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The Border Patrol’s union has consistently been up to no good. In just a couple of examples, it records its podcast in a studio owned by white supremacist rag Breitbart. The two actually enjoy quite a cozy relationship, with a local chapter of the union awarding the racist outlet for its “reporting” back in 2015. 

But the union also makes no secrets of its despicable views, after union president Brandon Judd went onto Fox News to openly promote racist “replacement theory.”

RELATED STORY: After Carlson spouts white nationalist ‘replacement theory,’ ADL chief says: ‘Tucker must go’

In the clip, both Fox News host Bill Hemmer and Judd are fuming over the Biden administration’s decision to terminate the Stephen Miller Title 42 order that for more than two years now has effectively stomped on U.S. asylum law. 

“Sir, why do you think this administration has allowed virtually an open border?” Hemmer asks Judd, once again exposing the conundrum Republicans have created for themselves. Literally from the start of the Biden administration, they’ve lied and declared “open borders” as a political attack. But now that the administration is moving to restore asylum access—a just decision that we should celebrate—they’re acknowledging the presence of Title 42 as a border control measure (though the policy has been a failure in multiple ways, see why here).

But I digress. “I believe that they’re trying to change the demographics of the electorate, that’s what I believe they’re doing” Judd responds to Hemmer. “They want to stay in power and the only way to stay in power is to continue to get elected.”

My colleague David Neiwert has previously described this “replacement” talk as “a conspiracy theory claiming that white people are selectively ‘replaced’ by nonwhite immigrants.” It’s white supremacist conspiracy theory, and it’s being promoted by the president of the union for border agents. This is, to say the least, very worrying.

But it’s not like Judd hasn’t already exhibited worrying behavior, earlier this year appearing in an ad where a right-wing candidate from Arizona shot at actors portraying the president, Speaker Pelosi, and Sen. Mark Kelly.

Let’s also not pretend the white supremacist “replacement theory” spouted during this interview was an aberration. Tucker Carlson has been a longtime fan, and has been echoed by top Republicans like Elise Stefanik. National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Rick Scott has gotten very close to it, after claiming that he’s eager to welcome “immigrants who want to be Americans, not change America.”

Nor are they one bit sorry about running on racism. I mean, it’s all they have. “After national press attention condemning Stefanik’s use of the white nationalist ‘replacement theory’ in her Fbook ads warning of an ‘election insurrection’ … she has doubled down and is STILL running these ads,” America’s Voice Political Director Zachary Mueller noted last fall.

RELATED STORIES: 

Arizona GOP candidate revels in outrage after releasing vile ad depicting political violence

Stefanik pushes racist ad that also claims undocumented immigrants are the real insurrectionists

GOP teeing up racist ads going into midterms. Democrats can fight back by championing immigrants

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Republican Rep. Bob Gibbs said Wednesday that he was ending his re-election bid for Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, a surprising announcement that came well after candidate filing closed and days following the start of early voting for the state’s May 3 primary. The six-term congressman’s abrupt retirement leaves former Trump aide Max Miller as the frontrunner to claim a seat in the Canton area and Akron suburbs that Trump would have carried 54-45. Gibbs’ name will remain on the ballot, but the secretary of state’s office says that any votes cast for him will not be counted.

Gibbs used his departure announcement to express his anger at the state Supreme Court, which is not scheduled to rule on the fate of the new GOP-drawn congressional map until well after the primary. “It is irresponsible to effectively confirm the congressional map for this election cycle seven days before voting begins,” said the incumbent, “especially in the Seventh Congressional District, where almost 90 percent of the electorate is new and nearly two-thirds is an area primarily from another district, foreign to any expectations or connection to the current Seventh District.” To put it another way, a mere 9% of the residents of the new 7th are already Gibbs’ constituents, so he would have been campaigning in largely unfamiliar turf.

Miller, by contrast, began the cycle by running against Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, who has since announced his own retirement, in the old 16th District, which makes up 65% of the new 7th. Miller, who was one of Trump’s favorite aides (an unnamed source told Politico that the two “had … kind of a unique ‘bro’ relationship”) received his old boss’ backing last year against Gonzalez, who voted for impeachment.

Miller ended up taking on Gibbs after redistricting led them to seek the same seat, and Trump’s spokesperson said last month that the endorsement carried over to Miller’s new campaign against the far-more loyal incumbent. Miller last year also filed a defamation lawsuit against his ex-girlfriend, former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, after she accused him of physically attacking her in 2020.

Gibbs himself got his start in elected office in 2002 when he won a seat in the Ohio state House, and he won a promotion six years later to the state Senate. Gibbs in 2009 set his sights on challenging Democratic Rep. Zack Space in the now-defunct 18th Congressional District, a historically red area in the eastern part of the state that had favored John McCain 52-45, but he had to get past seven fellow Republicans in the following year’s primary first.

Gibbs (who happened to share a name with the Obama White House’s press secretary), had the support of the party establishment, including House Minority Leader John Boehner, and he benefited after tea party activists failed to back a single alternative. The state senator ultimately beat 2008 nominee Fred Dailey, who had lost to Space 60-40, in a 20.9-20.7 squeaker, though it took another month to confirm Gibbs’ 156-vote victory.

The general election turned out to be a far easier contest for Gibbs in what was rapidly turning into a GOP wave year. Space went on the offensive early by portraying his opponent as a tax hiker and a supporter of free trade agreements, but Gibbs ended up unseating him in a 54-40 landslide. Redistricting two years later left the new congressman with a new district, now numbered the 7th, that was largely unfamiliar to him, but unlike in 2022, he faced no serious intra-party opposition in this red constituency. Democrats in 2018 hoped that well-funded Navy veteran Ken Harbaugh could give Gibbs a serious fight, but the congressman decisively turned him back 59-41.

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A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that 63% of Americans agree with the statement that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” with only 14% disagreeing and another 23% who were uncertain.

The statement matches exactly what President Joe Biden said late last month as he expressed what he later called his “moral outrage” at the savagery of Putin’s unprovoked invasion and the suffering it has heaped on Ukrainian civilians, especially women and children.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said in Warsaw, Poland, at the end of a forceful speech seeking to steel the global community for the fight ahead.

Although many within the Beltway were quick to seize on Biden’s remark as a gaffe, the new polling conducted March 31 to April 4 shows that Biden was in fact in step with the sentiment of roughly two-thirds of the American public.

The president, however, didn’t fare as well when the survey attached his name to the statement.

Even though 63% agreed with the unattributed statement, that number shrank to a plurality of 48% when respondents were asked whether Biden was “right or wrong” to have made the statement; 29% said Biden was “wrong” to make the remark. But even then, Biden’s statement was in net-plus territory by 19 points.

Naturally, Republicans accounted for most of the cohort that turned on a dime once they found out President Biden had made the statement. At first, Republicans agreed with the statement 57%-21%, a 36-point margin. But as soon as Biden’s name was injected, Republicans said he was wrong by 9 points, 46%-37%. That’s a net shift of 45 points.

Biden also lost 13 points among Democrats, with 83% originally supporting the statement but 70% ultimately saying Biden was wrong to say it.

The White House sought to clarify the unscripted statement almost immediately after Biden uttered it. The president was not endorsing “regime change,” a spokesperson noted at the time.

But when reporters later peppered the president with questions about the remark, he was defiant.

“I’m not walking anything back,” Biden said at a White House press conference. “I was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward the way Putin is dealing and the actions of this man—just the brutality of it, half the children in Ukraine. I had just come from being with those families.”

Political polarization aside, the fact remains that the American public is largely in agreement with the U.S. effort to flow as much weaponry and aid to Ukraine as possible without igniting World War III.

The poll suggests President Biden has a lot of latitude to bolster Ukraine’s valiant resistance and its right to self-determination. Whatever Americans might tell a pollster, their hearts are with Ukraine. That sentiment has likely only deepened after several days of horrifying revelations about mass graves of civilians, point-blank executions, and other unimaginable Russian atrocities.  

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Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western nations were extremely careful about the types of military hardware they sent to Kyiv. Food and supplies? Check. Small arms and ammo? Okay. Weapons designed specifically to take out tanks and other armored vehicles? That last one took a few years worth of thinking. Even something like body armor was the subject of deep discussion, as the U.S., NATO, and other members of the EU pondered just what did, and what didn’t, fit under the ill-defined oxymoron of “defensive weapon.”

Over the last month, it became clear that the Russian army was definitely not going to just roll into Kyiv to a welcoming parade. Over that same month, the Ukrainian military showcased how modern weaponry could take apart armored convoys deployed in a way that was either overconfident, or just plain sloppy. It also became increasingly obvious that not only does Ukraine have a chance to win this war outright, but that seeing Russia lose decisively benefits something like 194 out of the world’s 195 nations.

Add in images of maternity hospitals being shelled and shelters being bombed; and even before the revelations of atrocities that came with the Russian withdrawal from the area around Kyiv, many nations began to quickly move the markers on what weapons were acceptable to give to Ukraine. It’s safe to say that items which would never have been considered on Feb 24—like a trainload of Czech T-72M1 tanks—are now on their way to being used by Ukrainian forces.

The U.S. might not be sending any tanks or F-16 fighter jets (for all the reasons that Markos laid out), but it has definitely backed way they hell away from debates of the past. The U.S. has issued two new packages of military hardware to Ukraine since the invasion began, including a heavy dose of Javelin anti-tank weapons and Stinger anti-aircraft weapons.

In the last big package that President Biden put together, Ukraine was allocated 800 more Stingers, 2,000 Javelins, 1,000 missiles for hitting lightly armored vehicles, and a whopping 6,000 AT-4 anti-armor systems. Like the Javelin or Stinger, the AT-4 is a soldier-carried weapon, and it’s definitely capable of taking out a tank. It’s actually a Swedish weapon, one that the Ukrainian forces have already been using with some success.  They seem to like them.

For the U.S., that was on top of 600 Stingers and 2,600 Javelins that had already been sent. There are now far more anti-tank weapons in Ukraine than there are tanks. Which is just the way it should be. Those weapons are going to keep coming.

However, both advocates and skeptics of proving Ukraine with better weaponry were surprised when the $800 million package that Biden signed onto contained “100 Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems.” These turned out to be not some form of observation drone — though those are far more useful and deadly than they may seem — but sets of AeroVironment’s Switchblade drone.  

There are two types of Switchblades, the 300 and the newer 600. Both are “loitering munitions,” in other words, drones that can be launched and circle an area for several minutes before finding their target, locking in, and driving home. Unlike a larger Turkish Bayraktar, the Switchblade doesn’t fire a missile. It is a missile. One with good cameras and a lot of smarts.

The reaction in Ukraine, and among those supporting Ukraine, was one of considerable excitement. This class of weaponry is become more common, and it can be extremely effective in tasks like taking out artillery that is sitting back to shell a city safely out of reach of counter-fire.

There may be no better way to see how important this system is than to check in with Clint Erhlich. If you’ve forgotten who Erhlich is, he’s a favorite of Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, and right wing media in general. Ehrlich frequently pops up on television, radio, and podcasts as a “military analyst” or “Russia expert”.

That expertise brought Erhlich these amazing insights:

Feb 15: “I’ll put my reputation on the line: There is now zero chance that Russia suddenly invades Ukraine.”

Feb 23: “Many people are predicting that a Russian invasion of Ukraine will look like the failed Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They’re wrong. The world will be shocked by the swiftness of Russian victory. We’re about to witness a Sputnik moment.”

Feb 24: “Before this conflict, many people were speculating that Ukrainian troops would have a morale advantage, since they’d be defending their homeland. As we’re seeing, that overlooked the role that Russian shock and awe would play. I’m not blaming the Ukrainians. Just being honest.”

Erhlich then went on to explain, at length, in many tweets, why everyone should be cheering for a “swift Russian victory” to minimize Ukrainian casualties. You know, like how the casualties were minimized in Russian-occupied Bucha.

So, with that background of accuracy behind him, what did Erhlich think of sending Ukrainians some Switchblade drones? Well, he thinks it’s really bad news … for Joe Biden.

Mar 30: “If it’s only delivering Switchblade 300s to Ukraine, it’s not fighting the proxy war effectively. And if it thinks Russia won’t react to a covert delivery of Switchblade 600s, it’s dead wrong.”

Notice that over the last month Erhlich has continued to swim in the Russian propaganda tank and is calling this a “proxy war” for the United States. And notice that the only good Switchblade, in his opinion, is no Switchblade at all. 

That’s how you know they’re good.

Both the Switchblade 300 and 600 have their potential targets. How this type of weapon will work out in Ukraine isn’t clear, but we did learn one thing on Wednesday. Not only have the first examples of this weapon arrived in Ukraine for a trial, but when defense officials let slip that Ukrainian military were in the U.S. for training, at least some of that was being trained on how to use the Switchblade system, likely in connection with the Puma observation drone, which the U.S. is also sending.

It’s very possible that in the next few days we’ll see the first results of a Switchblade system being used in Ukraine. While any new class of weapons becoming involved in a war is never anything that should generate a lot of excitement, after Bucha, and Borodyanka, and what we already know has happened in Mariupol, that feeling seems a lot more justified.

Erlich was right about one thing — the faster this war is over, the better. So long as Russia loses.

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It’s unclear how a GOP candidate could be so bold as to contact the daughter of a civil rights legend like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at all, let alone to do so claiming he knows more about her father’s legacy than she does. But hey, there’s a reason they call it white privilege. Josh Mandel is a former Ohio state representative and state treasurer recently endorsed in the Ohio Senate race by Sen. Ted Cruz.

Instead of focusing on his race or perhaps in service to racist supporters, Mandel tweeted Bernice King on Tuesday that her father, who an assassin shot and killed on April 4, 1968 on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, “knew the importance of the Second Amendment.”

RELATED: One of the most mendacious Senate candidates we’ve ever encountered is back for another run in Ohio

Mandel claimed Martin Luther King Jr. “tried to exercise his right to self-defense and was wrongly denied a gun permit by anti-gun racists … Firearms ≠ violence. Study your history better @BerniceKing,” Mandel added in the tweet.

The social media post was part of a thread started by Mandel when he thanked Bernice King and the King Center, a nonprofit dedicated to nonviolent social change, for motivating his latest campaign ad. In the ad, Mandel is shown walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the historic landmark King led more than 2,000 Black and white protesters across in Selma, Alabama, to advocate for the federal Voting Rights Act. The response from Southern racists and law enforcement at the Edmund Pettus Bridge was repeated beatings, teargas bombings, and deadly encounters so violent that the scene televised for the country to witness on Sunday, March 7, 1965 was dubbed Bloody Sunday. Mandel evoked the memory to vocalize opposition to critical race theory.

A framework for interpreting law that maintains racism has an undeniable effect on the legal foundation of American society, the theory would be pretty exclusively confined to law schools if not for Republicans attempting to redefine it as anything that makes white people feel bad about racism.

“Martin Luther King marched right here so skin color wouldn’t matter,” Mandel said erroneously. “I didn’t do two tours in Anbar Province fighting alongside Marines of every color to come home and be called a racist.”

No, apparently he “did two tours in Anbar Province fighting alongside Marines of every color to come home” and be a racist.

“Josh: Regretfully, I do not believe that I or @TheKingCenter legitimately motivated you to film this ad, as it is in opposition to nonviolence and to much of what my father taught,” Bernice King responded on Twitter. “I encourage you to study my father/nonviolence in full.”

She included a link to nonviolence training at the King Center Institute.

Kevin Kruse, a historian and New York Times bestselling author, posted a thread on Twitter giving Mandel exactly the history lesson he so desperately needs. “I know everyone’s aghast at Mandel having the gall to lecture MLK’s own daughter @BerniceKing about MLK’s legacy, but I want to focus on the second part here, about how MLK was ‘wrongly denied a gun permit by anti-gun racists,'” Kruse tweeted.

He added, citing King Institute research:

Early in the Montgomery campaign, when King was still formulating a philosophy of nonviolence, his house was bombed. In that brief moment, King asked the local sheriff to approve gun permits for the men guarding him, but the sheriff denied the request.

…

It turned out to be a fortunate decision, because it deepened King’s commitment to nonviolent direct action as the best path to progress. As he later put it, “I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in the house.”

…

So, no, King was not some kind of strong supporter of the Second Amendment and, given the fact that he was assassinated by a firearm, it seems bizarre — and almost willfully mean-spirited — to insist to his daughter that he was.

Kruse tweeted that Martin Luther King Jr.’s requests for gun permits were denied “not because the sheriff was anti-gun, but because he was a racist … And when racists are in charge of administering seemingly race-neutral laws, they often apply them in uneven ways that reflect their racism,” Kruse said in the tweet. “That’s what Critical Race Theory stresses!”

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In a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Monday, Trump Justice Amy Coney Barrett previewed the horrors to come from the extremist Supreme Court majority. She attempted to posit that the increasingly destructive opinions the majority has issued and will issue are not aimed at imposing a “policy result,” and that Americans should wait and “read the opinion” to learn why the court took those controversial actions.

Two days later, from the shadow docket, Barrett and four of her colleagues gutted states’ ability to protect their own waters, and with it put the 1972 Clean Water Act in jeopardy. Without issuing an opinion for any of us to read. The shadow docket ruling comprises one paragraph reinstating a Trump environmental rule that limits states’ ability to block projects that could pollute rivers and streams pending an appeals court hearing. There is no decision to read in the policymaking move by five conservative justices.

RELATED STORY:  The conservative Supreme Court majority is issuing some of its most extreme rulings in the shadows

That it is five justices instead of six is notable because Chief Justice John Roberts was not in the majority. What’s even more notable is that Roberts signed onto Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent, blasting the court’s majority for using the shadow docket to issue a momentous decision on the flimsiest of grounds. “The request for a stay rests on simple assertions—on conjectures, unsupported by any present-day evidence, about what States will now feel free to do,” Kagan wrote.

That the court issued this stay—when the applicants showed no harm and there was no “emergency” that required the Supreme Court to intervene—shows the “Court goes astray,” Kagan wrote. “It
provides a stay pending appeal, and thus signals its view of the merits, even though the applicants have failed to make the irreparable harm showing we have traditionally required.” The court just spoiled the case in the appeals process. It just told the lower court what it is going to do when the case ultimately reaches it.

“That renders the Court’s emergency docket not for emergencies at all,” Kagan says. “The docket becomes only another place for merits determinations—except made without full briefing and argument.”

What is so significant is that this is the first instance of Roberts opposing the tactic. “Although Chief Justice Roberts has joined the Democratic appointees in prior shadow docket dissents (Roman Catholic Diocese; Tandon; SB8), this is the first time he’s joined an opinion criticizing the majority for abusing what Kagan here calls ‘the emergency docket,’” Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, tweeted.

In fact, he told The Washington Post, “This is the ninth time that Chief Justice Roberts has publicly been on the short side of a 5-4 ruling since Justice Barrett’s confirmation. … Seven of the nine have been from shadow docket rulings. This is the first time, though, that he’s endorsed criticism of the shadow docket itself.”

Return to Kagans’ dissent: The emergency docket, the shadow docket, “becomes only another place for merits determination—except without full briefing and argument.” That’s a remarkable departure for the court. It flies in the face of Barrett’s assertion that the majority is carefully weighing the cases before it, reasoning through the process.

The fact that Roberts, the conservative chief justice, signed onto Kagan’s dissent criticizing the majority proves one thing: The court’s legitimacy isn’t just in question, it’s lost. If the institution is going to be saved, it has to be wrested from the control of the extremist ideologues. It has to be expanded.

RELATED STORIES

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Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is no ally of the LGBTQ+ community. DeSantis recently signed the hateful, discriminatory “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law (while surrounded by young children, but I digress) effective July 1. DeSantis, and the Republicans who bolstered the bill up to his desk, have continued to allege it’s not about being anti-queer, but about being appropriate with minors. Now, we know children are exposed to cisgender, heterosexual norms essentially from birth, and this includes norms in the classroom—whether it’s concerning history lessons, pronouns, or even teachers talking about their families. It’s only when a teacher references their same-sex partner, for example, or the role of LGBTQ+ activists in a historical movement comes up, that conservatives get outraged.

DeSantis has referenced January Littlejohn, a resident of Leon County, Florida, to defend why he needed to sign hate into law. DeSantis has claimed that Littlejohn was not appropriately consulted about a public school’s approach to gender-affirming care for her child, including their name and pronouns. According to CNN, however, emails from public records suggest DeSantis’ presentation of the situation is far from the full story.

RELATED: And Republicans say queer people are the groomers …

Before we get into the email conversation as reported by CNN, let’s review some of how DeSantis has presented this situation. At a recent press conference, for example, DeSantis referred to a mother from the county who said her child was attending school and experiencing “some people” at the school changing their child’s name and clothing without telling the mother or getting her consent. 

“First of all, they shouldn’t be doing that at all,” DeSantis said. “But to do these things behind the parents’ back and to say that the parents should be shut out. That is wrong.”

The clothing allegation is notably weird, but it’s actually wonderful for a school to be supportive of a child’s name and pronouns. No need to have a parent give consent in order to have their child be treated with affirmation and respect in the classroom…. Because children are actually their own people, not just little dolls and pets for parents to project their entire being onto.

But, again, this doesn’t even seem to be the full story. According to emails obtained by CNN, Littlejohn reached out to the school back in 2020 and let a teacher know her child wanted to use different pronouns. In the email, Littlejohn said she was not trying to prevent her child from using different pronouns or a different name. 

In the email to the teacher, Littlejohn stressed that it’s been a “difficult” situation but that both parents are trying to be as “supportive” as they can. Littlejohn went on to detail their child’s gender identity and pronouns and shared that while they aren’t using their updated name at home, they gave her permission to use her updated name while at school.

When the teacher asked if parents wanted them to share the child’s updates with other teachers, Littlejohn noted again it was a difficult and confusing situation, but that the teacher could do what they thought was “best” or the child could decide themselves. 

Littlejohn shared in another email with the same teacher that the situation has “thrown us for a loop” and expressed sincere appreciation for the teacher’s support. They added, “I’m going to let [] take the lead on this.”

Nice. While I raise my eyebrows at any parent or guardian who isn’t using a child’s name or pronouns as requested at home, this parent certainly doesn’t seem against the school being supportive, and that is definitely more than many other folks can say.

According to CNN, however, about two months after these emails happened, Littlejohn and her husband filed a lawsuit against the school board over how the school handled their child’s gender identity. The parents claimed officials at the school created a student support plan with their child which includes things like their new pronouns, bathroom usage, and “expectations” for overnight trip housing. Again, sounds reasonable and affirming. But Littlejohn says the school denied parents access to these meetings. They’ve since hired legal representation from Child & Parental Rights Campaign, which seems to exist to do exactly what its name implies.

And for the school district? In a statement to CNN, the district communications coordinator Chris Petley said that “the family clearly instructed the school staff via email to allow their child to ‘take the lead on this’ and to do ‘whatever you think is the best.” They went on to claim the superintendent did meet with the family and pledged to amend any “vague or unclear” policy language.

In the very big picture, this all comes down to the conservative rallying cry about parental “rights.” Whether it’s trying to get books by and about LGBTQ+ people pulled from school libraries and classrooms, trying to bar youth from accessing potentially life-saving gender-affirming health care, or trans youth being able to play sports, the real rationale from Republicans is to stomp out LGBTQ+ youth by allowing their parents to effectively keep them in the closet as long as possible, or punish and control them if they dare to step out. 

The role of teachers is not to appease parents. Teachers do not exist to parrot what parents or guardians say in the home. Teachers (and other staff at schools) should prioritize the comfort and safety of the student, period, especially when we know gender-affirming actions like respecting names and pronouns can significantly improve a young person’s mental health.

Republicans like to stir controversy by talking about gender-affirming health care as simply surgeries, but that’s far from the case. In fact, many medical professionals agree that (especially for younger ages) gender-affirming health care can be as simple as honoring a child’s pronouns or name. Nothing irreversible about that, and yet conservatives can’t agree to that, either, because suddenly it’s all about the “rights” of parents.

It’s almost as if Republicans don’t see minors as people unless they’re trying to marry them. Funny how that works.

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Longtime media critic and former Daily Kos contributor Eric Boehlert has died at the age of 57 after a tragic bike accident in New Jersey.

Soledad O’Brien broke the news on Twitter. 

Boehlert was a media analyst who consistently challenged the narratives propagated by traditional media. He launched his Press Run newsletter in early 2020 and drew widespread praise for his efforts to hold the media accountable.

Boehlert was well-known in the blogging community. He was a senior fellow at Media Matters for 10 years. He wrote Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press in 2009.

Boehlert joined the Daily Kos community in 2007 and later become a regular contributor as a media analyst. His final contribution at Daily Kos was a blistering critique of the media’s inability to hold Donald Trump accountable, titled: “2019, the year the press tried—and failed—to stand up to Trump.” That was just one of the many insights he brought to our audience and elsewhere.

More recently Eric Boehlert was a guest on ‎Daily Kos’ The Brief: Has the political press learned anything in its coverage of the Trump Republican Party?

You can see his full Daily Kos history of thought-provoking media critiques here.

His final post at Press Run was Why is the press rooting against Biden?

The news of Eric Boehlert’s death is reverberating around the internet and there will be more to say in time, but let’s hold Eric’s family and friends in our thoughts for a moment. 

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Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison on Wednesday offered a particularly apt summation of Republicans on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.  

“It is a party built on fraud, fear and fascism,” Harrison said. “They don’t deserve to be in power.”

The three Fs—Fraud, Fear, and Fascism—are perfect alliteration for the GOP. The fact that it could fit on a bumper sticker is a notable advancement for Democratic messaging.

Culling Republicans down to a sticky umbrella message about the pervasive corruption pulsing through the GOP would be super helpful for Democrats.

Every time Republicans say the 2020 election was stolen, the response can be, “There they go again.”

Every time they claim their efforts to suppress votes and rig election outcomes are legitimate attempts to curb fraud, the response can be, “There they go again.”

Every time they blanket Democrats with repulsive smears like “pedophiles” or “groomers,” the response can be, “There they go again.”

But let’s linger for a minute on the latest trope Republicans are rolling out to smear Democrats and anyone else who dares to disagree with them: the notion that they are pedophiles who are grooming children for sexual abuse. On one level, it’s a preposterous charge—the whole pedophile ring thing is so 2016. But the coked-up party of orgies does have a recurring obsession with lobbing sexual smears at their political opponents.  

The “groomer” charge is just so on brand and perfectly repugnant for the GOP, catering to QAnon cultists steeped in the notion of a global cabal of sex traffickers run by Democrats and their allies.

Moderate Republicans who still exist in this world get it. As Never Trumper and The Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell says of the messaging, “When your team tries a coup, you gotta think hard about what’s worse than that. Hence, the ‘groomer’ discourse.”

But The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last absolutely nails the political strategy Republicans are employing and the choice they are making in the process.

“The modern Republican party has found a way to integrate voters who believe in a bizarre internet cult,” Last writes. “But it has no desire to integrate voters who maintain that Joe Biden won the 2020 election fair and square.”

That indeed is the modern Republican Party in a nutshell. And frankly, it represents an opportunity for Democrats: a critical slice of those reality-based Republicans are gettable for Democrats if they are continually reminded of exactly what the GOP has become.

For their part, Democrats cannot make the mistake of ignoring these Republican smears. They must train voters to see words like “groomer” or phrases like “endangers our children” as devices, dog whistles designed to draw Democrats into seedy defenses while juicing the impulses of their most deluded, fringiest members.

That’s where a rhetorical phrase like “There they go again” can work very well, particularly if it’s paired with an umbrella theme such as, “The GOP is a party built on fraud, fear and fascism.” It allows Democrats to call out the despicable tactic, stay above the fray, and then pivot to whatever issue they prefer to discuss.

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Judd Legum at Popular Information has another damning exclusive report demonstrating how deep into Russia the Koch conglomerate of intertwined corporate and political interests really is. He obtained an internal email from one the network’s influential nonprofits, Stand Together, that argues the U.S. needs to deliver a partial “victory” to Russia in Ukraine. Perhaps not so coincidentally, the Koch network’s corporate and nonprofit opposition to sanctions on Russia happened at the same time congressional Republicans began obstructing them.

Koch Industries, the multinational conglomerate run by right-wing billionaire Charles Koch, is uncharacteristically making national news this week by remaining one of few Western companies to continue operations in Russia. The Koch operation generally flies under the radar of traditional media—which works just fine for all concerned, they prefer a low profile—but after Legum’s newsletter broke the story, pressure built on Koch Industries to respond.

The Koch group was forced to issue a statement on March 16 explaining—and doubling down on—the decision to keep their operations in Russia going. That same day, the email Legum has uncovered was sent by the supposedly independent think-tank internally. That raises some serious questions about how dependent upon Koch Industries profits the supposedly nonprofit side of the operation is.

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Dan Caldwell, Stand Together’s vice president of foreign policy, sent the email to the organization staff with a subject line, “An Update on Ukraine.” After a rhetorical denunciation of Russia for the invasion and of Putin, Caldwell launches into a condemnation of international sanctions on the Russian government and assistance to Ukraine. “[O]verly-broad sanctions rarely work as intended and often strengthen the authoritarian regimes,” Caldwell wrote. The organization, he said, only supports “aggressive and targeted sanctions against Russian leaders.” Meaning none of the money-making in Russia should be endangered, and its economy should be protected.

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Caldwell argues that the harsh economic sanctions imposed by the European Union, individual countries, and the U.S. should be abandoned at the risk of escalating the war “into a larger conflict between a nuclear-armed Russia and the United States.”

“This is not to say the United States should do nothing,” Caldwell continues. No, the U.S. should be allowing the Russians to declare some kind of victory. “The United States should support diplomatic efforts to help end the war,” he wrote. “An outright victory by either Russia or Ukraine is increasingly unlikely and a diplomatic resolution is the path that best limits the bloodshed and minimizes the risk that the current war could escalate into a larger conflict.” Since Russia can’t have an “outright victory,” the U.S. needs to create a glide path for it to declare some kind of moral victory. Those diplomatic efforts, by the way, would likely involve ceding huge chunks of Ukraine to Putin, at the least. Russia would likely also demand the ouster of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and installation of a pro-Russia regime.

That’s all problematic from the standpoint of Ukraine’s future. More prosaically, it should be a problem for the Koch dark money “nonprofit” network. Caldwell explicitly tells Stand Together staff to read the statement from Koch Industries doubling down on the decision to stay in Russia, and reinforces the justification used by the commercial arm of the organization that halting business operations there would “do more harm than good.” It’s the same argument he’s making about sanctions: Basically, it’s all for the good of Russia, Ukraine, and world peace to let Russia overrun a sovereign nation and slaughter its people.

“Stand Together is a non-profit and, as a result, receives tax benefits from the federal government,” Legum explains. “Specifically, any money donated to Stand Together by Charles Koch (or others) is tax-deductible, and Stand Together itself does not have to pay income taxes. But, as a result, Stand Together’s resources cannot legally be deployed for the specific benefit of Koch Industries.” The tax-exempt Koch network think tank definitely appears to be promoting policies that would benefit Koch Industries’ economic interests.

Eight House Republicans voted against the revocation of Russia’s permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status back on March 17, when the Koch groups were formulating their opposition to sanctions and economic punishment of Russia. That opposition has ballooned to the point that on Tuesday night, 63 House Republicans voted against a bipartisan resolution that expresses  “unequivocal support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as an alliance founded on democratic principles.”

And now we have growing Republican refusal to punish Putin and to support liberal democracy. What started as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) having a similar fit over the human rights violations segment in the revocation of permanent normal trade relationship with Russia bill has grown into multiple problems with the legislation from unnamed senators—almost certainly Republicans—preventing the bill from having a quick vote in the Senate. At this point, it won’t be resolved before the Senate leaves for two weeks of recess.

The Koch money—a fortune built with the help of both Hitler and Stalin—has bankrolled Republicans for decades. Is it a coincidence that Republican opposition to further sanctions on Russia gelled following the Kochs doubling down on fighting them?

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