Month: September 2022

Lawmakers furious at Democratic leaders after stock trading ban stalls

Posted on (Updated by Tobias Burns

Anger is boiling over at House Democratic leadership for failing to deliver on a bill to ban members of Congress from trading stocks — a key priority for voters on both sides of the aisle — ahead of the midterm elections.  

Democratic leaders unveiled draft legislation to tackle the issue Tuesday, just days before Congress was set to leave for an extended recess. That left lawmakers little time to review the bill or offer changes, such as closing loopholes that critics say make the bill toothless, dooming its chances of a floor vote. 

Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) on Friday issued a scathing statement, accusing Democratic leaders of slow-walking her own stock trading proposal — introduced two years ago with bipartisan backing — and ultimately offering a more complicated bill that was designed to fail. 

“This moment marks a failure of House leadership — and it’s yet another example of why I believe that the Democratic Party needs new leaders in the halls of Capitol Hill, as I have long made known,” Spanberger said in her statement.  

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters Friday that the bill didn’t come to the floor because it didn’t have the votes to pass.  

The delay is a momentous setback for the stock trading reform effort, which drew a rare confluence of support from an overwhelming majority of Republican and Democratic voters.  

Public scrutiny of lawmakers’ trades intensified when Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) unloaded much of his portfolio after attending a private briefing on the devastating impacts of COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic. Pelosi, whose husband is a prolific trader, also drew backlash when she said she wouldn’t support a ban on stock trading in Congress, a position she later reversed. 

“Passing a stock trading bill before the midterms would have been a good faith sign to the voters that Congress takes its responsibility to the public interest seriously,” said Danielle Caputo, an ethics lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center. “And so obviously, that's disappointing.” 

The Combatting Financial Conflicts of Interests in Government Act, spearheaded by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) at the request of Pelosi, aims to prevent insider trading among members of Congress, federal government officials and Supreme Court justices. 

The bill is meant to stop insider trading by making officials put any stocks they own into what’s called a blind trust, whereby the stocks are handed over to a third party that manages them without their owner’s knowledge. 

But critics of the bill say that it contains a loophole that allows officials to get out of this requirement. 

“The problem is that the bill allows people to create a trust that they can claim is blind and diversified, and yet it doesn’t actually have to meet the criteria that are currently in the law for it to officially be a blind trust,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, an advocate with The Project on Government Oversight (POGO), a nonprofit watchdog organization.  

Congressional ethics committees, notorious for failing to hold lawmakers accountable for violating existing ethics rules, would sign off on the blind trusts under the proposal.  

“It’s basically a fake blind trust,” he said. “We don’t have that much trust in what the ethics committee is going to do because they’re notoriously weak in doing anything that’s particularly restrictive or robust around what happens internally.” 

Critics of Democratic leaders’ approach say that the stock trading bill should have stuck to the legislative branch, and that including ethics reforms to the judiciary and federal government only complicated its chances of passage. Those changes could have come in future bills, they said. 

Lawmakers complained this week that the Lofgren bill was not crafted with input from many rank-and-file lawmakers, particularly Republicans.  

“This is a complex issue requiring thought, debate, amendment and a full airing in committee to build as much bipartisan agreement as possible rather than the normal cram-down from the top that permeates literally everything we do,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who partnered with Spanberger on a stock trading bill, said in a statement Wednesday. 

House Judiciary Committee member Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said in an interview that he suspects that many members of his committee haven’t had time to properly review the legislation. 

“I would suppose there are many members who have not actually read the legislation. And it’s certainly an important enough issue that we need to take adequate time to deliberate on it. We know that stock trading by members of Congress and by judges — Article III judges — is unacceptable,” he said, referring to judges who are nominated by the president and can only be removed from office with impeachment proceedings. 

A recent analysis by The New York Times found that one-fifth of U.S. lawmakers traded financial assets in industries that relate to their work on government committees in recent years.  

A 2012 law called the STOCK Act forbids members of Congress from using insider information when buying and selling stocks, but watchdogs say violations of the law are common. 

“We keep seeing STOCK Act violations,” POGO’s Hedtler-Gaudette said. “We see them time and time again. And they’re not even assessing penalties on the people who are violating the STOCK Act.” 

The proposed stock trading ban in the House is one of several bills now being debated in the Senate from lawmakers including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). 

Upon hearing the news of the stalled bill Friday, Hawley tweeted, "Pathetic. This should be a slam dunk."

"Congress AND their spouses from owning stock. But no. Pelosi & Company won’t give up the $$$$," he continued.

The proposals from Hawley and Ossoff allow for stocks to be put into blind trusts, while the bipartisan measure from Warren and Daines is more strict and requires that stocks be sold off outright. 

Supporters are still hopeful that lawmakers can finish a stock trading bill in a lame duck session after the election. But they note that there will be less pressure on lawmakers to appease voters, and Congress will already have its hands full with a slew of legislative priorities, including a government spending bill. 

The Hill has reached out to Pelosi's office for additional comment.

Updated 4:02 p.m.

Sen. Hawley Introduces Bill To Allow States To Deport Illegal Immigrants

Posted on by Becky Noble

Already this fiscal year, the U.S. has seen record-breaking numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border. So far, over 2.1 million encounters with one month to go.

We’ve seen border states attempt to shame the Biden administration into doing something about it by sending illegal immigrants to northern, liberal areas.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has another idea. He’s introducing a bill that would allow individual states to enforce federal immigration laws, and deport illegal immigrants.

RELATED: Top Dem Nadler Knew Trump Impeachment Process Was ‘Unconstitutional’ But Schiff And Pelosi Dismissed Him

Granting More Power To States

Hawley’s bill, the “Empowering States to Deport Illegal Immigrants Act,” would:

  • Let state prosecutors bring charges for immigration violations
  • Allow states to deport illegal immigrants
  • Allow border states more leeway in actually closing their borders with Mexico

Conservatives have been pushing for such changes for some time.

During a recent appearance on the Fox News Channel with host Laura Ingraham, Hawley talked about the legislation and said:

“If Joe Biden isn’t going to enforce immigration laws why don’t we let the states enforce immigration laws? The State of Texas would love to, the states of Florida, Arizona, they’d love to enforce immigration laws. Let them do it, let’s let them secure the border, let’s let them deport illegal immigrants according to our laws. Let’s take the gloves off here, let’s enforce the law, let’s restore order to the border.”

RELATED: Thousands Of VA Students Protest Policy Requiring Boys To Use Boy’s Bathroom

Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands

While the Biden administration continues to insist that the southern border is “closed,” governors like Greg Abbott in Texas and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey have begun taking matters into their own hands.

Back in July, both Abbott and Ducey began transporting busloads of illegal immigrants to self-declared “sanctuary cities” like New York City and Washington D.C. It didn’t take long for the whining from sanctuary city mayors to begin.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams begged the federal government for help as the city’s homeless shelters were being overrun. Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser asked the federal government to deploy National Guard troops to her city, and claimed that immigrants were somehow being “tricked” into getting on busses headed for New York and Washington D.C. 

While calling for National Guard troops, Bowser also added that “local taxpayers are not picking up the tab.”

But perhaps the best illustration of how sanctuary cities don’t really mean sanctuary, is of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sending two planeloads of illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

Left-wing pundits accused DeSantis of “human trafficking,” and it sent the residents of the tony liberal enclave into a tizzy, declaring they had no way to house and feed just 50 migrants. In less than 48 hours, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker had activated 125 National Guard troops and the migrants were deported off the island to nearby Joint Base Cape Cod.

RELATED: Trump Has Seen Enough: Offers To Negotiate Peace Deal Between Russia, Ukraine

No End In Sight

As Americans listen to Biden administration officials repeatedly tell them that the border is closed and secure, The Political Insider’s own Kat Anderson recently looked at the numbers. The results are pretty alarming.

In August, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) reported 203,598 “encounters” with migrants at the border. That we know of, because there is no way to track how many “gotaways” avoided Border Patrol Agents and entered the country.

With one month left in Fiscal Year 2022, the total number of encounters is a staggering 2,150,370. The total for Fiscal Year 2021 was 1.7 million, marking an increase of 450,000 this year. Getting a bit anxious yet?

More people have crossed illegally into the United States than the populations of both Chicago and Houston. It is more than the population of 15 states combined. And what should really send a collective chill down the collective American spine, it is more than the total number of active military personnel in Russia, China, and the U.S.

If Josh Hawley’s bill becomes law, border states will truly be the front line against what some in those states are rightly calling an invasion.

POLL: Should states be allowed to deport illegal immigrants?

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MAGA crowd just as dangerous as ever: New study shows ‘messianic’ support for Trump

Posted on (Updated by Rebekah Sager

It’s no real surprise that former President Donald Trump’s supporters would literally go to battle for their leader. It’s a frightening reality, but as we quickly approach the midterms and see the many MAGA nominees the Republican Party is supporting, it’s clear that Trumpsters are desperate to have the twice-impeached former president back at the helm.

CBS News reported on a new study from the University of Chicago that found 13 million U.S. adults believe violence is justified if it means putting Trump back into the White House, and another 15 million believe violence would be warranted to keep Trump from being indicted over the FBI’s investigation into his mishandling of classified government secrets.

During a Sept. 8 appearance on Face the Nation, Dr. Robert Pape, the director of the University of Chicago's Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), told moderator Margaret Brennan, "We have not just a political threat to our democracy, we have a violent threat to our democracy [...] Today, there are millions of individuals who don't just think the election was stolen in 2020; they support violence to restore Donald Trump to the White House."

RELATED STORY: Roger Stone: ‘F**k the voting, let’s get right to the violence.' Also Stone: 'That's a deepfake'

Campaign Action

According to CBS, there is some good news: The number of members of Trump’s cult has gone down since last year, when it hovered around 23 million willing to fight for the 45th president.

When asked why the group was so invested that they would be willing to use force to put Trump back in office or defend him from an indictment, CBS reports that Pape and his team found that it was both QAnon rhetoric and fears of being replaced, with many in the mostly white group of urban respondents buying wholeheartedly into the “Great Replacement” theory.

"[Great Replacement] is a conspiracy theory, but it's not just on fringe social media like Parler or Gab, 4chan or 8chan ... This is every day on Fox News, it's on Newsmax, it's on One America, it's on talk radio," Pape said.

Politico writer Jack Shafer states that Trump’s support from his most extreme MAGA followers is “messianic.”

“Although evicted from the White House 19 months ago, Trump still postures as if he were president. In addition to calling for reinstatement and a do-over election, Trump ensures that his office calls him the ‘45th president,’ not the former president. He continues to unlawfully use the presidential seal for commercial purposes. And his capricious handling of sensitive and secret documents at Mar-a-Lago — his idea that the papers belong to him and that he’s above the law — make the case that he’s come to believe in his own, permanent divinity. Trump said in 2019 that being president gave him ‘the right to do whatever I want,’ which is consistent with thinking you’re God’s co-pilot,” Shafer writes.

With about six weeks until the Nov. 8 midterm elections, Pape says he is worried about Trump’s supporters and how far they may go.

"If it's just a political threat, well, then we can have elections. Once it's not just denying an election, but using violence as the response to an election denial, now we're in a new game."

Trump and his followers proved on Jan. 6 how dangerously close they came to overturning our democracy. Help cancel Republican voter suppression with the power of your pen by clicking here and signing up to volunteer with Vote Forward, writing personalized letters to targeted voters urging them to exercise their right to vote this year.

Good judges are more important now than ever. In some states, judges are on the ballot this November. In this episode of The Downballot, we shine a spotlight on elections for state supreme courts: actor and activist Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Together, Daily Kos and Julia are proud to announce their endorsement of seven Democratic candidates running for closely divided courts in Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio. You can support this slate by going to JusticewithJulia.com and donating today.

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MSNBC’s Joy Reid Compares Floridians Evacuating Hurricane Ian to Illegal Immigrants: ‘Ironic That They Have to Pour Over the Borders and Go North’

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

MSNBC host Joy Reid belittled Floridians trying to escape Hurricane Ian, comparing them to illegal immigrants and suggesting it’s “ironic” they have to “pour over the borders” to get out of the state.

Reid made the comments on her show Tuesday, as Ian was strengthening into what is likely to be a catastrophic storm once it hits the Sunshine state.

Reid would have done well to test her messaging out by saying it in a mirror where she surely would have picked up on the fact that her claim is plain dumb.

But she didn’t. Instead, viewers were treated to this deep thought.

“It’s a bit ironic now that you might have Floridians having to pour over the borders and go north and get out of the state of Florida in the exact same crisis we have been talking about on a trolling level in that state for a long time,” she said.

RELATED: Top Dem Nadler Knew Trump Impeachment Process Was ‘Unconstitutional’ But Schiff and Pelosi Dismissed Him

Joy Reid Compares Florida Residents Fleeing Hurricane Ian to Illegal Immigration

The idea that people temporarily leaving their homes ahead of Hurricane Ian by evacuating to another part of the state or a neighboring state within their own country is akin to illegally entering another country altogether is as stupid as it sounds.

Which is exactly the kind of programming you’d expect from MSNBC.

And Reid doubled down.

“And be careful about attacking people who have to move to save their own lives and safety, because you never know who, it’s your people that have to move, when it’s your people who have to migrate, when it’s your people who have to get on that road,” she continued.

“So just a thought.”

But there isn’t a ‘thought’ to be found anywhere in that statement. They aren’t evacuating to another country. And in a short period, everybody will be moving back to their home.

RELATED: Matt Gaetz Warns There Are Republican Squishes Already Trying to Shut Down Biden Impeachment

Accuses DeSantis of Owning the Libs

Rest assured, liberals in the media are hoping Hurricane Ian results in a catastrophic disaster. They can’t wait for any crisis that can be used to ‘own’ Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

They’ve put on their dancing shoes.

Ironically, Reid suggested the hurricane will test DeSantis in a way he hasn’t been tested because he doesn’t work and spends most of his time allegedly on Fox News.

“Florida prepares for a monster storm, with landfall expected tomorrow,” she said during the broadcast. “Governor Ron DeSantis is going to be put to the test, forced to actually do his job. When he’s used to spending most of his time hanging out on Fox News and owning the libs.”

All while trying – and failing – to own DeSantis.

While it is true that he absolutely owns the libs, it’s usually a side benefit of doing his job. Left-wing hacks that infest the American media don’t like politicians that actually do what is good for their state or what is good for the country. That’s why he is so reviled by people like Joy Reid.

Bottom feeders like this will always have jobs on mainstream outlets as long as Republicans are successful at putting America first. Consider her continued presence to be a good sign.

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Top Dem Nadler Knew Trump Impeachment Process Was ‘Unconstitutional’ But Schiff and Pelosi Dismissed Him

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

Powerful Democrat Representative Jerry Nadler was reportedly convinced the process behind the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump was “unconstitutional” and tried warning House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and fellow Rep. Adam Schiff, only to be rebuffed.

The extraordinary accounting comes from excerpts of a new book titled, “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump​.”

Fox News, which obtained the excerpts, reports that Nadler had issues with how Schiff (D-CA) was planning to run impeachment proceedings, particularly concerned that the then-President was not being afforded due process.

The New York Democrat was so concerned, the book’s authors reveal, that he told Schiff the process is “unfair, and it’s unprecedented, and it’s unconstitutional.”

RELATED: Schiff: Impeachment Necessary to Stop Trump In 2020

Nadler: Trump Impeachment is Unconstitutional

Despite Nadler’s initial concerns, House Democrats impeached former President Trump on the basis of a July 25, 2019, phone call between he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump, according to transcripts of the call, asked Zelensky to “look into” Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Trump maintained that nothing untoward took place during the conversation.

Schiff, who seemed unconcerned about potential constitutional violations of Trump’s rights during the impeachment proceedings, responded to Nadler’s concerns by saying, “I don’t appreciate your tone.”

He also said, “I worry you’re putting us in a box for our investigation.”

Nadler’s warnings persisted.

“If we’re going to impeach, we need to show the country that we gave the president ample opportunity to defend himself,” he demanded.

The Fox News report indicates again that Pelosi and Schiff were less concerned with due process and more concerned that Trump’s lawyers, if allowed to convey their own messages during the proceedings, would hurt Biden’s chances of being elected.

“F*** Donald Trump,” Schiff’s team is accused of saying.

Pelosi, meanwhile, was arguing that Americans weren’t going to understand the complexity of the impeachment charges and that they’d have to carefully construct the narrative.

“We need to make the case more strongly that this is a national security issue,” Pelosi said, according to the book.

“Eighty percent plus say it’s not okay for the president to ask for foreign assistance [in an election] — despite Trump asserting that he can do it,” she added. “I just think we need to make this case to rural voters, evangelicals, and Republicans.”

RELATED: Watch: Schiff Confronted by George Stephanopoulus For Making Up Trump Quotes, Keeps Lying

Pelosi: If Trump Complains About Due Process, We’ll Ignore Him

The authors of the book contend that Pelosi’s strategy to combat concerns of due process were to simply ignore them.

“Let’s not give them any attention,” she allegedly said adding, “Democrats are giving Trump more rights than the Democrats had under the Clinton impeachment.”

Anybody who witnessed the show that was the impeachment proceedings knows Democrats were more concerned about stopping Trump from being re-elected than anything else.

Schiff, you may recall, argued that impeachment couldn’t wait at that time because Trump cheated in the 2016 presidential election and Democrats couldn’t afford for that to happen again.

“The argument, ‘why don’t you just wait?’ comes down to this,” Schiff claimed. “‘Why don’t you just let him cheat in just one more election? Why not let him have foreign help one more time?'”

Whoa. You heard that correctly. Schiff, very clearly denying the results of the 2016 presidential election.

Some would call that ‘insurrection.’

Schiff also completely fabricated quotes by President Trump during a congressional whistleblower hearing on the Ukraine controversy. Something so absurd even George Stephanopoulus called him out.

And while the proceedings were so “unfair” that Jerry Nadler had to call them out, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) came to the defense of Pelosi at the time.

“She’s able to do what she feels is right. That’s up to her,” Romney said in defending Pelosi. “At this stage, the process is to continue to gather information but clearly what we’ve seen from the transcript itself is deeply troubling.”

Of course, the narrative from that “deeply troubling” transcript was manipulated by anti-Trump lawmakers and media members from the start.

Nadler, somewhere along the line, went from accusing Schiff of conducting things unconstitutionally, to saying Senate Republicans, by not going along with the sham, were behaving in the same manner.

“If the Senate doesn’t permit the introduction of all relevant witnesses and of all documents that the House wants to introduce, because the House is the prosecutor here, then the Senate is — is engaging in an unconstitutional and disgusting cover-up,” he claimed.

He said that knowing what Democrats had just done in the House was ‘unconstitutional and disgusting.’

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) responded to those comments by alluding to what Nadler had previously argued about the process.

“We’re not going to do a kangaroo court, like they did in the House,” Paul fired back. “The House only produced witnesses that Adam Schiff agreed to.”

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Morning Digest: Senate GOP has a big ad spending edge, but Democrats get more ‘bang for their buck’

Posted on by Daily Kos Elections

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

Subscribe to The Downballot, our weekly podcast

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Leading Off

● Senate: NBC reports that Republicans have outspent Democrats $106 million to $93 million over the last three weeks across the nine Senate battlegrounds, but, because so many GOP candidates are relying on super PACs to make up for their underwhelming fundraising, they aren't getting as much "bang for their buck" as their rivals. That's because, as we've written before, FCC regulations give candidates—but not outside groups—discounted rates on TV and radio.

Perhaps no race better demonstrates this in action than the Arizona Senate race. The GOP firm OH Predictive Insights relays that during the week of Sept. 19, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and his allies outspent Republican Blake Masters' side 52-48 in advertising. Anyone just looking at raw dollar amounts would conclude that the two parties aired about the same number of ads during this period, but that's not the case at all. In reality, Kelly's side had a 4-1 advantage in ​​gross ratings points, which measure how many times, on average, members of an ad's target audience have seen it.

Republicans can blame Masters, whom NBC says has spent all of $9,000 on ads during most of September, for much of the imbalance. The Senate Leadership Fund last week canceled all its planned ad time in Arizona while arguing that other super PACs would step in, and this data shows why Masters badly needs this prediction to finally come true.

Outside groups, though, can still air more ads than well-funded candidates if they're willing and able to spend massive amounts the way the GOP is in Ohio. Cleveland.com's Andrew Tobias reports that Republicans are airing 20% more commercials than their Democratic foes in the Buckeye State after spending or reserving almost three times as much. Democrat Tim Ryan, writes Tobias, is responsible for 83% of the ads coming from his side compared to just 8% for Vance, but the Senate Leadership Fund has committed $28 million here to bail out its underwhelming nominee.

Senate

● NC-Sen: Both Democrat Cheri Beasley and her allies at Senate Majority PAC are airing new commercials charging that when Republican Ted Budd's farm company, AgriBioTech, went bankrupt in 2000, it chose to repay itself rather than pay back the small farmers and creditors it owed millions to. "The Budds took $10 million and left over 1,000 farmers holding the bag," Beasley's narrator argues, while SMP declares, "One grower said, 'we were the little guy,' 'we got screwed.'"

The story was first reported last year by the Washington Post's Michael Kranish, who wrote that "a trustee for farmers and other creditors alleged that his [Budd's] father, Richard Budd, improperly transferred millions of dollars in assets to his family, including Ted Budd." The candidate was not an official at ABT, though the story identifies him as a "significant shareholder." The trustee, which named him as a defendant in their civil case, also accused Budd of having "acted in concert" with his father "in connection with the fraudulent transfers."

The matter was ultimately settled in 2005, with Kranish saying that the "Budd entities" agreed to pay "less than half of the amount initially earmarked for the farmers and other creditors" without admitting to any wrongdoing. The settlement left some bad feelings, though, with one Wyoming farmer telling the Post, "We got screwed and there was not a freaking thing we could do about it. There was no way to fight multimillionaires."

Richard Budd, who became chief executive of ABT after it bought his family's seed company, defended the candidate to Kranish, arguing, "Your attempts to tie my son to this business are dishonest and offensive. I wish my personal efforts to save ABT had been successful, but they were not." Ted Budd's campaign also denied any wrongdoing, saying the trustee's claims were "untrue allegations that are typical in that sort of litigation."

Budd and his allies at the Senate Leadership Fund, meanwhile, are each running commercials arguing that Beasley wants 87,000 more IRS agents, which continues to be a popular line of attack in GOP ads across the country. As we've written before, the agency reportedly will use the funds provided by the Inflation Reduction Act to replace many of the nearly 50,000 of its employees who could retire over the next five years. Many of the thousands of newly created IRS jobs beyond those positions would be in customer service and information technology.

And while the SLF has run ad after ad accusing Democrats of hating the police, its own commercial features menacing footage of what NBC says is "police raids and special agents at a gun range." Those videos accompany the narrator's prediction that "Beasley's gonna knock on your door with an army of new IRS agents" and that she "backs the liberal scheme to spend billions auditing the middle class, sending the IRS beast to collect her taxes on working families."

However, even Trump-appointed IRS Director Charles Rettig has stated that the agency would not crack down on those making less than $400,000, explaining that the beefed up enforcement of tax evasion would only target corporations and the richest 1-2% of households.

● PA-Sen: John Fetterman is airing another commercial pushing back on Republican Mehmet Oz and his allies' ads hitting the Democrat's work as head of the state Board of Pardons, which has been the GOP's favorite line of attack in the general election.

"Here's the truth: John gave a second chance to those who deserved it―nonviolent offenders, marijuana users," Montgomery County Sheriff Sean Kilkenny tells the audience, continuing, "He voted with law enforcement experts nearly 90% of the time. He reunited families and protected our freedom―and he saved taxpayer money." Kilkenny adds, "Dr. Oz doesn't know a thing about crime. He only knows how to help himself."

The GOP, though, is trying to push a very different line. Some of the party's favorite targets have been Lee and Dennis Horton, brothers who spent 27 years in prison after being convicted of second degree murder. The two in 1993 gave a ride to a friend named Robert Leaf who had just killed someone in a robbery, though they have always maintained that they didn't know Leaf had just committed murder. Gov. Tom Wolf last year commuted the Hortons' life sentences after Fetterman and prison officials championed their case, and the two went on to take jobs on Fetterman's Senate campaign.

Oz's campaign, though, has been happy to try to turn them into a liability for their boss, saying, "If John Fetterman cared about Pennsylvania's crime problem, he'd prove it by firing the convicted murderers he employs on his campaign." Fetterman, for his part, told the New York Times that if Republicans "destroy" his political career for advocating for people like the Hortons, "then so be it."

● Polls:

AZ-Sen: Suffolk University for the Arizona Republic: Mark Kelly (D-inc): 49, Blake Masters (R): 42, Marc Victor (L): 2

NC-Sen: GSG (D) for Cheri Beasley: Cheri Beasley (D): 46, Ted Budd (R): 46 (May: 45-45 tie)

OH-Sen: Siena College for Spectrum News: Tim Ryan (D): 46, J.D. Vance (R): 43

PA-Sen: InsiderAdvantage (R) for WTXF-TV: John Fetterman (D): 45, Mehmet Oz (R): 42

PA-Sen: Marist College: Fetterman (D): 51, Oz (R): 41

Governors

● PA-Gov: Campaign finance reports covering the period of June 7 to Sept. 19 are out, and they show that Democrat Josh Shapiro's $25.4 million haul utterly dwarfed the $3.2 million that Republican Doug Mastriano took in. Shapiro goes into the final weeks with a $10.9 million to $2.6 million cash-on-hand edge over Mastriano, who still has not so much as reserved any TV time and who recently lamented he's "[r]eally not finding a lot of support from the national-level Republican organizations."

P.S. Politico's Holly Otterbein flags that Mastriano received a $500 donation from Andrew Torba, the founder of the white supremist social network Gab. That's still far less than the $5,000 that Mastriano paid Gab in April for "campaign consulting," though.

● Polls:

AZ-Gov: Suffolk University for the Arizona Republic: Katie Hobbs (D-inc): 46, Kari Lake (R): 45

CT-Gov: Western New England University for CTInsider and WFSB: Ned Lamont (D-inc): 55, Bob Stefanowski (R): 40

ME-Gov: University of New Hampshire: Janet Mills (D-inc): 53, Paul LePage (R): 39, Sam Hunkler (I): 1

OH-Gov: Siena College for Spectrum News: Mike DeWine (R-inc): 55, Nan Whaley (D): 32

PA-Gov: InsiderAdvantage (R) for WTXF-TV: Josh Shapiro (D): 52, Doug Mastriano (R): 37

PA-Gov: Marist College: Shapiro (D): 53, Mastriano (R): 40

Quinnipiac University last week gave Lamont a similar 57-40 lead in its home state.

Early September numbers from the progressive Maine People's Resource Center showed Mills up 49-38 in a race that hasn't gotten much attention from pollsters.

House

● MT-01: Democrat Monica Tranel has publicized an internal from Impact Research that shows her trailing Republican Ryan Zinke only 45-43 in this newly-created seat in the western part of the state. This is the first poll we've seen from this 52-45 Trump constituency.

● House: The Washington Post reports that top allies of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy were involved in a serious effort to deny the GOP nod to several House candidates they feared would either threaten his power or prove to be weak general election candidates, a drive the paper says they concealed during the primaries by sending cash "from top GOP donors through organizations that do not disclose their donors or have limited public records."

Their most prominent target was North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who was a massive pain even before the far-right freshman claimed that an unidentified colleague had invited him to an "orgy" and that he'd witnessed prominent conservatives doing "a key bump of cocaine." Cawthorn lost renomination to state Sen. Chuck Edwards after a group called Results for N.C. spent $1.7 million against the incumbent, and the Post writes that two McCarthy allies were part of its effort.

The paper adds that the minority leader's people were involved in the successful drives to block Anthony Sabatini in Florida's 7th District and Carl Paladino in New York's 23rd, who were each attacked by a newly-established group called American Liberty Action PAC. Both men blamed McCarthy for what happened, and the Post writes that his allies were indeed working to stop them: "They would have been legislative terrorists whose goal was fame," explained one unnamed source.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, which is close to the GOP leadership, also openly got involved in several more primaries, though it got decidedly mixed results for the $7 million it spent. CLF's ads helped secure general election berths for California Reps. Young Kim and David Valadao; Mississippi Rep. Michael Guest; and Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei. CLF also managed to advance Morgan Luttrell through the primary for Texas' open 8th District over a candidate backed by the troublesome Freedom Caucus, while it spent $40,000 on get out the vote calls for Florida Rep. Daniel Webster.

The super PAC, though, failed to get its preferred nominees across the finish line elsewhere. In Arizona's 4th, restaurateur Kelly Cooper overcame $1.5 million in CLF spending meant to ensure that establishment favorite Tanya Wheeless was Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton's rival instead. Democrats have since launched commercials faulting Cooper for, among other things, having "compared federal law enforcement agents to Nazis and the Gestapo."

CLF also fell short in its efforts to block Karoline Leavitt in New Hampshire's 1st and Brandon Williams in New York's 22nd, while another organization it funded couldn't prevent Joe Kent from beating out Washington Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler in the top-two primary.

But CLF's worst failure is arguably in North Carolina's 1st District where its $600,000 offensive wasn't enough to stop Sandy Smith. Democrats have spent the general election running commercials focusing on the abuse allegations that surfaced against her during the May primary, including a new spot highlighting how her daughter and two former husbands have accused her of domestic violence.

Obituaries

● Mark Souder: Indiana Republican Mark Souder, who was elected to the House during the 1994 red wave but resigned in 2010 after revealing an affair with a staffer, died Monday at the age of 72. Souder, who was perhaps best known for his advocacy of abstinence education, was an ardent conservative, though he defied his party leaders in two notable occasions early in his career: Souder was part of the failed 1997 revolt against Newt Gingrich, and he voted against two of the four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton the next year.

Souder got his start as an aide to then-Rep. Dan Coats, and in 1994 he decisively won a six-way primary to reclaim the Fort Wayne-based 4th District that Coats had once represented. Souder’s opponent was Democratic incumbent Jill Long Thompson, who pulled off a big upset in the 1989 special to replace Coats after he was appointed to replace Vice President Dan Quayle in the Senate. However, while Thompson had convincingly won her next two terms, the terrible climate for her party powered Souder to a 55-45 win in this historically Republican area.

Souder quickly became entrenched in his new seat, which was renumbered the 3rd District in the 2002 round of redistricting: The congressman only failed to win by double digits once when he turned back Democrat Tom Hayhurst 54-46 during the 2006 blue wave. However, Souder became a tea party target in 2010 after supporting the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program and later the Obama administration’s Cash for Clunkers program.

Souder ended up turning back self-funding auto dealer Bob Thomas by an unimpressive 48-34 margin, but he had very little time to enjoy his win. Just weeks later, the married congressman announced, “I sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff,” and that he’d be resigning over the scandal. Souder, whose marriage survived the ordeal, never ran for office again, though he became a regular columnist for the Indiana tip-sheet Howey Politics and wrote extensively about Fort Wayne’s local TV and baseball history.

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