Independent News
Politico complains that competence, transparency, and truthfulness is making their job too hard
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While people in Ukraine are concerned about a brutal war with Russia, Politico is suffering in the battle against a different kind of opponent. It seems that transparency, truthfulness, and a daily process in which White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stands there and actually answers questions with facts and competence are seriously screwing with their ability to pose as crusading journalists.
According to Politico, there’s just no opportunity to become a “star” by being a White House reporter these days. Sure, the nation has been dealing with a pandemic where the number of official deaths is about to crack 1 million, the administration launched an ambitious legislative agenda that has largely been stifled by the egos of just two senators, the United States is moving desperately to support an allied nation engaged in the biggest war in Europe since World War II, and the January 6 committee is regularly cranking out information that shows deep involvement of Republican officials from top to bottom in an attempted coup. A White House reporter just might be able to wring a narrative out of one of those little items. But only if that reporter was interested in doing 10 minutes’ worth of work.
During the age of Biden, a perch inside the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room has become something altogether different. It’s become a bore.
It’s almost as if now that no one is standing in front of the room sputtering out a string of nonsense syllables or handing out a list of easily punctured lies, journalists in the White House have to do journalism. They need to research, and write, and actually do word stuff. All of which seems a lot harder than deciding which part of their visit with Donald Trump/Mark Meadows/William Barr/Peter Navarro/Kellyanne Conway/Hope Hicks/Sarah Sanders/etc. they would simply hold back until they got that seven-figure book deal.
Perhaps nothing can sum up this whole deeply felt concern better than this single paragraph.
“Jen [Psaki] is very good at her job, which is unfortunate,” one reporter who has covered the past two administrations from the room said. “And the work is a lot less rewarding, because you’re no longer saving democracy from Sean Spicer and his Men’s Warehouse suit. Jawing with Jen just makes you look like an asshole.”
What this makes clear is that these would-be “star reporters” aren’t at all concerned about the truth. They’re certainly not interested in doing the kind of journalism that would take the information provided by Psaki and explain to the American people what kind of impact the issues being discussed have on their daily lives. Nope. These are people who want to look good in front of the camera. Spicer was a good prop for them to lean against so they could express their Very Serious Concerns. Psaki is not.
Why, when the economy is breaking records and the White House is working hard to give Americans not just what they promised but what poll after poll says America really wants, is Joe Biden’s approval rating so disconnected from those achievements? A big part of it comes down to this: Politico’s “stars” were never interested in giving Americans the facts, never interested in reporting on how policies shape the nation, never interested in journalism at all.
They just wanted an easy way to look good and a lazy path to stardom. That’s why they’re actively cheering for the return of lies, incompetency, and villainy. It’s so much easier that way.
The Jan. 6 committee will hold hearings in June, some in primetime
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The Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol will launch its public hearings beginning June 9 and will commence eight sessions that will be aired during the daytime and primetime hours,
The committee’s chairman, Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said Thursday that after the panel rounds out its final interviews with witnesses through the end of this month and May, the hearings will kick off and effectively resume what the probe started in July 2021 when officers from the U.S. Capitol and Metropolitan Police Department offered gut-wrenching testimony to Congress for the first time.
RELATED STORY: Exclusive USCP Officer Harry Dunn shares notes, personal artifacts of the insurrection
“Eight is the number at this point and we’re moving forward for June hearings… We will tell the story about what happened. We will use a combination of exhibits, staff testimony, outside witnesses,” Thompson told press gathered outside of the Capitol early Thursday evening.
As of Friday, some 478 days have passed since former President Donald Trump incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The committee was formed just under a year ago and only after facing steep resistance from the overwhelming majority of Republicans led by House Leader Kevin McCarthy.
McCarthy, in this months-long process, has emerged as a stubborn figure in the investigation; starting first with his refusal to voluntarily cooperate and leading more recently to his blanket denials and walk-backs after being caught on tape acknowledging the need for Trump to resign in the aftermath of the assault.
He is also recorded saying that Trump’s actions were “putting people in jeopardy.”
RELATED STORY: McCarthy does damage control with House Republicans over leaked recordings
Nonetheless, the probe has amassed a huge wealth of information about what transpired on Jan. 6, interviewing a procession of Trump administration aides and staff, high ranking and low.
They have elicited key testimony about the strategy deployed by Trump to stage what investigator Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland defined to Daily Kos recently as “a coup that was orchestrated by the president against the vice president and against the Congress,”
RELATED STORY: ‘Prepare to be mesmerized’: An interview with Jan. 6 probe investigator Jamie Raskin
And for those that have patently refused to cooperate, like Steve Bannon, Trump’s onetime adviser, the committee has doled out contempt of Congress referrals with the backing of the U.S. House.
So far, the Justice Department has acted only on Bannon’s referral; his trial is expected to begin later this year.
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was also referred for contempt after he abruptly reversed course on his cooperation. He provided thousands of text messages and records before bailing, however, and many of those materials have already come to expose the breadth and depth of the push by Trump and his allies to stop or delay the certification on Jan. 6 so that Trump could remain in office despite his loss.
Meadows is currently under investigation by the state of North Carolina for voter fraud and has since been removed from the rolls there.
RELATED STORY: Not one, not two, but three states Mark Meadows registered to vote in
There has been no clear indication from the Justice Department on how they might proceed with Meadows.
The committee has also approved and voted out of the House contempt referrals for Trump’s former communications adviser Dan Scavino and onetime trade adviser Peter Navarro. Both former White House officials were subpoenaed and both refused to cooperate. Navarro called the committee a group of “domestic terrorists” and insisted that executive privilege would shield him from answering questions about a strategy.
Trump, however, has not invoked executive privilege over Navarro’s testimony and President Joe Biden has waived it, anyway.
For now, the committee is keeping details about who will appear at the hearings under wraps. When asked Thursday, Rep. Raskin told CBS News that a witness such as former Vice President Mike Pence—who was integral, if not the key to Trump’s scheme—was unlikely to appear.
“I think we have what we need from him,” Raskin said.
Members of Pence’s staff, like chief of staff Marc Short and national security adviser Keith Kellogg, were subpoenaed by the probe and ultimately provided some of the more disturbing details yet to emerge, including insight into Trump’s obstinance and sheer idleness on Jan. 6 as rioters actively swarmed the Capitol and the vice president inside.
Almost 1,000 depositions and interviews have been taken by the committee and there are still people investigators will continue to “engage” with, Thompson said Thursday. That would include figures like Donald Trump Jr., CBS reported.
Details, for now, are also sparing on how the committee will specifically present its findings although Raskin has said it will be presented like chapters of a book.
Through the committee’s successful legal battles for records from the Trump White House and from attorney John Eastman—who wrote a six-point memo for Trump strategizing how to overthrow the election by utilizing Pence unconstitutionally—the panel has been able to piece together information about Trump’s orchestrated efforts to defraud the United States by way of his “Big Lie” about voter fraud.
The sprawl of the committee’s work has been so extensive that it broke up its research into multiple teams that would then home their focus on a specific angle. One group followed the money, for example, assessing the fundraising for the Jan. 6 rallies by Trump’s organizers and campaign staff.
Other teams, with a fine-tooth comb, pored over the involvement and coordination of domestic extremist groups and activists involved in the assault like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Others drilled down on the pressure strategy targeting Pence. There were also breakaway groups reviewing evidence of how members of congress may have been directly pressured by Trump and more.
Lack of cooperation from some figures subpoenaed already has not stymied the probe entirely though members are reportedly still weighing what legal recourse they have to compel testimony from fellow legislators like GOP leader McCarthy.
Chairman Thompson indicated that by the end of this week the panel would send an “invitation” for McCarthy again. He has not been formally subpoenaed. The California Republican and House Speaker-aspirant has dubbed the investigation a sham and has, in recent months, said he would not cooperate.
That was a change of tune from May 2021 when McCarthy responded “sure” when asked by CNN if he would testify about his conversations with Trump.
Other lawmakers, like Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, are expected to receive new requests to appear soon, too. Both men heavily promoted Trump’s lie that election fraud was rampant.
Text messages obtained by the committee and otherwise made public have put both Jordan and Perry at the heart of the push to stop the certification on Jan. 6.
Once the hearings conclude, the committee will issue a public report.
Raskin told Daily Kos that report would not be a dry, perfunctory rehashing of the mountain of information obtained. Instead, Raskin said he hoped it would be a “multimedia report” to better encapsulate the gravity of what was at stake on Jan. 6, lay everything out for the record visually, and make it accessible to all.
Though the committee indicated in court this March that it found enough criminal evidence to refer Trump to the DOJ, as of early April, members were reportedly split on how to proceed.
Despite the criticism from those who have stood opposed to the committee from its inception, the panel has strived to keep the contours of its probe clearly delineated from the Justice Department’s own investigation.
The DOJ has now charged more than 800 people for crimes connected to the insurrection at the Capitol.
And while separation of powers undergirds so much of what has driven the committee for these many months, members have also made clear: if in the course of their investigation they unearth evidence of a crime, it will, of course, not go ignored.
RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 probe weighs criminal referral for ex-president
Black D.C. residents comprised 90% of the pregnancy-related deaths in the city, a study finds
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The city I grew up in was once referred to as “Chocolate City.” That has changed. Today, Washington, D.C., is less than 50% Black, so, when I read a recent study finding that Black birthing people in D.C. make up 90% of birth-related deaths, I was understandably shocked.
But, the real shocker was that of the 90%, no white residents in my hometown reported pregnancy-related deaths, yet this group made up 30% of the births.
If you know D.C., you won’t be surprised to learn that Wards 7 and 8, east of Anacostia River, are where the remainder of the city’s “chocolate”—aka, Black and lower-income—residents live. These neighborhoods comprised 70% of the pregnancy-associated deaths.
While Wards 2 and 3, neighborhoods home to such tony spots in the city as Georgetown, Chevy Chase, and Dupont Circle, are mostly where white, wealthy residents live. The study found no pregnancy-associated deaths in these areas.
RELATED STORY: White principal sues school district claiming she was ‘forced out’ over racist ‘slip of the tongue’
The study conducted by the Maternal Mortality Review Committee (MMRC) looked at deaths associated with pregnancy in D.C. between 2014 and 2018. During this period, 36 D.C. residents died in pregnancy.
“Eleven were maternal deaths, 10 were pregnancy-related deaths occurring 43 days to one year following the termination of a pregnancy, and 15 were deaths occurring within one year of the termination of pregnancy due to accidental or incidental causes,” the report reads.
The report defines pregnancy-related death as “a death during or within one year of pregnancy, from a pregnancy complication, a chain of events initiated by pregnancy, or the aggravation of an unrelated condition by the physiologic effects of pregnancy,” and this includes “maternal deaths within 42 days and pregnancy-related deaths 43 days to one year following the termination of a pregnancy.”
Dr. Christina Marea, a cofounder of MMRC, told DCist, “The disparities and the statistics are very real and very concerning, and they are very much along racial lines—racial lines that are underlined by these social and structural causes. … There’s nothing about Black birthing people that makes them more likely to die, it’s the environments to which they’re exposed in our social, environmental, and health systems.”
According to DCist, the committee reviewed D.C.’s maternal and pregnancy-related deaths and how the issue aligned with the health issues that disproportionately impact the city’s Black residents—illnesses such as heart disease and hypertension—all related to systemic racism such as access to health care and quality education, environmental issues, housing, and bias, according to the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (ODPHP).
“Yes, there are increased rates of pre-existing and pregnancy-related cardiovascular diseases that contribute to mortality,” Marea told DCist. “But let’s go farther upstream than that, and say ‘why are young women at such high risk of developing heart disease or other cardiometabolic disorders at such a young age?’ Well, we look at these social and structural factors that increase the chronic stress that their bodies are under.”
Since the formation of the committee, several initiatives and a budget for 2022 were put into place.
“When I introduced the Maternal Health Resources and Access Act, I knew it was the first step in a necessary expansion of insurance benefits and supports for expecting mothers enrolled in the District’s Medicaid and Alliance health plans,” D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson said in June 2021.
“These investments include increased access to doula services and subsidized transportation to prenatal and postpartum appointments. When you combine these changes with other important measures the Committee funded today, like the Postpartum Coverage Act of 2019 and the Certified Midwife Credential Amendment Act of 2020, we begin to make real movement toward reducing the disparate maternal health outcomes across the District.”
Medicaid matters a lot for 77 million people, and 15 million of them could soon fall off a cliff
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As Medicaid Awareness Month draws to a close, health advocates are warning about a very big cliff as many as 15 million people could fall off in a few months. Those millions, including as many as 6 million children, got coverage on Medicaid during the COVID-19 public health emergency. In the early days of the pandemic, Congress passed a “continuous coverage” provision under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, one of the first pandemic response bills. It prohibits states from kicking people off the program during the public health emergency.
The emergency was extended earlier this month and is now set to expire in mid-July. When it ends, Medicaid coverage won’t be the only thing that goes. Expanded SNAP (or food stamp) eligibility will end, too. There are plenty of other health-related programs that will go with it.
There are nearly 77 million non-elderly people who have health coverage through Medicaid, the federal/state partnership program to provide coverage to disabled Americans, and low-income Americans and their children. Something like 17 million people have enrolled during the COVID-19 pandemic, the result of job loss or long-term disability from the disease.
One of the real issues is for states, which have to determine Medicaid eligibility on a regular basis. States have been feeling their way through this, going extension to extension but dealing with a great deal of uncertainty because these extensions last just three months at a time, and because it looks like Congress isn’t going to do anything to respond with a permanent fix like the provision in the Build Back Better Act to ease the process for states.
There’s traditionally a lot of churn in Medicaid rolls, as people lose coverage because their income increases and they are no longer eligible, or they fail to provide the documentation required to continue their eligibility when they’re up for review. Because of the emergency, states haven’t been through this process in two years. It means that the data they have—people’s addresses, income, eligibility information—hasn’t been updated. So there are going to be added difficulties in the whole process. On top of that is the messiness of so many new enrollees from the COVID-19 crisis. Many of these people will be entirely new to the process of renewing their eligibility, and millions could end up being removed without even knowing it.
There are solutions other than just renewing the public health emergency every few months. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities details how Congress could do that.
That includes federal legislation to close the Medicaid gap in the 12 states that refused to take the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. The gap is those people who don’t qualify for traditional Medicaid under those states’ rules because they make too much to qualify—in Texas, making $3,733 annually counts as too much—or age out of it, and don’t have enough income to purchase insurance through the ACA marketplace.
That leads to another thing Congress can do—make the temporary premium tax enhancements in the American Rescue Plan (ARP) permanent. They’re not going to expire in July, but at the end of the year, when people’s Obamacare health insurance premiums go up, with notices going out in October. Just before the election. And lower-income people who can’t get Medicaid won’t be able to afford these new private health insurance costs. The Urban Institute estimates that about a third of the people who are going to lose Medicaid eligibility when the public health emergency ends could qualify for premium tax credits, but won’t be able to afford it without the ARP enhancements.
Congress could also make sure that all children in the program have 12 months of continuous eligibility as well as require all states to provide 12 months of postpartum coverage. Those provisions were passed by the House in Build Back Better, and as CBBP says have proven to be important “mechanisms for keeping eligible children and postpartum people enrolled, reducing unnecessary and potentially harmful coverage gaps, and reducing paperwork burdens on both states and families.”
Protect Our Care has a new fact sheet, as part of its efforts for Medicaid Awareness Month, outlining just how critical Medicaid is for women. It’s done similar analyses for how Medicaid has reduced disparities for communities of color, people living with disabilities, rural Americans, women, children, and seniors and older Americans.
Medicaid covers 31% of adult women, which in 2020 was 16% of women under age 65, and is particularly helpful to people of color: about “33% of Black Americans, 30% of Hispanic or Latino individuals, nearly 15% of Asian and Pacific Islanders, and 34% of American Indian and Alaska Native individuals are enrolled in Medicaid, compared with 15% of white individuals.” It also covers more than 44% of women with mental and physical disabilities. The program is also the largest payer for reproductive health care, including birth control, cancer screenings, and maternity care.
There is just so much at stake, as always, with health care, and so many threats in yet another election year and one in which it’s entirely possible that Republicans regain at least one chamber of Congress. They’re already plotting against us, with the latest iteration of “repeal and replace,” the anti-Obamacare mantra of the last decade. That makes getting this done now all the more critical. Democrats should be focusing on these issues with as much focus and zeal as they have on Obamacare in the past.
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Ukraine update: To execute a different strategy, Russia needs a different army
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Kos has written at length about the problems with the command structure in the Russian army. In an army filled with disinterested conscripts and poorly-trained regulars, Russia also has no non-commissioned officers—the corporals, sergeants, staff sergeants, etc. that turn orders from above into actions on the field. Why do Russian generals keep getting killed in Ukraine? Because Russian generals have to practically be in the ear of every ryadovoy (private) under his command. A general who is in earshot is also in rifle shot.
For most people, the idea of dropping all the middle management in their company may sound sort of blissful. It is definitely not blissful when that company is trying to coordinate moving thousands of tons of heavy equipment down hundreds of miles of muddy road before deploying to fight a pitched battle.
In any case, the Russian army demands generals on-site, and now the biggest general of them all may already be on the ground in Ukraine. Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov isn’t just a general, he’s Putin’s Agrippa. Whenever Putin goes into a war, it’s actually Gerasimov who executes that war.
Gerasimov started as a tank commander and first took command of an army in the Second Chechen War. How did that war go for Gerasimov? Well, it started by blowing up buses carrying refugees out of the battle zone, moved on to bombing villages with cluster bombs, and then moved onto the phase for which it’s known: using bombs and artillery to reduce the city of Grozny to absolute rubble.
Say, does this look familiar?
It’s not just the pulverized buildings and Russian tanks driving forward over wrecked cars and concrete dust that looks familiar, pictures of Grozny have it all—the shocked families staring at apartment buildings split wide open by missiles, the sad graves dug into the space between ruined buildings and parking lots, the blank-eyed stares of civilians who have become the targets of ongoing torture on its most massive scale.
Russian General Alexander Dvornikov, who was put in charge of Ukrainian forces just two weeks ago, might be known as the “Butcher of Syria,” but it’s Gerasimov’s butcher shop. The tactics Gerasimov used to successfully crush Chechnya were used again and again. Gen. Gerasimov had already been Chief of the General Staff for four years before Dvornikov played his role in Syria.
Gerasimov is regarded as a “military theorist” and the man behind the current design of those Battalion Tactical Groups that make the Russian army peculiarly fragile and deliciously griftable. What is Gerasimov’s theory? We’ve seen it. We’re seeing it. Gerasimov isn’t an idiot. He knows what he has—an untrained military with a lot of aging heavy equipment that’s poorly maintained and a lot of soldiers who are more interested in looting (with a side order of rape) than shooting. Whether it’s Dvornikov or Gerasimov calling the shots, that’s not going to change.
What will change? It won’t be the level of brutality. Already, roughly twice as many civilians have died in Mariupol alone as died in Grozny. More civilians may have died in the suburbs of Kyiv than in Russia’s entire war in Georgia. The levels of pure cruelty in Ukraine already seem to be higher than they were in Chechnya or Georgia. Maybe not Syria, but in that case, Russia had assistance from their chemical-weapons loving puppet, Assad.
It’s not so much that Dvornikov is some kind of unique monster. He’s just a regular commander in a military whose structure, culture, and tactics are entirely based on being monsters.
The whole Russian army is designed to operate on brutality. Because it has to. Corrupt officials, generals, and just plain criminals steal everything that’s worth stealing. So Russian equipment, like the T-72 tank, is deliberately not advanced. It’s crude, cheap, easy to produce in numbers, and designed to be operated by disposable knuckleheads who just got shoved into the thing yesterday. Russia tactics are just like that tank. Crude. Blunt. Dependent more on numbers than skill.
What difference will it make to have both Dvornikov and Gerasimov on the ground in Ukraine? Well, it might momentarily distract the Russian soldiers in their immediate area from scheming to steal washing machines. Maybe. It might also distract Ukrainian snipers as they look for that big score.
But in terms of overall strategy, don’t expect much. Because what Gerasimov needs to execute a different strategy is a different army.
Friday, Apr 29, 2022 · 2:39:20 PM +00:00
·
Mark Sumner
And now it seems that an even bigger general is in charge.
Picture this for a moment: Your company is in trouble. The production line keeps having difficulty, and while you can get parts of that line functional, it just doesn’t want to gel as a whole. So the Sr. Vice President of Production announces that he is taking control. Then the company president declares that he is charge. Then the CEO says he’s taking operational control.
How many of those problems on the floor does this solve?
Extremists operating within military ranks while plotting violent terrorism continue to emerge
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The stories keep bubbling up: In Spokane, Washington, two Air Force officers plotted to form a terrorist cell intended to “take our government back,” telling a recruit after the Nov. 2020 election: “I think the capital needs to be seized … No trial or chance to escape.” Meanwhile, in Columbus, Ohio, two buddies in the National Guard discussed carrying out violent terrorist acts: One of them fantasized about gunning down the Jewish schoolchildren at the academy where he had been hired as a security guard, while the other schemed up a plan to fly an airplane into the local Anheuser-Busch brewery.
These are just the latest incidents in what has become a running litany of radicalized extremists within the ranks of the U.S. military plotting lethal acts of domestic terrorism intended to undermine the government and terrorize both minorities and the public. It underscores once again what a daunting task the Pentagon faces in rooting such extremists out of the ranks of the military, complicated by the usual right-wing complaints that such an effort threatens the free-speech rights of soldiers.
The noncommissioned officers, both staff sergeants at Fairchild Air Force Base near Spokane, were arrested this week and charged with the theft of thousands of rounds of ammunition from the base. Charging documents for John I. Sanger, 30, and Eric A. Eagleton, 29, detail how the men managed to walk away with ammo from military stores and why: They were preparing to form a terrorist cell of like-minded far-right extremists, and practicing with weapons as preparation.
The men’s social-media posts following the 2020 election attracted the attention of the Inland Northwest Terrorism Task Force, especially after Sanger posted that “taking our government back” would involve violence, including the seizure of the U.S. Capitol and an apparent massacre (“no trial or chance of escape”) for its occupants.
“They defrauded our election system and are getting away with it,” Sanger wrote. “That means this system has run it’s course. People have to die,” according to an 11-page criminal complaint unsealed in federal court this week.
The task force sent an undercover agent working with the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations to engage Sanger in conversation and was told that Sanger “is actively recruiting in hopes of forming a local cell of like-minded individuals.”
That agent met up with Sanger and Eagleton last month to go target shooting, and was told by Eagleton that members of Fairchild’s Combat Arms Training Management section routinely stole “up to 3,000 rounds” of ammunition daily and distributed them amongst themselves. Eagleton also was voluble to the agent about his hatred for Jewish people and his antisemitic beliefs.
While out shooting targets at nearby Fishtrap Lake, the men were observed by Air Force Office of Special Investigations agents using ammo from cans that appeared similar to those used for combat arms training. The numbers on the packaging for the ammo were checked against base records, which showed it had been expended on training exercises some time beforehand.
The case was only the latest involving people still enrolled in the U.S. military preparing to carry out acts of domestic terrorism. Earlier this month, two National Guardsmen in Columbus, Ohio, were arrested after describing their violent plans on social media.
Thomas Develin, 25, a seven-year veteran of the National Guard, was arrested on April 1 after the Ohio National Guard alerted Columbus police about his social media posts. An employee of security firm Sahara, Develin’s job included serving as a security guard at the Columbus Torah Academy.
On Discord, he posted photos of himself posing with a semi-automatic handgun while working at CTA and added threatening text: “I’m at a Jewish school and about to make it everyone’s problem,” and followed that with a post warning that “the playground is about to turn into a self-defense situation.”
Develin also threatened to shoot parents when they came to pick up their children from school, according to the complaint. He is currently being held on $1 million bond.
“He was immediately terminated by the security firm Sahara, and Sahara worked closely with law enforcement to assist in the arrest of this man and another,” explained a letter from leaders at Temple Beth Shalom of New Albany. He was also suspended from the National Guard.
That second man was Develin’s friend, James Ronald Meade Jr., 25, who was arrested outside his home April 4 in Chesterhill, Ohio. Authorities started looking into Meade’s Discord posts after being alerted to Develin’s threatening comments.
Meade, according to court documents, threatened to fly a plane into the Anheuser-Busch plant in north Columbus, and is now charged with making a terroristic threat to the plant. Meade told Develin and others that he wanted to hijack a plane and crash it into the plant, adding: “I hope they got a terrorism insurance plan the day before.”
These are just the latest additions to a growing litany of cases that make the threat of military insiders radicalized into extremist belief systems abundantly clear: Not only do they have access to weapons, materiel, and training that enhance their ability to pull off terrorist violence successfully, but their placement in positions of trust and authority heighten their ability to inflict serious harm, including to national security.
The Fairchild arrests raise the specter of another Air Force staff sergeant in California, Steven J. Carrillo, who shot two federal officers at an anti-police protest in Oakland in late May 2020, killing one, and then a week later gunned down a sheriff’s deputy seeking him in connection with the Oakland case. Carrillo, who trained with a group of fellow far-right “Boogaloo” civil-war enthusiasts that included other veterans, hoped that authorities would blame the protest shootings on antifascists.
Another recent incident involved a group of Marines, some currently serving, who created a terrorist action cell in Idaho that engaged in training and preparation to take down the region’s electrical grid. The purpose of their scheme was to create a diversion that would enable to conduct assassinations against “leftist” targets, including local and regional politicians.
The spread of this kind of extremism within the ranks of the military has been enabled in large part by the Pentagon’s longstanding policy of looking the other way when their recruits indulge in far-right politics—such as flashing the white-nationalist “OK” sign—in public. Social media, particularly Facebook, has played a key role in the radicalization process, manifested in the group pages for elite military forces riddled with far-right extremism and ethnic hatred.
Studies, in fact, have shown that the presence of a military background among far-right extremist criminals who engage in violent acts has skyrocketed since 2017, suggesting that Donald Trump’s presidency may have encouraged this kind of infiltration by the radical right.
In January, the Pentagon’s inspector general (IG) announced that his office would be examining how effectively the military has screened for extremists during recruitment since early 2021. A December report from the IG’s office already noted that the Pentagon’s response to the issue is notably lacking in a commitment to gathering, tracking, and reporting data.
“Until the [Department of Defense] establishes DoD-wide policy for tracking and reporting allegations of prohibited activities, the DoD will continue to have inconsistent tracking of disciplinary actions for participation in extremist organizations and activities; problems identifying and collecting data from multiple, decentralized systems; and difficulty validating the accuracy of the data,” the IG wrote.
Morning Digest: Trump pick for Nebraska governor attacks woman who accused him of assault in new ad
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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
● NE-Gov: With less than two weeks to go before Nebraska’s Republican primary for governor, self-funding businessman Charles Herbster is running a TV ad that takes the remarkable tack of directly attacking one of the eight women who’ve accused him of sexual battery, state Sen. Julie Slama, claiming her allegations are part of a scheme orchestrated by a rival candidate, Jim Pillen, and termed-out Gov. Pete Ricketts.
Just last week, Herbster sued Slama for defamation, to which Slama, who’s not on the ballot this year, responded with a counterclaim seeking damages for sexual assault. Her attorney responded to the new ad by saying, “Charles Herbster is solely responsible for the harm he inflicted against Senator Slama, and he will answer for it in court.”
Herbster’s female narrator begins by charging that Pillen and Ricketts are telling the same sort of lies that, she claims, were also leveled at Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. The spot, which doesn’t mention Slama by name but instead refers to her as “Herbster’s accuser,” says Slama, as well as her husband and sister, received jobs from Ricketts. The voiceover adds that “even after the supposed incident, she kept contacting Herbster” and says Slama “even invited Herbster to her destination wedding.” Pillen’s attacks, the spot concludes, are “built on lies.”
The commercial does not, of course, mention any of the allegations leveled against Herbster by not just Slama but also seven other women, all of whom went unnamed out of fear of retaliation when they spoke with the Nebraska Examiner. All accused him of groping and other forms of sexual assault in incidents from 2017 through this year.
After the explosive report came out, Ricketts denied he had anything to do with the allegations against Herbster, telling Politico that it’s “ridiculous to think that somebody could coordinate eight different people to talk to a reporter about this.” Slama, who has accused Herbster of reaching up her skirt at a 2019 event, has said that the online wedding invitation Herbster is now highlighting was sent to him accidentally, adding that she hadn’t even been aware of the mistake until he RSVPed.
Herbster’s ad comes just before Donald Trump is set to hold a rally for him on Friday outside of Omaha. Trump, Politico writes, responded earlier this month to the allegations against Herbster by “relay[ing] word that Herbster wasn’t fighting back hard enough, backing plans for Herbster to hold a press conference aggressively denying the allegations and pushing back at his adversaries”—advice Herbster, much like Kavanaugh, evidently took to heart. A recent poll found Herbster locked in a close May 10 primary against Pillen and state Sen. Brett Lindstrom.
Senate
● OH-Sen: The USA Freedom Fund PAC, which is aligned with the Club for Growth and supports state Treasurer Josh Mandel in Tuesday’s GOP primary, is airing a new TV ad where they go after venture capitalist J.D. Vance for saying in February right before Russia invaded Ukraine, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” calling it a betrayal to the thousands of Ukranian Americans in Ohio. The narrator also uses Vance’s bestselling memoir about growing up in Ohio, Hillbilly Elegy, to bash him as a liberal elite for “trashing Ohioans as hillbillies” and selling his story to Hollywood.
Governors
● AZ-Gov: Former Democratic state Rep. Aaron Lieberman has put $562,000 behind his debut ad ahead of the August primary, which features the candidate speaking next to a literal dumpster fire as a metaphor for the state of the race. Lieberman berates GOP frontrunner Kari Lake for appearing at rallies with neo-Nazi sympathizers and castigates Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs for having been “found guilty of racial discrimination” by two federal juries, which Lieberman follows by pledging to focus on solving problems such as fixing schools and creating jobs as he uses a fire extinguisher to put out the blaze.
Lieberman’s claim against Hobbs references a matter from last decade when Hobbs led Democrats in the state Senate, which involved a Black woman named Talonya Adams who claimed that she was fired from her position as a Senate staffer in 2015 after complaining about being paid less than her white male colleagues. After a 2019 verdict in favor of Adams had been tossed out, a jury last year awarded Adams $2.75 million in damages, which a judge later reduced to $300,000 plus back pay.
Hobbs wasn’t a defendant in Adams’ lawsuit, though she had testified that she had been part of the group that fired Adams after it lost “trust and confidence” in her, but her campaign had defended Hobbs in response to the verdict by pointing out that “the Republican majority chief of staff acted as … the ultimate decision-maker regarding the termination” of Adams’ employment. While Hobbs had offered an initial apology after the 2019 verdict, she extensively apologized in a statement late last year that acknowledged the discrimination against Adams and conceded that her initial response to last year’s verdict was “unnecessarily defensive” and “fell short of taking real accountability.”
This matter has proved divisive for Hobbs, who started off the race as the frontrunner, and it led to some prominent Black leaders in the state calling on voters not to support her. However, Hobbs retains the support of other influential groups, and she continued to lead her primary rivals in first quarter fundraising. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how the ordeal will affect her standing with Democratic primary voters.
● GA-Gov: The conservative firm Guidant Polling and Strategy has released a survey on behalf of a group called the Georgia Leadership Coalition that looks at the May 24 GOP primary and finds Gov. Brian Kemp holding a huge 57-31 lead over former Sen. David Perdue. This release follows on the heels of a few other pollsters similarly finding Kemp solidifying his long-running advantage and surpassing the 50% threshold needed to avoid a June runoff.
Meanwhile, a federal judge on Thursday ruled that Kemp’s allies at Georgians First Leadership Committee, which is not subject to contribution limits, cannot raise money unless and until Kemp wins the Republican nomination; there is no word yet if the governor will appeal. The same judge said back in February that Georgians First could not continue to air ads to help Kemp in his nomination fight against former Sen. David Perdue because Perdue and other non-incumbents cannot create their own leadership committees unless and until they win their primary.
● HI-Gov, HI-02: Punchbowl News reported Thursday that freshman Rep. Kai Kahele has told senior Democrats that he’ll run for governor rather than seek re-election to the House. Kahele, who has drawn negative attention in recent weeks for casting numerous proxy votes from outside D.C., declined to comment when asked.
The Democratic nomination contest to succeed Kahele back home in Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District, which Biden would have carried 64-34, was getting underway before this news broke, though. Former state Sen. Jill Tokuda, who had been waging a second bid for lieutenant governor four years after narrowly losing that primary, announced Wednesday that she was now running for Congress.
Honolulu City Council Chair Tommy Waters also filed fundraising paperwork earlier in the week, though he didn’t commit to anything: Waters instead said, “I am still strongly considering running should the seat be open.” State Rep. Pat Branco expressed interested in a campaign for an open seat as well earlier in the month, and more names will almost certainly surface should Kahele confirm his plans. Hawaii’s filing deadline is in early June, later than all but five other states, and the primary will be in August.
About 40% of the 2nd District, which was barely altered by redistricting, is located in Honolulu, the state’s capital and by far its largest community. The remainder of the constituency is made up of Hawaii’s more rural Neighbor Islands, the term for every island apart from Honolulu’s Oahu. Kahele, who lives on the island of Hawaii (nicknamed the Big Island), is the state’s first member of Congress from one of the Neighbor Islands.
● IL-Gov: The Democratic Governors Association has reportedly now spent a total of $3.5 million here, which has included ads opposing Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin in the June Republican primary.
● NM-Gov: Just two days after state Rep. Rebecca Dow released the first negative ad in the June Republican primary by labeling former TV news meteorologist Mark Ronchetti a “Never Trumper,” Ronchetti fired back with his own spot criticizing Dow. Ignoring her charges against him, Ronchetti calls Dow a phony for her tough talk on immigration, citing roll call votes to claim she voted for two bills to give stimulus checks and job licenses to undocumented immigrants.
● NV-Gov: Donald Trump has endorsed Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo in the crowded June Republican primary to take on Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak. Lombardo, unlike some of the other candidates Trump has backed, was arguably already the favorite to advance, as he both ended March with a wide cash-on-hand edge over the rest of the GOP field and posted leads in the only two polls we’ve seen in months.
● OH-Gov: Former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley has received an endorsement from Rep. Joyce Beatty, who represents a very blue seat based around Columbus, days ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
House
● GA-07: The state AFL-CIO has backed Rep. Lucy McBath in her May 24 Democratic primary battle against fellow Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux.
● IL-17: Rockford Alderman Jonathan Logemann has earned an endorsement from the state AFL-CIO ahead of the crowded June Democratic primary for this open seat.
● KY-03: The crypto industry-aligned Protect Our Future PAC has dropped a hefty $972,000 in support of state Senate Minority Leader Morgan McGarvey ahead of the May 17 primary to succeed his fellow Democrat, retiring incumbent John Yarmuth, in this Louisville district. McGarvey, who has Yarmuth’s endorsement, already had a huge resource advantage over his one intra-party rival, state Rep. Attica Scott, even before the PAC came to his aid: McGarvey finished March with a $952,000 to $26,000 cash-on-hand lead, and no outside groups have spent on Scott’s behalf yet.
● NY-01: New York State United Teachers, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association, has endorsed Jackie Gordon, who was the 2020 Democratic nominee for the old 2nd District.
● NC-04: The Huffington Post reports that AIPAC’s United Democracy Project is spending $720,000 to boost state Sen. Valerie Foushee in the May 17 Democratic primary, which is considerably more than the $294,000 amount that we’d previously seen. Foushee, as we wrote earlier in the week, is also benefiting from $861,000 in support from Protect Our Future PAC, a group funded by crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. The only outside support that Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam has received, by contrast, is $139,000 in get-out-the-vote aid from the Working Families Party, while no major groups have spent yet on behalf of singer Clay Aiken.
● NC-11: GOPAC, a Republican super PAC that says it hasn’t endorsed anyone in this race, is out with a survey from Differentiators Data that shows freshman Rep. Madison Cawthorn leading state Sen. Chuck Edwards 38-21 in next month’s Republican primary. That’s a notable drop from the 49-14 edge Cawthorn enjoyed in a previously unreleased March survey from the firm, but it’s still above the 30% mark that the incumbent would need to clear in order to avert a July runoff. The only other poll we’ve seen is a March internal for Edwards that found him trailing 52-20.
● OH-09: State Rep. Craig Riedel and state Sen. Theresa Gavarone are each running new commercials ahead of the Tuesday Republican primary to face longtime Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, though considerably more viewers may see the former’s messaging. That’s because AdImpact, per NBC, says that Riedel has outspent Gavarone $290,000 to $43,000 on ads.
Riedel begins his spot with a narrator asking, “What’s worse than the radical left and their destructive agenda? Weak, spineless RINOs who play right into their hands.” That second bit is accompanied with a graphic of Gavarone along with Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, though the narrator never explains why the state senator should be linked with three of Trumpworld’s most hated Republicans. The rest of the ad argues Riedel is an ardent conservative who will “protect election integrity” and stands “with President Trump all, not just some, of the time.”
Gavarone, by contrast, turns to 5th District Rep. Bob Latta, who represents just over half of the newly gerrymandered 9th District, in her spot. Latta tells the audience that “conservative leaders know we need” Gavarone to join his fight against Democrats and commends her as the only candidate supported by Ohio Right to Life.
● TX-15: 314 Action has publicized a survey from GBAO that shows businesswoman Michelle Vallejo beating its endorsed candidate, Army veteran Ruben Ramirez, 49-37 in the May 24 Democratic primary runoff. The group almost certainly released those unfavorable numbers because the poll finds that Ramirez ultimately takes the lead after respondents hear about his progressive beliefs.
● CLF: The Congressional Leadership Fund, a major Republican super PAC with close ties to GOP leaders in the House, announced its first wave of fall TV ad reservations on Thursday, totaling $125 million. The move comes a month after its Democratic counterpart, the House Majority PAC, kicked off the 2022 cycle with $86 million in bookings.
The reservations cover 48 different media markets, comparable to HMP’s 45, and most overlap. The main exceptions are in Florida, New York, and Ohio, all states where HMP did not book any time on its initial list. One district CLF has set its sights on that HMP did not address, though, is Connecticut’s 5th, which is held by Democratic Rep. Jahanna Hayes and would have voted 55-44 for Joe Biden.
Conversely, CLF hasn’t secured any ad time in Georgia’s 2nd, a potentially vulnerable Democratic seat represented by Rep. Sanford Bishop that Biden also would have carried by a 55-44 margin. However, both of these super PACs will add to and adjust their reservations many times before Election Day, and they’ll be supplemented by bookings from the parties’ official campaign arms, the DCCC and NRCC.
As with HMP, CLF lists its reservations by market, since that’s how airtime is booked, so we’ve put together our best assessments as to the districts each reservation is targeted toward. As you’d expect, given the midterm environment, most are targeted toward Democratic seats. Note that many markets cover more than one potentially competitive House contest, such as Raleigh, North Carolina, which includes both the 1st and 13th Districts. Ultimately, we won’t know which races these funds will get used for until the money is actually spent—and just like a reservation at a restaurant, a booking for TV time can always be canceled.
Mayors
● Chicago, IL Mayor: Rep. Mike Quigley announced Thursday that he would not challenge his fellow Democrat, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, in next year’s officially nonpartisan race. Lightfoot currently faces opposition from Alderman Ray Lopez and wealthy perennial candidate Willie Wilson.
Ad Roundup
Dollar amounts reflect the reported size of ad buys and may be larger.
- NC-Sen: Carolina Senate Fund (R) – pro-Pat McCrory (R), anti-Ted Budd (R), backed by $330,000
- FL-Gov: Charlie Crist (D) – anti-Ron DeSantis (R-inc), backed by $21,000
- AL-05: Casey Wardynski (R)
- AZ-01: Elijah Norton (R)
- CA-03: Scott Jones (R)
- GA-10: Mike Collins (R)
- MT-01: Monica Tranel (D) – anti-Ryan Zinke (R)
- NC-04: Clay Aiken (D)
- NC-13: Wiley Nickel (D)
- PA-12: Summer Lee (D)
Highlights from The Downballot: Confusion in New York over redistricting and a May primary overview
This post was originally published on this site
This week on The Downballot, cohosts David Beard and David Nir analyzed a bizarre ruling by New York’s top court striking down the state’s new congressional and state Senate maps; explained why Utah Democrats chose not to endorse a candidate for Senate at their convention last week; discussed the Michigan GOP’s decision to back Trump-endorsed Big Lie proponents for state attorney general and secretary of state; and celebrated the results of the French presidential runoff.
Daily Kos Elections editor Jeff Singer joined for the second half of the show to talk about the huge slate of primaries coming up next month. Though primaries started back in March with Texas, the 2022 election cycle really gets underway in May.The coming month brings primary elections in 13 different states, and that includes Texas, which is holding runoffs.
You can listen below, or subscribe to The Downballot wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also find a transcript for this week right here. New episodes come out every Thursday!
In New York this week, the Court of Appeals struck down both the new map for the U.S. House and for the state Senate, saying that state legislators simply lacked the power to pass these maps in the first place. The court based its ruling on an amendment to the state constitution that voters approved in 2014 that created a body called the Independent Redistricting Commission. As Nir put it, “It’s not independent at all. Its members are mostly appointed by politicians in the legislature. It’s still called the IRC.”
Furthermore, the IRC failed to produce actual new maps, and the constitution says that new maps have to come from the IRC and those maps have to be passed on a bipartisan basis—creating and impasse on the panel. Nir explained that the process ended up completely jumbled because the commission could not agree on any maps, leaving New York with none. Thus, the state legislature said, “Well, okay. There are no maps. New York has to have new maps, and so we are going to pass new maps,” which they did. Those maps unquestionably favored Democrats, but this was the process that lawmakers believe was left to them.
“It’s not at all clear to me how on earth lawmakers are supposed to force an evenly-divided partisan body, like the Independent Redistricting Commission, to quote, ‘make more meaningful attempts at compromise,’ but that seems to have been the only recourse that was left to them. A dissenter said that was really nonsense and said that this view would leave the legislature hostage to the IRC. That’s essentially what the court seems to be okay with—the majority; this was a 4-3 opinion. It was really bitterly divided. There was a lot of nasty sniping between the majority and the dissenters in the footnotes,” Nir added.
Lacking a timetable, all the commission said was that the maps should be passed with “all due haste.” This, however, throws New York’s politics into turmoil, because the filing deadline passed several weeks ago, and in New York, filing is not just a mere formality.
This “really bizarre” outcome has left Democrats extremely unhappy. As Nir put it:
No one has any idea what the next set of maps will look like, but those also will be subject to appeal. It’s certain that New York’s primary will be delayed. The Court of Appeals said it probably has to take place in August, but there’s a whole other round of litigation that’s going to have to be resolved over the maps drawn up by this special master. Right now, New York’s maps are a total black hole, and there is just no predicting what’s going to come out the other side.
Beard added his perspective on the importance of keeping these maps from a politically strategic standpoint, even if they are gerrymandered:
To take it from a New York-focused point of a view to a national point of view just for a minute, the end result will probably be less gerrymandered maps for the state of New York, which in a vacuum, one could think, “Oh, well, that’s a good thing. Gerrymandered maps are bad,” but when you look at it from a national perspective, what you see is that, in New York, a gerrymandered map to favor Democrats was struck down by a Democratic court, but in Ohio, Republican gerrymandered maps were struck down once by a Republican court. They allowed the Ohio legislature to go back and draw another gerrymandered map and now those maps are being litigated. The expectation is that the primary will go ahead and the general will go ahead with these current gerrymandered maps. The Republican legislature was allowed to do a second round of gerrymandering and just pass it through, at least through 2022.
Next, the pair turned to the Utah Senate race. Delegates to Utah’s state Democratic Convention voted on Saturday not to run a candidate, an unusual move that one would not expect a state party convention to do. What they decided instead is to back conservative Independent Evan McMullin’s campaign. “What you’ll have as a result is Republican Sen.—incumbent—Mike Lee running on the Republican ticket and you’ll have Independent Evan McMullin. You’ll have no Democratic candidate, but you’ll have it at least publicly known that the Democratic Party is backing McMullin’s Independent run,” Beard explained.
In conservative Utah, Democrats seem to have accepted the idea that they have little to no chance of unseating Republican Sen. Mike Lee. For that reason, while it may seem unusual, Utah Democrats are purposefully taking a very narrow path to try to get through with McMullin, so that at least the person who hopefully wins will be closer to the center—“a little bit more pro-democracy, if not a Democrat, somebody who doesn’t like Mitch McConnell, who has promised not to vote for Mitch McConnell for majority leader,” Beard said. “On the off chance he wins and we end up with some sort 50-49 Senate plus McMullin, it’ll be a really interesting scenario to investigate.”
Nir and Beard moved the conversation to Michigan, where concerning news emerged from Michigan Republicans’ convention last weekend. This was a convention to choose their nominees for state attorney general and secretary of state. In both cases, two Trump-endorsed candidates who are Big Lie proponents defeated more traditional choices backed by the establishment. The GOP went with Matthew DePerno in the race against Attorney General Dana Nessel and Kristina Karamo in the race against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Both Nessel and Benson won close races in 2018. In their roles as the top elections official and the top law enforcement official in the state, they have played an important role in making sure that elections are run safely and soundly, whereas the candidates preferred by Trump, obviously believe that the only legitimate elections are ones that Republicans win and would unquestionably use their powers, if elected, to overturn any Democratic electoral victories.
This is a key part of their strategy, Nir noted:
That’s particularly crucial, given that Michigan will, almost certainly once again, be a major swing state in 2024. This is a reflection of a broader pattern we are seeing in other states, where really extremist candidates, Big Lie supporters, are running for secretary of state. They want their hands on the election machinery. We’re seeing it in Arizona. We’re seeing it in Georgia, as well. DePerno, who is the candidate for attorney general, he shot on to the scene in 2020 after the elections, when he claimed that there was election fraud in Antrim County, that’s in northern Michigan, a small conservative community, because the vote totals initially showed Joe Biden leading. It turns out it was just a clerical error. It was quickly fixed. Trump did, in fact, win by a big margin in the county, but of course, none of that ever matters in the MAGA world, so DePerno has continued to press his claims that election fraud—which again didn’t exist—wound up causing Trump to lose the state of Michigan to Joe Biden.
Lastly, in Europe, two sets of elections have yielded positive results, as Nir and Beard explained.
In France, the presidential runoff took place between centrists Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen. Macron won with 59% of the vote to Le Pen’s 41%, a fairly significant defeat, a little bit larger than the polls were showing just before the election—which had been about 10 points—but was a significant narrowing from their 2017 race, which Macron won 66% to 33%. There was a real increase for Le Pen and her vote five years later, which Beard thinks is concerning:
We also saw that turnout was 72% out of registered voters, which was a low for French presidential runoffs dating back to 1969. More than three million voters went to the polls and cast a blank ballot in protest of the two candidates who were available. I mean, it’s safe to assume these were primarily left-wing voters who were unhappy with the options of a centrist and a far-right candidate.
The difference here, obviously, is that Macron is definitely less popular now than he was in 2017. There was much more of a sense that a lot of people voted for him purely to keep Le Pen out, rather than out of real energy on his behalf. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out in the legislative elections. It’s a similar system, where all of the races go to runoffs between the top two candidates a couple of weeks later, just like the presidential system was.
Slovenia also recently held elections to determine whether right-wing Prime Minister Janez Jansa would receive another term. He was defeated by a political newcomer, Robert Golob’s Freedom Movement. Golob is the former executive of a state-owned energy company who took over, in a friendly way, the country’s very newly-constituted Green Party, renamed it the Freedom Movement, and led it to victory all in the course of about a year.
At this point, Beard and Nir welcomed Singer onto the show to analyze some sloppy GOP food fights in Senate races in Alabama, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; a pair of primaries in Oregon and Texas where progressive challengers are seeking to oust irritating Democratic moderates; and the first incumbent-vs.-incumbent matchup of the year, thanks to West Virginia losing a House seat.
Singer opened by sharing what he thought were upcoming main events, including the Ohio Republic Senate primary this upcoming Tuesday for an open seat in the wake of Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s retirement. With no fewer than five candidates running, Singer highlighted the major candidates:
It’s been a mess. Donald Trump recently decided to weigh in. He endorsed venture capitalist J.D. Vance, who is best known as the writer of Hillbilly Elegy. Vance, like plenty of Republicans in 2016, was a vociferous Trump critic, who at one point mused he might even vote for Hillary Clinton. He since reinvented himself as a born-again MAGA conservative, but he’s still taking plenty of flack for his past statements. We have also former state Treasurer Josh Mandel. He was the Republican nominee for the other Ohio Senate seat in 2012. He lost to Sherrod Brown. Mandel has the support of the Club for Growth, a really deep-pocketed conservative organization that’s been particularly aggressive about going after Vance for what he said about Trump.
”It’s really a Etch-A-Sketch. We have no idea who … Vance is going to end up beating. If he does win, that’ll at least be interesting to watch,” Beard said.
Moving on to Nebraska, where the winner of the Republican primary is probably going to go on to win the general election, Singer pointed out three major candidates. This race is open because Gov. Pete Ricketts, who hails from one of the most influential donor families in the Republican Party, is termed out. As he explained,
Ricketts is backing Jim Pillen, who is a University of Nebraska regent and a pig farmer. Donald Trump is endorsing wealthy businessman Charles Herbster, who was at the Jan. 6 rally that came right before the attack on the Capitol, although Herbster says he wasn’t there for that. Then, you have a third major candidate: state Sen. Brett Lindstrom, who is more moderate. He’s backed workplace protections for LGBTQ people, and he voted to override Ricketts’ video on a gas tax and death penalty repeal.
There was a recent poll that showed a very close three-way race, with Lindstrom for the first time with a small lead—but very little polling here. The race took a really unexpected turn two weeks ago when eight women, including a sitting Republican state senator, accused Herbster of groping them and other forms of sexual assault. Unsurprisingly, that’s not shaken Trump’s confidence in him in the least, but we’ll see if that affects things on May 10.
The 2nd congressional district in the northern part of West Virginia will bear witness to the first incumbent-versus-incumbent primary of the whole cycle between Alex Mooney and David McKinley. As West Virginia is a very red state, whoever wins is almost certainly going to prevail in November. Singer thinks that there is a lot to see here. The two congressmen, while having voted the same way most the time, have diverged on two very important issues recently: McKinley supported creating a Jan. 6 commission; Mooney very much didn’t. McKinley was one of the few Republicans who voted for the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill; Mooney very much did not. McKinley’s backed by Gov. Jim Justice; Mooney has Donald Trump and the Club for Growth in his corner.
The GOP primary for North Carolina’s Senate seat, which is another open seat race, has also become another truly nasty affair. Nir asked Singer to provide a rundown of the situation, and Singer had this to say:
North Carolina’s Senate seat is open because Republican Sen. Richard Burr is retiring. There are three major Republicans running. There is former Gov. Pat McCrory—you might remember him from 2016, when he narrowly lost reelection over the backlash over the transphobic bathroom bill. Here’s how far Republican politics has gone to the right: McCrory, if anything, is the less far-right candidate. That’s because Ted Budd, who is Trump and the Club for Growth’s candidate, is also in.
You also have former Congressman Mark Walker, who has some connections with the religious right. Walker has trailed very badly in the polls, but kept running, even though Trump tried to convince him to run for a House seat. There’s some fear that Walker could cost Budd some much-needed votes, but while McCrory went into the year with leads in even a Budd internal poll, the recent numbers we’ve seen have shown Budd well ahead. Things very much appear to have changed. Maybe it was Trump pushing Budd extra hard. Maybe it was the Club for Growth, which has been spending very heavily here on Budd’s behalf, making the difference. Maybe people are just tired of seeing McCrory’s face. The polls show Budd’s really taking control of the race. McCrory’s fired back. He’s run ads that show Budd saying nice things about Putin and commending him as pretty smart when he invaded Ukraine, but so far that doesn’t seem to be moving the needle the way he needs it to.
“Regardless of who wins, Democrats will be nominating former state Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley, who doesn’t really face any opposition in her primary,” Nir said.
The trio discussed yet another primary in North Carolina for a House race in the far western part of the state, which involves Madison Cawthorn. Singer elaborated that Cawthorn might have essentially shot himself in the foot by getting greedy and switching districts:
[Cawthorn’s] greatest liability might be [that he] essentially tried to switch districts. Last year, the Republican legislature adopted a congressional map, put most of Cawthorne’s existing seat in a different western North Carolina district. Cawthorne, he gets a little greedy and says, ‘I’m going to run for an even more Republican seat that I barely represent in the Charlotte area.’
No one’s quite sure why he did that. Might have just been to increase his statewide name recognition, might have been just to show what a big dog he was, but it really backfired, because that map no longer exists. That map got struck down. The map that was adopted by the state Supreme Court no longer gave Cawthorne any real option, except to run at home. Most incumbents would be quite okay with that, but Cawthorne’s constituents, they felt that he just tried to straight-up abandon them. That could be an even bigger liability than all the coke and orgy allegations in the world.
Cawthorn how has seven opponents, and with North Carolina’s runoff rules, that could bode well for him. In many states, Singer explained, if you take less than a majority of the vote, you’re in a runoff. In North Carolina, though, a second round happens only if no candidate takes more than 30% of the vote. “Even if a large majority of voters want Cawthorne gone, if he clears 30% and gets more votes than anyone else, he’s renominated, which is pretty good, considering how red this district is,” he added.
Cawthorne’s main opponent right now appears to be state Sen. Chuck Edwards, who has the endorsement of Sen. Thom Tillis. Edwards has been running ads, saying, “I’m not some vapid celebrity, unlike my opponent. I’m just a hardworking, dependable conservative. If 31% of the voters here want a vapid celebrity, that’s pretty good for Cawthorne.” Edwards even released a poll just last month that gave Cawthorne this huge 32 to 20 advantage. A Thom Tillis-aligned super PAC has also been running ads against him. “We’ll see if that moves the needle, but even Edwards knows he’s starting well behind,” Singer said.
Turning their attention to Oregon’s 5th District, which is held by moderate Democratic Congressman Kurt Schrader, Singer noted that Schrader has annoyed progressives for—among many other things—saying last year that the idea of impeaching Donald Trump was like a lynching. He apologized and voted to impeach Trump anyway, but the damage was done. Schrader’s one and only Democratic primary opponent in the seat, which takes up some of the Portland suburbs in Central Oregon, is Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who would be the state’s first LGBTQ member of Congress and is running to Schrader’s left. McLeod-Skinner argues that Schrader is dependent on special interests. And big names are getting involved: Joe Biden recently endorsed Schrader. “Biden, in many ways, is not like Trump. One of them is he does not really take part in competitive Democratic primaries that often, so it’s pretty notable he’s weighing in here, even for someone who’s tried to obstruct his agenda,” Singer pointed out.
In the next district over, Oregon’s 6th District in the Willamette Valley, there is a large field of candidates, but only two of the nine Democratic candidates have really gotten a lot of attention. One of those candidates is Economic Development Advisor Carrick Flynn, who has benefited from over $7 million from Protect Our Future PAC, which is a group that’s funded by cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. Additionally, Democrat’s House Majority PAC, which exists to keep Democrats in the majority and generally do not intervene in primaries; yet they’ve spent $1 million to help Flynn. Singer says it is a cause for concern, and provided this overview of the situation:
That’s caused a lot of consternation here. Why would they get involved in a primary for a seat that, since Biden won at 55 to 42, really shouldn’t be that competitive? It doesn’t look like Flynn is such a great candidate, that the group needs to intervene here. It’s caused a lot of angst. The other candidate who’s got plenty of attention here is state Rep. Andrea Salinas, who would be the first Latina to represent Oregon in Congress. She has an endorsement from Gov. Kate Brown, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has also spent $1 million on her. That’s far less than what Flynn has benefited from, but it’s still quite a lot. It’s still going to help her get her message out. There are seven other candidates here. So far, none of them have benefited from anything like the endorsements the other two have, but we’ll see. It’s a very, very strange race.
The trio swung back to the eastern portion of the United States to hit the third major state that has a primary on May 17: Pennsylvania. Here, there are competitive Democratic and Republican primaries in the Senate race. “How do you see both of these going, Singer?” Nir asked.
Singer thinks things are clearer on the Democratic side, and that the GOP race has been an “expensive mess”:
On the Democratic side … We have three major candidates, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who’s the tattooed, six-foot-nine candidate who has this big fan base. He’s had an advantage in every poll we’ve seen against Congressman Conor Lamb, who won a very closely-watched special election in western Pennsylvania in 2018, and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, who would be the first Black and gay senator to serve, ever.
To try to break Fetterman’s lead, a pro-Lamb super PAC has spent heavily on ads that—relying on a since-corrected media report—falsely claims that Fetterman was a self-described socialist. He’s not. The group had to pull the ad and edit it. The PAC seems to think that this is a good line of attack to argue Fetterman’s unelectable, because they’ve attacked Fetterman for applying for the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America, even though Fetterman explicitly said in their questionnaire he’s not a socialist. We’ll see if that does him any damage, but so far it doesn’t seem to be, at least in the primary.
The GOP race, on the other hand, is such an expensive mess. Trump recently decided to endorse TV personality Mehmet Oz, as in Dr. Oz, who has very weak ties to the state; he didn’t even vote there in 2020. Oz has been self-funding much of his bid, but so has former hedge fund manager David McCormick and his allied super PAC. They’d been running ads, attacking one another. McCormick is portraying Oz as this vapid celebrity. He’s benefited from recent footage of Oz kissing his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There are other candidates. We don’t have any recent polls, but it’s really been this demolition derby between Oz and McCormick.
Nir raised the issue of another demolition derby going on in the governor’s race in Pennsylvania. There, the current Democratic incumbent is term limited, and Democrats have rallied around state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, but the GOP primary is once again shaping up to be very messy.
With nine candidates running, Singer said, “anything can happen here,” especially given that not all of them have much money or name recognition:
One of the worst candidates in the nation—and that’s saying a lot—is state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who, among many other things, tried to help Trump steal the state after the 2020 election, and on Jan. 6, he was filmed passing breach barricades at the Capitol. Mastriano also recently addressed a QAnon-aligned group, although he claims not to have anything to do with it.
Mastriano has plenty of competition, though, on the far-right. You have former Congressman Lou Barletta, who lost the 2018 Senate race really badly to Democrat Bob Casey. Barletta, back in the early 2000s, was this virulent anti-immigration crusader when he was mayor of the small town of Hazleton. He has said he was a Trump conservative before there were Trump conservatives. You also have wealthy businessman Dave White, who has used his resources to outspend everyone else. He lost his election in eastern Pennsylvania to the Delaware County Council back in 2017, but he’s still a big presence, thanks to his wealth.
Nir then informed listeners that Pennsylvania is a state that does not use runoffs, so whoever wins this primary could do so with a very small share of the vote.
“Moving on to May 24, we’ve got three states holding a primary, along with the Texas runoffs. That’s Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia. Let’s start off in Alabama, where the Republican Senate primary is taking place. We’ve talked a little bit about that one. That’s where Trump withdrew his endorsement of Mo Brooks. What’s going on there now?” Beard asked.
Singer offered this update:
Brooks is still limping along. The Club for Growth is still on his side … Brooks really is in bad shape.
There are two other major candidates to watch. There’s Katie Britt, who ran the state’s Chamber of Commerce. She’s the former chief of staff to retiring Sen. Richard Shelby. Shelby’s going all in for her. He’s using his money to finance super PACs to help her.
Then there’s Army veteran Mike Durant, who was held prisoner in Somalia for 11 days in 1993 in the incident that was dramatized in the movie Black Hawk Down. He’s been self-funding. He’s all over the air. We’re waiting to see if Trump’s going to take sides, now that he’s abandoned Brooks, or if he just lets this one play out.
Alabama’s another state where you do need to win a majority to avoid a runoff. With three major candidates, or two and a half if you count Brooks, and a bunch of pretty minor contenders on the ballot, it’s very unlikely anyone’s going to win the first round outright. This one will probably go to a second round almost certainly [in a June 21 runoff].
Nir then highlighted what is happening in Georgia, home to a whole host of compelling primaries, the top of the ticket of which is the GOP battle in the Georgia governor’s race. “This one might’ve gotten more ink than any other, but it seems like it’s possibly about to fizzle?” he suggested.
Singer thinks that it very well could:
Brian Kemp, the governor—he rode to victory in the 2018 primary after Trump endorsed him. Trump’s not so fond of him anymore, especially after Kemp refused to help him steal the state two years later. Trump’s gone all in for former Sen. David Perdue, who lost last year’s runoff very narrowly. The problem for Perdue, it seems, is that Kemp still is liked by a majority of the base. Kemp is anything but a moderate. He’s fervently conservative on pretty much everything.
Perdue’s trying to still get to his right. He’s been focusing pretty much entirely on how he’s Trump’s candidate, and he’s been proclaiming the Big Lie at every chance he gets … but it doesn’t seem to be working. Every poll we’ve seen has shown Kemp either at or very close to the majority he’d need to avoid a runoff also on June 21. Perdue’s sticking with his strategy. Maybe the polls are wrong, but if they’re not, it’s looking like Trump’s going to take a very big black eye here. Whoever wins this one is going to take on Stacey Abrams, who was the 2018 Democratic nominee. She has no primary opposition this time.
“If it is a rematch between Kemp and Abrams, that will certainly be a blockbuster in November,” Beard added.
The trio wrapped up the show in Texas, which is holding runoffs from their March primary. “The highlight, of course, is TX-28, which we’ve covered extensively here already, but what has been going on since the first round down there in south Texas?” Beard asked.
On March 1, conservative Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar led his progressive Democratic primary opponent, Jessica Cisneros, just 49 to 47%—very close, just below what Cuellar needed to avert a runoff. Cuellar’s pretty much stuck with his strategy from the first round. He’s argued Cisneros is weak on public safety. Cisneros is more focused on abortion rights for this round: she’s attacked Cuellar for siding with Texas Republicans to restrict the right to choose. Singer recalled an interesting turn in this race back in January, when Federal investigators raided Cuellar’s home and campaign office, allegedly over his ties to Azerbaijan. Cuellar’s attorney recently said the congressman is not a target in a federal investigation. “No corroboration on this claim from the FBI or Department of Justice, but it hasn’t emerged in campaign ads this time. We’ll see if that changes, but so far Cisneros is focusing on abortion rights,” Singer said.
In closing, he noted that things are far from determined in this race:
While Cuellar has long had a money advantage—and still does—it has narrowed quite a bit. Cisneros is not getting outgunned the way she did back in 2020, when she narrowly lost in the first round. The Republicans also have a race to watch here, but the GOP establishment’s going all in for a former Ted Cruz staffer named Cassy Garcia. Garcia faces Sandra Whitten, who lost a very little-noticed campaign in 2020 to Cuellar … This seat in the Laredo area is a long-time Democratic stronghold, but Biden won it only 53 to 46 in 2020, so it could be in play.
The Downballot comes out every Thursday everywhere you listen to podcasts. As a reminder, you can reach our hosts by email at [email protected]. Please send in any questions you may have for next week’s mailbag. You can also reach out via Twitter: @DKElections.
Cartoon: How to atone for your vile, disgusting thoughts
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House minority leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy has gotten himself into hot water with his Republican colleagues for daring to suggest — soon after the January 6th insurrection — that he was going to tell President Trump he should resign. McCarthy denied that he ever said anything of the sort. Then, of course, an audio recording of him saying that very thing turned up.
The crazy thing is that McCarthy never actually told Trump he should resign, he only told fellow Republicans that he was going to tell Trump to resign. Nevertheless, he is getting pilloried for the mere suggestion. The Republican leader, who hopes to soon become Speaker of the House, has since done everything he can to get back on the die-hard, Trumpist side of the party. Principles? Who need ‘em!
Since this most recent dustup, McCarthy has assured everyone he is all-in with Trump and says the former president has forgiven him. All he needed to do was side with the insurrectionists, undermine democracy, kiss Trump’s ring and sell his soul.
Enjoy the cartoon — and remember, you can help support my work by joining me over on Patreon, where you’ll find prints, audio and behind-the-scene video!
Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Anatomy of a French presidential win
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Adam Gopnik/New Yorker:
The Real Meaning of Emmanuel Macron’s Victory
The fact is that, in difficult circumstances, Macron has managed to win the Presidency twice.[Marine] Le Pen did not get an enormous vote as a far-right extremist; she got an exceptionally large, though losing, share by pretending not to be a far-right extremist. She also benefited enormously from the presence of [Eric] Zemmour, who was so much further right and so unapologetically anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant that Le Pen seemed temperate by comparison. The whole force, and successful burden, of Macron’s remarks as the campaign ended was to remind people who Le Pen really is, and what her family legacy has been—though struggling to differentiate herself from her openly fascistic-minded father, she inherited her position mainly because of her family name—and what she really stood for. He did, and the French understood the reminder.
Walter Shapiro/TNR:
The U.S. Needs an Endgame in the Russia-Ukraine War
So far, Biden and the public are fully behind sending arms to fight Russia. But will the time come for a Putin-appeasing peace treaty?
Still, the quest for total victory in Ukraine is premised on the belief that defeat is the best deterrent. Having forged NATO unity and a surprising degree of economic sacrifice by the Europeans, Putin should be under no illusions that next time will be easier. The Ukraine war is one of those rare times when the morally right course—forcing Russia to retreat from all of Ukraine—is also the approach that appears to make the most strategic sense. There are no certainties in an irrational war seemingly brought on by Putin’s passion to restore the Soviet Union. But America should do everything in its power—short of sending troops—to bring victory parades to Kyiv.
Emily Hoge/Lawfare:
The Legacy of the Soviet Afghan War and Its Role in the Ukrainian Invasion
The unifying feature of the Afghan movement was a sense of victimization. Regardless of their politics, Afghan veterans were united by the feeling that they had been betrayed: by a government that sent them to a fight in a disastrous war, by people who now said they were murderers, by the fact that they weren’t considered heroes in the way that World War II veterans were, and by the lack of recognition and benefits they had expected and that were granted to veterans of other wars. In response, they started founding political and mutual aid organizations built around the idea that veterans of Afghanistan were and should be loyal to each other above all else. They felt they didn’t owe anything to and couldn’t rely on anyone but fellow soldiers of complicated wars—members of an international “combat brotherhood” that included them, veterans of Vietnam, and eventually veterans of the conflict in Chechnya and other “local wars.” Above all, they felt that they couldn’t rely on the state, the Soviet state or later the Russian state, to take care of their needs and would take care of each other themselves.
Yet by 2014, when I sent my email for my PTSD research, Afghan veterans’ groups had become loyal advocates of the government, frequently represented at and organizers of pro-Kremlin rallies. Afghan veterans’ groups gathered and trained volunteers to send to Crimea and the Donbas in 2014. Some Russian “volunteers” wounded there were treated in a sanatorium belonging to an Afghan veterans’ group, according to a 2014 interview with fighters published by a now-defunct Russian-language website. Veterans’ groups were some of the first Russian organizations to establish branches in Crimea after its annexation. Many Afghan veterans, even though they were mostly in their 50s and 60s, went to fight in eastern Ukraine themselves.
William Saletan/Bulwark:
The Most Damning Part of the Meadows Texts
He knew the president was lying. And he kept helping to spread the lies anyway.We’ve known for a long time, based on audits, investigations, and court reviews, that Donald Trump’s allegations about massive fraud in the 2020 presidential election are false. We also know, based on firsthand accounts from Trump’s former aides, attorneys, and political allies, that Trump’s advisers repeatedly told him the allegations were false. That leaves two possibilities: Either Trump is lying, or he’s trying to overthrow the government based on an impenetrable delusion. Take your pick.Now we’re compiling similar evidence against Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff during the election. He, too, knew Trump’s accusations were false. And instead of telling the truth, Meadows helped spread the lies.
The latest evidence comes from a batch of more than 2,000 text messages, revealed by CNN that were sent to or from Meadows between November 3, 2020, and January 20, 2021. Three of the exchanges are particularly instructive: one in early November of that year, another in late November, and a third in early December.
Multiple RNC staffers have spoken to Jan. 6 panel, sources say
House investigators have questions about the party’s messaging and fundraising in the weeks after the 2020 election.Most of the officials who have spoken with investigators are former employees who worked during the 2020 election cycle, including the fraught period between Election Day and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, one of the people said.
That means the committee has more insight than previously known into the Republican Party’s activity in the lead-up to January 6. The interviews underscore the select committee’s interest in how political messaging by the national GOP apparatus — which partnered with the Trump campaign on digital fundraising efforts — may have stoked falsehoods about the 2020 election.
They also want to know just how successful one particular email campaign was at getting users to click through to donation websites. Those emails prompted people to give money based on false claims the election was stolen, the select committee has emphasized.
Committee investigators have said they’re interested in who authorized the RNC’s specific messaging about the election outcome and whether it played a role in stoking the violent mob that breached the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Mark Liebovitch/Atlantic:
Just Call Trump a Loser
His record is clear. Some nervy Republican challenger should say so.
But if Trump does decide to inflict himself on another race, he will enter as the clear Republican favorite, enjoying a presumption of invincibility inside the GOP. This has engendered a belief that anyone who challenges Trump must tread lightly, or end up like the roadkill that his primary opponents became in 2016.
That notion is outdated.
Trump’s bizarre and enduring hold over his party has made it verboten for many Republicans to even utter publicly the unpleasant fact of his defeat—something they will readily acknowledge in private. I caught up recently with several Trump-opposing Republican strategists and former associates of the president who argued this restraint should end. The best way for a Republican to depose Trump in 2024, they said, will be to call Trump a loser, as early and as brutally as possible—and keep pointing out the absurdity of treating a one-term, twice-impeached, 75-year-old former president like a kingmaker and heir apparent. In other words, don’t worry about hurting Special Boy’s feelings.
Most Governors Facing Re-Election This Year Are Quite Popular
Democrats in Rhode Island, Wisconsin and New Mexico have the weakest job approval ratings of governors up in 2022Most governors facing re-election in November are beginning the year popular with voters in their states, according to Morning Consult Political Intelligence quarterly tracking. And despite declines over the past year, a handful of Republicans among them are some of the most-liked governors in the country