance of the June Democratic primary as part of what her campaign called an “eight figure media buy,” though Politico reports via AdImpact that the governor has only spent a relatively modest $931,000 on TV ads so far through April 25. The spot portrays Hochul as hardworking and touts her passage of over 400 bills covering topics such as promoting gun safety, improving public schools, and cutting taxes on the middle class.
Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi, who has spent roughly $3 million on ads so far, has launched his first joint spot with former New York City Councilwoman Diana Reyna, who is running in the separate primary for lieutenant governor as Suozzi’s ally. Their 15-second segment shows the duo arguing that Hochul represents “the same old Albany corruption” by highlighting the recent indictment (and resignation soon thereafter) of former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, whom Hochul had appointed to replace herself after she ascended to the governor’s office last year.
● PA-Gov: Former Rep. Lou Barletta has put $750,000 behind his first TV ad for the May 17 Republican primary, which promotes how he was among the first in Congress to endorse Trump, led the way on anti-immigrant policies, and “fought the liberals” on energy policy.
House
● OR-06: State Rep. Andrea Salinas’ second ad ahead of the May 17 Democratic primary focuses on how the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and how she strengthened abortion rights legislation in Oregon so that choice will be protected “no matter what happens in D.C.”
● VA-05: Former Henry County Supervisor Andy Parker has ended his campaign for the Democratic nomination after party officials said last week that he had failed to turn in enough valid signatures to make the ballot for the June primary.
This week on The Brief: How Democrats can craft successful messaging that gets through to their base
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This week on The Brief, hosts Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld talked all things messaging and how Democrats can shape an effective narrative that will pay dividends come November. Guest Jenifer Fernandez-Ancona, vice president of Way to Win, joined the show to talk about the group’s work shaping progressive messaging and what she’s learned about how Democrats can effectively combat the GOP’s aggressive (and often much more successful) messaging.
Moulitsas and Eleveld opened the show with conversation about the importance of the upcoming midterm elections, and Moulitsas in particular highlighted the importance of making these elections not only a referendum on Biden, but also one on Trump and the GOP as well. As Eleveld put it:
[There’s] this idea that you have to have a hero and a villain in every story. If Democrats are just talking about their accomplishments and they’re trying to sell themselves solely on their accomplishments, there’s no hero or villain in that story. It’s just, ‘Do you like what Democrats have done?’ versus ‘Do you like what Democrats are doing and would you like it if Republicans were in charge right now?’ Just think if Trump were president right now and the war in Ukraine had unfolded under his watch. I mean, I just can’t imagine what a debacle that would be and how quickly we would be shifting toward siding with authoritarianism as our democracy itself slid that way.
Fernandez-Ancona joined the hosts to share crucial takeaways from Way to Win’s work crafting messaging that works for progressives. She emphasized that the organization works on building power with lasting results through year-round organizing, as opposed to focusing on last-minute cash influxes towards the end of a race:
Our donors were all wanting to do something that was going to last beyond a given election cycle. They were tired of giving and giving to candidate campaigns and then feeling like they weren’t getting anything from it, you know, it just goes away at the end of the election. So they were wanting to build more lasting infrastructure, and we wanted to do it in a real political strategy context. So we formed Way to Win … [along with two other women-led organizations], we’ve moved over $200 million to the field since 2017 to grassroots organizations doing this community-based organizing.
Fernandez-Ancona also shared more about how the organization shapes messaging that works through their Midterm Message Project, an R&D project that was created in order to figure out how to create lasting influence on both the Democratic Party and its base through messaging:
We actually spent almost the entire year last year diving in doing a lot of research, both quantitative and qualitative, you know, listening to voters. And we were wanting to understand, who elected Biden? It was a multiracial, multigenerational coalition. We couldn’t have won any state with just white voters, or with just older voters. All of it was needed to actually win. So what makes them tick? Not only ‘them’ as individual groups, but how do you find a message that resonates across the whole? Because that’s one of the things that we find, that in Democratic messaging one of the challenges is just how much it’s sliced and diced by different audiences and various micro-target[ing], and it kind of misses the forest for the trees. And that’s really what the GOP does so well: this idea of telling one strong, emotionally resonant story, over and over and over again—because we know repetition also matters—that would actually work well across ideology. So we want to be getting our liberal activists excited about what we’re saying. We don’t want to turn them off, because we need them to help us turn out the vote, but we then we also want to persuade folks who are a little bit more in the middle. So that’s what we were trying to do with our messag[ing] project.”
“That is a tall order,” Eleveld said, as compared to Democrats, the GOP is mostly only having to target older, white Americans—so their audience is not as diverse, and narrower messaging might work on a larger group of them.
Fear of change and “things being taken away” is creating a climate of scarcity, Fernandez-Ancona added, and this has to be taken into account when creating messaging now. Way to Win has conducted focus groups and looked at the research to figure out what works, centering its campaigns around 30-second ads to capture the central focus of their arguments:
We test those ads in a tool called Swayable, where it’s a randomized controlled trial test. So it’s sort of like a poll. They watch the ad, they see the survey, there’s a control group. So you can then see, ‘How does this message actually move people across demographics? That’s a lot of the quantitative data that we have. So we did this throughout all of 2021. We tested our messages, we also tested the opposition’s messages that we see, you know, all of the GOP ads. And we tested a lot of our other kind of Democratic ally counterpart’s ads to see what’s going on. And where we really landed … [is that] we need to start, actually, with a positive, concrete [message about] what Democrats have done, because … people don’t know what Democrats have done … voters don’t know it, they’re not connecting those dots at all. So we need to be really clear: Here’s who we are, here’s what we do.
Fernandez-Ancona also noted that the GOP needs to be held accountable for what they are doing with regards to rolling back abortion rights, promoting anti-trans legislation, and fomenting a false moral panic over critical race theory: “Republicans are just getting off scot-free. They are not getting blamed for any of this stuff, there has not been enough attacks on them out there in the paid media landscape at all, and it’s just mind-blowing because there is so much to work with. I think what they have done has gone too far, but they’re getting away with it—but they don’t have to. I think we actually have to talk about it.”
Eleveld asked Fernandez-Ancona to share the top few issues Democrats should be focusing on in messaging, and what she believes to be the top few “Achilles heels” for Republicans.
Fernandez-Ancona named job creation, the recovery from the recession, COVID aid, and infrastructure as major issues that Democrats should discuss and address: “In ignoring it, they’re actually leaving so much on the table.” With regards to the GOP’s weaknesses, she listed the following: trying to overturn the election results with violence, trying to divide [communities] by pitting parents against teachers, banning and burning books, attacking the freedom to vote, and attacking a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body.
Fernandez-Ancona also noted that given the complexity of messaging that both highlights Democrats’ victories and addresses the issues, Democrats must understand how they are innately intertwined, not mutually exclusive:
We actually can do both, and should do both. We need to talk about the ways that the Biden team has helped shepherd this economic recovery. We can talk about that, even though there is inflation—we can still talk about [how] this is the greatest recovery we’ve ever seen. We can talk on and on about that. But we can’t only talk about that, and my point is that you actually can do both. Politics isn’t solitaire … You can’t just expect to talk about your thing. But when the other guys are talking about this other thing, if you don’t address it, you can’t win. My point is to resist that idea that, ‘Oh, we just have to focus on these kitchen table issues.’ … My point is we can do both: we can address the culture in the contrast.
She believes in a three-part approach:
- Start positive
- Go negative
- Story of voters—us, the collective voter—as the heroes and multiracial solidarity
The organization has tested this messaging with abortion, CRT, transgender youth, and other issues with much success. Fernandez-Ancona believes all of this is necessary to lift the Democratic Party brand.
Messaging that breaks through to the base and really rallies voters remains of utmost importance, according to Fernandez-Ancona. “We’re going to have to kind of do it ourselves in some way and show the way. I feel like this cycle is really important for us to do that, to build towards the 2024 cycle. Like, we can’t be figuring this out in 2024,” she said. “We need to actually get alignment on this basic framework and sort of overall story that should sort of carry us actually all the way through to 2024. It’s not cute to keep reinventing a message. You just need to pick one, and stick with it.”
Moulitsas picked up on this point, noting that consistent messaging simply gets the job done and likened it to the marketing strategy that major corporations employ: “There’s a reason [Coca-Cola] and Ford and Pepsi spend money year round, advertising at major events and major shows and sponsorships to create that brand. And the Democratic Party brand is trash. So why not spend that energy on a broad[er], values-based campaign to talk about what we are for. I’ve never even seen anything remotely close to that happening.”
Democrats can really capitalize on consistent messaging to close the gap and defeat conservatives at the messaging game, one from which “they never take an off day. They were spending on really good, really effective messaging in all of 2020 and 2021,” Fernandez-Ancona urged.
Moulitsas asked Fernandez-Ancona to share how viewers and listeners could support Way to Win’s work. Fernandez-Ancona asked the audience to support the organization’s PAC, Way to Lead, and also shared some a research hub filled with the organization’s messaging documents, which shed light on what works and what doesn’t when it comes to messaging about Democrats.
You can watch the full episode below:
You can also listen to The Brief on the following platforms:
Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: The Russian offensive has begun, with no guarantee of success
This post was originally published on this site
Shay Katiri / The Bulwark:
It Looks Like Genocide
Rich Lowry thinks President Biden shouldn’t have used that term. But the evidence of genocide is mounting.Let’s look at the record. As recently as April 4, President Biden rejected an opportunity apply the “genocide” label to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Putin “is brutal,” Biden said to reporters upon exiting his helicopter, “and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous, and everyone’s seen it.”
“Do you agree that it’s genocide?” a reporter asked him.
“No,” Biden replied. “I think it is a war crime.”
But a week later, on April 12, in a speech in Iowa, the president used the g-word, saying that economic inflation in the United States should not “hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away.”
Lawrence Freedman/Substack:
It is 50 years since I read Hannah Arendt’s essay on ‘Lying in Politics’. The essay was prompted by the unauthorised release of the Pentagon Papers, a classified documentary history of US policy-making in the Vietnam War. What shocked many at the time was the evidence that while Lyndon Johnson’s administration continued to tell the American people that its strategy was working, despite the accumulating casualties, top officials knew it was failing. Much of the commentary surrounding the release of the papers, including Arendt’s, turned on the role of deception and self-deception.
One passage in this essay stuck with me and influenced my subsequent efforts to understand how political leaders end up making such poor choices about military power. This is the passage.
‘Oddly enough, the only person likely to be an ideal victim of complete manipulation is the President of the United States. Because of the immensity of his job, he must surround himself with advisers, the “National Security Managers” as they have recently been called by Richard J. Barnet, who “exercise their power chiefly by filtering the information that reaches the President and by interpreting the outside world for him.” The President, one is tempted to argue, allegedly the most powerful man of the most powerful country, is the only person in this country whose range of choices can be predetermined.’
I recalled the passage when considering how Vladimir Putin came to decide on his calamitous war against Ukraine. The key insight was that someone so powerful could also be so badly informed. That was the case with Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s. Could it also be the case for Putin in 2022?
A Reporter in China / The American Prospect:
In Shanghai, the Essence of Authority Was Silence
The lockdown crisis in China’s richest city recalls decades of past food shortages and stirred a restless citizenry to speak out about a broken social contract.
In January 2020, when the virus was still a mystery, 11 million people in the city of Wuhan experienced a similar fate. Physical movement was halted and food supplies dwindled. But courier services still operated, albeit expensively and clumsily. Over two years later, Shanghai’s world-class food delivery system had ground to a near-total halt. Whether a migrant or a billionaire, a lawyer or a shopkeeper, all Shanghai residents were forced to ration food. They bartered with their neighbors, trading oranges for milk, beer for salt, garlic cloves for toilet paper. Vegetables and meats—obtained sporadically from government care packages and wholesalers—were shared. It was like Lord of the Flies, one Canadian resident said: “We organize ourselves, choose a leader and then figure it all out.”
During these lockdowns, some Chinese lost their lives and their loved ones, not because of COVID, but from everything else. As Shanghai’s health care system pivoted to pandemic prevention, patients with other illnesses were abandoned. This is a country where 26 million people can have a PCR test by day and get their results by night, but some of those people will not eat. That titanic myopia was all too familiar to some Shanghai residents. On April 6th, one elderly man asked officials, “Are you trying to outdo the Cultural Revolution?” He compared Shanghai to the Four Pests Campaign, a 1958 nationwide public hygiene movement to eradicate sparrows. The mass extermination led to an insect infestation, which decimated crops and contributed to China’s Great Famine. “Long before the ‘zero Covid’ policy,” The New York Times wrote, “China had a ‘zero sparrow’ policy.”
Ilya Matveev / Twitter:
Mikhail Khodorenok, a retired colonel with the Russian general staff currently working as an analyst, writing *three weeks before the war*:
1. No one in Ukraine will happily greet Russian troops in case of the invasion. [An obvious one, but okay]
2. Russia has no capability to destroy the Ukrainian military and thus end the war with one missile attack. It just doesn’t work that way.3. The war will not end quickly because of Russia’s air supremacy. Russia lost in Afghanistan and Chechnya despite them having zero planes. And Ukraine does have an air force and air defense.4. The Ukrainian forces have undergone massive reforms since 2014 and are very capable. The West will supply them with weapons on the scale of a new land-lease program.
David Rothkopf / Daily Beast:
Even if Russia Uses a Nuke, We Probably Won’t—but Putin Would Still Pay Dearly
A U.S. official who is closely tracking these matters noted that top Russian officials have been explicit in pointing out that the threat from events in Ukraine was not “existential.” This is seen as a possible signal that nuclear use was yet to be warranted under the guidelines described above. He added, “Nothing we’ve seen suggests they’re at the precipice” of taking such action.
U.S. officials also emphasized that in such circumstances, it would be expected that the first use of a nuclear weapon would be as a “warning shot,” likely the detonation of a device in the upper atmosphere. Whether Russia chooses such an approach or another, however, U.S. officials are confident NATO has multiple options via which to inflict high costs on the Russians without “transgressing” as the Russians would have done.
Should Russia use nuclear weapons of any sort on NATO forces or territory, the result would, of course, be swift and severe. A conventional attack on such forces, for example, would trigger a direct confrontation that it is believed the Russians very much want to avoid.
Amanda Carpenter / The Bulwark:
Mike Lee’s Role in Trump’s Attempted Coup
What would have happened if his plan worked?
Let’s bat the argument around, though. The texts show Lee was eager to assist Trump in challenging the election—to the point of Lee texting Meadows dozens of times, begging “please tell me what I should be saying” and offering his advice about what should be done. (Pour one out for his Article One Project.) Specifically, these texts and Lee’s other on-the-record statements show he was consistent in advocating that the only way, according to the Constitution, to change the outcome was for state legislatures to appoint alternate slates of electors for Congress to accept on Jan. 6. Lee spent much time and effort insisting on this. But, the state legislatures did not. So Lee did not raise any objections on January 6th and voted to certify Joe Biden as president. And, for this Lee is supposed to be some kind of hero.
Slow clap.
Because what if GOP-controlled state legislatures in the swing states Biden won had decided to appoint Trump electors based on whatever Cheetos-dust some drive-by gang of Cyber Ninjas sniffed and got high on while seizing Dominion Voting machines? Well, as Lee wrote Meadows on January 3: “Everything changes, of course, if the swing states submit competing slates of electors pursuant to state law.”
Got that? Everything changes. If state-level Republicans had been okay with overturning the election results, then Lee was okay with it, too.
Sarah Longwell / The Atlantic:
Trump Supporters Explain Why They Believe the Big Lie
For many of Trump’s voters, the belief that the election was stolen is not a fully formed thought. It’s more of an attitude, or a tribal pose.
Some 35 percent of Americans—including 68 percent of Republicans—believe the Big Lie, pushed relentlessly by former President Donald Trump and amplified by conservative media, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. They think that Trump was the true victor and that he should still be in the White House today.
I regularly host focus groups to better understand how voters are thinking about key political topics. Recently, I decided to find out why Trump 2020 voters hold so strongly to the Big Lie.
For many of Trump’s voters, the belief that the election was stolen is not a fully formed thought. It’s more of an attitude, or a tribal pose. They know something nefarious occurred but can’t easily explain how or why. What’s more, they’re mystified and sometimes angry that other people don’t feel the same.
Kyle Pope / Columbia Journalism Review:
Doubling down at the Times
In picking Joe Kahn, the Times’ managing editor, to replace Baquet, the newspaper is signaling that it has no plans to rethink its approach. Baquet and A.G. Sulzberger, the Times’ publisher, have consistently dismissed the idea that journalistic norms of objectivity should be tossed out. The view of the Times leadership is that journalism is more threatened by a lack of trust, which only deepens when readers sense that the paper has its thumb on the partisan scale.
Kahn, holder of the newsroom’s second-highest job since September 2016, has always been a front-runner for the top spot. He’s been a reporter in the Washington bureau, bureau chief in Beijing, and international editor. Now fifty-seven, he was president of the Crimson, at Harvard, and his father cofounded Staples, the office supply chain. In announcing Kahn’s elevation, Sulzberger called him “a brilliant journalist and a brave and principled leader.”
And one of us. Depending on who “us” is.
Ukraine update: Major Russian offensive now underway, even as Ukraine recaptures towns elsewhere
This post was originally published on this site
After a day filled with mostly rumor and confusion, we finally know a bit more about how the newest of Russia’s major offensives is unfolding. It is a major attack; it is not the sort of highly coordinated and overwhelming campaign that Russia still insists it could pull off but which outside experts now believe is beyond the nation’s command competence. But it is a major threat, and Russia has been able to take some new ground already.
On the other hand, Ukraine has also been able to rout Russians elsewhere, as they have been doing the entire war. Russia remains overextended, reliant on long supply lines and battalions already battered in earlier fighting. It’s simply too early to say how this latest offensive will play out.
Russian attacks appear to be concentrated on areas with Ukrainian defenses that have had years to prepare, with the most likely goal being the encirclement of several eastern cities southeast of captured Izyum so that they can then be obliterated by Russian artillery strikes. Previous speculation that Russia would attempt an absurd operation to encircle the entire eastern front are, so far, not coming to pass. While it seems curious for Russia to engage in battles in the places where Ukraine’s defenses are the strongest—especially considering Russia’s poor results when encountering actual Ukrainian troops, rather than just bombing civilian neighborhoods from afar—the Pentagon suspects attacking from these long-static positions are Russia’s way of avoiding the logistical challenges that have plagued its more far-ranging advances.
Here’s your news summary for the day:
Russian state TV is openly fantasizing about a 2024 Trump-Gabbard ticket
This post was originally published on this site
Do you think maybe Democrats could make political hay out of the fact that Russia’s Putin-controlled media wants to return Donald Trump—to whom congressional Republicans have more or less permanently Human Centipeded themselves—to his porcelain palace throne?
So there’s this guy Putin, see? And right now he’s reminding everyone every day how vile and genocidal Adolf Hitler was, ostensibly to convince his neighbors that Naziism is bad and they should really consider de-Nazifying. And he really wants his Western bestie, Grampa Rage Diapers, back in the White House. And none other than Mitch McConnell, the minority leader of the U.S. Senate would like that, too—at least if the other option is President Joe Biden, who’s been fiercely standing up to Putin’s aggression. So the only real bulwark we currently have against Russia and its tyrannical ambitions is the Democratic Party. Full stop.
So I have two questions: Is that message simple enough for the American people to grasp, and will it fit on the side of a Daytona 500 race car? Because I don’t really see the mainstream media connecting the dots for people who still don’t understand that Trump is just a glutinous sack of gooey id that Putin has wheedled and bribed into obeisance. I can almost see Chuck Todd on Meet the Press now: “Yes, the Republican Party would hand Western liberal democracy over to bad-faith foreign actors who are currently committing outrageous war crimes against their neighbor, but look what Whole Foods is charging for asparagus water. How does this affect Democrats’ chances of holding the House in November?”
In case anyone is still unsure about Putin’s hopes and dreams for America, Russia media analyst Julia Davis has helpfully laid it out for us. In a recent Daily Beast column, Davis notes that Putin’s mouthpieces in Russian state media are all but salivating over the prospect of a second Trump administration.
Last week, American intelligence officials reportedly assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin may use the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine as a pretext to order a new campaign to interfere in U.S. elections. Though AP reported that “it is not yet clear which candidates Russia might try to promote or what methods it might use,” Russian state media seem to be in agreement that former U.S. President Donald Trump remains Moscow’s candidate of choice.
Hmm. Well, I don’t know much, but I know at least one thing: If Halfwit Hitler wants Donald Trump back in office to, among other things, pull the U.S. out of NATO, maybe Americans of every political stripe should work to prevent that from ever happening. Sadly, only Democrats appear ready and willing to resist Putin’s loftiest ambitions.
In March, Russian state TV host Evgeny Popov said the time had come “to again help our partner Trump to become president.” Well, Putin’s propagandists haven’t changed their mind about that, but they have added a new wrinkle.
“We’re trying to feel our way, figuring out the first steps. What can we do in 2023, 2024?,” Russian “Americanist” Malek Dudakov, a political scientist specializing in the U.S., said. He suggested that Russia’s interference in the upcoming elections is still in its early stages, and that more will be accomplished after the war is over and frosty relations between the U.S. and Russia start to warm up. “When things thaw out and the presidential race for 2024 is firmly on the agenda, there’ll be moments we can use,” he added. “The most banal approach I can think of is to invite Trump—before he announces he’s running for President—to some future summit in liberated Mariupol.”
Really? That’s your plan, Russia? Well, you probably shouldn’t have shelled the Mariupol Hooters then.
Dmitry Drobnitsky, an omnipresent “Americanist” on Soloviev’s show, suggested that Tulsi Gabbard should be invited along with Trump. Dudakov agreed: “Tulsi Gabbard would also be great. Maybe Trump will take her as his vice-president?” Gabbard has recently become a fixture of state television for her pro-Russian talking points, and has even been described as a “Russian agent” by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine.
Ah, yes, Tulsi Gabbard. The “Russian agent” Democrats almost universally rejected when she ran for president in 2020. Why is it that we send Putin’s comrades packing while Republicans send them to Washington?
In fact, Dudakov went much further, suggesting that Russia needs to capitalize on America’s widening political divisions in order to weaken our resolve against their aggression.
“With Europe, economic wars should take priority,” Dudakov said. “With America, we should be working to amplify the divisions and—in light of our limited abilities—to deepen the polarization of American society. … The main elections are further ahead and preparations for those are already underway.”
He went on: “There is a horrific polarization of society in the United States, very serious conflicts between the Democrats and Republicans that keep expanding. You’ve already mentioned that America is a dying empire—and most empires weren’t conquered, they were destroyed from within. The same fate likely awaits America in the near decade. That’s why, when all the processes are thawed, Russia might get the chance to play on that.”
So the same guy who wants to destroy our country “from within” also wants Donald Trump to win back the presidency in 2024—and Moscow Mitch McConnell is totally on board with that if Trump wins the GOP primary, which he likely will if he chooses to run.
Maybe, just maybe, if you care about democracy and freedom here and abroad, you should stop fantasizing about Donald Trump’s return. And maybe we all should take concrete steps to prevent it from ever happening.
Just a thought.
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
Canada mosque attacker who wielded ax said he was there to 'kill terrorists'
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New updates have arisen in connection to an incident in which a man attacked mosque congregants with an ax and bear spray last month in Mississauga, Canada. According to the Canadian Press, Leader of the Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre Imam Ibrahim Hindy said Thursday that the man who attacked mosque-goers on March 19 yelled that he was there to “kill terrorists.”
During the incident, the man discharged bear spray in the mosque while wielding an ax in the other hand, The Washinton Post reported. He was then tackled by a group of 20 congregants, who held him down until police officials arrived. Local reports indicate no one was seriously injured during the attack.
Worshippers who were lined up in the mosque heard the sound of Omar’s can of bear spray and were immediately alerted, CNN reported.
“He (the attacker) didn’t realize the spray was making noise so that immediately alerted people in the first row,” Noonrani Sairally, a congregant told CNN. “One of the young fellows in that row saw the hatchet and acted very quickly to knock it out of his hand. Then everyone quickly jumped on him and pushed him to the floor.”
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According to Hindy, the man was unknown to the community despite having a Muslim-sounding name. Hindy alleged that the man identified as Mohammad Moiz Omar also had social media accounts full of anti-Muslim posts.
“It appears he was full of hate towards members of the Muslim community,” Hindy said, according to the Canadian Press. “When he attacked members of the community, he told members of the congregation as he was being tackled that he was there to kill terrorists.”
The man “clearly identifies as an ex-Muslim,” Hindy added.
According to a news release by the Peel Regional Police, charges against Omar include assault with a weapon, administering a noxious substance with intent to endanger life or cause bodily harm, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, utter threat to cause death or bodily harm, carrying a concealed weapon, and mischief to religious property. According to a Facebook post by the mosque, the 24-year-old suspect was also armed with “numerous other sharp-edged weapons.”
Police confirmed the incident was motivated by hate.
Worshippers remain traumatized and fearful of attending the mosque and religious activities.
According to the Post, the incident last month reminded Dar Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre congregants of other painful memories, including a 2017 incident during which a man fired at 50 worshipers in a mosque near Quebec City, killing six and injuring 19 others.
“Many of them have sought therapy and mental health help from experts,” Hindy said. “Some of them were as young as 13 years old and they’re having nightmares.”
Advocates and local members are urging the government to pass the Our London Family Act, a bill created by the Ontario NDP and the National Council of Canadian Muslims after a Muslim family in London, Ontario was struck and killed by a truck. Police found that incident to be hate-motivated.
While the bill was introduced in the legislature earlier this year, it has been stalled in the standing committee. If passed the bill would create safe zones around religious institutions, provide more education and tools for schools to fight racism, ban protests at Queen’s Park that incite racist, homophobic, and other forms of hate, and prevent white supremacy groups from registering as societies.
“We do not understand why this legislation has not been passed,” Hindy said. “It is uncontroversial.”
Speaking to the fear Muslims have in Canada of openly attending mosque services, the National Council of Canadian Muslims said it’s “disheartening to see Muslim communities having to deal with the effects [of] Islamophobia again and again.”
“The community at Dar Al-Tawheed mosque in Mississauga, Ont confirmed that the suspect who attacked their space last month said he was there to ‘kill terrorists.’ It’s time to move beyond condemnations and words,” the council wrote.
The incident follows a trend of attacks on religious institutions across North America. According to a 2021 U.N. report, anti-Muslim hatred has risen “to epidemic proportions,” with Muslims facing widespread stigmatization and limits on accessing citizenship. Data from the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives has found that in Canada more Muslims “have been killed in targeted hate-attacks” in the last five years than in any other Group of Seven country.
But despite the pain and fear the community feels, Hindy said that the community “will never be broken, and we refuse to be intimidated.”
Republican votes against affordable housing, then says no one knows what to do about homelessness
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Last week, the Tennessee state Senate passed SB1610, which creates more severe penalties for “illegally camping.” That is a euphemism for being homeless or unhoused. Before the 22-10 vote in favor of the bill, Republican state Sen. Frank Nicely stood up to make a speech about how homeless folks could find inspiration in famed Vienna men’s shelter occupant Adolf Hitler. That last statement concerning Mr. Nicely is not hyperbole: It is, in fact, what he said.
Don’t believe me? Here are his words, verbatim: “Nineteen and ten, Hitler decided to live on the streets. So for two years Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and his body language and how to connect with the masses. And then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books. So, a lot of these people it’s not a dead end. They can come out of these homeless camps and have a productive life, or in Hitler’s case a very unproductive life.”
On Monday, the Tennessee House passed the bill in a 57-28 vote.
Opponents of the bill argue that by creating larger fines and more serious charges for being homeless, Tennessee is making it clear that the resources they are willing to spend to help its citizens will only be prison-based. To explain this the way I explain it to my 6-year-old: Asking someone with no money for money because they have no money, and then threatening them with jail time if they don’t come up with the money they don’t have, and then at the same time not helping them get to a place where they could maybe make some money, is insane.
My 6-year-old gets it.
RELATED STORY: Tennessee Republican that said South won Civil War now talking about Hitler’s inspiring story
The bill, co-sponsored by state Rep. Tim Hicks, makes camping along a controlled-access highway, entrance, or exit ramp punishable by “either a $50 fine and a sentence to 20-40 hours of community service work, or a sentence of 20-40 hours of litter removal.” Hicks calls this a “safety issue.” In fact, Hicks is excited for this bill to help the homeless by increasing unhoused folks’ interactions with law enforcement.
“This bill allows people, law enforcement to be able to go up to someone and tell them that they’re breaking the law,” Hicks said. “The first time will be a warning, tell them that they’re breaking the law — they can’t camp here — and offer them help. That is exactly what we’re trying to do with this bill.
“If we sit on our hands and do nothing about this issue and wait on the homeless to take care of themselves, it’s going to continue to get worse. This is a tool that our cities and counties can do in order to get these folks help.”
Hicks’ addition to the bill and his unwillingness to talk about the rest of the bill sort of give away his real position. The law makes camping or sleeping outside a Class E felony. A Class E felony “can result in a maximum prison term of six years and/or a fine not exceeding $3,000.” In many states, a felony conviction means the loss of one’s right to vote.
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Church leaders and other people who have actually been trying to increase interactions with homeless citizens in the hopes of helping them have called the bill illogical. Burt Rosen, CEO of Knox Area Rescue Ministries, told WBIR that if your goal is to help people, criminalizing the issues they have doesn’t ameliorate anything. “The goal is really for them to get help, and we’re not going to accomplish a lot by putting someone behind bars.”
State Sen. Jeff Yarbo, who voted against the legislation, explained how dubious this law truly is, as GOP officials keep pretending that the law isn’t really the law. “Now I don’t anticipate anyone in the legislature wants to apply that to people enjoying their weekend. When we pass a law we don’t intend to have forced as written, it creates a really broad level of discretion, where local governments can target disfavored populations.”
Republican state Sen. Paul Bailey, the Senate bill sponsor, gave arguably one the most cynical statements in the history of the world when it was pointed out to him that a lot of churches and religious institutions that actually deal with helping people without homes are against his inhumane bill. “I don’t have the answer for homelessness. Those that oppose this legislation, they don’t have all the answers for homelessness. Those that support this legislation, they don’t have all of the answers for homelessness.”
That’s a hypocritical lie. For proof, state Sen. Paul Bailey need only look to 2018, when he and his GOP brethren voted to ban cities like Nashville from using zoning to “build or preserve affordable housing.” This was the conservative response to the increasing affordable housing crisis that Tennessee and the entire country are facing.