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Be as excited about expanding freedom

Anand Giridharadas presents a video conversation about what inpired “The Persuaders” at The Ink :

A year from now, America will face a defining choice between authoritarianism and freedom, hatred and love, exclusion and inclusion, and, as of now, it’s a dead heat.

It shouldn’t be. It doesn’t have to be.

Early in the conversation, Giridharadas says:

In a moment in American life in which the contest is not small government versus big government, blue versus red, left versus right, high taxes versus low taxes, in which the contest is really pro-democracy versus anti-democracy, some of us versus all of us … it was a dead heat. And sometimes we do well in the dead heat. And that means 49-46. A couple states more than that, and sometimes we lose the dead heat. But as a writer, as opposed to being a campaigner who has to eke out these narrow victories, I have the luxury of stepping back a little bit and saying, hold on.

We are going to the American people in this era and saying, “Here is fascism, and here is freedom.” And before you get to gerrymandering, just polling, just asking people what they want, it’s 50-50 … ish.

I’m not saying all the rigging stuff is not happening, and it magnifies the problem, but I think I started from the premise of we’re being a little bit easy on ourselves when we blame the rigging. The honest truth is we are presenting the American people in this era with a referendum on fascism and freedom, and the jury is really, really out. And a lot of people are really excited about the fascism option.

The left needs to build what it has failed to so far: a “galvanizing, inviting, seductive movement…. I think we need to throw a more fun party.” Right now, the dytopian, dehumanizing, Bizarro America movement the right leans into “reads as the more fun time.” At the same time, the left’s movement (what there is), is “the most inclusive platform, perhaps in any country in the history of the world,” yet reads as “tedious, moralistic, scoldy, wonky … we are playing the fiddle of wonkery while democracy burns.”

A recent arrival from Florida here organizes a monthly Democratic Happy Hour unconnected with the local Democratic Party. What’s great about it is that there is no program, no speakers (outside of election season), no volunteer signup sheets, no trainings. Just drinks and political conversation with like-minded people at some local brew pub. Low barrier to entry. No asks. Great for noobs and new arrivals.

I much prefer it to the more serious “Drinks with Dems” affairs in town. Why? Ladder of engagement-wise, it’s less programatic and more fun. Those who want to get their hands dirty with campaigns will get there on their schedule. Too often activists organize their events to attract other activists rather than to cultivate new ones by making friends first. On making our movement a fun time, Giridharadas is spot on.

But it’s a start

Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko pointed to this introductory ad from a candidate running for Congress in Arkansas. Yeah, on first glance this ad from retired colonel Marcus Jones is good. Then again (from 2022):

During the 2010 senatorial primary in North Carolina, Democrat Cal Cunningham said to my face that the DSCC told him his Bronze Star would trump anything the right wing could throw at him. My first thought was, “And you believed them?” My second was, “Does John Kerry ring a bell?”

At the Democratic State Executive Committee meeting in Durham Saturday, one delegate rolled her eyes at Senate candidate Cheri Beasley’s TV ads as the bland products of talentless consultants. “She’s going to lose.”

Former N.C. Chief Justice Beasley did in 2020 and 2022. Cunningham famously lost a second bid for Senate in 2020.

Another retired colonel ran for Congress here in WNC and lost to Madison Cawthorn. Having a military background may get you a foot in the door with swing voters but won’t prevent them from slamming it on your foot.

Post by @adamparkhomenko

View on Threads

Good luck, colonel. Hope all that experience translates and that you climb the learning curve quickly. Running for office requires a different skill set.

Pelosi brings the hammer down on No Labels

I noted in an earlier post the new Q Poll which included RFK Jr and Cornel West in the presidential survey. It’s not at all decisive and I have a feeling those numbers will not hold once the campaign begins in earnest anyway. But No Labels is also a threat if they succeed in carrying out their plan to get on the ballot in the battleground states. They cannot win but they seem determined to do it anyway.

The worst case scenario is that there will be a tie in the electoral college, which is very possible with their ballot strategy, throwing the decision to the House. I think we know how that’s going to pan out.

Nancy Pelosi doesn’t mince words on this subject:

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi on Thursday became one of the highest-profile elected Democrats to go public with her concerns about the centrist group No Labels’ third-party presidential bid.

“No Labels is perilous to our democracy,” she told reporters. “I hesitate to say No Labels because they do have labels. They’re called no taxes for the rich. No child tax credit for children. They’re called let’s undo the Affordable Care Act.”

Pelosi delivered her remarks at a breakfast event organized by the Democratic-centrist group Third Way, which has taken on the role of one of No Labels’ chief antagonists this cycle.

Pelosi said she has ignored No Labels, even when she was a target of the group as speaker of the House, but 2024’s election is a different case.

“When they jeopardize the reelection of Joe Biden as president of the United States, I can no longer remain silent on that,” she said.

No Labels national co-chair, former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-Md.), said in a statement it was “disheartening to see Nancy Pelosi literally make things up about No Labels to score political points. She ascribes positions to No Labels that they never took.”

[…]

The nonprofit is seeking access to the ballot across the country with the idea of putting together a unity ticket that would be led by one Republican and one Democrat. The group, which is currently formulated as a nonprofit that does not have to disclose its donors, has not yet announced who would lead such a ticket.

The latest memo from No Labels states that there’s an unprecedented appetite for a third-party or independent candidate this election cycle, partly because President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the likely candidates for both major parties, have low favorability ratings.

Pelosi disputed the premise of the group’s bid and said that once Biden is more frequently on the campaign trail voters will return to the fold.

Third Way President Jonathan Cowan added that early interest in third-party candidates is a way for people to express their discontent. But he said he suspected interest in No Labels and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent, would drop in popularity as next year’s general election campaign gets underway.

At the heart of Third Way and Pelosi’s concern about No Labels is that a moderately successful third-party candidate could win enough electoral college votes so that neither major party nominee wins the majority required to secure the presidency. Under this scenario, the outcome of the presidential election would be determined by congressional delegations voting for the president, of which Republicans control more than Democrats.

It is unlikely for a third-party candidate to win electoral college votes, but they fear if the election is forced onto the congressional delegations, No Labels could hand the White House to the Republican candidate.

There is no reason for No Labels to do this except to somehow enrich those who are involved in it. People like Larry Hogan know very well that they have no chance to win the election. They have made it clear that while they don’t much care for Donald Trump, their real issue is with Biden for passing big legislation they don’t approve of. It’s not a secret.

Those of you who’ve been around a while know this is a Joe Lieberman special. I don’t think any more needs to be said.

Oof — this Morning Joe supercut of Trump foreign policy comments from just the last few weeks pic.twitter.com/B6QrJJiRgw

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 31, 2023

Just thought I’d drop this in as a reminder. In case we’ve started to forget.

His first hire says it all:

When an ABC News reporter last week tried to ask Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), the soon-to-be Speaker of the House, about his key role in Donald Trump’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election, the message relayed by House Republicans was, essentially, “Shut up.”

While the new House leader continues to sidestep questions about his election denialism, his latest hire shows that trying to overturn the next presidential election may still very well be at the top of the House GOP’s agenda.

It was reported on Tuesday that Johnson had tapped Raj Shah to be his office’s chief spokesperson and oversee his communications operation. In this position, he will not only serve as Johnson’s top mouthpiece but also, according to Politico, “help run messaging for House Republicans.”

Representatives for Johnson and Shah did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Shah, a veteran GOP operative who served in the Trump White House, also happened to spend four years as Fox’s “brand protection” expert before leaving in disgrace this past June after the right-wing network settled Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit for a massive $787.5 million.

Shah’s role at Fox News’ parent company, in fact, was a key component of Dominion’s case, which alleged that the conservative cable giant knowingly peddled false conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud in order to boost sagging ratings following the 2020 election.

The network, after making a controversially early but inevitably accurate call for Joe Biden in Arizona on Election Night, watched its viewership crumble as disgruntled MAGA viewers fled for far-right rivals Newsmax and One America News, who were more than willing to parrot Trump’s baseless claims of a “rigged” election.

Shah, whose job as senior vice president was to protect Fox’s brand, spent the weeks after the election warning top executives that the network’s core audience was increasingly incensed with Fox News for supposedly abandoning Trump. And while texts and emails from that time, which were obtained and publicly released by Dominion during its case against Fox, suggest he didn’t buy into Team Trump’s wild conspiracies about hacked voting machines flipping millions of votes to Biden, he also didn’t want the channel’s reporters and anchors to contradict those claims on the air.

In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s election loss, Shah scrambled to find conservative pundits who would come to the network’s defense amid the right-wing backlash against Fox. With none of the “biggest folks” biting, Shah told the network’s PR team that he could potentially get some “Tier 2 folks” to write a column defending Fox News. Unfortunately, even most of those writers refused the assignment.

At the same time, Shah—who also acted as a bridge between Trumpworld and Fox—was desperately trying to get the network to at least issue a public apology for its Arizona call, citing anger from Trump supporters.

“Want to ask, even though it seems impossible, but is the idea of some sort of public mea culpa for the AZ call completely and totally out of the realm?” Shah wrote the network’s top flack Irena Briganti on Nov. 10. “Or some programming that’s focused on hearing our viewers grievances about how we’ve handled the election?”

While that request was ultimately denied on the grounds that it would cause additional turmoil between the channel’s “hard news” and opinion sides, Shah continued to express concern about Fox’s tumbling ratings. In his view, one of the main issues wasn’t just that the network’s Decision Desk had called the election against Trump, it was that Fox’s on-air reporters were also undermining Trump’s fraudulent election narrative.

Noting that “more of our viewers have an unfavorable opinion rather than favorable opinion of Fox,” he discussed the “threats” to Fox News’ reputation among the MAGA base. For instance, he highlighted the criticism anchor Neil Cavuto was facing for cutting away from then-Trump spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany for spreading election lies.

“Both Donald Trump and Newsmax have taken active roles in promoting attacks on Fox News. Positive impressions of Fox News among our viewers dropped precipitously after Election Day to the lowest levels we’ve ever seen,” Shah wrote in an email to Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch, Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, and then-Fox Chief Legal Officer Viet Dinh.

Following an unhinged Nov. 19 press conference that featured then-Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani making outrageous claims about widespread election fraud, which the network carried on-air in its entirety, Fox News correspondent Kristin Fisher swooped in with a comprehensive fact-check. Shah, meanwhile, was extremely displeased.

“This is the kinda shit that will kill us,” Shah texted a colleague. “What a fucking mess. We cover it wall to wall and then we burn that down with all the skepticism.”

Yet, while seemingly urging higher-ups to “respect the audience” and cater to their election denialism, Shah privately admitted in messages to colleagues and friends that Trump’s “stolen” election claims were largely nonsense. In fact, after then-Fox News star Tucker Carlson publicly challenged Powell to provide proof to back her claims, Shah said that the belief that there was “vote rigging to the tune of millions” was “so fucking insane.”

Shah, who had a close working relationship with Carlson, also advised Carlson on how to handle any backlash from Powell and Trump’s team, telling him to be “deferential.” Meanwhile, he was also working behind the scenes to get Trump to distance himself from Powell.

“After criticism from social media for Tucker’s segment questioning Attorney Sidney Powell’s outlandish voter fraud claims, our consultants and I coordinated an effort to generate Trump administration pushback against her claims,” he wrote top execs, adding: “We encouraged several sources within the administration to tell reporters that Powell offered no evidence for her claims and didn’t speak for the president.”

The effort apparently worked. On Nov. 22, the Trump campaign announced that Powell was “practicing law on her own” and was “not a member” of the outgoing president’s legal team. Yet, even though Powell was officially distanced from Trump, she continued to appear on Fox News airwaves for weeks.

In the end, while helping to whitewash Trump’s election lies, Shah still let friends know that he didn’t believe that the election was rigged.

“It’s really disheartening,” Shah wrote to a former White House colleague days before the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. “The only clear cut evidence for voter fraud is the failed attempts from Trump.”

Now Shah will serve as the top spokesperson of a suddenly prominent Republican lawmaker who will almost certainly insert himself into the 2024 presidential election, especially since Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee.

While Johnson rose from relative obscurity to the speakership last month, he did play a significant role in Trump’s attempts to overturn his loss to Biden.

Shortly after Biden was projected as the winner of the election, Johnson aligned himself with Trump’s refusal to accept the results. “President Trump called me last night and I was encouraged to hear his continued resolve to ensure that every LEGAL vote gets properly counted and that all instances of fraud and illegality are investigated and prosecuted,” he tweeted at the time. “Fair elections are worth fighting for!”

Johnson also helped fuel the conspiracy theories about “rigged” voting machines—the same baseless claims that ended up costing Fox News nearly a billion dollars.

In a Nov. 17, 2020 radio interview, he said there was “a lot of merit” to the Dominion claims, adding that “when the president says the election was ‘rigged’ that is what he was talking about; the fix was in.” He also peddled debunked conspiracies about Dominion being owned by deceased Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

In that same interview, Johnson backed Trump’s assertions about Georgia’s vote for Biden being fraudulent, claiming “it really is rigged” and “was set up for the Biden team to win.” Trump and 18 others have since been indicted over their attempts to overturn Georgia’s election results, with some already pleading guilty.

Johnson’s support of Trump went further than tweets and radio interviews, though. He quietly worked behind the scenes to recruit House Republicans to join an amicus brief in support of a Texas lawsuit asking the Supreme Court to block four Biden states from voting in the Electoral College. In the end, the majority of the GOP caucus signed the brief. The lawsuit would soon be tossed out by the court.

Eventually, Johnson joined most of the House GOP in voting against certifying Biden’s electoral victory on the same day a mob of angry MAGA supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to keep Trump in power.

Regardless of where Shah personally stands on election denialism, Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz argues, he’s shown a willingness to sell whatever it is the conservative base desires.

“But Shah’s private concerns did not prevent him from encouraging propaganda,” Gertz wrote on Wednesday. “And in his new role, backing a speaker who was neck-deep in Trump’s election subversion plot, he’ll assuredly do the same if Trump takes another pass at trying to overturn an election.”

As you can see, Shah is one of the worst MAGA wingnuts out there. He’s slick and he’s experienced. But he is extreme. It say everything about Mike Johnson that he hired him.

He doesn’t have a bank account? What?

This is odd:

Newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) does not have a bank account.

At least, that’s what Johnson reports on years of personal financial disclosures, which date back to 2016 and reveal a financial life that, in the context of his role as a congressman and now speaker, appears extraordinarily precarious.

Over the course of seven years, Johnson has never reported a checking or savings account in his name, nor in the name of his wife or any of his children, disclosures show. In fact, he doesn’t appear to have money stashed in any investments, with his latest filing—covering 2022—showing no assets whatsoever.

Of course, it’s unlikely Johnson doesn’t actually have a bank account. What’s more likely is Johnson lives paycheck to paycheck—so much so that he doesn’t have enough money in his bank account to trigger the checking account disclosure rules for members of Congress.

House Ethics Committee filing guidelines state that members must disclose bank accounts they have at every financial institution, as long as the account holds at least $1,000 and the combined value of all accounts—including those belonging to their spouse and dependent children—exceeds $5,000.

The rules cover all “interest-bearing, cash-deposit accounts at banks, credit unions, and savings and loan associations,” including checking, savings, and money market accounts, along with certificates of deposit and individual retirement funds, or IRAs. (Johnson reported receiving a $10,485.53 distribution from a New York Life IRA in 2017, his first year in office, possibly from a retirement account he had listed the previous year.)

It’s certainly not uncommon for Americans to have less than $5,000 in their bank account. Most Americans—57 percent—couldn’t handle an unexpected $1,000 expense, according to a report earlier this year. And the median amount that Americans keep in their bank account is $5,300. But Johnson’s household income puts him in the top 12 percent of earners in the United States. And it’s extraordinarily rare for members of Congress to not list a qualifying bank account—let alone zero assets whatsoever.

The Daily Beast reached out to Johnson’s office for comment but did not receive a reply.

Brett Kappel, a government ethics expert at Harmon Curran, told The Daily Beast it would be “very unusual for a Member not to have to disclose at least one bank account.”

Jordan Libowitz, communications director for watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, offered a more blunt assessment, saying that if Johnson truly doesn’t have any assets, it “raises questions about his personal financial wellbeing.”

“It’s strange to see Speaker Johnson disclose no assets,” Libowitz told The Daily Beast. “He made over $200,000 last year, and his wife took home salary from two employers as well, so why isn’t there a bank account or any form of savings listed?”

Johnson has also carried debts over for several years, which Libowitz said would sharpen the question.

“He owes hundreds of thousands of dollars between a mortgage, personal loan, and home equity line of credit, so where did that money go?” Libowitz said. “If he truly has no bank account and no assets, it raises questions about his personal financial wellbeing.”

He must have a bank account. He couldn’t get loans and mortgages without it. Obviously, he just hasn’t bothered to disclose his financial status as required by law. For all we know, he’s not just a Christian nationalist but a sovereign citizen who doesn’t think he has to abide by the laws of an illegitimate government. He’s that extreme.

Philip Bump has an unusual analysis of the coming race that I find rather depressing but on target:

One of the unusual dynamics of the 2016 presidential race was that neither candidate was particularly well-liked. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were viewed more unfavorably than favorably by Election Day, with perceptions of each candidate at historic lows.

Seven years later, though, this seems almost unremarkable. National politics have been mired in toxicity for so long that it’s sort of hard to imagine a contest in which voters were choosing between two candidates that they liked, rather than picking the least undesirable option.

But this is where we are. Meaning that one of the most interesting questions about the 2024 contest — one that will by all appearances feature a rematch of the one three years ago — is how those Americans who view both candidates unfavorably will vote.

After all, they made the difference in 2016.

Not nationally, mind you. Exit polling showed that about a fifth of voters who cast ballots in 2016 viewed both candidates unfavorably. Let’s call them the “haters.” Within that 18 percent, Trump got just under 50 percent of the vote, a 17-point advantage over Clinton.

This pattern trickled down into the states. In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which Trump flipped from Democratic victories in 2012, about a fifth of voters viewed both Trump and Clinton unfavorably. Trump won majorities of those voters in each state.

That was important! Had all of those haters stayed home, exit polling suggests that Clinton would have won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and the presidency. But they didn’t.

In 2020, the dynamics were different. Trump was still unpopular but Joe Biden wasn’t. By Election Day, only 3 percent of voters indicated that they viewed both candidates negatively. Trump still won that vote nationally and in the swing states of Georgia and Wisconsin, according to exit polls.

Why don’t we know who won the vote in the other states that flipped from red to blue in 2020? Because there simply weren’t enough members of the hater voting bloc to break out their results. It’s a useful point to remember that exit polls are broad estimates of who voted and how, and that the more precision you seek by picking out narrower demographic groups, the less precise they become. The relatively small hater bloc, though, was also a function of Biden having generally positive ratings from voters — a situation that has changed in the subsequent three years.

Because there were far fewer haters, the effects of their preference for Trump was more muted. In neither Georgia nor Wisconsin did they swing things for Trump — obviously, since he lost both.

So now the questions become “how many haters will there be in 2024” and “how will they vote?” Polling released from Quinnipiac University on Wednesday offers an early estimate.

Very early, obviously. We don’t even know who the major-party nominees will be (though we can guess) and lots of things can change between now and the election that will occur a year from now. We have a recent example of this; in November 2019, did you expect 2020 to center heavily on a global viral outbreak? But with those qualifiers stated, the Quinnipiac poll is still useful.

At this point, the school’s polling finds that about 4 in 10 Americans view Biden and Trump favorably. As you’d expect, that’s centered heavily within members of each candidate’s party; most independents view both men unfavorably. (Independents often lean their support toward one party or the other not because they like that party more — they’d just join the party if they did! — but because they dislike the other one.) Overall, only 2 percent of respondents view both candidates favorably. Seventeen percent view both unfavorably.

There’s a trick to comparing polling before the election with polls taken after people vote: many of those who respond to Quinnipiac’s poll won’t cast a ballot. Among those who say they like neither candidate, for example, 1 in 8 say they won’t vote in 2024. Among those who have a vote preference (about 4 in 5 respondents), Biden has a narrow, nonsignificant advantage.

But there’s a twist in 2024: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West are running independent candidacies. There are systemic challenges to this; both candidates will have a challenge in getting on the ballot in every state. Quinnipiac included Kennedy in a 2024 preference question anyway, finding that he drew significant support from both candidates. And, among haters with a vote preference, he was the runaway winner.

Again, this will change. About 3 in 10 respondents don’t have an opinion of Kennedy. If they form one over the next year, those opinions may not be favorable, meaning that the haters are again left without someone they view particularly positively. As the polling stands, though, it suggests a possibility that neither major-party candidate might benefit substantially from the hater vote.

Kennedy’s candidacy disrupts the advantage that Trump had in 2016. He was the candidate of disruption, of upending the way things worked. If you held a cynical view of both candidates, you might also have a cynical view of politics in general, meaning that you might lean toward a candidate who — even if you didn’t like him — promised to break the system. In 2024, those same voters might view the new outsider, Kennedy, as the conduit for rearranging how Washington works. Just as Biden’s favorability has constricted following his tenure in office, Trump’s ability to position himself as an outsider is likely to have declined.

There remain a lot of people who dislike both major-party candidates. It’s unusually unclear, though, whether their views will help decide who becomes president in January 2025.

I can’t imagine any Democrats thinking that Biden is just as bad as Trump but the nation’s sour mood dictates a certain amount of irrationality so it’s predictable. I guess I’m hoping that most of them will come to their senses in the next year. It’s really … destructive. (A lot of people are hating on Biden for his backing of Israel but this predates October 7th. )

Whatever the reasons, it’s looking like it will be a very close election, third party spoilers or not, so we all need to gird ourselves for a brutal campaign.

New Q Poll:

In a hypothetical 2024 general election matchup between President Biden and former President Trump, 47 percent of registered voters support Biden, while 46 percent support Trump, a virtual dead heat. This is unchanged from Quinnipiac University’s August and September national polls.

In today’s poll, Democrats support Biden 94 – 4 percent and Republicans support Trump 94 – 4 percent. Independents are split, with 45 percent supporting Trump and 44 percent supporting Biden.

When the hypothetical 2024 general election matchup broadens to include environmental lawyer and anti- vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who is running as an independent candidate, Biden receives 39 percent support, Trump receives 36 percent support, and Kennedy receives 22 percent support.

Among independents, 36 percent support Kennedy, 31 percent support Trump, and 30 percent support Biden.

When progressive activist Cornel West who is running as an independent candidate is added to make a four-person hypothetical 2024 general election matchup, voters give Biden 36 percent support, Trump 35 percent support, Kennedy 19 percent support, and West 6 percent support.

At this point it doesn’t look as though it changes the dynamic much. But, of course, it al depends upon that undemocratic anachronistic atrocity the electoral college. That’s where the third party candidates will do their mischief.

And, by the way, this doesn’t take into account the No Labels sabotage party.

Why these people feel they need to do this now, of all times, is reminiscent of certain , shall we say, errors on the part of opposition parties in Germany in the 1930s. It’s terrifying.

God has blessed Mike Johnson, hasn’t She?

Associated Press:

Before House Speaker Mike Johnson was elected to public office, he was the dean of a small Baptist law school that didn’t exist.

The establishment of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law was supposed to be a capstone achievement for Louisiana College, which administrators boasted would “unashamedly embrace” a “biblical worldview.” Instead, it collapsed roughly a decade ago without enrolling students or opening its doors amid infighting by officials, accusations of financial impropriety and difficulty obtaining accreditation, which frightened away would-be donors.

There is no indication that Johnson engaged in wrongdoing while employed by the private college, now known as Louisiana Christian University. But as a virtually unknown player in Washington, the episode offers insight into how Johnson navigated leadership challenges that echo the chaos, feuding and hard-right politics that have come to define the Republican House majority he now leads.

[…]

J. Michael Johnson Esq., as he was then known professionally, was hired in 2010 to be the “inaugural dean” of the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, named for a Southern Baptist Convention luminary who was instrumental in the faith group’s turn to the political right in the 1980s. The board of trustees who brought Johnson onboard included Tony Perkins, a longtime mentor who is now the president of the Family Research Council in Washington, a powerhouse Christian lobbying organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as an anti-gay “hate group.”

About Judge Paul Pressler. Houston Chronicle [December 27, 2017]:

A former Texas justice and prominent conservative religious leader has been accused in a state court lawsuit of sexually abusing a Houston man for decades, starting when he was a teenager.

The lawsuit, filed in Harris County court, claims Paul Pressler III sexually assaulted Gareld Duane Rollins Jr. beginning in 1979, when Rollins was 14 and Pressler was a justice on Texas’ 14th Court of Appeals, and continuing until 2004.

Houston Chronicle [April 13, 2018]:

The list of men accusing a former Texas state judge and leading figure of the Southern Baptist Convention of sexual misconduct continues to grow.

In separate court affidavits filed this month, two men say Paul Pressler molested or solicited them for sex in a pair of incidents that span nearly 40 years. Those accusations were filed as part of a lawsuit filed last year by another man who says he was regularly raped by Pressler.

Pressler’s newest accusers are another former member of a church youth group and a lawyer who worked for Pressler’s former law firm until 2017.

The details are predictably salacious. The case was eventually dismissed as too old to pursue in court.

None of this was public in 2010 when Johnson’s job was to launch a law school named after Pressler who had paid Rollins $450,000 in a confidential 2004 settlement. It’s just that these things conform to a predictable pattern among so many whose eyes are very publicly on heaven while their hands are privately in people’s privates.

He’ll stop Hummus from starting WWII in Sioux Falls

The former president has a full schedule of trials and court actions in addition to trying to run for president. It’s no wonder Donald Trump doesn’t know where he is from minute to minute.

In addition to his civil fraud case being tried in Manhattan, and U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon trying to delay his Classified Documents trial for him in Florida, and ongoing probes by special prosecutor Jack Smith in the Jan. 6 case, and Fulton Cpunty D.A. Fanni Willis breathing down his neck in Georgia, Trump has lawyers trying to stop a case in Colorado that would ban him from the 2024 ballot there based on the 14th Amendment. A Colorado judge on Wednesday denied their motion to dismiss that suit.

All that and repeated violations of his gag order stemming from middle-of-the-night tweets from a man who seems to get little sleep. Is it projection that Trump settled on calling President Biden “Sleepy Joe”?

Today it appears Trump’s attorneys will have to defend him in a 14th Amendment case in Minnesota (The Guardian):

Attorneys at the Minnesota supreme court will argue on Thursday that former President Donald Trump should not be allowed to appear on the state’s ballots for president because of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and role in the insurrection.

A group of voters wants the courts to weigh a clause in the 14th amendment, which disqualifies an “officer of the United States” who has taken an oath to defend the constitution from holding office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the country. In dozens of pages in their initial court filing, they cite examples of Trump’s election interference, from the fake electors scheme to his comments to rioters on 6 January 2021.

“Despite having sworn an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, Trump ‘engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or [gave] aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,’” the voters argue.

With all that going on, is it any wonder Trump’s verbal slip-ups will be coming back to haunt him? (CNN):

Former President Donald Trump has made mocking President Joe Biden and questioning his mental fitness for office a core part of his campaign speeches – even as he experiences his own recent series of gaffes and verbal slips on the campaign trail.

“He’s always looking around, where do I go?” Trump said as he did an exaggerated impersonation of Biden walking around the stage looking confused at a campaign stop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last month.

Weeks later, Trump took the stage in Sioux City, Iowa, and mistakenly thanked supporters for coming out to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, before an Iowa state senator tried to discreetly correct him — a moment that was caught on a hot mic.

During a summit in Washington, DC, Trump claimed that Biden could “plunge the world into World War II” – which ended nearly 80 years ago – and appeared to confuse Biden and former President Barack Obama, saying he was leading Obama in election polls.

The recent missteps have created an unwelcome wrinkle for Trump, his campaign team and the larger Republican political apparatus. Republicans have questioned whether Biden is able to serve as commander-in-chief, pointing to his age and mental fitness. But their own primary front-runner seems to be suffering the same predicament, making their argument less potent.

Trump incorrectly said Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, was the prime minister of Turkey – he quickly corrected that error. He has repeatedly mispronounced Hamas (huh-maas), the name of the Palestinian militant group that launched a deadly terror attack on Israel, as hummus.

And, during a rally in South Carolina in September, Trump confused former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, one of Trump’s 2016 GOP rivals, with his brother, former President George W. Bush

“When I came here, everyone thought Bush was going to win,” he said at that rally.
“They thought Bush because Bush supposedly was a military person… he got us into the, uh, he got us into the Middle East. How did that work out, right?”

Who’s really sleepy?

Update: Livestream from Minnesota court here.