Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: As goes the swing voter, so goes the election—Part II

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.

New York Times:

‘Antihero’ or ‘Felon’: 11 Undecided Voters Struggle With How to See Trump Post-Verdict

Ben, you’re up. Can you explain why undecided?

Ben, 42, Texas, white, college adviser

A couple people have mentioned a massive judicial conspiracy of everybody going after him. OK, let’s talk conspiracy math here. The sheer number of people who would have to be working together to get something like this working just boggles the mind. And have you ever tried to get four people to agree on what to order for pizza? I just don’t see this working out. And at the end of the day, OK, fine. OK, I’m going to side with Jonathan on this one, saying, what’s the big deal about bribing Stormy Daniels? But I want a president who’s going to be able to cover up a $130,000 bribe to Daniels. If he can’t pull that off, I’m not going to trust him with the nuclear football. This seems like such an easy thing for him to screw up. I’m kind of leaning toward Biden now.

Well, okay then. So long as it’s about policy.

From that story, five of the eleven are leaning Biden, 3 Trump, the other 3 RFK, Jr or won’t vote.

Democratic strategist @celindalake on the Trump convictions: Ds need more repetition, a louder echo chamber, responses to upcoming events (sentencing, appeal, convention) all through a "character matters" lens. Thanks @GregTSargent for this conversation. https://t.co/eeMa38lL6W

— Jill Lawrence (@JillDLawrence) June 5, 2024

NBC News:

Biden calls Trump a 'convicted felon' who 'snapped' after the 2020 election

The president also called Trump, who was found guilty last week in his New York criminal trial, "unhinged."

“It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict,” Biden told reporters at the White House last week.

Biden made similar remarks Monday, saying, "It's reckless and dangerous for anyone to say that’s rigged just because they don’t like” the outcome.

"Something snapped in this guy for real" after the 2020 election, Biden said. "It’s literally driving him crazy."

Biden also called Trump "unhinged."

(During impeachment) This should be decided at the ballot box! (He loses at the ballot box) (incites a violent mob to storm the capitol) If he broke any laws, that’s up to a jury to decide! (A jury decides he broke a ton of laws) This should be decided at the ballot box!

— Ben Wexler (@mrbenwexler) June 3, 2024

Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark:

The MAGA Education of Larry Hogan The Senate candidate learns the hard way that his party no longer supports the rule of law.

The MAGA hardliners, who don’t represent most of us but are determined nevertheless to be the boss of all of us, are lying in wait. The Senate is particularly easy to muck up and bog down, and they are ready. Ready to block Democratic nominees, legislative priorities, and funds for “partisan lawfare,” which is how they describe bringing charges against Trump. They claim the Biden administration is making “a mockery of the rule of law” and they want revenge: “We are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart.”

As Trump would say, unbelievable. Projection like we’ve never seen.

Hogan’s crash course in MAGA-style politics has gotten a lot more intense in the last few days. He may have a feeling he’s not in Maryland anymore, and he’d be right. Planet MAGA is home for the GOP these days—and Larry Hogan is an alien.

Stephen Collinson/CNN:

Why Biden’s escalation on Trump guilty verdict is so significant

Other Democratic officials have used such rhetoric. But the phrase took on greater force coming from the mouth of the president himself. While Republicans have rallied around Trump since his conviction, it remains unclear how the verdict will go down in swing states where the shift in a few thousand votes could decide November’s election.

Biden’s remark was yet another stunning turn in an election entangled in Trump’s multiple legal threats. It came on a day when the first family was embroiled in its own extraordinary courtroom drama as Biden’s son Hunter became the first child of a sitting president to go on trial. The younger Biden has pleaded not guilty to charges of buying and possessing a gun illegally while addicted to or abusing drugs. He also faces a tax trial in September.

Last week, Biden noted that Trump had been convicted on 34 felony counts and said it was “reckless … dangerous … and irresponsible” for his opponent to say the verdict was rigged. Presidential remarks in off-camera fundraisers can often serve as a test bed for rhetoric that later emerges in public events. But Biden’s sharpened tone will certainly lead to accusations by the Trump campaign that the former president’s conviction came after a process of political weaponization of the justice system.

The fake elector scandal has racked up indictment totals unseen since Watergate and Iran-Contra: - Arizona: 18 were indicted - Georgia: 19 were indicted - Michigan: 16 were indicted - Nevada: Six were indicted - Wisconsin: Three were indicted this morning https://t.co/OdsH8nK4nu

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen) June 4, 2024

John Stoehr/The Editorial Board:

Will a felony conviction hurt Trump? Yes! Just listen to him!

The man's practically howling in pain, but some people still wonder

For the most part, all this wondering comes from very clever people who are paid very handsome salaries to wonder aloud about things, even in the face of plain reality that should end all the wondering.

I’m talking, of course, about members of the Washington press and pundit corps, even some liberals, who want more than anything else to get your attention. They can’t do that as well as they would like if the contours of the election align with normal common sense. It’s normally very bad for a convicted felon to run for president, but it’s more fun, and perhaps more lucrative, to pretend the opposite could be normal.

Political reporters are probably more bored than cynical. Trump never changes and he’s been campaigning nonstop since 2015. The main difference is while he was fascist-lite then, he’s full-on fascist now. That’s not enough, though, and when political reporters get bored, they assume everyone else is bored, too. That assumption, however, should be seen as a choice of convenience. Assumed boredom is a credible rationale for believing spin about a felony conviction working in Trump’s favor, instead of what it really is, which is a painful wound.

💥Netanyahu is cornered: Families of hostages asked Knesset members for their signatures– and 70 (out of 120) joined a call asking Netanyahu to accept the hostage deal. pic.twitter.com/V5u8dPKppT

— Noga Tarnopolsky נגה טרנופולסקי نوغا ترنوبولسكي (@NTarnopolsky) June 4, 2024

Alon Pinkas:

Israel Is in Flames, Israelis Are Dying, While Netanyahu Polishes a Speech for Sycophants in Congress

Analysts of Benjamin Netanyahu keep attributing grand plans to the Israeli prime minister. But there is no plan – just a desperate, incompetent leader, manipulating a once-thriving country, who couldn't care less about the hostages or their families

Northern Israel is burning, four hostages taken alive by Hamas on October 7 have been confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Forces, he is clueless as to what happens next and refuses to engage in any deliberations on postwar frameworks. But don't worry, while his country is in flames, Nero Claudius Caesar Netanyahu is busy picking out a tie for his sanctimonious, recklessly unnecessary, patently divisive showcase speech in the U.S. Congress later this month.

Now that @netanyahu has signaled he won't come June 13, getting a date before Aug recess is increasingly difficult, per sources familiar. House is in June 25-28 and then 3 weeks in July, one of which is the NATO summit in D.C. Johnson said in closed GOP meeting this AM that…

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 4, 2024

Matt Robison on the effect of the Trump felony conviction:

Hunter Biden’s wife lashes out at former Trump aide during court appearance: ‘Piece of s—‘

Melissa Cohen Biden – the wife of Hunter Biden – lashed out at a former Trump White House aide during a Tuesday appearance in court to support her husband, who has been charged with three felonies stemming from a 2018 firearm purchase.

Her remarks were directed at Garrett Ziegler, who was sued by Hunter Biden last year for publishing the contents of his infamous laptop.

Approaching Ziegler at the trial, Biden's wife pointed her finger at him and said, "You have no right to be here, you Nazi piece of s---."

Ziegler, who leads the nonprofit group Marco Polo, did not respond to Melissa Cohen Biden's remarks at the time.

Ziegler confirmed the encounter, which was first reported by NBC News, and told the outlet, "It's sad I've been sitting here the whole time and haven’t approached anyone."

EX-TRUMP AIDE SUED BY HUNTER BIDEN WANTS BIDEN-APPOINTED JUDGE OFF LAPTOP CASE, FEARS '2020 ALL OVER AGAIN'

"For the record, I’m not a Nazi, I’m a believer in the U.S. Constitution. I haven’t said one thing to them," Ziegler added.

Regarding Ziegler's encounter with Melissa Cohen Biden, Marco Polo wrote in a tweet, "The wife has the same level of impulse control as Hunter. To the family bringing decency back, anyone who is perceived as opposition is a Nazi."

"Truly contemptible liars & scoundrels," the group added. "We don’t respond in kind in the back of a courtroom, because we’re gentlemen who do not berate women."

Hunter Biden's lawsuit against Ziegler, which was filed last September, alleged that he had violated federal computer laws by hacking into the now-infamous laptop that was left in a Delaware repair shop in 2019.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, accuses Ziegler and Marco Polo, as well as 10 unidentified associates, of spreading "tens of thousands of emails, thousands of photos, and dozens of videos and recordings" that were considered "pornographic" on the laptop.

Marco Polo is a self-described nonprofit research group "exposing corruption & blackmail." The website has several sections pertaining to Biden’s laptop, including his emails, text messages, phone calls and financial data that culminates into a massive "online searchable database."

In the 14-page civil complaint, Biden’s attorneys allege that Ziegler is a "zealot" who has unleashed a "sustained, unhinged and obsessed campaign" against the entire Biden family for over two years and "spent countless hours accessing, tampering with, manipulating, altering, copying and damaging computer data" with his associates.

"While Defendant Ziegler is entitled to his extremist and counterfactual opinions, he has no right to engage in illegal activities to advance his right-wing agenda," attorneys Abbe Lowell, Bryan Sullivan, Zachary Hansen and Paul Salvaty wrote.

HUNTER BIDEN’S DRUG USE: WHAT THE PROSECUTION NEEDS TO PROVE AND WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW

In March, Ziegler sought to have a judge who was appointed by President Biden removed from the case. He argued that the outcome of the lawsuit not only has implications for the congressional impeachment inquiry, but also the 2024 election.

In a recent motion in U.S. District Court for Central California, Ziegler's attorney, Robert Tyler, requested that Judge Hernán D. Vera recuse himself from the case because his "impartiality will be reasonably questioned." Vera made donations to Joe Biden’s campaign for president in 2020. He also was appointed to his position by President Biden just three months before Hunter Biden filed the lawsuit against Ziegler and one day after then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced a presidential impeachment inquiry had commenced in Congress.

Tyler emphasized that he is not arguing against Vera's integrity and assumes the court system assigned the judge to Hunter Biden's lawsuit at random. 

"But there’s something called forum shopping that lawyers do," he told Fox News Digital at the time. "And here’s a case where our client resides in Illinois, he has no contact with California such that California should have any jurisdiction over this case, yet Hunter Biden’s lawyers filed this lawsuit to the Central District of California just shortly after Judge Vera’s appointed."

Hunter Biden's lawsuit seeks a jury trial based on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California's Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act. 

Ziegler’s attorney counters that the former Trump aide and associates "prepared a credible investigative report," known as the "Report on the Biden Laptop," not to wage a campaign against Hunter Biden, but to "expose instances of foreign compromise" by Hunter Biden and his father, President Biden, which are "matters of great public interest and concern." In preparing the report, Ziegler relied on copies of files from the laptop that "had already been widely circulated since at least October 2020 to numerous media outlets," Tyler wrote.

The repair shop owner turned the laptop over to the FBI on or around October 2019 after discovering its "disturbing materials," Tyler's motion noted.

The motion stated that Ziegler’s website with the Biden laptop report has been accessed by over 5 million Americans since its inception in June 2023 and more than 8 million Americans have accessed the free digital version of the report made available in November 2022.

Fox News' Jamie Joseph and Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.

The GOP’s Texas platform is bonkers. You should see the rest of the party

Sure, the Republican Party is overwhelmingly backing a convicted felon, confirmed sexual assailant, business fraud, insurrectionist, and (alleged!) documents thief whose most endearing personality trait is his rascally inability to stop quoting Hitler, but have you seen what’s going on in Texas lately?

The Lone Star State, which has continually returned a criminally indicted attorney general to statewide office, is now looking to be a laboratory of new, exciting ideas, like “what if we shove all these unlabeled lab chemicals in a Hefty bag, light it on fire, and then stand around and see what happens?”

To read the Texas GOP’s recently passed, deeply un-American platform is to hate it—particularly if you’re a progressive ... or a moderate … or a moderate conservative who either has, knows someone with, or knows of someone with a womb.

As Karen Tumulty wrote in The Washington Post:

Just a few of the platform’s planks: that the Bible should be taught in public schools, with chaplains on hand “to counsel and give guidance from a traditional biblical perspective based on Judeo-Christian principles.” That noncitizens who are legal residents of this country should be deported if they are arrested for participating in a protest that turns violent. That name changes to military bases should be reversed to “publicly honor the southern heroes.” That doctors who perform abortions should be charged with homicide. That the United States should withdraw from the United Nations and that the international organization should be removed from U.S. soil.

Holy Mike Johnson! It’s enough to make you swallow your own tongue, assuming it wasn’t cut out years ago by your local Christofascists for uttering the sacred name of Barron Trump. What’s next, thought crimes? It won’t be long before Republicans seek to jail ordinary Americans for looking at pornographic images of consenting adults—or for not looking at pornographic images of Hunter Biden. (If Covenant Eyes hasn’t yet tweaked its filter to accommodate lurid photos of Hunter Biden, it really doesn’t understand its audience and should probably just shut down now.) 

And that’s not all! If you’re gobsmackingly horrified by the above, well, you should see what they want to do to democracy in Texas.

As reported in the Texas Tribune:

Perhaps the most consequential plank calls for a constitutional amendment to require that candidates for statewide office carry a majority of Texas’ 254 counties to win an election, a model similar to the U.S. electoral college.

Under current voting patterns, in which Republicans routinely win in the state’s rural counties, such a requirement would effectively end Democrats’ chances of winning statewide office. In 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott carried 235 counties, while Democrat Beto O’Rourke carried most of the urban, more populous counties and South Texas counties. Statewide, Abbott won 55% of the popular vote while O’Rourke carried 44%

So to review, Texas Republicans wants to jail abortion doctors while ensuring Greg Abbott can’t possibly lose the governorship, no matter how many killer mutant Sea-Monkeys he pours into the Rio Grande.

All of that is suitably horrifying, of course—and Texas Republicans are admittedly pushing the envelope further than other state parties—but Republican extremism and anti-democratic thinking have been running rampant of late, in case you somehow hadn’t noticed. And that’s a big opportunity for big-D Democrats.

First and foremost, the GOP is a party that embraces a literal felon who faces three more felony cases, all of which are arguably stronger than his first one.

It’s a party that, in newly red redoubts like Ohio, is brazenly attempting to thwart the will of voters on reproductive rights, vowing to do “everything in [its] power” to uphold restrictive abortion laws. 

It’s a party that’s rushed to pass new restrictive voting laws in response to Trump’s insistence that the racist, eternally demagoguing, pro-Putin candidate deserves to win every time.

It’s a party that, to a startling degree, has embraced and protected Putin, as well as openly autocratic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban

It’s a party that, post-Dobbs, has eagerly passed new, restrictive abortion laws, even as it tries to pretend it’s moderate on the issue. 

It’s a party that keeps hinting it will take an axe to Social Security and Medicare, which remain vital to the well-being of millions of Americans.

It’s a party that elevates ambulant absurdities like South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s dog killing.

And it’s a party that’s apparently eager to ratify every fascist scheme that Trump wants to inflict on the American people. 

In other words, as Hopium Chronicles’ Simon Rosenberg tweeted, the current iteration of the Republican Party is “the ugliest thing any of us have ever seen.”

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg we’re about to crash into at full speed if we’re not careful.

In 2020, the GOP neglected to release a platform in advance of its national convention, perhaps reasoning that Trump’s surpassing charm and wit were all that they needed—or perhaps worried that Trump wouldn’t read it and would wildly contradict its key planks. Or, more likely, they were worried that the GOP’s awful policies—psst, if you want to live a long, healthy life, don’t live in a red state—would actually shake people loose from their tribal fealties long enough to notice that they prefer progressive policies. (Which, to be clear, most of them do. Turns out millions of non-billionaires actually support raising taxes on billionaires. Go figure.)

Of course, despite ample evidence that the electorate as a whole has no use for GOP policy prescriptions—on abortion and a range of other topics—Republicans across the country (not just in Texas) somehow can’t resist saying the quiet parts out loud. 

I say we hand them a megaphone and encourage them to Trump front and center as often as possible. Because every time he talks, an angel vomits into a pail, and there’s only so much mess God is willing to put up with, even from his chosen one.

Daily Kos’ Postcards to Swing States campaign is back, and I just signed up to help. Please join me! Let’s do this, patriots! Democracy won’t defend itself.

Every day brings a new prognostication that is making President Joe Biden's campaign operatives worry or freak out. Is Donald Trump running away with the election? No. Not even close.

Johnson lays out strategy to crack down on DOJ ‘weaponization’ against Trump

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., revealed a "three-pronged" strategy for cracking down on the alleged weaponization of the Department of Justice (DOJ) in a closed-door meeting with House Republicans on Tuesday.

It comes as former President Trump faces criminal charges in two federal cases led by special counsel Jack Smith, as well as charges in Fulton County, Georgia, and a criminal conviction on 34 counts in Manhattan criminal court.

Three people, two GOP lawmakers and a source familiar with the plan, told Fox News Digital that Johnson’s strategy to rein in the "weaponization" of the DOJ is broadly focused on three pillars: oversight, appropriations and legislation.

Johnson updated Trump on the plan ahead of announcing it to his House GOP conference, Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital.

TRUMP GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS IN NEW YORK CRIMINAL TRIAL

Johnson confirmed his approach during a press conference just after the meeting.

"We’re going to do everything we can, everything within our scope of our responsibility in the Congress, to address it appropriately. And I announced this morning to our conference, we're working on a three-pronged approach," Johnson told reporters.

"We’re looking at various approaches to what can be done here through the appropriations process, through the legislative process, through bills that will be advancing through our committees and put on the floor for passage and through oversight. All those things will be happening vigorously."

WHAT’S NEXT FOR TRUMP LEGALLY? WHICH CASE MIGHT COME UP BEFORE ELECTION DAY?

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told Fox News Digital that he understood Johnson’s timeline for his strategy to include both the next six months, while the House GOP still holds its razor-thin majority, and next year, assuming they keep the chamber from flipping to Democratic control.

Norman paraphrased Johnson’s message to Republicans, "It can’t just be words…It’s got to have some action to it, and that’s where legislation comes in. Meaningless resolutions…that’s words. You’ve got to go beyond that."

The South Carolina Republican said Johnson did not raise the issue of a President Biden impeachment, however, despite Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s threats to force a vote on the matter.

Jackson said Johnson also pointed out that the chairs of the relevant committees – like Oversight, Judiciary and Appropriations – were already exploring ways to crack down on the DOJ.

"It’s not going to happen instantaneously. This stuff has to be put together and vetted by the conference and then put on the floor, so on and so forth," Jackson said. "His point was, we’re doing everything we can."

He said Trump is "in the loop on what the plan for the House is."

NY V. TRUMP: HOUSE JUDICIARY INVESTIGATES BRAGG PROSECUTOR WHO HELD SENIOR ROLE IN BIDEN DOJ

Jackson suggested Johnson was looking at a shorter timeline but said the speaker did not give specifics on the matter. 

"I know there are people that are anxious, myself included, to see something happen. So it’ll be soon," Jackson said.

Johnson's comments come the same day that Attorney General Merrick Garland is on Capitol Hill testifying before the House GOP-led Judiciary Committee.

Fox News Digital reached out to the DOJ for comment.              

‘Remain vigilant’: Pence nonprofit urges conservatives not to ‘back away’ from these key policy victories

FIRST ON FOX: Advancing American Freedom, a nonprofit that advocates for conservative values and policy proposals, released a memo on Tuesday touting key "triumphs" from the 2020 RNC platform and encouraging conservatives to continue fighting to defend those key issues.

"The 2016 Republican National Convention platform, retained in 2020, was the most principled conservative platform in nearly 40 years," Advancing American Freedom, founded by former Vice President Mike Pence in 2021, says in Tuesday's memo.

"As always, liberal Republicans want to water down many of the Conservative Movements’ favorite planks. Grassroots conservatives must remain vigilant in defense of a strong conservative platform."

The memo outlines key points from the platform on abortion that calls for protecting "Human Dignity and the family."

MIKE PENCE ACCUSES BIDEN OF IMPEACHMENT HYPOCRISY AMID ISRAEL ARMS THREAT

"We assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed," the memo reads, adding that the Republican Party must continuee to "oppose the use of public funds to perform or promote abortion or to fund organizations, like Planned Parenthood, so long as they provide or refer for elective abortions or sell fetal body parts."

Republicans and pro-life groups helped successfully lobbied to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, marking one of the most consequential conservative political victories in decades, which Pence told Fox News in 2023 was a "new beginning for life."

US TROOPS COULD PAY PRICE IF NATO ALLIES DON'T MAKE MAJOR CHANGE, FORMER VP'S GROUP WARNS

The memo also touches on IVF treatment and calls on Republicans to "oppose federal funding for harvesting embryos and call for a ban on human cloning."

"Marriage between one man and one woman is the foundation for a free society," the memo states as a highlight from the 2020 platform. "We… condemn the Supreme Court’s lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges."

The memo goes on to highlight conservative positions on "taxes and trade" as well as foreign policy.

"Republicans consider the establishment of a pro-growth tax code a moral imperative," the memo says. "We propose to level the international playing field by lowering the corporate tax rate to be on a par with, or below, the rates of other industrial nations."

The memo focuses on Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan when it comes to foreign policy, saying that conservatives "will not accept any territorial change in Eastern Europe imposed by force" when it comes to Ukraine while also reaffirming "unequivocal support for Israel and rejected two-state solutions."

 "The United States… will help Taiwan defend itself against Chinese aggression," the memo says. "As a loyal friend of America, Taiwan has merited our strong support, including free trade agreement status, the timely sale of defensive arms… and full participation in the World Health Organization… and other multilateral institutions."

Republicans will gather in mid-July in the key swing state of Wisconsin to hold their 2024 GOP Convention.

"Time-honored principles that have delivered enormous prosperity for America should continue to drive policy as the platform articulated in 2016 and 2020," said AAF Chairman Marc Short told Fox News Digital.

"Some in the conservative movement are attempting to move away from these principles, instead chasing big government solutions that resemble the agenda of the left.  Conservatives must not back away from what has created a winning agenda for the American people which is focusing on fiscal responsibility, a free economy, American leadership on the world stage, and defending family values, including the right to life."

Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene threatens to force vote on impeaching Biden over border crisis

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on Monday threatened to trigger a privileged resolution to impeach President Biden this week over his handling of the border, in what she describes as the "permanent invasion of the United States."

Greene said she contemplated triggering the resolution on Monday but said she decided to speak with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., first.

"I can force a vote this week," Greene told reporters. "But you know what, I was gonna do it tonight but I decided I’m gonna go talk to our Republican elected Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, that I actually voted for [who] claims he supports Trump, and ask him if he’s gonna do something about it."

Greene said she plans to talk about her privileged impeachment resolution in a closed-door GOP conference meeting this week. 

BIDEN IS SAID TO BE FINALIZING PLANS FOR MIGRANT LIMITS AS PART OF A US-MEXICO BORDER CLAMPDOWN

The move comes as Biden plans to roll out an executive order that would crack down on illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. The order is expected to shut down asylum requests at the border if the average number of daily encounters reaches 2,500 at ports of entry. 

"When are we going to impeach Joe Biden"? Greene asked. "I've got articles of impeachment ready to go, privileged resolution. I'm happy to force everyone up here to vote because that's what we should be doing."

"Because here's Joe Biden, he's going to come out with his garbage executive orders on Wednesday, his permanent invasion of the United States of America plan where he sets a limit, a weekly limit. Here you go, everybody. You get to come in."

She railed against a report that shows that since 2022, over 350,000 asylum cases filed by migrants were closed by the U.S. government on the basis that those who filed did not have a criminal record or were not deemed a threat to the U.S.

"So, you know what? Republicans need to grow a spine. They need to learn that this is our country, our America that we know is gone, because Democrats are willing to put every single one of their political opponents in prison."

IMMIGRATION JUDGES RAMP UP PACE CLOSING DEPORTATION CASES, BUT BACKLOG EXPLODES AS BORDER CRISIS GROWS

If Greene were to trigger the resolution on Tuesday or Wednesday, it would force a vote within two legislative days – likely with a procedural vote coming first on a motion to table or refer to a committee. This would be procedurally similar to what happened with the privileged resolution by Rep. Boebert, R-Colo., to impeach Biden in June of last year. It would also be procedurally similar to what happened to her resolution to oust Johnson last month. 

The vote could happen immediately after Green's resolution is triggered, while it could also be put off until later in the same day, the next day, or even until the House comes back next week as the chamber is leaving town on Wednesday to allow a congressional delegation to go to Normandy for the anniversary of D-Day. In the case the motion to table or refer were to fail, the House would then vote on a privileged resolution to impeach Biden immediately. 

It does not appear likely at this time that the votes are there to impeach Biden.

Greene said if Johnson does not move to impeach Biden she will try and force the matter.

"And if he says he won't bring an impeachment resolution against him, I'll just drop 'em on the floor," Green said. 

"And then we can vote and see where everybody stands. So I'm mad, I'm mad…my people at home are mad. Everybody across this country are furious. We don't want a banana republic. We want an actual legitimate government. We want a real justice system. We don't have one."

Fox News' Tyler Olson contributed to this report.

The Downballot: The biggest supreme court races of 2024 (transcript)

It's right there in the name of the show, so yeah, of course we're gonna talk about downballot races on this week's episode of "The Downballot"! Specifically, we drill down into the top contests for attorney general and state supreme court taking place all across the country this year. Democrats and liberals are playing defense in Montana, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, but they have the chance to make gains in many states, including Michigan, Arizona, Ohio, and even Texas.

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also recap Tuesday's runoffs in the Lone Star State, where a GOP congressman barely hung on against an odious "gunfluencer." They also dissect a new Supreme Court ruling out of South Carolina that all but scraps a key weapon Black voters have used to attack gerrymandering. And they preview New Jersey's first primaries in a post-"county line" world.

Subscribe to "The Downballot" wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. New episodes come out every Thursday morning!

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

David Beard: Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.

David Nir: And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. “The Downballot” is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency from Senate to city council. You can subscribe to “The Downballot” wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode.

Beard: Let's dive into today's episode. What are we talking about?

Nir: Well, we are recapping Texas runoffs, where a Republican congressman survived by the skin of his teeth, as did the GOP speaker of the state House, but there is still a major blood-letting going on in the state. Then we are discussing a new Supreme Court ruling that has once again undermined the cause of fighting against gerrymandering. And then we have more primaries coming up next week. We are previewing a top race in New Jersey as a table-setter for the month of June.

Then on our deep dive, we are discussing some of our absolute favorite types of races here at “The Downballot.” We are covering the most important contests for state Attorney General and state Supreme Court across the country. These are the sorts of races that you need to learn about so that you can tell all your friends about them. We have a ton to cover on this episode, so let's get rolling.

Nir: Well, we wrapped up May with a few runoffs down in Texas, and we need to recap some of the top results.

Beard: Yes. Now, the Tuesday after Memorial Day is probably not the best day to hold an election, but Texas has never been accused of making voting easy, so here we are nonetheless. Now in Texas’s 23rd district, that's a district that stretches from El Paso to San Antonio, Representative Tony Gonzales is an incumbent Republican. He really, really narrowly defeated his primary opponent, gun influencer — whatever that is — Brandon Herrera, by just 407 votes. That's less than a 1.5% margin.

Herrera is really, really far out there, very far right. He's mocked veteran suicide. He's mocked the Holocaust, even Barron Trump. You know you're getting too far out there when you're mocking Trumps because that's the one thing that's supposed to be off-limits. But despite that, he almost knocked Gonzales off, but Gonzales held on.

Nir: Yeah, Donald Trump didn't weigh in on this race. Maybe if Herrera had managed to shut up about his son, he would have, because that clearly would've been a difference-maker.

Beard: And Gonzales had called him a neo-Nazi. He'd bashed the other congressional members of the Freedom Caucus who'd come out and supported Herrera. Gonzales said, "It's my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I served with some real scumbags," which I can't disagree with, but that's his own party, so you think he'd be a little nicer about it.

Now, Gonzales's side heavily, heavily outspent Herrera's, so it's very easy to imagine a less crazy far-right person primarying Gonzales next time, and him either losing in the primary or retiring ahead of 2026.

Nir: I could see someone just as crazy as Herrera, if not Herrera himself, doing it. I mean 407 votes. Now, yeah, like you said, right after Memorial Day turnout is very low; a weird electorate, not the usual electorate that you see for a primary. But Gonzales represents a pretty conservative district that Republicans helped gerrymander to make it redder. So he's very likely to win in November. But after that, I'd be pretty surprised if he comes back for a further term beyond that one.

Beard: Honestly, if Herrera had just not attacked Barron Trump, there's every chance Trump might've endorsed him and he would've won. So I could very easily imagine either Herrera or someone else winning this in 2026.

Nir: So the other big set of races in Texas were a whole batch of Republican runoffs for the statehouse. A whole bunch of Republican incumbents were in jeopardy because of various vendettas by major figures in their own party, particularly Attorney General Ken Paxton and Governor Greg Abbott. But somehow Speaker Dade Phelan managed to survive in a huge surprise; he defeated fellow Republican David Covey by also just under 1.5 points.

Covey had actually led Phelan 46 to 43 in the first round of voting, which was way back in early March. So this really did feel like an upset, but almost all of the other Republican incumbents in the House who were on the ballot on Tuesday were not as lucky as Phelan. Six of the other seven lost. That's on top of nine who lost outright in March in the first round of voting.

Beard: Now, the interesting thing here is that there were two different operations underway going after some of these incumbent Republicans. There was Governor Greg Abbott, who was spending a lot of money targeting Republicans who opposed his plan to give taxpayer money to private schools, causing it to fail. Attorney General Ken Paxton was on a revenge tour against the Republicans who had voted to impeach him on corruption charges last year. There was a lot of overlap between those two groups, but it wasn't universal.

Now, Abbott was already declaring victory for his school voucher plan claiming on Tuesday night that the legislature now has enough votes to pass school choice because of all of these primary defeats of Republicans. Of course, there are elections in November and it's not clear the exact makeup of how many Democrats might defeat some of these Republicans to make that not the case.

Nir: Yeah, it's absolutely not surprising to me at all that Greg Abbott was counting his chickens immediately on runoff night. It's not entirely clear whether Democrats can flip enough seats held by pro-voucher Republicans to thwart the Abbott voucher agenda, but it's certainly possible, especially if Democrats have a good year in Texas, which is also possible.

So yeah, let's maybe wait until this thing called “elections” happens. As for Paxton, he immediately threatened any Republican who might vote for Phelan to return as Speaker next year. Phelan was largely in Paxton's crosshairs as opposed to Abbott's. Phelan had overseen the impeachment vote, but he also wasn't especially aggressive in pushing Abbott's voucher plan either. So I'm sure Abbott wouldn't mind seeing him replaced.

It's an open question as to what's going to happen next year. It certainly seems like Phelan does have a lot of supporters in the statehouse, but this is one of just many state legislatures across the country where Republicans are in bitter disarray and there's huge infighting over who should actually lead them. I think we're going to see many more messy battles come January,

Beard: And to be clear, Phelan is no moderate. This is not a case of the moderate caucus in the Texas Republican Party.

Nir: Yeah, that's funny.

Beard: Growing or losing, there's not really a moderate caucus at all. Phelan is very much his own man. He has his own opinions about Paxton: he is this corrupt guy, and so we should impeach him. He didn't feel like he should push through the school voucher plan over a lot of Republican's objections. And for that, Abbott and particularly Paxton, don't like him because he won't do what they say, and so that's why he might not be Speaker again.

Nir: Moving on from Tuesday's runoffs, we need to discuss the recent big Supreme Court ruling out of South Carolina. To catch you up on this one, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that said that South Carolina Republicans had engaged in illegal racial gerrymandering in drawing their new congressional map. So by way of background, Republicans had moved tens of thousands of Black voters from the 1st district, which had seen competitive elections in both 2018 and 2020 to the dark blue 6th district, and they did so knowing that Black voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic.

But thanks to prior Supreme Court precedents that were actually pushed by conservatives decades ago, it's generally impermissible to divide voters by race this way. So something has changed in the past few decades, and I'll tell you what it was. This new opinion was authored by Sam Alito, who of course has been in the news lately for the insurrectionist flags that just somehow seemed to keep getting flown at his various homes, but he can't do anything about it. I mean, God, you really got to feel for this guy. I find this happens to me all the time. You too, right?

Beard: Yeah. I hate it when others in my household fly insurrectionist flags. It's such a common problem.

Nir: So Alito, who totally is not an insurrectionist, and his fellow conservatives did something really extreme with this ruling, which is that they rejected the findings of fact by the trial court, and this is very rare. Speaking in broad terms, courts make two types of assessments. They determine the facts of the case, and then they apply the law to those facts.

Normally, an appellate court sticks to reviewing the law, and there's good reason for that. It's the trial court judges who are actually in the courtroom. They're the ones hearing testimony from witnesses, judging credibility, and taking in all the million intangible things that simply can't be conveyed by a transcript or a written opinion.

But Alito said nope. He said the court was wrong in how it adduced the facts. He said that legislatures must be entitled to a presumption of good faith when they draw maps, which essentially makes it impossible for anyone to ever prove racial gerrymandering again. If legislators are entitled to a presumption of good faith, then as election law expert Rick Hasen put it, you basically need smoking gun evidence to have any chance of overturning that.

And these Republican lawmakers, they might be crazy, but they aren't stupid, and they read these Supreme Court opinions and they know exactly what they should shut up about or not send emails about, and they're going to make it almost impossible for anyone to ever find the kind of extremely burdensome evidence that you would need to prove a racial gerrymandering case ever again.

So the idea of a racial gerrymandering claim that you can't divide voters by race is something that conservatives on the court had really come up with decades ago. And Rick Hasen noted something interesting about the history of these cases. He pointed out that in the 1980s, it was white Republicans who were trying to undo newly created Black districts in the South that the DOJ was pushing states to create, under the DOJ's interpretation of the Voting Rights Act.

But over the ensuing decades, Republicans took power throughout the South and they started using race as a proxy for partisanship, just like in this South Carolina case, in order to curtail Black voting power by cracking and packing Black voters to minimize their ability to elect Black Democrats. So Black voters started bringing racial gerrymandering cases and they had some success in knocking down some of these districts where Republicans had really cherry-picked and drawn lines based on voters race.

So it's really a very obvious and naked turnaround on the part of Alito and his fellow conservatives because this tool, these racial gerrymandering claims, were once very helpful to Republicans in striking down majority-black districts. Now it's been turned against them. And so the far-right conservatives on the Supreme Court want to scrap it. It really couldn't be more obvious, and it is yet another tool in the toolbox, that advocates for Black voting rights and for voting rights for people of color are simply going to be almost unable to use.

Beard: Yeah, and what we've seen pretty consistently with the Supreme Court is that it is not terribly interested in a lot of legal details and running through the exact way something should be done. It's interested in outcomes. The conservatives on the court want certain outcomes. They clearly wanted a specific outcome in this case to let Republicans have a freer hand to gerrymander and not have these restrictions around race.

And so they got to where they wanted to go by going into stuff like you talked about the facts of the trial court as opposed to the law because they wanted to get to the outcome. So they got to the outcome they wanted, even if it was a really ugly way to get there.

Now, one last topic we wanted to cover for our weekly hits. We're going to have a full June primary preview with Daily Kos Elections editor Jeff Singer next week. But there was one June 4th race that we wanted to highlight ahead of that, and that's New Jersey's 8th district where incumbent Democratic representative Rob Menendez is facing off against Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla.

Now, Bhalla is hoping that the ongoing trial against Senator Bob Menendez is going to drag down his son. Bhalla has said that voters should fire the "entitled son of corrupt Bob Goldbars Menendez." In response to that, the younger Menendez ran an ad saying, "My opponent wants to run against my father because he is scared to run against me. That's on him." So there's a lot of back and forth about, are you running against Bob Menendez? Are you running against Robert Menendez?

Of course, so Rob Menendez became a congressman, at least in part due to the fact that his father was Senator Bob Menendez. So now the fact that it's a downside is also going to affect him, in the way that it was an upside before. One other note is that there's a third candidate on the ballot, businessman Kyle Jasey. So conceivably, we could see one of these candidates win with less than 50% support, more likely Menendez who might be able to squeak through if some of the opposition votes are divided between the two candidates.

Nir: And also, of course, we have talked a lot on the show about New Jersey's county line where party-endorsed candidates would receive favorable placement on primary ballots. Of course, as “Downballot” listeners very well know, the county line is no more, as of Tuesday's primary, so that's going to affect Democratic primaries all up and down the ballot. And it's possible that it could have an impact here because Menendez ordinarily would've had that favorable placement.

In fact, he was on track. He got endorsed by all of the county Democratic parties in the 8th district, which is a deep blue district. So whoever wins the Democratic primary is definitely going to win in November. So it'll be a really, really interesting test.

The lawsuit to bring an end to the line was chiefly brought by Andy Kim in the Senate race, but of course, he no longer has any top-tier opponents. So it'll be really interesting if the major test case for it against an incumbent winds up happening in the district held by the son of the guy that Kim was looking to boot from Congress.

Beard: And if you remember, for everyone outside of New Jersey who maybe isn't super familiar with how the line worked or how it looked, Menendez would've been in this grouping with Joe Biden, with Andy Kim, with all these other incumbent Democrats in this line that the county party endorses and then Bhalla would've been in a different section without any of those fellow incumbents or very well-known names now like Andy Kim. So the fact that the line isn't there and they're just both listed for an office is a huge, huge difference, and we'll see if that knocks Menendez off come next week.

Nir: There are several other primaries in New Jersey taking place on Tuesday night, including in the race to succeed Andy Kim in the 3rd district. There are also primaries in other states including Montana, where there is an open seat, thanks to Matt Rosendale finally deciding to completely bail on Congress altogether. We will be recapping those next week, and as David Beard said, we will also be previewing the many, many additional primaries coming up in the rest of June with Jeff Singer next week.

That does it for our weekly hits. Coming up after the break, we are taking a deep dive far down the ballot into some of our favorite sorts of races. We are talking about attorneys general and state Supreme Courts who know that these are favorite topics here at “The Downballot.” But they don't get enough recognition, so we are going to be rounding up all of the top races that should be on your radar this year.

Nir: Today for our deep dive on “The Downballot,” we are talking about statewide elections below the top of the ticket that don't get as much attention as they deserve. Specifically, we are going to round up the top elections in 2024 for Attorneys General and state Supreme Court. Now, you might notice there's one category missing that we often talk a lot about at Daily Kos Elections, and that is Secretaries of State.

As you know, most elections for state office take place in midterm years. There are far fewer that happen simultaneously with presidential elections. And while there are a few Secretary of State elections on the ballot this year, none of them look like they're going to be particularly competitive in November. However, for Attorneys General, we have two major open seats in two super important swing states. So we are going to dive right in to talking about Pennsylvania.

Now in Pennsylvania, we have an open seat because of the Democratic governor — that's Josh Shapiro, who of course won in 2022 in huge fashion over far-right Republican lunatic Doug Mastriano. When he left the post of Attorney General to become governor, he appointed one of his deputies, Michelle Henry, in his place. But Henry declined to run for a full term, so that created the open seat that we have now, and Pennsylvania had primaries last month.

The Democrat who emerged as his party's nominee is a former statewide elected official, Eugene DePasquale. He used to be the state auditor. He also ran an expensive race for the US House after being termed out after two terms in the auditor's role.

Beard: Now the Republican nominee is York County District Attorney Dave Sunday. York County is a midsize county, sort of west of the main Philadelphia suburban counties, but certainly a little bit of a voter base. Now, Democrats are on a three-cycle winning streak for this office. They won it in 2012, 2016, even though Trump won the state, and then again in 2020, so they'll be looking to win it for a fourth straight term.

Nir: This is one of the most high-profile AG positions in the country, in part because of Pennsylvania's large size and also simply because Pennsylvania is a swing state. Shapiro really surged in prominence following the November 2020 elections when Donald Trump unleashed his Kraken trying to overturn the outcome of the election, and Shapiro heavily defended the state's elections in court.

He had also tangled a lot with Trump in the years before, but he got to stand up as a defender of democracy and also just made Donald Trump lose many, many times in court. He totally humiliated him. So it's very possible that the current incumbent, who is Henry, who is not seeking another term might play a similar role after this November, but Democrats very, very badly want to keep this job so that Republicans can't pull this kind of crap and potentially find an ally in the Attorney General's office after future elections.

Beard: And DePasquale is a good candidate. Obviously, he has won statewide before. That's what you want for an office like that. So I think that probably gives him a bit of a leg up, but this will certainly be very, very competitive into November.

Now, the other big Attorney General race that we're going to be focused on is in North Carolina. It's another open seat. Josh Stein is running for governor. That's the Democratic incumbent. So that leaves two Representatives who are going to be duking it out for the office. For the Democrats, that’s Representative Jeff Jackson, and for the Republicans, Representative Dan Bishop. Now Jackson is a freshman from the Charlotte area who won under the fair maps that North Carolina briefly had in 2022. He has since been redistricted out of a seat that he couldn’t ever possibly win, and so he decided to instead run for Attorney General, a statewide office that can't be gerrymandered.

Meanwhile, Dan Bishop is a far-right House Freedom Caucus member, really beloved by the Trumpist wing of the party. He'll be the standard bearer for all of that craziness. It should certainly be a very competitive race. Democrats have held the seat for quite a while. Stein, of course, has won it twice, and before that, Roy Cooper was the Attorney General for a number of years. So there's been a long streak of Democratic Attorneys General, which we'll be hoping to of course see continue with Jackson in November.

Nir: I’ve got to say, I'm a huge Jeff Jackson fan on a personal basis. He puts out this phenomenal newsletter totally for free. It's extremely well written and it gives insight both into his life as a member of Congress on the Hill and just the kind of day-to-day stuff that he deals with and sees, often stuff that doesn't make it into media reports. And he really shares things in a very clear and understandable way.

And then he also devotes some coverage to his race for Attorney General. So if you like our style of coverage on “The Downballot” of elections, you'd love his newsletter. And if you like congressional goings-on, you'd also love his newsletter. Definitely recommend it.

On a less fanboyish level, I will say that I think it's very possible that Republicans could live to regret redistricting Jackson out of his seat. I'm sure Democrats would have found a strong nominee regardless, but Jackson really cleared the field. He did have some opponents in the primary. They really did not run impressive campaigns.

And Bishop, meanwhile, isn't just a far-right nut job. He's the guy... Beard, I know I hardly need to remind you of this… who was the architect of North Carolina's infamous bathroom bill, the anti-trans "bathroom bill" that led to Governor Pat McCrory losing in 2016 to Roy Cooper, who of course as you noted was Stein's predecessor.

So I wonder if that kind of extremism might come back to haunt him. Also, we haven't yet really mentioned abortion, but you know abortion is going to play a big role, especially in North Carolina where Republicans did pass an abortion ban, thanks to that turncoat Democrat in the legislature. And Bishop, of course, is as crazy and extreme as they come on abortion.

Beard: Yeah, it seems like every Attorney General or state Supreme Court race that's in a red or purple state, we have a big like... And also abortion is a huge factor in this race for, of course, understandable reasons because for anybody who lives in North Carolina or Arizona that we're going to talk about, or Montana, which we're going to talk about, this is the main way to affect abortion rights in the state is some of these races. So that's of course going to come up again and again.

It is funny to think about how Bishop led to McCrory's defeat in 2016. He could very well lead to Jackson now becoming Attorney General if he loses that race. So maybe in a weird way, he is a bad luck charm for Republicans when you go to these competitive races and hopefully, it'll work out well for Jeff Jackson.

Nir: I should also mention that DePasquale in Pennsylvania has been emphasizing abortion as well. Their abortion rights are under much less threat. You have a Democratic governor, of course, who we just mentioned, Shapiro, who is not up for reelection until 2026. The statehouse is currently under Democratic control and also the state Supreme Court has a wide democratic majority.

But it's Pennsylvania. Republicans used to hold the governorship not all that long ago. They had a hammerlock in the legislature for years and years. They controlled the state Supreme Court, so you could imagine things going sideways for abortion rights in Pennsylvania. So yeah, that is going to be a top topic in every race, whether it's a slightly blue-leaning state or a straight-up swing state or a red-leaning state, it's going to be everywhere.

Beard: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's also a good reason to transition to the other races that we wanted to talk about, which is state Supreme Court races. And we're going to stay in North Carolina where there's a very important state Supreme Court race. Allison Riggs is an appointed justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court, appointed by Governor Cooper. She's going to be running for a full term. Her Republican opponent is Court of Appeals judge Jefferson Griffin, which I think is the most Republican judge name I've ever heard. Maybe for the South, I guess that's it. But Jefferson Griffin is just such a Republican judge name. It's wild.

So he's the GOP candidate, with Democrats holding the seat. If Riggs wins, that would maintain a five to two minority on the court, but it would keep the Democrats at their current two seats, and then obviously open up for gains when the Republican seats come up in future years. So it's very, very important to hold its seat not to go down to six to one.

Nir: Yeah, we have talked before on the show about the path back for Democrats in North Carolina. With the current far-right Supreme Court green-lighting gerrymandering, and with Republicans holding a hammerlock on the legislature, you got to win the governorship and you got to try to chart a path back to the majority on the state Supreme Court.

We talked about a five-year plan — not that kind of five-year plan, the good kind. Democrats could conceivably win a majority by 2028. We laid out this plan last year in case you're doing the math. So yeah, that was five years ahead. That is of the utmost importance because retaking that Supreme Court would allow the court to once again outlaw gerrymandering and create a fair and level playing field for the state legislature.

It starts by keeping this seat getting back to a majority on the state Supreme Court, which Democrats had as recently as 2022 is really only going to be possible if we can keep it at five-two and not go down to six-one.

Beard: Now, just before we leave North Carolina, I did want to flag there are a ton of competitive downballot statewide races here, not just the Attorney General race and the state Supreme Court race. We're not going to cover them right now, but there's a competitive Lieutenant Governor race. There's a competitive Commissioner of Labor race; there's a competitive Superintendent of Public Instruction race. North Carolina has a lot of statewide offices and a lot of them are very competitive. So if you're in North Carolina, keep your eyes peeled on all of those.

Nir: Sticking with state Supreme Courts, we're going to run through several other states as well. We also mentioned on the show previously, Arizona, which has different sorts of elections. These are retention elections for two conservative justices on the state Supreme Court there. That just means voters get to vote either yes or no, keep this person on the court, or declare the seat vacant and let the governor, who is Democrat Katie Hobbs, appoint a replacement.

Now retention elections — these are almost always won by incumbents. It's very rare for anything else to happen. However, in Arizona just a couple of years ago, a few lower court judges lost retention elections. So I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility of either Clint Bolick or Kathryn Hackett King losing in November, specifically because they were part of the court majority that upheld Arizona's Civil War era ban on almost all abortions.

Now, lawmakers, despite the fact that the legislature is run by Republicans, actually quickly convened and voted to repeal that ban. But I think that anger isn't going to fade over this issue. Abortion is going to remain the top issue in the state, especially because there's also going to be a ballot measure for an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. There was another abortion ban, less restrictive, but that the GOP passed in more recent years that would conceivably come back into play if this amendment doesn't pass in November.

And Beard, I was reading an article that came out just on Wednesday about abortion and state Supreme Courts in the Los Angeles Times by Faith Pinho. There was a quote that I thought was interesting from a professor at UNLV, Rebecca Gill, who said, "Usually, I would never put a dime on betting in favor of someone losing a retention election," speaking of Arizona. "But in this one, I'm actually kind of thinking it's a little bit more plausible."

Well, Professor Gill, I totally agree with you. I really do think it's plausible. Progressives are starting to mobilize to focus on these races. I think one of the difficulties is that you do have so much going on in Arizona. You have the presidency, for which Arizona is now a swing state. You have the Senate race, Ruben Gallego versus Kari Lake. You have the fights over the state legislature where Republicans hold just a tiny advantage in both chambers.

So the real fight I think will be for attention, but I don't think it'll cost that much money to run good campaigns because it's not like you have to fund a whole candidate and their staff and find someone to run. All you have to do is run negative ads, say vote no on retention, and end of story.

Beard: Yeah, I think there are two main things that you need for a retention election to potentially result in not retaining that person who's in office. And that's one, you need an issue that people care enough about, and two, it is heard enough about that even voters who are not tuned into politics are aware of it and what happened.

And I think abortion is something that definitely meets that threshold. We saw in previous decades that same-sex marriage was something that sort of permeated enough through regular voters who don't pay attention to the day-to-day ins and outs of politics, that it became an issue in some retention elections in other states. So I think abortion definitely rises to that level.

And then you also need voters to be enough on the side against the judge in sufficient numbers to then obviously vote them down because you're always going to lose some really low-information voters who just don't know enough to do anything other than check retain because they're like, "I don't know, they're judges, they're in office, sure." They're always going to have some of those voters. And so you have to not just have 51% of voters who wouldn't like their ruling on abortion and would consider voting them down, you need a much larger percentage.

But I think both of those things are here. I think reproductive rights are popular enough in Arizona, and I think it's salient enough for Arizona voters that it's going to be a real possibility.

Nir: Now, one thing we need to mention about Arizona is that all seven justices were appointed by Republican governors. So it is a very conservative court; on that abortion ruling in the 1860s abortion ban case, two of these conservative justices actually voted against. But it would obviously be a while — even if Bolick and King were to lose in November — before Democrats could actually install a more progressive majority on that court.

But again like we were saying with North Carolina, you got to start somewhere, and this is the year to start.

Beard: Now moving to another state with some key state Supreme Court races, which is Michigan, where Democrats currently hold a four to three majority on the court. There are two seats up for election. Kyra Harris Bolden is a Democrat who was appointed to a seat by Governor Whitmer and she's running for the remainder of the term she was appointed to. There's another seat that's for a full term; it's held by a Republican. That Republican is retiring, not running for re-election, so it's an open seat.

We have a Democratic candidate already, that's Kimberly Thomas. The Republicans haven't chosen a nominee yet, so that's still to be determined. Obviously, if Democrats are able to pick up this seat, that would turn the court from a four-to-three Democratic majority to a five-to-two Democratic majority. It would certainly make the court a more stable Democratic majority. They could afford a loss of an individual justice on certain issues or if they were to lose a future race and still hopefully maintain that majority. So it's definitely important to get up to that five to two majority.

Nir: So a couple of things worth noting about Michigan that differ from the states we've mentioned previously, North Carolina elections, straight up partisan. You have D and R labels on the ballot. In retention elections in Arizona, there are no partisan labels at all. Michigan is a weird hybrid because parties nominate candidates, but then on the general election ballot, there are no party labels. But what there is, is a designation on the ballot of who the incumbents are.

We saw this exact same thing happen in Georgia just the other week when Democrat John Barrow lost that race. One huge disadvantage he had is that the conservative incumbent got listed as the incumbent on the ballot, and that's also going to be the case in Michigan. But that's why it's such a huge deal that this Republican justice, David Viviano, decided to retire because in this open seat race. Then it's simply a matter of educating voters about who the Democrat is and who the Republican is.

And Michigan, obviously it's a swing state but hopefully still a little bit blue-leaning, that ought to give Democrats a bit of an advantage in that race. Meanwhile, Kyra Harris Bolden, the Democratic incumbent, she will be identified as the incumbent. So hopefully, that gives Democrats the edge that they need in order to have a shot at moving the court to a five-two majority.

So we're going to move on to Montana. This is yet a different situation still. The way that states conduct Supreme Court elections tends to vary a lot from one another. Montana races are strictly nonpartisan, at least on a formal basis, and that's rather similar to what we saw in Wisconsin. But once again, like in Wisconsin, there are going to be some very clear ideological dividing lines. Now, unlike in Michigan where we can say very clearly the court is four to three Democratic, or in North Carolina, where we know it's five to two Republican, pinning down the ideology of the Montana Supreme Court is actually a bit more difficult.

There are seven members, and on the surface, there are three justices who are generally considered liberals, two who are considered conservatives, and two who have often been swing votes. However, two of the liberals including the Chief Justice are retiring, and that means that if conservatives prevail in both of those races, they will have a four-seat majority on the court.

But like I say, Montana's been a bit of an odd duck and it's not always been obvious how cases are going to divide along ideological lines. In particular, Montana has one of the strongest judicial precedents in favor of a right to an abortion. It's rooted in the state constitution's right to privacy, which has much stronger language than anything you're going to find in the federal constitution, for instance.

The Supreme Court has blocked a lot of GOP attempts to restrict abortion access based on its own precedent, and many of those cases have involved unanimous rulings. So even the conservatives have stuck with the majority to strike down GOP abortion restrictions. The question is would they continue to do so if they actually had four out-and-out conservatives on the court? Who's to say let's not find out?

There are actually primaries for both of these seats for the chief justice seat and the associate justice seat that are coming up on Tuesday. It's very clear who the progressive and the conservative candidates are. In the chief justice race, Democrats are uniting behind a former federal magistrate judge, Jerry Lynch. The GOP establishment meanwhile is backing Broadwater County Attorney Cory Swanson. He's the district attorney for that county.

In the other contest for Associate Justice, the two main candidates are both trial court judges. For Democrats, that's Judge Katherine Bidegaray. And for Republicans, it's Judge Dan Wilson. Again, these are officially nonpartisan races, but there is going to be a ton of money spent educating voters on exactly who stands where on the issues.

Beard: And one positive that might help these races a little bit is, of course, Jon Tester's race higher up the ticket. They're going to be driving Democratic turnout as much as possible. This won't be like your average red state where no one's campaigning because Republicans are going to win and you're fighting against that tide to try to win that race.

Every Democrat who lives in Montana is going to be pushed out to vote for Tester, and hopefully, they will know to vote for the more liberal candidates for these races. And hopefully, that will help, in addition to, of course, discussions of reproductive rights and other issues that Montanans generally support. Montana, of course, is not a deep red state on some issues the way that other states we think of are. It is certainly red, but it has some libertarian leanings and some more freedom-y leanings that could be helpful.

Now we want to wrap up with a couple of redder states. First off is Ohio where there are three seats up. Now we've got a strange situation here. There are three different races and there are three incumbent justices, but they're not each running in one race. We've got two incumbents running for the same seat. So the court is currently four to three Republican, and two of these seats are held by Democrats and one of the seats is held by a Republican. If the Democrats were to sweep all three seats, they would actually take a majority on the court.

In the first seat, we've got a Democratic incumbent, Michael Donnelly, who's running for reelection. He'll face a Republican; it’s pretty straightforward. In the second seat, we've got another Democratic incumbent, Melody Stewart, who will be facing off against Joseph Deters. Now, Deters is a GOP Supreme Court justice. He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Governor DeWine. But instead of running for his seat, which is that third seat, he's running for the second seat because the first two seats are for full terms.

So Stewart, the Democratic incumbent justice, and Deters, the Republican-appointed justice, are both running for that second seat so they can have a full term, which then leaves that third seat, which is now technically an open seat because there's no incumbent running for it. And that is just for a partial term. So for that third seat, it'll be between Democrat Lisa Forbes and Republican Dan Hawkins.

Nir: Beard, didn't we see something like this in North Carolina where we had two incumbent Supreme Court justices run against one another? I think Cheri Beasley, right? She lost reelection to a fellow incumbent a few years ago.

Beard: Yes, and that wasn't about full terms. That was about specifically the position of Chief Justice, which is a different position in North Carolina. You run specifically for Chief Justice. And I believe they have some additional authority around appointing judges to certain cases and such. So yes, he took on Beasley for the Chief Justice position and did defeat her by about 400 votes, very unfortunately.

Nir: Yeah, that's another thing to mention. We talked about with regard to Montana, the Chief Justice position being a separate election from Associate Justice. Of course, the chief does have certain rights and privileges, so those races take on even greater importance. But not every state Supreme Court elects Chief Justices specifically. Oftentimes, they are chosen by the members of the court, or there are other rules around who gets to be the Chief Justice based on seniority and other factors like that.

Beard, it's also interesting to me that you mentioned Tester. I am wondering if you might have a similar situation in Ohio with Sherrod Brown being on the ballot and obviously going to do everything he can to get every last Democrat and potentially Democratic-leaning voter out for him. And there's also likely to be a measure on the ballot to ban gerrymandering to finally put in place genuine independent redistricting in the state of Ohio. Of course, abortion was on the ballot last year. Hopefully, there's a whole bunch of good motivating reasons that would get softer partisans to actually want to show up and also vote for Democrats in the Supreme Court elections.

Finally, we want to briefly mention Texas. This is another state where Republicans are absolutely dominant. No Democrat has won a statewide election of any sort in Texas since 1994. Republicans have a nine-to-zero majority on the state Supreme Court. But there are three Republican Justices who are up for election this year. And once again, if they're going to lose, it's going to be because of abortion.

I'm sure all “Downballot” listeners remember the horrifying story of Kate Cox, who was the pregnant woman who said that her pregnancy was posing a serious threat to her health and possibly her life and sought an emergency abortion, which a lower court ruled that she could have and then the Texas Supreme Court told her no. They overturned that ruling and she had to leave the state to have a very, very difficult abortion. That issue, if the Democrats challenging these Republican incumbents can put that front and center, who knows? Maybe they can throw a scare into them.

Beard: Obviously, these are a ton of really important races, as we mentioned. Things like abortion and gerrymandering will be key issues that a lot of these races are going to be confronting. There are also a lot of other downballot statewide races that we're going to be focused on that will definitely hit in the months ahead as we get closer to November.

Nir: And just to note, these are by no means the only states holding Supreme Court elections this year. There are in fact a few dozen that will have races on the docket. There will be potentially competitive contests in other states as well, maybe in a place like Florida. There is also, believe it or not, a potentially competitive seat in Kentucky. So as these races continue to develop, we will of course revisit them, and we definitely plan to be talking about this subject much more for the rest of the year.

Beard: That's all from us this week. “The Downballot” comes out every Thursday, everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to “The Downballot” and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our editor, Drew Roderick, and we'll be back next week with a new episode.

At Texas GOP convention, Republicans call for spiritual warfare

By Robert Downen, The Texas Tribune

From his booth in the exhibit hall of the Texas GOP’s 2024 convention, Steve Hotze saw an army of God assembled before him.

For four decades, Hotze, an indicted election fraud conspiracy theorist, has helmed hardline anti-abortion movements and virulently homophobic campaigns against LGBTQ+ rights, comparing gay people to Nazis and helping popularize the “groomer” slur that paints them as pedophiles. Once on the fringes, Hotze said Saturday that he was pleased by the party's growing embrace of his calls for spiritual warfare with “demonic, Satanic forces” on the left.

“People that aren’t in Christ have wicked, evil hearts,” he said. “We are in a battle, and you have to take a side.”

Those beliefs were common at the party’s three-day biennial convention last week, at which delegates adopted a series of new policies that would give the party unprecedented control over the electoral process and further infuse Christianity into public life.

Delegates approved rules that ban Republican candidates—as well as judges—who are censured by the party from appearing on primary ballots for two years, a move that would give a small group of Republicans the ability to block people from running for office, should it survive expected legal challenges. The party’s proposed platform also included planks that would effectively lock Democrats out of statewide office by requiring candidates to win a majority of Texas’ 254 counties, many of which are dark-red but sparsely populated, and called for laws requiring the Bible to be taught in public schools.

From left: Conservative activists Steven Hotze and Jared Woodfill enter the Senate gallery during the afternoon session of Day 1 of the Ken Paxton impeachment trial in the Texas Senate on Sept. 5, 2023.

Those moves, delegates and leaders agreed, were necessary amid what they say is an existential fight with a host of perceived enemies, be it liberals trying to indoctrinate their children through “gender ideology” and Critical Race Theory, or globalists waging a war on Christianity through migration.

Those fears were stoked by elected officials in almost every speech given over the week. “They want to take God out of the country, and they want the government to be God,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Thursday morning.

“Our battle is not against flesh and blood,” Sen. Angela Paxton, Republican of McKinney, said Friday. “It is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

”Look at what the Democrats have done,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said Saturday. “If you were actively trying to destroy America, what would you do differently?”

Controlling elections

The Texas GOP’s conventions have traditionally amplified the party’s most hardline activists and views. In 2022, for instance, delegates approved a platform that included calls for a referendum on Texas secession; resistance to the “Great Reset,” a conspiracy theory that claims global elites are using environmental and social policies to enslave the world’s population; proclamations that homosexuality is an “abnormal lifestyle choice”; and a declaration that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.

The 2024 convention went a step further.

It was the first Texas GOP convention set against the backdrop of a civil war that was sparked by the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton and inflamed by scandals over white supremacists and antisemites working for the party’s top funders, West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. This year’s convention was also sparsely attended compared to past years, which some longtime party members said helped the Dunn and Wilks faction further consolidate their power and elect their candidate, Abraham George, for party chair.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Texas GOP Convention on Thursday, May 23, 2024 in San Antonio.

“What we're seeing right now is a shift toward more populism,” said Summer Wise, a former member of the party’s executive committee who has attended most conventions since 2008, including last week’s. “And the [party’s] infrastructure, leadership, decision-making process, power and influence are being controlled by a small group of people.”

That shift was most evident, she said, in a series of changes to the party’s rules that further empower its leaders to punish dissent. The party approved changes that would dramatically increase the consequences of censures—which were used most recently to punish House Speaker Dade Phelan for his role in impeaching Paxton, and against U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales for voting for gun safety legislation.

Under the changes, any person who is censured by the party would be banned for two years from appearing on GOP primary ballots—including judges, who are elected in partisan races but expected to be politically neutral once on the bench. The party also voted to unilaterally close its primaries, bypassing the Legislature, in a move intended to keep Democrats from voting in Republican primaries.

“It’s pretty hypocritical,” Wise said of the changes, which legal experts and some party members expect will face legal challenges. “Republicans have always opposed activist judges, and this seems to be obligating judges to observe and prioritize party over law—which is straight-up judicial activism.”

The convention came amid a broader embrace of Christian nationalism on the right, which falsely claims that the United States’ founding was God-ordained and that its institutions and laws should reflect their conservative, Christian views. Experts have found strong correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and opposition to migration, religious pluralism and the democratic process.

Wise said she has seen parts of the party similarly shift toward dogmatic political and religious views that have been used “to justify or rationalize corrupting the institution and stripping away its integrity, traditions, fundamental and established principles"—as if “‘God wants it, so we can rewrite the rules.’”

“Being Republican and being Christian have become the same thing,” she said. “If you're accused of being a (Republican in Name Only), you're essentially not as Christian as someone else. … God help you if you're Jewish.”

The “rabbit hole”

Bob Harvey is a proud member of the “Grumpy Old Men’s Club,” a group in Montgomery County that he said pushes back against Fox News and other outlets that he claims have been infiltrated by RINOs.

“People trust Fox News, and they need to get outside of that and find alternative news and like-minded people,” Harvey, 71, said on Friday, as he waited in a long line to meet Kyle Rittenhouse, who has ramped up his engagement in Texas politics since he was acquitted of homicide after fatally shooting two Black Lives Matter protesters.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, wave to attendees during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024.

Rather, Harvey’s group recommends places such as the Gateway Pundit, Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News or the Epoch Times, a far-right website that also had a booth at this year’s convention and is directly linked to the Falun Gong, a hardline anti-communist group.

Such outlets, Harvey said, are crucial to getting people “further down the rabbit hole,” after which they can begin to connect the dots between the deep-state that has spent years attacking former President Donald Trump, and the agenda of the left to indoctrinate kids through the Boy Scouts of America, public schools, and the Democratic Party.

Harvey’s views were widely-held by his fellow delegates, many of whom were certain that broader transgender acceptance, Critical Race Theory, or “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives were parts of a sinister plot to destroy the country and take over its churches.

The culprits behind the ploy differed—Democrats, socialists, or “globalists,” to name a few. But their nefarious end goals loomed over the convention. Fearing a transgender takeover of the Republican Party of Texas, delegates pushed to explicitly stipulate that the party’s chair and vice chair must be “biological” men or women.

At events to recruit pastors and congregations to ramp up their political activism, elected leaders argued that churches were the only thing standing between evil and children. And the party’s proposed platform included planks that claim gender-transition care is child abuse, or urge new legislation in Texas that's "even more comprehensive" than Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits the teaching of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools.

“Our next generation is being co-opted and indoctrinated where they should have been educated,” Rep. Nate Schatzline, Republican of Fort Worth, said at a Friday luncheon for pastors and churches. “We are in a spiritual battle. This isn't a political one.”

Kyle Rittenhouse shakes hands with conventioneers at a meet and greet during the Texas GOP convention on Thursday in San Antonio.

For at least a half-century, conservative Christian movements have been fueled by notions of a shadowy and coordinated conspiracy to destroy America, said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put the Bible in public schools.

“It's like the boogeyman that won't go away, that gets summoned whenever a justification is needed for these types of agendas,” he said. “They say that somebody is threatening quintessential American freedoms, and that these threats are posed by some sort of global conspiracy—rather than just recognizing that we're a pluralistic democracy.”

In the 1950s, such claims were the driving force behind the emergence of groups such as the John Birch Society, a hardline anti-communist group whose early members included the fathers of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump. After decades of dwindling influence, the society has seen a revival since Trump's 2016 election. And in the exhibit hall last week, so-called Birchers passed out literature and pamphlets that detailed the New World Order's secret plans for "world domination."

Steve Oglesby, field director for the Birch Society's North Texas chapter, said interest and membership in the group has been on the rise in recent years—particularly, as COVID-19 lockdowns and international climate change initiatives have spurred right-wing fears of an international cabal working against the United States.

"COVID really helped," he said, adding that the pandemic proved the existence of a global elite that has merely shifted its tactics since the 1950s. “It’s not just communism—it’s the people pulling the strings.”

Throughout the week, prominent Republicans invoked similar claims of a coordinated conspiracy against the United States. On Friday, Patrick argued that a decadeslong decline in American religion was part of a broader, “Marxist socialist left” agenda to “create chaos,” including through migration—despite studies showing that migrants are overwhelmingly Christian. Attorney General Ken Paxton echoed those claims in his own speech minutes later, saying migration was part of a plan to "steal another election."

“The Biden Administration wants the illegals here to vote,” he said.

As Paxton continued, Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest held hands and nodded their approval from the convention hall’s front row. Last year, the two were spotted outside of a Tarrant County office building where Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist and Adolf Hitler fan, was hosted for nearly seven hours by Jonathan Stickland, then the leader of Dunn and Wilks' most powerful political action committee. They eventually lost their jobs after The Texas Tribune reported on their ties to Fuentes or white nationalist groups.

Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest watch as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, the first day of the gathering.

Maulding has been particularly vocal about her support for Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy theory that claims there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to replace white people through migration, LGBTQ+ acceptance or interracial marriage. Once a fringe, white nationalist worldview, experts say that Great Replacement Theory has been increasingly mainstreamed as Republican leaders, including some who spoke last week, continue to claim that migration is part of a coordinated effort to aid Democrats. The theory has also been cited by numerous mass shooters, including the gunman who murdered 22 Hispanic people at an El Paso WalMart in 2019.

Five hours after Paxton and Patrick spoke, Maulding took to social media, posting a cartoon of a rabbi with the following text: “I make porn using your children and then make money distributing it under the banner of women’s rights while flooding your nation with demented lunatics who then rape your children.”

David Barton

Kason Huddleston has spent the last few years helping elect Christians and push back against what he believes is indoctrination of children in Rowlett, near Dallas. Far too often, he said, churches and pastors have become complacent, or have been scared away from political engagement by federal rules that prohibit churches from overt political activity.

Through trainings from groups like Christians Engaged, which advocates for church political activity and had a booth at this year’s convention, he said he has been able show more local Christians that they can be “a part of the solution” to intractable societal ills such as fatherlessness, crime or teen drug use. And while he thinks that some of his peers’ existential rhetoric can be overwrought, he agreed that there is an ongoing effort to “tear down the family unit” and shroud America’s true, Christian roots.

David Barton, left, of WallBuilders, at a Texas Eagle Forum reception at the Republican Party of Texas convention in Fort Worth on June 7, 2012.

“If you look at our government and our laws, all of it goes back to a Judeo-Christian basis,” he said. “Most people don’t know our true history because it’s slowly just been removed.”

He then asked: “Have you ever read David Barton?”

Since the late 1980s, Barton has barnstormed the state and country claiming that church-state separation is a “myth” meant to shroud America’s true founding as a Christian nation. Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian” who served as Texas GOP vice chair from 1997 to 2006, has been thoroughly debunked by an array of historians and scholars—many of them also conservative Christians.

Despite that, Barton’s views have become widespread among Republicans, including Patrick, Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson. And his influence over the party was clear at last week’s convention, where his group, WallBuilders, maintained a booth and delegates frequently cited him.

This year’s platform, the votes for which are expected to be released later this week, included planks that urged lawmakers and the State Board of Education to “require instruction on the Bible, servant leadership and Christian self-governance,” and supports the use of religious chaplains in schools—which was made legal under a law passed by the state Legislature last year.

Warren Throckmorton, a former Grove City College professor and prominent conservative, Christian critic of Barton, told the Tribune that the platform emblematized Barton’s growing influence, and his movement’s conflicting calls to preserve “religious liberty” while attempting to elevate their faith over others. The platform, he noted, simultaneously demands that students’ religious rights be protected, and for schools to be forced to teach the Bible.

“What about the other students who aren’t Christians and who don't believe in the Bible?” he said. “This is not religious liberty—it’s Christian dominance.”

As Zach Maxwell watched his fellow Republicans debate and vote last week, he said he was struck by the frequency and intensity with which Christianity was invoked. Maxwell previously served as chief of staff for former Rep. Mike Lang, then the leader of the ultraconservative Texas House Freedom Caucus, and he later worked for Empower Texans, a political group that was funded primarily by Dunn and Wilks.

He eventually became disillusioned with the party’s right wing, which he said has increasingly been driven by purity tests and opposition to religious or political diversity. This year’s convention, he said, was the culmination of those trends.

“God was not only used as a tool at this convention, but if you didn’t mention God in some way, fake or genuine, I did feel it was seen as distasteful,” he said. “There is a growing group of people who want to turn this nation into a straight-up theocracy. I believe they are doing it on the backs of people who are easily manipulated.”

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