Month: February 2020

Donald Trump confirms ongoing purge of his administration, but ‘I don’t think it’s a big problem’

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Donald Trump simultaneously acknowledged the existence of a purge list and downplayed its importance during his press conference in India Tuesday. The White House is reportedly tracking down administration officials seen as less than 110% loyal to Trump and replacing them with people guaranteed to go along with all of Trump’s corruption and not just like 95% of it. The effort is assisted by Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

“I don’t think it's a big problem. I don’t think it's very many people,” Trump told reporters in India, going on to claim that he wants “people who are good for the country, loyal to the country.” Let’s unpack this, starting with substituting “Donald Trump” for “country” when it comes to the real requirement.

When Trump says “I don’t think it’s a big problem,” he’s talking about the number of people—“not very many”—that need to be purged for having loyalties divided between Donald Trump and anything else on earth. But there is a big problem here: that once again Trump is putting personal loyalty above loyalty to the United States or its Constitution or its people.

Trump has purged the intelligence community of anyone who might push back against Russian election interference. He earlier purged the Department of Homeland Security in part because some officials weren't being cruel enough to immigrants. He had Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his brother removed from their White House jobs because Vindman testified at the impeachment inquiry, and fired Gordon Sondland as ambassador to the European Union for the same reason. He pulled a Treasury Department nomination for former U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu because she prosecuted former national security adviser Michael Flynn but not former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.

And he’s telling us he’s not done yet. But that there aren’t very many people left who might do anything that would irk him even a little, so it’s not a big problem—at least as long as you confuse loyalty to country and being good for the country with loyalty to Trump.

President Trump Obliterates CNN’s Jim Acosta on World Stage

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

CNN reporter Jim Acosta tried to get cute in front of reporters in India and President Trump immediately made him pay.

Trump, speaking on a wide array of topics at a press conference in India, actually offered a bit of praise for the left-leaning network. He noted a report on Russian election interference supposedly favoring the President that would eventually have to be walked back.

“First of all, I want no help from any country, and I haven’t been given help from any country,” Trump insisted regarding the constant drumbeat of Russian interference.

“If you see what CNN, your wonderful network said, I guess they apologized in a way,” he said to Acosta. “Didn’t they apologize for the fact that they said certain things that weren’t true? Tell me, what was their apology yesterday? What did they say?”

Acosta then delivered a line only an oblivious cretin could possibly think was a solid retort.

RELATED: Covington Catholic Student Nick Sandmann Reaches Settlement Agreement From CNN After $275 Million Lawsuit

Acosta Gets Laid Out

After Trump chided Acosta for his network having to walk back yet another fake news report, CNN’s resident resistance hack couldn’t help but try to embarrass the President on foreign soil.

“Mr. President, I think our record on delivering the truth is a lot better than yours sometimes,” he quipped.

The reality, of course, says quite the contrary, but so did President Trump right then and there. You didn’t think he was going to let that slide, did you?

“Your record is so bad that you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You have probably the worst record in the history of broadcasting,” shutting down Acosta’s repeated attempts to interrupt.

The only false word in that statement is “probably.” CNN definitely has the worst record out of all the far-left networks.

RELATED: CNN Journalist of the Year Resigns for Making Up Fake Stories

Embarrassed Yet Again

We’d ask if Acosta has no shame but the answer is already glaringly apparent. He likes making press conferences about him and seemingly doesn’t mind getting torn to shreds in the public square.

Dancing like a circus clown for your resistance audience is embarrassing, and it doesn’t change CNN’s garbage record when it comes to reporting the truth.

They just had to settle a massive lawsuit with Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann after the cable news station smeared him as a racist for the crime of wearing a MAGA hat.

Acosta must have forgotten about that.

It must have also slipped his mind the time CNN once had a ‘journalist of the year’ forced to resign after it was discovered he fabricated his stories “on a grand scale” for many years.

Or the time three of their reporters had to leave the network after the publication of a ‘fake news’ report on Russia that was later retracted.

Or when they blatantly helped doctor a call transcript with Ukraine to help fuel impeachment.

Or the numerous other stories that were proven to be false.

Steve Krakauer, a former senior digital producer for CNN, once blasted Acosta as “truly an embarrassment, on multiple levels,” adding that he “give(s) all good journalists a bad name.”

Like clockwork, Acosta has proven him right once again.

The post President Trump Obliterates CNN’s Jim Acosta on World Stage appeared first on The Political Insider.

Trump Allies’ Battle Over Senate Seat Prompts Republican Jitters

Posted on by Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

Trump Allies’ Battle Over Senate Seat Prompts Republican Jitters(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump so far hasn’t been able to head off a drawn-out Republican brawl for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia that pits two candidates he’s praised against each other and triggered jitters within the party about potentially losing the seat in November.The conflict’s been brewing since Georgia’s GOP Governor Brian Kemp chose businesswoman Kelly Loeffler in December to temporarily fill an open Senate seat, despite lobbying from the president to pick four-term GOP Representative Doug Collins, who’s now waging a primary fight.Collins last week rejected Trump’s attempt to lure him away from challenging Loeffler by floating the idea of making him a candidate to become the next U.S. spy chief. Hours after Trump made the surprise announcement, Collins said no. “I’m running a Senate race down here in Georgia,” he said.Collins has been an ardent Trump backer since the 2016 primaries and as the top Judiciary Committee Republican was prominently one of the president’s most vocal defenders during the House impeachment inquiry. Though Loeffler is new in the Capitol, she quickly picked up a Twitter habit that she’s used to praise Trump and bash his critics.The concern for Republicans is that a bitter fight between Republican candidates provides an opening for Democrats. The Georgia race is crucial to the GOP’s bid to keep the Senate majority it has held since 2015. Republicans will be defending 23 seats in November, compared with 12 for Democrats. A net pickup of four seats by Democrats would guarantee them the majority.‘Jungle Primary’The Georgia contest isn’t a typical Republican primary that chooses a nominee to run against a Democrat. Instead, multiple candidates from both parties will compete in a wide-open “jungle primary” on Nov. 3. It’s to fill the last two years of the term Republican Senator Johnny Isakson, who resigned for health reasons.If no candidate wins a majority, a runoff election between the top two vote-getters will be set for Jan. 5. While Republicans hold a statewide edge in voting, some in the party worry a Loeffler-Collins battle could divide GOP voters and make it easier for a Democrat to win.Republicans have quickly taken sides.Collins, who has represented northeastern Georgia in the House since 2013, is a well-known fixture on Fox News and other conservative outlets. He’s backed by high-profile conservatives including former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who won the state’s 2008 presidential primary, American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp, Fox News host Sean Hannity, and conservative radio host Mark Levin. Collins has been invited to speak this week at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference run by Schlapp outside Washington. Loeffler isn’t on the line-up.On The AttackCollins and his allies have launched broadsides against Loeffler as politically untested and anything but a Trump Republican, flagging her past support for Utah’s GOP Senator Mitt Romney. They’ve even questioned her depiction as a hunter in a posed ad with a shotgun over one shoulder, mocking her expensive outfit and saying she doesn’t have a Georgia hunting license.Loeffler’s campaign notes that Collins briefly was state chairman for former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker for president in 2015.“Sending an untried and untested candidate against the Democrats could very well be a disaster. Doug is anything but untried and untested,” said Dan McLagan, a campaign spokesman for Collins.Loeffler, as the incumbent, has support from the National Republican Senatorial Committee controlled by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The committee’s policy is to blacklist any political companies that work for candidates challenging a GOP incumbent.That has upset the Collins campaign, which accused the NRSC of trying to shut down competition.“Collins is everything Georgians hate about Washington,” NRSC Executive Director Kevin McLaughlin responded. “He is a swamp creature that claims to be conservative.” McLaughlin added, “Now, having made an emotional, ill-informed and selfish decision, he finds himself at a crossroads.”Lining Up SupportLoeffler also is working to build support among conservatives. Along with the support of Georgia’s governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, she is backed by conservative Senators Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, as well as the fiscally conservative Club for Growth, which is running a $3 million ad campaign against Collins.Trump has tried to walk down the middle. He praised Loeffler and Collins early this month for supporting him during his impeachment, and suggested he’d find a way to make both of them happy.“Something’s going to happen that’s going to be very good. I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet,” Trump said at a Feb. 6 White House event. His attempt to do so Thursday by saying Collins is under consideration for the job of director of national intelligence fell flat.After the news of Trump’s remarks that he was considering Collins for the intelligence job, Kemp’s press secretary, Cody Hall, tweeted a thinly veiled taunt.Kemp’s appointment of Loeffler was an unusual bit of defiance from a Republican office-holder.But Loeffler is viewed as more likely to halt the erosion of GOP support from women in the Atlanta suburbs, said Mark Rountree, a Georgia-based Republican political consultant not tied to either the Loeffler or Collins campaign.Loeffler owns the WNBA’s Atlanta team and is married to Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, parent firm of the New York Stock Exchange. She’s also served as chief communications and marketing officer for Intercontinental Exchange, which operates global commodity and financial products marketplaces, and later was CEO of Bakkt, an ICE unit that trades Bitcoin futures.In the Senate she’s now a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, which has jurisdiction over some aspects of Intercontinental Exchange businesses, prompting some Collins’ backers to raise questions about possible conflicts of interest.“She’s got to define herself to voters and she’s got to do it quickly, because he’s trying to define her first,” said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta.Campaign MoneyLoeffler has pledged $20 million of her own fortune for her campaign. Her main objective now is to show that money isn’t the only reason why she got the job. She’s spending $2.6 million on ads to introduce herself to Georgians.“I’ve only been in Washington a few weeks, and it’s even worse than you thought,” she says in one spot. “I’ve spent my life in business, not politics. Grew up on our family farm, working in the fields, showing cattle.”There’s no up-to-date polling on a head-to-head contest between the two Republicans. A University of Georgia poll released last week found that Loeffler’s favorability rating had climbed almost even with Collins’s, with about one-third of the voters viewing them both favorably. Her favorability rating in the same poll in January was 12 percentage points behind Collins.Georgia’s other senator, Republican David Perdue, will also be on the November ballot, seeking a second term. Trump won the state by 5 percentage points in 2016.State Democrats appear to be coalescing behind a single candidate. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has endorsed Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. Two other Democrats, Matt Lieberman and former U.S Attorney Ed Tarver, have also announced Senate campaigns.Gillespie of Emory University said that having two Republican candidates for one Senate seat, in a non-partisan primary, “guarantees that a Republican can’t win in a walk, not on the first ballot.”(Updates with Collins formerly backing Walker in 11th paragraph)To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie AsséoFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.


Posted in Uncategorized

‘Boogaloo’ civil war talk takes on a life of its own as far-right extremists coalesce

Posted on by David Neiwert

The myths and conspiracy theories that fuel the radical right often take on lives of their own: Think of how the QAnon phenomenon began as a handful of conspiracy theorists making groundless claims and predictions about a coming “Storm” that metastasized first into a wildly popular body of “Patriot”/militia conspiracism, and finally into a massive submovement operating within the framework of the Trump presidency—while producing a growing record of lethal violence by its unhinged believers.

Something similar appears to be coalescing around the “boogaloo”—the vision of members of the far right of a coming civil war, which they claim is being forced upon them by liberals who want to take their guns away as the first step toward their incarceration and enslavement. In reality, of course, a number of sectors of the far right have ginned up this kind of rhetoric for decades—but now, a systematic study of its spread through social media has found that it appears to be massing into a movement of its own.

The study, conducted by the independent Network Contagion Research Institute, explores, according to its subtitle, “how domestic militants organize on memes to incite violent insurrection and terror against government and law enforcement.” It focused on the “boogaloo” in large part due its increasing popularity—particularly as a hashtag (#Boogaloo or #Boogaloo2020)—on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as the extreme and often callous expressions of violent intent that form the essence of the chatter.

YouTube Video

In its initial forms, the “civil war” talk was generated in different sectors of the radical right in different ways. Among neo-Nazis, it generally has focused on a “race war”—i.e., a genocidal conflict between whites and nonwhites—dating back to the 1980s and the classic white-supremacist blueprint, The Turner Diaries. This vein of rhetoric has produced a long record of lethal domestic terrorism, including the 1984 neo-Nazi criminal gang The Order; the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; and more recently, the 2011 attack in Norway that killed 87 people and the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks in New Zealand that killed 51.

Among the “Patriot” movement believers who form militias in resistance to “the New World Order,” most of the rhetoric has focused on using arms against law enforcement, particularly the federal kind, as well as the mythic “blue-helmeted” United Nations soldiers about to descend on them from black helicopters. In its more recent iterations among far-right Oath Keepers and “III Percent” militiamen, the “boogaloo” talk has mostly revolved around resistance to liberal gun-control legislation.

This reached its apotheosis in January when thousands of armed “Patriots” from around the United States descended on Richmond, Virginia, to protest imminent gun safety legislation making its way through the state’s General Assembly. Before the rally, FBI agents arrested a trio of neo-Nazis who were preparing to open fire on law enforcement at the event.

However, one of the results of the broad emergence of popular “boogaloo” rhetoric has been a blurring of the lines between the anti-government extremists who foresee conflict with federal forces and the more extreme white supremacists who lust for a bloody conflict between the white and nonwhite races. While many of the latter also eagerly participate in the anti-government talk, many of the former appear to be warming up to the race-war talk.

The NCRI study found not only that the discussion of the “boogaloo” on social media had surged, but that discrete groups were coalescing around the discussion and creating the nascent forms of a movement. The “boogaloo” “topic network” produces “a coherent, multi-component and detailed conspiracy to launch an inevitable, violent, sudden, and apocalyptic war across the homeland,” it said, adding that the models created by researchers “show that the meme acts as a meaningful vector to organize seditious sentiment at large.”

The conspiracy, replete with suggestions to stockpile ammunition, may itself set the stage for massive real-world violence and sensitize enthusiasts to mobilize in mass for confrontations or charged political events. Furthermore, the meme’s emphasis on military language and culture poses a specific risk to military communities due to the similar thematic structure, fraternal organization, and reward incentives.

One of the “Boogaloo Boys” memes.

One of the “boogaloo” groups featured in the study, calling itself “Patriot Wave,” illustrated perfectly how the lines between militia “Patriots” and alt-right white nationalists were completely blurred and submerged in the larger project of fomenting a violent civil war. Its members wore alt-right “Pepe the Frog” patches with the title “Boogaloo Boys,” while others wore the skull balaclava generally associated with members of the fascist Atomwaffen Division.  

The study also pointed to a particular area of concern: namely, the ability of these extremists to simply blend into existing power structures, including law enforcement and the military. One “boogaloo” enthusiast, Coast Guardsman Christopher Hasson, was arrested with a full arms cache and a plan to assassinate liberal political leaders. A Patriot Wave member is quoted in the study: “Some of the guys we were with aren’t exactly out of the military yet, so they had to keep their faces covered.”

The spread of the “boogaloo” organizing on social media has been facilitated with the use of hashtags #Boogaloo and #Boogaloo2020, which are then accompanied by associated hashtags such as #2A, #CivilWar2, and #2ndAmendment, as well as hashtags such as #BigIgloo, intended to elude filters.

This kind of informational conflict—or what the study calls “memetic warfare”—has evolved, the study says, “from mere lone-wolf threats to the threat of an entire meme-based insurgency.”

The NCRI report was sent to members of Congress and the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice, among others. Paul Goldenberg, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, told NBC News’ Brandy Zadrozny that the report was "a wake-up call."

"When you have people talking about and planning sedition and violence against minorities, police and public officials, we need to take their words seriously," said Goldenberg.

If impeachment was bad politics for House Democrats, American voters sure don’t know it

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Nearly six in 10 Americans say that the U.S. representative in their congressional district deserves to be reelected, the highest level of such sentiment recorded by Gallup since 2012. While only 35% similarly say that most members of Congress deserve reelection (as opposed to their own member), that's also a higher percentage than at any time since 2012.

What bodes so well for Democrats, obviously, is that they currently hold a commanding majority in the House. So when 59% of Americans are happy with the status quo, it redounds to Democrats’ advantage. As Gallup writes, “Democrats have a solid majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the elevated 59% of Americans saying their member of Congress deserves reelection augurs well for their bid to maintain their majority next year.” 

Check out the graph below.

Morning Digest: Former Hawaii congresswoman enters what could be a crowded race for Honolulu mayor

Posted on by Daily Kos Elections

The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

Leading Off

● Honolulu, HI Mayor: On Friday, former Democratic Rep. Colleen Hanabusa announced her long-anticipated campaign for mayor of Honolulu.

Hanabusa, who has been raising money for months, is one of several candidates competing to succeed termed-out Democratic incumbent Kirk Caldwell, but others may jump in ahead of Hawaii's June filing deadline. All the candidates will run on one nonpartisan ballot in September, and a runoff would take place in November if no one secures a majority of the vote in the first round.

Campaign Action

Hanabusa has a long history in Hawaii politics, though she lost two high-profile primaries during the last decade. Hanabusa gave up her House seat representing the 1st District, which includes just over 70% of Honolulu, in 2014 to challenge appointed Sen. Brian Schatz, a campaign she very narrowly lost.

Fellow Democrat Mark Takai won the race to succeed Hanabusa, but he announced in 2016 that his battle with pancreatic cancer would prevent him from running for re-election. Hanabusa, who earned Takai's endorsement shortly before he died that summer, went on to win back her old seat with minimal opposition. Hanabusa left the House again in 2018 to challenge Gov. David Ige in the primary, and she was the clear frontrunner for most of the campaign.

However, while Ige's prospects seemed to sink even lower that January when a false ballistic missile alert went out, intense flooding in Kauai and the Kilauea volcano eruption both gave the incumbent the chance to demonstrate the decisive leadership that Hanabusa insisted he lacked. It also didn't help Hanabusa that her duties in the House kept her thousands of miles away from the state for much of the campaign, a problem Ige did not have. Ige ended up winning renomination 51-44, and he carried Honolulu 54-43.

Hanabusa began talking about a mayoral run last year by highlighting Honolulu's ongoing difficulties completing its expensive and long-delayed rail system and the island's struggles with homelessness. The former congresswoman launched her campaign last week arguing that she has the "requisite experience, connections and a history of being able to tackle the hard issues and know what you are doing."

A number of other candidates are already running, and two of them had considerably more money than Hanabusa at the end of 2019. Former insurance executive Keith Amemiya, who is a former executive director of the Hawaii High School Athletic Association, took in $724,000 and self-funded another $200,000 during the second half of the year, and he had $360,000 on-hand at the end of December.

City Councilwoman Kymberly Pine raised a much smaller $127,000 during this time but already had plenty of money available, and she had $607,000 on-hand. Hanabusa hauled in $259,000 during these six months and had $216,000 in the bank at the close of last year.

The field continued to expand in January when real estate broker Choon James launched her campaign, while former Hawaiʻi News Now general manager Rick Blangiardi entered the race this month. It may get larger still: The Honolulu Star-Advertiser also wrote in mid-February that two prominent politicians, former Mayor Mufi Hannemann and ex-Rep. Charles Djou, had not ruled out running here over the last few weeks.

Hannemann, who has a terrible record when it comes to LGBTQ rights and abortion access, served from 2005 until he resigned to focus on his unsuccessful 2010 campaign for the Democratic nod for governor. After losing a 2012 primary for the 2nd Congressional District, Hannemann bolted the party and took 12% of the vote as an independent in the 2014 race for governor. He considered another independent bid for governor last cycle but decided against it, and it's not clear how Hannemann identifies now.

Djou, for his part, is a former Republican who became an independent in 2018 after waging several high-profile, but mostly unsuccessful, campaigns of his own. Djou beat Hanabusa in a fluke in a three-way 2010 special election for the House but lost their rematch several months later, and Djou failed poorly against her the following cycle. However, Djou came close to winning this seat back against Takai in 2014, and he only lost the 2016 mayoral race to Caldwell 52-48.

Senate

● GA-Sen-B: On Monday, GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger set the candidate filing deadline for this special election for March 6, which is the same day that the state requires candidates to file for its regularly-scheduled primaries. This move means that anyone who loses in the spring won't be able to just turn around and enter the November all-party primary for this Senate seat.

● IA-Sen: On Monday, Senate Majority PAC began a seven-figure TV and digital ad buy in support of businesswoman Theresa Greenfield well ahead of the June Democratic primary to face GOP Sen. Joni Ernst.

The narrator begins, "Tough times don't last, but tough people do," and he describes how Greenfield worked her way through college. The spot continues by talking about how Greenfield raised her two boys and led a business after her husband died in an accident, and it concludes, "All of it makes Theresa tough enough to take on Washington's corruption and deliver for Iowa."

● KS-Sen: Former Gov. Jeff Colyer endorsed Rep. Roger Marshall on Monday ahead of the August GOP primary. Colyer lost an incredibly close 2018 primary to former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who looks like Marshall's main intra-party foe for this race.

● KY-Sen: Retired Marine pilot Amy McGrath, who has the support of the DSCC, is out with two January polls that show her in a tight race with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Garin-Hart-Yang, which was in the field Jan. 8-13, gave McConnell a 43-40 edge over McGrath, while Libertarian Brad Barron took another 5%. A Change Research poll conducted Jan. 17-21 showed McConnell and McGrath tied 41-41, while Barron took 7%. McGrath's memo did not mention state Rep. Charles Booker, who is her main foe in the May Democratic primary.

These are the first polls we've seen of this race since July, when a survey from the GOP firm Fabrizio Ward for the AARP showed McConnell leading McGrath by a similar 47-46 spread. However, while the majority leader has been unpopular in Kentucky for years, he's also proven to be a very tough opponent for Democrats in this very red state. Indeed, some early polls from the 2014 cycle showed McConnell trailing Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, but the incumbent ended up winning by a convincing 56-41 spread.

While the political environment should be considerably better for Democrats this year than it was back then, it's still going to be extremely difficult for McGrath or any other Democrat to beat McConnell in a year where Donald Trump will be leading the ballot.

● NE-Sen: The GOP firm We Ask America is out with a poll giving Sen. Ben Sasse a 65-17 lead over businessman Matt Innis in the May Republican primary. There was some talk at the beginning of the cycle that Sasse, who once made a name for himself by criticizing #BothSides, could face serious intra-party opposition, but that never happened. Donald Trump has joined the state party establishment in supporting Sasse, while Innis has brought in almost no money.

Gubernatorial

● NJ-Gov: Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy announced over the weekend that he would be treated for a tumor on his kidney early next month. Murphy said, "The expectation is that overwhelmingly, assuming nothing happens on the operating table or you don't get an infection or something, you're back on your feet and back in the game without any impairment going forward."

House

● AL-01: The GOP firm Strategy Research is out with a poll of next week's Republican primary for News 5, and it gives Mobile County Commissioner Jerry Carl the lead with 29%. That's well below the majority needed to avoid a March 31 runoff, though, and former state Sen. Bill Hightower leads state Rep. Chris Pringle 21-13 for the second place spot. This is the first poll we've seen here since just before Thanksgiving when Hightower's allies at the anti-tax Club for Growth released a survey showing him ahead with 35% as Pringle edged Carl 16-13 for second.

P.S. Strategy Research also polled the Democratic primary in this 63-34 Trump seat along the Gulf Coast.

● MN-07: While Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson previously insisted that he'd decide by the end of this month whether to seek re-election in his 62-31 Trump seat, he recently told Agri-Pulse that he still hadn't made up his mind. Peterson said that he might make his choice after the March 3 primaries, but he also noted that candidate filing doesn't begin until May; the deadline to file is June 2.

Peterson has flirted with retirement for years, and he said he wasn't sure he wanted to stick around much longer. The congressman argued, "I know I can win. That's not the issue. That's the problem. I'm not sure that I want to win." Peterson didn't give a good indication about which way he was leaning, though he said, "I tell people I'm running until I'm not."

Peterson is almost certainly the only Democrat who could hold this very red seat in western Minnesota, but Team Red will make a strong push for it even if he seeks another term. Former Lt. Gov. Michelle Fischbach, who has House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's endorsement, is the most prominent Republican who has run here in years, and she outraised Peterson $261,000 to $158,000 during the fourth quarter of 2019. Peterson, who does not traditionally raise much money during odd-numbered years, still ended December with a large $1 million to $204,000 cash-on-hand lead over Fischbach, though.

Fischbach also doesn't quite have a clear path through the August GOP primary. Physician Noel Collis, who has been self-funding most of his campaign, had $272,000 to spend at the end of last quarter, which was actually a bit more than what Fischbach had available. Dave Hughes, who held Peterson to unexpectedly close wins in 2016 and 2018, is also trying again, but he had just $19,000 to spend.

● NY-01: Perry Gershon, who was the 2018 Democratic nominee against GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin, is out with a new poll that finds him well ahead in the June primary in this eastern Long Island seat. GBAO gives Gershon a 42-21 lead over Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, while Stony Brook University professor Nancy Goroff takes 9%.

It's quite possible that Gershon is benefiting from name recognition from his last campaign, which ended in a surprisingly close 51-47 loss against Zeldin. However, his opponents will have the resources to get their names out closer to primary day: Goroff outraised the field during the fourth quarter by bringing in $348,000, while Fleming outpaced Gershon $239,000 to $200,000 during her opening quarter.

Goroff ended 2019 with a $636,000 to $549,000 cash-on-hand edge against Gershon, while Fleming had $202,000 to spend. However, Gershon did plenty of self-funding during his last campaign, and he might be able to throw down more if he feels like he needs to.

Whoever wins in June will be a tough race against Zeldin in a seat that has shifted sharply to the right in recent years. While Barack Obama carried the 1st District by a narrow 50-49 margin, Trump won it 55-42 just four years later, and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo prevailed there by just a 49.1 to 48.6 spread in 2018 despite winning a 23-point blowout statewide. Zeldin himself raised $713,000 during the last quarter and had a hefty $1.5 million on-hand.

● TX-13: Wealthy businessman Chris Ekstrom is out with a new TV spot ahead of next week's GOP primary promoting himself as a political outside opposing "the creatures of the swamp."

● TX-17: Rocket scientist George Hindman is going up with a negative TV spot against businesswoman Renee Swann, who has the endorsement of retiring Rep. Bill Flores, ahead of next week's GOP primary. The narrator declares that Swann is "actually a Democrat primary voter" and that she refused to answer whether she'd support additional restrictions on gun owners. The ad goes on to charge that Swanson is "the handpicked candidate of the Washington establishment."

While this ad doesn't actually mention Flores, who is Swanson's most prominent supporter, there's no love lost between the retiring congressman and Hindman. Back in 2012, Hindman challenged Flores for renomination and lost by a lopsided 83-17 margin; Hindman went down in flames in subsequent races for the Austin City Council and for state Senate in 2014 and 2018, respectively. However, Hindman has poured $600,000 of his own money into his newest campaign, and his heavy spending could help him at least advance to a May runoff in this very crowded contest.

Legislative

● Special Elections: There are three special elections on tap for Tuesday.

KY-HD-67: This is a Democratic district located in Campbell County in the suburbs of Cincinnati. This seat became vacant after Gov. Andy Beshear tapped former Rep. Dennis Keene to be commissioner of the state Department of Local Government.

Candidates were selected by the parties rather than through primary elections, and businesswoman Rachel Roberts is the Democratic candidate while businesswoman Mary Jo Wedding is the GOP standard bearer. Roberts ran for a state Senate seat in this area in 2018 and lost to Will Schroder 57-43, though she still overperformed in a 62-32 Trump seat. Wedding, by contrast, faced legal questions about her residency in this district but was ultimately ruled eligible to seek this seat.

This district is swingy turf that went for Trump 49-44 and Mitt Romney by a narrow 49-48. According to analyst Drew Savicki, Beshear dominated here last year by winning 61-36.

KY-HD-99: This is a Democratic district in rural eastern Kentucky that became vacant when Beshear selected former State House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins, whom he defeated in the primary last year, to be a senior advisor to his administration.

Democrats picked former Rowan County Board of Education chair Bill Redwine, who was also endorsed by Adkins, to be their nominee, while Republicans chose former Rowan County party co-chair Richard White as their candidate.

At the presidential level, this is a strongly Republican district that backed Trump 68-28 and Romney 57-40. However, this district has been much more favorable to Democrats down the ballot. Adkins had served in this seat since 1987 and, according to analyst Matthew Isbell, Beshear prevailed 50-48 here last year.

Republicans have a 61-37 advantage in this chamber with these two seats vacant.

PA-HD-190: This is a Democratic district in west Philadelphia that became vacant when former Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell resigned after being charged with stealing funds from a charity she ran. Johnson-Harrell had just won a special election last year to replace Vanessa Lowery Brown, who was convicted of bribery.

Just like in Kentucky, the candidates were chosen by the parties: The Democrat is SEIU business agent Roni Green, while the Republican is businesswoman Wanda Logan. This is Logan's fifth run for this seat, though it is her first as a Republican after primarying Lowery Brown in each election from 2012 to 2018.

This district is assured to remain in the Democrats' column, as it backed Hillary Clinton 96-3 and Barack Obama 97-2. Republicans have control of this chamber 107-92 with this and three other seats vacant.

Your regular reminder that ending Moscow Mitch’s majority is as critical as dumping Trump

Posted on by Joan McCarter

It is always worth remembering that there are literally hundreds of bills passed by House Democrats now languishing in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's legislative graveyard. With the Presidents Day recess over, the winter holiday break hangover is being shaken off. Impeachment is done and McConnell's cover-up of Donald Trump's misdeeds effected. Under normal Senate leadership in an election year, the real legislative work would be underway now. But McConnell will not let us have normal anymore; he won't let us have anything good.

He's holding the nation hostage. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as Senate majority leader.

Like the bill passed by the House on Dec. 12 last year, which would substantially reduce the costs of prescription drugs (a sustained issue for voters) and strengthen Medicare by allowing it to negotiate drug prices and use the savings to expand Medicare benefits to include hearing, dental, and vision care. That bill is "the most impactful piece of drug legislation" since the Medicare prescription drug program was created nearly 20 years ago, Steve Knievel, an advocate at Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program, told HuffPost.

It's been one year, Sen. Chris Murphy points out, since the House passed universal background checks for gun purchases, a year in which more than 15,000 people died by gun violence.

Just the week before last, McConnell and his minions once again blocked Democrats from bringing election protection bills to the floor. That's while the intelligence community is being destroyed by Trump for telling the truth to Congress—that Russia is even now interfering to help Trump be re-elected.

What McConnell is bringing to the floor is forced-birth legislation that will never pass in the Senate or be considered in the House. It's a bill in search of a problem—the abortion procedure it would ban doesn't even exist. But McConnell thinks it will help his vulnerable Republicans to take this vote, so that's what the Senate is going to do.

Instead of making the nation healthier. Instead of making the nation safer.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid Claims Trump Supporters are Racists Who Revolted Against ‘Smart People’

Posted on by LifeZette

By PoliZette Staff | February 24, 2020

MSNBC host Joy Reid just launched a vile attack on supporters of President Donald Trump, reminding all of us just how little liberal elites think of conservatives.

While covering the Nevada Caucuses, Reid revealed why she thinks Trump won the 2016 election, and she unsurprisingly chalked his victory up to racism.

“Even though Donald Trump did not have a majority, the hungry constituency was a lot of white ethnic voters, north and south, who said ‘we’re taking this country back from the brown people, the immigrants. We’re getting rid of unlawful migration,'” Reid said.

RELATED: MSNBC Hosts Caught on Hot Mic Trashing Dems

Reid went on to imply that Republicans are less intelligent than liberals. Paraphrasing what she felt they were thinking, Reid said, ‘We don’t care what you say… The smart, the smarty pants, the college educated…forget them. We’re the hungriest.'”

This is far from the first time Reid has attacked Trump and his supporters in this way. Back in 2017, Reid described Trump as the worst version of Americans, according to The Blaze.

“If you think of the presidency as a national avatar, Obama is who we hope we are, and Donald Trump is who we fear we are,” Reid said, adding that Trumpism is “something sort of guttural…like playing to all of your base fears of other people—your anger, your rage, your neediness. The core of his need is this black hole inside himself is kind of what America fears—like the crass part of ourselves is becoming.”

Republicans aren’t the only ones Reid calls racist, however, as she also hurls this attack at Democrats who disagree with her. Earlier this month, she accused 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg of being racist for using the word “heartland” in a tweet.

RELATED: CNN Ratings Continue to Struggle, Fox News Gets a Huge Boost From Impeachment Trial

“So I want to read you a tweet from you,” she said. “‘In the face of unprecedented challenges, we need a president whose vision was shaped by the American Heartland rather than the ineffective Washington politics we’ve come to know and expect.’ I got a lot of texts on that tweet. Not positive. From people saying, ‘heartland’—that sounds to a lot of people like a dog whistle to white voters.”

No wonder MSNBC is struggling in the ratings. How can anyone take anything a race-baiter like Reid says seriously?

This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
Man who became whistleblower in Obama-era Homeland Security is found dead on the side of the road
Eric Holder comes unhinged when reporter exposes McCabe prosecutor’s Democratic ties—’Shut the hell up!’
Trump admin ‘eclipsing’ Obama in ‘almost every area,’ according to Kudlow

The post MSNBC’s Joy Reid Claims Trump Supporters are Racists Who Revolted Against ‘Smart People’ appeared first on The Political Insider.

Trump’s helping Moscow muck with our elections fits the strict constitutional definition of treason

Posted on by Meteor Blades

Throughout the history of the Republic, traitorous and treasonous have held a broader, more generic meaning for treason than the one found in the U.S. Constitution. The rebellious founders, having themselves been traitors to the British Crown—and being fully familiar with how English treason laws had been extended and abused in what was then the not-very-distant past—the drafters wisely kept to the narrowest of definitions in the first paragraph of Article III, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Thus, while many Americans have been harassed or imprisoned on suspicions of disloyalty, something wrongly but popularly equated with treason, trials have been rare, convictions rarer, and none has included a president. Not even, as it turns out, the president of the Confederate States of America who conspired with others to initiate the bloodiest war ever fought on U.S. territory. Andrew Johnson made sure neither Jefferson Davis nor the top generals nor other prominent rebels ever would be prosecuted when he granted amnesty to all Confederates before leaving the presidency in 1869. That leniency factored in spurring these obvious traitors into becoming iconic heroes. Statues of some of the worst aren’t just rampant in town squares across the South, they are also still displayed like heroes in the nation’s Capitol. 

Since even the leaders of the slavocrats’ rebellion were given a pass a century and a half ago—with at least 900,000 people moldering in the ground from the slaughter they started—how could I possibly suggest that the man who now sits in the big chair in the Oval Office should be treated more harshly than they? And, besides, how does anything Donald J. Trump is doing qualify for the justifiably and thankfully narrow constitutional definition?

On the first point, I would argue that failing to try the leading Confederates and deconstructing Reconstruction were mistakes that have paid horrible dividends to the African American population ever since. It was meant to reunite, to reconcile. But reconciliation without truth paves the way for future evil. Our nation’s political and social dynamic today is still profoundly affected by that decision.

Secondly, U.S. intelligence services have concluded and explained to selected members of Congress that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election. There’s a difference of opinion over whether or not they said the Russians are specifically working to help Sen. Bernie Sanders get the Democratic nomination as a means of getting Donald Trump reelected. Whatever the Russians’ specific strategy, what matters is that they are meddling. 

The public hasn’t yet learned the classified specifics of exactly how the interference is happening. But if it is like 2016 plus the honing and polishing of the four years since, we can assume that in addition to the deluge of disinformation, the fake news, and the whole social media assault, the Russians will be hacking into pieces of our insecure electronic election infrastructure. Perhaps this will be to alter results or simply to create chaos by persuading people they can’t trust their vote to be tallied correctly, so why bother to show up? 

Cyberwarfare is war. Kremlin attacks on U.S. elections in hopes of advancing the interests of Vladimir Putin and other Russian oligarchs by weakening America are clearly as much a threat to national security as would be, say, an attack on the software of a few chemical plants or the electrical grid—potentially lethal acts achieved without firing a shot. Attacks on our elections and on the election apparatus that Senate Republicans won’t allow to be made secure can have lethal impacts on what is becoming an increasingly fragile democracy. One of the many faces of 21st century conflict. Sun Tzu would recognize its value immediately: “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”

Donald Trump has chosen to abet Moscow's attack on U.S. national security via election meddling. By purging the veteran intelligence experts who have done their job and by appointing a right-wing toady without a shred of relevant experience to oversee 17 intelligence entities—plus calling the assessment that Russia is at it again a “hoax”—the man in the White House has adhered to, if not an American enemy, certainly an adversary. He is giving Russian meddlers the comfort of knowing that he’s doing all he can to smooth the way for them to meet whatever meddling quotas they are assigned, and he aids them by making it obvious that anybody who reports the meddling is happening will be fired.

What Trump has done, what he is now doing, meets the strict definition of treason in the Constitution. No doubt the lawyers will tell me I am full of it. That including cyberwarfare as the same as a declared war is bogus, even though we’ve had plenty of wars but none declared since 1942. They’ll also remind me what just happened with the impeachment vote in the Senate.

No way will Trump ever be tried for treason, of course, so why bother to bring it up? Because Trump is a traitor. Because he’s thrown open the door to bad actors, not sneakily the way he has done so many things, but in broad daylight. This isn’t speculation about something that will happen someday down the road. It’s happening right damn now.

Trump knows the Republican He-Did-It-So-What? Caucus will never convict him for treason or anything else. If it got as far as another impeachment, Alan Dershowitz would argue that Trump can order the strafing of an entire U.S. Army division on Fifth Avenue and not be liable for prosecution. The GOP would have no trouble if Trump made a deal for Russia to write software for swing state voting machines and made a fat commission off it.

Trump’s protectors will shield him no matter what and he will do whatever. The word for that in these circumstances isn’t supporters, it’s accomplices. If the constitutional machinery of the Republic is inadequate to oust this traitor, if he can’t be defeated at the polls or won’t leave office if he is defeated, then “street politics” will be all that remains. That’s far from a happy prospect.