Republicans continue to fail the democracy test: Do they support Trump or the U.S. Constitution?

After three consecutive dismal election cycles, Republicans still can't bring themselves to break with perennial loser Donald Trump even after his rallying cry to terminate the U.S. Constitution.

On Tuesday, the House GOP's No. 2, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, became the latest Republican to fail the democracy test: Trump or the Constitution?

Pressed by PBS Newshour reporter Lisa Desjardins on Trump's latest call to suspend "all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution," Scalise simply couldn't bring himself to condemn Trump.

"Rep. @SteveScalise told me a few minutes ago that he has not seen former Pres. Trump's words about the Constitution," tweeted Desjardins, in regard to Trump's Truth Social rant.

Desjardins proceeded to educate Scalise: "As he sees the election, from 2020, it allows for the termination of all rules and articles, including the Constitution. What do you make of that?"

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Steering clear of Trump, Scalise responded, "The Constitution is never subject to being waived or suspended. Obviously, the Constitution's our enduring document that protects our freedoms."  

Desjardins followed up by asking Scalise if it's "dangerous to talk about the termination of things like that?" In other words, is it dangerous to suspend the very document that "protects our freedoms," as Scalise himself put it.

The response, according to Desjardins' tweet thread: "Scalise: *enters office, does not respond*"

So if it's Trump or the Constitution, it's still Trump for Republicans, which is the exact same message Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, who chairs the Republican Governance Group, sent Sunday on ABC's This Week.

Host George Stephanopoulos asked Joyce directly, "Can you support a candidate in 2024 who's for suspending the Constitution?"

Joyce equivocated at first, offering, "It's early, I think there's going to be a lot people in the primary."

But he ultimately admitted that he would back Trump if he won the nomination. "At the end of the day, whoever the Republicans end up picking, I think I'll fall behind."

"Even if it's Donald Trump and he's called for suspending the Constitution?" Stephanopoulos interjected.

Joyce retreated to his earlier contention that it would be a "big field" in 2024, suggesting that Trump might not win.

"That's not what I'm asking," Stephanopoulos clarified, "I'm asking you, if he's the nominee, will you support him?"

"I will support whoever the Republican nominee is," Joyce restated, adding another dash of fairy dust, "I just don't think at this point he will be able to get there."

Stephanopoulos proceeded to call Joyce's statement both "extraordinary" and "remarkable."

But the truth is, it isn't remarkable in the least from today's Republican Party—it's just more of the same from a party that has routinely capitulated to Donald Trump no matter what the circumstance. Even after Trump inspired the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. seat of government, 197 House Republicans—93% of the caucus—voted against impeaching him.

The entire Jan. 6 attack was an assault on the Constitution, the peaceful transfer of power, and the will of the people.

The brother of fallen Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick put it best on Tuesday when he explained why the Sicknick family refused to shake the hands of GOP leaders Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell at a congressional gold medal ceremony for officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6.

"Unlike Liz Cheney, they have no idea what integrity is," Ken Sicknick said. "They can't stand up for what's right and wrong—with them, it's party first."

On Tuesday, McConnell had yet another opportunity to defend U.S. democracy when CNN’s Manu Raju asked if he would “categorically” refuse to support Trump. 

"What I’m saying is, it would be pretty hard to be sworn in to the presidency if you’re not willing to uphold the Constitution,” McConnell offered. 

Again, given the choice of Trump or the Constitution, McConnell demurs.

Republicans have proven over and over again their fealty to party, and personal gain supersedes their fealty to the republic. Their continued refusal to condemn a man who is calling for the "termination" of the U.S. Constitution is just a continuation of their treachery.

FLASH: Family of officer Brian Sicknick refuses to shake hands with Sen McConnell and Rep McCarthy at Congressional gold medal ceremony. Brian’s brother Ken Sicknick tells me why ====> pic.twitter.com/Y34CI8MCTi

— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) December 6, 2022

Asked McConnell - in aftermath of his criticism of Trump in the past two weeks - if he could categorically say he wouldn't support him as GOP nominee. "What I’m saying is it would be pretty hard to be sworn in to the presidency if you’re not willing to uphold the Constitution" pic.twitter.com/FUdv4zIpvT

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 6, 2022

This is the state of the authoritarian Republican Party: willing to back an aspiring despot who *explicitly* says he wants to terminate the US Constitution, so long as he’s got an (R) by his name. We’re in trouble. pic.twitter.com/0AGd6nK0o6

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) December 4, 2022

Family of fallen officer snubs McConnell, McCarthy at Jan. 6 Gold Medal ceremony

Family members of the late officer Brian Sicknick, who died after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, appeared to snub Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday, passing by the pair without shaking their hands at a ceremony to honor officers who served during the attack.

C-SPAN footage shows some of the officers and their family members moving down a line of lawmakers, first shaking the hand of Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and then passing by McConnell and McCarthy. McConnell kept his hand outstretched as the honorees walked by.  

Sicknick's mother, Gladys Sicknick, and brother, Ken Sicknick, were among those who declined to shake the Republican leaders' hands, according to multiple reports.

McCarthy did not appear to extend his hand, holding on to a box containing one of the medals as the recipients filed by.

The lawmakers were gathered in the Capitol Rotunda to award the Congressional Gold Medal for officers’ service defending the Capitol on Jan. 6.  

D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee and U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger accepted medals on behalf of their departments, and family members of officers who died surrounding Jan. 6 joined them for the ceremony.

The 42-year-old Sicknick collapsed during the riot, suffered two strokes and died the following day. Capitol Police have said Sicknick “died in the line of duty, courageously defending Congress and the Capitol.”

Sicknick’s mother ahead of this year’s midterm elections attributed her son’s death to people such as failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R), who espoused former President Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election had been fraudulent. The fallen officer’s former partner said she blamed people surrounding Trump for not speaking up before the attack.

McConnell and McCarthy both gave remarks at the ceremony after the medals were awarded. 

“The Capitol Police and D.C. Police are valued members of this community. But they’re also members of another community. The community of law enforcement. The brotherhood of law enforcement," McCarthy said, tying the officers’ actions to a broader conversation of law enforcement in the nation. 

“These brave men and women are heroes ... Days like today force us to realize how much we owe the thin blue line,” McCarthy said. 

McConnell said that Congress was able to “finish our job that very night” because of the officers’ actions to secure the Capitol and facilitate the lawmakers’ certification of the 2020 presidential election results. 

McConnell was the Senate majority leader during the Jan. 6 attack and has come under scrutiny for voting against convicting Trump in his second impeachment trial over the insurrection, though he has said Trump "provoked" the crowd.

McCarthy has indicated he intends to investigate the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 when Republicans take control of the lower chamber in the next Congress.

“On that terrible day in January, you stared directly into the heart of darkness and, though outnumbered, you held the line, the line of democracy. You bravely held it and democracy endured. In return, those of us in elected office must always strive to care for you,” Schumer said to officers on Tuesday.

Updated at 2:06 p.m.

Fallen officer’s family snubs McConnell and McCarthy at Jan. 6 gold medal ceremony

Police officers who responded to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and some of their family members pointedly declined to shake the hands of Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy as they accepted Congressional Gold Medals on Tuesday.

Officers and the family of fallen officer Brian Sicknick shook hands with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer as they accepted the medals, but quickly moved past the House and Senate Republican leaders — despite McConnell outstretching his hand. All senior congressional leaders were participating in the event to honor U.S. Capitol Police officers, Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police and others who responded during the riot.

"May this medal — the highest honor that Congress can bestow — serve as a token of our nation's deepest gratitude and respect: not as full but as a token," Pelosi said prior to awarding the medals at a ceremony that took place in the Capitol Rotunda.

Among those who walked past the congressional leaders were the family of Sicknick, a U.S. Capitol Police officer who died in the days following the attack and later lay in honor in the Capitol.

In ceremony remarks after the snub, McConnell and McCarthy both thanked the officers for their heroics during that day.

"To all the law enforcement officers who keep this country safe: thank you," McCarthy said. "Too many people take that for granted, but days like today force us to realize how much we owe the thin blue line."

Asked about the situation later Tuesday, McConnell didn't criticize the family's actions.

"Today, we gave the gold medal to the heroes of January 6. We admire and respect them. They laid their lives on the line and that's why we gave a gold medal today to the heroes of January 6," the Senate Republican leader said at his weekly press conference.

Police officers have criticized McCarthy's response following the attack, including former D.C. officer Michael Fanone, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and a heart attack in the riot and secretly recorded a meeting with the House Republican leader. Some House Republicans have downplayed the seriousness of the attack, and McCarthy has personally minimized former President Donald Trump's role in stoking the mob.

McConnell has called the Jan. 6 attack a "violent insurrection," but also joined McCarthy and other Republicans in voting against the establishment of a bipartisan commission to investigate the riot. The GOP Senate leader also voted against convicting Trump in his second impeachment trial over the former president's role in Jan. 6.

Posted in Uncategorized

Senate Republicans, stuck in minority, frown on House GOP calls for impeachment against Biden, Mayorkas

Senate Republicans are dismissive of a House GOP-led effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, being mindful that such an effort has no chance of success.

Six pledges McCarthy has made for a GOP House as he aims for Speakership

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is escalating and doubling down on several pledges about how he would run the lower chamber next year as he tries to beat back opposition from a handful of House Republicans who threaten to derail his Speakership bid.

Over the weekend, he warned that any delay in Republicans taking the gavel would put GOP priorities and his plans for his conference on hold.

“Right now, it’s actually delaying our ability to govern as we go,” McCarthy, who won the House GOP nomination for Speaker, said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” “So I’m hopeful that everybody comes together, finds a way to govern together. This is what the American people want. Otherwise, we will be squandering this majority.”

Five House Republicans — Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Bob Good (Va.), Matt Rosendale (Mont.) and Ralph Norman (S.C.) — have said or strongly indicated that they will not vote for McCarty for Speaker on Jan. 3, when he needs support from a majority of those voting for a Speaker candidate. With Republicans heading toward a narrow majority of 222 seats to Democrats' 212 in January, the opposition threatens to keep him from the post.

McCarthy’s argument did not land with his fiercest critics, whose issues with McCarthy range from not committing to pass a slashed federal budget to calling on him to do more to empower rank-and-file members.

“‘Squandering this majority’ would be allowing a guy that the conservative movement has lambasted for years to take the reins as House Speaker,” Biggs responded in a tweet. “Leaders who lead from behind aren’t leaders.”

Here are six pledges McCarthy has made in a bid to win the Speakership:

Try to roll back IRS funding boost

The first bill from House Republicans, McCarthy announced in September, would be to “repeal 87,000 IRS agents” — a reference to an $80 billion funding boost to the IRS included in Democrats’ tax, climate and health care package signed into law earlier this year.

A 2021 Treasury Department estimate said the IRS could hire nearly 87,000 employees over a decade with the new funding, a figure that includes support staff, auditors and replacements for those who leave the agency. Republicans have repeatedly falsely said that all the 87,000 IRS hires would be “agents” and sought to use the threat to fire up midterm voters.

Such a bill would likely be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Remove certain Democrats from committee assignments

McCarthy says he will remove Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from the House Intelligence Committee and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The move is in part a response to GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.) being removed from their committee posts last year over social media posts and interactions involving violence against other members. It is also a response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vetoing two of McCarthy’s picks for the Jan. 6 committee, after which McCarthy pulled his other three selections.

The GOP leader accused Schiff, the current chair of the House Intelligence Committee, of lying to the public about investigations into former President Trump. Schiff fired back, saying that McCarthy will “misrepresent my record” and will do “whatever he needs to do to get the votes of the QAnon caucus within his conference.”

Swalwell, McCarthy said, should not sit on the House Intelligence Committee due to his relationship with an alleged Chinese spy who reportedly helped fundraise for his 2014 campaign and helped place an intern in his office. Swalwell’s office has said he provided information about the individual to the FBI.

And McCarthy has accused Omar of making antisemitic comments. Omar said in a statement that McCarthy’s threat is a “continuation of a sustained campaign against Muslim and African voices.” 

Removing a member from a standing committee requires a vote of the full House.

Investigate Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

Hard-line House conservatives are hungry for impeachments of Biden administration officials, and Mayorkas, whom they blame for the crisis at the southern border, is at the top of their list. But McCarthy has not explicitly promised to do so, saying that Republicans will not use impeachment for “political purposes.”

Instead, on a border trip just before Thanksgiving, McCarthy called on Mayorkas to resign or face House GOP investigations and a potential impeachment inquiry — his strongest comments on the topic to date.

That escalation, though, has not satisfied McCarthy's opponents. 

“He had plenty of time to support impeachment articles against Mayorkas and was radio silent,” Biggs said in a tweet.

Create a House Select Committee on China

McCarthy has pledged to create a House Select Committee on China, an effort that Republicans hope can produce meaningful bipartisan agreement on both economic and military matters.

McCarthy tried to work with Democrats to create a China select committee in 2020. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Republicans say, pulled Democrats out of the plan around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Washington Post reported at the time that Democrats had concerns about the China issue being too politicized.

Dealings with China are thought to be one of the few areas where the two parties can come to some agreement in the next Congress.

End proxy voting

The pandemic-era practice of allowing House members to designate another member to vote by proxy for them will come to an end, McCarthy has said, charging that it “allows Members of Congress to get paid without ever needing to show up for work.”

Members of both parties have utilized proxy voting — which requires a letter saying the members is unable to attend in person “due to the ongoing public health emergency” — in ways that appeared to be for convenience rather than health reasons.

McCarthy took a lawsuit challenging proxy voting up to the Supreme Court, but the court in January declined to hear the case.

Pass culture war–related bills

McCarthy and House Republicans have promised to advance the "Parents Bill of Rights,” a bill crafted last year in response to frustrations about “woke” curriculum and COVID-19–related school closures that spilled over into heated school board meetings.

The bill would require school districts to post curriculum publicly, have teachers offer two in-person meetings with parents a year, have parents give consent before any medical exam at school and provide notice of any violence at school.

McCarthy has also said he would bring up a bill to define sex “solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth” for purposes of Title IX in athletics, taking aim at transgender athletes.

Like a bill to repeal the IRS funding boost, though, it is unlikely it would be taken up in the Senate.

GOP senators tune out House conservatives’ impeachment calls

House conservatives want their party to go big on impeachment next year. Across the Capitol, Senate Republicans on their would-be jury are not ready to convict.

While House GOP leaders feel intense pressure from their Donald Trump-aligned base and colleagues to impeach President Joe Biden or a top member of his Cabinet, many of the party’s senators want nothing to do with it. In fact, some Republican senators are openly signaling that even if impeachment managed to squeak through the House, it would quickly die in their chamber — and not just at the hands of the Democratic majority.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a close ally of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said he “hadn’t really given any thought” to impeaching Biden or a Cabinet official like Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom Kevin McCarthy singled out last month as a primary target of future House investigations. Cornyn said he hasn’t seen any actions that meet the bar for an impeachable offense: “Not really, no.”

And Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the only GOP senator to twice convict former President Trump, put it more bluntly: “Someone has to commit a high crime or misdemeanor for that to be a valid inquiry. I haven’t seen any accusation of that nature whatsoever. There are a lot of things I disagree with … but that doesn’t rise to impeachment.”

Cooling their counterparts’ impeachment fever is just one of many tricky tasks facing the Senate GOP over the next two years in its relationship with an incoming House majority where pro-Trump conservatives often shout the loudest. While those House Republicans look to ding Biden’s administration after six years trapped in the minority, the party’s senators are picking battles more carefully.

A big reason behind the different strategies: House Republicans will hold the party's biggest megaphone on Capitol Hill heading into 2024, with some of their own GOP centrists already feeling heartburn — and hearing Democratic warnings — that pursuing impeachment will backfire in the next election.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), McConnell’s No. 2, subtly urged House Republicans to focus on specific investigative targets that could help the party put pressure on Democrats. He added that the border was a “debacle” and that Mayorkas should be called in for “oversight,” but underscored that what specific actions should spin out of such investigations was not yet clear.

“I think there is a legitimate need for oversight … but, I mean, I think it needs to be focused on some specific areas,” Thune said. When asked about the possibility of impeaching Biden himself, Thune repeated that they should outline certain investigative targets and "see if we can’t pressure the Democrats into working with us on a few things.”

It's an ongoing pattern for Republican Senate leaders, who have mostly tried to avoid the pitfalls of Trump-related probes. While House GOP leadership has leaned hard into publicly pushing back on the Democratic-run panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, their Senate counterparts have largely sidestepped tangling with the select committee.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy walks to his office from the chamber during final votes as the House wraps up its work for the week, at the Capitol, Dec. 2, 2022.

Meanwhile, McCarthy called on Mayorkas to resign or face possible impeachment during a trip to the border last month. The Californian first opened the door to impeaching the Homeland Security secretary earlier this year, and his most recent remarks dovetail with his efforts to lock down support from conservatives who have threatened to oppose his speakership bid.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who lost to McCarthy for the conference's speakership nomination last month, has introduced a resolution to impeach Mayorkas that's supported by several of the minority leader’s most vocal critics.

Spokespeople for McConnell, who teed off on the administration’s border policy from the floor Monday, didn’t respond to a question about impeaching Mayorkas. The GOP leader also quashed calls to impeach Biden last year that were sparked by a widely criticized Afghanistan withdrawal.

Because Senate Republicans will be stuck in the minority for at least the next two years, they can't do much to contribute to House GOP investigations. And for some GOP senators, questions about their counterparts’ impeachment dreams elicit responses that put a new spin on M.C. Hammer's 1990 hit: They can't, and won't, touch this.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, one of the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump last year, said with a laugh that she was “not going to get into the machinations of the House.”

“That’s not something I’ve heard discussed over here,” Collins said about impeaching Biden or Mayorkas.

And Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, brushed off questions about if he supports a Biden or Mayorkas impeachment: “I can’t do anything about what the House does.”

It was always a long shot that the Senate would convict in any impeachment trial next Congress, given it would require 67 votes in favor. No presidents have been found guilty and the one Cabinet official who was the subject of an impeachment trial was acquitted. But House Republicans' roughly five-seat margin next year means that dreams of even passing an impeachment of Biden or his top lieutenants through their own chamber might have already died on the vine.

Still, the staunchest pro-impeachment House Republicans aren't deterred by the reality that their efforts would ultimately fail across the Capitol — or even alienate some in their own party. They see it as their business to take on the Biden administration, and winning the majority means business is about to pick up.

“I would say back to them: 'Then why enforce any laws? Why do anything?' I think we always have to hold people accountable. We have to do our job in the House, regardless of what is going to happen in the Senate,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has pushed impeaching Biden since he took office.

And Greene's camp does have some Senate Republicans in its corner when it comes to impeaching Mayorkas. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who was an impeachment manager against former President Bill Clinton, sent a letter to Mayorkas arguing that his actions, if not corrected, could provide “grounds for impeachment.”

In addition, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) accused Mayorkas of having “misled” him and members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and being “unresponsive.” He added in a brief interview that “I think an impeachment there is probably warranted" and could be used to get information from the agency.

But asked about the prospect of impeaching Biden, Hawley, who has disavowed any interest in a run of his own in two years, pointed to the 2024 election as the better venue.

“You know, I’m not a fan of the president. … But impeaching a president is a very, very, very high bar,” he said. “The American people, pretty soon here, are going to have a chance to weigh in again.”

Posted in Uncategorized

Senate Republicans turn on Trump over suspend-the-Constitution talk

Senate Republicans are slowly but surely distancing themselves from Donald Trump after a call to terminate the Constitution and a meeting with antisemites — though there’s no sign any will start actively opposing his 2024 campaign.

The former president’s campaign launch is landing with a thud among Republican leaders, many of whom began losing interest after his loss to Joe Biden and are now openly pining for a crowded primary field to take on Trump. That hope for intraparty competition is a flashback to the opening days of the 2016 election, except this time Trump has baggage ranging from stoking an insurrection to a sitdown with Ye and white nationalist Nick Fuentes to his latest call to illegally unwind his 2020 defeat.

As polls show Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) competitive with Trump and many other Republicans eye a run against him, some in the GOP think Trump might even end up pulling the plug on his nascent campaign.

“I just think, in the end, he will not end up running because [of] the polling,” said retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). “The trend line is not positive.”

Trump on Saturday falsely cited “massive fraud” in his 2020 loss before calling for a “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" in order to reinstate him as president or hold a new election.
That comment, Portman said, “makes no sense.”

Many election officials, including Trump's own former attorney general, have affirmed that no voter fraud occurred on a scale significant enough to affect Biden's victory over Trump. And spending yet another year litigating 2020 is too much for some party leaders.

“I’m at a loss for words. We need to move on,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to McConnell, said of the constitutional-suspension posts from the former president. Cornyn added that the prospect of Trump winning the nomination is “increasingly less likely, given statements like that.”

While few Republicans spoke out publicly before returning to Washington on Monday, Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said “of course I disagree with that” when asked about Trump's comments. The No. 2 Senate Republican would not say whether he’d support Trump if the former president wins the GOP nomination in 2024 and said he’s “just not going to go there at this point — that’s a long way off.”

But Thune did predict Trump’s remarks would fuel the ambitions of Republicans who'd want to take on the former president in a 2024 primary: “It’s just one of those intuitively obvious things, whether a candidate for office has sort of a bedrock principle, ‘are you going to support the Constitution?’” Thune said. “For him, it’s not all that unusual. But it will be the grist and plenty of fodder for those that are looking to get into that race.”

Trump could face competition from DeSantis and a handful of Republican senators for the nomination. Rather than actively oppose his candidacy, many in the GOP are betting he will fall flat on his own this time around after twice winning the Republican nomination.

Some said the party's lackluster midterm results speak for themselves.

“The facts of the election in 2022 are just indisputable. The ultra, pro-Trump, handpicked by Trump, based on loyalty to Trump? Those candidates wildly underperformed,” said retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who voted to convict the former president in his second impeachment trial. “It's pretty clear that he’s become a toxic force and that's going to diminish his influence a lot.”

His suspend-the-Constitution posts on his Truth Social platform mark the second time in two weeks that Trump has prompted criticism from within the GOP, after he dined last month with antisemitic rapper Ye, better known as Kanye West, and white nationalist Nick Fuentes. That sitdown led Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to predict that anyone holding meetings with people who use their profiles to disseminate bigotry “are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States.”

The meeting with Ye and Fuentes, Trump’s postings about the Constitution and a hangover from his role nominating several losing candidates are all animating Republicans to reconsider Trump’s viability. And some of the party's senators have been there all along.

“I’d like Republicans to win elections again, unlike the way this guy has made sure my party could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in 2018 and in 2020 and again in 2022,” said Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who is leaving Congress next month to become president of the University of Florida.

Sasse voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial and was a frequent critic of the former president’s. He says now “people in my party have to decide: Do they want to keep giving oxygen to somebody who is trying to sell tickets to his own proprietary circus, or do they want to be a constitutional party that has a clear agenda.”

Many of those who will serve beyond January were more reserved but still clearly broke with Trump. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said the substance of Trump's proposal is “pretty simple, it’s unconstitutional.” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), another McConnell adviser, dismissed Trump’s comments as “ridiculous” and said they “sounded like a little crazy talk to me.” And retiring Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said there’s “no emergency clause not to follow the Constitution.”

McConnell declined to respond to questions about Trump's postings on a constitutional suspension, saying he’d address it Tuesday at his weekly press conference.

Trump tried to walk back his willingness to suspend the Constitution on Monday, posting that “the Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution.” Yet he followed that comment with another suggestion that in fact he would be open to a suspension, suggesting “no time limit” for holding a new presidential election.

And while no one would defend Trump’s idea of terminating the Constitution, several saw value in his rants about Twitter’s decision to suppress reporting about Hunter Biden’s personal computer files during the 2020 election. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said what “Trump said was wrong, but what happened at Twitter was wrong.”

“One of the reasons that the Twitter story is so significant is because it shows a direct threat to the First Amendment,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). “The First Amendment, or any part of the Constitution, should never be suspended.”

But only a few focused on Twitter’s missteps, in contrast to Trump’s comments. Former Vice President Mike Pence responded to Trump, albeit indirectly, by saying that “everyone that aspires to serve or serve again should make it clear that we will support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial and just won reelection, said on Sunday night “that suggesting the termination of the Constitution is not only a betrayal of our oath of office, it’s an affront to our Republic.” And Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said that “anyone who desires to lead our country must commit to protecting the Constitution."

Posted in Uncategorized

Liberal TIME Magazine Redefines ‘Election Denier’ to Protect New Election-Denying Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries

In an attempt to shield Democrats from the “election denier” moniker, TIME Magazine lunged at the opportunity to take one for the team by penning a piece which asserts that new House Democrats leader Hakeem Jeffries has certainly denied the outcomes of elections in the past, but in no way does that make him an election denier.

No, being an “election denier” is exclusively reserved for conservatives and those who contested the voting integrity of the 2020 election – and that election alone.

What sparked this bout of justified, liberal mental gymnastics was a recent tweet from the RNC, which was posted when it was confirmed that far-left Congressman Hakeem Jeffries would be succeeding Rep. Nancy Pelosi as House Democrat Leader.

“BREAKING: Election Denier Hakeem Jeffries was just elected as the new leader of the House Democrats,” the RNC had posted on top of screenshots from as far back as 2018 in which Jeffries repeatedly denies elections.

RELATED: Meet Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrats’ Far-Left Choice to Succeed Pelosi as House Leader

Election Denying Juxtaposition

TIME wrote, “In tweets, news interviews, and House hearings, Jeffries called to question the legitimacy of Trump’s election because of Russia’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 race, and accused Trump of colluding with Russia to win the election.”

They also added that the special council investigation in 2019 “did not find sufficient evidence that Trump or his campaign conspired with Russia.”

Right there, the author Jasmine Aguilera doesn’t deny that Jeffries himself denied that Trump was the lawfully elected president, going as far as to repeatedly call him “illegitimate.” With that fact stated, you’d think it would be hard to make a case that someone isn’t an election denier when you’ve already firmly shown that they have denied election results.

This is where things get stupid.

Aguilera argues that since the 2020 election, the term “election denier” doesn’t just mean someone who denies elections.

No, she states that the “phrase has come to be associated with Republicans who claim the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, assert without evidence there was fraud in 2020 voting, and cast doubt on secure voting systems—claims that lead to the deadly January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.”

Well, of course. That’s a fait accompli: the liberal media insists that it is that way, and flood the airwaves with it. Jeffries can’t be an election denier because he’s a Democrat. The term’s definition magically changed and we all have to accept that now.

“Calling Jeffries an ‘election denier’,” she continues, “is misleading and conflates different issues.” No, actually, it isn’t misleading at all.

You don’t get to just go around changing the definitions when they become inconvenient – or in this case, downright embarrassing. This used to be an accepted fact of life, but now, we go by the rules of 1984 where words can change meaning in order to prop up the Party.

Aguilera tries to add emphasis to this point by quoting Rachel Orey, an associate director of the Elections Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, who had stated that “Casting unfounded doubt on the outcome of an election is irresponsible when either party does it, but I think it’s important to remember that the culture around elections was quite different before 2020.”

Once again, an election denier is a denier of elections, except when Democrats deny elections. Confused? I certainly am, especially with Orey’s assertion that before 2020 things were just magically different.

Am I the only one that remembers four years of Democrats calling for Trump’s impeachment based solely on the debunked Russian collusion hoax?

I’m certainly old enough to remember that Democrats denying the outcomes of elections didn’t start (and sadly won’t end) with Donald Trump.

Democrats – including former Presidents – have denied every single election Republicans have won since the year 2000.

RELATED: Trump and Melania Reportedly ‘Just Sick’ Over January 6 Defendants, Would Issue Pardons

A Democrat Tradition

Denying elections is as much a part of the Democratic Party as slavery and taxpayer funding of abortion. This isn’t ancient history either.

Former Vice President Al Gore, Presidents Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, and former Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz were all vocal election deniers in 2000, claiming that Republican George W. Bush had stolen the election.

In 2004, Democrats attempted to do the exact same thing again, with Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, Shiela Jackson Lee and even Democrat nominee John Kerry attempting to paint the 2004 election results as illegitimate. 

And of course, we all know about Democrats denying the 2016 election.

This dangerous attempt by TIME to allow a writer to assert that we can change very basic definitions based on a very open political narrative isn’t just dangerous to public discourse, it’s an outright threat to our democracy.

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Musk leaks Twitter documents to pursue his own agenda, making Twitter a more dangerous platform

It's been an eventful weekend in Muskland, and as usual every act boils down to Elon Musk making some new attempt to make Twitter worse. Say what you want about Musk, but the creativity of his approach is impressive; the man keeps inventing new ways to make Twitter worth less than it was the day before. Could you do that? No, probably not. Even more impressive is Musk's creativity in inventing new disasters for Twitter that don't involve white supremacists or Nazi sympathizers.

The big news, or what was supposed to be big news until it flopped, was Musk's release of internal Twitter communications that showed employees agonizing over the company's October 2020 decision to block a New York Post story in which the Post claimed it had obtained access to—insert drumroll here—"Hunter Biden's laptop." In a fairly interminable Twitter thread, former big-name journalist turned Substacker Matt Taibbi shared snippets of the internal debate that were provided to him by Musk.

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The big news, as Taibbi would have it, was that this internal debate existed; we already know, however, that Twitter would soon reverse its decision and that the company saw this particular episode as an unforced error on its part. What Taibbi (who is not a credible voice on these matters) glosses over are the reasons why Twitter, along with nearly every other major non-Rupert Murdoch-owned news outlet, was so wary of the Post's October "surprise." The news that the contents of a laptop belonging to "Hunter Biden" had somehow been delivered to Rudy Giuliani and other pro-Trump provocateurs was enough to cause skepticism of itself, given that Giuliani was embroiled in a years-long effort to manufacture a new pro-Russia hoax that would claim that it was Russia's enemy Ukraine and U.S. Democratic figures who were the true villains behind the Russian government's interventions on Trump's behalf in the 2016 presidential elections. The FBI had even warned Twitter beforehand that there was reason to believe a Russia-backed disinformation campaign targeting Hunter Biden, specifically, was in the works. The Post refused to provide evidence of its claims to more reputable media outlets, and many observers inside and outside Twitter indeed saw all the makings of a Giuliani-backed, possibly Russian-backed election eve hoax.

If it wasn't a hoax, new factors came into play: Was the laptop's data stolen, and would publishing information from a stolen device constitute a crime? What evidence could the Post provide that even if the data was genuine, it hadn't been altered between the time it left Hunter Biden's possession and, through a series of suspect events, landed in the Post's possession? (And, it turns out, the data had indeed been altered.)

We still don't have solid answers to any of it, but the internal Twitter debate was initially premised on suspicions that the Post's "laptop" story stood good chance of either being a Giuliani-tied hoax or the product of a criminal data hack. Twitter later reevaluated those odds and reversed itself, but if you were to ask anyone not on the Trump campaign's personal go-to lists whether or not they could vouch for a story that seemed to be pulled quite directly from the same Giuliani-promoted anti-Ukraine propaganda efforts that led to Donald Trump's first impeachment trial, you can begin to understand why Twitter's trust and safety teams were falling over themselves to determine whether the notoriously sensationalist Post had just willingly fallen for a hoax or, worse from Twitter's standpoint, were abetting a crime.

All of this is fairly interesting from a content moderation standpoint ... and that's about it. For a thread exploring just what it does and doesn't mean, however, you can try here.

It also can't be overlooked that a very great deal of the controversy revolves around conservatives wanting to expose pornographic images of Hunter Biden found on the "laptop," in the name of constitutional free speech or somesuch. Revenge porn is not, however, generally considered free speech. Nor do we have any concrete explanation for why the crowd currently beside themselves with theories about "groomers" continues to be so fired up in their demands that they be able to post images of penises, though the Jordan-Gaetz wing of the party could probably shed some light on that for us and will no doubt make it their mission to do so whether we want them to or not.

Alternatively you can do what Donald Trump Jr. did: Snort a hell of a lot of something and melt the absolute bejeebers down because being able to expose private information and images of a politician's grown-ass adult son is the most important issue of our modern era:

Junior is upset that the media isn’t making a big deal out of the Hunter story, and says that 70% of people would’ve switched their vote in 2020 if they had known about it. pic.twitter.com/dUgjdnol1s

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) December 4, 2022

It's not clear Uday here is really thinking through the consequences of his assertions that probing the private life of a prominent American politician's drug-fueled failson is absolutely something that must be done, but if that clip is any indication he won't be able to think through such things until he gets three full days of sleep and at least a few bags of IV fluid.

The biggest takeaway from the story, however, might be its impact on Twitter itself. In a wide-ranging Twitter Spaces Q&A session featuring a vaudevillian cast of supporting characters, Elon Musk claimed he has given full access to internal Twitter emails and documents to Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and to at least one other person.

Musk's goal appears to be to hunt for justification for his claims that Twitter has acted to "give preference to left wing candidates" here and abroad; in order to find such evidence, Musk is relying on at least two would-be investigators who have focused their current careers on making such claims.

Whether you work for Twitter or simply use the platform, Musk has now demonstrated that he's willing to publicly release your work for the purposes of backing his own conservative agenda.

That's going to be an existential problem—literally—for protesters in other countries who have used Twitter to organize and to evade government speech restrictions. If Musk is willing to open up private employee communications in order to target, by name, employees and groups who he believes favor the "left," will the Musk-led company be similarly eager to expose the direct messages of those who have run afoul of conservative Saudi and Iranian regimes? And what of Ukraine, where Twitter is a dominant means of tracking—often anonymously—both military movements and likely war crimes?

Can U.S. journalists themselves trust that Musk will not personally take an interest in their own direct messages on the social network, or release those private messages if he believes they show "bias" against his own friends and allies?

Musk's apparent move to provide anti-left "investigators" with years of internal employee records goes beyond making Twitter a more dodgy place for advertisers and for attention-grabbing celebrities and journalists. It demonstrates Twitter to be a now inherently unsafe place for anyone who might someday run afoul of Musk and his personal agenda. It wipes out Twitter as an organizing tool—unless, of course, you're a white supremacist, neo-Nazi sympathizer, crypto scammer, conservative propagandist, or other Musk ally.

Yes, that brings us to the final story of the weekend: Musk's order to reinstate celebrity train wreck Kanye West, even though West had been suspended from Twitter for antisemitic statements, ended precisely how everyone but Musk thought it would after Musk was again forced to suspend West after West tweeted, in the immediate aftermath of an Alex Jones appearance in which he praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, an image that merged the Star of David with the Nazi swastika.

Because Musk continues to know absolutely nothing about anything when it comes to running a social media network, First Amendment-thumping conman Musk falsely claimed he was obliged to suspend West because showing the image was a violation of American law. This is an outrageously false statement, and one that proves Musk to be an absolute buffoon when it comes to interpreting "free speech" rights or anything else.

It does, however, hint at yet another way Musk may be getting Twitter into very hot regulatory waters. Displaying Nazi symbols is not illegal in the United States, but it can be illegal in Germany. As an international company, Twitter must navigate an ever-bubbling stew of international regulations, and must now do so despite Musk's removal of most of the staff responsible for knowing those regulations and abiding by them.

There's no question that West tweeted the symbol as an intentional nod to Nazis, but whether that specific image would run afoul of German law is unclear. What's considerably more dangerous to Musk is his own order that previously banned hate accounts, including neo-Nazi figures, be unbanned. There appear to be around 12,000 suspended accounts so far reactivated, including QAnon hoaxers, spam accounts, "adult content" distributors, and the heads of several notorious white supremacist groups.

At the same time, Twitter moderation is grappling, poorly, with far-right and fascist attempts to get anti-fascist watchdog accounts banned en masse by flooding Twitter with false reports targeting those users. The far-right may not need help, however, given that Musk himself has been publicly asking far-right figures to provide him with lists of accounts they believe should be suspended.

Oh—and in the meantime, the re-launch of "Twitter Blue" remains stymied by rampant identity theft concerns and now, a Musk-led attempt to dodge Apple App Store fees.

So there's where things stand now. Twitter is suspending watchdog accounts that report on the doings of extremist far-right groups, a far-right campaign that is successful in large part because Twitter now doesn't have enough moderators to police against the gaming of their systems. Musk himself is publicly appealing to extremist figures to report their enemies. And Musk is releasing internal Twitter communications to a handpicked list of right-leaning investigators in a move that is already resulting in the far-right targeting of Twitter employees who made (or didn't make) decisions that Musk personally suspects to have been motivated by hostility towards the right.

Whether it's time to leave Twitter, at least for the moment, is up to you. But know the platform is now inherently "unsafe" in that Musk has proven willing to use his ownership to selectively leak whatever he personally believes might provide him with an advantage. In the meantime the question of Twitter's short-term viability is entirely out of our hands; Musk is on a collision course with European regulators, with the Federal Trade Commission, and with the site's own teetering stability.

With the reinstatement of high-profile hate accounts and new warnings from federal officials predicting that new Twitter-published hate speech will lead to extremist violence, it's now impossible to name any Musk action that hasn't had the immediate result of making Twitter less profitable, less reliable, and far more dangerous.

RELATED STORIES:

Twitter's moderation teams collapse while Musk berates the advertisers who are bailing out

Musk's only hope for keeping Twitter alive is circling down the drain of that sink he carried in

More top Twitter executives resign, warning that Musk is exposing the company to massive legal risks

Morning Digest: Republicans seek to trim Democrats’ majority in race for Pennsylvania Supreme Court

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.

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Leading Off

PA Supreme Court: Two Democrats and one Republican have so far announced that they'll run in next year's statewide race for a 10-year term on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which will be a high-stakes contest even though the Democratic majority on the seven-member body is not at risk. The post these candidates are running for became vacant in September when Chief Justice Max Baer died at the age of 74 just months before he was to retire because of mandatory age limits.

Baer's absence was felt just before Election Day when one Democratic justice, Kevin Dougherty, sided with his two GOP colleagues against the remaining three Democratic members in a high-profile case over whether to count mail-in ballots that arrived on time but had missing or incorrect dates. This deadlock meant that election authorities were required to "segregate and preserve any ballots contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes," a decision that Democrats feared could cost them crucial contests.

Team Blue, after scrambling to encourage any impacted voters to cast new votes (one woman even immediately flew home from Colorado at her own expense to make sure she would "not be silenced by voter suppression"), got something of a reprieve when Senate nominee John Fetterman and other Democrats pulled off decisive wins. Still, the ruling was a troubling reminder that, even with a 4-2 Democratic edge on the state's highest court, Republicans could still have their way on major cases.

Baer's seat still remains unfilled, since either outgoing Gov. Tom Wolf or his successor, fellow Democrat Josh Shapiro, would need to have his nominee confirmed by the GOP-run state Senate. It's not clear whether Republicans would assent to anyone chosen by Wolf or Shapiro, though any acceptable appointee would almost certainly be someone who agreed not to run next year.

That likely explains why two Democratic members of the Superior Court from opposite sides of the state, Beaver County's Deborah Kunselman and Philadelphia's Daniel McCaffery, have already launched campaigns ahead of the May primary. (The Superior Court is one of two intermediate appellate courts in the state and hears most appeals.) The only Republican in the running right now is Montgomery County President Judge Carolyn Carluccio. A win would be a boon to Republicans but, barring more unexpected vacancies, the soonest they could actually retake the majority would be 2025.

election calls

 CA-13: The final unresolved House race of 2022 was called Friday night for Republican agribusinessman John Duarte, who flipped this seat by defeating Democratic Assemblyman Adam Gray 50.2-49.8 after an expensive battle. Biden carried this sprawling constituency in the mid-Central Valley by a 54-43 margin, but Democrats often struggle with midterm turnout in this region. Duarte, though, will almost certainly be a top target when the next presidential cycle comes around in two years.

With this race settled, Republicans will begin the 118th Congress with 222 House seats compared to 212 for Democrats. This tally includes Colorado’s 3rd District, where Democrat Adam Frisch has conceded to far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert even though an automatic recount will take place this month. The final constituency is Virginia’s safely blue 4th District, which became vacant last week following the death of Democratic Rep. Donald McEachin and will be filled through a still-to-be-scheduled special election.

Georgia Runoff

GA-Sen: Two new media polls show Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock with a small lead over Republican Herschel Walker going into Tuesday's runoff. SurveyUSA, working for WXIA-TV, put the senator ahead 50-47, while SRSS' poll for CNN had Warnock up 52-48. (SRSS allowed respondents to say they were uncommitted, but almost none did.)

Redistricting

MT Redistricting: Montana's bipartisan redistricting commission gave its approval to a new map for the state House on Thursday, with the panel's tiebreaking independent member voting in favor of a proposal put forth by Democratic commissioners while the body's two Republicans voted against it. While Republicans are still all but assured of retaining control of the 100-member House, Democrats will have a strong chance of rolling back the GOP's supermajority, which currently stands at 68 seats. (An interactive version of the plan can be found on Dave's Redistricting App.)

The map isn't quite done yet, however: Members of the public will now have the chance to offer feedback, which the commission may use to make further tweaks. Once that task is complete, the panel will work on a map for the upper chamber, which will involve uniting pairs of House districts to create single Senate districts (a process known as "nesting"). The commission will then vote to send final maps to lawmakers, who will have 30 days to propose additional adjustments. Commissioners, however, are not obligated to make any revisions based on comments from legislators.

Once all of this is done, Montana will finally become the last state to finish regular redistricting this decade. It waited so long due to arcane provisions in its state constitution, a delay that very likely was unconstitutional. Despite this apparent violation of the "one person, one vote" doctrine, no one brought a lawsuit challenging these procedures prior to the 2022 elections, so they remained in place. However, in the coming decade, such a challenge could very well succeed.

Senate

FL-Sen: Retiring Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy did not rule out challenging Republican Sen. Rick Scott in 2024, telling the Orlando Sentinel, "I'm running through the tape in this job. And then I'll figure out what comes next." Murphy also used the interview to push back on the idea that her state had become unwinnable for Democrats, arguing, "Florida is not dark red. It can be a purple and blue state with the right candidates and with the right field strategy."

WV-Sen: Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said Friday he'd announce his re-election plans sometime in 2023, and that he is "not in a hurry" to make a decision.

House

NM-02: Defeated GOP Rep. Yvette Herrell sent an email to supporters shortly after she created a new FEC account where she confirmed she was considering a rematch against the Democrat who beat her, Rep.-elect Gabe Vasquez. "We know our work in Washington was not completed, and hundreds of people from all over the District and colleagues in Washington have asked me to stay in the fight," Herrell said, adding, "All options will be on the table--so stay tuned."

OR-06: A local judge on Thursday allowed Mike Erickson's lawsuit against Democratic Rep.-elect Andrea Salinas to proceed, but the Republican's legal team is hedging whether he'd try to prevent Salinas from taking office or stop at demanding hundreds of thousands in damages over what he claims was a dishonest ad.

Attorneys General and Secretaries of State

PA-AG: The Philadelphia Inquirer's Chris Brennan takes a look at what could be a crowded 2024 contest to serve as attorney general of this major swing state, a post that Democrat Josh Shapiro will hold until he resigns to become governor. Shapiro will be able to nominate a successor for the GOP-led state Senate to approve, but there's little question that the new attorney general will be someone who agrees to not run in two years.

On the Democratic side, former state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale tells Brennan that he's interested in running; DePasquale was last on the ballot in 2020 when he lost to far-right Rep. Scott Perry 53-47 in the Harrisburg-based 10th District. The paper also reports that former Philadelphia Public Defender Keir Bradford-Grey, Bucks County Solicitor Joe Khan, and state Rep. Jared Solomon are all thinking about it. A PAC began fundraising for Bradford-Grey all the way back in April, though she hasn't publicly committed to anything.

Finally, Brennan mentions outgoing Rep. Conor Lamb, who lost this year's Senate primary to John Fetterman, as a possibility. Lamb recently drew attention when he announced he had accepted a job at a prominent law firm in Philadelphia, which is at the opposite side of the commonwealth from his suburban Pittsburgh base, while adding, "I hope to return to public service one day, perhaps soon." Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer, who is running for re-election in 2023, is also name-dropped as a possible contender.

On the Republican corner, Brennan relays that former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain being recruited to run for attorney general by unnamed people even though his last bid went very badly. McSwain initially looked like a strong candidate for governor this year before Donald Trump castigated his appointee for not doing enough to advance the Big Lie and urged Republicans not to vote for him. McSwain's main ally, conservative billionaire Jeff Yass, later urged him to drop out in order to stop QAnon ally Doug Mastriano, but he didn't listen: McSwain took a distant third with just 16%, while Shapiro went on to beat Mastriano in a landslide.

Another Republican, state Rep. Craig Williams, says he's considering even though he's focused right now on being an impeachment manager as his party tries to remove Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner from office. (Solomon will be one of the Democrats defending Krasner at his January trial before the state Senate.) Brennan also mentions as possibilities former U.S. Attorney Scott Brady; state Rep. Natalie Mihalek; York County District Attorney David Sunday; and Westmoreland County District Attorney Nicole Ziccarelli.

The attorney general became an elected office in 1980, and Republicans had an iron grip on the job until Democrat Kathleen Kane finally broke their streak in 2012. Kane resigned in disgrace four years later, but Shapiro held the seat for his party even as Donald Trump was narrowly carrying the state and prevailed again in 2020.

Legislatures

WI State Senate: Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has scheduled the special election to succeed former Republican state Sen. Alberta Darling, whose resignation gives Democrats a chance to take away the GOP's new supermajority, to coincide with the April 4 statewide contest for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Evers' proclamation also makes it clear the contest for this seat, which is based in the suburbs and exurbs north of Milwaukee, will take place under the new legislative lines drawn up this year.

The new version of this seat would have backed Trump 52-47, according to Dave's Redistricting App. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson last month won the district 54-46, according to our calculations, while GOP gubernatorial nominee Tim Michels prevailed over Evers here by a smaller 52-48 spread.

The only notable candidate currently running to succeed Darling is Republican state Rep. Dan Knodl, who launched his bid on Tuesday. Prospective contenders have until Jan. 3 to file, and primaries would take place Feb. 21 if needed.

Mayors and County Leaders

Houston, TX Mayor: State Sen. John Whitmire announced all the way back in 2021 that he would compete in next fall's nonpartisan contest to succeed his fellow Democrat, termed-out Mayor Sylvester Turner, but Whitmire's Tuesday kickoff still made news for attracting a number of prominent Republican donors.

Whitmire has in his corner billionaire Tilman Fertitta, who also used the launch at the hotel he owns to attack Turner's leadership. (Paper City notes that Fertitta once hosted a fundraiser for Turner.) The state senator also has the backing of several donors whom the Houston Chronicle says funded Republican Alexandra del Moral Mealer's unsuccessful attempt to oust Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo last month, as well as local police unions. The kickoff was also attended by some notable local Democrats including Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who has clashed with Hidalgo, and fellow state Sen. Carol Alvarado.

Whitmire himself begins the campaign with a huge $9.5 million in his legislative account, though, the Chronicle says it's not clear how much of that he can use to run for mayor. He's been able to build up this sort of haul in part because he's had decades to fundraise. He was first elected to the state House all the way back in 1972, when Democrats were still the dominant party in Texas, and he won a promotion to the upper chamber in 1982.

Whitmire, who is the longest serving member of the state Senate, has remained a powerful figure even though he's spent most of that time in the minority. He has chaired the Criminal Justice Committee since 1993, which makes him the only Democrat to hold this sort of power. The Chronicle writes that, while he's usually supported his party's proposals, he's sided with the GOP on multiple votes against bail reform. The state senator last year also dismissed the lack of air conditioning units in jail cells by snarking, "Don't commit a crime and you can be cool at home."

The state senator, though, had no trouble winning renomination to his seat, which now takes up about a quarter of Houston, until this year when he faced a challenge from the left from nurse Molly Cook. Cook, who accused him of "running for two offices at once," lost 58-42, which was still Whitmire's closest showing since the early 1990s.

Whitmire currently faces three notable opponents in the race for the job that his former sister-in-law, Kathy Whitmire, held from 1982 to 1992. The field includes former Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, who attracted widespread attention in 2020 for implementing efforts to expand access to voting during the pandemic. Hollins has already called Whitmire's Democratic loyalties into question by reminding voters that he did not support Hidalgo during her competitive re-election fight.

The contest also includes former City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards, who took fifth in the 2020 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and would be the first Black woman to lead Houston. Rounding out the field is attorney Lee Kaplan, a first-time candidate who has done some self-funding. Kaplan and Edwards had about $700,000 and $720,000 on hand at the end of June, respectively, while Hollins had $940,000 to spend. All the candidates will compete on one nonpartisan ballot in November, and it would take a majority of the vote to avert a runoff the next month.