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The Senate is on a razor’s edge heading into next year’s midterms, and all Republicans have to do is net one seat to retake the majority. It’s a time when any ordinary party not controlled by Donald Trump would be lining up a slate of candidates with wide-ranging appeal.

But for Trump, that means littering the GOP field with alleged wife and child abusers. Senate GOP campaign chair Rick Scott demonstrated once again Monday morning that Senate Republicans don’t have the moral fortitude to declare a history of abuse disqualifying.

Sen. Scott of Florida was asked on CNN whether Trump-endorsed Sean Parnell was “still the right candidate” for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat after his estranged wife gave damning testimony last week about Parnell’s alleged patterns of abuse. Scott dodged.

“We’ll see who comes out of the primary,” Scott said. “Facts will come out. We’ll find out exactly what people think. I think what ultimately happens is people are going to look at somebody’s background and say is that the type of person they want and also are they talking about the issues I care about.”

CNN’s Brianna Keilar responded, “But is this the type of person you want? … You have someone whose wife is saying that he strangled them and that he left welts on their child. I think that’s a fair question to ask you if this is the right guy for this job.”

But given a second chance, Scott doubled down on the GOP’s particular brand of spinelessness.

“Brianna, I’m not supporting or opposing people in primary. I am the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee,” Scott offered, using neutrality as a get-out-of-jail-free card for having to demonstrate any basic sense of decency.  

Scott was, in fact, the second Senate Republican who couldn’t bring himself to say the GOP doesn’t support wife batterers or child abusers.

Asked about the abuse allegations last week, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who is vacating the seat, entirely ducked the question. “I really don’t have anything for you right now,” Toomey told HuffPost reporter Igor Bobic.

The GOP establishment has already embraced the candidacy of another alleged domestic abuser, Herschel Walker. None other than GOP Leader Mitch McConnell himself linked arms with the Georgia Senate candidate a couple of weeks ago, bowing to Trump’s wishes on someone who hasn’t lived in Georgia in decades and is dragging a boatload of baggage with him into the race.

Now, Senate Republicans are opening the door to potentially putting another abusive candidate on their roster. According to Scott, if Parnell wins the GOP primary, his alleged history of wife and child abuse is just fine by Senate Republicans. Maybe McConnell will issue a statement asserting that Parnell “is the only one who can unite the party,” just like he did for Walker.

Perhaps having an abusive history will become the GOP’s new litmus test for its candidates.

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In January, American citizen Evan Neumann was allegedly seen punching police officers as he berated them and used a metal barricade as a battering ram while he and a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol. After months on the run, this weekend Neumann resurfaced on television in Belarus announcing his quest for political asylum.

The 48-year-old former resident of Mill Valley, California, appeared on the state-controlled Belarus-1 TV network on Sunday. Neumann told a correspondent he fled the U.S. for Europe this summer after charges against him for his alleged role in the insurrection went public.

The Department of Justice filed six charges against Neumann in March but did not unseal them until July. The criminal complaint included charges of assaulting police, obstruction of law enforcement, unlawfully entering a restricted building, disorderly conduct, engaging in physical violence on restricted grounds, and violent entry on Capitol Grounds.

U.S. Assistant Attorney Brian Kelly initially asked for Neumann’s records to be kept under seal to preserve the integrity of the case. But in June, prosecutors asked a judge to unseal the documents so the public could aid law enforcement in tracking Neumann down.

On the FBI’s “lookout” list by Jan. 27, it was an anonymous tipster and reported “family friend” of Neumann’s who clued authorities into his residence in Mill Valley. An affidavit accompanying Neumann’s charges detailed how in February the FBI’s special surveillance unit watched Neumann travel from his home to the San Francisco International Airport.

FBI special agents stopped him for an interview at the airport, where Neumann admitted to flying to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5 and back to California on Jan. 7. He stopped short, however, of answering any questions about whether he entered any federal buildings during his trip to D.C.

“Neumann admitted that he interacted with law enforcement in Washington, D.C. but declined to elaborate further or to answer if he had any physical engagement with law enforcement,” the previously sealed affidavit states.

In security footage from Jan. 6, Neumann is allegedly seen speaking directly to officers and can be heard verbally abusing them. He suggested to cops that lawmakers inside the Capitol were “gonna kill your fucking children, they are gonna rape them, they are gonna imprison them,” court records showed. 

When officers asked Neumann to back off, he allegedly responded: “No, you can’t tell me what to do, you piece of shit.”

Neumann, appearing to sport a gas mask and a “Make America Great Again” cap in the Jan. 6 footage, was also heard reportedly telling officers that the crowd would “overrun” them.

“I’m willing to die, are you?” Neumann said.

Neumann is also seen numerous times in footage, prosecutors allege, grabbing a metal barricade and using it to aggressively break up a line of officers. Prosecutors said Neumann swung his closed fist at police repeatedly, at times successfully striking them.

The Moscow Times—first to report the interview—said that during Neumann’s spot with Belarus state TV, he was described by the network correspondent as “the same type of simple American whose shops were burned by Black Lives Matter activists.”

That description is steeped in Russian propaganda that has been unleashed in recent years targeting racial and social divisions in the U.S. In 2018, according to a comprehensive report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, since 2016 disinformation agents from the Russian firm the Internet Research Agency (IRA)—funded by Kremlin oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin—have manipulated and infiltrated online social spaces and specifically spaces where Black Americans talk politics, elections and civil rights, or advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Similar manipulations of online social media platforms unfolded ahead of the 2020 U.S. election. In an investigation by CNN, it was revealed at length how Russian troll farms were erected in places like Ghana and Nigeria and how locals were hired to agitate racial animus online.

Notably, the 2018 committee report found no single group of Americans was targeted by IRA operatives more than Black Americans.

In the minutes-long interview where the Belarus-1 chyron reads “Goodbye, America!” just below his face, Neumann claims he fled there because he was being stalked by security officials in Ukraine. He also claimed he was subjected to wild boar, snakes, and an unforgiving swamp-like crossing when he moved from Ukraine to Belarus.

In the segment, Neumann recounts how he flew from the U.S. to the European Union in March, feigning that he was on a business trip. He then took a train from Switzerland to Germany where he eventually secured a car. He then drove from Germany to Poland in short order and by mid-March, he settled in Zhytomyr, Ukraine. After staying for just four months in a rented apartment, he told Belarus-1 he fled to Belarus at night on foot. A report by ABC in July indicates Neumann sold his U.S. home in Mill Valley last April—just after charges were filed—for a substantial $1.3 million.

There is no extradition treaty between the U.S. and Belarus, meaning someone convicted of a crime in one nation does not have to be forcibly returned to another to face trial or sentencing.

A representative for the FBI did not immediately return request for comment Monday.

This is does not appear to be Neumann’s first foray into so-called political revolution. Department of Justice footage from Jan. 6 featured in Neumann’s criminal complaint highlights how he wore a scarf commemorating Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution during the Jan. 6 attack. Neumann also listed himself as an attendee at the Orange Revolution in 2004 and 2005. That revolution involved a series of intense protests in response to the overturning of the rigged election of Viktor Yanukovych.

Yanukovych, notably, rose to power in part because of his backing from ally and Russian President Vladimir Putin, but also thanks to the heaps of political consulting offered to him by none other than Paul Manafort, former President Donald Trump’s onetime campaign chairman-turned-convict-turned-pardon-recipient.

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The House passed the first part of President Joe Biden’s big economic and infrastructure plans Friday in a 228 to 206 vote. That’s the $1.2 trillion bipartisan hard infrastructure bill negotiated in the Senate with Republicans—and Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, though mostly with Republicans. Now that it has passed, they are of course giving all the credit to the former guy. Which is what any Democrat gets for trying to be “bipartisan” with the crew of Republicans and which was totally predictable because it’s exactly what they did when the bill passed in the Senate back in August.

The bill provides about $550 billion in new spending—the other half of the $1.2 trillion total is already authorized money lumped in. It’s heavy on current fossil fuel-dependent infrastructure like roads and bridges, but does add in broadband, water, and energy system investments. It will, according to the Congressional Budget Office, add $256 billion to the deficit over the next decade. This is a key number to keep in mind as the Senate deficit peacocks who wrote this bill screech about the deficit when it comes to passing the other part of Biden’s agenda, the Build Back Better (BBB) plan. The Joint Committee on Taxation determined this plan will raise about $1.5 trillion in revenue and not add to the deficit long term.

The hard infrastructure bill, or BIF as it has become to be known, has $110 billion for surface transportation—roads and bridges—with $40 billion of that for bridges; $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations; $39 billion for transit; $55 billion for water systems; $1 billion for Biden’s original $20 billion plan to “reconnect” communities of color; $66 billion for freight and passenger rail; $65 billion for broadband; $25 billion for airports; $73 billion to modernize the energy grid; and $21 billion toward environmental remediation.

What is in this bill is good and necessary and does much of the great stuff the White House is claiming on transit, electric vehicles, rebuilding ports and airports, clean drinking water, and climate change resilience programs. All of these areas are seeing the largest investments ever.

Which is absolutely necessary because of decades of neglect, but which is also insufficient without the follow up of the BBB budget reconciliation bill, and which is why those two bills had been linked throughout the negotiating process. Biden’s promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to half of 2005 levels simply cannot happen with this bill alone.

The bill as described by Beth Osborne, director of advocacy group Transportation for America, follows “the old fashioned approach to change, which is to create a little bitty program to change a problem that we’ll continue to create with a much larger pot of money.” She points to another example: the slashing of President Biden’s critical $20 billion plan for “reconnecting” communities of color that were bulldozed through in previous roadbuilding sprees. It’s now $1 billion. “I would suggest you look back at other $1 billion programs created throughout the history of the reauthorization process and see which ones grew into anything mighty,” Osborne said.

The historic investment in clean drinking water in BIF is also inadequate by itself. A report from E2 Environmental Entrepreneurs on lead pipes details the limitations. The bipartisan bill puts $15 billion into a revolving fund for water utilities to replace lead pipes, but only if they want to—they won’t be required to do so. That $15 billion would replace just 25% of the lead pipes in the U.S. E2 estimates that the full $45 billion Biden called for originally would “create and support 56,080 jobs annually for 10 years, or a total of 560,800 job-years.”

The $550 billion in climate remediation in BBB is essential to reaching Biden’s goals and starting to future-proof the nation against climate change. It includes tax credits for clean energy production and the manufacture of clean energy technology components. It increases tax credits for the purchase of electric cars and clean technology like solar panels, as well as their manufacture. The original mix of carrots (tax credits and grants) and sticks (fines and penalties for delaying the transition to clean energy production) is pretty much all carrots now. However—and this is fairly big—the legislative text the House drew up based on Biden’s framework includes a fee for oil and gas operators per metric ton of released methane.

This is a historic achievement by President Biden and the Democrats and should be celebrated as a step along the way to achieving his goals—but only a step, because it’s only part of the job done. Without the profound investments included in the BBB—even as constrained as it has become in the hands of Manchin and Sinema—it’s not going to be enough.

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=If you’re wondering like the rest of us how an inane, straw man issue such as critical race theory (CRT) could be the fulcrum to catapult GOP darling, Glenn Younkin, into the governor’s seat… well, let’s just say, it wasn’t white suburban Karens, toiling away on their own in some grassroots effort. It was a carefully crafted scheme by GOP operatives funded by billionaire donors such as Koch Industries working as puppet masters and using white, scared parents as the mouthpieces. 

According to reporting by The Daily Beast, several of Virginia’s anti-CRT groups were found to have backing by lobbying firms, Koch groups, former Trump officials, and The Federalist Society. 

These deep pocket groups used Virginia’s non-degreed Karens as the face of CRT (a curriculum that isn’t even taught in their kids’ schools) because these GOP-backed entities knew they could count on their PTA moms who’ve historically been there to fight the good fight against Black and brown people, and this was an issue they could easily unite them around.  

Virginia’s anti-CRT efforts were conducted primarily by rabid dog Ian Prior—former press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee, former comms director for the Karl Rove super PAC American Crossroads, and a former official in the Justice Department under former one-term President Donald Trump. Today, Prior works as a GOP operative behind Fight for Schools and launched Parents Against Critical Theory (PACT), even though he claims to be just another concerned Virginia parent. 

Prior’s group, Fight for Schools, is backed by 1776 Action, a nonprofit led by former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Dr. “Uncle” Ben Carson. 

Prior’s name doesn’t appear on the PACT’s website, the group was supposedly founded by Scott Mineo, another Loudoun County, Virginia parent, and another mad dog who has welcomed money from 1776 Action. 

“Our kids have the right to develop their own opinions, free from indoctrination and school-sanctioned bullying. Instead of opening young minds, Loudoun County school leaders are policing them. This is not education; it is coercion,” Mineo told Washington Examiner in June. 

Prior has appeared on Fox News at least 15 times, and according to Media Matters, “Prior currently runs his own political communications consulting firm, is co-founder of a political newsletter, and is a senior counsel and spokesperson for Unsilenced Majority, ‘a grassroots conservative advocacy organization opposed to cancel culture in all forms’ helmed by other Republican and right-wing media figures.”

The Daily Beast reports another significantly funded group is the Free to Learn Coalition, which is apparently connected to the Concord Fund, also known as the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), a nonprofit run by Leonard Leo, a big bucks conservative activist, and Federalist Society executive. JCN, run by Carrie Severino, a former law clerk of Justice Clarence Thomas,  spent at least $10 million in ads to support the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett. Severino is a staunch pro-lifer and helped to draft legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act. 

Then there is the group Parents Defending Education, founded by Nicole Neily, who also happens to be a Koch network alum, formerly working at the Independent Women’s Forum and as the president of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, founded in 2009, and identified by Columbia Journalism Review as “the Koch’s leading media investment to date.” 

Patti Hidalgo Menders is president of the Loudoun County Virginia Republican Women’s Club. But Menders is not just another suburban mother of six fighting against Virginia’s equity and inclusion curriculum in schools, she’s also a GOP strategist. 

“The folks who fund this also oppose public education, the distribution of public goods, and the power of collective action. It ties up in a nice package with a big bow: To undermine democracy,” Maurice Cunningham, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, told The Daily Beast. 

The GOP has found its dupes again, only this time it’s a bunch of racist scared suburban moms, who are fighting a desperate battle against having little Johnny and Karen from being labeled as racists after they learn about their violent and colonizing history in this nation. Of course, all of this is just smoke and mirrors, because once again, the Republican party is using these people and their fear simply to gain power.

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Really, how hard is it to wear a mask? The first civil war in this country was fought over the profound moral tragedy of chattel slavery. If a second one is fought because Donald Trump didn’t want to smear his topcoat of Sherwin-Williams Burnt Sienna, I will be officially depressed.

Of course, Trump started this culture war when he politicized the virus. Instead of using the crisis to unite the nation behind sensible public health measures, he employed it as a wedge to unify and rile his political base; the following story is just one example of the all-too-predictable result.

Ricki Collin and Amy Hall, two Portland, Oregon-area anti-maskers, were arrested in Eugene, Oregon, on Wednesday after Hall engaged in an old-timey donnybrook with the owner of a local cookie establishment—because law and order are only important if you’re using them as a cudgel to marginalize people of color, apparently.

Watch:

As you can see from the video, these two parboiled clown sharts walked into the Crumb Together bakery in Eugene, Oregon, with their camera rolling, clearly ready to rumble over mask requirements.

In August, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown reinstated the state’s indoor mask mandate amid the surge of the COVID-19 delta variant. So far, Oregon has done a pretty good job of mitigating COVID-19, ranking 46th in the nation in COVID-19 deaths per capita. That’s likely at least partly due to the mask requirements and the buy-in of the state’s residents, at least in heavily Democratic municipalities like Eugene, Portland, and Salem. 

But, hey, there’s no success great enough that it can’t be belittled by little people with little minds. 

After Collin and Hall walked into the bakery, Hall confronted the owner while Collin filmed the conversation. The owner asked the maskless couple to leave. Eventually, Hall shoved the owner, which prompted the shopkeeper to retrieve a baseball bat from behind the counter. Then they fought like hell as the owner shouted, “Get the fuck out!”

But here’s the best part: Convinced they had the moral high ground, Collin and Hall tracked down the Eugene police to show them the video they’d taken, hoping to get the baker in trouble. Instead, they were promptly arrested, because they were breaking the law. Oops!

How sad. Hall was taken away in cuffs. Let’s all shed a single briny tear.

Shockingly, this isn’t the pair’s first run-in with the law over statewide mask requirements.

KEZI-TV, Eugene:

Collin has an open trespassing case in Washington County and is charged with seven misdemeanors, including trespassing while in possession of a firearm.

He has reportedly posted several videos to a YouTube channel in which he is seen confronting law enforcement and others about mask mandates.

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by Sravya Tadepalli

This story was originally published at Prism.

On Tuesday, a record number of voters cast their ballots using ranked-choice voting, a system that allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. For the first time, ranked-choice voting determined elections in 31 municipalities, up from only seven last year. The kinds of communities that have adopted ranked-choice voting are wide-ranging, including large, diverse cities like San Francisco; small, predominantly white communities like Basalt, Colorado; and several towns in Utah. Through ballot initiatives, residents in Ann Arbor, Michigan; Westbrook, Maine; and Broomfield, Colorado, voted on Tuesday to adopt the ranked-choice voting system in future elections.

“We are really excited about the outcome in Broomfield,” said Emma Donahue, political director for RCV Colorado and campaign manager for Better Ballot Broomfield. “Ranked-choice voting stops vote splitting, allows communities to have a bigger say in their elections, and people feel they don’t just have to pick the candidate who has the most money, but the candidate that has their values.”

Ranked-choice voting has grown in popularity across the country in recent years, with 42 jurisdictions presently implementing some version of it. In most ranked-choice voting systems, voters rank candidates for elected office in their order of preference. If one candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes in the first round, that candidate is elected. If no candidate gains a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are reallocated to the voters’ second choice candidates. This process goes on until one candidate wins a majority.

One of the most popular arguments in support of ranked-choice voting is that it gives more opportunities for independent and third-party candidates to win elections. In both the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections, a substantial number of left-leaning voters cast their ballots for the Green Party, creating a “spoiler effect” that reduced the total number of votes for the Democratic candidate and in some states, handed victory to the Republican. In a ranked-choice voting system, people could vote for a third-party candidate without fear of vote-splitting. If the third-party candidate is unpopular, they are eliminated and a third-party voter’s second choice is considered in the automatic runoff. Ranked-choice voting allows voters to vote for third party and independent candidates without fear of inadvertently contributing to the election of an ideological opponent.

Recent research found that California cities that adopted ranked-choice voting had more candidates of color running for office and more women candidates of color winning. A study by FairVote, an organization that advocates for ranked-choice voting across the country, found that voters of color tended to rank more candidates than white voters, and candidates of color benefitted from the system at a higher rate than white candidates.

In Ann Arbor, where residents overwhelmingly voted in favor of adopting ranked-choice voting on Tuesday, community members expressed excitement about the possibility of having more inclusive and less partisan elections.

“Most [supporter] comments have been about breaking the two-party system and having more selection in their options,” said Pat Zabawa, communications director for the Rank MI campaign. “Some were unsure, but on the other hand they were pretty excited to hear about it being implemented in the primaries.”

Ann Arbor actually briefly adopted a ranked-choice voting system in the 1970s, after a Republican candidate won a three-way race in 1973 without a majority. When the system was adopted in 1975, Ann Arbor elected its first Black mayor. The city dropped ranked-choice voting soon after that election, but proponents have used this example to show its potential for diversifying elected officials. According to FairVote, approximately 41% of winners in 1,422 ranked-choice voting elections have been people of color.

“The win, especially the high margin, means that we have renewed energy to advocate for ranked-choice voting in other cities throughout the state,” said Zabawa after hearing the election results. “I personally am very excited to learn that so many people in the Ann Arbor community support improving its elections with ranked-choice voting and aren’t afraid of improving their democracy in this way.”

Experimenting with ranked-choice voting

The New York City mayoral election primary in June was the city’s first use of the ranked-choice voting system, generating one of the largest and most prominent tests in the country. With a field of 13 candidates to choose from, voters had the opportunity to rank up to five candidates on their ballots. Eric Adams, who garnered around 30% of first-choice votes in the Democratic Party mayoral primary, went on to secure the nomination, eventually winning the mayoral election. New Yorkers turned out in record numbers for the mayor’s race, and 95% of voters said the ranked-choice voting system was easy to understand. 

While cities like San Francisco and Minneapolis adopted the system for municipal elections in the 2000s, Maine became the first state to adopt ranked-choice voting in 2016, after people cast their votes in favor of the new system. The initiative process was led by grassroots organizers who wanted to preserve Maine’s tradition of independent and third-party candidates, while also ensuring that candidates had the support of the majority. At the time Maine adopted ranked-choice voting, nine of the state’s last 11 governors had won with only a plurality.

Several opponents launched legal challenges to the system in the following years, arguing that it was unconstitutional, but lawsuits were repeatedly rejected. Maine has now used ranked-choice voting for multiple state and federal election cycles.

More than 50 jurisdictions across the country are expected to use ranked-choice voting in their next election.

Sravya Tadepalli is a freelance writer based in Oregon. Her writing has been featured in Arlington Magazine, Teaching Tolerance, the Portland Tribune, Oregon Humanities, and the textbook America Now. Sravya is also a 2018 Harry S. Truman Scholar.

Prism is a BIPOC-led non-profit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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Big Bird. Mr. Potato Head. Dr. Seuss. 

This is not a list of potential Christmas gifts for your young child—it’s a list of things Republicans have gotten very publicly worked up about over the past year. And the reason they’ve gotten so worked up about those things is obvious: to create a distraction from the things Democrats are talking about. Like infrastructure. Voting rights. An expanded child tax credit. Paid family leave.

Republicans keep doing this because it works for them. When Dr. Seuss’ estate announced it would stop publishing six of the children’s author’s books because of their overt racism, one poll found that more Republicans had heard “a lot” about Dr. Seuss than about the House passing the American Rescue Plan, with its $1,400 direct payments to most people and expanded child tax credit that has gone on to dramatically reduce child poverty.

So when Sen. Ted Cruz attacks Big Bird for tweeting about getting his COVID-19 vaccination now that children aged 5 to 11—an age range that canonically includes Big Bird—are allowed to be vaccinated, he knows what he’s doing. It’s a practiced move fully intended not just to cement the Republican opposition to public health and politicize a lifesaving vaccine, but to distract from the passage of a bipartisan infrastructure bill he voted against and from Democratic efforts to pass a series of other very popular policies to help U.S. families and workers and in particular children.

That’s why Cruz isn’t the only one. He’s been joined in attacking Big Bird’s vaccination by a series of right-wing media personalities and attention-seekers, including Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who really went for maximum notoriety by tweeting: “Big Bird is a communist.” 

This is a ploy. Republicans stir up anger about something extremely minor, but involving children’s culture and some form of progress that Republicans are fighting—although in this case, it’s not even anything new, since Big Bird was shown getting a vaccination all the way back in 1972—and count on their base to get emotionally involved. The same people who love to scream about liberal tears and fragile snowflakes are depending on blind rage about children’s books and TV shows and toys to get themselves electoral advantage.

Meanwhile, Democrats struggle to get media attention on things like an expanded child tax credit that reduced child poverty by 29% almost immediately upon going into effect. Even when CNN covers the financial struggles of a family that is benefitting from the child tax credit, the network doesn’t mention it. We’re talking about children being fed and clothed adequately who were not before, but also struggling families getting to take their first beach weekend in years or sign their kids up for the extracurricular activities their classmates have gotten to do all along. Real changes in children’s lives that will make a lifelong difference to their health and educational outcomes and are bringing joy now, and Republicans are controlling the media story with whining about Big Bird getting vaccinated and Mr. Potato Head becoming do-what-you-want-with-it Potato Head and six Dr. Seuss books that few people were reading anyway ceasing to be published because of their really nasty racism.

Democrats are doing the work. They’re not always doing it as effectively as we might wish, for sure. They’re struggling to get around every single Republican and a small handful of their own who are committed to blocking anything that might strengthen U.S. workers or struggling families or fight climate change. But they’re trying. Republicans are showboating in an effort to distract, and the substance of their showboating distractions, time and time again, boils down to “asshole and proud of it.” That’s it. That’s what Republicans want to govern on. Tax cuts for the wealthiest and just plain being an asshole. Truly these are the worst people on earth. And yes, they’re proud of it.

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The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

Leading Off

● CO-03: Democratic state Sen. Kerry Donovan became one of the highest-profile victims of redistricting this year when she announced on Friday that she was dropping her bid against Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District.

Under the old lines, Donovan’s family ranch in the town of Edwards was contained within the 3rd District, but in the new map adopted in September by the state’s redistricting commission and recently greenlighted by the state Supreme Court, her home was moved into the 2nd, which is represented by Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse.

Of course, members of Congress don’t have to live in the districts they serve, but redistricting posed even greater problems for Donovan: The old 3rd voted for Donald Trump by a difficult but still surmountable 52-46 margin, while the new 3rd would have given Trump a wider 53-45 win. In addition, while approximately three-quarters of Donovan’s state Senate district was located in the previous iteration of the 3rd, only about half would be now, meaning fewer voters would be familiar with her.

Campaign Action

Donovan didn’t specifically cite any of these issues in explaining her departure, but she did castigate the commission’s maps, saying they “failed to recognize the complexity of rural Colorado and instead divided communities, protected incumbents and ignored Coloradans’ voice.”

Prior to leaving the race, Donovan had raised huge sums thanks to Boebert’s notoriety, showing up at the top of the list every quarter this year and clocking in a total of $1.9 million as of the end of September. After the commission settled on a final map, though, she suspended her fundraising operation, which still has $614,000 in the bank, at the start of this month. That money could be saved for a future campaign, returned to donors, or given to charity.

Several other Democrats remain in the race, including activist Sol Sandoval, veterinarian Debbie Burnett, and state Rep. Donald Valdez, though none have yet capitalized on the burning desire among progressives to oust Boebert in the way Donovan had.

Redistricting

● IA Redistricting: Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed Iowa’s new congressional and legislative maps into law on Thursday, a week after lawmakers passed them almost unanimously. The congressional plan creates three red-leaning districts and one safely Republican seat, which we outlined previously.

Despite the wide bipartisan support it received, the map could face a legal challenge. Iowa law requires the drawing of “reasonably compact districts” that are “square, rectangular, or hexagonal in shape, and not irregularly shaped.” As you can see here, though, the new districts are anything but regular.

● MA Redistricting: Republican Gov. Charlie Baker has signed Massachusetts’ new legislative maps, which passed both chambers last month almost unanimously. A recently introduced congressional map remains pending before lawmakers.

● MT Redistricting: The independent tiebreaker on Montana’s bipartisan redistricting commission voted with Republicans on Thursday to advance the GOP’s proposed congressional map. The plan could still be tweaked before the commission’s Nov. 14 deadline to adopt a final map but is likely very close to final.

The map divides the state into an eastern and a western district, with the latter the more competitive of the two. Compared to the GOP’s initial proposals, the western seat (which would be numbered the 1st) is about a point bluer and would have gone for Donald Trump by a 52-45 margin last year, making it about 3 points redder than Democrats’ preferred plans. The 2nd District, by contrast, would have voted 62-35 for Trump. By and large, the map bears the hallmarks of a nonpartisan plan that doesn’t seek to favor one party over the other.

The state’s lone representative, Republican Matt Rosendale, is certain to seek re-election in the 2nd District, which includes his home in Great Falls. We’ll take a look at the field in the 1st District when the commission completes its work.

● WI Redistricting: A committee in Wisconsin’s Republican-run state Senate has passed the GOP’s proposed congressional and legislative maps, but they’re certain to be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers due to their extreme gerrymandering.

Senate

● IL-Sen, IL-Gov: Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who recently announced his retirement from the House after Illinois Democrats’ new gerrymandered congressional map left him without a plausible district to run in, now says he’s considering bids for Senate or governor and will “probably” decide by early January.

● PA-Sen: Politico reports that wealthy hedge fund manager David McCormick is being recruited to run for Senate by unnamed “prominent Pennsylvania Republicans,” though McCormick himself has yet to comment. McCormick has reportedly told allies he would “invest millions of his own money into the race” should he run, though one problem he currently faces is the fact that he lives in Connecticut.

Governors

● CO-Gov: A new poll from Democratic pollster Global Strategy Group on behalf of the liberal group ProgressNow Colorado finds Democratic Gov. Jared Polis with a 52-35 lead over University of Colorado Regent Heidi Ganahl, his likely Republican opponent next year. That’s very similar to the 54-34 advantage for Polis that GSG found in June, several months before Ganahl entered the race.

● NY-Gov: Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi, who previously hadn’t ruled out a bid for governor, now confirms he’s actively considering a campaign and says he’ll decide by the end of the month.

● PA-Gov: Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a vocal Big Lie proponent who’s been considering a bid for governor, has announced that he’s formed an exploratory committee. He did not, however, offer a timeline for making a decision.

● TX-Gov: A new poll from the University of Texas at Austin for the Texas Tribune finds Republican Gov. Greg Abbott leading former Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke 46-37 in a hypothetical matchup. The survey, which was conducted online by YouGov, is similar to other polling of this potential race. O’Rourke has been considering a bid for some time but has yet to announce a decision.

House

● CA-21: Democrat Angel Lara, a former aide to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has abandoned his bid for California’s 21st Congressional District. While Lara didn’t explain his decision, Democrats recently landed a much more prominent contender in Assemblyman Rudy Salas, whom the party has long tried to recruit to challenge Republican Rep. David Valadao.

● FL-20: Following a recount, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick leads Dale Holness 23.76-23.75, a difference of just five votes. The recount for the Democratic primary in this heavily black South Florida district comes after Holness led by nine votes the day after the election. Despite the recount, this race is far from over, as Politico’s Gary Fineout wrote Wednesday military and overseas ballots can be received into next week, in addition to any litigation that could arise due to the airtight nature of this contest.  

● PA-18: Attorney Steve Irwin, a former head of the Pennsylvania Securities Commission (but, so far as we’re aware, no relation to the Crocodile Hunter), has joined the race for Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, which is open because Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle is retiring. The Democratic primary already includes two other notable candidates, law professor Jerry Dickinson and state Rep. Summer Lee. While redistricting has yet to take place, this Pittsburgh-based seat is all but certain to remain safely blue.

● TX-35: Democratic state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, who’s been considering a bid for Texas’ open (and safely blue) 35th Congressional District, has now filed paperwork with the FEC, though he has yet to announce a campaign.

This post was originally published on this site

Note: due to a family emergency, this week’s cartoon is a “classic” TMW, which is to say, a rerun.