Donald Trump must be feeling pretty good following the Ohio Senate primary in which his chosen one, J.D. Vance, triumphed over a crowded field. In addition to Trump’s endorsement, Vance had $15 million in outside money from Peter Thiel. But he was also hammered by outside advertising from the Club for Growth, hitting him for his past negative statements about Trump. And, following Vance’s win, Axios reports that the Club for Growth isn’t the only part of the Republican establishment unhappy about the situation.
“The Republican establishment privately regards Vance with the same disgust many felt toward Donald Trump when he entered the White House on Jan. 20, 2017,” according to Jonathan Swan and Lachlan Markay. We know how that worked out: Trump took over the party and few Republicans would speak out against him publicly, sitting back and playing along as long as they thought it contributed to Republican power.
One key issue where Vance could make life difficult for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wing of the party is Ukraine. “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” he said on Steve Bannon’s podcast before Russia invaded, and he hasn’t changed his position since, with campaign sources telling Axios it was because people who don’t want the U.S. supporting Ukraine are likely to vote on that position, while few voters who otherwise liked Vance would vote for someone else just because he opposed any intervention.
Vance’s history shows he’s a raging phony. He didn’t just go from mild criticism of Trump to sucking up for Trump’s endorsement. His turnabout took him to the endorsement after having said, in 2016, he “loathed” Trump, and tweeted, “What percentage of the American population has @RealDonaldTrump sexually assaulted?” That tells you what kind of a craven slimeweasel we’re talking about. And it tells you that as long as Trump remains his best bet for power, he will be committed to being as disgusting as possible. For example:
Vance says Biden is trying to kill MAGA voters: “If you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better to target them and their kids with this fentanyl .. It does look intentional. It’s like Biden wants to punish people who didn’t vote for him.” pic.twitter.com/5Yoh0CA44z
J.D. Vance, who won the Republican Senate nomination in Ohio, has called for FIRING EVERY SINGLE federal employee. In this way, Vance shows total contempt for workers. It also shows his total contempt for unions, civil service laws & the rule of law..https://t.co/onsrpjLnQUpic.twitter.com/Ff07TRpAg5
So, yeah. Mitch McConnell and a lot of other high-ranking Republicans should be nervous. If J.D. Vance wins—which, given the recent rightward shift in Ohio, is likely—they’re getting a colleague whose commitment to his own personal advancement above any principle makes him willing to do his level best to out-Trump Trump. But, as we know, McConnell et al’s ruthless pursuit of power means they won’t try to limit the rise of someone like Vance as long as they think he might be even a little bit useful. They all deserve each other.
We all know that our whereabouts can be easily tracked on our cell phones, and that the data can then be sold. But, according to Vice, there’s a company that also tracks visits you make to a health care clinic—including those that provide abortion care.
Being tracked is frightening enough, but all of this becomes even more terrifying after a draft opinion from Supreme Court Justice Alito leaked to Politico indicating that the Court may very well overturn Roe v. Wade, which would remove federal abortion protections and ban or partially ban abortion in at least 13 U.S. states.
Gathering this data could be a very effective tool for anti-abortion rights activists who’ve had health care clinics, providers, and pro-choice organizations in their crosshairs for decades. But giving them the option to simply purchase this information from companies is a scary reality.
Zach Edwards, a cybersecurity researcher who closely tracks data selling, says, “It’s bonkers dangerous to have abortion clinics and then let someone buy the census tracks where people are coming from to visit that abortion clinic… this is how you dox someone traveling across state lines for abortions—how you dox clinics providing this service.”
SafeGraph is one such tracking company. Essentially, Safegraph gathers location data from the apps we download onto our phones. The apps come with an unseen code and that code sends our location to companies to sell for a fee. Vice reports that SafeGraph recently sold $420,000 worth of data to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to help them track how well COVID-19 lockdown measures were working.
“SafeGraph’s Patterns dataset includes visitor and demographic aggregations for points of interest (POIs) in the US. This contains aggregated raw counts of visits to POIs from a panel of mobile devices, answering how often people visit, how long they stay, where they came from, where else they go, and more,” according to the SafeGraph website.
Vice reports the data costs around $160 for a week’s worth of information, and “Planned Parenthood” is considered a “brand” that can be tracked.
“SafeGraph is going to be the weapon of choice for anti-choice radicals attempting to target ‘out of state clinics’ providing medical care,” Edwards said.
As Mother Jones reports, anti-choice groups have long had a serious surveillance game. Documenting who comes and goes from abortion clinics, maintaining databases, and tracking license plate numbers of patients and providers. Now, add some high-tech data tracking, and you’re able to follow people, even if they cross state lines into states where abortions are available.
“It’s not good,” Communication Director Zack Gingrich-Gaylord of the Trust Women Clinic in Oklahoma City told KFOR. “These are patients who would otherwise be going to seek care in their own communities. The surrounding states are not that big and they don’t have that many clinics. So it’s creating a significant strain on the neighboring states to Texas.”
Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had an urgent message for his conference Tuesday: Whatever you do, don’t talk about the Supreme Court’s draft opinion destroying abortion rights.
Chastising his GOP colleagues at their weekly luncheon, McConnell told them, “You need, it seems to me, a lecture to concentrate on what the news is today: Not a leaked draft, but the fact that the draft was leaked.”
As my Daily Kos colleague Hunter detailed, Republicans spent Tuesday fixated on the leaking of the bombshell opinion as a “stunning breach” by “the Left” to “intimidate sitting Supreme Court justices.”
The harm done to the high court and its justices by the leak was apparently deeply enraging and irreparable. But being forced to carry a fetus to term because the Supreme Court says so? Meh. Republican senators reserved all their outrage for the nine Americans who donned fancy black robes while deciding that the government does indeed have the right to dictate people’s health care decisions.
The emphasis on the leaking (versus what was leaked) was an interesting fixation for a party that has devoted much of its last five decades to clearing the way for the demolition of Roe v. Wade.
But McConnell just might be the ultimate example of the dog that caught the car. Sure, he wants Roe shredded along with basically every other decision supported by a solid majority of Americans. But McConnell surely doesn’t want it shredded before the midterms. By Jove, he can practically taste that Majority Leader goodness.
Except now the fringe court for which he stole two seats might be complicating Senate Republicans’ path back to the majority. Here’s a little glimpse of why McConnell and his conference had a cow after the leaked opinion surfaced in Politico.
Data for Progress notes that public support for a federal ban on abortions doesn’t exceed 30% in any single state.
YouGov’s G. Elliott Morris tweets that the “latest public polls from Pew, Gallup, YouGov, and CNN, all from the last year, found that between 58% and 70% of Americans oppose the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, including roughly three-fourths of Independents and nearly a majority of Republicans.”
The latest public polls from Pew, Gallup, YouGov, and CNN, all from the last year, found that between 58% and 70% of Americans oppose the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, including roughly three-fourths of Independents and nearly a majority of Republicans. pic.twitter.com/bT8fFNrBhD
We’re going to find out a lot more about polling on this topic over the coming months. But one of the most interesting footnotes is that the vast majority of voters truly didn’t believe the Supreme Court would overturn Roe. Just 20% or even fewer voters believed that, according to Democratic pollster and president of Impact Research, Molly Murphy. So this Supreme Court ruling gutting Roe will truly come as a shock to the electorate. And Republicans clearly know it.
Pollster Molly Murphy says Dems are in uncharted territory figuring out how voters will react to SCOTUS. Support for abortion in the high 60s — but people didn’t believe court would overturn Roe. Belief that it would was just in teens or 20s. (At @emilyslist conference)
The action for the last few days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been at the two extreme ends of the long “front”—near Kherson in the southwest and near Kharkiv in the northeast. That was mostly true again on Tuesday.
Kharkiv Area
Ukrainian forces entered the area of Staryi Saltiv on Sunday, and fighting in the town continues. Because the bridge over the broad Siverskyi Donets River at Staryi Saltive was blown up by Ukrainian forces early in the war, Ukraine can’t use that bridge now to extend their push to the east bank of the river. On the other hand, Russian forces can’t use that bridge to escape. So instead, Russian forces are moving north while Ukrainian forces clean up and take control of the area to the south of the town.
On Tuesday, that included Ukrainian forces moving into the town of Molodova. Securing that location helps to straighten out what had been a rather crooked path for forces moving between Kharkiv and Staryi Saltiv, and seems a pretty good indicator that there remain little or no Russian forces on the west bank of the river south of the former bridge. However, there remain two settlements on the road running directly west from Staryi Saltiv that on Monday were still in Russian control. Based on Telegram messages (and generous use of Google Translate) there are reports that Russian forces have left both of these locations. There are other reports that battles are going on for these locations. Pending any kind of official announcement, I’ve labeled them both as “in dispute.”
On the extreme northwest of the Russian-occupied territory, Ukrainian forces have reportedly moved closer to the town of Kozacha Lopan. However, there seems to have been no real movement along the roads running directly north out of Kharkiv, with no reports of Russian forces being pushed back (or of failed attempts).
Kharkiv area
Izyum area
The central part of the line is where Russia has most of its force allocated, with roughly 68 Battalion Tactical Groups squeezed in from Izyum down to Donetsk. The biggest change on the map today is that it more accurately reflects the number of points that are actually in dispute, because—as it has almost since the start of the war—Russia seems to be making a large number of attempted breakthroughs by relatively small forces.
The only one of these to make anything like significant progress in the last two days is that small salient jutting down east of Slovyansk starting at the town of Zarichne. That push has secured Russian forces a series of small villages, and on Monday they seem to have consolidated control of Yampil. They’re now on to the next village in the line, but where they’re going from there is still in question.
Further south, Russia is still trying to capture Popasna. It still doesn’t have it. I swear, when I first wrote about this little town, I had no idea it was going to be the absolute focus of Russian efforts for three solid weeks.
Izyum area
Kherson Area
The only thing I know for sure about activity in the Kherson area over the last 48 hours is that I spent a lot of time reading Twitter and Telegram posts about every single city, town, and village I could find in an effort to understand who currently controls what and where Russia is going.
Honestly, the Russian push toward Kryvyi Rih seems as pointless as ever—more an exercise in trying to taunt Volodomyr Zelenskyy by threatening his hometown than a serious military effort. But there is definitely activity in the area, and several villages under dispute. It can be assumed that Russia occupies a large number of villages and towns on the west bank of the Dnipro in the middle of the highlighted area, but I came up dry on anything indicating the status of any but a handful of locations. That may be related to reports that Russia is now channeling communication in the Kherson area through the Russian internet.
Expect this map to have fewer villages shown next time. It seemed necessary today to tag more locations to get a good definition of the current situation.
Kherson area
That’s pretty much it from me, as far as the activities that I stumbled over the day. Let’s see what the other guys say.
Staryi Saltiv is still shown under Russian control.
Russian attacks in Rubizhne, Popasna, and Lyman, but none of those three were taken.
NASA FIRMS Firemap
The only areas where there seem to be significant numbers of fires on the NASA FIRMS Firemap over the last 24 hours are in the area SW of Lyman—that’s the area of Yampil and the village of Ozerne that’s currently in dispute. A good deal of this fire seems to be the result of Ukrainian artillery firing into Russian positions. The patch of fires to the northwest of Slovyansk is in the little “valley” of Ukrainian control south of Oskil. That suggests this is Russian artillery firing in.
One of the things that looks concerning this morning is the sheer amount of fire being poured into this small area.
This little gap is seeing heavy artillery
Both Ukraine satellite flashes (@ukr_satflash) and the NASA FIRMS fire map have been tracking what looks to be heavy pounding of this area for the last two days. Though there’s been no official indication that Russian positions have advanced, the fire has move from Oleksandrivka on the east (shown here as that “in dispute” yellow marker) to the tiny crossroads village at Sosnove, just SE of the center of that circle.
This makes it seem very likely that Russia will attempt to cut across this area along the road between Oleksandrivka and Studenok on the west. What could hold this up? The bridge west of Studenok is reportedly out.
The Siverskyi Donets River looks to be about 250 wide at this point, and swiftly flowing after spring rains. It would be hard to span with a pontoon bridge. However, Russian engineering teams may be working to fix this bridge or create some other crossing. It’s hard to imagine that Sosnove and the surrounding area would be getting the kind of pounding it’s now receiving unless Russia intended to make some move in this area.
I don’t want people to think in any way I’m getting paid by leatherman for endorsing them but they sent this to Chuck with a handwritten letter. Class act. Peace Chuck! pic.twitter.com/OPmuy0zgrf
Monday night’s leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion essentially overturning Roe v. Wade has been overwhelming news, to say the least. Reproductive justice advocates have mobilized, organizing protests and fundraising efforts to support organizations in states that have so-called “trigger laws” meaning that, were such a ruling to go into effect, 13 states would immediately see abortion bans on the books. This includes the state I live in, Louisiana, which also happens to have a terrible track record when it comes to both reproductive justice and environmental justice. Led by a pro-life Democratic governor, Louisiana readily gave up the abortion fight in 2020 when voters moved to pass an amendment that added this language to the state declaration of rights: “Nothing in this constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.”
Between now and then, major natural disasters have occurred, studies have revealed the damning costs of continuing to allow polluters to harm some of the state’s most vulnerable communities, and people have suffered because of lack of access to much-needed reproductive health care services — among many, many consequences from a warming planet and reproductive rights restrictions. Louisiana is just the canary in the coal mine of what’s to come were an expected June ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization consistent with Alito’s draft opinion. The case that made its way to the highest court in the land comes from the neighboring state of Mississippi — yet another state with a trigger law on the books. And, unsurprisingly, Mississippi is a state with blatant environmental justice issues that span generations and still affect residents today.
The consequences of climate change are especially hard on pregnant people and children, with extreme heat posing a particular risk to pregnant people and even more so for pregnant people of color. Studies have been conducted on the impact of flooding to pregnant people, with one such report published in 2018 finding that “[it] has a significant impact on the health of pregnant women and children. In addition, it may exacerbate a range of negative psychological and physiological child and reproductive health outcomes.” The lingering effects of natural disasters only add to the pain for survivors who lack the services they need in the wake of such life-altering events.
Countlessstudies on reproductive care in the wake of Hurricane Katrina found that fertility levels decreased for Black pregnant people and that substantial percentages of those affected by the storm were unable to access health care. According to one study, 40% had not used birth control and 4% “experienced an unintended pregnancy as a result of lack of access to care.” As natural disasters and extreme weather events become more frequent, it’s more important than ever to make sure that our climate mitigation response is an intersectional one that includes advocating for and enacting policies that advance reproductive rights.
Abortion is still legal, even in Texas. Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas, wants to reiterate that. Even since Sept. 1, when the abortion bounty-hunter law went into effect, the clinics have still been helping people.
“When news like this comes out, it confuses people and scares people, and I think there are people who will read these stories and think that abortion is already illegal,” said Hagstrom Miller. “I think it’s important for us to speak to these people and let them know this isn’t final, and at least for now we can still offer them the care they deserve.”
However, when the Supreme Court makes the leaked draft ruling from Justice Samuel Alito overturning Roe v. Wade and Casey (the long-standing rulings protecting the right to an abortion) official, Texas is going to ban abortion with just one exception: to save the life of the patient or if there’s a risk of “substantial impairment of major bodily function.” Thirty days after the Supreme Court issues that ruling, doctors providing abortions in Texas could face life in prison and $100,000 fines.
As if the six-week ban hasn’t been harmful enough to people who need abortions. NPR spoke with one 21-year-old Texan, Mady, who accidentally got pregnant. “When I initially found out that I was pregnant, I was like, I cannot have a kid right now. Like, I cannot do that.” Which is a pretty mature thing to know about yourself. She was past the six-week deadline when diagnosed, and when she reached out to clinics outside of Texas, found they were all booked already with Texas patients. She had to wait more than a month for her procedure. “So I drove all the way to Mississippi through the night with my father,” Mady said.
“And then after the initial visit, they’re like, you can come in on this day at this time next week. And so right after my appointment, we turned around and drove back to Texas.” She and her mom flew back to Mississippi the next week so she could have the abortion. It cost her about $2,000. Which means Mady was a very lucky person to have not just an understanding and helpful family, but the means to obtain the care she needed.
Another Texan, Nicole, counted herself lucky because her old car’s engine decided to turn over on the day of her procedure; any delays, and it couldn’t have happened. “I just had to honestly just make the decision quickly and say you know what, I’m 33 years old, I have a week and a half to kind of decide this, and it’s just going to be a ‘yes,’ honestly, at this point,” she told CNN. “I don’t know what would have been my next options,” she said. “I’m just grateful that my car came on today.”
Another Texan, 27-year old Caroline, found out too late, at 12 weeks. It took another six weeks for her to get an appointment at a Colorado clinic more than 1,000 miles from home. Caroline lives in an abusive home, where money is tight. A child was not an option. ”A lot of women in domestic violence situations,” she said, “know that if they give birth, that child will be turned into a weapon.” The wait was difficult, with complications arising in the 17th week that cemented her decision. “I haven’t been able to sleep and eat,” she said. “Pregnancy takes a toll on your body and my body’s just been hurting.”
Those are three realities coming out of Texas. For so many more in the state, reality is even more grim.
Texas, which has a trigger ban that would outlaw abortion almost completely if Supreme Court overturns Roe, has: -highest overall uninsured rate in the country -highest rate of uninsured women of childbearing age -highest rate of uninsured kids -highest repeat teen pregnancy rate
More than 20 states are “certain or likely” to ban abortion once Roe is overturned. Thirteen of those states have trigger laws that will end abortion just as soon as the Supreme Court decision is handed down.
Blue states are working hard to counter that, to ensure that abortion will be made available to whoever needs it, no matter how far they have to travel. But there’s the rub—they have to have the information, the means, and the support to get there.
Here’s another reality.
Women are going to be forced to give birth in a nation where maternity wards are closing and there are huge reproductive care deserts, where pregnancy care and birth are prohibitively expensive, and where maternal mortality rates are the highest among developed countries.
Prenatal and maternal care in this country is abysmal, considering the resources we have. We are the absolute worst among developed nations for maternal mortality. But that’s not a concern for the predominantly white, predominantly male, and predominantly wealthy people making these decisions about other people’s bodies and lives.
It’s the people who are poor, who are Black or brown, who are marginalized because of their gender identity, who are young, and who are trapped by any situation—all of whom are on the list of people Republicans especially don’t care about—who will suffer the most.
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.
●OH-Sen: The Republican primary for Ohio’s open Senate seat—which weighed in at nearly $75 million—finally concluded on Tuesday with a win for Trump’s endorsed candidate, venture capitalist J.D. Vance. Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy author and one-time vociferous Trump critic, reinvented himself as a MAGA diehard and defeated former state Treasurer Josh Mandel 32-24 for the nod to succeed retiring Sen. Rob Portman. Vance will take on Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who won his own primary 70-18 against former Treasury official Morgan Harper, in a longtime swing state that has lurched hard to the right in recent years.
Just a few months ago, Vance’s allies at Protect Ohio Values, a super PAC funded by megadonor Peter Thiel, warned that the candidate’s poll numbers were in “precipitous decline.” The group highlighted the previous fall’s assault by the Club for Growth, which supported Mandel and had run a barrage of ads using 2016 footage of Vance saying, “I’m a Never Trump guy,” an offensive that persuaded many voters that Vance could not be trusted.
Thiel’s group responded with new advertisements that rebranded Vance as a Trump loyalist, a maneuver that seems to have at least kept him in contention. Vance was also able to keep going because none of his four major rivals were able to establish a meaningful lead—either in the polls or in the contest to win Trump’s endorsement. (Only state Sen. Matt Dolan, who criticized Trump as recently as last year, didn’t seek it.) The financier also had a powerful ally in Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whom Rolling Stone reported played a key role in winning Trump over to Vance’s side.
Carlson reportedly not only made the case that Vance’s anti-Trump days were long behind him, he also argued that Mandel’s main benefactor, Club president David McIntosh, was untrustworthy because of what the story calls an “an embarrassing and ‘chronic’ personal sexual habit.” The magazine refused to provide any details about this salacious claim, but it relayed that Trump “spent a notable amount of time gossiping and laughing about the prominent Republican’s penis.” (Can’t believe you just had to read that sentence? We can’t believe we had to write it, either.)
No matter what ultimately convinced Trump, though, he went on to give his stamp of approval to Vance less than three weeks ahead of the primary. Trump excused Vance’s past disloyalty at a recent rally, saying that while his new favorite had indeed “said some bad shit about me,” each of his rivals “did also.”
The Club hoped that voters wouldn’t be so forgiving, and it even ran a commercial questioning Trump’s judgment—a shocking gambit given the GOP’s obeisance to its supreme master. Even Trump himself managed to give Vance a humiliating round of headlines just two days before Election Day when he told an audience, “We’ve endorsed—JP, right? JD Mandel, and he’s doing great.” But while Trump couldn’t remember Vance’s name, enough Republican primary voters could.
We’ll be recapping all of Tuesday’s results in Ohio and Indiana in the next Morning Digest, though if you don’t want to wait that long, join us on Wednesday at Daily Kos Elections and follow along as we provide updates in our Live Digest.
Senate
●NV-Sen, NV-Gov, NV-04: Former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt has publicized an internal from WPA Intelligence that gives him a 57-20 lead over Army veteran Sam Brown ahead of the June 14 Republican primary. Back in mid-March, WPA’s survey for Laxalt’s allies at the Club for Growth found him ahead by an almost-identical 57-20 margin.
The central committee of the Nevada Republican Party, though, spurned the Trump-backed frontrunner over the weekend by voting to endorse Brown. The party’s leadership also threw its support behind attorney Joey Gilbert, who has bragged that he was “definitely on the Capitol steps” on Jan. 6, in the primary for governor; the decision came days after Trump endorsed another candidate, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo. Additionally, the state GOP went for Air Force veteran Sam Peters in the GOP contest to face 4th District Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford.
Governors
●NY-Gov: The state Board of Elections ruled Monday that both 2014 nominee Rob Astorino and former Trump White House staffer Andrew Giuliani had submitted enough valid signatures to appear on the June Republican primary ballot despite a challenge by one of their intra-party rivals, Rep. Lee Zeldin. The field also includes wealthy businessman Harry Wilson, whose petitions were not contested by anyone.
●RI-Gov: Campaign finance reports are in covering the first quarter of 2022, and WPRI has rounded up the totals for all the notable Democratic contenders:
former CVS executive Helena Foulkes: $900,000 raised, additional $400,000 self-funded, $1.5 million cash-on-hand
Gov. Dan McKee: $427,000 raised, $1.1 million cash-on-hand
Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea: $378,000 raised, $896,000 cash-on-hand
former Secretary of State Matt Brown: $110,000 raised, $79,000 cash-on-hand
Businesswoman Ashley Kalus, who is the only major Republican contender, took in a mere $13,000 from donors but self-funded another $500,000, which left her with $410,000 available at the end of March.
House
●FL-15, FL-14: Jay Collins, who lost a leg as a combat medic in Afghanistan, announced Tuesday that he would seek the Republican nomination for the new and open 15th District. Collins had been running against Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor in the neighboring 14th District, which remains safely blue turf under the GOP’s new gerrymander, and he ended March with $339,000 on hand that he can use for his new campaign.
On the Democratic side, Alan Cohn, who was the party’s 2020 nominee against now-Rep. Scott Franklin in the old 15th, says he’s also “seriously considering” running for the open seat. (Franklin himself is running for the renumbered 18th District.)
The legislation also allowed a seven-member committee of Democratic leaders to swap Delgado in for Benjamin, who prior to the new law’s enactment could only have been taken off the ballot had he died, moved to another state, or been nominated for another office; now, anyone charged with a crime can be removed as well.
Delgado, a moderate representing the swingy 19th District in Upstate’s Hudson Valley, was facing a difficult re-election campaign that was likely about to get more so: While his fellow Democrats had sought to make his seat bluer in redistricting, that map was recently thrown out by the state’s highest court, so the next iteration of the 19th—which will be drawn by an independent expert—could well be tougher.
But Delgado’s new path is still fraught. In New York, candidates run in separate primaries for governor and lieutenant governor, with the winners merged onto a single ticket on the November ballot. That system typically prompts pairs of candidates to forge alliances in the hopes of avoiding an unwelcome “shotgun wedding” for the general election, but even if Hochul defeats her two opponents on June 28 (as all polls have indicated she will), there’s no guarantee Delgado will do the same.
In fact, after Benjamin’s arrest on bribery charges, a number of progressive leaders had rallied around activist Ana Maria Archila, who’s allied with New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. (The only other alternative, former New York City Councilwoman Diana Reyna, is running alongside Rep. Tom Suozzi, who’s positioned himself well to Hochul’s right.)
Delgado will benefit from Hochul’s powerful perch and massive war chest, but he may be hurt by accusations that the governor sought to change the rules mid-stream in order to benefit herself—a concern that led a sizable number of Democratic senators to oppose the bill in a rare show of dissent.
And no one knows better that being linked with a powerful, deep-pocketed governor is no guarantee of victory than Hochul herself. In 2018, on the same day that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo romped to an easy 66-34 victory over actor and activist Cynthia Nixon, Hochul only narrowly defeated the little-known Williams, at the time a member of the City Council, by just a 53-47 margin.
Once Delgado is sworn in to his new post—no legislative confirmation is required—Hochul will have 10 days to call a special election under a law passed last year requiring such elections be held in a much timelier manner than they had been in the past. (Cuomo had been notorious for repeatedly dragging his feet on calling specials when it didn’t suit him to do so, thanks to a huge gap in state law that gave him wide discretion.) The election must then be held within 70 to 80 days.
While redistricting is still up in the air, the special will take place under the old lines. Recent trends had been favorable for Democrats in the 19th: Joe Biden flipped the district in 2020, carrying it by a slender 50-48 margin four years after Donald Trump won it 51-44; Delgado, meanwhile, unseated one-term Republican Rep. John Faso 51-46 in 2018 and then defeated an unheralded GOP foe 54-43 two years later.
In New York, local party committees, rather than primary voters, pick nominees for special elections, but there isn’t much suspense as to whom Republicans will choose. Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro has been running for the 19th since September without any serious intra-party opposition, and he quickly confirmed he would campaign in this summer’s contest.
Things are far more uncertain on the Democratic side, though a couple of names have already surfaced. Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan, who took second place to Delgado in the 2018 primary, said he was considering, while an unnamed source told the New York Times that state Sen. Michelle Hinchey is looking at the contest as well. Hinchey is the daughter of the late Rep. Maurice Hinchey, who represented a sizable portion of this district from 1993 to 2013.
●OR-05: Journalists at Sludge report that Mainstream Democrats PAC, a new group with the stated purpose of thwarting “far-left organizations” that want to take over the Democratic Party, will spend $800,000 in ads to help moderate Rep. Kurt Schrader fend off attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner in the May 17 primary.
The first spot from the super PAC, which is funded in part by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, uses footage of the Jan. 6 attack and warnings about Team Blue’s prospects in the midterms to argue, “We need proven leaders who can beat Trump Republicans.” The narrator goes on to declare that McLeod-Skinner, who lost both the 2018 general election for the safely red 2nd District and 2020 primary for secretary of state, “just can’t do it,” while Schrader “beats every Republican every time.” The commercial continues by arguing that the incumbent shares “our Democratic values” and reminding the audience that he’s President Joe Biden’s endorsed candidate.
●TN-05: Music video producer Robby Starbuck has filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the state GOP’s decision to keep him off the August primary ballot for failing to meet the party’s definition of a “bona fide” Republican. Starbuck, who moved to the state three years ago, was rejected because he had not voted in three of the last four statewide primaries, which his suit dubbed an unconstitutional “camouflaged residency requirement.”
Former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, who was Trump’s endorsed candidate, also failed to pass the bona fide test for the same reasons, but she says she will not challenge the decision. Businessman Baxter Lee, the third candidate kicked off the ballot, does not appear to have said what he’ll do. It may not matter, though, as NBC notes that “courts, including those in Tennessee, have given broad deference to political parties in such disputes” as this one.
Prosecutors
●Baltimore, MD State’s Attorney: Prosecutor Thiru Vignarajah last month released a mid-April GQR poll that shows him trailing incumbent Marilyn Mosby 35-32 in the July Democratic primary to serve as Baltimore’s top prosecutor, with defense attorney Ivan Bates at 13%. It takes only a simple plurality to secure the Democratic nod, which is tantamount to election in this reliably blue city.
This week on The Brief, hosts Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld talked about the leaked initial draft majority opinion in a case that would overturn Roe v. Wade, written by Justice Samuel Alito and circulated inside the court.
Guest Christine Pelosi, an attorney, author, and advocate who has has trained thousands of leaders in almost every state and four foreign countries, joined the hosts for this episode. Pelosi is also in the process of training Democratic candidates running for the House of Representatives this November, and she shared her thoughts on what happens now that we know about the impending demise of Roe v. Wade.
Outrage poured out across the nation as news of the leaked document made its rounds on the internet early this week. “No matter how much you expected this decision, the impact was still a gut punch,” Moulitsas said. This extremist ruling hardly reflects the views of most Americans: Civiqs polling shows that a majority of Americans—58%—believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared to 38% who believe it should be illegal in most or all cases.
While Eleveld emphasized that this is a draft opinion, she acknowledged that it has been authenticated. The question, she added, is whether it manages to get toned down before the final ruling likely lands in June—and what ripple effects it could have:
One way or the other, five justices have voted to overturn. Who knows, maybe there will be a concurring opinion from Chief Justice Roberts, but it’s done. It’s … a maximal assault on all progressive constitutional decisions, basically. This is just the beginning for the right-wing conservative movement. They are going to go after contraception, they are going to go after LGBTQ rights, the same-sex marriage decision … they are going to go after everyone who’s not male and white and Christian.
Justice Samuel Alito, in the decision, also took a slap at Lawrence v. Texas, which Eleveld noted is “basically the first big LGBTQ rights win at the Supreme Court [level] in 2003 that said that same-sex couples have the right to privacy to have sex in their own bedrooms without [the government getting involved].
“Conservatives are shredding what we have come to know over the last fifty years as modern America,” she added. Ultimately, the conservative justices’ argument revolves around what the Supreme Court confers upon Americans as “unenumerated rights”—ones not specifically mentioned in the Constitution by name, but ones the Supreme Court has deemed inferred or implied by the rights listed in the Constitution.
Moulitsas and Eleveld expressed concern that society has greatly changed and evolved since the U.S. Constitution was written, arguing that strictly adhering to the document simply doesn’t make sense. “Once you get into, ‘Well,’ it’s not explicitly written in the Constitution,’ then it’s open season [on your rights]. They will go after everything that we have come to know as basic, modern American civilization,” Eleveld said.
Joining the conversation, Pelosi chimed in that trigger laws in thirteen states, many passed in the years since the Roe decision in 1973, could also come into play. These laws explicitly state that abortion will be outlawed as soon as SCOTUS strikes down Roe v. Wade.
Moulitsas called out many Democrats’ complacency around Roe v. Wade over the past few decades, noting that abortion rights activists have long been sounding the alarm on the potential for the Supreme Court to overturn the landmark decision. While Republicans have been very effective at using the Supreme Court as an electoral tool, he noted, “Democrats … were unable to weaponize the Supreme Court issue as a campaign issue, as a way to galvanize our voters.”
He also pointed out how Alito appeared to be sensitive to the fact that he is a man determining an issue directly affecting women and decided to weaponize feminism in the decision. As Alito wrote, “Women are not without electoral or political power. It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.” Thus, Moulitsas said, “He is basically daring women to do something about it.”
Pelosi believes that Democrats need to show up in the streets and press for action at the congressional level to show Alito and the other conservative justices that this is unacceptable:
Bless his heart. The same man that gave us Citizens United [v. FEC], the same man that helped gut the Voting Rights Act, is now going to talk about, ‘Oh don’t worry, women, you can vote’? It’s actually women who have more voter suppression to deal with than less, because women who get divorced or married, therefore changing their [last] name, have a more difficult time going through all those legal documents. I think a lot of people are dealing with voter suppression, and a lot of them are women. So no, I think it is a dare and I think we should take him up on his dare … I feel like Alito is channeling Scalia in saying, ‘Well, if you don’t like it, you can just vote to change the law.’ Well, we did vote to change the law! Right? We voted for a Democratic Senate, we voted for a Democratic president, [but] you know, Mitch McConnell didn’t give us our vacancy when Scalia passed.
Pelosi also impressed upon the audience the importance of urging their senators to “confirm everyone you can as quickly as you can right now.”
While the leaked draft ruling is horrible, Pelosi urged Democrats to lead with empathy and humanity first:
I think the shock is only just starting to wear off, and I think because it’s such a personal, painful decision, we want to be really careful about how we go about looking at where it would have electoral advantage or disadvantage. Yes, it’s going to piss people off, yes, it’s going to get people out and voting. Yes, women know who’s on their side. Patients know who’s on their side … that much will be clear. I also want to just put in a word for those who are coming at this from a place of trauma, because what I don’t think would be helpful is to add to the unhealed grief and the long COVID and the trickle-down hate from the last administration.
We want to be careful about making sure that it is a net plus that Democrats know that our base is furious. They’re furious with us, they’re furious with themselves, they’re furious with this country, and we have to honor that pain … I would just hope that this is done with a tad of nuance and a lot of care, because yes, it’s a bumper sticker, right? ‘My body, my choice.’ Who decides, you or them? Vote pro-choice, vote Democratic. Like, we get that. It’s actually easier to campaign on other issues in that respect. But there are a lot of scared people who are going to be in a lot of pain and potentially die … Let’s just make sure that we’re leading with that empathetic heart and with input from the people who are most impacted so what the public sees is that we care about them—which we do.
“What I’m hearing from you is something we’ve been talking a lot about in recent shows about messaging, which is that you start by stating your values and what you’re for, and then you say, ‘And then what is the other side going to do for you? What plans do they have to help you?’ Because at this point, their only plans are the culture wars. So that’s it,” Eleveld replied. “There are no plans to help with healthcare, there are no plans to help with reproductive rights, there are no plans to help with inflation, there are no plans to help with anything.”
Pelosi left the audience with important strategic takeaways about how to take meaningful action:
Support your local grassroots organizing. If you are blessed enough to be in a place where, after you organize for yourself, you can organize for others, then work on holding the House, and holding the Senate, and holding some of these seats in nested communities, right? Going to what we call red California or purple California, but also looking at places like Michigan, where they’ve got a contested governor’s race, where they’ve also got contested legislative races, and they will in the general have some contested congressional races. Work in Florida, work in Texas … But we’ve got to make sure we hold this House, and to do that, we have to make sure we’re getting out the word that yes, the House did codify Roe once. They’ll do it again, and they’ll be able to do it next year too, and to fund a codified Roe, if we have a Democratic majority, so hold the House.
[A]pproximately one fourth of all fertilized eggs are swept out on the menstrual tide before they even get near to implanting themselves in the uterine wall, and we do not hold funerals over Kotex or Tampax.
I suggest to you this means that the beginning of life is not a single specific event, but rather a process that deserves increasing respect as it continues toward birth—precisely the tripartite system set up under Roe v. Wade (and if you hear Roe v. Wade described as “abortion on demand,” you are listening to a liar).
I respect those who oppose abortion, but I do not think they have a right to use the law as an instrument of coercion against people who do not believe (and it is a matter of faith) as they do. … There were an estimated one million abortions a year in this country before Roe. Abortion can be safe and legal, or dirty and illegal. It cannot be stopped.
—From Who Let the Dogs In? (2004)
Coming soon to a Republican-controlled state legislature near you: the Mandatory Funerals for Kotex and Tampax Act of 2022.
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, May 4, 2022
Note: Happy Star Wars Day. May the Fourth be with you…
CHEERS to face time. Hey, did you know that Daily Kos turns 20 this month? It’s true! Among the ways we’re marking the occasion is with a little online get-together on Zoom two weeks from Friday, and you’re invited. Organizer Chris Reeves has the early details:
On May 20, we are holding a virtual Cheers & Jeers meetup once again…a chance to join with your fellow members of Daily Kos for an evening of fun, pop-ins, and the chance for all of us to talk about anything we desire.
May 20th.
It is a lot easier to appreciate someone when they step out from behind the keyboard and you can see them in real life. COVID, however, has changed so much about our ability to come together and just talk.
On May 20, we’re going to host the second Cheers & Jeers virtual gathering via Zoom. While it isn’t quite the same as meeting in person, it is definitely a chance for everyone to hear each other and talk about their own cheers and jeers.
I think we’ll start around 6pm EDT and it’ll run—for me at least—until shortly before I have to post the Friday C&J around 7:30. It won’t be the big Bob Fosse-style production we put on last year that left half of the staff in traction for weeks. Just a low-key affair this time, to jawbone while swigging your favorite cocktail or ivermectin smoothie. To get in our secret club, you need to RSVP to Chris via kosmail. Drop him a line hereand he’ll put you on the list. Shortly before the event, he’ll send you the info for logging in to the Zoom account. As always with these formal blogger galas, pants are optional.
CHEERS to hoosegows for gougers. Another January 6thinsurrectionist—a real piece of work, this one—will be cleaning prison toilets with a toothbrush for a spell. Asshole is an ex-Marine and an ex-cop who decided it would be a swell idea to shred the oaths he took to defend the Constitution and take out his “economic anxiety” on his fellow cops. A jury concluded that he needs a little time-out, like maybe for the rest of his miserable existence on Planet Earth:
In the weeks following the Capitol attack, Thomas Webster turned himself into a New York FBI field office.
Traitors have such a poetic way with words.
He was arrested and charged, and a superseding indictment was filed late last year accusing him of multiple counts, including violence and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. A Washington, D.C. jury convicted him on all charges, including assaulting a police officer, on Monday after only a few hours of deliberation, WUSA’s Jordan Fischer reported.
After crossing onto restricted grounds, the government alleged Webster yelled at one of officers, “You f***ing piece of shit. You f***ing Commie motherf***ers, man.” He then allegedly used the flagpole against the officer, swinging over the police line.
He’ll be sentenced in September. Until then, the traitor who tried to overthrow the United States government gets to sleep in his own bed; he’s on 24-hour home detention but has to wear an ankle monitor. If there’s any justice it’ll play Battle Hymn of the Republic every hour on the hour—a little musical torture to remind him who won the Civil War.
CHEERS to connecting the docs. The American Medical Association, which is rapidly coming around in favor of a single-payer health care system, was formed 175 years ago today. Medical professionals from 22 states and 28 medical schools attended to hear such topics as: “How to Smoke a Stogie Properly Over an Open Wound,” “Why Drugs Will Never Replace A Good Arsenic Tincture” and Ether: Your Trusted After-hours Friend. On their first day they unanimously approved the association’s motto which is still in place today: “E PluribusThree O’clock Tee Time.”
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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Timelapse of Europa & Io passing over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, shot from space probe Cassini. pic.twitter.com/V9t5QnvDYg
JEERS to a predictable outcome. Midterm primary elections started yesterday in states I haven’t bothered to check. But I heard that there was a Republican primary in Ohio for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by a pasty-faced male MAGA cultist, and I can tell you without any hesitation that, in the battle to replace him with either a pasty-faced male MAGA cultist or a pasty-faced male MAGA cultist (not to mention the other two pasty-faced male MAGA cultists), MAGA cultists totally zigged when everyone thought they’d zag, choosing the pasty-faced male MAGA cultist over the pasty-faced male MAGA cultist. Who says there’s no diversity on the right?
JEERS to itchy trigger fingers. Fifty-two years ago today, National Guard troops fired on Vietnam War protesters at Ohio’s Kent State University, killing four students and injuring 12 in 13 seconds. (The site is now designated Ohio’s 76th national Historic Site.) The question that may never be answered: what possessed the Guard to use live ammo when they could’ve pacified the crowd with a plate of hash brownies? A permanent blemish on my home state’s record.
P.S. Imagine if all the students had been walking around with concealed (or even open-carry) weapons so they could “stand their ground,” a concept that makes Republicans salivate every time they think about it. That would’ve worked out swell that day, huh. Real swell.
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 4, 2012
JEERS to tactics of the lowlife. OMG!!! I saw a billboard by the Heartland Institute with a huge photo of the Unabomber that says: ”I still believe in global warming. Do you?” So I got to thinkin’ real hard, and…dang. If that’s the case—if Ted Kaczynski really still believes in global warming—well, then, I can’t believe in global warming anymore. Because if the Unabomber believes in it, and I believe in it, then that would mean I’M A UNABOMBER TOO AND I’M NOT!!! Thank you, Heartland Institute, for posting that billboard. Without false equivalence I’d be so lost.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the Great Restoration of Aught 22. Yesterday we mentioned in our award-winning column that we were heading to our ophthalmologist to get some scar tissue obliterated by the Jewish space laser…a byproduct (the scar tissue, not the laser) of double cataract surgery we had in 2019, which was a byproduct of chemotherapy a couple years earlier. All I can say is wowie zowie. At 11:15am and 32 seconds everything in my life looked like this:
Yesterday I thought this was a pickle factory. I see now that it’s a battleship.
And at 11:15am and 58 seconds…it didn’t. Holy cow. Everything’s crisp and clear and colorful again: the marbled colors of the squirrels’ coats. The green grass. The blue skies. The blossoms on the trees. The daffodils and crocuses. The twinkle in my partner Michael’s eyes. The cigarette butts in the gutter. The accumulated dust in the house. The butt crack of the plumber working on a clog in the neighbor’s kitchen. The blond patches of shed dog hair. The fresh orange-green cat vomit. Gaaahhhh…when did these elephantine wrinkles take up residence on my hands??? “Hello, Doc? Do you do laser un-do surgery? Asking for a bloated ego.”
Have a happy humpday. Floor’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today’s Shameless C&J Testimonial
“We conclude that Daily Kos’s flag-raising program does not express government speech. As a result, Markos’srefusal to let Bill in Portland Maine fly his underwear violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”
