Month: September 2023

Greg Sargent calls it the “MAGA doom loop” :

For almost three years now, Republicans have defended or embraced Donald Trump’s authoritarianism — from lies about his 2020 loss to inciting an insurrection — which backfired as Americans proved unexpectedly eager to vote in defense of democracy in the 2022 elections as well as in contests this year.

But Republicans aren’t giving up — they’re going even further. To an unappreciated degree, they have responded to these electoral losses with even more flagrantly anti-democratic maneuvers all around the country.

The pattern is becoming clear: Even as voters are mobilizing to protect democracy at the ballot box, Republicans are redoubling their commitment to the former president’s anti-majoritarian mode of politics. And this, in turn, is motivating voters even more.

Call it the “MAGA doom loop.” It’s playing out in state after state.

Let’s start with Michigan, where Trump’s decisive loss in 2020 led MAGA loyalists to reshape the state Republican Party around devotion to the “big lie.” Then Democrats resoundingly captured full control of the state’s government in the 2022 midterms, in which election-deniers across the country lost races up and down the ticket.

Now, the Michigan GOP is in shambles. Just this month, the chairman again called for scrutiny of supposed 2020 fraud, prompting infighting over debunked conspiracy theories. And as the New York Times reports, the party’s descent into MAGA mania is alienating donors, draining volunteer enthusiasm and driving away swing voters. All of that will further dim Trump’s 2024 chances in this crucial battleground state.

Or take Wisconsin. The GOP-controlled state legislature is threatening to impeach state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who won her seat earlier this year by 11 points, handing liberals a majority. Democrats ran ads about protecting democracy to boost Protasiewicz, arguing that her ascent would thwart attempts to overrule the state’s 2024 outcome.

Given that this message already proved successful with Democrats andswing voters, it’s all the more striking that Republicans want to respond with impeachment. Rather than causing introspection, their landslide election loss has them dredging up comments that Protasiewicz made about abortion and gerrymandered maps during her campaign — a concern dismissed by a nonpartisan state panel — as grounds for removal.

But that absurdity aside, Democrats will surely be able to use those MAGA-approved tactics to mobilize voters against Trump and Republicans in 2024. “The threat to overturn an election through impeachment pushes MAGA attacks on democracy to the top of voters’ minds,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler told me.

Then there’s North Carolina, where the GOP legislature is attempting to strip Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s control over the State Board of Elections and to pass new voting restrictions. Oddly, Trump won the state in 2020, yet Republicans — who maintain supermajority control of both state chambers — justify these moves by insisting that voting was dubious anyway, apparently consumed by continued MAGA preoccupations with Trump’s defeat.

This weird disconnect has persuaded North Carolina Democrats that Republicans are worried about the sheer closeness of Trump’s 2020 margin (just over one point), leading the GOP to limit voting by Democratic-leaning constituencies.

“They know North Carolina is getting bluer and more college educated,” Morgan Jackson, a Democratic consultant in the state, said of Republicans. Trump is still heavily favored there, but Democrats can highlight these anti-democratic moves to try to hasten that evolution. “Nothing motivates our voters more,” Jackson told me.

And in Ohio, after watching numerous pro-choice ballot measures pass last cycle, state Republicans recently pushed a referendum to raise the threshold for amending the state constitution to 60 percent of votes. The tactic was rejected by a decisive majority, suffering a crushing 14-point defeat.

While Trump is still very likely to win Ohio in 2024, the dizzying MAGA doom loop can work against Republican priorities even in red states.

As former Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper shows in his book “Laboratories of Autocracy,” states have a long history of such anti-democratic retrenchment. What’s remarkable now is how they’re forging ahead even as Americans are getting more accustomed to voting in democracy’s defense.

A new analysis by Nate Cohn of the New York Times sheds some light here. Despite President Biden’s unpopularity, recent Times polling shows his surprising resilience in swing states — and Cohn suggests this partly reflects backlash against MAGA-fied state parties in these places. By embracing Trump’s efforts to nullify his loss, they are only reminding voters that democracy is once again in peril, including whether their own votes will be counted next time.

All of this syncs up with what political science tells us: Issues become salient for voters when elites talk about them a lot. That has certainly been the case with democracy and that will surely continue next year. Big events — such as Trump’s prosecution for Jan. 6, 2021-related offenses and the GOP’s continued devotion despite those criminal charges — will only reinforce what’s at stake.

“As long as the MAGA-Trump faction remains a threat to free and fair elections, a consequential slice of the electorate will continue to vote on this issue,” political scientist Lee Drutman told me.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s that the MAGA doom loop might keep on working its magic — all the way through 2024.

I agree with this. They aren’t going anywhere. They are going to double down.

On Thursday morning NBC News reported that the FBI has created a stand-alone unit to investigate all the threats being made against FBI agents and Federal Prosecutors investigating Hunter Biden. You will be forgive for thinking that this must mean there has been a spate of left wing terrorism we haven’t heard about but, in fact, the threats are coming from right wingers who are convinced that these federal officials have been too soft on the younger Biden. Apparently, there has been “a dramatic uptick in threats against FBI agents that has coincided with attacks on the FBI and the Justice Department by congressional Republicans and former President Donald Trump.”

And let’s not forget the right wing media which has been hammering this for months, and in the process encouraging their febrile audience to believe that everything coming out of the FBI and the Justice Department is being manipulated by the White House and the career FBI officials and prosecutors are all Democratic operatives. It is the only way they can explain the fact that their Dear Leader, Donald Trump, has been credibly accused of more crimes, corruption and malfeasance than any president in American history. If they were to admit that all these law enforcement personnel and judicial officers have had ample reason to believe that Trump is guilty, they would have to admit that they are blithering fools.

You would think that they would feel just a bit chagrined however, to learn yesterday that Hunter Biden has now been indicted on three federal felony charges for lying on a form to obtain a gun and is on the verge of going to trial to potentially face many years in prison if he is convicted. After all, they have been demanding that Hunter Biden be charged with a crime and now he has been. But no. It’s not good enough. Not good enough at all. Let’s just say that this news is unlikely to result in fewer threats against the FBI and the prosecutors. Let’s hope they are all well protected.

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said that it’s a “small start” but is fit to be tied that they’ve only charged a crime that no one can say had anything to do with Joe Biden. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz quipped, “Getting Hunter Biden on the gun charge is like getting Jeffrey Dahmer on littering.” They want the Special Counsel to indict Hunter Biden on all the crimes they’ve fabricated in their fever dreams, particularly the fantasies about President Joe Biden running an international influence peddling operation and human trafficking ring.

It doesn’t appear that Weiss is going to do that, largely because there is no evidence of any such thing. But most legal observers believe that the Special Counsel may be on the verge of indicting Hunter Biden on the tax charges he previously pleaded guilty to, in which he admitted that he had filed his taxes late for two years. (He has paid them in full.) And that too will leave the right wingers unsatisfied. They suspect that Hunter Biden’s taxes are a treasure trove of evidence that he and his supposedly senile father are criminal masterminds if only someone will look hard enough to find it. If it weren’t for the alleged “two-tiered justice system” it would be happening.

In other words, their preposterous crusade to have Hunter Biden and Joe Biden put behind bars in order to prove that Donald Trump is an innocent man isn’t going anywhere.

The sad truth of the matter is that in this case there really is a two-tiered system — Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes would never be prosecuted if he weren’t the president’s son. Filing taxes late in and of themselves is usually a civil crime, as demonstrated by the DOJ’s treatment of Trump crony Roger Stone. And virtually no one with a clean criminal record who never even shot the gun or used it in commission of a crime (he only had it for about 11 days) would ever see the inside of a courtroom. According to the NYT even Weiss confided that no other American would not be prosecuted on the evidence against Hunter.

Mr. Weiss told an associate that he preferred not to bring any charges, even misdemeanors, against Mr. Biden because the average American would not be prosecuted for similar offenses. (A senior law enforcement official forcefully denied the account.)

But then the politics kicked in:

Earlier this year, The Times found, Mr. Weiss appeared willing to forgo any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all, and his office came close to agreeing to end the investigation without requiring a guilty plea on any charges. But the correspondence reveals that his position, relayed through his staff, changed in the spring, around the time a pair of I.R.S. officials on the case accused the Justice Department of hamstringing the investigation. Mr. Weiss suddenly demanded that Mr. Biden plead guilty to committing tax offenses.

Ah yes, the vaunted whistle blowers who claim that the Justice Department stopped them from getting at the truth about Joe and Hunter’s suspected nefarious criminal tax crimes. This claim has been denied by the DOJ, Weiss and others who were present at the meetings the whistle blowers say proved their allegations.

Despite the political pressure to throw the book at Biden, Weiss’s office didn’t really have the goods so they settled on a plea deal which blew up in the courtroom on the day it was to be settled. That agreement had Biden pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges (those late filings) and agreeing to a so-called “diversion” program in which he agreed to never try to purchase a gun again and would not use any controlled substance or drink alcohol for two years. But the judge called into question the constitutionality of the diversion terms and it also became clear that while Biden’s lawyers had logically assumed that this agreement represented the conclusion of the case, the prosecution had decided they weren’t closing it after all.

So now, irony of ironies, Hunter Biden is facing a felony gun charge in federal court and right wingers who insist that the right to bear arms is so unfettered that even terrorists can’t be denied their constitutional right to own them are cheering it on.

As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes likes to say, after seeing these charges he’s decided not to vote for Hunter Biden for president or any other office which is exactly the point. Hunter Biden is not running for anything so there’s really no need for all this hype and according to a 538 analysis of the polling, all the nervousness that it’s going to hurt the president politically is overblown. Mainly it’s serving the purpose of hurting Joe Biden personally which is part of the plan.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said the other day, she wants to make the impeachment inquiry “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden” so I’m sure nothing makes her and her fellow GOP sadists happier than for his troubled surviving son to be put through the legal wringer. If they could make it bad enough for Hunter to crack under pressure and lose his sobriety, it would make their year. It doesn’t even have to have any political purpose. They just want to see Joe Biden suffer.

Salon

Just what are voters buying?

“Repetition is really important. And so is repetition.”

Donald Trump knows the value of repetition. Debunking his lies has no stopping power on his relentless repeating of them. It’s a habit that the press has come to accept from Trump and from Republicans when they repeat lies, but sees as futile, even pathetic, when Democrats repeat facts.

USA Today:

Linda Muñoz is scared about the economy. She dipped into her emergency savings this year. And she doesn’t believe President Joe Biden feels her pain.

The retired teacher from Channelview, Texas, worries about paying $4 for cereal and $3.38 for gasoline in her state.

“According to him, everything’s perfect,” said Muñoz, a Republican. “He just doesn’t live in reality.”

As Biden tries to sell Americans on an economic rebound, most Americans aren’t buying it, according to an exclusive poll from the Suffolk University Sawyer Business School and USA TODAY that reveals major concerns about the state of the economy and little hope of people’s outlook improving. What’s worse for the incumbent president, Americans say they trust Donald Trump − not Biden − to fix it.

The Google link headline is “Biden is selling an improving economy. Americans don’t buy it.” The subtext is that when the president repeats upbeat news about Bidenomics he is failing to connect with Real Americans™. Maybe he ought to stop (before his message sinks in). Would Trump?

People think what they think and feel what they feel. Until they think and feel something else.

One problem Democrats have is a lack of persistence when it comes to messaging. If a message is not sinking in rapidly, they’ll drop it and try something else before the public opinion needle has a chance to move. That’s not a problem for Republicans. They’ll lather-rinse-repeat until their base is repeating their message without remembering where it came from.

Yes, often Democrats’ messaging stinks. But they change it so often who can say for sure?

As for the Suffolk poll, Democrats should be reluctant to change course too early. President Joe Biden’s “It’s never a good bet to bet against America”‘ is a signature message. He’s not going to stop saying it. He’s not going to stop promoting what his policies have done for people. Just as Trump is not going to stop lying about what his didn’t.

“Democrats rely on polling to take the temperature; Republicans use polling to change it,” Anat Shenker-Osorio wrote in 2017. It’s one area where Democrats could learn from their political adversaries.

Republicans did not “start by polling and finding out that Virginia parents were natively concerned about critical race theory,” David Roberts prompted Shenker-Osorio during a 2021 interview:

Anat Shenker-Osorio:  

Because they weren’t. They were like, what is that? Is that the name of a coffee shop? A new kind of NASCAR race? What is that? 

They decide where it is they want to take people, and then they use message testing to figure out the articulation that is going to be most effective of the path that they have already decided to walk. They do message testing to try to change the temperature; they don’t do testing to take it. 

The question Biden’s advisers should be asking is if his message is reaching people on a subconscious level that polling doesn’t reveal. Don’t rely on your gut.

Sabotuers of Democracy unite

A friend with roots in the theater once told a Netroots audience about his journey from the closet to being authentically himself. When finally he came out to actress Bea Arthur, she replied, “Joel, are you the last to know?” Joel died of pancreatic cancer several years ago.

“Are you the last to know?” comes to mind because spread across the internet today is a quote from retiring Utah Sen. Mitt Romney that may wind up on his tombstone: “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”

Commenting on Romney’s remarks to The Atlantic‘s McKay Coppins, Jamelle Bouie writes, “Faced with a conflict between partisan loyalty and ideological ambition on one hand and basic principles of self-government and political equality on the other, much of the Republican Party has jettisoned any commitment to America’s democratic values in favor of narrow self-interest.”

Republican commitment to the Constitution is highly situational. They are at times “fixated” on it, reading in meanings when attempting to subvert the very democratic processes it established, and ignoring the will of voters that the Constitution secures when that will turns against them.

Here’s what that looks like when people do it with the Bible.

Talked to an anti-abortion protester about how God was not very pro-life in the Bible. pic.twitter.com/SICaida09x

— The Good Liars (@TheGoodLiars) September 14, 2023

“Republicans,” Bouie observes, “do seem to believe in the Constitution, but only insofar as it can be wielded as a weapon against American democracy — that is, the larger set of ideas, intuitions, expectations and values that shape and define political life in the United States as much as particular rules and institutions.”

Examples are plentiful not just inside the Beltway but out in state legislatures former Ohio Democratic chair, David Pepper, calls “laboratories of autocracy.”

For those of you – especially Democrats in the Senate – who think the threat to our democracy is over and who just moved on from this issue after the midterms, a reminder: https://t.co/teWKxECbQ9

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) September 14, 2023

Wisconsin Republicans mean not only to undo the results of the recent state Supreme Court election that Judge Janet Protasiewicz won by a whopping 11 points. They also mean to (illegally) replace Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) administrator Meagan Wolfe for being insufficiently Trumpy after the state narrowly awarded its electoral votes to Joe Biden in 2020. In a party-line vote Thursday, the Republican-majority state Senate voted to remove Wolfe (Democracy Docket):

The move is the final legislative step in a long and winding process that was fueled by Republican conspiracies surrounding the 2020 presidential election. As a nonpartisan elections official, Wolfe was nominated to lead WEC by the commission itself in 2019 and confirmed with unanimous support by the Wisconsin Senate. WEC is a bipartisan commission that was formed in 2016 to serve as the state’s election regulatory agency and carries out a wide range of election administration-related functions for the state. 

Yet following the 2020 election, Republicans in the state Senate turned on Wolfe, first calling for her resignation in 2021.

In June, WEC deadlocked on a vote to nominate Wolfe for a second term as three Democratic commissioners abstained from the vote. In accordance with state law, this stalemate meant that Wolfe would remain in the position as a holdover. Republicans in the state Senate then declared that WEC had nominated Wolfe for reappointment, and began the process that ultimately led to today’s removal. 

Some GOP activists want more, Ari Berman reports: “I don’t call for Meagan Wolfe’s ouster,” one election denialist said at a legislative hearing last week. “I call for her arrest.”

The senate has no authority to remove Wolfe, claims Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (D). There will be a lawsuit. But the lawsuit could wind up before the Democratic majority state Supreme Court that Republicans are working to sabotage.

Attorney Marc Elias of Democracy Docket warns that in advance of the 2024 elections Republicans are working to aid election vigilantes in mounting massive voting challenges:

Tucked into Georgia’s massive anti-voting law was a provision to make it easier for partisan vigilantes to engage in mass voter challenges. As I wrote when the law passed in 2021, the portion allowing mass voter challenges was the worst provision of a very bad law. Last year, nearly 100,000 Georgia voters had their registrations, and thereby their right to vote, challenged by election vigilantes.

But limited by federal statutes, GOP operatives now mean to circumvent limits “by outsourcing voter purges to third-party groups,” Elias writes. “Election officials will be deluged by voter challenges as voters navigate a maze of disinformation about how to ensure they can vote and have their vote counted.”

One new company, Eagle AI, claims to have developed a product that uses public data sets to flag voter registrations it deems potentially fraudulent. As expected, one of the Republican attorneys leading the anti-voting movement, Cleta Mitchell, has enthusiastically endorsed it, while wealthy conservatives have reportedly provided at least some of its funding.

[…]

Another project, the Voter Reference Foundation (VoteRef), has been hard at work since 2021 collecting, compiling and making public state voter files, which contain a list of a state’s registered voters, their vote history and identifying information. Since state voter files often include full names, addresses, dates of birth and other personal information, they can easily be misused to harass and intimidate voters as well as file mass challenges of voters.

Where there is one, there are more, and conservative donors and activists to employ them against political adversaries.

Elias adds:

States need to act urgently to enact clear laws that forbid private voter challenges. There is  no reason for any citizen to have their right to vote challenged or taken away based on a spreadsheet submitted by someone they don’t know and have never met. States should similarly prohibit in person challenges at the polls and ensure partisan observers do not disrupt the voting process.

It’s like fighting the Hydra.

WOW!

KELLY: But once you get a subpoena you have to turn them over.

TRUMP: I know this. *pauses* I don't even know that. pic.twitter.com/X4zbcTUaqh

— KevinlyFather 🇺🇲🇨🇦🇲🇼🇸🇿 (@KevinlyFather) September 14, 2023

And yet tens of millions of people think this guy is a genius,

Nobody’s calling for mask mandates. That doesn’t mean the right wingers aren’t having a hissy fit anyway.

They just love to whine and they love it so much they even make up things to whine about:

As Americans fend off a late summer COVID-19 spike and prepare for a fresh vaccine rollout, Republicans are raising familiar fears that government-issued lockdowns and mask mandates are next.

It’s been a favorite topic among some of the GOP’s top presidential contenders. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters that people are “lurching toward” COVID-19 restrictions and “there needs to be pushback.” South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott posted online that the “radical Left” seeks to bring back school closures and mandates. And former President Donald Trump urged congressional Republicans to stop the Biden administration from bringing back COVID-19 “mandates, lockdowns or restrictions of any kind.”

“The radical Democrats are trying hard to restart COVID hysteria,” Trump told supporters in Rapid City, South Dakota, during a recent campaign stop. “I wonder why. Is there an election coming up by any chance?”

While some individual schools and colleges have implemented temporary mask requirements, there is no sign that anyone in federal or state leadership is considering widespread COVID-19 restrictions, requirements or mask mandates. The administrations of several Democratic governors denied that any such moves are even under discussion. The overriding sentiment is to leave the decisions to individuals.

“No COVID-19 public health restrictions or mask requirements are being considered by the Murphy administration,” said Christi Peace, spokesperson for New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

“There are no impending mass lockdowns or mask mandates for New Mexico,” said Jodi McGinnis Porter, spokeswoman for the New Mexico Department of Public Health.

It was largely the same message from Democratic governors’ offices in several other states that responded to an inquiry about whether any COVID-19 mandates were under consideration. That included Connecticut, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, made clear his opposition to COVID-19 lockdowns as well as mask and vaccine mandates when he was campaigning for office last year: “This is an area where I think folks got it wrong,” he said of school and business shutdowns. His office echoed the same sentiment in its response to the AP this week, saying, “The administration’s view is that there is no need to impose restrictions.”

In the two most populous Democratic-led states, California and New York, the state health departments recommend getting the updated vaccine, but have no requirements for the shot or mask wearing. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was asked during a news conference Wednesday about whether she would consider mask or vaccine mandates: “We are in a place where we’re seeing low numbers; not requiring such actions today,” she said.

There will be no mask mandates but there might be censure and condemnation from right wing fanatics against those who wear them. They are certainly trolling like mad on social media, saying they not only won’t stand for anyone telling them to wear masks, they don’t want anyone else wearing them voluntarily either. That’s really a thing.

Marge the sadist:

On a sweeping patio overlooking the golf course at his private club in Bedminster, N.J., former President Donald J. Trump dined Sunday night with a close political ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

It was a chance for the former president to catch up with the hard-right Georgia congresswoman. But over halibut and Diet Cokes, Ms. Greene brought up an issue of considerable interest to Mr. Trump — the push by House Republicans to impeach his likely opponent in next year’s election.

“I did brief him on the strategy that I want to see laid out with impeachment,” Ms. Greene said in a brief phone interview…

Ms. Greene, who has introduced articles of impeachment against Mr. Biden, said she told Mr. Trump that she wanted the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.”

Ain’t she sweet?

She would not say what Mr. Trump said in response, but she said her ultimate goal was to have a “long list of names” — people whom she claimed were co-conspirators involved in Biden family crimes. She said she was confident Mr. Trump would win back the White House in 2024 and that she wanted “to go after every single one of them and use the Department of Justice to prosecute them.”

This is a very sick and dangerous person. No wonder Trump loves her so much.

I’m not sure what DeSantis thinks he’s getting out of this but it’s so on brand I just have to mention it. If there’s anything offensive and destructive going on in Republican politics he wants to be in the middle of it:

In the high-stakes fight that is threatening to shut down the federal government next month — and tear House Republicans apart — Ron DeSantis is taking sides.

The Florida governor spent about 30 minutes on the phone Wednesday with conservative Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Bob Good of Virginia — leaders of the cadre that is pushing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to embrace a shutdown if Democrats won’t agree to hard-right policy demands.

DeSantis’ message, according to a person familiar with the call: “I got your back. Keep fighting.”

The call is the latest signal that DeSantis is working to insert himself into the spending fight on the Hill in a bid to elevate his standing among Republican primary voters.

“Ron DeSantis knows that both parties — including the current and previous administration — are to blame for Washington’s reckless spending spree,” said DeSantis campaign spokesperson Andrew Romeo. “He is urging congressional Republicans to hold the line in this current spending standoff and end days of rubber stamping multi-trillion dollar spending bills that harm the American people.”

DeSantis spent three terms in the House and is a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, the hard-line group that is pushing McCarthy to fight harder against Democrats on spending and other members — and threatening his gavel if he doesn’t.

Still, it’s notable DeSantis is associating himself with McCarthy’s internal foes as tensions inside the House GOP reach a boiling point. Inside a closed-door conference meeting Thursday, McCarthy exploded at his critics.

“If you think you scare me because you want to file a motion to vacate, move the fucking motion,” he said, referring to the ouster maneuver that has been discussed by Good and other lawmakers.

The person who described the phone call did so on the condition of anonymity. A spokesperson for Roy, who has served as an informal leader of the conservative splinter group, declined to comment. A spokesperson for McCarthy did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on DeSantis’ role.

In other recent signs of his interest in the spending fight, DeSantis released a video knocking the “D.C. establishment” for spending too much. And in an interview with CBS’ Norah O’Donnell, he blamed both Democrats and Republicans for overspending.

I guess on the politics he’s making a play for the fiscal extremists to beat back Ramaswamy? Or maybe it’s because he’s an extremist himself and really wants to deliver the death blow to America as we’ve known it. I’m betting on the latter. I see him becoming Ted Cruz Jr in the future if he can get Rick Scott or Marco Rubio out of the way.

It sure looks like the left is going after the prosecutors and FBI doesn’t it?

Au contraire:

Federal prosecutor Lesley Wolf, who had been part of U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ team investigating Hunter Biden, got such a barrage of credible threats that she sought security help from the U.S. Marshals Service, according to previously unreleased testimony from an FBI official to the House Judiciary Committee last week. Two IRS agents on the case have accused Wolf of making decisions that appeared favorable to Biden. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Special counsel Jack Smith and his team have long been protected by an armed security detail, as is Robert Hur, the special counsel appointed to investigate classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home and office.

I’d guess the threats against Hur are coming from the right as well.

We have right wing terrorists threatening law enforcement to such an extent they have had to create a special unit to deal with them. And apparently, almost half the country is ok with this because they are going after those who are prosecuting Donald Trump. And they are also threatening law enforcement because it is supposedly going too soft on Joe Biden and his son.

The spokesperson says none of this is partisan or political. Oh. Yes. It. Is.

Turn slowly and can be pricey

Remember Kim Davis?

The Guardian:

A federal jury has awarded $100,000 to a Kentucky couple who sued the former county clerk Kim Davis over her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Davis, the former Rowan county clerk, drew international attention when she was briefly jailed in 2015 over her refusal, which she based on her belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

A jury in Ashland, Kentucky, awarded David Ermold and David Moore each $50,000 after deliberating on Wednesday, according to lawyers for Davis. A second couple who sued, James Yates and Will Smith, were awarded no damages on Wednesday by Judge David Bunning.

Bunning sent Davis to jail for five days in 2015 after holding her in contempt of court. She was parodied on Saturday Night Live and embraced by conservative politicians who traveled to Kentucky to support her.

Here’s a novel idea:

Bunning ruled last year that Davis violated the constitutional rights of the two couples. In the ruling, Bunning reasoned that Davis “cannot use her own constitutional rights as a shield to violate the constitutional rights of others while performing her duties as an elected official”.

It’s not clear if Davis can put up a GoFundMe to help pay her judgment. Around the time Davis went to jail, and in response to another case involving discrimination against same-sex couples, the site updated its terms of service to deny access to campaigns “in defense of formal charges or claims of heinous crimes, violent, hateful, sexual or discriminatory acts.”

That language seems to have been updated and broadened to prohibit “User Content that reflects, incites or promotes behavior that we deem, in our sole discretion, to be an abuse of power or in support of terrorism, hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorist financing or intolerance of any kind reflects an abuse of power relating to race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, disabilities or diseases.”

Maybe Mike Huckabee can help. Again.

I’m headed to Kentucky on Tuesday to stand with #KimDavis. We must end the criminalization of Christianity! #ImWithKim

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) September 3, 2015