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Senate Republicans apparently decided that while they can be on the wrong side of history when it comes to voting for the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, they need to shake off their growing reputation as the party of Putin. The stories and images that emerged this week of Ukrainian corpses in the streets, of mass graves, of executions and rampant destruction in Bucha increased pressure to finally force action.

After three weeks of obstruction, Republicans finally allowed a vote to revoke permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with Russia and Belarus and to codify the gas and oil bans President Joe Biden had already imposed. When they decided to let it happen, they did so unanimously.

The House then moved quickly to pass both. For three weeks, the Senate has been wrangling over Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) objections to the reauthorization and expansion of the Global Magnitsky Sanctions that were included in the bills.

The 2012 Magnitsky Act imposed sanctions on Russian officials believed to be responsible for the torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant who exposed corruption among high-level government officials. Since then, the law has been expanded to allow the White House to impose visa bans and sanctions on individuals anywhere in the world it deems responsible for “gross” human rights violations and acts of significant corruption. The bill from the House expands sanctions and travel bans to individuals who are responsible for “serious” human rights violations, and that’s what caused Paul’s objections. He succeeded in getting the language changed back to the original. Mostly, he succeeded in creating a three-week delay.

Once that objection was negotiated away at the end of last week, there were more unspecified obstacles from other senators, presumably Republicans, that remained undisclosed. One of the sweeteners they added for Republicans was passing a lend-lease program to expedite the provision of U.S. military hardware to Ukraine. President Biden can already use his executive authority to provide materials under the Arms Export Control Act, but this bill creates some waivers of requirements in the law to make the process more efficient. The House did not act on that before leaving for recess Thursday afternoon.

With passage of the PNTR bill, Russia and Belarus join Cuba and North Korea as the only countries denied normal trade status. It will result in higher tariffs for their products, and directs the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office to work with partners in the World Trade Organization to get them to also revoke favored nation status for Russia and suspend its membership in the WTO.

The oil embargo bill codifies the ban Biden had already enacted on oil, gas, coal, and other petroleum products, but requires that if the embargo is going to be lifted, the president certify to Congress that Russia has negotiated an agreement to withdraw troops from Ukraine, end hostilities, poses no threat to any NATO member, and recognizes Ukraine’s total sovereignty and the right of its people to freely choose their own government. Congress could reject that certification. The PNTR bill also includes these certification requirements for Russia and Belarus to regain normal trade status.

Those bills are headed to Biden.

The House, meanwhile, spent Thursday re-passing those bills so they could go on to the president, and passing a $55 billion package to provide more COVID-19 relief for restaurants and other small businesses that are still struggling because of the pandemic.

The biggest chunk of the package, $42 billion, would go into the existing Restaurant Revitalization Fund, a grant program created in the American Rescue Plan. Out of the 300,000 restaurants and bars that tried to get grants from the program last year, only about one-third secured help. The other $13 billion in the bill would go toward other types of small business, particularly entertainment venues and travel-related businesses.

The House is reportedly looking at funding clawed back from fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loans and grants to pay for it. Senate Republicans, who have the power to kill it, are skeptical.

With that done and Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed to the Supreme Court (YAY!!!!), Congress left Washington for two weeks. Since Capitol Hill is in the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak reaching from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and through the House to Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), it’s probably a good thing they’re all getting away from each other. Ironically, they left with the latest COVID-19 supplemental bill still languishing in the Senate.

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On Thursday evening, Ukrainian officials announced that, in anticipation of major battle in the area, they were evacuating a broad swatch of eastern Ukraine. Residents in a number of cities and towns were urged to show up at bus stops and train stations. From there, they would be taken out of the conflict zone and delivered to Kyiv or other locations where they would be safe. 

On Friday morning, Russia bombed the train stations in at least four locations. At least 35 people, gathered with a handful of their belongings, seeking to escape the invasion, were killed on the station platform at Kramatorsk. How many have died in other locations is still unknown.

Informed of this latest tragedy, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy replied in a way that captured the whole nature of the last 43 days of this invasion: “Lacking the strength and courage to stand up to us on the battlefield,” said Zelenskyy, “they are cynically destroying the civilian population. This is an evil that has no limits.”

It was Ian Fleming’s arch-villain Auric Goldfinger who uttered one of the most memorable lines in fiction, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.” When it comes to missiles and bombs directed at civilian targets, Russia is far past those bounds. What they’re doing is something that goes beyond even the terrible label of war crime. It is war crimes as a strategy. It blows past depraved indifference into the realm of cold and calculated malevolence. 

While the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol might have been the most visible instance, there are multiple towns and cities where Russia has bombed or shelled every hospital and medical facility. They’ve fired missiles directly into schools and kindergartens. They’ve targeted  water plants and electrical supplies. As Russia has done in so many places before, they relentlessly targeted civilian homes. Perhaps most odious of all, they deliberately sought out locations marked as shelters, those places where frightened people huddled together when the air raid sirens sounded, and struck those locations with bombs and missiles.

Terrible things happened in World War II, where governments—including, and perhaps even especially, the United States—resorted to widescale bombing of cities in an effort to reduce an enemy’s ability to continue the war. Millions of dumb munitions were dropped in places like Dresden in the hopes that some would find their targets, and the knowledge that many would end human lives. This isn’t World War II, and that’s not what this is about. 

This is directed artillery fire and precision-guided munitions that have been deliberately targeted to cause the most pain, the most death, the most ongoing harm, to civilians. It’s a strategy to deprive people of their homes, of their health, and where if fails to take away their lives, of anything that might make those lives tolerable. What makes it far more terrible is that if Russian forces were actually seeking to limit their strikes to military targets, and to hit civilian areas only when they were intermingled with military equipment, they could. The Russian military didn’t just choose not to do that, they chose to do the opposite. They chose to preferentially attack civilians and civilian infrastructure.

It is a malignant strategy. A despicable strategy. One for which sufficiently vile adjectives do not exist. It’s little wonder Russian soldiers are engaged in horrendous crimes as individuals when their leadership is showing them that causing pain and suffering is the goal.

Yes, it’s war. Terrible things happen in war. Etc. Etc. That doesn’t make Russia’s actions any more tolerable or acceptable. What is clear is that any end to this invasion that doesn’t see the Russian military and civilian leadership, as a whole and as individuals, answering for these crimes, is unacceptable.

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

Subscribe to our podcast, The Downballot!

Leading Off

● TN Redistricting: A panel of three state court judges has blocked Tennessee’s new state Senate map from being used this year for violating the state constitution, though the court allowed new districts for the state House to take effect. The judges ordered that lawmakers “remedy the constitutional defect” in the Senate map by April 21 and extended the candidate filing deadline from April 7 to May 5, though Republicans say they plan to appeal.

In theory, a remedy ought to be extremely simple. At issue is an unusual provision in the state constitution that requires Senate districts in the same county to be numbered consecutively. However, in the map that the Republican-run legislature passed in February, the four districts contained either wholly or partly within populous Davidson County—home of the state capital of Nashville—are numbered the 17th, 19th, 20th, and 21st, so you can see the problem.

This isn’t, however, an arbitrary or meaningless requirement, as law professor Quinn Yeargain, an expert on state constitutions, explains in a fascinating thread. When Tennessee amended its constitution in 1965 to increase senators’ terms from two years to four, the state also staggered the chamber, meaning half of all seats are up for elections every two years, trading between even- and odd-numbered districts. Drafters therefore included the consecutive number provision to ensure that large counties would not go four years between Senate elections, and indeed, under the prior map, Davidson’s four districts were numbered in order, from 18 to 21.

It’s not clear why the Republican lawmakers who crafted the new Senate map chose to violate this rule, as it’s hard to discern a reason why they’d want an extra district in the Nashville area to go before voters this November (odd numbers are up this year): The 17th is safely red while the 19th and 21st are safely blue. Only the 20th, which Joe Biden would have won by a 56-42 margin, is potentially swingy, but it won’t be up until 2024. Given the GOP’s intent to appeal the ruling, though, there’s likely some motivation behind the decision.

In the same case, plaintiffs had also asked the court to block implementation of the new map for the state House on the grounds that it splits too many counties, but the judges declined to do so. However, in a footnote, they noted that their ruling is only an “interim Order that does not bind the Panel” as it proceeds to a “full, expedited consideration of this case on the merits.”

Redistricting

● VT Redistricting: Republican Gov. Phil Scott has signed Vermont’s new legislative maps, which were recently passed by wide bipartisan majorities in the Democratic-run state legislature.

1Q Fundraising

• AZ-Sen: Mark Kelly (D-inc): $11.3 million raised, $23.2 million cash-on-hand
• NC-Sen: Cheri Beasley (D): $3.6 million raised, $5.1 million cash-on-hand
• NH-Sen: Donald Bolduc (R): $100,000 raised
• NV-Sen: Catherine Cortez Masto (D-inc): $4.4 million raised, $11 million cash-on-hand
• WA-Sen: Tiffany Smiley (R): $1.65 million raised, $2.65 million cash-on-hand
• IA-02: Ashley Hinson (R-inc): $950,000 raised, $1.8 million cash-on-hand
• NC-04: Clay Aiken (D): $440,000 raised
• WV-02: David McKinley (R-inc): $466,000 raised, $1 million cash-on-hand
• WY-AL: Harriet Hageman (R): $1.3 million raised, $1 million cash-on-hand

Senate

● IA-Sen: Former Rep. Abby Finkenauer is out with a poll from GBAO that gives her a wide 64-15 lead over retired Navy Vice Adm. Mike Franken in the June Democratic primary to take on Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.

● NC-Sen: Rep. Ted Budd’s allies at the Club for Growth have dropped a survey from WPA Intelligence that finds him outpacing former Gov. Pat McCrory 44-31 in the May 17 Republican primary, which is also well over the 30% Budd would need to avoid a runoff. That’s very different from the 31-25 McCrory lead that Budd’s own pollster, Meeting Street Research, found about a month ago. During the intervening time, however, an unaffiliated group called North Carolina Values Coalition released its own survey from Vitale and Associates that did have Budd ahead by a small 32-29.

Meanwhile, a Club affiliate called School Freedom Fund is spending at least $1.25 million on an ad campaign that portrays McCrory as a liberal enabler. The narrator proclaims that as governor, McCrory “put liberals in charge of the state textbook commission, appointing a Democrat [sic] majority.” The voiceover continues in histrionic terms, “His commission mandated textbooks written by radical woke professors pushing critical race theory, teaching our kids to hate America.” The spot doesn’t actually object to anything in those textbooks but instead uses a brief clip of a history professor the narrator says was a member of the commission explaining, “The Constitution is soaked in slavery.”

● OK-Sen-B: A new super PAC called Okieway is spending at least $475,000 on an ad campaign starring outgoing Sen. Jim Inhofe urging viewers to back his former chief of staff, Luke Holland, in the June Republican primary.

The senator spends the first third of the spot recounting his career before telling the audience, “Luke started in our mailroom and quickly rose to be chief of staff.” Holland is then shown sitting with Inhofe and asking his former boss, “We got to conserve the things that are best about America, wouldn’t you agree?” Inhofe unsurprisingly does, though he responds in the negative when Holland inquires, “You think I should pick up flying?” Inhofe concludes by imploring the audience, “This last time, I’d sure appreciate your vote … for Luke Holland.”

● PA-Sen: Honor Pennsylvania, which AdImpact says has already spent $9.8 million for rich guy David McCormick ahead of the May 17 GOP primary, is running a new commercial touting him as someone who will “stand up to Joe Biden.”

Governors

● HI-Gov: Democratic Rep. Kai Kahele says he’s still considering whether to join the open race for governor but did not provide a timeline for when he’d reach his decision, merely telling Civil Beat’s Chad Blair that he’d let him know “if I do decide to run.” Blair, though, writes, “Word on the street is that that announcement will come in early May shortly after the Legislature adjourns.” Hawaii’s filing deadline is two months away.

● OH-Gov: Former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley’s new spot for the May 3 primary stars Ohio’s most prominent Democrat, Sen. Sherrod Brown. “As the mayor of Dayton, Nan Whaley put workers first, focusing on manufacturing, attracting investment and jobs with decent wages,” says Brown. “Nan led her city through crisis after crisis, bringing people together, never dividing them.”

● WI-Gov: Fight for Wisconsin, which supports businessman Kevin Nicholson, has publicized a poll from Remington Research Group that shows him trailing former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch 42-29 in the August GOP primary. The memo did not include numbers testing state Rep. Timothy Ramthun, an election denier who entered the race in February; instead it released a matchup that includes businessman Eric Hovde, who has not announced a bid, and showed him in third with 4%.

The PAC argues that this poll shows the primary has “has significantly tightened just within the last two months,” but it didn’t release any earlier numbers from Remington to make that case. Instead, the group referred to a January survey from WPA Intelligence that had Kleefisch up 59-8 to make its case for “a dramatic 38-point swing towards Nicholson,” a statement that violates a cardinal rule of polling analysis: Never directly compare polls taken by separate pollsters to find a trendline because every firm uses a different methodology.

Fight for Wisconsin also says this new survey was conducted following a “nearly $1 million ad buy” for Nicholson. That ad argues that, while Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Kleefisch just talk and do nothing, Nicholson is a man of action. The only thing the narrator actually points to Nicholson doing, though, is “organiz[ing] thousands of Wisconsinites to support our police, get kids back in school, and stop crazy teaching.”

House

● FL-22: Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner Ben Sorensen announced Wednesday that he would compete in the August primary to succeed his fellow Democrat, retiring Rep. Ted Deutch. Sorensen joins a primary that includes Broward County Commissioner Jared Moskowitz, who’d had the field to himself for a month, and commercial airline pilot Curtis Calabrese, a recent entrant.

● GA-06: Former state ethics commission chair Jake Evans’ new spot for the May 24 Republican primary features him standing in front of a jarringly bad green-screen image of the Supreme Court as the narrator proclaims that he’s “the only candidate who took the fight for President Trump to the U.S. Supreme Court, so only legal votes would count.” Evans was part of a 2020 amicus brief that tried to prevent Pennsylvania from counting mail-in ballots for an additional three days; what his ad doesn’t mention, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution does, is that his side lost.

Evans’ other commercial has a different narrator praising him as the one candidate who “defended our religious liberties against liberals in court, protecting a church’s right to its own property.” The AJC also explains that this is a reference “to a lengthy zoning dispute between an affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention and the City of Clarkston.”

● IA-01: 314 Action, which is supporting Democratic state Rep. Christina Bohannan, has released an internal from Public Policy Polling that shows her trailing Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks by a tiny 43-42 margin. This is the first poll we’ve seen of the contest for this southwestern Iowa seat, which Trump would have carried 50-48.

● NC-04: The state AFL-CIO has endorsed state Sen. Valerie Foushee in next month’s Democratic primary.

● NC-13: Politico’s Natalie Allison reports that the Club for Growth has launched a $1.2 million ad campaign in support of law student Bo Hines ahead of the May 17 Republican primary for this newly drawn swing seat. The spot, which is almost identical to the one it’s currently airing for Illinois Rep. Mary Miller, tells viewers that Hines is Trump’s endorsed candidate, believes in term limits, “will never compromise on election integrity,” and opposes “socialist green energy schemes.”

However, not everyone in this suburban Raleigh district is as enamored with Hines as the Club and Trump. Several conservative activists tell Allison that they feel Trump made a bad call by backing Hines, whom she describes as a “Charlotte native who most recently resided two hours away in Winston-Salem,” thanks to his weak ties to the area. She adds that Hines’ team says he’s “in the process of moving” to the district and “intends to update his voter registration in time to vote in the upcoming primary.”

On the Democratic side, state Sen. Wiley Nickel has earned the backing of the state AFL-CIO.

● NM-02: Physician Darshan Patel announced late last month that he’d turned in enough signatures to advance to the June Democratic primary to take on Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell, and the secretary of state has confirmed that he’ll be on the ballot. In mid-March, Patel lost the state party convention to Las Cruces City Councilor Gabe Vasquez 80.4-19.6, but he argued that his total should be rounded up so he’d have the 20% needed to make the ballot without gathering petitions. A party spokesperson said at the time they’d leave the matter up to state election officials, but we never heard whether any decision was made.

● OK-02: Businessman Guy Barker, who is also the secretary-treasurer of the Quapaw Nation, has announced that he’s joining the busy June Republican primary for this safely red open seat in eastern Oklahoma.

● OR-04: Airbnb executive Andrew Kalloch’s new ad for the May 17 Democratic primary has him arguing, “The price of gas, housing, prescription drugs, soaring. The old way of doing things isn’t working.” Kalloch continues by telling the audience, “I’m running for Congress to bring a new generation of leadership that puts Oregon first, not the special interests.”

● TX-15: The first poll we’ve seen of the May 24 Democratic runoff is a Lake Research Partners internal for businesswoman Michelle Vallejo, and it shows her leading Army veteran Ruben Ramirez 39-29.

● VA-02: Former Rep. Scott Taylor announced on Thursday, which was the day that candidate filing closed in Virginia, that he’d support Republican state Sen. Jen Kiggans’ bid to take on Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria rather than run again himself.

● WV-02: The National Journal‘s Erin Covey reports that two different outside groups are airing ads supporting Rep. David McKinley ahead of his May 10 Republican primary showdown with his Trump-backed colleague, Rep. Alex Mooney.

Covey writes that Defending Main Street, which is a super PAC set up all the way back in 2013 to stop anti-establishment candidates from winning GOP primaries (you can see how that went) has deployed $250,000 on an anti-Mooney buy, though a copy doesn’t appear to be online. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, has launched what NBC says is a $160,000 campaign that praises McKinley for wanting to “increase oil and gas exploration on federal lands.”

Mayors

● Los Angeles, CA Mayor: The Los Angeles Times reports that billionaire developer Rick Caruso has already spent close to $7 million on TV advertising, as well as around $1 million more for digital ads, ahead of June’s nonpartisan primary, while none of his many rivals have aired their first TV spots yet. One of Caruso’s many spots touts him as someone who “won’t defund the police” but will instead ”invest in making L.A. safer with 1,500 new officers,” while another features a testimonial from former police chief Bill Bratton.

● Louisville, KY Mayor: Developer Craig Greenberg’s first TV ad for the May 17 Democratic primary features his wife, Rachel Greenberg, describing how the candidate survived a murder attempt on Valentine’s Day at his campaign office. “We are lucky that we made it and that everyone in that room was safe and can move forward together,” Rachel Greenberg says. “Many people that are struck by violence don’t have that luxury. Craig understands that.”

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This week on The Downballot, cohosts David Beard and David Nir covered a lot of ground:

• Elections this past week in Wisconsin and California
• An interesting turn of events in the Pennsylvania Senate race, where the Democratic primary race went negative for the first time
• Madison Cawthorn and why Republicans are finally turning against him
• Important European elections that have taken place recently or are coming up on the docket very soon

Beard and Nir also spoke to guest Ali Lapp, founder of House Majority PAC, the largest Democratic super PAC that is devoted to helping Democrats win House races nationwide. The trio discussed how House Majority PAC goes about its work and the races that it’s focusing on this year, as well as the role redistricting has played in Democrat’s strategies.

You can listen below, or subscribe to The Downballot wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find a transcript for this week right here. New episodes come out every Thursday!

In California, a special election was recently held for the remainder of Rep. Devin Nunes’ term. Former GOP state Assembly Leader Connie Conway took first place in the runoff that’s going to be held June 7. She took 64,000 votes—about 35%. Democrat Lauren Hubbard, an official at the California Department of Water Resources, is in second with 20%, though as Beard notes, that figure is not final yet because there are a few other candidates with about 15% of the vote each: GOP businessman Matt Stoll and another Democrat and Marine veteran, Eric Garcia.

“There are still mail ballots that can be received and be counted, so that hasn’t been called yet. But I think the expectation is that Conway and Hubbard will advance to the runoff, which is again, June 7. Neither one of them are running for any congressional seat in November because the seat is changing a lot in redistricting,” Beard explained. “So assuming Conway wins—she’s the favorite because it’s a pretty Republican leaning seat at the moment—she’ll already be a lame-duck congresswoman when she’s sworn in later in the summer.”

“One thing I should note is that Republican candidates combined for 65% of the vote in the first round of the special election, so that presents pretty nodding odds for Democrats,” Nir chimed in, offering his assessment of the situation. “Though the second round is happening on the same day as the regular statewide primary, that hopefully means turnout will be higher, but I’d say this seat is very likely to remain in GOP hands.”

In Wisconsin, a number of local elections were held last week. In one notable race, fake Trump elector Kelly Ruh (who tried to help Donald Trump steal the election in 2020 by being one of the Wisconsin electors for Donald Trump) lost her reelection as an alderperson in De Pere, a town near Green Bay. Down in Milwaukee, acting mayor and Democrat Cavalier Johnson decisively won Tuesday’s special election, beating conservative Bob Donovan by a 72 to 28 margin. Johnson made history as the first black person elected to lead Milwaukee, though he will have to run for a full term in 2024.

Beard thinks that Wisconsin was, overall, a “mixed bag”:

There were some Democratic victories, some Republican victories, which is not the worst news, I think, compared to where we’ve seen in the past. These before-November elections that take place are lower turnout; you can really see wipeouts one way or another when it’s a big wave year. So the fact that it wasn’t a terrible night for Democrats … does provide a little bit of hope that a wave is not imminent later in the year, but that’s obviously just one factor among many that we’re going to continue to keep watching.

Moving on to the topic of Madison Cawthorn, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis announced that he would be endorsing state Sen. Chuck Edwards, who is running against Cawthorn in the May 17 GOP primary. While it is a pretty unusual move to see a sitting senator endorse a challenger to a member of Congress from his own state, as Nir explained, there were many underlying reasons for this:

Though the coke and orgy stuff got all of the attention, that’s not really why Tillis and other Republicans finally have painted a target on Madison Cawthorn’s back. The real problem is that Cawthorn has just behaved like a celebrity who cares much more about the national right-wing media circuit and the attention he gets in D.C. than about his constituents back home. And in fact, that’s exactly something that Tillis specifically cited, saying, ‘It comes down to focus on the district, producing results for the district. And in my opinion, Mr. Cawthorn hasn’t demonstrated much in the way of results over the last 18 months.’

Moving up north to Pennsylvania, where just this week for the first time, the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate turned negative on the airwaves. The race is primarily a contest between two candidates, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Congressman Connor Lamb, both of whom are from Western Pennsylvania. Nir gave listeners a rundown of the situation:

Fetterman has led in all the polls. He simply has greater name recognition. And it seems that Lamb’s allies think that the only way to stop Fetterman is to attack him on TV ads. But boy, did they screw up. A Super PAC called Penn Progress started airing an ad that tried to contrast Lamb, describing his background as a Marine and a prosecutor, with Fetterman, and saying that Fetterman is ‘a self-described socialist.’ But there was a big problem, at the end of the piece, there was a huge correction that said, ‘This piece said that John Fetterman is a self-described socialist. He is not.’ So this ad was based on a claim in an article that was retracted. And as a result, Fetterman’s campaign sent a letter to TV stations that were airing the ad, asking them to take the ad down because it contained a falsehood.

“The thing though is that this might be a blessing in disguise because the idea that this group is attacking Fetterman for being too liberal or too far to the left in a Democratic primary—that seems completely crazy to me,” Nir continued. “If anything, that might make Fetterman more popular with voters. So Lamb’s team really needs to go back to the drawing board here. But I think that Fetterman remains the favorite in the Democratic primary.”

The pair wrapped up their weekly rundown by quickly previewing some international elections to watch in Hungary and France. Hungary held a general election this past Sunday, in which Prime Minister Victor Orbán won a fourth term in office with 54% of the vote—up more than four percentage points from his last election victory in 2018. His party also retained a two-thirds majority in Parliament, thanks to some pretty significant gerrymandering that his party has implemented in the past. In Orbán’s victory speech, he listed a number of what he called left-wing groups or organizations that he had overcome in this victory, among them: the left in Hungary, the EU, and Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros (who is often the victim of antisemitic attacks in Hungary). He also included Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which seems incredibly strange, Beard opined, though Zelenskyy has attacked Orbán for being one of the most reluctant of the EU leaders to support Ukraine or to provide aid to Ukraine.

This follows an increasingly popular conservative model of thinking and governing, Beard notes: “The Conservative Political Action Committee, CPAC, which is one of the biggest conservative groups in the [United States], they are gathering in May in Hungary where their headline speaker will be Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán. So they aren’t really trying to hide their affection for him and for their desire to emulate what he’s done in Hungary here.”

Over in France, there’s a related situation going on, where the first round of the presidential election is going to be taking place on Sunday, April 10. The two leading candidates are centrist president Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, both of whom are expected to advance to a runoff that’s going to take place two weeks later. Polls have shown Le Pen narrowing her deficit in that runoff to single digits after she lost to Macron five years ago by a landslide 32% margin.

Beard offered this analysis of the situation:

Le Pen, like much of the far right in Europe, has been close with Putin in the past, like Orbán has been. But as we saw in Hungary, as I mentioned, that doesn’t seem to be a major factor in voters’ decision-making in these countries; it’s been much more about things like the cost of living and other domestic concerns. So that’s going to be something we’re going to watch closely. Obviously we’ll have the results of the first round next week, and then the results of the runoff a few weeks later. But Le Pen is definitely a major concern there and something to watch.

In the second half of the show, Beard and Nir welcomed Lapp on to share more about the work House Majority PAC is doing.

“So the details of what House Majority PAC is and how it differs from the DCCC or even candidate campaigns can be tough to parse for a lot of people. Can you give us a brief rundown of the unique role that HMP plays and how it functions as an independent expenditure PAC?” Beard asked.

Lapp replied:

The reason that House Majority PAC exists is because our campaign finance laws in this country are really confusing. And so the way that we have to operate is we are completely independent of candidates and party committees. When I look at House races, I like to think of it as a house, a literal house that someone would live in with three different wings. And one wing of that house are the candidate and their campaign committees. They’re allowed to work with certain people who work at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, they work with their state parties, they can work with the DNC. And they operate in that wing of the House.

Another wing of the house is where the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s independent expenditure resides. They are the most isolated wing of that house. They really can only talk to themselves; they cannot coordinate with any other organizations, including the candidates, or outside groups who are supporting those candidates. And then the third wing of the House, I think is the biggest wing of the house, is where House Majority PAC resides. And in that wing, we also have groups like the League of Conservation Voters, EMILY’s List, labor unions who have independent expenditure arms, and we all operate independently of those other two wings and do whatever we can to make sure that the House Democrat in the races that we care about is going to win their election.

“We work really closely with other organizations. I like to think of us as the air traffic control of House world … and we really try to help [other organizations] make good decisions in their House independent expenditure work. We really see ourselves as helping them understand who the candidates are, what forces are at play,” Lapp added. “We have a decently sized staff of House experts, so when these organizations who may not have as big a staff decide, ‘Hey, we’d like to play in this race,’ we can immediately help them with good information, sharing our polling data, sharing our research, and helping them help us win House seats.”

Asked about redistricting, Lapp admitted that redistricting does affect their planning, but as a result, the organization stays very flexible. As she put it, “We’re very nimble, we’re able to move quickly when we need to. And that’s really important in a redistricting cycle more than any other kind.”

Beard pointed out that HMP has actually put out a few things recently, most recently releasing an ad called “Rescued” that touts Biden and the Democrats’ economic successes over the past 18 months or so, along with some research from Blue Rose Research about how positive the ads’ impact would be. “So how did that come about? And what’s the rationale for an ad like that that doesn’t focus so much on a specific House or House races, but really has a much broader national focus?” he asked.

Lapp believes it’s crucial to start setting the table for the dialogue that needs to happen this fall:

We need to start talking about the economic successes that Democrats have brought to the American people and what we’re still doing every day to make things better for them. In that ad, we specifically talked about the job growth we’ve had, the economy turning around and what we’ve been doing lately, Biden doing his work to lower gas prices, the House voting on Congresswoman Angie Craig from Minnesota’s bill to cap the price of insulin. These are things that have a real impact on families’ pocketbooks, and we think we need to be talking about them even more aggressively than we already have been. So we felt that we should produce this ad, release it, try to get as much play as we can and potentially show what we believe is the right path to talking about the economy as we head into the fall elections.

Nir noted that a few media markets on HMP’s list seemed to cover some districts that definitely got worse for Democrats during the redistricting process—for instance, Arizona’s 2nd District, Michigan’s 10th District, or Texas’ 15th District. “How do you make decisions about whether a seat is worth the investment, especially when it’s gotten redder in redistricting?” he inquired.

This is a huge part of our mission at House Majority PAC, Lapp explained:

Unlike a candidate who goes out and polls and tries to figure out ‘How do I best talk about my biography and my issues and how should I run my race,’ when we’re polling, we’re also trying to get a really good sense of a district’s viability because there are limited resources even with $100 million in TV reservations, and we have to make our best judgment about which districts are the best to invest in. We don’t want to spend in districts that our Democratic candidate is going to win by 10 points, nor do we want to spend in districts where our Democratic candidate is going to lose by 10 points.

So you really have to try to focus in on those ones where your spending is going to be the decision maker in whether or not a race is won or lost. The way that we do it is really not that complicated; we obviously we do a lot of public opinion research in these districts, we poll, sometimes we do focus groups. We look at the strengths of the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate. We look at their fundraising and their ability to run a robust campaign. We think about how many allies we have in a race and whether or not they’re going to be able to invest in there as well. We look at the level of Republican commitment in a race as well.

And we ultimately, we also have to take into account the cost of a race, frankly. If there are two races that are looked to be equal in terms of our ability to win them, but one of them is four times as expensive as the other, we’re all about numbers at House Majority PAC, we need to get to 218 or more. So … we really have to evaluate every race in that context.

Closing out, Lapp acknowledged that this is going to be a tough cycle, but that HMP is up to the challenge.

“We’ve got so many good Democratic candidates running. And look, 2020 was not a great year down-ballot, even though Joe Biden won the presidency. So a lot of Democrats that held some of the toughest districts were not reelected in 2020. And the Democrats from really tough districts that were reelected in 2020, they’re battle-tested. They are strong candidates, they fit their districts really well, and most of them got districts that are at least a little bit better as a result of redistricting,” Lapp said. “So we have every confidence in their ability to win this cycle. We’re there to support them. We know you guys are, we hope your listeners are, and we really appreciate the support.”

The Downballot comes out every Thursday, everywhere you listen to podcasts. As a reminder, you can reach our hosts by email at [email protected]. Please send in any questions you may have for next week’s mailbag. You can also reach us via Twitter @DKElections.

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I’m on vacation this week and thought this blast-from-the-past cartoon might be a good reminder of what was going on when Russia took over Crimea back in 2014. Some similar threads still today.

If only we knew about Paul Manafort back then and the dirty dealings he was doing in Ukraine for his client, Viktor Yanukovych.

I’ll be back with new material next week. Please fix the world when I’m gone.

Thanks.

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Charles P. Pierce/Esquire:

Eric Boehlert’s Spirit Was Decades Younger and His Wisdom Decades Older

One of the only media critics who mattered has died at 57 years old.

He was gloriously unimpressed by reputations. He was the implacable foe of journalistic laziness in all its forms, especially as expressed through access journalism and the reportorial arch-heresy of Both Siderism. Take him all in all, he was something of a proud throwback to what the craft of journalism ought to be. It pains me as a professional to know that a lot of famous yahoos are going to get a freer ride now that he’s gone, although I feel certain that the likes of Dan Froomkin and Margaret Sullivan—and, in its own little way, this shebeen—will carry on his work as best we all can.

Joan Walsh/The Nation:

Eric Boehlert Got Everything Right About Our Petty, Self-Congratulating Media  
From his early coverage of political reporters’ savaging Al Gore to his incisive critique of their Joe Biden coverage right before he died, he got it. And he will be missed.

Many fine journalists have written tributes to Eric’s insight and bravery in covering the media, and also his generosity and warmth as a colleague and friend. What more can I add? Well, we worked together at Salon for five years in the early 2000s, and I was frequently his editor. I went looking for some of his early pieces for us, and I found treasure. Whether even his admirers know it or not—and many do, but not all—Eric has been on the same story for the last 23 years: the callow, irresponsible way that our Beltway media has covered Democrats in these decades.

And he has fucking crushed it.

WaPo:

Trump deflects blame for Jan. 6 silence, says he wanted to march to Capitol

The former president struck a defiant posture and repeated false claims in an interview with The Washington Post.

Trump, speaking Wednesday afternoon at his palatial beachfront club, said he did not regret urging the crowd to come to Washington with a tweet stating that it would “be wild!” He also stood by his incendiary and false rhetoric about the election at the Ellipse rally before the rioters stormed the Capitol. “I said peaceful and patriotic,” he said, omitting other comments that he made in a speech that day.

In fact, Trump said he deserved more credit for drawing such a large crowd to the Ellipse — and that he pressed to march on the Capitol with his supporters but was stopped by his security detail. “Secret Service said I couldn’t go. I would have gone there in a minute,” he said.

He’s our best GOTV tool. 

Taylor Lorenz/Twitter:

The NYT announced a new policy on Twitter today and it’s very disappointing and contradictory to see. This is not how a newsroom should approach the internet or social media. It only deepens the NYT’s vulnerability to bad faith attacks. Let me break it down.

For the majority of my career I ran social strategy for newsrooms. I wrote social media guidelines for large media cos. A good social policy is about *supporting* your staff, protecting them against bad faith attacks, and recognizing that we all live as full humans online now. 

These two things are in direct contradiction w/ each other. The issue w/ NYT is that they consistently buy into bad faith attacks online and punish their journalists when they’re subject to gamergate style smear campaigns.

David Axe/Daily Beast:

Two COVID Variants Just Combined Into a ‘Frankenstein’ Virus

First identified in the U.K., the ultra-infectious “XE” subvariant could already be spreading undetected in America.

The first subvariant of Omicron, the latest major variant of the novel coronavirus, was bad. BA.1 drove record cases and hospitalizations in many countries starting last fall.

The second subvariant, BA.2, was worse in some countries—setting new records for daily cases across China and parts of Europe.

Now BA.1 and BA.2 have combined to create a third subvariant. XE, as it’s known, is a “recombinant”—the product of two viruses interacting “Frankenstein”-style in a single host…

But don’t panic just yet. The same mix of subvariants that produced XE might also protect us from it. Coming so quickly after the surge of BA.1 and BA.2 cases, XE is on track to hit a wall of natural immunity—the antibodies left over from past infection in hundreds of millions of people.

HuffPost:

Ketanji Brown Jackson Makes History As First Black Woman On Supreme Court

For the first time ever, the court will no longer be a majority of white men.

Jackson, 51, was confirmed in a 53-47 vote. Every Democrat voted for her, along with three Republicans: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Susan Collins (Maine) and Mitt Romney (Utah). When the vote was over, the Senate chamber erupted with cheers and applause from the balcony.

Jackson’s confirmation seals a promise by President Joe Biden, who vowed as a candidate to pick a Black woman for the Supreme Court.

With Jackson on the court, white men will not be a majority of justices for the first time ever.

Amy Knight/WaPo:

Is a coup against Putin possible? Russia’s history offers clues.

Vladimir Putin has never faced a serious challenge to his power. But his disastrous war in Ukraine could change that…

The most likely threat to his rule comes from within the regime. Russia’s history offers some insights.

There have been two successful coups d’état since the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 — the overthrow of Stalin’s dreaded secret police chief Lavrenti Beria in June 1953 and the ouster of Communist Party First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev in October 1964. Aside from the execution of Beria and six of his associates, these coups were relatively bloodless. In both cases, the support of the security services and the Soviet military were crucial to their success.

Jessica Bruder/Atlantic:

A COVERT NETWORK OF ACTIVISTS IS PREPARING FOR THE END OF ROE

What will the future of abortion in America look like?

Ellie snugged the rubber stopper into the mason jar. She snipped the aquarium tubing into a pair of foot-long segments and attached the valve to the syringe’s plastic tip. In less than 10 minutes, Ellie had finished the project: a simple abortion device. It looked like a cross between an at-home beer-brewing kit and a seventh-grade science experiment.

The two segments of tubing protruded from the holes in the stopper. One was connected to a cannula, the other to the syringe. Holding the anatomical model, Ellie traced a path with the tip of the cannula into the vagina and through the cervix, positioning it to suction out the contents of the uterus. Next, to show more clearly how the suction process works, she placed the cannula into her coffee. When she drew back the plunger on the syringe, dark fluid coursed through the aquarium tubing and into the mason jar, collecting slowly within the diamond-patterned glass.

I had read about such devices before. But watching the scene on the beach towel brought history into focus with startling clarity: Women did this the last time abortion was illegal.

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Russia continues to shift already-battered forces toward Eastern Ukraine and has made new moves around Kherson, but there’s still no clear picture of what Russia’s actual next plans might be. There are hints that Russian leaders are focused on capturing a broad section of the country centered around Kramatorsk, which would allow Russian troops to fully encircle deeply dug-in Ukrainian defenders who have long held back separatist aims in the Donbas—but outside observers are skeptical that Russia could pull off such an ambitious operation. Each of the logistical problems that plagued Russia in its Kyiv assaults—from lack of coordination to lack of communication to long supply lines that were relentlessly (and very successfully) hounded by Ukrainian territorial defenders—would only be doubled; the battalions Russia is sending have already seen hard fighting and heavy losses.

Russian leaders, however, might be so desperate for something that can be portrayed as victory that they are willing to throw as many troops as is necessary at Ukrainian defenses. We’ve circled from pre-war predictions—most positing that Russia would tear through Ukraine’s defenses like steel through paper—to experts struggling to come up with a scenario in which Russia cobbles together any military victory at all.

That does not mean it is not possible. It also doesn’t mean Russia will not continue to inflict horrific violence on Ukrainian civilians—the only Russian military skill that appears to have survived Putin’s purge of competence. Today’s updates:

• The Kherson bulge, the Kramatorsk gap
• Lies, damn lies, and … WTF is that?
• ‘Looking behind us now, into history back’
• ‘Ukraine biolabs’ conspiracy theory pushed by Kremlin and Tucker originated with QAnon fan

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The CoreCivic-operated Otay Mesa Detention Center in California is back in the news for the usual, but no less horrific, reason: it’s abusive treatment of people in its custody.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that a number of immigrants have reported sexual misconduct by a staff worker, who they say walked into their cells unannounced and stared at their groins and buttocks while making inappropriate remarks. One of the men said that during one of these unwanted visits, the staff worker had a visible erection.

“It’s pretty disturbing for me to even relive this,” Erik Mercado told The San Diego Union-Tribune. He recalled that when he questioned the staffer about what he was doing in his cell, the staffer responded that he was “looking for something big.” 

RELATED STORY: Psychologist further traumatized immigrants detained at odious facility, civil rights complaint says

The private prison profiteer said the complaints were under investigation, and claimed that the company “is committed to the safety and dignity of every person entrusted to our care,” the report said. But the record doesn’t lie: Otay Mesa Detention Center is an abusive shithole that should be shut down.

“Sexual abuse ranging from verbal harassment to the extremes of rape are rampant, and it’s often covered up by the perpetrators,” Freedom For Immigrants’ Amanda Díaz told The San Diego Union-Tribune. She manages the free legal hotline attacked by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Mercado and three other men also reported the abuses to through the hotline. “ICE operates under a veil of secrecy, and it leaves those who have been harmed with pretty much no path for justice.”

Other immigrants said in a civil rights complaint last month that they were mocked, belittled, and further traumatized by a contracted psychologist after asking for mental health care. Sergio Manrique Gutierrez said in the complaint that Hrysso Fernbach was mocking him within minutes of sitting down in front of her.

“On that day I was in her office and within three minutes she said to me, ‘There is nothing wrong with you … Let me guess, you’ve been here since you were a little kid and this is all you know… You want me to write you a letter for the judge so he can let you stay here.’” Manrique Gutierrez had “struggled with psychotic and mild neurocognitive disabilities for many years,” the complaint said. He said visiting this doctor, who already had a disturbing history even before arriving to Otay Mesa, “only made me feel worse than I did before seeing her.”

It seems that if CoreCivic truly were “committed to the safety and dignity of every person entrusted to our care,” this doctor wouldn’t have been treating vulnerable people at Otay Mesa in the first place.

House lawmakers joined advocates last fall in urging the Biden administration to terminate Otay Mesa’s contract, citing “repeated violations of the ICE standards and the excessive waste of federal funds.” They noted a DHS inspector general report confirming the facility had at the start of the pandemic tried to force immigrants into signing a liability form protecting the site if they wanted a protective face mask.

ICE is also abusing immigrants at huge benefit to private prison companies, lawmakers noted at the time. “The contracts to run these facilities are designed in such a way—particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the September 21, 2021 DHS enforcement priorities—to guarantee government waste,” legislators said. “ICE pays an estimated $1.34 million dollars every day on unused beds through guaranteed minimum contracts, such as the ones with Otay Mesa and Adelanto.” They noted that from April 2020 to March 2021, CoreCivic reaped $22 million for used beds.

RELATED STORIES: ‘Repeated violations’: California lawmakers call on DHS to end three ICE contracts in state

San Diego’s wretched Otay Mesa immigration prison is seeing near-record COVID-19 cases

Detainees were told they’d have to sign contract letting facility off the hook if they wanted masks

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As Daily Kos continues to cover, the heinous, hateful “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida is dangerous for LGBTQ+ students, plus those who are questioning and allies. Queer youth already face structural and systemic barriers and obstacles when it comes to mental health, in addition to being at higher risk for becoming homeless, leaving high school without a diploma, and facing verbal and physical harassment and abuse. 

That’s bad enough as it is, but an under-discussed element of the law (and copycats popping up around the nation) is the way it targets public school teachers, coaches, and other staff. Do LGBTQ+ teachers essentially need to go back into the closet? Whose identity is “inappropriate” and whose isn’t? (We know the answer to that one.) How do teachers know the line between being supportive and being “too” supportive? 

One example comes to us from Kentucky, where music teacher Tyler Clay Morgan wrote a message of support for LGBTQ+ students on the classroom board on March 30, according to local outlet WB on 9. After outcry, he has since resigned from his job and says he has received threats of violence over it.

RELATED: School board president received death threat against family prior to local election. Guess who won?

The message read: “YOU ARE FREE TO BE YOURSELF WITH ME YOU MATTER!” in rainbow colors. A trans pride flag and pride flag were also included. Morgan, who taught at West Irvine Intermediate School, which serves third through fifth grades, confirmed he did write the message on the whiteboard, according to local outlet WKYT. 

Sadly, we don’t know what conversation ensued in the classroom, but according to Estill County Superintendent Jeff Saylor, the conversation went “far beyond the music curriculum.”

Listen and subscribe to Daily Kos Elections’ The Downballot podcast with David Nir and David Beard

In a longer statement, Saylor wrote in part that while teachers “of course” sometimes veer from lessons plans, the conversations in Morgan’s classroom allegedly exceeded those norms. “It is my job to make sure that parents are not surprised by these types of situations,” he wrote. 

Sounds a lot like the parental rights discussions are spooking administrators already, huh?

Not all people have taken an issue with what happened, though. Local outlet LEX 18 spoke to a parent who asked to be anonymous and said they appreciate the teacher’s effort to provide a “safe space” for “ANY student to be themselves.”

Henry Sparks, a former student at the high school, told the outlet that having a teacher like Morgan could have been life-changing for him when he was a student, as he recalled hearing homophobic slurs from a young age. 

“He was literally trying to make a safe atmosphere for these kids to be themselves and learn,” Sparks told the outlet. “Which is something I was not able to do.” He added that he didn’t feel he had a safe space to learn as a youth.

As a gay person myself, I relate to this: I wasn’t “out” entirely in high school (if I even had a concept of what that looked like), but I cannot imagine how reassuring it would have been to have a teacher in my life who explicitly, openly, warmly supported LGBTQ+ people and that I didn’t have to guess or worry about how people “really” felt. Of course, I was (and am) privileged in many ways: I’m white, cisgender, and able-bodied, for example. For LGBTQ+ people who live with multiple marginalized identities, having a supportive adult in their life might make an even bigger impact. 

“I still firmly believe more work needs to be done in Kentucky,” Morgan wrote in a Facebook post about his resignation. “Especially in Eastern Kentucky, to ensure that more resources are provided to make sure all students feel safe, secure, and seen.”

In addition to Morgan’s situation, we have to remember the young children who are losing a teacher. For youth who were drawn to Morgan’s message of inclusion, watching them leave the classroom so soon after might be traumatizing or anxiety-inducing, as it could send a message that support and acceptance are going to get them in trouble in some way. Again, this ultimately suggests to young people that they should stay in the closet, and that’s an enormous (and unfair) emotional burden. 

Again, we don’t know what was said in the classroom, but from what we know, the board’s message seems appropriate, loving, and, dare I say, educational. It’s almost like conservatives are hoping young people won’t learn acceptance or inclusion and will be all the easier to manipulate into conservatism as adults. 

Again, talk about grooming, huh?

You can catch brief local video coverage below.

Sign the petition: Demand the Senate pass the Equality Act and protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination.

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When we in the United States discuss the Caribbean diaspora—including the nearly 13 million U.S. citizens of Caribbean ancestry—rarely do we think of Canada. Our neighbor to the north has a Caribbean immigrant and ancestored population of about 1 million people, and they have faced struggles for civil rights as what Canada dubs “visible minorities,” a term coined by Black Canadian activist Kay Livingston in 1975. 

Today, let’s meet two amazing Black Caribbean Canadian women: a politician and a dub poet.

Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.

While searching for Caribbean news items for this series, I came across a video promoting the documentary Steadfast: The Messenger and the Message. I admit that I knew zero about the subject of the film, the Hon. Jean Augustine, P.C., C.M., O.Ont., C.B.E., as she’s styled in Canada; while I was aware that Canada celebrates Black History Month, I didn’t know Augustine, 84, was the person behind that legislation. 

Here’s the Steadfast theatrical trailer.

Some background on the Hon. Augustine.

Augustine is one of a large number of Caribbean immigrants who came to Canada in the years following World War II. She was born on September 9, 1937, in Grenada, an island nation in the southeastern Caribbean Sea that was then still part of the British colonial empire. She grew up in a village called Happy Hill near Grenada’s capital of St. George’s. Her father, Ossie Simon, was a sugarcane-plantation worker, but he died before she was a year old after a deadly bout with tetanus, which he contracted during a visit to the dentist.

Augustine’s mother, Olive, was already expecting a second child when her husband died, and the entire family was adopted by an older woman in the village, whom they called “Granny.” Granny had no children of her own, but owned some property and was moderately well-off. Such communal and charitable arrangements were more commonplace in West Indian society during Augustine’s youth. Granny’s was a household in which Augustine was encouraged to excel in school, and she did. She won a scholarship to a local Roman Catholic school, where she earned top grades. During her high-school years, she founded an all-girl band and also hosted her own youth program on a local radio station before graduating a year early.

Augustine’s first job was as a schoolteacher in Grenada, but her pay was less than $10 a month. On Sundays she would write letters for other Grenadians who had never learned to read or write, but wanted to keep in touch with relatives living overseas. This experience exposed Augustine to people who had left the West Indies in search of better economic opportunities, and at the age of 22 she herself moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to take a job as a nanny. She arrived on a special visa the Canadian government gave out to citizens of other nations inside the British colonial realm, which required her to work one year as a domestic servant. After that period was finished, she would then be free to stay in Canada permanently if she wished.

Augustine would go on to make history in Canada in 1993 when she was elected to the House of Commons; nine years later, she would become the first Black woman to serve as a cabinet minister.

But Augustine has impacted generations. Unilearnal’s Anne Moreau is the co-creator of the YouTube series 28 Moments of Black Canadian History. In the 2020 episode below, Moreau talks about life as a Black woman in Canada, as well as the impact of learning about and then meeting Hon. Jean Augustine.

Moving on to the other star of today’s story, April 5 marks the 70th birthday of Lillian Allen, one of the founders of the dub poetry movement in Canada.  

Krista L. Roberts wrote Allen’s bio for the Canadian Encyclopedia. 

Lillian Allen was born the fifth of ten children. She was raised and grew up in Spanish Town, a historic city about 17 kilometres west of Kingston, Jamaica. Allen’s father was a civil servant and a leader at the local church; her mother was also an active community member who played a large role in educating her children. In 1969, at the age of 17, Allen left Spanish Town to attend the University of Waterloo in Kitchener, Ontario. That same year, she moved to New York City, where she landed a job working at the Caribbean Daily. It was in the pages of this paper that she first  published, “I Fight Back,” a dub poem that gained a considerable amount of recognition. While living in New York, she also studied communications and Black studies at City College of New York, as well as creative writing at New York University. During  this time, she became heavily involved in the dub poetry scene.

Allen moved back to Jamaica in 1973, and the next year she returned to Canada and settled in Toronto, where she enrolled in the newly formed English and Creative Writing Program at York University. She was one of the first students to graduate from the program, with a BA, in 1978. While in school, Allen served as a community legal worker in Regent Park, a public housing estate in Toronto with a large population of Afro-Caribbean immigrants. She also worked as an education coordinator for the Immi-Can youth project,and contributed research and lyrics for the reggae band Truths and Rights […]

In 1989, Allen’s poem “Unnatural Causes” was the subject of a National Film Board film. The short film features images of politicians basking in luxury and comfort interspersed with images of homeless women and archival footage of Canadian protest movements. In 1993, Allen co-produced and co-directed the documentary Blak Wi Blakk, about the life and work of the dub poet Mutabaruka. In 1999, she released her third album, Freedom and Dance. She was a driving force in the 2003 founding of the Dub Poets Collective, alongside Afua Cooper, Klyde Broox, Chet Singh, Clifton Joseph, di’b young and Sankofa Juba, and in 2004 she hosted Wordbeat, a CBC Radio program on poetry and spoken word.

Give a listen to “Unnatural Causes”:

As Kerstin Knopf writes in Views of Canadian Cultures:

The piece “Unnatural causes” contextualizes the clash between Canada’s postcard image as the perfect multicultural nation and the various images of (immigrant) poverty and homelessness that are likely to be ignored in national discourses. In the poem’s idealized city and country “a curtained metropolitan glare/ grins a diamond sparkle sunset.” The picture postcard of Toronto that is sent home transports false illusions into the world. Canada’s postcard images construct it as an immigrant “fairy land,/ where everything is so clean/ a place where everyone is happy/ and well taken care of” as the voice of the receiver of the postcard reflects. But the postcard glosses over society’s unpleasant spots and does not reveal that in the “silvered city/ hunger rails beneath the flesh,” people make their homes in streetcars and bus stops and stay thirsty “at the banks of plenty.” To affirm this ‘unpostcardlike’ side of Canadian society, Allen introduces the character of Caroline Bungle, a homeless woman, who “tugs her load […] on the front steps of abundance” and whose life is a “dungle of terror/ of lost hope/ abandonment.”

Here’s a video tribute to Allen.

In 2021, Allen published Make the World New: The Poetry of Lillian Allen. In her review of the book for The Walrus, Kaie Kellough writes this of Allen’s lasting impact—and those who tried to thwart it:

The arrow-like precision of Allen’s voice helped fashion a new narrative of who a Canadian artist could be and what they might address. In 1984, Allen was part of a small group of dub poets who tried to join the League of Canadian Poets, a national organization that, for many years, was the face of English-language poetry in the country. Their application was rejected on the grounds that Allen and the others were performers and therefore failed to meet the league’s membership criteria at the time. The group countered that they write poems, but they also perform them, and performance is a form of publishing. They were eventually admitted. The instance of discrimination masquerading as formal artistic distinction marked Allen. The initial rejection suggested that a Black poet who maintains an oral practice cannot really be a poet. Instead of accepting that and practising their art form on the margins of the literary scene, Allen and her contemporaries demanded that the definition change.

Hope you enjoyed meeting these two phenomenal sisters, and that you will join me in the comments for more discussion and the weekly Caribbean news Twitter round-up.