Report: Never-Trumpers Kinzinger, Hogan, And Cheney Could All Run Against Trump In 2024

Critics of former President Donald Trump – Representatives Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, along with Maryland Governor Larry Hogan – could all launch presidential campaigns in 2024.

The news comes via a report from the Associated Press.

The report notes that all three have some irons in the fire regarding 2024:

  • Hogan is “planning trips to Iowa and New Hampshire.”
  • Kinzinger is “considering a rough timeline for a potential presidential announcement.”
  • Associates of Cheney are “openly talking up her White House prospects.”

The AP points out that this is the first time ‘Never Trump’ operatives have plotted a ‘shadow primary’ knowing it is very likely Trump himself will run in 2024.

RELATED: Hawley Mocks Liz Cheney For Possible Presidential Run: She Has ‘No Support In Her Own Caucus’

Cheney-Kinzinger 2024

The goal for Hogan, Cheney, and Kinzinger in 2024 supposedly isn’t about winning the nomination, as each is clearly destined to fail. As per usual, they view themselves as having a more noble cause – stopping Donald Trump.

“Their goal would not necessarily be to win the presidency,” the outlet writes. “Above all, they want to hinder Trump’s return to the White House.”

In that, 2024 might not end up being very different than 2016.

“It’s there as an option, but it’s not necessarily because this is all some big plan so I can be in the White House,” Kinzinger admitted.

“It’s looking and saying, ‘Is there going to be a voice out there that can represent from that megaphone the importance of defending this country and democracy and what America is about?’” he added.

Kinzinger seems to think he’s that man. Of course, he’s the same drama queen who said Republicans who stand up to Trump are the same as the heroes of Flight 93 who fought back against terrorists on 9/11.

The report indicates that the ‘anti-Trumpers’ all believe there are “a significant number of less vocal Republican voters” who “are eager to move past Trump.”

RELATED: Goodbye: Anti-Trump Rep. Adam Kinzinger Won’t Seek Reelection

It’s in the Works

The report that Cheney, Hogan, and Kinzinger are planning a run at the Republican nomination for president in 2024 has been hinted at in the past.

A Politico column in August notes that those close to Kinzinger believe he may run for statewide office or “he could even mount a 2024 presidential bid.”

The Political Insider reported back in April that Cheney refused to rule out a future run for President of the United States when asked.

“I’m not ruling anything in or out — ever is a long time,” Cheney was quoted as saying.

The comments prompted Senator Josh Hawley to mock the anti-Trump Representative, saying she doesn’t speak for Republicans and has “no support in her own caucus.”

The pair – Kinzinger and Cheney – are nearly indistinguishable after abandoning any semblance of Republican values and shifting their focus to an exclusively anti-Trump campaign.

Hogan, according to the AP, is busy “working to help Trump’s loudest Republican critics in other states” as he plans trips to Iowa and New Hampshire – the first two states on the traditional presidential primary calendar.

Perhaps that says something about the relative value of a nominal Republican who is able to win a deep blue state, like Hogan in Maryland or Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.

Kinzinger also noted he’d be willing to try a presidential run as an Independent in order to stop Trump but his “hope would be to be able to find the salvation of the GOP.”

The post Report: Never-Trumpers Kinzinger, Hogan, And Cheney Could All Run Against Trump In 2024 appeared first on The Political Insider.

Trump’s Ukraine extortion campaign didn’t begin or end with ‘I would like you to do us a favor’

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine didn’t come from nowhere: Russia had invaded and annexed part of Ukraine in 2014 and there has been an ongoing war ever since, with thousands of people killed on both sides. Donald Trump’s efforts to extort Ukraine came in the midst of that war, and have to be understood in that context. Trump had very real leverage over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, because Zelenskyy was desperate for U.S. support during a war and Trump used that leverage to apply pressure over a period of months.

Trump’s pressure campaign wasn’t just that of a larger country against a smaller one. It was against a smaller country at war with a larger one, where the aggressor in that war—Russia—was watching and reading the tea leaves about the United States’ level of support for Ukraine. Again and again, Trump left Ukraine hanging and let Vladimir Putin know that U.S. support for Ukraine was conditional at best.

The House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry report from 2019 lays it out in detail, as Asha Rangappa noted. From the moment Zelenskyy won his election in April 2019, Trump was dangling the possibility of public shows of support and then yanking them back. In their initial phone call after Zelenskyy’s win, Trump invited him to the White House—an invitation Ukrainian officials then sought to pin down and make real, without success. Trump initially said he would send Mike Pence to Zelenskyy’s inauguration with the U.S. vice president’s presence standing as visible evidence of support, only to keep Pence home and send Energy Secretary Rick Perry instead. This was as Rudy Giuliani was ramping up his efforts to get Zelenskyy to announce investigations into supposed corruption involving the Biden family and supposed Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.

Trump explicitly connected his reluctance for a White House visit for the Ukrainian president to Ukraine having supposedly “tried to take me down” in 2016. This was false. As Russia expert Dr. Fiona Hill said in her impeachment inquiry testimony about claims that Ukraine interfered in the U.S. elections, “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves. The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016.”

Next, Trump personally froze nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine—aid appropriated by Congress and supported by officials throughout the federal agencies responsible for sending it, except those who were first and foremost Trump loyalists. And a quid pro quo was repeatedly communicated to Ukraine: Make a public announcement of investigations into the Biden family and interference in the elections if you want the White House visit and the military aid. No actual investigations are needed. Just the public announcement of them.

“On July 2, in Toronto, Canada, Ambassador Volker conveyed the message directly to President Zelensky, specifically referencing the ‘Giuliani factor’ in President Zelensky’s engagement with the United States,” according to the impeachment inquiry report. “For his part, Mr. Giuliani made clear to Ambassadors Sondland and Volker, who were directly communicating with the Ukrainians, that a White House meeting would not occur until Ukraine announced its pursuit of the two political investigations. After observing Mr. Giuliani’s role in the ouster of a U.S. Ambassador and learning of his influence with the President, Ukrainian officials soon understood that ‘the key for many things is Rudi [sic].’”

This pressure ratcheted up with Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelenskyy, the one in which he responded to Zelenskyy’s request to buy more Javelin anti-tank missiles with, “I would like you to do us a favor, though.” And it became still stronger as the hundreds of millions of dollars in aid continued to be frozen. 

On Aug. 28, 2019, Politico reported on the hold-up of the aid. The following day, Ambassador William Taylor sent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a first-person cable in which “He explained the ‘folly’ of withholding security assistance to Ukraine as it fought a hot war against Russia on its borders. He wrote that he ‘could not and would not defend such a policy.’” But on the same day, with the aid freeze now public, Trump cancelled a trip to Warsaw for a World War II commemoration event, a trip on which he was scheduled to meet with Zelenskyy. Instead, he sent Pence.

At the meeting, President Zelensky expressed concern that even an appearance of wavering support from the United States for Ukraine could embolden Russia. Vice President Pence reiterated U.S. support for Ukraine, but could not promise that the hold would be lifted. Vice President Pence said he would relay his support for lifting the hold to President Trump so a decision could be made on security assistance as soon as possible. Vice President Pence spoke with President Trump that evening, but the hold was not lifted. 

Zelenskyy—the guy who has stayed in Kyiv at the risk of his own life during Russia’s invasion—buckled under the pressure. He booked an interview on CNN to announce the investigations Trump was demanding. Instead, as more of the story of the extortion campaign trickled out and the House announced investigations, Trump unfroze the aid. 

Trump’s pressure on Ukraine—on Zelenskyy—wasn’t just about one phone call. And the pressure wasn't just about the specific military equipment Ukraine wanted. It was about sending a message to Putin that U.S. support for Ukraine was wobbly. 

This International Women’s Day, here’s a deep dive into an unsung hero of workers’ rights

On Tuesday, March 8, we can center and honor women on International Women’s Day 2022. Mind you, the news, in general, is bleak. Russia is invading Ukraine, trans youth are fearing for their safety across the U.S., and women are subjected to gender-based violence every single day. Trans women continue to face high rates of physical and sexual violence, as well as homelessness and poverty. Women of color get paid less than white women, and especially less than white men. Abortion rights feel precarious depending on where you live—or really, in general.

In short: Celebrating women is excellent and needed. It’s also excellent and necessary to keep fighting on behalf of actual equality and anti-discrimination. If you’re feeling really, really tired from keeping up the good fight, however, I invite you to dig into some surprising, inspiring history. For me, this looked like doing a delightful deep dive into an influential woman whose history I was barely familiar with. She was the first woman—and apparently, first queer woman—to serve as a Cabinet secretary in U.S. history, and was essentially the backbone of our Social Security system as we know it. 

Her name? Frances Perkins.

Frances Perkins served as the secretary of labor for Franklin D. Roosevelt for 12 years, starting in 1933. She’d known Roosevelt previously, as she served as labor chief for New York state in the time Roosevelt served as governor, as reported by The Washington Post. Perkins, who was in her early fifties at the time, became not only the first woman to serve in the presidential Cabinet, but was a driving force behind Roosevelt’s famed New Deal.

The New Deal included structural efforts to help people during the Great Depression. For Perkins at the time—and in years to come—this meant establishing a minimum wage, ending child labor, expanding insurance for older folks, establishing unemployment compensation, and setting a 40-hour workweek. She even wanted universal health insurance.

Born in Massachusetts to a well-off, Republican family, Perkins attended Mount Holyoke for college. By sheer coincidence, Perkins was in New York for work during the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, where nearly 150 workers—mostly young women—died. Clearly, workers' rights were not just a question of theory for her, but actual daily life. 

In fact, Perkins later referred to the tragedy as “the day the New Deal was born.” 

If you’re assuming Perkins got a lot of flak, you’d be right. She faced an incredible amount of criticism based on her appearance—including reporting on her height and weight, for example—and snide remarks even from her peers in government in reference to her marriageability. Roosevelt was an ally to Perkins until his death in 1945, though she met a fair deal of criticism—including threats of impeachment—on her own, and in spite of the trusted relationship she had with the president.

As reported by NPR, Perkins rarely wore makeup and made an intentional effort to dress plainly and in dark suits in an attempt to be taken seriously by her male colleagues; she rationalized that if she reminded men of their mothers, she’d be accepted by men at work.

After Roosevelt’s death, Perkins wrote a book and went on to teach at various colleges, including Cornell University. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she taught about labor and industries. 

Though Perkins wasn’t publicly out as queer at the time and married Paul Caldwell Wilson, a man who lived with mental health issues and was in and out of treatment, she actually lived with Mary Harriman Rumsey (who founded the publication we now know as Newsweek) until Rumsey’s death following a riding accident. She later lived with New York Rep. Caroline O’Day in Washington, D.C. That home is actually now a National Historic Landmark.

The official website dedicated to her life’s work and history leaves out these relationships, which continues to strike me as I write this piece. Truly, it is sad reading so many sources that erase or otherwise omit her queerness. We can’t rightly say how she would have identified with today’s terms, of course, but total erasure is, if nothing else, absolutely inaccurate. 

This International Women’s Day—and every day—learn, honor, and share about women’s full, rich, complex lives, and not just what’s readily accepted or understood. 

Here is some brief video coverage about Perkins, if you’re interested. 

What women in U.S. history would you love to see highlighted more in mainstream media or school classes? If you’d like to share in the comments below, I’d love to read!

‘When everything looks hopeless, you are the hope’: Rep. Jamie Raskin

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat representing the state’s 8th Congressional District, is a thoughtful and devoted arbiter of democracy. In other words, he is truly one of the rare politicians who, lucky for us, is on our side. 

I spoke with Raskin on the day the House reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, which helps in the battle he’s fighting on behalf of missing and murdered Indigenous and Black women through his work as chair of the U.S. House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

In addition to $1.5 trillion in funding, the measure includes a “tribal title,” a provision that gives tribal courts jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-Native offenders—sexual assault, sex trafficking, stalking, and child abuse, as well as obstructing justice and assaulting tribal law enforcement officers. 

Raskin told Daily Kos that the panel on missing and murdered women of color catalyzed people’s attention to the problem. He says the next steps are to assure that “law enforcement resources go to every level of local and regional and tribal governments to bolster their ability to respond to people who go missing,” and he added that “the Biden Justice Department is going to be seriously focused on this issue.”

Raskin says his dedication to political life began at home. He grew up in a family of what he calls “intense political activists and intellectuals,” adding, “it was sort of the air I breathed as a kid.” 

Raskin’s maternal grandfather was a state legislator in Minnesota, spending his days, Raskin says “solving people’s problems.” 

“So when I decided finally to run for the state Senate, I was in my early 40s. I thought a lot about my grandfather and what he did and how he did it.” And indeed much of what Raskin does in his daily political life, outside of being a member of the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, leading the impeachment drive of former President Trump in the Senate, and the plethora of other committees he sits on, is work on the concrete needs of his constituents—getting people their passports, resolving visa problems, procuring people’s lost Social Security checks, getting people their PPP money or VA benefits—in essence, he says, “figuring out how to get government-funding to lots of needy entities.” 

He admits that these small wins offer momentary satisfaction when there’s a stalemate at the national level for new legislation. Which immediately brought to mind the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and why it’s so hard to get it passed. 

“Voting rights legislation is a direct threat to the GOP's cynical and governed and governing model today. The GOP is a minority party and a shrinking minority party. Hillary beat Trump by three million votes. Joe Biden beat them by seven-and-a-half million votes, and they thrive on voter suppression and the use of a bag of tricks involving anti-democratic maneuvers like gerrymandering of our congressional districts, the use of the filibuster to thwart voting rights legislation, right-wing judicial activism, and even manipulation of the Electoral College,” Raskin says. 

He added: “What we're suffering from today is not democracy. It's a series of anti-democratic impediments to majority rule. That's the struggle we're in today. It's a race between the clear will of the majority and the manipulation of these levers of anti-democratic power.”

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Raskin also focuses much of his work on the environment, calling the nation’s thinking on this issue “obsolete.” 

“I think we need to recognize this as a universal political imperative. If our brains were bigger and we had greater collective cognitive intelligence, we would all be focused on this front-of-mind centrally in terms of everything we're working on. But we're not and we continue to be dragged back into wrestling with monsters and ghosts from the 20th century like racism and authoritarianism,” he says. 

On Dec. 31, 2020, just days before a violent mob stormed the Capitol, Raskin lost his son Tommy to suicide. He chronicles the suicide in his book Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy, published in January of this year. 

“It would be my own attempt at a personal answer, a labor of love and a way to respond to all those people who told me, in such fine-grained detail, about the love and the crises in their own families, about their grievous personal losses and their incremental triumphs, and about the desperate fears they have for our nation’s future and the most cherished hopes they have for what America may still become in a world of so many frightful dangers,” Raskin told The Washington Times about the book. 

In response to his son’s death, Raskin says he’s working on several bills that directly deal with mental health services. One is a bill asking for funding from the Department of Health and Human Services to give grant funds to state, county, and local governments nationwide to beef up behavioral services in schools. 

“We need to make sure that there is funding in the schools for enough behavioral service health service workers such that they can begin to address the crisis. But we are, you know, the behavioral and mental health staff are overwhelmed everywhere across the country, and we have huge workforce shortage problems. So that's something that we need to deal with,” he says.

In light of so much darkness in Raskin’s life and what he’s faced in his years fighting Republicans, an attempted coup, and a failed twice-impeached U.S. president, it’s a miracle that Raskin stays as upbeat and engaged as he is. How does he do it? 

“My dad always used to say that when everything looks hopeless, you are the hope. It's incumbent upon all of us to help bring some optimism and light to young people. It's a generation that itself is bringing a lot of hope. I mean, they are beyond racism and sexism and antisemitism and immigrant-bashing.  So, we derive a lot of hope from young people.” 

Raskin’s father Marcus G. Raskin was a Juilliard-trained pianist in addition to being an author, philosopher, and co-founder of the progressive think tank Institute for Policy Studies

So, it’s no surprise that Raskin’s hope comes from the arts. 

“We need to restore culture and music and drama and humor to a central place in what we do. Politics cannot just be about grim news, coups, and insurrections; it's got to be about the kind of social future we're looking for.”

The Good Fight is a series spotlighting progressive activists around the nation battling injustice in communities that are typically underserved and brutalized by a system that overlooks them.

Editor’s Note: Rep. Raskins congressional district was misidentified and has been corrected. 

Republican Attorney General who killed a man with his car has to answer for new evidence

Back in September 2020, 55-year-old Joseph Boever was struck and killed by a car being driven by South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg. Boever was walking on the side of Highway 14 around 10:30 PM when Ravnsborg’s car drifted into the shoulder of the highway and hit Boever. Ravnsborg had been driving home from a Republican fundraiser and reportedly called 911 at the time, claiming to the dispatcher that he might have hit a deer. A sheriff’s deputy came out to quickly survey the attorney general’s car before giving him a ride home.

It wasn’t until the following morning, when Ravnsborg returned to the site, that he discovered Boever’s body. From there a long and drawn out investigation ended this past year with Ravnsborg pleading guilty to three misdemeanor charges, serving no time in jail, and paying out $5,000 in fines and court costs. At the time, Boever’s family said the results were “not the ending we hoped for.” This was in part because the investigation was opened up to the public by Ravnsborg’s Republican colleague, Gov. Kristi Noem. Noem has long been calling for Ravnsborg’s resignation, and the attorney general has been facing an impeachment inquiry.

On Wednesday, new evidence was leaked out by way of Public Safety Secretary Craig Price, A Noem appointee. Price sent a letter to South Dakota’s Republican Speaker Spencer Gosch that relitigated quite a bit of the evidence that was already known—and also added some information that was not public knowledge.

Related: What’s the cost of a deadly hit-and-run? For one South Dakota official, it’s $5,000 and no jail time

Related: South Dakota attorney general pleads to misdemeanor, avoids jail time for killing man with his car 

Price tweeted out the letter he sent to make sure the public at large got an eyeful of Ravnsborg’s guilt and felt no doubt over his level of responsibility in Boever’s death. The letter, among other things, claimed that Ravnsborg “had been pulled over for traffic offenses eight times between taking office in 2019 and the fatal crash, including five in which he either identified himself as the attorney general or displayed a badge.” He was never ticketed during any of those stops. But before he had that position, he had received more than a half dozen tickets for speeding.

Also damning, according to Price’s letter, is a claim that Ravnsborg, his Division of Criminal Investigation director, and his chief of staff shared “disparaging and offensive statements regarding other law enforcement officers, judges, a supreme court justice, a legislator, prosecutors, staff members, a former Attorney General, and A United States Senator” by way of text messages. Also, maybe as a teaser, Price wrote about “Text messages that the investigation uncovered between the Attorney General and what appears to be a political consultant wherein the consultant indicated, referring to the deceased, “Well, at least the guy was a Democrat.” The message seems to have been sent just two days after Boever was killed.

In the interest of continued transparency on this important issue, I sent this letter to the Honorable Speaker Gosch today. I can’t speak for the committee, but I’m confident they are interested in the truth and facts as well. pic.twitter.com/0nywsqFp5y

— Craig Price (@PriceDPS1) March 10, 2022

Boever was a registered Democrat but his cousin, former state legislator Nick Nemec, told The Daily Beast he wasn’t an active political operative: “He was just a voter.” Nemec pointed out that the letter was further proof of the battle going on in the GOP with “far-right Republicans, regular Republicans and Democrats. And there’s just turmoil in Pierre right now.”

There has been ample evidence that Ravnsborg’s story has changed and and been shaky from the start:

  1. His insistence that he had no idea what he had hit was called into question as Boever’s glasses were discovered on Ravnsborg’s passenger seat, meaning his face had slammed so hard into the window that his glasses went flying into the car.
  2. Ravnsborg insisted he had not been looking at his phone any time near when he hit Boever, until investigators presented him with evidence that he was reading some kind of “sonspiracy” article about President Joe Biden and China right around the time he hit Boever with his car.
  3. Ravnsborg’s insistence that he never exceeds the speed limits by more than 4 MPH are clearly untrue.
  4. According to Craig, Ravnsborg contacted digital evidence expert Brent Gromer to pick his brain about what investigators may be able to find on his phone. The interaction leads Gromer to write up a report on the meeting, and Ravnsborg has to admit he has made contact with Gromer later on to investigators after having denied any such contact.

One thing Boever’s family could not have foreseen was that right-wing MAGA monster Noem’s ambitions to control her political party would potentially help them receive some justice in the form of political retribution against Ravnsborg.

Cawthorn’s Ukraine take isn’t so shocking if you’ve been paying attention to Republicans since 2016

This week, Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s take on Ukraine makes him stand out. “Remember that Zelenskyy is a thug,” Cawthorn said in a video obtained by North Carolina news station WRAL. “Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies.”

It’s a bold statement, coming at a time when 61% of Republicans have a positive view of Republican President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to one poll—and Cawthorn did try to walk it back a little. But Cawthorn isn’t so out of step with his party if you look at the last few years rather than the last few weeks. For that matter, some prominent Republican voices continue to boost Vladimir Putin and suggest that Ukraine had it coming. 

The loudest Republican with the biggest platform carrying Putin’s water at this point is Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, who most recently jumped on board with Russian disinformation claims that the U.S. and Ukraine have a joint bioweapons program. Also buying into the bioweapons lab propaganda was Rep. Thomas Massie—one of the three Republicans who voted against a House resolution supporting Ukraine—who attached his concern about the issue to a tweet by Glenn Greenwald. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been critical of Putin recently, but she appeared at a white nationalist event less than two weeks ago at which Putin and the invasion of Ukraine were cheered on, and as recently as January, Greene was one of a significant number of prominent Republicans—led by Donald Trump—who were arguing against U.S. support for Ukraine.

Going back a little further than that, during Trump’s first Ukraine-centered impeachment, a standard Republican talking point was that Ukraine was incredibly corrupt, “one of the three most corrupt countries on the planet,” according to Rep. Jim Jordan.

But the groundwork for the extortion attempt that led to Trump's first impeachment had been laid years before that, in large part by former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, whose work for pro-Russian candidates and the oligarchs who supported them contributed both to political turmoil in Ukraine in recent decades and to the Republican move toward support for Putin. In one key incident, supposed grassroots anti-NATO protesters who attacked U.S. Marines doing exercises with the Ukrainian military were not so grassroots after all—they were plants set up by politicians for whom Manafort consulted. That incident in turn was cited by Putin when he annexed Crimea, as evidence that people there would welcome the Russian move.

With Manafort as Trump’s campaign manager—consulting with Russian oligarchs and employing a Russian spy all the while—military support for Ukraine was removed from the platform at the Republican National Convention. And all of that is before Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine while pressuring Zelenskyy to help Trump destroy Biden’s 2020 chances.

So Madison Cawthorn’s anti-Ukraine comments may seem shocking this week. But it’s not that Cawthorn is out of step with his party’s last several years of Ukraine-Russia policy. It’s just that he’s apparently too slow on the uptake to change his message quite as quickly as his fellow Republicans did.