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In the standard image displayed at the top of a Daily Kos story, on an average browser, there are fewer than 500,000 pixels. The image used for this story contains exactly 1 million pixels, but you’ll have to open it in another page if you want to see them all. And of course, even then you can’t see them all, not really. They’re just a sea of sameness. Just a mass of dark where there could be light. Just points that show nothing where there could be something.

Like the one million people missing from the United States at this moment due to COVID-19.

There is really no way to show you what that loss looks like. No doubt there are, right at this moment, people making a valiant effort to do so. Somewhere shoes or cups or caps or some other items of everyday life are being arranged carefully on a field. Somewhere signs are being made with a scale and resolution that can genuinely provide some sense of what this number looks like when measured in human beings. Those efforts are, of course, symbolic, but that doesn’t mean they are worthless. Done well, such efforts can deliver a profundity and a physicality that the words “one million” simply don’t deliver.

This is a number so large that it falls into that the same well as those we use when describing the universe. These dinosaur fossils are 65 million years old. This galaxy is 10 million light years away. We nod along when told such things, but we don’t grasp them. Not really. Just like we can’t begin to grasp what it means to have one million people absent from the life of the nation. One million voices lost to the conversation. One million … one million.

Listen to Mark Sumner talk about the pandemic on Daily Kos’ The Brief

This doesn’t seem the time to review the awful decisions that brought us here. Everyone is far too aware of the lies, the distortion, and the sheer indifference. The downplaying of the threat. The false promises of a miracle cure. The long, deliberate effort to undermine the advice of those who saw what was coming.

Instead, try another form of memorial. Spend one minute and imagine it was you. If you’re young, imagine what impact your loss would have to your parents, your siblings, your friends, your coworkers. If you’re older, imagine your absence in the lives of your children or what it would mean to your partner. Take one minute and imagine a you-shaped hole, not just in the events of today, but every day to come. Forever.

Then multiply that by one million.

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On Jan. 6, after the mob receded from the Capitol, Oath Keeper Wiliam Todd Wilson sat in a hotel room less than a mile away and listened as Elmer Rhodes attempted to call someone who he thought could connect him to then-President Donald Trump.

After a violent, failed day, the leader of their extremist network implored this individual to tell Trump that groups like theirs were on the ready to forcibly stop the nation’s transfer of power. 

Related story: Seditious Oath Keeper cries as judge accepts another guilty plea from extremist network

This is the account of William Wilson, the leader of the Oath Keeper’s North Carolina division. On Wednesday, he pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding for his part in what Department of Justice prosecutors have described as a well-orchestrated, fully weaponized conspiracy. 

Oath Keeper William Todd Wi… by Daily Kos

Rhodes has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial. Around him meanwhile, his former compatriots are turning their backs to seek reduced sentences at an increasing clip. Wison’s plea marks the third Oath Keeper to flip and subsequently up the ante on Rhodes who is facing possible decades in prison should a jury convict. 

According to the 45-year-old Wilson, during the call with someone appearing to serve as a Trump intermediary—the individual was not named in court records—Rhodes was left flat.

He would not be patched through to Trump. Wilson recalled that an apparently tense Rhodes turned to his fellow Oath Keepers gathered at the Phoenix Hotel and remarked: “I just want to fight.”

Wilson’s guilty plea is added to those entered by fellow Oath Keepers Joshua James of Alabama and Brian Ulrich of Georgia in the seditious conspiracy case. Wilson, however, was not indicted by a federal grand jury first, unlike James and Ulrich. Instead, he flipped voluntarily. This is a strong indicator that Wilson has been cooperating with the Justice Department for some time.

Statement of Offense Willia… by Daily Kos

Wilson was one of many Oath Keepers from neighboring states who arrived in D.C. in advance of Jan. 6 and prepared to lay siege.

Christine Pelosi talks about the Supreme Court’s leaked decision on Roe v. Wade, and what Democrats are doing now, on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

He arrived in Vienna, Virginia, on Jan. 5 and stowed weapons at the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel including an AR-15-type rifle, a pistol, ammunition, and body armor. Wilson also carried a pocket knife and chemical irritants like pepper spray and brought along a large wooden stick he intended to use as a weapon. 

When coming to Washington, he traveled with Rhodes. During the rioting, Wilson has admitted to charges that he plowed through the west side of the Capitol only to force open the Rotunda doors and usher in a column of Oath Keepers to join the fray. 

The Justice Department argues that this moment had been in the works since right after the 2020 election. Enraged over Trump’s lies about rampant fraud in the results, Rhodes, his indictment noted, wanted Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act.

If he did, the Oath Keepers would have a series of “quick reaction force” teams lined up in nearby hotels with weapons to aid him. 

Between Jan. 4 and Jan. 6 alone, Wilson said he and Rhodes spoke dozens of times with their co-conspirators to finalize their plans. As Wilson made the drive, he texted members of a “DC Op Jan. 6 21” encrypted channel. 

“It’s going to hit the fan tonight!” he wrote. 

In fact, it would take a few more hours yet. 

Once they breached the barricades on Jan. 6, Wilson said he and Rhodes, and others steadily advanced through a chaotic scene. Rhodes told the group they were “in the midst of a ‘civil war” and moving in a stack formation, the Oath Keepers attempted to force their way deeper inside the building. Wilson, at times, filmed the assault. 

When it was over, and Wilson, Rhodes, and other co-conspirators found themselves back at the Phoenix Hotel, the inability to connect with Trump directly seemed to fill the ringleader with a new rage. 

In an encrypted Signal chat seized by prosecutors, Rhodes warned that “patriots entering their own Capitol to send a message to the traitors is NOTHING compared to what’s coming.” [Emphasis original]

After meeting for dinner to discuss the longer fight ahead—what Rhodes allegedly said was going to be akin to the American Revolutionary War—the Oath Keepers agreed to destroy any incriminating evidence and scrub their devices. They went their separate ways. 

Weeks later, after Wilson had returned to North Carolina, he told prosecutors he chucked his phone into the ocean. 

At present, Rhodes and nine other defendants charged with seditious conspiracy have pleaded not guilty. But they are far from the only Oath Keepers involved or charged with crimes connected to Jan. 6. There is another group of seven Oath Keepers and their affiliates also poised to face trial for conspiracy. The Rhodes group goes to trial in July; the second group is expected to go to trial in the fall.

Rhodes has maintained that Oath Keepers who were in D.C. on Jan. 6 and charged with violence went off-script. He has argued that they were there if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, but also to provide security details to Trump’s associates like Roger Stone. 

Related Story: Oath Keeper: I was ready to protect Trump by force

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Boy, did the Republicans of the House Judiciary Committee own the libs in the wake of the leak showing the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

“Still trying to find the word ‘abortion’ in the Constitution,” the committee Republicans tweeted. Quite the devastating argument … if you’ve never read the Constitution.

RELATED STORY: Top Republican talking point on leaked Supreme Court draft is one for the ages

Twitter users were quick to respond with a long, long list of other things that aren’t in the Constitution. Among them:

• Woman or women
• God, Jesus, Christ, Christian, or Bible
• Marriage
• Family or child
• Filibuster
• Nine. Or for that matter any specified number of Supreme Court justices.
• Corporations or corporate personhood
• Student loans
• Police

The list goes on. Some users also pointed to places where the Constitution specifically said that it was not a full and complete list of all rights, starting with the entire Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

But that’s not all:

Whether the House Judiciary Republicans were trying to get attention by making a completely ludicrous statement or were counting on their followers not knowing a damn thing about the Constitution—and both things are equally possible, as is some combination of the two—it’s nonetheless a telling attempt. Being completely dishonest is their only option here. 

On the other hand, at least this tweet wasn’t trying to downplay an actual insurrection by claiming that a leaked document is The Real Insurrection.

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Alito cites racist eugenics theory to support overturn of Roe v. Wade

If SCOTUS kills Roe, many states are poised to swiftly enforce abortion bans, sweeping restrictions

From contraception to LGBTQ rights—Alito’s draft opinion on Roe opens the floodgates

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It doesn’t take the keenest observer to realize that the U.S. Supreme Court’s inclination to reverse Roe v. Wade was just the tip of the iceberg.

If the leaked draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito told us anything, it was that the conservative majority could absolutely pave the way for the loss of other significant and established rulings: same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, and literally any right not explicitly granted in the Constitution by name. And who but Texas Gov. Greg Abbott would step up to seize the worst possible opening.

In an interview on The Joe Pags Show, Abbott said he would consider challenging a Supreme Court decision ensuring that all children have a right to public education—regardless of immigration status, the Austin American-Statesman reports.

RELATED STORY: Texas conservatives have gone rogue, paying Big Lie lackeys to investigate citizens for voter fraud

“Texas already long ago sued the federal government about having to incur the costs of the education program, in a case called Plyler versus Doe,” Abbott told conservative radio host Joe “Pags” Pagliarulo during a phone interview. “And the Supreme Court ruled against us on the issue. … I think we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler versus Doe was issued many decades ago.”

Plyler v. Doe was a 1982 landmark decision making it unconstitutional to deny any student a free public education, whether the student is undocumented or not.

“By a 5-4 vote, the Court found that any resources which might be saved from excluding undocumented children from public schools were far outweighed by the harms imposed on society at large from denying them an education,” the American Immigration Council website reads. 

But for Republican lawmakers such as Abbott, going after the rights of undocumented students to have an education isn’t really the point for the GOP. The point is to go after public education in general. Conservatives are using buzzwords such as “CRT,” “grooming,” and “social-emotional learning” in an attempt to dismantle public education in favor of vouchers for charter schools, religious schools, or private schools.

Conservatives are taking many of their policy cues on schools from a small southern Michigan Christian school called Hillsdale College. It is quite literally at the epicenter of book banning movements, anti-vaxxer and CRT communities, climate-science deniers, and Republican legislation.

Hillsdale College offers school boards and right-wing policymakers a template for conservative curriculums and attacks on liberalism. The institution espouses that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a hoax and that, according to outstanding reporting from Salon, Russian president Vladimir Putin is a “hero to populist conservatives around the world.”

Reversing Roe v. Wade is an attack on reproductive rights, but more than that it’s a gateway drug for a conservative, rigid, and uneducated nation under extremist minority rule.

As for Roe’s reversal as a bellwether for more challenges? Columnist with The Washington Post, Megan McArdle, dismissed any notion that the landmark civil rights decision Loving v. Virginia could be next, tweeting: “Similarly, it is not 1950. In Georgia, 13-14% of Atlanta and Augusta couples are now interracial! Even in the Deep South, outlawing interracial marriage would be a lift… But also, is Clarence Thomas going to vote to let states outlaw his marriage?”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that “gay marriage” and “civil rights” might be next up on the Court’s reversals.

The day after the leak went public, Laurence Tribe, a legal scholar tweeted that if Roe is overturned, the next “predictable” steps would be a “roll back rights to contraception, same-sex marriage, sexual privacy, and the full array of textually unenumerated rights long taken for granted.”

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When the Supreme Court formally overturns Roe v. Wade, abortion will be banned in Louisiana thanks to a 2006 trigger law putting such a ban in place as soon as the court allowed. But that’s not enough for some Louisiana Republicans—they’re pushing a bill that would not just criminalize abortion but treat it as homicide.

The state House Appropriations Committee moved the bill forward on a 7-2 vote despite one of the lawmakers voting in favor admitting that it was unconstitutional, and despite the imminent Supreme Court decision allowing Louisiana’s trigger law to go into effect. “We can’t wait on the Supreme Court,” said the bill’s author, despite the fact that the wait for the Supreme Court is likely to be a matter of weeks.

RELATED STORY: From contraception to LGBTQ rights—Alito’s draft opinion on Roe opens the floodgates

For years, people warning that Republicans really did want to overturn Roe v. Wade and that Republicans really did want to criminalize abortion have been mocked as partisans dishonestly seeking advantage or condescended to as alarmist, but here we go: The Supreme Court is poised to allow states to ban abortion, and Republicans in one state are moving forward with a bill that would allow abortion providers and their patients to be prosecuted for murder.

Co-founder of Sister District, Gaby Goldstein, joins The Downballot to discuss what Democrats in the states are doing to protect abortion rights

A bill criminalizing abortion in this way could also criminalize in vitro fertilization and some forms of birth control—already, many of the people most loudly opposed to abortion describe some forms of contraception, including IUDs and emergency contraceptives, as abortifacients. And even if miscarriage is not technically criminalized, in a world where abortion is a crime, miscarriage will become a highly suspicious event, particularly for already vulnerable people.

And this isn’t a case where the one fringe Republican who all the other Republicans kind of wish would go away introduced a bill that everyone is ignoring. This passed out of committee and it wasn’t even close.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the leaked Supreme Court draft striking down Roe, Republicans are still trying to portray people worried about what comes next as dishonest or hysterical or both. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is circulating a memo, obtained by Axios, calling on Republicans to “Forcefully refute Democrat lies regarding GOP positions on abortion and women’s health care.” Those so-called lies? That Republicans want to take away contraception. That Republicans want to take away mammograms. That Republicans want to “throw doctors and women in jail.”

And yet. In addition to this Louisiana bill calling for doctors and women to be thrown in jail for one of the most serious crimes there is, just a couple months ago, all three Republicans running for Michigan attorney general said that Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court opinion striking down bans on contraceptives for married people, was wrongly decided. As for mammograms, it’s not a common claim in the context of abortion that Republicans are trying to take them away, and while Republicans aren’t yet specifically targeting them, that would fall under the more general category of Republicans making any and all health care difficult to obtain. The Affordable Care Act requires most insurance plans to cover mammograms and other preventive care with no out-of-pocket costs for the patient, and we know Republicans feel about the Affordable Care Act.

This is the next step. Probably all the people who said that Roe wasn’t really in any danger will also line up to say that criminalizing abortion isn’t really going to happen. But this week, we know how to assess their judgment of what’s possible.

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If SCOTUS kills Roe, many states are poised to swiftly enforce abortion bans, sweeping restrictions

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The image above is from Russia’s practice for the upcoming May 9 parade. For weeks, Russian troops have been marching around the town, showing off their parade uniforms and driving some cleaned up, and hopefully decently maintained, vehicles along the streets, prepared to bring Moscow some of that military pomp so beloved of Soviet leaders and Donald Trump. This particular group is being lead by a new T-90M tank. It’s a 2017 update of Russia’s latest in-production tank.

The most notable upgrade to the T-90M is that it carries a new generation of Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA) that’s designed to stop incoming missiles and shells in their tracks. Its armor was specifically designed with the promise that it would stop anti-tank weapons, and even survive multiple incoming weapons striking at the same time. And you can see exactly how well that worked in practice by checking out the T-90M below.

As far as anyone is aware, the number of T-90Ms sent to Ukraine so far would be one. The number still in operation would be zero. Overall, Russia has managed to roll out about 20 of the T-90M upgrades, but the remaining ones are apparently being held close to Moscow at the moment. After all, they’re needed for critical parade duty.

The same goes for Russia’s T-14 Armata. This angular next generation tank has been appearing in Moscow’s May 9 parades since 2015. However, to date it seems that fewer than a dozen have actually rolled off the line, with changes still being made and reported issues with multiple systems. A couple of them have at least been allowed to get dirty.

If a T-14 shows up in Ukraine, don’t take it as a sign that Russia has confidence in its super tank. Take it as a sign of desperation.

After all, Russia is just four days away from a parade where it expected to celebrate its easy victory over Ukraine. Vladimir Putin fully believed that he would be standing in the bleachers, saluting the victors of the in Battle of Kyiv, maybe with a few acolytes from his new Ukrainian puppet government looking on for good measure. Even when it became clear that the parade was not going to feature Volodomyr Zelenskyy being dragged along in chains, there was still the hope that sticking all of Russia’s forces into the Donbas would allow them to overwhelm Ukraine, and push to the borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in time for the parade to start. Only … nope. 

That’s okay. They could always bring in Belarus to drag Ukrainian forces to the west. Or how about a referendum in Kherson that would form a new “people’s republic?” Or an attack from Transnistria? Or Azovstal! They could at least finish off Azovstal and celebrate May 9 by declaring that Mariupol, so beautifully remodeled by Russian artillery, was eager to join up. Azovstal, yes!

On Monday, Russian forces resumed hitting the Azovstal complex with both artillery and hundreds of dumb bombs dropped by strategic bombers. Russian ships in the Sea of Azov joined in, blasting the site with massive shells.

Before the smoke had even cleared, Russian forces attempted to storm the Azovstal complex, entering its maze of tunnels and chambers to root out the unknown number of remaining Ukrainian fighters from their positions deep underground. Throughout the day, there were reports of hand to hand fighting, and “bloody conflict.” On the surface, structures were blasted with explosives and set on fire in an attempt to burn every building remaining on the site to the ground.

For three days now, that fight has continued above ground and underground. Russian sources insisted on Monday that Azovstal was in “its final hours.” But they’ve said that before.

With four more days remaining, it’s entirely possible that Putin will get the only peace he wants in Mariupol in time for his parade: the peace of the grave. After all, there is always gas that could be used against the defenders still evading his forces underground. There is always all that rubble available to block all the potential exits. If Putin wants everyone in the complex dead—including the forces that are not part of the Azov regiment, including the wounded who were not allowed to leave the hospital on the site, and including the civilians still trapped there—he can almost certainly have it.

On May 9, it’s almost certain that some selected “victors of Mariupol”—or some nice, tall, appropriately photogenic roleplayers—are going to join Putin’s parade. And that really would be  appropriate. They can celebrate the butchery of Bucha, the 600 women and children who died in the basement of Mariupol’s theater, the thousands of civilians buried in still-undiscovered mass graves, and the tens of thousands of Ukrainians being enslaved in Russian labor camps a continent away from their homes. They can celebrate the destruction. They can celebrate rape. They can celebrate a second Holodomor.

It’s really the only appropriate theme.

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With the leaked decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and send our country back to the era where we burned witches at the stake for staring at people, a famous old stand-up bit by the late, great, George Carlin is doing the rounds again. It’s a piece about the “pro-life” movement, aka the “anti-abortion” movement, the Christian conservative movement that has continued on in our country for decades and has now successfully dragged our society’s discourse back hundreds of years. Carlin takes on all of the language used and how just the smallest bit of analysis exposes how incoherent, how hypocritical, and ultimately, how clearly false all of the right’s rhetoric around abortion really is.

Carlin talks about the right-wing concept of “conception of life.” How the “fertilized egg” is supposedly a child. After riffing on how problematic and untrue that is, Carlin makes the point that the majority of a person’s “fertilized eggs” end up being flushed out during the menstrual cycle, “So basically what these anti-abortion people are telling us is that any woman who’s had more than one period is a serial killer.” He also reminds everyone that Catholics are some of abortion’s biggest opponents, and also one of the biggest opponents of homosexuals and homosexuality. “Well who has less abortions than homosexuals? Leave these fucking people alone for Christ’s sakes. Here is an entire class of people guaranteed never to have an abortion and the Catholics and Christians are just tossing them aside—you’d think they’d make natural allies.”

Christine Pelosi talks about the Supreme Court’s leaked decision on Roe v. Wade, and what Democrats are doing now, on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

Carlin pokes a bit more at the hypocrisy of the church in this regard, and then zeroes in on the phraseology used by the so-called “pro-life” movement. Specifically, Carlin wants to understand the term “sanctity of life.”

CARLIN: Well I mean, life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history you realize that God is one of the leading causes of death. Has been for thousands of years.

In fact, Carlin argues, so many different religions have used “God” to justify killing others that killing might be considered part of His brand. But beyond all of that, beyond the preaching about the “sanctity of life,” Carlin wants to know: Where do we practice what we preach? Which brings us back to the anti-abortionists:

CARLIN: Boy these conservatives are really something aren’t they? They’re all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn, but once you’re born you’re on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that they don’t want to know about you. They don’t want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no daycare, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you’re pre-born you’re fine. If you’re preschool you’re fucked!

Then Carlin moves on to when conservatives remember you’re alive: when you get to military age and they can send you off to kill and be killed. “These people aren’t pro-life, they’re killing doctors. What kind of pro-life is that? They’ll do anything they can to save a fetus but if it grows up to be a doctor they just might have to kill it.” And finally, Carlin, at his greatest, synthesizes it down to the essence: “They’re not pro-life. You know what they are? They’re anti-woman.”

You can watch the entire eight-minute chunk below. Enjoy.

Warning: some bad language and adult content.

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The Supreme Court, comprising nine unelected people who have reached the most vaunted of public offices in the United States and are there for life, is more or less immune to public opinion. They are untouchable in practice—sure they theoretically could be impeached, but that’s pretty darned unlikely to happen. That could, however, change.

One thing that could change it is the fact that when an extremist majority takes over and starts acting with impunity, the public increasingly distrusts them. When the court acts without even bothering to go about the regular business of hearing and arguing controversial cases before handing down their edicts, they become even more suspect in the public eye.

When they start imperiously handing down highly controversial decisions that are far out of the mainstream of public opinion, they could be putting their own pleasant and long-standing careers in jeopardy. That’s going to depend in large part on whether Democrats mean all the things they’ve said about the Supreme Court and the extreme majority’s intent to gut abortion rights.

Immediately following the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft decision overturning abortion rights published by Politico, Politico had Morning Consult conduct a poll, revealing that a clear majority of voters—57%—want the court to support abortion rights and that 56% of voters believe abortion should be legal in “most” or “all cases.”

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What else? The idea of Supreme Court reform is very popular: 66% strongly or somewhat approve of term limits for justices; 64% want to see an age cap for justices; 73% believe there should be a binding code of ethics for the court; 57% believe the court should be balanced with an equal number of Democrats, Republicans, and independents; and 57% support the idea of expanding the number of justices on the court.

That backs up polling conducted in March by Hart Research for The New Republic. That poll found that 52% of voters “believe that increasing the number of justices on the Supreme Court would strengthen democracy.” And boy, howdy, would it be popular with what generally is thought of as the Democratic base: 67% aged 18-34, 58% aged 35-49; 69% of Black voters, 60% of Hispanic voters; 72% of Democrats; 71% of Biden voters; 83% of liberals and 54% of moderates; 84% of liberal Democrats and 58% of moderate/conservative Democrats.

That’s a lot of people who could use a good reason to make the effort to vote this November, maybe even kick in a few bucks for volunteer hours. That awareness could be creeping in for Democrats. On the Senate floor Wednesday, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took direct aim at the court, and at the Republicans who created it. “Now, we must be clear: this week’s draft decision didn’t come out of nowhere,” Schumer said. “It didn’t materialize in a vacuum. Indeed, the blame for the end of Roe lies primarily right across the aisle here with Senate Republicans.”

“The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe would have never been possible without Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans spending years packing our courts with hard-right judges, judges who came from a list—under the Trump years—that the Federalist Society approved,” he continued. That’s right—he accused McConnell and Trump of packing the courts, which is precisely what happened. 

That’s the right narrative to build. The court has already been packed, it’s been packed with illegitimate justices by illegitimate means, by a perversion of the constitution. By McConnell, for Trump. The voters get that, and they get the solution: expanding the court. We just need the people who can do something about it to follow us.

Yes, there are obstacles in the form of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, but they’re basically daring Chuck Schumer and President Biden to make them irrelevant. That’s another motivating message for the base: Increase the majority and tell those two to take a hike. At this point, they’re not going to do anything to help Democrats—including helping to eliminate the filibuster to pass federal abortion protections—so Democrats might as well start running against them.

So expanding the court is what you might call a winning idea for President Biden and congressional Democrats. It also happens to be the most effective way to get our country back.

Our country. The one that won the Civil War. The one that is composed of a beautifully diverse, albeit unequal, population. The country built by labor unions and women and people of every color who have fought for it, fought for the promise that anyone can be anything in this land. That you don’t have to be a propertied, straight, white man in order to count.

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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

● OH-09: Tuesday’s night’s biggest surprise came in Ohio’s newly gerrymandered 9th Congressional District, when J.R. Majewski, a QAnon-aligned activist who attended the Jan. 6 Trump rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, defeated two Republican state legislators to win the nod to take on 20-term Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur. Majewski edged out state Rep. Craig Riedel 36-31, with state Sen. Theresa Gavarone taking third with 29%, and will now face Kaptur in a Toledo area constituency that would have supported Trump 51-48—a massive shift from Biden’s 59-40 victory in her current district.

Majewski, who previously served in the Air Force, made news in 2020 when he used paint to transform his yard into a giant “Trump 2020” banner, a move that Trump himself praised on Twitter. Majewski soon appeared decked out in a QAnon shirt in an interview with Fox News, and he also showed up on a QAnon livestream sporting related garb. In that appearance, writes the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer, Majewski identified himself as a supporter of the conspiracy cult and said, “I wear this shirt with pride.”

Following Trump’s defeat, Majewski bragged that he was helping bring people to the Jan. 6 rally. That day, he also appeared with a QAnon promoter named Zak Paine, who posted a video with Majewski in which Paine says they’d made it “all the way to the base of the Capitol building” after violence broke out.

When he launched his bid for Congress in the spring of last year, Majewski told the Toledo Blade that he hadn’t fully understood what QAnon was. However, Sommer reports, Majewski has continued to associate with Paine: In February, Majewski told Paine that he was willing to fight Democrats in a “civil war” (as Sommer put it) and even invited Paine to host a November victory party for him less than two weeks ago.

Until Tuesday night, though, Majewski’s prospects of even making it to the general election seemed remote. Riedel and Gavarone each enjoyed considerably deeper networks as sitting elected officials, and they made use of them. Riedel ran commercials touting his support from Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, including one in which he pledged to join Jordan’s Freedom Caucus. Gavarone, who is closer to GOP leadership, sported a notable endorsement of her own from 5th District Rep. Bob Latta, who currently represents just over half the revamped 9th.

However, Majewski proved to be a tougher opponent than either official likely realized. The candidate ultimately raised and self-funded just over $250,000 through late April, which was actually slightly more than the amount Gavarone brought in. (Riedel took in a little more than $435,000, with a large portion of that self-funded.) And while Majewski, unlike his two foes, doesn’t appear to have run TV commercials, he did still generate attention with an online video in which he told his audience he’d “do whatever it takes to return this country back to its former glory” just before cocking a rifle. (After his win, another video surfaced of him in a “Let’s Go Brandon” rap video. We’ve warned you.)

Majewski also benefited from outside support from Drain the DC Swamp, a PAC that spent close to $400,000, mostly on mail and radio ads promoting him and bashing the two state lawmakers. Trump himself gave Majewski a shoutout at a late April rally for Senate candidate J.D. Vance, saying, “We love you, J.R.” (Given Trump’s difficulty in remembering the initials of Ohio Republicans, though, it’s always possible this was just a happy accident.)

Majewski will now go up against Kaptur, who is the longest-serving woman in the history of the House, for a seat that Republicans engineered to try to win for themselves. The congresswoman, though, is hoping that her deep ties to the Toledo area will help her win over enough conservatives to hold on. Even Majewski, when he launched his campaign, acknowledged, “My grandparents supported Marcy Kaptur. My grandmother adored Marcy Kaptur and so did my great-grandmother. They adored her.”

The Downballot

● This week’s dreadful news that the Supreme Court is poised to strike down Roe v. Wade underscores more than ever why progressives must build power at the state level. The Downballot hosts Gaby Goldstein, the co-founder of Sister District, to discuss what Democrats in the states are doing to protect abortion rights; how her organization helps connect volunteers with worthy legislative candidates across the country; and the advice she’s giving campaigns on how to succeed in a difficult political environment.

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also recap Tuesday’s primaries in Ohio, including Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance’s come-from-behind victory in the GOP Senate race, Nina Turner’s fizzled rematch with Rep. Shontel Brown, and a shock win by an openly QAnon rando in a House district Republicans are hoping to flip. We also cast a gimlet eye at last-minute ballot shenanigans in New York State designed to benefit Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Please subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You’ll find a transcript of this week’s episode right here by noon Eastern Time.

Senate

● AL-Sen: Republican Rep. Mo Brooks’ latest ad ahead of the May 24 primary features audio of the 2017 shooting attack on a GOP congressional baseball practice event, where Brooks was present and Republican Rep. Steve Scalise along with several others were seriously injured in the shooting, to claim he was the top target of the “leftist gunman.” Brooks uses the incident to highlight his recent endorsement from the NRA.

● AR-Sen: With just under three weeks to go until the Republican primary, Sen. John Boozman has launched an ad that criticizes his opponent, former NFL player Jake Bequette, as “fake Jake” and argues Bequette opposes Trump’s agenda without providing any specifics. The rest of Boozman’s spot touts how he has been a steadfast Trump ally who supported Trump’s Supreme Court appointees, backed his border wall, and has Trump’s endorsement.

● NC-Sen: Meredith College has released a late-April poll of the May 17 GOP primary, and it finds Rep. Ted Budd holding a 33-26 lead over former Gov. Pat McCrory, with a 34% plurality of voters still undecided. Budd has led in every poll since mid-March, and he would only need to win with a plurality above 30% in order to avoid a potential July runoff.

Governors

● AZ-Gov, NM-Gov: The RGA has unveiled new ads attacking Democrats running for governor in Arizona and New Mexico over immigration.

The Arizona ad is a minute-long spot that claims without evidence that Joe Biden and Democrats favor “open borders” and blames them for a whole host of supposed ills as a result. It then singles out Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Democratic primary frontrunner, over the federal government’s immigration policy known as Title 42. The Trump administration implemented Title 42 in March 2020 to enable immigration officials to quickly deport asylum-seekers, even those with valid asylum claims, to Mexico in the name of preventing COVID-19 outbreaks at border detention centers, though Trump officials had reportedly wanted to implement it even before the pandemic began.

The Biden administration has subsequently moved to revoke the policy later this month now that the pandemic is no longer as dire a threat and once again allow those seeking asylum to remain in the country while officials determine whether they qualify for asylum, which Republicans have fixated on to attack Democrats. Hobbs had initially said in early April that “Title 42 isn’t working,” but she told CNN later last month that Biden should reverse his “rash decision” to lift it because doing so “without a clear plan to secure our border would be a disaster.”

Hobbs’ campaign contends that her statement to CNN was clarifying her earlier position that Title 42 has been ineffective because border crossing attempts increased anyway after Trump implemented it, but the GOP has pounced on it to accuse her of flip-flopping. Local CBS affiliate KPHO reports that Board of Regents member Karrin Taylor Robson, who is running in the GOP primary, has “spent big money” on ads attacking Hobbs over the issue.

Meanwhile, the New Mexico ad is another minute-long spot where the first part is nearly identical to the Arizona ad. The second half chastises Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for withdrawing National Guard troops from the border shortly after taking office and claims she refuses to oppose Biden’s “open borders” policy, an unnamed reference to Title 42. The RGA’s assertion cites the Albuquerque Journal without noting that the article in question is an opinion piece from … Mark Ronchetti, who is the frontrunner in the GOP primary to take on Lujan Grisham.

● FL-Gov: St. Pete Polls’ newest survey for Florida Politics shows Rep. Charlie Crist beating Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried 52-19 in the August Democratic primary to go up against GOP incumbent Ron DeSantis.  

● GA-Gov, GA-Sen, GA-AG: The Republican firm ARW Strategies has released a poll of the May 24 GOP primary, though there’s no word if these numbers were done on behalf of a client. It finds Gov. Brian Kemp turning back former Sen. David Perdue 59-22, while former football star Herschel Walker outpaces state Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black 59-10 in the Senate contest. ARW also has the first survey we’ve seen of the attorney general nomination fight, and it shows incumbent Chris Carr leading his Trump-endorsed foe, Big Lie proponent John Gordon, 25-9, with 66% undecided.

Kemp has posted huge leads in every recent poll even though his party’s leader badly wants him to fall, but the governor enjoys the support of noted Dallas-based painter George W. Bush. Bush will be the “special guest” at a Kemp fundraiser later this month, which seems to be his primary function in today’s Republican Party.

● ME-Gov: New campaign finance reports show that Democratic incumbent Janet Mills outraised her Republican rival, former Gov. Paul LePage, $1.1 million to $455,000 from Jan. 1 through April 26, and she holds a $2 million to $855,000 cash-on-hand lead.

● OR-Gov: Nelson Research has conducted what it says is an “independently conducted poll” of the May 17 Republican primary, and it finds that no one has established a firm lead with less than two weeks to go. Former state House Minority Leader Christine Drazan outpaces former state Rep. Bob Tiernan 19-14, with 2016 nominee Bud Pierce at 10%; a 27% plurality of respondents are undecided. Back in mid-April, the firm showed Pierce edging out Drazan 11-8, with Tiernan locked in a three-way tie for third with just 5%.

● PA-Gov: The Club for Growth hasn’t made an endorsement ahead of the busy May 17 Republican primary, but it’s very much decided it wants wealthy businessman Dave White stopped . The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the group is spending about $1 million in the Pittsburgh media market on a commercial accusing White of “defending a massive tax hike” when he served on the Delaware County Council “even though taxes had already gone up by more than 12%.”

● DGA: The Democratic Governors Association has booked a total of $75 million in fall TV time to defend Democratic incumbents in seven states:

• Colorado: $5 million
• Maine: $5 million
• Michigan: $23 million
• Minnesota: $4.5 million
• Nevada: $10 million
• New Mexico: $2.5 million
• Wisconsin: $21 million

The DGA’s counterparts at the RGA announced its first round of reservations about two months ago.

House

● NC-11: It’s impossible to fit every article of freshman Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s dirty laundry into one 30-second commercial, but Sen. Thom Tillis’ allies at Results for NC do the best they can in their newest spot for the May 17 GOP primary. The ad features footage of Cawthorn being pulled over by the cops; shows a senior staffer placing his hand on the congressman’s crotch; and displays the incumbent posing in women’s lingerie as the narrator says, “Always in the limelight. Now, Madison Cawthorn’s starring in Putin’s state-owned TV.”

After hitting the incumbent for allowing himself to be “used to defend Putin’s war crimes” and voting “against banning the Russian oil funding Putin’s terror,” the narrator accuses Cawthorn of wanting to cut “veterans’ benefits by $80 billion.” The group has spent almost $950,000 with less than two weeks to go.

● OR-05: Center Forward, a super PAC that’s funded by the pharmaceutical industry, has deployed another $650,000 opposing attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner ahead of her May 17 Democratic primary against incumbent Kurt Schrader, which brings its total spending here to just over $1 million.

● SC-01: Republican Rep. Nancy Mace’s newest commercial stars former Gov. Nikki Haley, who is arguably her most prominent supporter, praising the congresswoman’s conservative credentials and taking a not very subtle shot at primary rival Katie Arrington. “She won this seat from a liberal Democrat,” Haley tells the audience of Mace, “and she’ll keep it Republican.”

● TX-28: AIPAC’s United Democracy Project is spending another $416,000 against attorney Jessica Cisneros ahead of her May 24 Democratic primary runoff against conservative Rep. Henry Cuellar, which brings its total to nearly $750,000.

Legislatures

● Special Elections: Michigan Democrat Carol Glanville flipped a dark-red state House seat in Tuesday’s special election, which makes this the first legislative seat either party has flipped nationwide in 2022, against a truly vile Republican foe. Glanville defeated Robert Regan 52-40, with another 8% opting for a write-in candidate, in House District 74, a west Michigan constituency that Trump carried 57-41 in 2020. Over in Georgia, though, Republican Mitchell Kaye turned back Democrat Dustin McCormick 57-43 to defend HD-45, a suburban Atlanta seat that had gone for Biden 50-49.

West Michigan was an unlikely place for a Democratic pickup, but Regan proved to be an especially toxic candidate even by the standards of the Trump-led GOP. Regan, who lost primaries here in 2014, 2018, and 2020, attracted national attention after he narrowly captured the nomination in March when he pushed back on the idea that it was “too late” to overturn Biden’s win. “​​That’s kind of like having three daughters. I tell my daughters if rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it,” he said. “That’s not how we roll. That’s not how we won this election.”

Regan also called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “fake war just like the fake pandemic” and shared bigoted Facebook posts that, among many other things, labeled feminism “a Jewish program to degrade and subjugate white men.” Powerful Republicans ended up abandoning their nominee, with the House Republican Campaign Committee refusing to support him Tuesday. The Michigan Freedom Network, which is close to the DeVos family, also spent $3,500 to promote the write-in campaign of Republican Mike Milanowski.

Glanville’s victory leaves the GOP with a small 57-53 majority ahead of this fall’s elections, which will be fought using the new map drawn up by the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. Both Glanville and Regan are campaigning for a full two-year term in the new HD-84, which is significantly different turf at 54-44 Biden. The new state representative has no intra-party opposition, while Regan is going up against Milanowski and two other Republicans.

Obituaries

● Norman Mineta: Norman Mineta, a California Democrat who spent two decades in the House and later served as U.S. secretary of transportation during the Sept. 11 attacks, died Tuesday at the age of 90. Mineta, whom San Jose’s airport is named for, is largely remembered nationally for his decision to ground every airplane in U.S. airspace following Sept. 11 and for his work afterwards creating the Transportation Security Administration.

Mineta’s interactions with the U.S. government began in a truly awful way when at 10 years old he was detained along with his family and other Japanese Americans in 1942. Mineta was incarcerated in Wyoming, and it was there that he met fellow Boy Scout Alan Simpson; the two became close friends and later served together in Congress when Simpson represented the state in the Senate as a Republican.

Mineta was a Republican himself after World War II, but he’d become a Democrat by the time he became active in San Jose politics. He made history in 1967 when he became the first person of color on the San Jose City Council, and his landslide win in the mayoral race four years later made him the first Asian American to lead a major U.S. city.  

While Mineta had planned to remain in local office, he got a chance to run for Congress in 1974 when Republican Rep. Charles Gubser retired from what was then numbered the 13th Congressional District. The region the 13th was based in, which had recently been christened Silicon Valley, was Republican-friendly turf at the time, but Mineta’s popularity and the national GOP’s woes following the Watergate scandal gave him a huge advantage over former Assemblyman George Milias. The New York Times wrote just before the election that Democrats anticipated a Mineta victory, and he soon confirmed their hopes by winning 53-44.

Mineta was re-elected two years later 67-31 over future Rep. Ernest Konnyu even as, according to data analyst Kiernan Park-Egan, Gerald Ford was carrying his seat 54-46 against Jimmy Carter, and the congressman never had a close race in any of his subsequent campaigns. Mineta was a major supporter of public transportation during his long career in D.C. He also successfully passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided $20,000 to each surviving internee and apologized for their detention, and he stood out as one of the rare members of Congress to support same-sex marriage at a time when it was deeply unpopular nationwide.

Mineta opted to become chair of the House transportation committee following the 1992 elections rather than become Bill Clinton’s secretary of transportation, but he lost that coveted post after the GOP flipped the House two years later. Mineta himself resigned in 1995 to become a Lockheed Martin executive, and Democrats soon got a rude reminder that Silicon Valley was still in the process of becoming reliably blue turf. Former Republican Rep. Tom Campbell decisively flipped Mineta’s seat, now numbered the 15th District, in a special election; Mike Honda, who had also been detained during World War II, retook the constituency for Democrats 2000 when Campbell left to unsuccessfully run for the Senate.

Mineta himself returned to public service in 2000 when he became Clinton’s secretary of commerce, and Bush later kept him in the cabinet as its one Democratic member. Mineta, who mused, “There is no such thing as a Democratic highway or a Republican bridge,” eventually retired as secretary of transportation in 2006.

Election Recaps

● OH-Gov: Gov. Mike DeWine defeated former Rep. Jim Renacci 48-28 in Tuesday’s Republican primary, with another 22% going to farmer Joe Blystone. While the incumbent, whose 2020 pandemic measures infuriated ultra conservatives, failed to take a majority of the vote, Renacci and Blystone each proved to be weak contenders: Renacci, just like in his failed 2018 bid against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, poured millions into his campaign but didn’t spend much of it on ads, while The Columbus Dispatch says Blystone ran an operation that was “messy with high turnover among volunteer staff and incomplete campaign finance reports.”

On the Democratic side, former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley decisively defeated John Cranley, her counterpart from Cincinnati, 65-35. Whaley will be in for a very tough battle against DeWine in a state that swung hard to the right during the Trump era.

● IN-01: Air Force veteran Jennifer-Ruth Green earned the Republican nomination to face freshman Democratic Rep. Frank Mrvan by beating former LaPorte Mayor Blair Milo 47-23. Milo looked like the clear frontrunner when she entered the race in January but Green, who would be the first African American Republican to represent Indiana in Congress, ran to her right and portrayed the former mayor as a “never Trump liberal.” Biden would have carried this northwestern Indiana seat, which only changed minimally in redistricting, 53-45.

● IN-09: Former state Sen. Erin Houchin defeated former Rep. Mike Sodrel 37-26 in the primary to succeed their fellow Republican, retiring incumbent Trey Hollingsworth, in this dark-red constituency in south-central Indiana. Houchin lost to Hollingsworth six years ago, while Sodrel was waging his third campaign to return to Congress (and his sixth overall) following his 2006 defeat after just one term.

● OH-11: Rep. Shontel Brown fended off former state Sen. Nina Turner 66-34 in the Democratic primary for this safely blue seat in Cleveland, a rematch that took place less than a year after Brown beat Turner in an upset. Turner responded to her latest defeat by expressing interest in running for president as an independent in 2024.

● OH-13: Attorney Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, who has Donald Trump’s endorsement, earned the Republican nod for this open seat by defeating underfunded opponent Gregory Wheeler by a 29-23 margin. Gilbert will be going up against Democratic state Rep. Emilia Sykes, who had no primary opposition, in what will likely be one of the fall’s most competitive House races: This seat in the southern suburbs of Akron and Cleveland, which is a radically reconfigured mashup of five old districts, would have supported Biden by a close 51-48.

Ad Roundup

• IA-Sen: Michael Franken (D)
• AL-Gov: Lindy Blanchard (R) – anti-Kay Ivey (R-inc)
• OK-02: Chris Schiller (R)

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