Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

On casting stones at patients in distress

Consider where the American Taliban wants to take this country. For anyone who missed it, this clip below is the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina. He may sound like he is a member of the lunatic fringe, but he is not. Mark Robinson is just shoutier.

The lunatic fringe right has gone mainstream. In fact, they’ve made it to the U.S. Supreme Court several times already. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern comment on Tuesday’s oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM). They write:

In public, the plaintiffs in this case—a group of doctors and dentists seeking to ban medication abortion—have long claimed they object to ending “unborn life” by finishing an “incomplete or failed” abortion at the hospital. But in court, they went much further. Their lawyer, Erin Hawley, admitted at oral argument that her clients don’t merely oppose terminating a pregnancy—they are pursuing the right to turn away a patient whose pregnancy has already been terminated.Indeed, they appear to want to deny even emergency care to patients whose fetus is no longer “alive,” on the grounds that the patient used an abortion drug earlier in the process. And they aim to deploy this broad fear of “complicity” against the FDA, to demand a nationwide prohibition on the abortion pill to ensure that they need never again see (and be forced to turn away) patients who’ve previously taken it. This is not a theory of being “complicit” in ending life. It is a theory that doctors can pick and choose their patients based on the “moral distress” they might feel in helping them.

That is, AHM wants to define patients at risk of bleeding to death as medically untouchable based on subjective perceptions of their moral purity. No, they’re not joking.

The plaintiffs say they are terrified that one day, a patient may walk into their emergency room suffering complications from a medication abortion prescribed by some other doctor. This patient may need their assistance completing the abortion or simply recovering from the complete abortion, which these plaintiffs deem “complicity” in sin. And they say the solution is either a total, nationwide ban on mifepristone, the first drug in the medication abortion sequence, or a draconian (and medically unnecessary) set of restrictions that would place mifepristone out of reach for many patients. (The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit ruled to reinstate those restrictions at their behest.)

It is a twisted line of logic, one that should never have reached the Supreme Court in the first place. But it is also a product of the court’s past indulgence of outlandish claims about moral “complicity.” As was made plain in the oral arguments and briefing,activist doctors are no longer satisfied with personal conscience exemptions already granted under state and federal law; they now insist that nobody, anywhere, should have access to the abortion pill, in order to ensure that they themselves won’t have to treat patients who took one. At a minimum, they say, they should be able to radically roll back access to the pill in all 50 states to reduce the odds that one of these handful of objectors might someday encounter a patient who took it. This extremist argument lays bare the transformation of the idea of “complicity” from a shield for religious dissenters to a sword for ideologues desperate to seize control over other people’s lives and bodies.

Unclean!

Lithwick and Stern cover some of the back and forth of the arguments. This trend in the religious far right demanding the rest of America live by its most restrictive definition of fundamentalist freedom is not new:

All this is reminiscent of Little Sisters of the Poor, a case about a Catholic charitable group that was afforded an exemption from the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate. The Little Sisters were asked to check a box signaling to the government that they could not comply with the mandate, at which point the government would step in to cover their employees. But the Little Sisters refused, viewing this action—the checking of a box to opt out of coverage—as “complicity” in abortion because it would in turn trigger government payment for contraception (which they viewed as abortifacients). The Supreme Court and the Trump administration ultimately indulged the Little Sisters’ claim.

Here, we have emergency room physicians asserting that they will not participate in lifesaving medical intervention unless they approve of the reason for the pregnancy loss. Presumably, if the pregnant patient is an unwed mother, or a gay or transgender person, the doctor would be similarly complicit in sin and decline service. Seen through this lens, since one can never know which sins one is enabling in the ER, each and every day, a narrow conscience exemption becomes a sweeping guarantee that absolutely nobody in the country can ever have access to basic health care, let alone miscarriage management. (Of course, these plaintiffs might focus only on one set of “sins” they see as relevant.) In a country effectively governed by Kacsmaryk and his plaintiff friends, a gay person suffering a stroke could be turned away from any hospital because of his sexual orientation, all to spare a doctor from a glancing encounter with prior sin. As Tobias Barrington Wolff, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, put it to us in an email, this unbounded view of complicity “is part of enacting the social death of people and practices you abhor, which in turn can contribute to the material death of people and practices you abhor.”

Only the pure deserve to live, and that’s not you if you’re not them. You’re unclean, an untouchable.

One of the most exhausting lessons of post-Roe Americais that being “pro-life” definitively means privileging the life of the presumptively sin-free unborn—or even their “dead” remains—over the life of the sin-racked adults who carry them. This is why women are left to go septic or to hemorrhage in hospital parking lots; it is why C-sections are performed in nonviable pregnancies, at high risk to mothers; it’s why the women who sued in Texas to secure exceptions to that state’s abortion ban are condemned by the state as sinners and whores. And it’s why—in the eyes of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—it is a greater hardship for a physician to “waste precious moments scrubbing in, scrubbing out” of emergency surgery, as Hawley put it, so long as they don’t believe that the emergency warrants their professional services, than it is for a pregnant person, anywhere in the country, including in states that permit abortion, to be forced to give birth.

Heaven forbid doctors should ritually cleanse themselves only to have to touch a female patient who may or may not have engaged in acts that render them biblically unclean. Stoneable.

These arguments are, of course, untangleable from the right’s less-public demand that the traditional male hierarchy be reinstated to assuage conservative men’s damaged sense of being atop it, and that Christianity, a specific, radicalized variety, be formally declared the official state religion. You will live by their code, one way or another, and women will know their places. Ask Mark Robinson.

Robert Reich opined on the Alabama “frozen embryo” case last month:

According to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, more than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation — either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21 percent) or sympathizing with those views (33 percent).

This point of view has long been prominent among white evangelicals but is spreading into almost all reaches of the Republican Party, as exemplified by the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling.

It is also closely linked with authoritarianism. According to the survey, half of Christian nationalism adherents and nearly 4 in 10 sympathizers said they support the idea of an authoritarian leader powerful enough to keep these Christian values in society.

During an interview at a Turning Point USA event last August, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said party leaders need to be more responsive to the base of the party, which she claimed is made up of Christian nationalists.

“We need to be the party of nationalism,” she said. “I am a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

Think they won’t impose their will at the point of a sword, or a bayonet? Look back at the Christian nationalist banners dotting the Jan. 6 mob and the violence now excused as patriotism by Trump.

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● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

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What BS

Former White House counsel Pat Philbin testified at Jeffrey Clark’s disbarment hearing and talked about the chaotic post-election period at the White House:

“I tried to explain to him that it was a bad idea for multiple reasons,” Philbin recalled Tuesday at a long-delayed disbarment hearing for Clark. “He would be starting down a path of assured failure … If by some miracle somehow, it worked, there’d be riots in every major city in the country and it was not an outcome the country would accept.”

It was Philbin’s first public testimony about the chaotic final days of the Trump presidency since he left the White House. Though Philbin has spoken to both the Jan. 6 select committee and the federal grand jury that indicted Trump for his effort to seize a second term, no transcript or recording of his remarks has even been released.

Philbin’s description of his interactions with Clark shed new light on the frenzied effort by Trump to remake the Justice Department into a tool of his bid to cling to power despite losing the election — a remarkable new account more than three years after a mob of pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol in his name. His testimony followed Richard Donoghue, a former acting deputy attorney general.

Together, the two men described a White House that had let down all guardrails, with conspiracy theories about election fraud reaching Trump, who was an eager recipient of even implausible claims of fraud. Clark, too, embraced some of those claims, they said.

Philbin described feeling relief in the first days of January 2021 when he heard that Trump had ditched plans to appoint Clark as acting attorney general. But he quickly learned in discussions with his boss, Pat Cipollone, and two top DOJ officials — acting attorney general Jeff Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue — that the effort had been revived. The men agreed that Philbin should speak to Clark, owing to their decadeslong relationship, and attempt to discern what was happening.

Philbin, who testified for about two hours on Tuesday, described Clark as wildly misinformed about claims of election fraud — countenancing a theory about “smart thermostats” being used to manipulate voting machines — and not sufficiently cognizant of the havoc it would wreak on the country if his plan succeeded. But he said Clark seemed “100 percent sincere” in his beliefs.

“I believe that he felt that he essentially had a duty,” Philbin said. “I think Jeff’s view was that there was a real crisis in the country and that he was being given an opportunity to do something about it.”

When Philbin warned Clark that there would be riots in every major American city if Trump reversed the outcome of the election, Clark responded, “Well, Pat, that’s what the Insurrection Act is for,” Philbin recalled.

Clark, in Philbin’s telling, was referring to a 19th-century federal law that permits the president to use the military to quell civil unrest, an indication that he recognized the grave implications of his efforts. Though it was Philbin’s first time publicly discussing the exchange, the conversation was captured in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump — without naming either Philbin or Clark, though the identities of both speakers were easily discerned. On Tuesday, Philbin was asked to elaborate on this discussion.

“I don’t think I said anything on the phone. I just thought that that showed a lack of judgment,” he said. “Triggering riots in every major city in America, you’ve got to be really sure about what you’re doing and have no alternatives … In my estimation, that was not the sort of situation we were talking about.”

No, no, no. This was not a “lack of judgement.” The election was on the up and up. Courts all over the country looked at it. There were recounts and audits and Republican officials validated the results. These ideas were batshit crazy and they were solely due to the fact that Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist with a psyche so fragile that he could not accept that he had lost. That’s all it was.

The rest of those nutbags like Clark are either brain damaged or cynical opportunists who saw that Trump has a talent for making people believe lies simply by repeating them over and over again. Either way, there was never any merit in any of this and Philbin obviously knows that and yet is still soft-peddling just what a monumental crime these people perpetrated on the American people.

No? Then you need not apply to the RNC

Trump is making “You can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes” a litmus test to work at the Republican Party.”

Those seeking employment at the Republican National Committee after a Trump-backed purge of the committee this month have been asked in job interviews if they believe the 2020 election was stolen, according to people familiar with the interviews, making the false claim a litmus test of sorts for hiring.

In recent days, Trump advisers have quizzed multiple employees who had worked in key 2024 states about their views on the last presidential election, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interviews and discussions. The interviews have been conducted mostly virtually, as the prospective future employees are based in key swing states.

“Was the 2020 election stolen?” one prospective employee recalled being asked in a room with two top Trump advisers.

The question about the 2020 election has startled some of the potential employees, who viewed it as questioning their loyalty to Trump and as an unusual job interview question, according to the people familiar with the interviews. A group of senior Trump advisers have been in the RNC building in recent days conducting the interviews.

The questions about the 2020 election were open-ended, two people familiar with the questioning said.

“But if you say the election wasn’t stolen, do you really think you’re going to get hired?” one former RNC employee asked.

“Candidates who worked on the front line in battleground states or are currently in states where fraud allegations have been prevalent were asked about their work experience,” RNC and Trump spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said in a statement Tuesday. “We want experienced staff with meaningful views on how elections are won and lost and real experience-based opinions about what happens in the trenches.”

RNC staffers were told en masse in early March that they were being let go but could reapply for jobs, and the application process has included an interview with the Trump advisers. The Trump advisers this week are vetting both former employees and some laid-off employees — whose last day is Friday — to decide how many can either return or stay with the RNC.

Doug Heye, a longtime GOP strategist who worked as communications director at the RNC, said the party had long expected staffers to mimic the positions of its presidential candidates. “You’re there for that specific reason,” he said, “to back the candidate up and go along with the worldview.”

But nominees other than Trump wouldn’t make such outlandish claims, he said, or put employees in such an uncomfortable spot.

“The problem with Trumpism is that despite bringing in very smart and very capable people, if you want to play Trump’s game, you have to back him up on everything he says. Claims about the election being stolen is kind of the last frontier of that,” Heye said.

Other questions have included what they believe should be done on “election integrity” in 2024, along with basic questions about their job responsibilities, their previous employers and their opinions on how things are going at the RNC.

Instead of having employees based in Washington, Trump advisers have told prospective employees that many will be expected to move to Palm Beach, Fla., to be near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, hollowing out the RNC headquarters. RNC officials have said it is about combining the operations of the campaign and the committee for maximum use ahead of the general election.

It’s only a matter of time before they’re required to make a formal oath of loyalty to Donald Trump and say “Hail Trump!” when he enters the room. And I’m not kidding. That could easily happen. He’s already got them saluting to the “January 6th choir” at his rallies.

DeSantis has turned Florida into a Banana Republic. No wonder the whole Trump family lives there now.

The biggest donors in Republican politics largely shunned Ron DeSantis after his presidential campaign began to falter last summer. So his allies turned to donors the Florida governor still held sway over because of his day job.

A state coronavirus response contractor, CDR Enterprises, gave $1 million to his aligned super PAC Fight Right in the final weeks of the campaign. The DeSantis administration has issued purchase orders to the company worth $158 million to help distribute vaccines, treat patients and provide other services,sometimes through no-bid contracts, according to state records.

Herzog Railroad Services — a Missouri company the DeSantis’s team hired to build a $35 million Orlando commuter rail extension — gave $250,000 around the same time to Never Back Down, another aligned super PAC.

And a casino magnate, Jeffrey Soffer, gave $1 million in late July — on the same day that the campaign announced massive layoffs. DeSantis came out in support of Soffer’s controversial bid to transfer a casino license to his Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach weeks after leaving the presidential race.

People involved in the DeSantis fundraising effort described the dependence on donors with business before Florida as part of a strategic shift born of necessity. Lobbyist friends and fundraisers of DeSantis called Florida clients asking them to contribute to the super PACs paying for television ads and field operations — and many of those people gave, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. The pitch, according to one person who received a call, was that DeSantis was likely to remain a powerful governor in the state.

DeSantis had entered the presidential campaign as the richest candidate in politics, with $82.5 million in state campaign funds that seeded one of his super PACs, Never Back Down. But the governor raised relatively little from major donors between June 30 and the end of the year, when most deep-pocketed Republicans who play in national politics looked elsewhere, eventually settling on the campaign of former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley.

Only 11 percent of the $147 million raised in 2023 by Never Back Down and Fight Right came in the second half of the year, according to campaign finance records. Many of the biggest donations had deep interests in Florida. Never Back Down, which raised nearly all of the funds, took in 37 percent of its haul from Florida-based donors in the first half of the year, not counting the transfer from the governor’s own political committee, according to campaign finance filings. The group raised 57 percent of its funds from Florida-based donors in the second half of the year.

James Uthmeier, DeSantis’s chief of staff and former campaign manager, said in response to a request for comment that “the premise of your article is entirely false.”

“Anybody working closely with the governor, such as I do, knows he is a man of unwavering principle and he would be the last person to grant access or state favor in exchange for political support, as your article suggests,” he said in a statement. “However, it is the case that many people who work in and around Florida supported his campaign because they genuinely believed he was the best candidate, and many have seen firsthand the incredible results of his leadership in our state.”

Uh huh. The system is corrupt, at every level. But these Republicans don’t even try to hide it. They just take vast sums of cash and then scream “I know you are but what am I!”

It remains to be seen if it’s been done in time

The Daily Beast reports on what they call the “quiet” Biden plan to “ambush” Trump.

For the first time in a long time, there’s good news for Biden on the polling front. Gradual improvements in the battleground states along with an uptick in his approval rating led one Democratic strategist, Simon Rosenberg, to declare “the Biden bump.”

The boost is at the very least correlated with Biden’s fiery State of the Union address on March 7, when he repeatedly went after his “predecessor” and made sure to mix it up with Republicans in the chamber on a few occasions.

Since then, Biden’s team has continued the punchy, combative tone on display that night, using press releases to cheekily slam their legally challenged opponent as “Broke Don.”

On top of that, the Biden campaign has continued to flex what has always been its core strength: fundraising.

With a $53 million haul in February, the Biden campaign built on their already impressive financial advantage over Trump, who brought in only $20 million over the same period. The Biden campaign has $71 million in cash on hand, compared to just $33.5 million for Trump.

The tide is turning, a Biden adviser argued to The Daily Beast, and although they aren’t putting too much stock into any recent polling upticks, the president’s team is ready to seize upon April and May as a crucial time to ambush a wounded Trump campaign.

“It’s aggressive,” a source within the Biden campaign said, requesting anonymity to speak candidly of the mood inside the re-election team. “There’s a lot of travel, there’s a lot of work. It’s all exciting. We’re heading into this final fundraiser of the month with the former presidents [Obama and Clinton], but it’s aggressive.”

Taking advantage of a substantial fundraising lead, the Biden campaign is focusing on two key areas: travel and organizing.

Since his State of the Union, Biden has visited every major battleground state—typically pairing official White House stops with separate private campaign events—in an effort to demonstrate his ability to keep an energetic schedule.

Trump, on the other hand, has only done a rally in Ohio and another in the battleground state of Georgia since Super Tuesday. Otherwise, he’s mostly been confined to his Mar-a-Lago estate as he prepares to spend the second half of April and most of May stuck in a Manhattan court four days a week for the upcoming Stormy Daniels hush money trial.

Second, the Biden campaign is going full steam ahead on hiring in the battleground states, approaching 100 field offices with more than 130 staffers spread across eight major battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, as well as North Carolina and New Hampshire.

Such investments mean that Biden can begin the crucial work of mobilizing voters early. The Trump campaign, by comparison, could not tell The Daily Beast whether they have made any additional hires or opened any field offices in the battleground states, beyond shifting over the same team focused on early primary and Super Tuesday states.

In an election which will likely be decided by less than tens of thousands of votes in a handful of battlegrounds, the Biden campaign is focusing on gaining as much as they can at the margins now to catch up to Trump.

Ramping up their field organizing, along with getting Biden on the road and in front of cameras to show he still has the energy to campaign at full throttle, is an opportunity they can’t afford to miss while Trump remains mired in legal and financial problems.

[…]

Not to worry. They’ve taken over the RNC and have Lara Trump on the case:

Lara Trump is releasing a new single called “Anything is Possible.” Tom Petty’s family must be thrilled that Lara Trump, who has released two versions of “I Won’t Back Down,” is moving on to different music.

Lara Trump plays the piano on the track, and, according to Breitbart News, the song contains a line from Lara Trump’s CPAC speech earlier this year. Lara Trump told Breitbart News that she plans to continue pursuing music even while serving as the new RNC co-chair:

I guess it’s just a part time job. The Trump team is nonetheless very optimistic:

Chris LaCivita—a top Trump campaign adviser who is also the chief operating officer of the Republican National Committee—rejected the idea that the former president’s team should disclose its organizing plans.

“By combining forces and operations, The Trump campaign and RNC are deploying operations that are fueled by passionate volunteers who care about saving America and firing Joe Biden. We do not feel obligated however to discuss the specifics of our strategy, timing and tactics with members of the News Media,” LaCivita told The Daily Beast.

“Democrats want to talk process because they don’t want to talk about Broken Braindead Biden and his absolute failure,” LaCivita argued. “The media should not do Democrats’ bidding and should focus on the issues the American people care about.”

The polls are starting to move toward Biden which doesn’t mean much when they are so close but it’s not as if Trump is putting it away:

The Biden campaign is eyeing the late spring and early summer to start focusing their messaging on persuading undecided voters, according to the senior aide, with the present focus continuing to be building out their door knocking infrastructure to make sure core voters show up to cast their ballot no matter what.

“That’s what matters at this point in the cycle,” Munoz said. “And I think we have a very good story to tell, not only on the operation we’re building, but also on the issues that we’re fighting for. These are the issues that when Americans go to the ballot box, they care most about, and Donald Trump is running on an agenda that people actively root against when they go to the ballot box.”

The Trump campaign’s answer to that is … well, nothing:

“The Trump campaign will raise the money, deploy the necessary assets, and win because President Trump will secure the border, make American families more prosperous, and make our nation respected on the world stage,” Trump campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez said in a statement to The Daily Beast.

Whatever. The truth is that the race is close and there are warning signs for both campaigns:

Jim Messina, who served as Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, argued that Biden is in a stronger position to win than Trump given the cards they’ve been dealt.

“I like to play poker and I would simply much rather have Biden’s cards than Trump’s,” Messina said.

Biden’s two key advantages, according to Messina, are on the economy and the legal front.

“The economy is improving and people are feeling it, Biden has an affirmative message, and Trump will continue to remind independents why they voted against him in 2020 by campaigning from a courtroom,” he said.

Matt Grossman, a political scientist with Michigan State University, said it very well could be the case that March marks the nadir of Biden’s polling woes, but added a note of caution for the president’s campaign.

“My question has been what kind of message is likely to work this time,” Grossman said. “In 2020 we had strong evidence people had already made up their mind about Donald Trump, but not Joe Biden… Now we have two very well-known candidates, so it would make me expect the efficacy of any persuasion effort would be less.”

With two such well-known candidates and some 70 percent of the public weary of a 2020 rematch, the little things could count even more this time around.

“If it’s close to a 50-50 election, then minor things can still move the outcome. And certainly overall, there’s evidence that more contact is better, to deliver both turnout and persuasion messages more is better,” Grossman said.

I’m going with the value of incumbency and the fact that the Republicans are fielding a man who has twice lost the popular vote for president, was impeached twice, attempted a coup, incited an insurrection, was found liable for sexual assault and business fraud to the tune of half a billion dollars — and is facing 91 felony counts in four different jurisdictions. I’ll admit that it’s shocking that it’s even a race but it doesn’t change those basic facts. I think if that man becomes president of the United States again it means we actually have bigger problems. It will mean that our society has completely lost its bearings and as individuals we will all have to make some hard decisions.

Trump press secretary brags about Trump ending Roe v. Wade, calling it a “win,” and then says Trump will work to pass a national abortion ban if reelected pic.twitter.com/ULcaokxfbo

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 26, 2024

As Tom pointed out this morning, it worked like a charm down in Alabama yesterday just as it’s been working ever since Rove v Wade was overturned.

I hope they see just what a huge winning issue this is for them and ride it all the way to November.

Good:

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Democrats are more likely to report feeling “fearful” or “angry” about the prospects of another Trump term than Republicans are about the idea of Biden remaining in the White House.

The emotional reaction Trump inspires may work in his favor too, though, since the poll also found that Republicans are more excited about the prospect of a Trump win than Democrats are about a Biden victory.

Seven in 10 Democrats say the words “angry” or “fearful” would describe their emotions “extremely well” or “very well” upon a Trump victory. A smaller majority of Republicans – 56% – say the same about a Biden triumph. About 6 in 10 Democrats cite both emotions when contemplating a Trump victory. Again, that exceeds the roughly 4 out of 10 Republicans who said they would feel both angry and scared about Biden prevailing.

The findings are notable in an unusual campaign pitting an incumbent president against his predecessor, with both men facing doubters within their own parties and among independents. Consolidating support from Republicans who backed Nikki Haley in the GOP primary could be a challenge for Trump. Biden faces disenchanted progressives to his left and concerns over whether his age, 81, is a liability in the job.

I understand progressives being disenchanted about Gaza but other than that I don’t think they have much to gripe about. And we’ve certainly learned that there’s no taboo against ageism…

Still, I’ll take fear and anger over apathy any day. At least most Democrats are starting to wake up to the fact that Orange Julius Caesar isn’t going anywhere and they’d better vote against him:

Excitement about the two candidates will be an important factor in a race where turnout from each side’s base will be key. But dislike can motivate voters as much as enthusiasm.

“If there was a third-party candidate who had a chance in hell I would vote for them,” said Austin Healey, a 26-year-old Democrat. Healey, who describes himself as “very liberal,” said his mixed reviews of Biden take a back seat to his concerns that Trump’s comeback bid “looks like a clear ploy for trying to abolish democracy.”

Though he is “not excited about it,” Healey said, that means a vote for Biden.

Derrick Johnson, a Michigan voter who identifies as a liberal independent, offered plenty of critiques against Biden, as well. But the 46-year-old caregiver and food service worker made his bottom line clear: “Donald Trump is a madman. I’m afraid he’ll have us in World War III. My message is anybody but Trump.”

Democrats’ intense feelings about Trump account for the overall differences in how Americans view the two rivals. Altogether, about 4 in 10 U.S. adults say “fearful” would describe their emotions “extremely” or “very” well if Trump is elected again, while roughly 3 in 10 would fear a second Biden term. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults said they would be angered by Trump winning in November while 28% said the same about Biden.

54% of Republicans are “excited” about Trump’s return while only 40% of Democrats feel the same way. I would guess “relief” is the better way to describe it.

Whatever motivates the anti-Trump coalition to vote is fine. They just have to do it.

Health care is still on the ballot. Including reproductive care.

Both the president and vice president campaigned in Raleigh, North Carolina on Tuesday (CNN):

The Raleigh stop marked a rare joint appearance on the road by the president and vice president, highlighting the emphasis the duo will place on health care as they prepare to face off against former President Donald Trump. It came the same day the Supreme Court heard arguments on access to the abortion medication mifepristone, teeing up a summer decision that could have major implications for abortion rights.

Biden’s advisers believed Tuesday’s visit would provide a stark contrast between the Democratic ticket’s vision for health care and reproductive rights and proposals put forth by Republicans. It’s taking place on the heels of a campaign push slamming Trump for threatening to repeal the Affordable Care Act if he’s elected to a second term.

“Donald Trump and MAGA friends are nothing if not persistent. They’ve tried to repeal it 50 times, not a joke. Fifty times they’ve tried to repeal it. We stopped them every time now,” Biden said to the crowd at Chavis Community Center in Raleigh, North Carolina. “Kamala and I have come back to North Carolina to celebrate the ACA and to remind all of us, we can’t take anything for granted.”

Happening Now: President Biden and the Vice President deliver remarks in Raleigh, North Carolina on lowering health care costs and strengthening the ACA, Medicaid, and Medicare. https://t.co/9Nn656MnhY

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 26, 2024

NYT:

Speaking to a crowd of more than 200 Democratic leaders and supporters in the gymnasium of a community center near downtown Raleigh, the president and vice president attacked Republicans for seeking to repeal or limit parts of the Affordable Care Act. Ms. Harris called them “extremists,” who are “trying to take away medical care in our country or make it more expensive.”

[…]

After reading a laundry list of ways Americans could lose health care coverage if the Affordable Care Act were repealed or restricted, Mr. Biden vowed to protect access to abortion, which has animated national politics since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. If he and Ms. Harris are re-elected in November, Mr. Biden said, they would restore its protections as “the law of the land.”

While the brief mention of abortion signaled that it would be one of his health care priorities for a second term, he did not offer details on how he planned to deliver on his pledge to protect abortion rights.

Really? Well, he didn’t promise it in two weeks for four years, did he?

The stop in North Carolina underscores the state’s growing significance to Democrats, as they work to defeat Mr. Trump in November. Mr. Biden lost the state by less than two points in 2020 — the same year that he carried Georgia, a state he visited earlier this month, by fewer than 12,000 votes.

We’ve seen that emphasis on the ground here for over six weeks. CNN notes at the end of the following report that the Trump campaign has no advance staff on the ground yet in North Carolina.

🚨 Catch the @NCDemParty on @CNN tonight after @POTUS and @VP visit North Carolina to discuss protecting the ACA, expanding Medicaid in our state (thanks to @RoyCooperNC, @NCHouseDems, & @NCSenateDems), and the fight to make sure everyone has access to quality healthcare. #ncpol pic.twitter.com/Ds627tjVln

— Anderson Clayton☀️ (@abreezeclayton) March 27, 2024

That’s because Trump is too busy trying to stay both out of bankruptcy and jail. When he’s not hawking Bibles to easy marks.

Left: President Biden today, focused on lowering health care costs and stopping Trump’s plans to rip away health care from millions of Americans

Right: Trump today, hawking $60 Bibles that he’s making royalties off of, claiming that other Bibles aren’t “endorsed” by him pic.twitter.com/EWg3Bu2440

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 26, 2024

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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.

Is the insurrectionist-in-chief melting?

Good does not always triumph. Bad guys don’t always get their comeuppance. Despite all the stories we’ve heard since childhood. Ask a conservative. The world is not fair. Ask Donald Trump. Nobody knows more about unfairness than he does.

Our bias toward expecting justice to be done, eventually, and the arc of the moral universe bending toward it, eventually, makes it hard for us to conceive that the former president may exit this life without receiving what he justly deserves. He might. Or his comeuppance might arrive outside the criminal justice system.

Simon Rosenberg urges his Hopium readers to do more and worry less: “Donate to and join the Biden-Harris campaign” and “Make an early investment in North Carolina.” Biden has gained ground on Trump in six new polls.

But the only polls that really count are the ones open on Election Day. Those continue to deliver for Democrats, as they did last night in the Huntsville, Alabama area by 25 points:

Democrat Marilyn Lands on Tuesday decisively won an Alabama state House seat in a long-held Republican district, notching a special-election victory after centering her campaign on promoting access to abortion and in vitro fertilization.

Lands’s win was the latest in a string of Democratic victories around reproductive rights after abortion rights advocates experienced a huge blow nearly two years ago. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — which had established a constitutional right to abortion—in 2022, Democrats have found success in battleground elections and ballot referendums by focusing heavily on protecting abortion rights and running against GOP opposition to them.

The universe may not be fair, but comeuppance is in the air … even in Alabama.

Now to the insurrectionist-in-chief. The pressures of fighting in four courts to stay out of prison and to keep his family business from imploding while campaiging for president have the already unstable Trump showing signs of losing it. He goes to trial in Manhattan on the hush money case on his least-favorite day of the year, April 15.

Trump has turned to selling Bibles to pay his bills and shore up his evangelical base. Naturally, The Daily Show mocked the hell out of him. Ron Filipkowski posted a mashup of “Two Corinthians” Trump clearly bullshitting his way through questions about scripture. Which is your favorite, New Testament or Old Testament? “Probably … equal,” Trump replies, staling for time. “I think it’s just an incredible … the whole Bible.”

Since Trump is now selling Bibles, here is a montage of clips of Trump giving us his vast and extensive knowledge of the Bible. pic.twitter.com/VKXQdT5wLA

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) March 26, 2024

There was a time when Southerners celebrated cautionary tales about trusting traveling Bible salesmen portraying themselves as “Manly.” But those are not the good old days America’s fascist-leaning, Christian-nationalist movement yearns for.

Still, we see more signs that the scales are falling from MAGA eyes, perhaps in enough numbers to send Trump’s container ship crashing into a bridge pier: “Hillary was right.”

Former Trump voter who says he voted for Trump to vote against Hillary Clinton says he doesn’t recognize the party anymore and admits Hillary Clinton was right about Trump pic.twitter.com/H4yrjo2wrg

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 27, 2024

Trump’s “truths” are becoming even more disjointed, something an aggressive, gloves-off Biden campaign is quick to pound away at. Biden-Harris is not letting up on working the eye.

A feeble and confused Trump posts a typo-riddled all-caps rant misspelling “Biden,” “disinforms,” “misinforms,” and other basic words pic.twitter.com/xrb0NEa3Zn

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 26, 2024

Don’t expect the universe suddenly to turn fair, but with any luck there could be a slow meltdown in progress. Maybe Comeuppance will arrive early this year.

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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.

He’s got problems. Big ones.

Rudy Giuliani is trapped in a living “nightmare,” and the former New York City Mayor can’t believe it’s real, he was overheard telling pals at Donald Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago last week.

Source exclusively tell Page Six that Giuliani was spotted at the Palm Beach club as he’s facing bankruptcy stemming from a spate of debts.

An attendee told us they heard the former Trump attorney saying he’s in a “nightmare world,” and “he wakes up everyday and can’t believe it’s real.”

The onetime pol was hit with a whopping $148 million claim after being found guilty by a Georgia court of falsely accusing two poll workers of committing voter in Fulton County during the 2020 election.

Feds are also reportedly targeting Giuliani’s own $3.5 million Florida condominium, as Giuliani contends he lacks the finances to settle his debts.

Giuliani was at Mar-a-Lago attending an event in support of Arizona Republican congressional hopeful Abe Hamadeh, we hear.

[…]

Giuliani has told supporters recently in a frantically worded message via his Rudy Giuliani Freedom Fund: “Friend, There’s no other way to say this… You may truly be my only hope. The Biden Regime is sending a top ally of President Trump to PRISON!”

The appeal added that, “The Deep State is hellbent on indicting, arresting, bankrupting, and imprisoning President Trump and his top allies for daring to challenge the corrupt forces that have hijacked our once Free Republic. And as the lawyer who successfully defended President Trump from impeachment, I am at the top of their list.”

Giuliani is still attending fundraisers for other people? He’s still speaking to Trump despite the fact that Trump supposedly owes him millions? Huh.

I’m not sure what he’s doing but if he thinks Trump is going to lift a finger to help him, he’s crazy. I suppose he may hope that Trump wins in November and somehow that saves him but it’s hard to see how they finesse his large civil fine. Maybe he figures some incredibly rich sugar daddy will rescue him?

He probably just plans to ride it out until he passes into the Mar-a-Lago Beach Club in the sky. It might just work.