The Supreme Court has gone rogue. Now is the time to start fixing it

The conservative Supreme Court has gone rogue. It has “cemented its place in history as the most radical Supreme Court ever,” in the words of historian Kevin Kruse. It handcuffed all federal regulatory agencies last week, and elevated the president to king on Monday. They’ve done so on behalf of the American oligarchs who have bankrolled the lavish lifestyle of at least two of the justices. They have also done so on behalf of twice-impeached convicted felon Donald Trump.

If there is any hope of salvaging our republic out of this mess, President Joe Biden and Democrats have to fight back, immediately, in the campaign and in action. That means setting aside the trust institutionalists like Biden and Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin have in the system and in the basic decency of people like Chief Justice John Roberts. It means directly taking on the corrupt court and making the case to the American people that it has to be stopped.

Biden made a start Monday evening, giving a short prime-time address to the nation to point out the “dangerous precedent” of placing “virtually no limits on what a president can do.”

“This decision,” Biden said, “has continued the court’s attack in recent years on a wide range of long-established legal principles in our nation, from gutting voting rights and civil rights to taking away a woman’s right to choose to today’s decision that undermines the rule of law of this nation.”

In perhaps the most chilling words a president has uttered since the Civil War, Biden starkly defined where we’re at as a nation. 

“[I]t will depend on the character of the men and women who hold that presidency that are going to define the limits of the power of the presidency,” he said, “because the law will no longer do it.” 

That’s Biden declaring that, as of Monday, we are no longer a nation under the rule of law because of a decision made by a court that is fundamentally corrupt—the essential backdrop to this momentously, historically awful term.

Start with Justice Clarence Thomas, whose corruption has been detailed in months of reporting from ProPublica: the undeclared luxury trips, gifts, and real estate deals; the cozying up to the Koch machine; his own extortion of the court and the oligarchs insisting that if he didn’t benefit financially, he would leave the court. There’s also his wife, Ginni, who not only plotted in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, but was rewarded by another billionaire—Leonard Leo—who funneled tens of thousands to her for consulting work. 

Not to be outdone in either the grift or the partisanship game, there’s Justice Samuel Alito. He was there for the luxury trips from hedge fund billionaires and the lavish trip to Rome to be feted for writing the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Like Thomas, Alito lets his spouse do his partisanship talk for him, or rather the flag-flying.

Then there’s Roberts refusing to even answer questions from the Senate about how these bought-and-paid for ideologues have tarnished the institution or to consider implementing a binding ethics reform to attempt to redeem the court.

And voters know it. Trust in the court plummeted after it overturned Roe to record lows, and it is not recovering.

So here we are. The only thing that can forestall the end of the republic is our vote and the hope that democrats—and Democrats—prevail in November in numbers that can’t be denied. Maybe then elected Democrats will fix this mess.

There are plenty of good ideas for reshaping the court from expanding it to imposing term limits to create a stable of justices that rotate in and out of the court. The solutions are there—Democrats need to embrace them. And run on them.

That can start with rallying around Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s impeachment resolution against the justices who perpetrated this “assault on American democracy.” No, it won’t move forward in a Republican-controlled House, but it can help unite Democrats for an immediate course of action should they regain the House.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries echoed that, saying Democrats plan to “engage in aggressive oversight and legislative activity” to determine that “extreme, far-right justices in the [Supreme Court] majority are brought into compliance with the Constitution.”

The Senate has to take the lead in the coming months, and it has to come from Durbin, who failed in his first task of responding to the devastating ruling. He complained over spilled milk, that Thomas and Alito “brazenly refused to recuse themselves from this case.” He scolded Roberts for not using “his existing authority to enact an enforceable code of conduct.”

It’s a lot too late for that. Durbin and his colleagues need to get on the same page as House Democrats, because they actually are in an oversight position and need to start using it. No, they can’t fix the Supreme Court now, but they can start building the case for it. 

They have to win back the two elected branches, and one of the best ways to do it will be to put aside the niceties of institutionalism and comity and declare war on the unelected branch—the one that would make Trump king.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Bloody Monday, every single Democrat should be talking about that—exclusively that. Enough hand-wringing over Biden’s debate performance. Enough speculation about replacing the top of the ticket. Enough Democrats in disarray. Too much is at stake now.

Tell the people—show the people—the danger the republic is in. How Democrats react now to what this court has done could make all the difference in November.

If you want to help make America the place it ought to be, it starts by electing more and better Democrats. And you can do your part right here. Please give $10 to each of these Daily Kos-endorsed candidates today!

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GOP House speaker finally finds a reason to remove a president from office

House Speaker Mike Johnson—an architect of Donald Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 election who had to be evacuated from the Capitol as the mob descended on Jan. 6, 2021, and who stood with Trump as a New York jury convicted the former president on 34 felony charges—says President Joe Biden should be removed from office because he had a bad debate night.

“I would ask the Cabinet members to search their hearts. … And we hope that they will do their duty, as we all seek to do our duty to do best by the American people. These are fateful moments,” Johnson told reporters Friday. “If I were in the Cabinet … I would be having that discussion with my colleagues at the Cabinet level. I would. … We'll see what action they take. It’s a serious situation.”

This is the same Mike Johnson who voted against removing Trump from office after the Capitol insurrection. He’s for removing a president because he’s old, and he’s against removing a president who is old and who tried to overthrow the government. Good to know.

Meanwhile, Johnson’s guy stood on a debate stage and lied more than 30 times, according to CNN’s fact-checking guru Daniel Dale, including:

Democratic-led states allow babies to be executed after birth, that every legal scholar and everybody in general wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, that there were no terror attacks during his presidency, that Iran didn’t fund terror groups during his presidency, that the US has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has, that Biden for years referred to Black people as “super predators,” that Biden is planning to quadruple people’s taxes, that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned down 10,000 National Guard troops for the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, that Americans don’t pay the cost of his tariffs on China and other countries, that Europe accepts no American cars, that he is the president who got the Veterans Choice program through Congress, and that fraud marred the results of the 2020 election.

Trump stood on that debate stage and refused—three times—to say he will accept the results of the next election. That’s the guy Johnson wants to see back in the White House. 

And what was Trump’s main takeaway from the debate? He’s a great golfer. So please spare us your thoughts on who is fit to be president, Mr. Johnson. Oh, and fuck you. 

Don’t let either Johnson or Trump stay in power. Please give $10 to each of these Daily Kos-endorsed candidates to take back the House and defeat Trump!

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House Republican wants to have attorney general arrested just because

GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, best known for fabricating her entire life story, told Fox News that she has a plan to get the sergeant-at-arms to arrest Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

“Several months ago, I introduced a resolution for something called inherent contempt of Congress. This is something that Congress has the authority to do, and it hasn’t been done since the early 1900’s,” she told host Maria Bartiromo on Monday. 

Luna was responding to questions about the Justice Department’s announcement that it would not prosecute Garland for not turning over audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

“And what that allows Congress to do is really be the punitive arm and really hold Garland accountable by using the sergeant-at-arms to essentially go and get him,” Luna went on, “as well as the tapes, bring him to the well of the house and really be a check-and-balance on the Department of Justice.”

Like most of what Luna says, there are all kinds of facts being misrepresented here. For one, her assertion that she introduced her inherent contempt of Congress resolution “several months ago” is belied by the fact that she actually announced it on May 7. And while that is technically more than one month, it is far less than several months. Though, to be fair, her announcement could have been missed, since it came the same day that Stormy Daniels was testifying … in Trump’s criminal trial.

The sergeant-at-arms is "the chamber’s primary law enforcement official and protocol officer, responsible for maintaining security on the House floor and the House side of the U.S. Capitol complex.” 

The case from the “early 1900’s” that Luna is referring to is something some legal scholars felt was more apropos to the unwillingness to comply with requests from Congress by the Trump administration.

The Teapot Dome scandal, which involved President Warren G. Harding’s Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall’s no-bid contract to lease federal oil fields in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, happened in 1922. Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty was heavily criticized at the time for not more thoroughly investigating Fall, who was later convicted of taking a $100,000 bribe.

The scandal escalated to the Senate committee subpoenaing Mally S. Daugherty, the attorney general’s brother. 

When Mally Daugherty refused to show up to testify before Congress, the Senate Sergeant at Arms David S. Barry deputized John J. McGrain to arrest him and bring him to Washington to testify.

The Republicans’ fixation on getting audio, despite having already received the entire transcript of Hur’s interview with Biden, has been a transparently political endeavor. Hur, a Republican, released a 375-page report in February saying that no charges were warranted and that Biden had likely kept the documents as a private citizen by “mistake.”

Since then, House Republicans voted to hold Garland in contempt. Speaker Mike Johnson vowed to take the Garland contempt case to court after the DOJ announced it planned no further action. But whether Johnson will bring Luna’s resolution to a vote remains to be seen.

There has been very little tangible action that has come out of the GOP’s neverending political theater. This past year it spent an inordinate amount of time attacking Biden’s border security while trying to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—a stunt that failed miserably. 

Luna’s newest resolution is the GOP’s latest political stunt to create a cloud of doubt over Biden’s reelection campaign against convicted felon Trump.

Hopium Chronicles' Simon Rosenberg joins Markos to discuss the “red wave-ification” of the economy and how prepared Democrats are for November. There is still work to do but we have a better candidate—and we have the edge.

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With new rules, the Texas GOP seeks to keep its elected officials in line

The state party plans to limit primaries to registered Republicans and keep elected officials it censured off the ballot. It’s unclear if it can without legislative approval.

By James Barragán, The Texas Tribune

Republican voters in Texas sent a strong message this primary season about their expectations for ideological purity, casting out 15 state House GOP incumbents who bucked the grassroots on issues like school vouchers or the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton.

At the same time this spring, the party itself has been making moves beyond the ballot box to keep its elected officials in line.

At its biennial convention last month, the Texas GOP tried to increase its party purity by approving two major rules changes: One would close the Republican primary elections so that only voters the party identifies as Republicans can participate. The other would bar candidates from the primary ballot for two years after they had been censured by the state party.

Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said the moves are clear political shots by the increasingly dominant right wing of the party to root out dissenters and shape the party in its image.

“It says something about this battle, this civil war that’s broken out in the Republican Party of Texas that one side has gotten so concerned that they haven't been able to solidify their control of the party that they want to close their primary,” he said.

But the ideas have drawn pushback from inside and outside the party, with many questioning whether the GOP has the power to enact them without action from the state Legislature.

James Wesolek, a spokesperson for the Republican Party of Texas, said the party will be pursuing the policies regardless. He added that “an overwhelming majority” of Republican voters supported the ideas when they were included as propositions in the GOP primary this year.

“We hope the legislature takes action, but we will move forward as our rules dictate,” Wesolek said in an email last week.

Questions remain about how that would work.

Eric Opiela, a longtime Republican who previously served as the state party’s executive director and was part of the rules committee at this year’s convention, said moving forward on closing the primary without legislative action would lead to legal challenges.

Because party primaries are publicly financed and perform the public service of selecting candidates for elected office, they must adhere to the state’s election law, said Opiela, who has also served as a lawyer for the state party.

Currently, any voter can participate in a Democrat or Republican primary without having to register an affiliation. Without a change to state law, the Texas GOP could open itself to liability if it barred voters from participating in its primary elections, Opiela said.

Under the rules approved by the GOP, a voter would be eligible to cast a ballot in a primary if they voted in a GOP primary in the past two years or submitted a “certificate of affiliation with the Republican Party of Texas” prior to the candidate filing period for that election. They also could register with the state party, though the party hasn’t yet unveiled a process to do so.

A voter under 21 could also vote in the primary if it were their first primary election.

But critics are concerned that the party is underestimating the amount of work required to vet a person’s voting history. And Opiela also said that there are concerns about how to provide proper notification to new voters, especially military voters, who might have recently moved into the state and are not covered under the proposal as written. He said such concerns are why these changes should be left to the Legislature, where lawmakers can consider obstacles to implementation and come up with solutions.

“I don’t know that the process was given much thought,” said Opiela. “Those of us who have run an election know that this isn’t easy to pull off.”

Texas is among 15 states that currently have open primaries, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Ten states currently have closed primaries.

Closed primaries are a particularly hot topic in the GOP due to frustration among some in the conservative grassroots over House Speaker Dade Phelan’s primary runoff victory.

Phelan oversaw the passage of major conservative victories including restricting abortion and loosening gun laws in recent years. But he has become a target of the hard right for failing to pass school voucher legislation, appointing some Democrats to chair legislative committees and presiding over the impeachment of Paxton, who is a darling of the hard right.

He finished second in his March primary, but won his primary runoff against right wing candidate David Covey by fewer than 400 votes. Covey and his supporters blamed Phelan’s victory on Democratic voters who crossed over into the GOP primary runoff to vote for Phelan.

It’s difficult to say whether that’s true; Texas doesn’t track party registration. About 4% of the people who voted in the GOP primary this year had most recently voted in the Democratic primary, according to data compiled by elections data expert Derek Ryan, a Republican. But party leaders, such as recently departed party Chair Matt Rinaldi, have pointed to the Phelan race as a reason for a need for change.

“The time is now for Republicans to choose our own nominees without Democrat interference,” Rinaldi said in May.

Taylor, the UTSA professor, said the push to close the primaries was in line with the right wing’s push to force GOP candidates to follow the party line.

“You’re engaging in a form of ideological conformity, you’re demanding 100% fealty to the party,” he said.

But Daron Shaw, a political science professor at the University of Texas, pushed back against those crying foul.

“It is completely unclear to me how it is the ‘right’ of a voter in Texas, particularly one that does not identify as a Republican, to vote in the selection of Republican candidates,” he said. “Ultimately, a party is a private association and if it chooses to select extreme candidates, then presumably the general electorate will react accordingly.”

The rule to bar candidates who had been censured by the state party has also been met with skepticism.

Opiela said that if a candidate turned in an application that otherwise met the requirements for running for office, a court would likely order the party to allow the candidate on the ballot. He also said the provision could open up precinct and county chairs to criminal liability for rejecting applications that met the requirements.

The state party rule tries to cover for that potential liability by stating it would provide legal representation for any party official who is sued for complying with the rule.

Asked by The Texas Tribune to assess the legality of the idea, Rick Hasen, a UCLA professor and election law expert, called it “dicey.”

Taylor, from UTSA, said the move was also a pretty transparent message to elected officials like Phelan and U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales to fall in line. Phelan was censured in February for overseeing Paxton’s impeachment and appointing Democrats as committee chairs. Gonzales was censured for supporting a bipartisan gun law in the wake of the 2022 Uvalde shooting, which occurred in his district, and his vote for a bill that codified protections for same-sex marriage.

The censure rule in particular has been denounced as undemocratic, an increasingly common criticism from the GOP’s loudest critics. At the same party convention, the state party changed its platform to call for a new requirement that candidates for statewide office must also win a majority of votes in a majority of Texas’ 254 counties to win office, a model similar to that of the U.S. Electoral College.

That proposal, which represents the official position of the party but does not have any power of law, has been panned as unconstitutional.

“There’s a very good argument that such a system would violate the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court,” Hasen said.

Under the proposal, the 4.7 million residents of Harris County would have the same voting power as the 64 residents of Loving County.

“It’s basically a tyranny of the minority,” Taylor said. “This is designed to potentially go a step further in nullifying the concept of one person-one vote.”

The proposals come even as the GOP has dominated Texas politics for decades, and the hardline conservative movement continues to grow its influence. Brian W. Smith, a political science professor at St. Edward’s University in Austin, questioned the moves on a political level.

“Texas is already gerrymandered to elect ideologically pure candidates. We’re not seeing a lot of Republicans or Democrats moving to the middle to attract a broad swath of voters,” he said. “The Dade Phelans of the world are not winning because of independents or Democrats, they’re winning because they’re more popular among Republicans than their opponents.”

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Tracking URL: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/06/10/texas-republican-closed-primaries-rule-changes/

House GOP amps up its revenge against Attorney General Merrick Garland

The House is going to spend half of this week on their revenge agenda for convicted felon Donald Trump, this time voting to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. This is part of the mounting campaign among Republicans to enact retribution on President Joe Biden, his administration officials, congressional Democrats and anyone else Trump puts on his enemies list. It’s a precursor to what they’ll do if they maintain the House, win the Senate, and Trump wins.

The House will send the resolution against Garland to the Justice Department for criminal referral if it passes later this week. Which essentially means it’s going nowhere. The referral would go to the U.S. attorney who would be tasked with determining whether a crime was committed by Garland in refusing to turn over audio recordings of the interviews special counsel Robert Hur conducted with Biden in a classified documents inquiry, and if charges should be brought.

The U.S. attorney for D.C. is highly unlikely to find criminal action on Garland’s part, which would likely send the case to federal courts, and there wouldn’t be an outcome before the election. But if the election favors Republicans, Garland is going to be high on their list for locking up.

House Democrats have done a bang-up job of humiliating Republicans on this goose chase and are continuing to do so, but a little humiliation isn’t enough to deter them from doing Trump’s bidding.

“Desperate to blame someone—anyone—for the utter failure of this impeachment inquiry, Republicans have contrived an allegation that Attorney General Merrick Garland has impeded their impeachment inquiry by preventing them from hearing President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Hur by withholding the audio recording,” Democrats on the Oversight Committee said in a statement.

“In fact, Republicans, and the American public, can already read the full content of that interview.”

That’s absolutely true—Garland released the transcripts when Hur testified before Congress, a hearing that turned out to be a flop for Republicans. They want that audio, though, to use to show Biden unfavorably in their televised hearings. This is why the Justice Department is refusing to cede to the demand. It’s also why Biden claimed executive privilege to block release of the tapes.

White House Counsel Ed Siskel blasted GOP lawmakers' attempts to get the tapes, insisting that they have no legitimate purpose for acquiring them, only a political one "to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.”

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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.

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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.

‘Little maggot-infested man’ Tom Cotton rises to top of Trump VP list

A new name has popped up in the chatter about Donald Trump’s potential pick for vice president: Sen. Tom Cotton. He’s reportedly high on the list because of his “experience and the ability to run a disciplined campaign.” As a running mate, the Arkansas senator “would carry relatively little risk of creating unwanted distractions for a presidential campaign already facing multiple legal threats,” according to The New York Times.

But it sure seems risky to put a no-holds barred racist, sexist creep on a debate stage with Vice President Kamala Harris. Cotton traded in his dog whistle for a racist bullhorn years ago, and has made headlines with his outrageous statements and behavior.

Here is a mere sampling of Cotton’s lowlights:

Attacking Ketanji Brown Jackson

During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Cotton teamed up with the other deplorables on the Senate Judiciary Committee to harangue the nominee about everything from QAnon theories to her history as a public defender, attempting to paint her as an adherent of “critical race theory,” as if that’s a bad thing.

Cotton really sunk to the bottom, however, when he all but called Jackson a Nazi sympathizer during a floor speech. “You know, the last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis,” he said. “This Judge Jackson might’ve gone there to defend them.”

“Judge Jackson voluntarily represented three terrorists in three cases,” Cotton complained to CNN. “And she called American soldiers war criminals. I have no patience for it.” Jackson, of course, did not call U.S. troops war criminals.

Those were the accusations that prompted Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison to call Cotton the “lowest of the low” and a “little maggot-infested man.”

Attacking the first Muslim American appeals court nominee

Cotton’s recent bigoted attacks on Adeel A. Mangi, the first-ever Muslim American federal appeals court nominee, also made headlines when he subjected the Pakistani-born attorney to a barrage of Islamophobic questions about the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, al-Qaida’s 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, policy issues regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and antisemitism in general.

Cotton bragged about his harassment of Mangi on X (formerly Twitter), crowing about his “gotcha” question trying to paint Mangi as antisemitic. Which is ironic, given Cotton’s previous antisemitic tweet history.

Blocking nominees of color

Cotton has a history of opposing Democratic presidents’ Black and brown nominees. From 2014 through 2016, Cotton blocked President Barack Obama’s friend and nominee Cassandra Butts—a Black woman—from an ambassador job. Why? When Butts met with him about his block, she told The New York Times’ Frank Bruni, Cotton admitted it was because “he knew that she was a close friend of Obama’s … and that blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president.” Butts died of cancer more than 800 days after her nomination.

Smearing a Singapore national

The senator proved himself an equal opportunity bigot in a recent Senate hearing on child safety and social media, repeatedly attacking TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew—a Singapore national—about his supposed personal connections to “the Chinese Communist Party.” Chew repeatedly denied Cotton’s obnoxious assertions, reiterating again and again, “I served my nation of Singapore.”

That didn’t stop Cotton from running to Fox News to smear Chew. “Singapore, unfortunately, is one of the places in the world that has the highest degree of infiltration and influence by the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “So, Mr. Chew has a lot to answer for, for what his app is doing in America and why it’s doing it.”

Defending slavery

Of course, Cotton’s racist theatrics haven’t been confined to Senate hearings. He authored legislation in 2020 to ban public schools from using a curriculum based on The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which dissected slavery’s impact on our country’s founding. He justified his bill by calling The 1619 Project “left-wing propaganda” and revisionist history at its worst.”

Cotton added that children should instead be taught that slavery “was the necessary evil upon which the union was built.”

National security sabotoge

When he wasn’t harassing people of color during hearings, Cotton also dabbled in national security sabotage, interfering in Obama’s negotiations with Iran on their nuclear capabilities. Cotton spearheaded a letter from GOP senators to Iranian leaders telling them that even if they came to an agreement with the U.S., future administrations and/or Congress could renege on it. 

That infamous New York Times op-ed

And don’t forget Cotton’s gross New York Times op-ed titled “Send In The Troops,” which called for Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and use “an overwhelming show of force” against protesters who took to the streets nationwide in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police. The column incited fierce backlash, which led to backpedaling from The New York Times and the opinion page editor’s resignation.

None of this will diminish Cotton’s prospects with Trump, who likes him because he’s a smart guy with an elite education. Also, he’s a reliable sycophant.

Cotton has refused to condemn Trump’s love of Vladimir Putin, and has bragged about how he ignored the evidence and arguments in Trump’s first impeachment. 

“My aides delivered a steady flow of papers and photocopied books, hidden underneath a fancy cover sheet labeled ‘Supplementary Impeachment Materials’, so nosy reporters sitting above us in the Senate gallery couldn’t see what I was reading,” Cotton wrote in his 2022 memoir.

Everything about Cotton appeals to Trump—and everything about him will revolt voters.

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Tom Cotton calls slavery a 'necessary evil' in push to ban schools from teaching the 1619 Project

Tom Cotton leads the Republican fight to sabotage Iran negotiations

Republican senator turns hearing on child safety into display of racial profiling

GOP senators barrage Biden's Muslim court nominee with hostile, inappropriate questions at hearing

Republican senators who attacked Ketanji Brown Jackson with racist frames got Fox News rewards

Republicans have their racist knives out for Ketanji Brown Jackson

New York Times gets justifiably smashed for publishing Sen. Tom Cotton's fascist screed

We're heading across the pond for this week's episode of "The Downballot" after the UK just announced it would hold snap elections—on July 4, no less. Co-host David Beard gives us Yanks a full run-down, including how the elections will work, what the polls are predicting, and what Labour plans to do if it finally ends 14 years of Conservative rule. We also take detours into Scotland and Rwanda (believe it or not) and bear down on a small far-right party that could cost the Tories dearly.

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Donald Trump says he’d consider Ken Paxton for US attorney general

Trump told a reporter in Texas this weekend that Paxton is “a very talented guy.”

By Jasper Scherer, The Texas Tribune

Former President Donald Trump said he would consider tapping Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. attorney general if he wins a second term in the White House, calling his longtime ally “a very talented guy” and praising his tenure as Texas’ chief legal officer.

“I would, actually,” Trump said Saturday when asked by a KDFW-TV reporter if he would consider Paxton for the national post. “He’s very, very talented. I mean, we have a lot of people that want that one and will be very good at it. But he’s a very talented guy.”

Paxton has long been a close ally of Trump, famously waging an unsuccessful legal challenge to Trump’s 2020 election loss in four battleground states. He also spoke at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the deadly U.S. Capitol riot in January 2021.

Paxton’s loyalty was rewarded with an endorsement from Trump in the 2022 primary, which helped the attorney general fend off three prominent GOP challengers.

Trump also came to Paxton’s defense when he was impeached last year for allegedly accepting bribes and abusing the power of his office to help a wealthy friend and campaign donor. After Paxton was acquitted in the Texas Senate, Trump claimed credit, citing his “intervention” on his Truth Social platform, where he denounced the proceedings and threatened political retribution for Republicans who backed the impeachment.

“I fought for him when he had the difficulty and we won,” he told KDFW. “He had some people really after him, and I thought it was really unfair.”

Trump’s latest comments, delivered at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Dallas, come after a series of recent polls have shown the presumptive Republican nominee leading President Joe Biden in a handful of key battleground states.

Paxton has also seen his political prospects rise in recent months, after prosecutors agreed in March to drop three felony counts of securities fraud that had loomed over Paxton for nearly his entire tenure as attorney general. The resolution of the nine-year-old case, along with Paxton’s impeachment acquittal in the Senate last fall, has brought him closer than ever to a political career devoid of legal drama.

Still, Paxton’s critics say he is far from vindicated. He remains under federal investigation for the same allegations that formed the basis of his impeachment, and he continues to face a whistleblower lawsuit from former deputies who said they were illegally fired for reporting Paxton to law enforcement. A separate lawsuit from the state bar seeks to penalize Paxton for his 2020 election challenge, which relied on discredited claims of election fraud.

If nominated, Paxton would need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The chamber is narrowly divided along party lines, with Democrats holding a 51-49 majority. One of the most prominent Republican members, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, has been an outspoken critic of Paxton, while Paxton has openly entertained the idea of challenging Cornyn in 2026.

Paxton is not the only Texan Trump has floated for a high-profile spot in his potential administration. In February, he said Gov. Greg Abbott is “absolutely” on his short list of potential vice presidential candidates. Abbott has since downplayed his interest in the job.

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Tracking URL: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/20/donald-trump-ken-paxton-attorney-general/

House Speaker Mike Johnson just can’t win

Big Republican donors might note Monday that after Speaker Mike Johnson talked tough to them this weekend about cracking down on the rebels who have derailed the House, he chose to kowtow to the current chaos agent; Johnson will have a one-on-one meeting with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to air her grievances. 

Johnson and Greene will meet Monday afternoon, following days of Greene abusing him on social media and with her promise of forcing a vote to oust Johnson some time this week. She and her ally, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, are ready to go. “If you’re happy with what he’s done this year and if you’re looking forward to what he will do the remainder of the year, you should join the Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries in supporting Mike Johnson. #uniparty” Massie tweeted Sunday.

That’s in response to the Democratic leadership team’s announcement last week that they’ll ride to Johnson’s rescue and allow members to block his ouster. That move ensures Johnson owes his future as speaker to Democrats and guarantees that his GOP detractors are only going to be more enraged at him because of it. There's just no winning for him no matter what.

Meanwhile, Johnson tried to placate big GOP donors by telling them he wants to crack down on the rebels if the Republicans retain the House next year. In a two-day donor retreat that started Sunday evening, Johnson said that he’d support new rules that would kick members off of their committees if they don’t toe the line on party-line procedural votes. Members of the Freedom Caucus have been regularly grinding the House’s business to a halt this session by blocking bills from moving to the floor either in the Rules Committee or on the floor.

Johnson needs those big donors for the Republicans to have a prayer of keeping their House majority and those big donors need to know that their investment wouldn’t just go down the toilet. The chaos in the House has been a black eye for Republicans, and the money men are seemingly not happy about that. 

Johnson’s reassurances that he’d crack down on the malcontents if he stays in the job just made Greene more riled up. “Speaker Mike Johnson is talking about kicking Republican members off of committees if we vote against his rules/bills,” she tweeted Monday morning. “It’s not us who is out of line, it’s our Republican elected Speaker!!” It’s unclear if that came before or after Johnson granted her a private audience. 

So far, most of the Freedom Caucus gang seems to be as fed up with Greene as they are with Johnson, so she hasn’t gained much support. But that could change with Johnson’s promise to the money people that he’d crack down on the rebels. That would make Johnson even more reliant on Democrats to save him, which would make the maniacs even angrier. He can’t win.

This was supposed to be a week devoted to messaging bills bashing President Joe Biden and the Democrats, including everyone’s favorite HOOHA bill—Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act—which promises to liberate our refrigerators from the heavy hand of big government. Instead it’s all going to be overshadowed by the soap opera. 

Donate now to end this circus, and to take the House back from Republicans!

RELATED STORIES:

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Mike Johnson may be speaker, but Democrats run the House

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