Republicans no longer have abortion to run on in 2024 thanks to Donald Trump and his SCOTUS appointments. They’re running away from abortion. With good cause. They have lost everywhere abortion rights have been on the ballot in election after election since SCOTUS overturned Roe in June of 2022.
So they’ve latched onto scare-mongering about brown-skinned immigrants, the real ones at the southern border and the even scarier Others they can conjure in the minds of their voters. Immigration is too good a campaign weapon to lose before November.
Of course, they’re going to sabotage the border bill. Republicans don’t want to fix the border. They want to campaign on the border being broken. pic.twitter.com/ubBUaGWN69
Laura Ingraham claimed on her show Wednesday that she’d spoken with Trump and he’s adamant that House Republicans reject the bipartisan immigration bill passed by the U.S. Senate. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson is on board (Meidas Touch):
Republican Speaker Mike Johnson admitted to Laura Ingraham on Fox News Wednesday night that he has been talking to Donald Trump “pretty frequently” about a possible deal being negotiated to fix problems at the border.
A bipartisan border deal was reached recently between Republican Senator James Lankford and Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer to solve many of the issues the country is facing at the southern border. Soon after, Laura Ingraham aired a misleading graphic on her show, cherry picking portions from the bill that would be most likely to anger hardline MAGA Republicans.
It worked.
Almost instantly, Johnson was pressured to denounce the bill and said that it would never reach the House Floor. On Wednesday, Johnson said, “I don’t think now is the time for comprehensive immigration reform, because we know how complicated that is.”
Complicated? Complicated? Not for Donald Trump, The Wizard of Wharton. He claims every problem can be fixed quickly and easily. Why not this one?
They want their weapon.
Republicans in the House have been pretty blunt about it (Business Insider):
“Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating,” Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas told CNN this week. “I will not help the Democrats try to improve this man’s dismal approval ratings. I’m not going to do it. Why would I?”
Rep. Jared Mosckowitz (D-Fla.) took House Republicans to task over their grandstanding on immigration reform. He brought a prop of the Nehls quote above to reinforce the GOP’s refusal to address what they’ve made a signature campaign issue: “They want to use it to raise money. They want use it to politicize it. But they don’t want to solve the issue.”
They want their weapon.
President Joe Biden worked the problem this week with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other congressional leaders at the White House (NBC News):
“I’ve been a part of enough negotiations to know when you’re coming close to finishing, and I feel like we’re there,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told reporters. “But didn’t I say something like that last three weeks ago?”
Leaving the White House, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called Wednesday’s meeting “productive,” saying he told Biden and Democrats: “We must have change at the border — substantive policy change.”
[…]
McConnell said earlier Wednesday he expects that the Senate could vote on the emerging immigration package — tied to Ukraine aid, Israel funding and assistance for Taiwan — next week.
“We have a number of important international responsibilities. And I think it’s time to go ahead with the supplemental, and I’m anticipating it’ll be before us next week,” he said.
That prompted a speedy rebuke from Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas:
Former President Donald Trump‘s convincing victory in Monday’s Iowa caucuses shows his continued strength among Republicans, and a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds once more that Trump is both viewed nationwide as the candidate whom Republicans and Republican-leaning independents would be most satisfied with as their 2024 nominee as well as the highest-rated contender across a range of other attributes.
Three out of four Republican-leaning adults say they would be very or somewhat satisfied with Trump as the GOP’s presidential nominee, compared to 64% who say the same about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and 50% for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Trump’s two remaining rivals in the nominating race.
Trump’s advantage tracks closely with the findings about Republicans who were interviewed as part of a more extensive ABC News poll conducted the week before the Iowa caucuses.
And much like Iowa entrance polls that indicated Trump was able to dominate among evangelical or born-again Christian voters in the state on Monday, he maintains a sizable advantage in that group’s assessments nationally as well. According to the new ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel, 74% of evangelicals or born-again Christians are somewhat or very satisfied with Trump. He has a stronger rating on this question than both Haley and DeSantis among this group.
Sitting in here earlier, I was listening to the discussion on jobs and that the whole reason claimed by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is that they want to bring in as many illegal aliens as possible, give them amnesty so they can fill jobs in America,” Greene claimed. “And then they talked about that we have a population growth problem in the United States.”
“Well, I think we can all say that if maybe, perhaps, 63 million people weren’t murdered in the womb, we wouldn’t have a population growth problem, would we?” she asked. “That’s not women’s reproductive rights. That’s called abortion. It’s called murder.”
Greene blamed abortion rights for slowing population growth.
Never say there is no plan:
I gotta give to it to MTG. She really understands what America’s all about: the mass deportation of immigrants. https://t.co/1FX3cXe9A5
Is it possible Trump will actually choose Stefanik? I still doubt it. She’s not out of central casting after all, at least not in the way Trump thinks is important. But apparently he’s talked about it”
During a candlelit dinner with Mar-a-Lago members in late December, former President Donald Trump walked around the table as the conversation turned to one of the biggest decisions he’d have to make should he become the Republican nominee: Whom should he pick to be his running mate?
That’s when Rep. Elise Stefanik, the hard-charging upstate New York Republican, came up, according to a person at the dinner table. Attendees around Trump raved about her viral moment just weeks before, when she grilled three university presidents at a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus.
At the thought of Stefanik as a possible choice for vice president, Trump nodded approvingly.
“She’s a killer,” Trump said, according to the person at the event.
Ever since then, Trump and a growing group of allies have started to look more closely at Stefanik as a running mate, according to eight people familiar with the matter, including people in Trump’s orbit, Stefanik fundraising bundlers and former Trump administration officials.
At the time, the 39-year-old congresswoman was at the crest of a wave of national publicity after taking on the top leaders of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their answers to the question, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your college’s] rules on bullying and harassment?” eventually resulted in two of them resigning and brought a firestorm of criticism on the schools.
But Stefanik was on Trump’s radar long before that hearing, because she possesses one of the key attributes he’s looking for in a 2024 running mate: loyalty. That, mixed with her ability to drive the news on key issues, may be an irresistible mix for a vice presidential pick.
“Stefanik is at the top,” said Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s chief strategist in the White House and the architect of his 2016 campaign strategy.
“If you’re Trump, you want someone who’s loyal above all else,” a Republican campaign operative said. “Particularly because he sees Mike Pence as having made a fatal sin.”
Stefanik won’t make that mistake. She has shown herself to be completely without morals or principles of any kind.
I’m not sure she brings anything other than that to the table (which, granted, may be all that counts to Trump.) She’s just not a very likable politician and I suspect she could be as polarizing in her own way as Sarah Palin was in the 2008 race. I just don’t think she would bring in any of those suburban moms they’d really like to have back in the fold.Why else put a woman on the ticket in the first place? It’s not like they care about “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
I just want you to take a minute and contemplate what a Stefanik presidency would be like (just in case Trump falls face first into the omelette station at Mar-a-Lago.) She might be the most craven politician I’ve ever seen and that’s saying something. What the hell would she do if she finally got what she wanted?
Keep this in mind when you hear that Trump has changed his spots and “won’t have time for retribution.” It’s what he lives for:
Former President Donald Trump and people in his inner circle have told down-ballot Republican candidates not to hire Republican strategist Jeff Roe or his political consulting firm after Roe worked to elect Ron DeSantis, according to four people familiar with the conversations.
The admonition against hiring Roe represents an attempt to choke off revenue for his consulting firm, Axiom, in an act of political retribution. Roe was a top strategist for the DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down. Roe resigned in mid-December after the Washington Post published a story detailing backbiting at the super PAC.
Candidates have been warned that hiring Roe could create a political problem for them with the Trump team.
“It’s an open secret that candidates who want to stay on President Trump’s good side should not hire Axiom,” said one of the four people, an influential Republican strategist who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “They are enemy No. 1.”
President Joe Biden on Wednesday dispatched his chief of staff to call the former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and apologize for a dig the Democratic National Committee took at him a day prior, just after he had dropped his campaign for president.
Hutchinson had been one of Donald Trump’s biggest critics from the right in his failed campaign, which he ended less than 24 hours after he finished a distant sixth in the Iowa caucuses.
The DNC looked to make light of Hutchinson’s performance in a statement sent to reporters shortly after his exit Tuesday, writing, “This news comes as a shock to those of us who could’ve sworn he had already dropped out.”
Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden’s press secretary, revealed during a Wednesday press briefing that Jeff Zients made the phone call after she was asked about the DNC’s statement.
Jean-Pierre said Biden has a “deep respect” for the former governor and “admires the race he ran.”
“The president knows him to be a man of principle who cares about our country and has a strong record of public service,” Jean-Pierre said. “This morning, the chief of staff here, Jeff Zients, called the governor to convey this and apologized for the statement that did not represent the president’s views.”
It’s totally fair to hit people like Trump. He’s a monster. But punching down to hit someone like Hutchinson is just an unnecessary nasty bully boy tactic.
“This is the blue collar realignment of the Republican Party and what I can tell you is for every Karen we lose, there’s a Julio and a Jamal ready to sign up for the MAGA movement, and that bodes well for our ability to be more diverse and to be more durable as we head into not only the rest of the primary contest, but also the general election.”
Gaetz explains why Republicans don’t need women voters: “For every Karen we lose, there’s a Julio and a Jamaal ready to sign up for the MAGA movement.” pic.twitter.com/IqZcSYQGbg
In case you missed testimony by Jessica Valenti (Abortion Every Day) on Wednesday before some Senate Democrats, her prepared statement was appalling. In part:
Right now, there is a quiet but well-funded campaign led by the most powerful anti-abortion groups in the country that is focused entirely on pressuring and forcing women to carry doomed pregnancies to term.
They’re not only trying to do away with exceptions for nonviable pregnancies—they’re trying to eradicate prenatal testing altogether. It’s a lot easier to force women to carry a dying fetus to term if they never get diagnosed to begin with.
When I tell people about this, the question I get asked most often is why? Why would anyone want to deliberately create a world where women are forced to be “walking coffins”?
It is inexplicable, until you understand that this has nothing to do with families or babies, but enforcing a worldview that says it’s women’s job to be pregnant and to stay pregnant, no matter what the cost or consequence.
But because Republicans don’t have the bravery to admit that truth—and because they’re afraid of voters, who are more pro-choice than ever—they lie.
Here is Valenti delivering those remarks:
Republicans don’t have the bravery to admit the truth on abortion—they’re not only trying to do away with exceptions for nonviable pregnancies—they’re trying to eradicate prenatal testing altogether.
Valenti’s full statement is here, including her account of “a 21 year old woman in Texas who was denied an abortion even though her fetus developed without a head, and a hospital worker in South Carolina who watched a college student die after attempting to end her own pregnancy.”
She has been following what I called the anti-abortion underground for some time, but it has been mainly on her substack.
Great question from @SenCortezMasto in today’s @SenateDems briefing who drilled into the ways Republicans are undermining federal law on abortion.
My response, and the bottom line: when Republicans make clear they don’t care about our lives, we should believe them. pic.twitter.com/6CR2UAOMNV
“I was thrilled to be pregnant for the fifth time,” said Dr. Austin Dennard, a Texas OB-GYN and plaintiff in a lawsuit brought against the state by people denied abortions since the Dobbs decision. “Then, a routine ultrasound showed devastating — the brain and skull had not formed. It was anencephaly. The most severe neural tube diagnosis. Although relatively rare, this is fatal,” she said, holding back tears.
Under Texas law, Dennard had to flee her state to get an abortion.
Photo from New York Times 2018 expose on the Trump family’s financial schemes. The famously litigious Trump sued. Last week a New York judge ordered Trump to pay $400,000 in legal fees to the Times and three reporters. The suit was dismissed last year.
“If you could have one superpower, what would it be?” is a familiar conversation-starter. Flying? Invisibility? Super strength?
Marvel built a media empire around that fantasy. DC Comics too. Before Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman, If I Had a Million (1932) considered what Average Joes would do if they came into a sudden financial windfall.
Donald J. Trump, heir to daddy Fred’s fortune, has been selling a fantasy his entire life. When he came to prominence in New York City in the 1970s, he conned New York Times reporters into believing he owned properties his father actually owned. Even the chauffeured Cadillac he ferried them around in during the interview was leased by Fred.
In If I Had a Million , several recipients of million-dollar checks use the money to get even with those who’ve done them wrong. W.C. Fields buys eight cars to crash into “road hogs” he encounters. Others find out great wealth does not make them invulnerable.
In addition to living a gilded fantasy, Trump has used his money for the former his whole life. He has so far evaded the latter “through sheer shameless and sociopathic behavior,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes observed Wednesday night.
“Immunity, complete immunity, total supremacy over everyone and everything, even the law,” Hayes suggests, is the fantasy Trump is selling even now. “Even the law itself cannot hold him and cannot restrain him, that he is sovereign over it.” If you could have one superpower? That’s the fantasy that by the millions Trump’s MAGA followers have bought like a limited-offer household product sold on late-night TV.
What would they do with their superpower? Like Fields, get even and get away with it.
Hayes says:
Getting away with it? That’s the fantasy he is selling to so many people that a lot of people really want to buy into. Plenty of people daydream about what they might do without restraints, what they would say or do to their boss or their coworker or their sister-in-law. They want to imagine a world in which they, like Trump, can transgress in any way they want to, in which they can say whatever they want to whoever they want and not face consequences. In which they could lie, cheat, and steal — maybe even use force. A sort of seductive mythos, particularly to a certain kind of man, as the polling bears out. A seductive mythos that he is selling and selling openly when he tells people, “I am your retribution.”
To be supreme, unchallenged, beyond the law, a law unto themselves is the MAGA myth. Tied up, yes, with white Christian nationalism, a people chosen by God (and their leader, too) to rule a land founded by and for white Europeans where all others exist to serve them.
If I had a rocket launcher…I’d make somebody pay, sings Bruce Cockburn.
“Even the law itself cannot hold him and cannot restrain him, that he is sovereign over it,” is Trump’s pitch. Follow me and live like the rich and powerful. That’s the freedom he’s selling.
For Trump’s entire life he has gotten away with it. He has flouted the law and bought his way out of trouble more times than we can count. One of the biggest reasons to hold Trump accountable now, finally, says Hayes, is to puncture the myth.
But one reason it is such an easy sell for Trump is that everyone knows the rich live by a different set of rules. Equal justice under law is itself a myth that has eaten away at the Constitution and the American ideal of equality since our founding by wealthy, white men. The second Gilded Age has driven that truth home with Trump as an icon, rendering the law a joke and our other institutions as well. Bringing him to justice is an imperative. Torches and pitchforks are the alternative.
Axios’s “Vibe Survey” found that people are feeling quite good about the economy. Imagine that:
Americans overall have a surprising degree of satisfaction with their economic situation, according to findings from the Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll.
The Axios Vibes poll has found that when asked about their own financial condition, or that of their local community, Americans are characteristically optimistic.
It’s broadly understood that economic well-being influences electoral outcomes. By the same token, however, political affiliation influences the responses that Republicans, in particular, give when they’re asked about the economy.
So asking about personal finances rather than the broader economy can reveal optimism not seen in consumer-sentiment polls.
Axios Vibe Check: How people feel about their economic prospects: 😁
-63% of Americans rate their current financial situation as being “good,” including 19% of us who say it’s “very good.”
[…]
Americans’ outlooks for the future are also rosy. 66% think that 2024 will be better than 2023, and 85% of us feel we could change our personal financial situation for the better this year.
That’s in line with Wall Street estimates, which have penciled in continued growth in both GDP and real wages for the rest of the year.
77% of Americans are happy with where they’re living — including renters, who have seen their housing costs surge over the last few years and are far more likely than homeowners to describe their financial situation as poor.
Indeed, a substantial majority of renters are happy renting, with 63% of them saying they’re not interested in homeowning and having a mortgage.
The reality is similarly upbeat. Asking rents finally started falling rather than rising recently. That, of course, is great news for renters.
Meanwhile, most mortgages carry very low interest rates of below 4%, and homes have soared in value — so homeowners are sitting pretty too.
More than half of Americans say that if they lost their job tomorrow they’d be OK; that they could find an equivalent or better job quickly; and that “my employers need me more than I need them.”
63% of respondents describe their job security as “a sure thing.”
That shouldn’t be surprising, given that the number of job openings in America is still much higher than at any point before the pandemic.
The bottom line: Americans who believe their community’s economy is strong outnumber those who think it’s weak. They’re right.
I’m sure this must be bad news for Biden, right?
All joking aside, it’s important that CW purveyors like Axios start sending this information around to the journalists who read them every day. It’s important that they absorb it so they stop disseminating the disinformation the right has been pushing for the last three years.
