Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

RFK Jr. claims he’ll make North Carolina’s presidential ballot

Claiming you have enough signatures to get onto the ballot by petition is not the same as an official determination by the state Board of Elections. Still, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign on Monday announced it had what it needed in North Carolina.

WRAL:

Kennedy’s We The People Party must collect 13,865 valid signatures before May 17 to be on the ballot under North Carolina election law. The campaign said it has collected more than 23,000 signatures, giving them a buffer in case some of the signatures are not counted.

The signatures have to be validated by elections officials before they become official. If validated, North Carolina would be the largest state that Kennedy has gained access. Kennedy is already on the ballot in Utah and has collected the needed signatures in New Hampshire, Nevada and Hawaii.

An individual candidate must collect more than 83,000 signatures to be on the ballot in North Carolina. But a party has a much lower threshold — 0.25% of the total number of voters who voted in the most recent general election for governor, which would be 13,865 — to place a nominee on state ballots. All the signatures must be from registered voters and at least 200 must come from at least three separate congressional districts in the state.

If Kennedy qualifies, it remains to be seen how this will impact the presidential contest in the state. There is a lot going on here. A lot of moving parts. The Biden campaign last week announced it was opening 10 field offices across the state. It is expanding its state staff. After a rere joint appearance with President Biden last week, Vice President Harris will return on Thursday for her fourth visit to the state to open an office in Charlotte.

Meanwhile:

Trump’s campaign has not announced when it will open field offices in the state. The Associated Press reported last week that some Republican Party leaders in battleground states raised concerns about a “skeleton” campaign, quoting Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.

While former President Barack Obama was the last Democrat to win North Carolina in 2008, party leaders are trying once again to put the state in play. In 2020, Trump won the state by about 1.34 percent, which was his smallest margin of any state he won that year.

Political strategist and CEO of TargetSmart, Tom Bonier, notes that youth voter registration in the state is on a streak, even if Nate Cohn questions whether they will vote BIden.

Wow, in NC young voters are accounting for a larger share of new registrants than they did at this point in the '20 and '22 cycles. pic.twitter.com/wXvzULsyIA

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) March 31, 2024

It's 55% unaffiliated, Nate.

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) April 1, 2024

From my front-row seat, I’m trying to ignore polls. Some of the fundamentals — blocking and tackling — are more important. Trump fatigue is setting in. A reporter at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vice-president announcement found more Republicans than disgruntled Democrats supporting Kennedy. Anybody-but-Trump Republicans may find the anti-vaxxer candidate an appealing alternative.

Plus, Trump’ support in North Carolina’s metro areas is collapsing, according to Carolina Forward:

For over 15 years now, a majority of North Carolina’s counties have been shrinking in population, and many more are essentially stagnant. This is not a prediction or even a trend – it has already happened, and is accelerating. While North Carolina is also one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, the large majority of this growth has accrued to just a handful of urban and suburban counties – all of which are voting Democratic by increasing margins in each election cycle.

According to the U.S. Census, fully 41% of all of North Carolina’s eye-popping population growth as a state from 2010 to 2020 accrued to only two counties: Wake (22%) and Mecklenburg (19%). We have covered this phenomenon in detail here, here, here and here.

This would not be an issue if North Carolina’s heavily Republican, majority-white rural counties were also growing by leaps and bounds. But they are not – in fact, the opposite is happening. Nor are there clear opportunities for finding new GOP voters. The largest county where Republican margins are increasing even modestly is Davidson county, which ranks #17 in the state for population.

It gets worse for the GOP:

North Carolina Republicans are seeing a rapid implosion of their brand in not just North Carolina’s cities, but also its booming suburbs, which together are the source of nearly all the state’s growth. Worse, there is no clear way for them to address it. A brief recap of the two largest counties in the state demonstrates this in stark relief.

• Across Mecklenburg county, Republicans once routinely won and held legislative seats. Today, the party is almost extinct. The list of defeats is a who’s-who of the state political battles of the 2010s: Bob Rucho (who quit); Dan Bishop (also quit); Scott Stone (defeated 2018); Bill Brawley (defeated 2018, and again in 2022); Andy Dulin (defeated 2018); and Jeff Tarte (defeated 2018). Perhaps the most famous example, though, is Pat McCrory, who was the last Republican to win the mayorship of Charlotte for the foreseeable future. In 2023, the Republican mayoral candidate was defeated by 52 points.
• In Wake county, the situation is similar. Republicans have experienced a die-off of legislative candidates: Paul “Skip” Stam (quit); Nelson Dollar (defeated 2018); Marilyn Avila (defeated 2016); Tom Murry (defeated 2014); Chris Malone (defeated 2018); John Adcock (defeated 2018); Gary Pendleton (defeated 2016); Tamara Barringer (defeated 2018); John Alexander (quit). Wake Republicans are no longer capable of meaningfully competing at the county level in Wake, prompting the legislature to change the county’s electoral system instead.

After the 2024 election, there may no longer be a single Republican in Mecklenburg county’s state legislative delegation. Only two Republicans represent Mecklenburg in the state legislature today: Rep. John Bradford (HD-98) and Rep. Tricia Cotham (HD-105). Cotham, of course, was not elected as a Republican at all. Her race, while competitive, is quite likely to flip Democratic this fall. Bradford announced he was quitting the legislature altogether in 2023. Bradford’s seat, House District 98 (once held by Thom Tillis), is also a likely Democratic flip this fall.

And it’s not helping that the North Carolina Republican ticket will include the fringiest of the fringe candidates.

Biden winning in this state will take shaving the GOP margins not just in urban areas but in red, rural counties. TBD.

Update: Misattributed original photo. Swapped it out with another.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Did you know that President Trump paid off Diller family’s mortgage!

Man of the People. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/skkUa8CDb4

— Freedom 🇺🇸🦅 (@PU28453638) March 28, 2024

That was a lie. Meidas Touch reports:

David Zere, host of the MAGA Real America’s Voice show Breaking Point, kicked off a firestorm of social media misinformation Friday when he falsely claimed that disgraced former President Donald Trump had paid off the mortgage for the family of slain NYPD officer Jonathan Diller.

Trump used the wake for Officer Diller, who was killed at a traffic stop on Monday, as a photo op, posing for cameras in front of a line of NYPD officers and railing against crime in the U.S. 

“We have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently. This is not working. This is happening too often,” Trump said, despite violent crime rates being lower now than they were during his presidency.

Zere said in an interview with Jack Posobiec prior to the wake, “The story here is that Trump gave a donation to Tunnels to Towers, I believe he paid off the mortgage for this family.”

Trump himself never claimed he would be donating to pay off Diller’s mortgage, but the lie quickly spread on social media following Zere’s interview. Students for Trump Chair Ryan Fournier posted, “[Trump] has a huge heart and I’ve seen it time and time again.”

Other MAGA accounts chimed in to praise the former President for his supposed act of charity for the fallen officer’s family, calling him a “man of the people” and saying “this is our President who cares.”

In reality, Tunnels to Towers Foundation, a non profit that provides “mortgage-free homes to Gold Star and fallen first responder families with young children, and [builds] specially-adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders,” quickly announced it would be paying off Diller’s mortgage to provide relief for his family. 

The charity put a button link for the public to donate to Diller’s mortgage on the home page of its website:

David Zere then issued a clarification, responding to a Tunnels to Towers post on X promoting their campaign for Diller’s family, saying he “may have been mistaken” about Trump donating to help Diller. However, other major accounts, like Fournier, at the time of writing have not taken down their posts crediting Trump, despite receiving a fact check from X Community Notes.

Neither Zere’s retraction, nor the Community Notes fact check can stop the spread of misinformation once it takes hold in the MAGA corners of social media. The image of Trump as the benevolent dear leader is strong in the minds of his supporters. 

But as the family of slain Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick pointed out, Trump has spent the last year on the campaign trail praising January 6th insurrectionists who attacked police officers. In recent months he has taken to calling them “unbelievable patriots” and “hostages.” 

Trump has said many times during this campaign that he is seeking immunity for police officers, just as he seeks it for himself. He claims that you just have to put up with the occasional “bad apple” or rogue president in order to allow them to properly do their jobs, which basically means he believes they and he should be able to defy the law if, in their judgment, it’s what they need to do. In other words, it’s not just immunity he seeks for Trump and police, it’s also impunity. With his promises of pardons for the J6 criminals on day one of a new presidency, it appears he now wants the same for his followers

If Trump once again incites his followers if he loses the election (which I think is very likely) there may very well be plenty of police who fight on their side this time. That’s undoubtedly in the back of his mind these days when he stages a performance as he did at that funeral last weekend.

It appears to be on the table:

Rep. Don Bacon on Sunday warned that “it’s possible” that Speaker Mike Johnson could face a vote to oust him if he moves to pass Ukraine aid in the House.

“I’m not going to deny it,” Bacon, R-Neb., said when asked by moderator Kristen Welker on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” whether it’s possible Johnson could lose his speakership over Ukraine aid.

“We have one or two people that are not team players. They’d rather enjoy the limelight, the social media,” Bacon added, though he did not name any members.

“It’s a very narrow majority, and one or two people can make us a minority,” he said.

Bacon favors some support for Ukraine and highlighted his partnership with Reps. Jared Golden, D-Maine, Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., and Ed Case, D-Hawaii, on a Ukraine aid bill.

“We put a bill together that focuses on military aid — a $66 billion bill that provides military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan,” Bacon told Welker, calling for a “bicameral, bipartisan solution.”

“If we do this bill, and I think we will, there’s enough support in the House to get this done. And I want to make sure that we have support in the Senate,” Bacon said.

Should the Democrats bail out the Republicans in the name of preventing dysfunction? I don’t think so. We’re in an election year! Let the Republicans stew in their own toxic mess. But I won’t be surprised to see the so-called “frontline” Dems in swing districts decide it’s in their best interest to show themselves as “moderates.” Maybe they’re right. But it’s going to leave a bad taste in the Democratic base’s mouth if they do it and it will make no difference in the long run. Johnson isn’t going to remain as speaker or minority leader. Marge Greene will exert her will sooner rather than later.

The good news (maybe) is that they may get the Ukraine funding done. At least I hope so. It’s dire.

They never miss a chance to be racist garbage

Look at what they’re saying about the mayor of Baltimore:

It was just after 1:30 Tuesday morning when Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) says he received the call from the city’s fire chief.

“He said, ‘Sir, the Key Bridge collapsed,’’ said Scott, who was awake with a 3-month-old child when the call came in. “I said, ‘Repeat that.’ He said, ‘The Key Bridge collapsed, a ship hit it, it’s gone, sir.’ ”

Scott, 39, said he threw on his official Baltimore city jacket and headed for the scene, calling the governor, the presidents of the state Senate and city council, and the city administrator along the way. When he arrived at the shore of the Patapsco River to see the wreckage, “you could still hear it moving at that point,” he said of the Dali, the 985-foot ship that had taken down the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

Just before daybreak, as Scott began appearing in national television interviews to speak of the “unthinkable tragedy,” the attacks started.

One user on X, called him “Baltimore’s DEI mayor,” a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion programs that have come under attack by conservatives who say they lead to minorities getting jobs over more qualified White candidates. Meanwhile, others attacked Scott for his facial hair and for not wearing a suit. “He looks like your average street criminal,” another X user wrote. Neither user responded to a request for comment.

“He was doing what anyone would expect an elected official to do, and you assign that to DEI. It is bonkers. It is absolutely bonkers,” said Caryn York, president of the nonprofit Baltimore Corps.

The collapse of the Key Bridge has complicated the young politico’s efforts to revive the city’s fortune, and it thrust him into the national spotlight, making him an even larger target for racist commentators. It’s to be expected, Scott said in an interview. “When you’re young and Black in leadership, you know that that kind of stuff is going to come,” he said.

The racist attacks haven’t been reserved for him, Scott noted. Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore (D), who is Black, and the immigrants who lost their lives in the collapse have become targets, too.

Being Baltimore mayor’s has never been an easy job. The city’s high unemployment and crime rates, along with miles of blighted property, have long made it a somewhat thankless task. But as a young Black man, Scott said, he faces an additional challenge: a barrage of racist dog whistles, from being called a “thug” to being accused of fathering “one more Baltimore illegitimate black baby.”

I would imagine on the right wing sites, the racism was even more appalling. This stuff is worse than it’s been in decades.

Jena Griswold, the Colorado Secretary of State was on Chris Hayes talking about the threats she got and revealed that there was a 600% increase in threats to her and staff. 600% WTF?

That day, she received an email declaring: “We are coming for you bitch.” Another person emailed, “If you have kids, I hope they get murdered by illegal aliens,” adding, “Seriously, just die.”

In a voicemail, someone said, “I can’t wait to find you and follow you to your house and expose your address.” Another person left a voicemail saying, “I’d love for you to die.” Some time this month, a person told Griswold on social media, “Take my advice and wear Kevlar … a lot of Kevlar!!!”

‘Just Die’: Colorado Elections Chief Who Took on Trump Sees 600% Spike in Threats, By Andrew Perez, Adam Rawnsley, Ryan Bort, Asawin Suebsaeng March 28, 2024 

On these cable news segments we often hear some specific threats, but unless someone counts all the threats, and then tells the media about them, we never know just how huge the problem is. And if we don’t know how huge the problem is, we also don’t know how terrible the response to the problem is.

At the end of the segment Griswold talked about how the DOJ Election Threat Response Task Force has failed. It’s been going since 2021 and has only 20 convictions.

Have you heard about any of those 20 convictions? Did you see any mugshots of the perps who are now serving 3 1/2 years in prison for threatening election officials? No. Because the DOJ didn’t use any photos of the convicted felons in their press release or press conference!

This is a huge failure by the DOJ. They MUST promote their successes to send a message to the general public that if you threaten election officials, their staff and poll workers you will be found, arrested, tried and punished. And I’m not the only one who thinks this. This is from AZ’s new secretary of state,

Even when federal prosecutors secure a victory after charging people making these violent threats, Arizona’s secretary of state argues that barely anyone hears about it — and that’s a major problem.

“In almost every other area criminality is deterred through public campaigns,” he adds. The Justice Department’s election task force issues typically press releases after convictions, but Fontes says press releases aren’t enough to deter people or adequate given the extent of the problem.

Top Arizona Dem: Biden’s DOJ Is Failing to Protect Election Workers From ‘Domestic Terrorism’

As my friend Bill said, that’s like if the feds did a massive drug and weapons bust but didn’t have a photo of the guy they busted or a photo of the 600 pounds of cocaine stacked up next to 275 rocket propelled grenades.

I couldn’t find a photo anywhere online of Joshua Russell of Bucyrus, Ohio who got 2.5 years in prison for death threats made in 2022 to Arizona’s top election official. The only mug shot I found was of Frederick Goltz of Lubbock Texas. He threaten Arizona elected officials and their kids on RW social media. I read all court documents for the entire Goltz case and the media coverage. His lawyers used all the usual explanations, ‘He was joking. He was in another state, he didn’t intend to take action, his comment was taken out of context, he is a good father who cares for his kids.” The prosecution countered all of those and proved he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Goltz was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison.

This would have been an excellent case for the DOJ to promote nationally as a deterrent, because he threatened to kill kids too. But they didn’t. It was one of the victims who posted on social media that I found the mugshot. The VICTIMS should NOT have to promote the successful prosecution.

In the case of threats to Jena Griswold, the Colorado Secretary of State’s office went to the journalists at Rolling Stone and told them what was happening. THIS IS NOT what law enforcement tells people to do. But when law enforcement isn’t doing their job, they have to. Law enforcement knew of all the threats to Judge Engoron’s clerk during Trump’s trial, but they don’t talk about “ongoing investigations” so the New York state court system’s Department of Public Safety kept count of the threats and told the media.

Here’s Lisa Rubin telling Chris Hayes about the 275 Pages of transcribed voicemail threats. When he saw that the scale and scope of the threats it finally made an impact on Hayes.

The Secretary Of State office had to go the press because law enforcement isn’t doing their job. But even media pressure isn’t enough. There needs to be an look into WHY law enforcement is failing and fix the problem.

Thanks to great reporting from Linda So and Jason Szep at Reuters, we’ve learned that law enforcement often won’t investigate and they dismiss threats as not rising to the level of criminal threat prosecution. Or they declare them “protected political speech”  But based on the experts who reviewed the threats, that’s a bullshit excuse. This is a must read piece on the failure of law enforcement to manage threats to U.S. election workers. It’s from 2021 and is damning.
U.S. election workers get little help from law enforcement as terror threats mount Reuters Campaign of Fear Sept. 8, 2021,

What’s really behind law enforcement not wanting to do this?
1) It’s not a priority
2) They don’t have a budget
3) They don’t see it as a big deal, it’s “online” or on social media, so it’s not local or “real world.”
4) It’s a lot of work for a low conviction rate, especially if they have to prove intent.
5) The people getting threatened aren’t important (POC, low-level election workers, women like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss)
6) The people who are doing the threatening are not seen as domestic terrorists.
7) Lots of cops are MAGA Trumpers

I’ve dug into the reasons and excuses for law enforcement’s failure to act.
1) Show the problem is huge and real.
The Secretary of States offices should talk to more people in the media about scale and scope.
They should describe the actions that need to be taken, and by whom.
There should be talk about who is blocking those actions and what pressures they are using.
(Is this about Trump lovers in law enforcement? Budget? Fear of speaking out?)
4) Determine what pressures can apply to get action. What if the stories about 1,000s of actionable threats isn’t enough?
Do we need to expose the INTENTIONAL internal failures and how they will lead to deaths?

And finally, since I LOVE to talk about successes, not just failures, when a law gets passed or a person is convicted for threats or a victim wins a civil law suit and is compensated for their pain and suffering, promote those stories! Make it a big deal!

(BTW, I’ve been doing this by educating groups on the power of civil legal actions and teaching them how to do follow up stories with the media. What I don’t know how to do, and needs to be done, is a social media plan that addresses the coordinated disinformation and gaslighting and fights back.)

One thing I learned from Glenn Kirschner is that the DOJ wants people to believe they are above pressure, but he said when they get new information, either from the original reporting or from reports from sources like the Secretary of State’s offices, the DOJ is forced to look at it and respond.

Based on this information everyone being threatened needs to USE that information. Get your story out there. Demand of law enforcement, “Where are the arrests?” If law enforcement does HAVE a success, SHOW IT!

Get the media to stop with their OWN excuses. I still see a reflexive move of the media to give the benefit of the doubt to people making threats. I get it, they don’t want to be seen as censors. They want to be able to criticize elected officials, Chris Hayes was still pushing the “You should expect some incoming” as a DA, as a normal experience, until he heard of the 275 transcribed pages of voicemail threats. That finally got through to him. But the media, and the public, need to hear it OVER AND OVER again. As Barb McQuade points out in her book, the right is exploiting our old views of in-person free speech in an actual public square, via an era of anonymous bots pushing lies and threats on social media.

The DOJ Election Threats Task Force should be doing big national stories about the people who are in jail for threats. SO big that FOX news can’t avoid covering them. And when RW social media and FOX try to turn the perpetrators into “misunderstood martyrs” whose “free speech is being censored!”
There needs to be a social media rapid response team that flips that lie around. “This guy IS NOT A “FREE SPEECH” HERO.” THIS GUY THREATENED TO KILL KIDS, HE IS BEING PUNISHED AS THE LAW PROVIDES.”

The social media owners should know this is against their Terms Of Service AND the LAW! Any gaslighting about it being free speech needs to be called out as the BS it is.

I’d repeat what John Keller, head of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, had to say in this press conference,

“Death threats are not debate.
Death threats do not contribute to the marketplace of ideas.
Death threats are not a protected constitutional right.”

John Keller, head of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force

When there are no big stories about convictions for threats, no photos of the people who are going to prison for years following a trial by a jury of their peers, there will be no deterrence. Yes, justice was done, but the public doesn’t know about. Humans need to SEE justice being done.

I asked people for an example of seeing justice getting done. They recommended the ending scene of The Untouchables. I thought that was appropriate, especially since Trump has taken to comparing himself to Al Capone lately.

That seems to be what they have in mind

Trump has often told his ecstatic followers that he planned to stay in office beyond eight years. The media has always taken it as a joke. Now the ultra-MAGA website American Conservative has developed a “serious” rationale:

Lost in the Left’s endless babbling about Donald Trump’s alleged threat to democracy is a very simple but inconvenient truth: Trump’s re-emergence as the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 is a triumph of democracy.

Not only did Trump secure the nomination following his defeat in 2020—a rather incredible feat in and of itself—but did so in spite of every obstacle the mainstream media, the Republican establishment, and the lawfare apparatus have put in his way.

The primary voters and caucus-goers who chose Trump did so in spite of January 6, the prosecution of the former president, or even the popularity in some MAGA quarters of Ron DeSantis. They chose him because they damn well felt like it. 

This is democracy in action: The voters surveyed the scene, tuned out the noise, and selected the man the rest of the world loves to hate. What could be more democratic than voting for your preferred candidate against the advice—the warnings, the threats, the fear-mongering—of your betters?

Yet, even if Trump returns to the White House this November, the Twenty-second Amendment will bar him from standing for re-election in 2028. Ratified in 1951, the amendment is largely seen as a kind of constitutional course correction following the four consecutive presidential terms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The amendment reads, in part: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

This sounds reasonable enough, especially in light of FDR’s hold on the office. Yet those who supported the amendment more than 70 years ago could not have foreseen the prospect of a one-term president who lost the office but who later regained it in a subsequent election. Grover Cleveland remains the only president to have successfully vaulted himself to the White House in nonconsecutive elections, in 1884 and in 1892. (Theodore Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1909, also gave it a try by running as the Progressive Party standard-bearer in 1912.)

In modern times, it is virtually inconceivable that any of the ousted one-term presidents would have seriously thought of running anew against the same opponent (now the occupant of the White House) who had bested them four years earlier. (Think about it: George H.W. Bush running against Bill Clinton in 1996?) This is not a reflection of a weakness in their character but the reality of American public life: Voters are fickle, and by the end of the first term of any presidency, they have long forgotten the loser from four years earlier. 

As the primary season has shown us, the Republicans have not moved on from Trump—yet the Twenty-second Amendment works to constrain their enthusiasm by prohibiting them from rewarding Trump with re-election four years from now. 

This is plainly unfair. Indeed, there has long been support for axing the Twenty-second Amendment due to the artificial limits it places on voter choice. Many popular presidents have agreed. In 1985, the Washington Post reported that Ronald Reagan supported repealing the amendment, saying in private remarks that the lame-duck label being applied to his second term left him feeling “handicapped.” In 2016, Barack Obama told David Axelrod that he was sure he would have coasted to a third term if such a thing were permissible: “I am confident in this vision, because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could have mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it.” 

The case of Donald Trump, however, makes an even more forceful ethical argument against the Twenty-second Amendment and for its repeal: If a man who once was president returns, after a series of years, to stand again for the office and proves so popular as to earn a second nonconsecutive term—as Trump seems bound to do—to deny him the right to run for a second consecutive term cuts against basic fair play. If, by 2028, voters feel Trump has done a poor job, they can pick another candidate; but if they feel he has delivered on his promises, why should they be denied the freedom to choose him once more?

Just let that sink in.

I wonder if they’ll be ok with the fact that Democrats are then free to run Barack Obama who will only be 67.

Good luck with that.

Apparently, they’re getting upset with Trump’s revenge obsession. Go figure:

Donald Trump’s bid to oust a Florida Republican who backed Ron DeSantis over him is reviving a long-running GOP anxiety: that he can’t be dissuaded from the grudges and inflammatory rhetoric that plagued his party’s lawmakers during his first term.

Trump’s call for a challenger to Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.), the only House Republican from DeSantis’ state to endorse the Florida governor in the primary, reveals a campaign with little interest in courting his former rivals and their supporters. But as President Joe Biden makes a play for Nikki Haley voters who might be reluctant to back Trump, Republicans are starting to nudge the former president to at least try to tone it down.

They’re concerned about a rerun of the hair-pulling past — where GOP candidates in battleground races are constantly challenged to answer for their presumptive nominee’s more erratic and boisterous statements.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), another former DeSantis backer, told POLITICO that Trump’s scorched-earth approach to Lee risks turning off some voters who might otherwise favor him.

“Gratuitous attacks like these won’t help him win the presidency, and are counterproductive to building a conservative Congress eager to advance his agenda when he’s elected,” Massie said. “Fortunately, Laurel Lee will win her reelection by a comfortable margin, but in the meantime, these kind of statements alienate some of Trump’s potential voters.”

Trump is unlikely to heed such warnings to pivot to a more consistent general election message. So far this month, he has said that Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats “hate” their religion and described some migrants as “not people.”

But the fact that Hill Republicans are even attempting to refocus him, underscored by nearly 20 interviews with lawmakers and aides, illustrates their real worries about a 2024 cycle where their electoral fates are inescapably tied to the man at the top of the ticket.

The former president “needs to be sensitive to where he’s strong and where he’s weak in the electoral map,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

Atop of the list of topics some Republicans want Trump to avoid: his attempts to revise the violent history of the Capitol attack by his supporters and his description of people convicted of riot-related crimes as “patriots.”

Many GOP senators are wincing as Trump homes in on Jan. 6, 2021, rather than attempting to capitalize on Biden’s vulnerabilities. Some national polls show Biden with a potential edge on the issue of democratic values, and the president made the violent attack an early and central fixture in his State of the Union address this month.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), said that praising Capitol rioters “definitely is not my thing,” advising Trump to talk more about middle-class workers instead.

“I was there” on Jan. 6, said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D). “And the courts have clearly said that these individuals engaged in criminal activity. Not all of them, but a sizable number. And I’m most certainly not going to call them patriots.”

Still, Rounds made clear that he wants Biden out of office, launching into a fusillade of mainstream GOP criticisms of the president and congressional Democrats on inflation, energy and tax policy. Then, when asked if he agr

Behold the utter depravity of all that. They know Trump is totally unfit. They just like power more than anything.. They obviously see the danger that this freak is going to lose because of his bizarre character defects but they obviously figure they’d rather take that chance than temporarily lose power and help save the country from the man they know very well is unhinged.

Update — Speaking of unhinged:

Rep. Derrick Van Orden is done with Rep. Bob Good.

Good, the leader of the House Freedom Caucus and one of eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, has been at the center of internal GOP infighting that has left their party’s agenda in tatters and their conference embroiled in a bitter civil war.

Now Van Orden has joined hands with a band of House Republicans angling to knock Good off in his June primary by propping up his primary opponent, John McGuire – a tactic long viewed as a serious breach of protocol but one that underscores the bad blood within the House GOP.

“Bob Good didn’t come here to govern. He came here to be famous,” Van Orden, a Wisconsin Republican, told CNN. “Bob Good’s wearing our jersey, and he’s not on the team.”

Van Orden added: “If you look at what we have not been able to accomplish in this Congress, it’s predominantly because of Bob Good and his ilk.”

But Good is undeterred.

As he barnstormed through his district last week with fellow House GOP hardliners, such as Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Chip Roy of Texas, Good said voters in his district don’t care what his colleague from Wisconsin thinks. And he pointedly accused many of his Republican colleagues in Washington of casting votes that hurt the country and undermine the conservative cause.

So much disarray…

Nobody can stand to be in congress anymore

Staffers are sick of it too:

When it comes to job satisfaction, members of Congress aren’t the only ones considering calling it quits.

Only about one in five senior aides on Capitol Hill believe that Congress is “functioning as a democratic legislature should,” and about the same margin believe that it is “an effective forum for debate” on key issues.

Given those assessments by the people who live and breathe these issues, this particularly glum finding should not come as a surprise: Almost half of senior congressional aides are considering leaving the Hill because of “heated rhetoric from the other party.”

These are just some of the findings from an investigation by the Congressional Management Foundation, a nonprofitthat aims to improve both lawmaker effectiveness and constituent engagement. Situated seven blocks away from the Capitol in Eastern Market, the foundation conducts seminars for staff and offers research to outside groups trying to figure out the byzantine ways of the House and Senate.

Over the past seven years, the foundation has conducted three very deep dives into the lives of senior staff in Congress, understanding that these unelected officials wield tremendous clout and that their positive outlook — or lack thereof — can deeply affect the health of the institution.

They have raised the salaries and created new resources in recent years so that isn’t the problem:

What’s driving this new bout of staff departures is the overall environment on Capitol Hill. That includes pandemic fallout, ranging from partisan battles over mask mandates to the long closure of the buildings to the public. It also accounts for the ongoing toxicity since the January 2021 attack on the Capitol. These factors have added to an institution that was already pretty partisan.

Lawmakers themselves are incredibly fed up with the institution. Next month, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) will resign his seat, the seventh member of the House to quit midterm for the private sector, a historically unusual amount.

Slightly more senior Democratic staff members said they were considering leaving because of the GOP’s “heated rhetoric” than did Republican aides when considering Democratic rhetoric. But almost 6 in 10 senior Republican staffers said they were thinking about leaving their jobs because of the actions of “my party.”

Most congressional aides have gone to college and studied public policy or political science, and maybe have an advanced degree in law or some key issue area. They largely come to Washington to try to shape things toward their party’s ideological vision of things.

But now, too often, newer members of Congress show up without much concern about policy and instead focus on their communications staff and getting attention on social media and cable news.

A House Republican deputy chief of staff, granted anonymity by CMF’s staff, gave a harsh assessment of those political performance lawmakers and their ability to cause dysfunction.

“Perhaps courses on the constitutional role of Congress would help enlighten them on how representation is intended to work, and we could govern properly,” the House GOP aide said.

Threats of violence have now become a regular backdrop to the work of senior staff. Less than one in five express being “very satisfied” that lawmakers and aides “feel safe doing their jobs,” with a bit more saying they are somewhat satisfied.

GOP aides said they feel safer, but not by much. And aides from both parties find threats to be an almost regular part of their job.

Four in 10 senior aides — an identical amount in each party — reported that “direct insulting or threatening messages” occur frequently or very frequently while doing their jobs.

“The physical and psychological toll of this place cannot be understated. We are in danger as a nation,” the top Democratic aide to a House committee told the foundation’s staff.

[…]

Their collective ire also goes toward the representatives and senators themselves, who have amped up their bombast so much that it makes it harder for aides to secure the goodwill needed to do their jobs effectively. Almost half of senior aides strongly agreed that the tone taken by lawmakers “inhibits the ability of staffers to collaborate across party lines.”

With those viewpoints, it’s clear that more resources for policy expertise and a 33 percent salary boost don’t inspire senior advisers to want to stay on the job. Not when they can go to K Street and make more money, or go work at issue-oriented nonprofits to scratch their policy itch without the amount of anxiety that comes with their current jobs.

Ultimately, the CMF report’s authors found that voters themselves have to change what they value in lawmakers so that more serious, sober-minded members of Congress will take charge — and encourage their best staffers to stick around and help make that change.

“The nation can ill afford to lose them,” they wrote.

That’s very interesting but it doesn’t answer the big question, does it? Who is responsible for this change? It isn’t the Democrats, is it? And it didn’t happen overnight. The Republicans have been acting like monsters since the 1990s getting worse with each passing year. When Trump came along they just let their freak flags fly.

Sliding into the 1930s

The Silent Generation generally avoided speaking directly about anything deemed uncomfortable in polite society. TV’s Lucy and Ricky slept in separate beds, fergawdsakes. It was a thing when Lucille Ball was “expecting” (never pregnant) and they wrote it into the series. One of my old roommates had been a junkie as a teen before I knew him in college. My My Silent Generation mother was distressed that I seemed to know people with “problems.”

It’s like a throwback to the 1950s that today the news media has a problem openly discussing “problems.”

It's been four years since I was asked for three or four changes in political journalism that might begin to right this ship. (Emphasis on "begin to…") Here is what I came up with. pic.twitter.com/m462CLeEAt

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) March 31, 2024

Digby on Sunday referenced the Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn dealing plainly with uncomfortable truths about the immediate past president. Jay Rosen took note as well.

A newspaper editor — Chris Quinn of the Cleveland Plain Dealer — says it as clearly as he can:

"Our Trump reporting upsets some readers, but there aren’t two sides to facts." https://t.co/2nYQx8adj6

Quinn writes of a different kind of access. Access to our own eyes and ears: pic.twitter.com/rAeDjXmOpY

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) March 30, 2024

Rosen has been particularly vocal about reporting that dances around the objective facts.

My comments to the @AP on NBC's adventure with Ronna McDaniel. https://t.co/v9in684HmJ pic.twitter.com/kaDBDE23yd

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) March 29, 2024

Michael Tomasky takes on the double standard the news uses in covering the immediate past president, citing the response to Trump posting an image of Joe Biden tied up in the back of a pickup truck:

The Biden campaign issued a denunciation, and Trump spokesman Steven Cheung, always handy with hall-of-mirrors projection, snapped back: “Democrats and crazed lunatics have not only called for despicable violence against President Trump and his family, they are actually weaponizing the justice system against him.”

Take note of two points. First, the way Cheung equates “Democrats and crazed lunatics” with Trump; that is, if it’s okay for “crazed lunatics” to post irresponsible things about Trump, then it’s fine for Trump himself—the standard bearer of the Republican Party to hold the most powerful office in the world—to post irresponsible things about Biden.

Bothsidesism normalizes MAGA deviancy:

This is a long-standing right-wing sleight of hand—to take things said by random angry liberals on social media and prattle on as if “the Democrat Party” said them. When Barack Obama was president, we endured years of Republicans—in Congress and state legislatures, along with numerous state party officials—making watermelon jokes and being slippery about whether Obama was born in America. It happened incessantly. And then, every so often, a few online liberals would get some nasty and perhaps tasteless meme about Mitch McConnell trending, which would give Republicans the excuse to say, “Aha, see? Both sides do it!”

Republicans have gotten away with this for ages. The mainstream media has come to expect and tolerate this state of affairs for two reasons. It’s simple human nature: If a parent has a well-behaved kid and an unruly kid, the parent naturally over time expects more of the former and lowers the bar for the latter. And once something has happened a thousand times, it isn’t really news anymore.

But there’s more to this than bothsidesism and capitalist news enterprises soft-peddling MAGA deviancy to keep from losing readership.

The water in this pot is getting hotter while the press ignores it. Anat Shenker-Osorio remarked on NBC’s Kristin Welker’s euphemistically chalking up Trump attacking a judge’s family to us being a “deeply divided nation.”

“We aren’t merely unwitting frogs in the boiling water, the forecasters keep assuring us it’s merely a pleasant little hot tub,” Shenker-Osorio tweets.

I get the everyone is burnishing their credentials to work at TrumpTV but perhaps, I dunno, we could try to first stave off the total seizure of speech and freedoms?

— Anat Shenker-Osorio 🟧 (@anatosaurus) April 1, 2024

“This whole, the news is what the public thinks the news is, isn’t merely an abdication of responsibility. It’s a pre-capitulation to fascism,” she continues.

I told my roommate about my mother generically referring to uncomfortable topics as problems. He smiled, grew animated, and spoke wildly with his hands.

“Problems? Problems? The guy’s a junkie! He has a two-bag-a-day habit! You could say he has problems!”

Our problem is a mainstream press that treats budding fascism as the 1950s treated Lucy’s pregnancy.

Quinn wrote:

Our nation does seem to be slipping down the same slide that Germany did in the 1930s. Maybe the collapse of government in the hands of a madman is inevitable, given how the media landscape has been corrupted by partisans, as it was in 1930s Germany.

I hope not.

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

You are better off now than four years ago

I took a cue ten days ago from the Bulwark and every morning began posting the New York Times front page from four years ago. Remember those grim headlines?

The GOP’s idiotic attempt at campaigning in 2024 on “Are you better off?” relies on Americans having short memories and on our collective PTSD from the COVID-19 pandemic. We’d rather blot out images of empty store shelves, 6-ft distancing stickers, bodies in refrigeration trucks, mass graves, daily infection and death plots, etc. At one point, I was tracking how many preachers who claimed they were protected by the blood of Jesus had died of COVID. I stopped counting at 50 about this time four years ago. Donald Trump and the GOP want to play “Are you better off”? I’m happy to oblige.

On this April Fools’ Day, the Associated Press is running a series of articles highlighting the miriad ways Americans can be fooled.

Secret history: Even before the revolution, America was a nation of conspiracy theorists

WASHINGTON (AP) — A brutal conflict in Europe was fresh in people’s minds and the race for the White House turned ugly as talk of secret societies and corruption roiled the United States.

It was 1800, and conspiracy theories were flourishing across America. Partisan newspapers spread tales of European elites seeking to seize control of the young democracy. Preachers in New England warned of plots to abolish Christianity in favor of godlessness and depravity.

This bogeyman of the early republic was the Illuminati, a secret organization founded in Germany dedicated to free thinking and opposed to religious dogma. Despite the Illuminati’s lack of real influence in America, conspiracy theorists imagined the group’s fingerprints were everywhere. They said Illuminati manipulation had caused France’s Reign of Terror, the wave of executions and persecutions the followed the French Revolution. They feared something similar in America.

Election disinformation takes a big leap with AI being used to deceive worldwide

LONDON (AP) — Artificial intelligence is supercharging the threat of election disinformation worldwide, making it easy for anyone with a smartphone and a devious imagination to create fake – but convincing – content aimed at fooling voters.

It marks a quantum leap from a few years ago, when creating phony photos, videos or audio clips required teams of people with time, technical skill and money. Now, using free and low-cost generative artificial intelligence services from companies like Google and OpenAI, anyone can create high-quality “deepfakes” with just a simple text prompt.

One Tech Tip: How to spot AI-generated deepfake images

LONDON (AP) — AI fakery is quickly becoming one of the biggest problems confronting us online. Deceptive pictures, videos and audio are proliferating as a result of the rise and misuse of generative artificial intelligence tools.

With AI deepfakes cropping up almost every day, depicting everyone from Taylor Swift to Donald Trump, it’s getting harder to tell what’s real from what’s not. Video and image generators like DALL-E, Midjourney and OpenAI’s Sora make it easy for people without any technical skills to create deepfakes — just type a request and the system spits it out.

These fake images might seem harmless. But they can be used to carry out scams and identity theft or propaganda and election manipulation.

Almost makes me nostalgic for false-flag robocalls.

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.