Mitch McConnell’s legacy comes under fire in Kentucky race to replace him in the Senate

Posted on August 4, 2025 by Associated Press

Republican Nate Morris had deftly warmed up a crowd of party faithful, gushing about President Donald Trump and recounting his own life’s journey — from hardscrabble childhood to wealthy entrepreneur — when he turned his attention to the man he wants to replace, Sen. Mitch McConnell.

That's when things got feisty. While bashing Kentucky's longest-serving senator at a GOP dinner on the eve of Saturday's Fancy Farm picnic, a tradition-laden stop on the state's political circuit, Morris was cut off in midsentence by a party activist in the crowd, who noted that McConnell isn't seeking reelection and pointedly asked Morris: “What are you running on?”

Morris touted his hard line stance on immigration and defended Trump's tariffs as a boon for American manufacturing. But he didn't retreat from his harsh critique of McConnell.

“We’ve seen 40 years of doing it the same way," Morris said. "And, yes, he’s not on the ballot, but his legacy is on the ballot. Do you want 40 more years of that? I don’t think you do.”

McConnell's blunt-force approach used against him

The pushback from a county GOP chairman revealed the political risks of attacking the 83-year-old McConnell in the twilight of his career. Towering over Kentucky politics for decades, McConnell is regarded as the master strategist behind the GOP's rise to power in a state long dominated by Democrats. The state Republican headquarters bears McConnell's name. As the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history, McConnell guided Republican policymaking and helped forge a conservative Supreme Court. Back home, his appropriating skills showered Kentucky with federal funding.

Now, his blunt-force style of campaigning — which undercut so many foes — is being used against him.

Morris is running against two other prominent Republicans — U.S. Rep. Andy Barr and former state Attorney General Daniel Cameron — for McConnell's seat. The outcome will be decided in the spring primary next year. Kentucky hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Wendell Ford in 1992.

All three Republican hopefuls lavish praise on Trump — in hopes of landing his endorsement — but also have ties to McConnell, who mentored generations of aspirational Republicans. Cameron and Barr have chided McConnell at times, but it's been mild compared to Morris' attacks. Morris interned for McConnell but glosses over that connection.

McConnell pushes back

Mitch McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chao, acknowledge applause at the annual Fancy Farm picnic on Aug. 2 in Fancy Farm, Ky.

At events surrounding the Fancy Farm picnic, an event long known for caustic zingers that he has always relished, McConnell showed no sign of backing down.

“Surely this isn’t true, but I’ve heard that one of the candidates running for my office wants to be different,” McConnell told a Republican crowd that included Morris at a pre-picnic breakfast in Mayfield. “Now, I’m wondering how you’d want to be different from the longest-serving Senate leader in American history. I’m wondering how you’d want to be different in supporting President Trump.”

McConnell received multiple standing ovations. Morris stayed seated.

McConnell has consistently voted for Trump's policies more often than Kentucky's other Republican senator, Rand Paul, according to a Congressional Quarterly voting analysis. McConnell recently supported Trump's signature tax and spending measure. Paul opposed it, saying it would drive up debt.

Yet Morris has taken on McConnell, who has famously had an up-and-down relationship with Trump.

McConnell teamed with Trump to put conservatives on the federal bench and pass tax cuts during the president's first term. McConnell also guided the Senate — and Trump — through two impeachment trials that ended in acquittals. But the relationship was severed after McConnell blamed Trump for “disgraceful” acts in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack by Trump's supporters.

McConnell endorsed Trump in 2024, but in a biography by Michael Tackett of The Associated Press, released shortly before the election, McConnell described him as “a despicable human being.”

Running against career politicians

Morris, who started a waste management technology company, says the senator has been insufficiently loyal to Trump and allowed festering issues like immigration and the national debt to grow worse during his years in Senate leadership.

Morris wants to tether his opponents to McConnell while running on anti-establishment themes that his campaign thinks will appeal to legions of Trump supporters in the Bluegrass State.

Nate Morris speaks at the annual Fancy Farm picnic on Aug. 2 in Fancy Farm, Ky.

“Let’s face it, folks, career politicians have run this country off a cliff,” Morris said.

Morris' rivals sum up the anti-McConnell attacks as an angry, backward-looking message. Cameron called it a diversionary tactic to obscure what he said is Morris' lack of both a message and credibility as a supporter of Trump's MAGA movement.

"He can’t talk about his actual record. So he has to choose to pick on an 83-year-old,” Cameron said.

At Fancy Farm, where candidates hurl insults at one another against a backdrop of bingo games and barbecue feasts, Morris took a swipe at McConnell's health.

“I have a serious question: who here can honestly tell me that it’s a good thing to have a senior citizen who freezes on national television during his press conferences as our U.S. senator?” Morris said. "It seems, to me, maybe just maybe, Mitch’s time to leave the Senate was a long time ago."

McConnell had his customary front-row seat for much of the event but wasn't there for Morris' remarks. He typically leaves before all the speeches are delivered and exited before his would-be successors spoke.

Living by the sword

McConnell complimented Trump in his speech, singling out Trump's bombing of Iranian nuclear sites.

“He turned Iran's nuclear program into a pile of rocks,” McConnell, a steadfast advocate for a muscular U.S. foreign policy, said to cheers.

At the GOP dinner the night before in Calvert City, where candidates typically are more politely received, party activist Frank Amaro confronted Morris for his anti-McConnell barrage.

“He keeps bashing Mitch McConnell like he’s running against Mitch McConnell,” Amaro, a county Republican chairman, said afterward. “Overall, he’s helped Kentucky and the United States, especially our Supreme Court, more than any other U.S. senator in this country.”

But Morris' blistering assessment of McConnell hit the mark with Trump supporter Patrick Marion, who applied the dreaded Republican-in-Name-Only label to McConnell.

“Personally, I think Mitch has been a RINO for way too long,” Marion said later. “I don't think he was a true MAGA supporter of President Trump.”

Afterward, Morris was in no mood to back off.

“He’s the nastiest politician maybe in the history of this state if not in the history of this country,” Morris said of McConnell. "Look, you live by the sword, you die by the sword.”

McConnell announces he’s done taking a dump all over democracy

Posted on February 20, 2025 by Emily Singer

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the former Senate Republican leader who is in large part responsible for helping destroy American democracy, will announce on Thursday that he is not running for reelection, the Associated Press reported.

“Seven times, my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate,” McConnell will say in a speech on the Senate floor, according to prepared remarks obtained by the AP. “Every day in between I’ve been humbled by the trust they’ve placed in me to do their business here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.”

It’s hard to pinpoint the worst things McConnell has done in office, because he’s done so many horrendous things. McConnell is responsible for breaking the Senate, weaponizing the filibuster to keep legislation from passing.

He is also responsible for stealing not one but two Supreme Court seats from Democratic presidents. In 2016, McConnell gleefully blocked former President Barack Obama from being able to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, refusing to give Obama’s nominee a hearing, let alone a vote on the Senate floor because he said it was too close to an election. Then in 2020, he conveniently said that rule no longer applied when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, confirming Donald Trump’s pick to fill Ginsburg’s seat just eight days before the 2020 election.

It wasn’t just the Supreme Court that he helped stack. McConnell blocked dozens of Obama’s lower court nominees, holding those seats vacant so that Trump could fill the seats after he was elected. And he shepherded through Trump’s judicial nominees, including ones that were blatantly unqualified.

Even more galling is that when Trump won a second term in November, McConnell then cried foul when federal judges decided to no longer retire to keep Trump from choosing their replacements, accusing them of playing politics with the judiciary.

“They rolled the dice that a Democrat could replace them, and now that he won’t, they’re changing their plans to keep a Republican from doing it,” McConnell, the master of playing politics with the judiciary, said in a speech on the Senate floor.

McConnell stepped down from GOP Senate leadership in 2024, saying it was time to pass the torch.

“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” McConnell said in February 2024. “So I stand before you today ... to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”

Since then, he’s seemingly found his spine, criticizing Trump’s worst impulses and voting against Trump’s unqualified and dangerous Cabinet nominees, including now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and now-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Yet McConnell voted for Trump in 2024, even though he thought Trump was, in his own words, a “stupid … narcissist.”

And Trump wouldn’t even be in the Oval Office now if McConnell had done the right thing in Trump’s 2021 impeachment and voted to convict Trump of inciting the insurrection at the Capitol and bar him from running for the presidency again.

McConnell believed Trump was responsible for the attack, saying that the insurrectionists, “were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.”

But McConnell voted against convicting Trump, and did not work to convince other Republican senators to vote to ban Trump from seeking federal office in the future.

Ultimately, McConnell has been a menace in American politics. He will not be missed.

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GOP congressman caught again doing same thing he accuses Biden of

Posted on June 10, 2024 by Walter Einenkel

For nearly a year, Head of the House Oversight Committee Rep. James Comer has used the power of his position to produce an evidence-free investigation into what he has called the “Biden family cover-up.” Warping half-truths in order to drive an investigation into old and debunked conspiracy theories has resulted in virtually no meaningful evidence of wrongdoing by President Joe Biden. It has, however, exposed the world to how much of a raging hypocrite Comer is.

In August, Comer told Newsmax that “Joe Biden was using pseudonyms to hide the fact that he was working with his son to peddle access to our enemies around the world.” The Kentucky congressman has repeatedly implied Biden’s use of aliases, a “common practice” in government correspondence, is proof he was involved in shady activities connected to his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

The Daily Beast reports that when he was Kentucky’s commissioner of agriculture in 2011, Comer was sending pseudonymous emails for government business. In fact, he was bungling hemp seed deals with China, and sending those emails from a government account, named after his 7-year-old son, to a big campaign donor who had a possible interest in the hemp product.

This is just the latest example of how enormous his hypocrisy is in regards to the allegations he levied against President Biden.

Back in November 2023, Comer accused Joe Biden of corruption based on a check for $200,000 he gave to his brother Jim Biden in 2018, which was repaid. Comer called it a “bombshell” piece of evidence. Days later, it was revealed that Comer had also paid his own brother $200,000, in one of many “land swaps” deals the Comers and their businesses had been involved in over the years.

In March 2023, the Congressional Integrity Project—the Democratic-aligned group committed to putting Republicans on the defensive—wrote a letter asking for a Kentucky prosecutor to investigate Comer for possibly committing “at least one, and perhaps multiple, felony offenses during his failed attempt to secure the Republican nomination for governor in 2015.” The motivation for the letter was a New York Times profile on Comer, in which the congressman talked about the tight gubernatorial primary he had lost—which included allegations by a blogger against him that he was abusive to a college girlfriend:

The month before the primary, a story appeared in The Lexington Herald-Leader in which leaked emails suggested coordination between the blogger and the husband of the running mate of one of Mr. Comer’s opponents in the race, the Louisville developer Hal Heiner.
The rumor whispered around Kentucky political circles at the time was that Mr. Comer had swiped the emails from the computer server for the husband’s former law firm and leaked them to the newspaper. In an interview with The Times, Mr. Comer confirmed, for the first time, that he had been behind the leak and strongly hinted he had gotten them from the server.

“I’ve had two servers in my lifetime,” Mr. Comer said when asked about the emails. “Hunter Biden’s is one, and you can — I’m not going to say who the other one was, but you can use your imagination.”

This tactic by Comer seems to have worked out as well as his investigation into Biden, as Comer’s former girlfriend, angered by the leaked emails, wrote and published a letter detailing what she described as a “toxic, abusive” relationship with Comer. Comer has denied the allegations of abuse.

Recently, reports say Comer spends his days fantasizing about the dead-end Biden impeachment disappearing. The constant humiliation of having failed to actually prove anything against Biden has prompted even right-wing news outlets like Fox News to stop giving him primetime mentions.

However, Donald Trump is running for president again, and the demands to create the semblance of corruption by Biden seems to be Comer’s primary job. On Sunday, Comer told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo he was not done with trying to get Biden, saying “This is just the beginning.”

He’s had almost a year, and all he’s proven is that Biden is a supportive father.

Donald Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records on May 30. What are potential voters saying about this historic news? And what is the Biden-Harris campaign doing now that the “teflon Don" is no more?

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Jury awards $100,000 to Kentucky couple denied marriage license by ex-County Clerk Kim Davis

Posted on September 14, 2023 by Associated Press

A federal jury has awarded $100,000 to a Kentucky couple who sued former county clerk Kim Davis over her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Davis, the former Rowan County clerk, drew international attention when she was briefly jailed in 2015 over her refusal, which she based on her belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

A jury in Ashland, Kentucky, awarded David Ermold and David Moore each $50,000 after deliberating on Wednesday, according to lawyers for Davis. A second couple who sued, James Yates and Will Smith, were awarded no damages on Wednesday by U.S. District Judge David Bunning.

Bunning sent Davis to jail for five days in 2015 after holding her in contempt of court. She was parodied on Saturday Night Live and embraced by conservative politicians who traveled to Kentucky to support her.

Davis was released only after her staff issued the licenses on her behalf but removed her name from the form. Kentucky's state legislature later enacted a law removing the names of all county clerks from state marriage licenses.

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Bunning ruled last year that Davis violated the constitutional rights of the two couples. In the ruling, Bunning reasoned that Davis “cannot use her own constitutional rights as a shield to violate the constitutional rights of others while performing her duties as an elected official.”

The trials held this week were held to decide damages against Davis. The former clerk had argued that a legal doctrine called qualified immunity protected her from being sued for damages by the couples.

Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, which represented Davis in the case, said in a release Wednesday they “look forward to appealing this decision and taking this case to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Davis’ lawyers in the case in 2020.

Ermold and Moore had a highly publicized showdown with Davis at the Rowan County clerk's office in 2015 after they asked for a marriage license with news cameras surrounding them. When she refused, Moore asked under whose authority was she acting. She replied, “under God's authority.”

Ermold unsuccessfully ran for clerk of Rowan County in 2018, when Davis was defeated by another Democrat. Before running, Ermold and Moore returned to Davis' office to file to run for clerk, and Davis, who handled election filings, helped Ermold during a brief but cordial meeting.

McConnell holds joint infrastructure event with Biden in Kentucky, infuriating MAGA Republicans

Posted on January 5, 2023 (Updated January 5, 2023) by Charles Jay

So where was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday when the House GOP clown caucus failed once again to get its act together to elect a speaker? In a move sure to infuriate Republican extremists, McConnell made a rare joint appearance with President Joe Biden in Covington, Kentucky, to tout a major project funded by the $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law in November 2021.

The event offered a sharp contrast to the chaos engulfing the House with the new narrow GOP majority unable to elect a speaker on its second day in control.

Biden began his remarks by thanking McConnell for providing the votes needed to get the infrastructure bill passed according to a transcript of the speeches.

"I wanted to start off the New Year at this historic project with the bi-partisan agreement because I believe it sends an important message to the entire country," Biden said. "We can work together. We can get things done. We can move the nation forward. If we drop our egos and focus on what is needed for the country."

In his remarks, McConnell said, “Even while we have big differences on other things .. this bridge, I think, symbolizes coming together ... If you look at the political alignment of everyone involved, it’s the government is working together to solve a major problem at a time when the country needs to see examples like this, of coming together and getting an outcome … I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish.”

McConnell had fully expected to take over as Senate majority leader on Tuesday when the new Congress convened. But instead, Democrats ended up increasing their Senate majority by one seat in the midterms.

Unlike his spineless House counterpart Kevin McCarthy, McConnell may realize it's beneficial for party leaders to stand up to rather than appease extremist MAGA Republicans. He has blamed Trump for putting up poor quality candidates like Herschel Walker in Georgia and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania who lost potentially winnable races that left him as minority leader.

He doesn’t want that to happen again in 2024 when the Senate map favors Republicans. Democrats must defend three seats in states won by Trump—in Ohio (Sherrod Brown), Montana (Jon Tester), and West Virginia (Joe Manchin) as well as in purple states, including Arizona (Kyrsten Sinema, now an independent).

Additionally, Trump has insulted McConnell in posts on his Truth Social platform as an “Old Crow” RINO (Republican In Name Only) and leveled ethnic slurs at his wife, Trump’s former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. And Trump lashed out at McConnell and Chao again on Tuesday on his Truth Social platform in the wake of McCarthy’s failure to win the speakership. Trump is backing McCarthy’s bid for speaker.

“There is so much unnecessary turmoil in the Republican Party,” Trump said, adding that the disorder is due in large part to “Old Broken Crow” McConnell, his wife Chao “who is a sellout to China,” and their “RINO” allies. They “make it difficult for everyone else by constantly capitulating to Hopeless Joe Biden and the Democrats.”

Of course, McConnell is responsible for much of what ails the nation, including packing the judiciary with Federalist Society conservatives, including three hard-line Supreme Court justices. But McConnell has begun to take a stand against MAGA Republican extremists, even if his actions are too little, too late after he failed to vote against Trump in the 2021 Senate impeachment trial. McConnell incurred the wrath of Trump when he got 18 other Senate Republicans to join him in supporting the infrastructure bill in 2021. In the House, McCarthy opposed the bill, while only 13 Republicans supported it.

He further infuriated MAGA Republicans when he helped the Senate pass the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in December, including $45 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine, to fund the government in fiscal year 2023.

On Wednesday, Biden and McConnell appeared together to tout the $1.63 billion in federal grants that Kentucky and Ohio will receive to help repair the overloaded Brent Spence Bridge and build a new span adjacent to it. The bridge over the Ohio River connects Cincinnati and Covington, and is a heavily used freight route connecting the Midwest and the South.

Other speakers at the event included two Republicans, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and former Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, as well as two Democrats, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who is up for reelection in 2023, and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and J.D. Vance of Ohio did not attend the event.

Biden has accomplished much more than expected with Democrats narrowly in control of Congress during his first two years in office. But after the November midterms, Republicans gained a narrow House majority and plan to try to stall Biden’s agenda and launch investigations into his family and Cabinet members.

Conservative commentators were irate about the joint appearance. Mark Levin called McConnell a “total fraud” on Twitter. Laura Ingraham tweeted, “Behold the uniparty!”

On Tuesday, McConnell broke the record for longest-serving Senate party leader whether in the majority or the minority, Politico reported. The record had been held by Democratic Sen. Mike Mansfield of Montana, who served as majority leader for 16 years.

In his floor remarks to open the new Congress, McConnell actually paid tribute to Mansfield: “Mansfield was a canny strategist who knew how to rally his conference. He knew when to go to battle, and when to coordinate with his counterpart Everett Dirksen,” McConnell said. “In short, he knew how to work the Senate.”

In November, McConnell beat back a leadership challenge. Ten senators voted for Sen. Rick Scott of Florida instead of McConnell.

Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior Biden administration officials will be blanketing the country this week to promote the president’s economic plan. On Wednesday, Harris will be in Chicago and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will visit New London, Connecticut. On Thursday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will join White House Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu in San Francisco, California.

Those visits are related to the following infrastructure projects funded under the 2021 bill: four moveable bridges crossing the Calumet River in Chicago; the Gold Star Memorial Bridge in New London, Connecticut; and the famous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Here is a video of Biden’s visit to Covington, including the speeches by Biden, McConnell and others. McConnell’s speech begins at the 29-minute mark and Biden’s at the 35-minute mark.

YouTube Video

(Updates throughout with details from the event in Covington, Kentucky.)

Chief justice temporarily blocks Title 42 end, indicates further action from court could come soon

Posted on December 20, 2022 by Gabe Ortiz

Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday temporarily halted the Biden administration’s planned lifting of the anti-asylum Title 42 order, granting a so-called emergency appeal from a slate of Republican attorneys general. “So-called emergency appeal,” because the appeals court panel that had last week denied the GOP request noted that the group of 19 attorneys general had waited too long to file their request.

The Biden administration had planned to lift the debunked public health order that’s used the pandemic as an excuse to quickly deport asylum-seekers in violation of their rights Tuesday evening, following a lower court order. Roberts instructed the administration to respond by this evening, indicating more action could be imminent. Legal expert Mark Joseph Stern noted that Roberts’ administrative stay “does not hint at the eventual outcome.”

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Republicans have simultaneously claimed that the Biden administration has an “open borders” policy while insisting that the Title 42 policy—which was implemented against the advice of public health experts by noted white supremacist Stephen Miller and Mike Pence at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020—must stay in place indefinitely. They have also insisted this public health order remain as they’ve consistently challenged other pandemic-related orders by the administration.

“The Biden administration, for its part, has insisted it is prepared to lift Title 42, saying the restoration of regular immigration procedures, such expedited deportations, will allow the U.S. to gradually reduce migrant arrivals and the high rate of repeat crossings recorded during the pandemic,” CBS News reported.

That last part is crucial: Title 42 in fact led to an increase in apprehensions, because desperate people blocked from their asylum rights and expelled have had no choice but to try again. It’s a failed policy, and its lifting would put our country back on the side of respecting U.S. and international asylum law. In a statement, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that as required by Roberts’ order, “the Title 42 public health order will remain in effect at this time and individuals who attempt to enter the United States unlawfully will continue to be expelled to Mexico.”

“While this stage of the litigation proceeds, we will continue our preparations to manage the border in a safe, orderly, and humane way when the Title 42 public health order lifts,” Mayorkas continued. “We urge Congress to use this time to provide the funds we have requested for border security and management and advance the comprehensive immigration measures President Biden proposed on his first day in office.”

House Republicans set to take power in the next Congress have indicated they’re serious about leading on immigration policy … by pushing a harebrained idea to impeach Mayorkas. Over what crimes? They haven’t figured that part out yet.

Vice President Kamala Harris similarly noted the need for lawmakers to lead on comprehensive immigration measures, and she called out for Republicans for failing to come to the table. They obsess on the issue of immigration only when it’s election season (my words, not hers). For example, a proposed framework that would have passed permanent relief for young immigrants in exchange for harsh border measures recently failed, derailed by Republicans’ “border first” excuses even though there was border stuff in there.

"I think that there is so much that needs to happen to address the issue," the vice president told NPR. "And sadly, what we have seen in particular, I am sad to say, from Republicans in Congress is an unwillingness to engage in any meaningful reform that could actually fix a lot of what we are witnessing.”

'Arbitrary and capricious': In victory for asylum-seekers, judge orders end to Miller pandemic order

Testimony confirms Title 42 was never about public health, it was about deporting asylum-seekers

GOP disarray: Trump blasts Mitch, Bowers calls out GOP ‘fascism,’ Colorado senator switches to Dems

Posted on August 24, 2022 by Charles Jay

While Joe Biden and fellow Democrats are getting things done, the GOP is increasingly in disarray as it embraces the MAGAverse and the cult of Trump. In fact, so much is going on that it might be time for periodic roundups of the internal fissures within the GOP.

Democrats still face an uphill battle in the November midterms, but the tide is turning in our favor. So let’s start with the dust-up between Donald Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Last week, McConnell conceded that the House has a better chance of flipping than the Senate. During a stop in Kentucky, McConnell told reporters:

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” McConnell said. “Senate races are just different — they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” he added, without mentioning any names.

But it was clear that he was referring to Trump-backed candidates in key swing states who are all trailing their Democratic opponents in recent polls—Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, J.D. Vance in Ohio, Herschel Walker in Georgia, and Blake Masters in Arizona. McConnell is backing pro-impeachment incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, while Trump is supporting her 2020 election denier rival, Kelly Tshibaka, in Alaska’s Senate race.

That didn’t sit well with the master of the MAGAverse. Over the weekend, Trump posted this on his Truth Social platform:

Why do Republican Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard working Republican candidates for the United States Senate. This is such an affront to honor and to leadership. He should spend more time (and money!) helping them get elected, and less time helping his crazy wife and family get rich on China!

Elaine Chao, McConnell’s wife, served as secretary of Transportation during Trump’s four-year term, but resigned shortly after the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.

Immediately after the insurrection, McConnell took to the Senate floor to say that Tump is “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events” of Jan. 6. However, he spinelessly voted to acquit Trump at his second impeachment trial a few weeks later.

As for Chao, whose family emigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan when she was a child, there have been questions raised as to whether she aided her father’s shipping company through her government positions. The U.S. Transportation Department's Inspector General's office investigated Chao for potential violations of ethics rules and misuse of her position, and published its findings in March. Chao's father, James S.C. Chao, founded a shipping company, now called the Foremost Group, which her sister Angela now heads. The firm does significant business in China.

McConnell’s criticism of Trump was relatively mild compared with what Arizona’s ousted House Speaker Rusty Bowers had to say about Trump and his party in an extraordinary interview with The Guardian. Bowers, a staunch conservative, testified in a public hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection about the pressure he faced to overturn Arizona’s presidential election result that gave Joe Biden a narrow win.

Earlier this month, Trump got his revenge when Bowers lost a Republican primary race to challenger David Farnsworth, who claimed that the 2020 election had been satanically snatched from Trump by the “devil himself.”

Bowers detailed to The Guardian how Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and John Eastman pressured him to have the state legislature use an arcane Arizona law to switch the election outcome to Trump. He resisted the bullying. ”The thought that if you don’t do what we like, then we will just get rid of you and march on and do it ourselves—that to me is fascism,” Bowers said.

With the primary loss behind him, Bowers, who is a Mormon, felt unhindered in letting loose on Trump and the GOP. “The constitution is hanging by a thread,” he told The Guardian. “The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And it’s my side. That just rips at my heart: that we would be the people who would surrender the constitution in order to win an election. That just blows my mind.”

Bowers said he remains optimistic that the GOP will one day find its way back on to the rails, but said that things are likely to get much worse before they get better. He said the Arizona GOP seems to be lost at the moment. “They’ve invented a new way. It’s a party that doesn’t have any thought. It’s all emotional, it’s all revenge. It’s all anger. That’s all it is,” Bowers said.

And in Colorado, one GOP state senator went even further when he announced Monday that he couldn’t remain a Republican any longer and was defecting to the Democrats. State Sen. Kevin Priola wrote in a two-page letter that there is “too much at stake right now for Republicans to be in charge.” He added: “Simply put, we need Democrats in charge.”

#coleg #copolitics #Elections2022 #democracy #Republican #DemocratsDeliver #colorado pic.twitter.com/eCiKONCAsi
— Kevin Priola 🇺🇸 XLVIII (@KevinPriola) August 22, 2022

Priola cited two main reasons for switching parties: Many Republicans peddling false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and the party’s efforts to block legislation that would fight climate change even as Coloradans endure worsening wildfires and drought.

Priola has served in the Colorado legislature as a Republican since 2009, first as a representative and then, starting in 2017, as a senator. Term limits bar him from seeking reelection in 2024. His defection increases the Democratic state Senate majority ahead of the November elections.

“I haven’t changed much in 30 years; but my party has,” Priola wrote. “Coloradans cannot afford for their leaders to give credence to election conspiracies and climate denialism,” he wrote, adding: “Our planet and our democracy depend on it.”

Gubernatorial hopeful who failed Breonna Taylor as prosecutor awfully quiet amid word of plea deal

Posted on August 15, 2022 (Updated August 16, 2022) by Lauren Sue

It's a shame Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron didn’t come to the same conclusion about a former Louisville police detective that she did about herself. That conclusion seems to be that Kelly Goodlett is guilty of helping falsify a no-knock search warrant for Breonna Taylor's home and filing a false report to cover it up. Goodlett will plead to one count of conspiring to violate Taylor's civil rights, ABC News reported on Friday. Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was killed on Mar. 13, 2020, in Louisville, Kentucky although she wasn't the subject of the warrant Goodlett allegedly helped falsify. The Black medical worker was sleeping when officers rammed through her door.

Still, Cameron didn’t even pretend to seek Goodlett’s prosecution or that of any other officer for Taylor’s death. It’s a fact that hopefully voters won’t soon forget amid his gubernatorial run.

Cameron attempted to make his case for why he should be the state’s next governor on Aug. 6 at the 142nd Fancy Farm Picnic. But demonstrators refused to let him have an unearned moment in the sun at the picnic in the unincorporated community in Graves County, Kentucky. They’ve watched him avoid holding officers involved in Taylor’s death accountable for more than two years now, and they refused to be silent while Cameron attempted to profit politically from his inaction.

“Breonna Taylor,” protesters shouted while Cameron raised his voice to compete with them.

He didn’t mention her name once in his speech, but he voiced support for law enforcement, telling them: “Know that we will always have your back, and we will always support the blue.”

Earlier in the day, Cameron told reporters two of the cops who shot Taylor, retired Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and former Detective Myles Cosgrove, didn't use excessive force the night of Taylor's death.

“I know folks have very strong feelings about this case ... but we have a responsibility to not give into any preferred narrative,” he said, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. “We have a responsibility to do right by the laws of Kentucky and that’s what we did.”

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What was right to Cameron, who served as special prosecutor after Jefferson County Commonwealth’s Attorney Tom Wine recused himself, was to allow the officers involved with Taylor’s death to rest easy knowing they wouldn’t be held accountable by the state’s top prosecutor.

Cameron only sought charges against one cop, former Detective Brett Hankison, not for killing Taylor but for allegedly endangering her neighbors in the process.

It took the Department of Justice stepping in to charge former Louisville police Detective Joshua Jaynes, former Sgt. Kyle Meany, and Goodlett allegedly for violating Taylor’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. The officers sought the warrant to search Taylor's home "knowing that the officers lacked probable cause for the search," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in remarks announcing the federal charges. Goodlett is set to appear in court to enter her plea on Aug. 22, ABC News reported.

The Department of Justice also charged Hankison "with two civil rights offenses alleging that he willfully used unconstitutionally excessive force” when he fired 10 shots through a window and a sliding glass door, “both of which were covered with blinds and curtains,” according to the Department of Justice.

Cameron attempted to excuse his lack of action in a seven-part Twitter thread responding to the federal charges.

He said:

“As in every prosecution, our office supports the impartial administration of justice, but it is important that people not conflate what happened today with the state law investigation undertaken by our office. Our primary task was to investigate whether the officers who executed the search warrant were criminally responsible for Ms. Taylor’s death under state law.

"At the conclusion of our investigation, our prosecutors submitted the information to a state grand jury, which ultimately resulted in criminal charges being brought against Mr. Brett Hankison for wanton endangerment.

"I’m proud of the work of our investigators & prosecutors. This case and the loss of Ms. Taylor’s life have generated national attention. People across the country have grieved, and there isn’t a person I’ve spoken to across our 120 counties that isn’t saddened by her loss. There are those, however, who want to use this moment to divide Kentuckians, misrepresent the facts of the state investigation, and broadly impugn the character of our law enforcement community.

"I won’t participate in that sort of rancor. It’s not productive. Instead, I’ll continue to speak with the love and respect that is consistent with our values as Kentuckians."

Three grand jurors in the Taylor case filed a petition with the Kentucky House of Representatives calling for Cameron's impeachment for what they described as manipulation in his presentation to jurors. Kevin Glogower, the lawyer who represented the jurors, told the Courier-Journal: “Mr. Cameron continues to blatantly disregard the truth,” which was that he never even mentioned a homicide charge in his presentation to jurors.

GOP panic over two major Pennsylvania races headlines huge primary night nationwide

Posted on May 17, 2022 (Updated May 17, 2022) by Jeff Singer

Tuesday brings us the biggest primary night of the 2022 cycle so far―in fact, one of the biggest we can expect all year―as voters in five different states across the country head to the polls. We have tons of must-watch and extremely expensive elections in store as each side selects its nominees in crucial contests for Senate and governor, as well as in numerous House races.

Below you'll find our guide to all of the top primaries, arranged chronologically by each state’s poll closing times. When it’s available, we'll tell you about any reliable polling that exists for each race, but if we don't mention any numbers, it means no recent surveys have been made public.

And of course, because this is a redistricting year, every state on the docket has a brand-new congressional map. To help you follow along, you can find interactive maps from Dave's Redistricting App for Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. Note that the presidential results we include after each district reflect how the 2020 race would have gone under the new lines in place for this fall. And if you'd like to know how much of the population in each new district comes from each old district, please check out our redistribution tables.

The Daily Kos Elections Team talks about how the MAGA civil war might be hurting the GOP in races across the country on The Downballot podcast

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Our live coverage will begin at 7:30 PM ET at Daily Kos Elections when polls close in North Carolina. You can also follow us on Twitter for blow-by-blow updates, and you’ll want to bookmark our primary calendar, which includes the dates for primaries in all 50 states.

KENTUCKY

Polls close in the portion of the state located in the Eastern Time Zone, which includes the entire 3rd Congressional District, at 6 PM ET. They close in the rest of the state an hour later.

● KY-03 (D) (60-38 Biden): Rep. John Yarmuth, who's spent a decade as Kentucky’s only Democratic member of Congress, is retiring from a Louisville seat that only underwent minor changes in redistricting, and two candidates are running for the nod to replace him: state Senate Minority Leader Morgan McGarvey, who has Yarmuth’s endorsement, and state Rep. Attica Scott, who would be the state’s first Black member of Congress.

McGarvey, who has enjoyed a massive fundraising lead over Scott, has also received $1 million in support from Protect Our Future PAC, a group funded by cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. Scott, who kicked off a campaign for this seat before Yarmuth announced his departure, has not benefited from any serious outside spending.

NORTH CAROLINA

Polls close statewide at 7:30 PM ET. Candidates must take at least 30% of the vote to avert a July 26 runoff, though the second-place finisher must officially request a runoff for one to occur.

● NC-Sen (R) (50-49 Trump): A total of 14 Republicans are competing to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr, but most of the attention has centered around Rep. Ted Budd and former Gov. Pat McCrory. Budd has the backing of Donald Trump and the well-funded Club for Growth, which along with its allies has spent $14.3 million on the congressman's behalf.

While Budd's campaign appeared to be in rough shape as recently as late January, every recent survey has shown him far ahead and well above the threshold for avoiding a runoff. Former Rep. Mark Walker and businesswoman Marjorie Eastman are also running, but they’re unlikely to matter unless the polls are wrong and Budd struggles to win outright. The winner will face former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, who doesn’t have any serious opposition in the Democratic primary.

● NC-01 (D & R) (53-45 Biden): Rep. G.K. Butterfield is retiring from this northeastern North Carolina seat that became slightly redder under the new congressional map imposed by the state courts after finding the GOP's districts were illegal partisan gerrymanders. Four fellow Democrats are running to replace the departing congressman. The two main contenders are state Sen. Don Davis, a prominent moderate whom Butterfield is supporting, and former state Sen. Erica Smith, who badly lost the 2020 primary for the U.S. Senate.

Smith has gone after her opponent for supporting anti-abortion legislation, but she’s been heavily outspent by Davis and his allies. The senator has benefited from $2.9 million in spending from United Democracy Project, a super PAC funded by the hawkish pro-Israel group AIPAC, while the Working Families Party has deployed a considerably smaller $600,000 to promote Smith. A recent Davis internal, to which Smith did not respond, showed him up 44-31.

Things got unexpectedly nasty in the final week of the GOP's eight-way primary when the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC close to party leadership, launched an ad campaign aiming to torpedo accountant Sandy Smith, who is running again after losing to Butterfield 54-46 in 2020. Smith’s most prominent intra-party foe appears to be Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson, who is the only elected official in the contest and has self-funded most of his bid. Other contenders to watch are attorney Billy Strickland, who failed to beat an incumbent state senator in a 2020 primary, and another self-funder, businessman Brad Murphy.

● NC-04 (D) (67-32 Biden): Veteran Rep. David Price is retiring from a safely blue seat that remains anchored by the college towns of Durham and Chapel Hill, and eight fellow Democrats are competing to take his place. The contest includes two elected officials: Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, who in 2020 became the first Muslim woman to win elective office in North Carolina, and state Sen. Valerie Foushee, who would be the first Black woman to represent this area in Congress. Also in the running is Clay Aiken, the former "American Idol" star who unsuccessfully ran against Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers several maps ago in 2014 and would be the state’s first gay representative.

Outside spending has very much favored Foushee, with AIPAC and Protect Our Future, the crypto-aligned PAC, representing most of the $3.5 million that has been deployed on her behalf; by contrast, Allam has received about $330,000 in support from the Working Families Party and other groups, while there have been no independent expenditures for Aiken. A late April internal from Foushee’s allies at EMILY’s List showed her defeating Allam 35-16.

● NC-11 (R) (54-44 Trump): Far-right freshman Rep. Madison Cawthorn pissed off lots of folks in western North Carolina when he tried to leave them behind to run for an even more conservative district in the Charlotte area that he had almost no ties to—a self-serving plan to boost his own profile that got derailed when the state's new court-drawn map replaced that Charlotte seat with a solidly blue district.

Cawthorn now faces seven challengers in a constituency that’s virtually the same as the one he wanted to abandon, several of whom launched campaigns during the brief period that the congressman was trying to hop districts. Sen. Thom Tillis has thrown his support behind state Sen. Chuck Edwards, who has pitched himself as an ardent conservative alternative to the shameless, attention-seeking incumbent. A super PAC close to Tillis has spent $1.6 million on ads attacking Cawthorn and his litany of embarrassing behaviors while also promoting Edwards.

The incumbent, though, retains Trump’s endorsement, and he could benefit if the other six candidates, including local GOP official Michele Woodhouse, split the anti-Cawthorn vote. Indeed, a late April survey from GOPAC, which isn’t backing anyone, showed that Cawthorn still led Edwards 38-21. The eventual winner will likely go up against Buncombe County Commissioner Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, who is the Democratic frontrunner.

● NC-13 (D & R) (50-48 Biden): Redistricting created a new swing seat in Raleigh's southern suburbs, and both parties have competitive primaries here. The Democratic side includes five candidates, with state Sen. Wiley Nickel and former state Sen. Sam Searcy the frontrunners. Nickel has enjoyed a spending advantage over Searcy in a contest where major outside groups haven’t gotten involved.

Things are far busier on the Republican side, where eight contenders are squaring off. Both Donald Trump and the Club for Growth are supporting Bo Hines, a 26-year-old former North Carolina State University football player who has minimal ties to the area and. The Club, the nihilistic House Freedom Caucus, and assorted other groups have together spent over $2.3 million promoting Hines and attacking one of his many opponents, wealthy attorney Kelly Daughtry, while a PAC called Old North has dropped over $1 million to boost Daughtry and bash Hines.

The other six candidates haven’t attracted as much attention. The field includes former Rep. Renee Ellmers, who represented part of the greater Raleigh area in the House from 2011 to 2017 in a brief career that was defined by some very wild swings of fortune; party activist DeVan Barbour; Army veteran Kent Keirsey; and pastor Chad Slotta.

PENNSYLVANIA

Polls close statewide at 8 PM ET.

● PA-Sen (R & D) (50-49 Biden): Both parties have hosted expensive primaries to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey in this key swing state, though the GOP contest has been a far more volatile affair. Until the final week, the main contenders were TV personality Mehmet Oz, who has Trump’s backing, and wealthy former hedge fund manager David McCormick. The two candidates and their allies have dumped millions on attack ads for months, which appears to have provided an unexpected opening for author Kathy Barnette, an election denier who badly lost to Democratic Rep. Madeleine Dean last cycle in the 4th District.

A survey taken for Fox News late in the race showed Oz with a 22-20 edge over McCormick, with Barnette just behind at 19%. The Club for Growth soon followed up with a $2 million infusion for Barnette, who has scarcely aired any ads on her own. Many GOP insiders are worried that she’d jeopardize the party’s general election prospects, and even Trump tried to knock her down Thursday. Also in the running are Jeff Bartos, who was Team Red's nominee for lieutenant governor; former Ambassador to Denmark Carla Sands; and attorney George Bochetto, but they haven’t demonstrated any Barnette-like late surge.

On the Democratic side, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman has from day one enjoyed huge polling leads over his two main intra-party rivals, Rep. Conor Lamb and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta. The race never descended into anything like the bloody affair on the Republican side, though it did turn negative last month. A pro-Lamb super PAC tried to weaken Fetterman using an erroneous and since-corrected news report to falsely claim Fetterman is a "self-described socialist” (the spot was pulled off the air and an edited version had to be substituted), but there’s no indication this attack had its desired effect. Fetterman announced Sunday that he’d suffered a stroke two days before but was “well on my way to a full recovery” and would continue his campaign.

● PA-Gov (R) (50-49 Biden): Republicans have to sort out a crowded, bitter primary before they can focus on trying to replace termed-out Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, a contest Team Blue has taken a deep interest in. State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a QAnon ally and Big Lie proponent whom many Republicans fret would be a toxic nominee, posted a 29-17 advantage over former Rep. Lou Barletta in a mid-May Fox News poll despite spending little money. Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who has no intra-party opposition, even ran commercials ostensibly attacking Mastriano that are actually designed to help him appeal to Trump fans; Trump himself also delivered a late endorsement to Mastriano on Saturday.

GOP leaders who aren’t Trump have hoped that they could consolidate behind one non-Mastriano candidate, prompting state Senate leader Jake Corman and former Rep. Melissa Hart to drop out just days before the primary and endorse Barletta, an anti-immigration zealot who is anything but a moderate. However, former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain, self-funding businessman Dave White, and several contenders even further behind in the polls have stayed put. McSwain himself has spent heavily, but he got the worst news possible last month when Trump attacked him for not doing enough to advance the Big Lie and urged Republicans not to vote for him.

● PA-12 (D) (59-39 Biden): Five Democrats are campaigning to succeed retiring Rep. Mike Doyle in a Pittsburgh-based seat that looks very much like the 18th District he currently serves.

Doyle and Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald are both backing Steve Irwin, a former chief of the Pennsylvania Securities Commission. The other major contender is state Rep. Summer Lee, a progressive who would be the first Black woman to represent the Keystone State in Congress. In Lee’s corner are Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and the influential SEIU Pennsylvania State Council. There's also law professor Jerry Dickinson, who challenged Doyle in the 2020 primary and lost 67-33. Dickinson, like Lee, is a Black progressive, and it's possible the two will be competing for the same sorts of voters.

A late March poll for Lee’s supporters at EMILY’s List showed her beating Irwin 38-13, but Irwin’s allies have ramped up their spending since then. A total of $3.1 million in outside spending has gone towards promoting Irwin or attacking Lee, with the bulk of it coming from AIPAC. The Working Families Party and Justice Democrats, meanwhile, are responsible for most of the $1.7 million that’s aided Lee.

● PA-17 (D & R) (52-46 Biden): Two Democrats and three Republicans are campaigning to succeed Senate candidate Conor Lamb in a suburban Pittsburgh seat that’s very similar to the old 17th District. On the Democratic side, Navy veteran Chris Deluzio has outspent party operative Sean Meloy in a race where outside groups haven’t gotten involved. Deluzio has the Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council on his side, while Meloy, who would be the state’s first LGBTQ member, has the support of neighboring Rep. Mike Doyle.

The GOP race is a battle between former Ross Township Commissioner Jeremy Shaffer and Jason Killmeyer, a national security analyst who often appears in conservative media. Shaffer has spent the most money, though Killmeyer has made sure to highlight the fact that Shaffer unseated an incumbent state senator in the 2018 primary only to narrowly lose the general election and cost the GOP a crucial seat. The third Republican, business owner Kathleen Coder, has little money.

IDAHO

Polls close in the portion of the state located in the Mountain Time Zone at 10 PM ET/8 PM local time. Polls close in the rest of the state an hour later.

● ID-Gov (R) (64-33 Trump): Gov. Brad Little faces seven fellow Republicans in this overwhelmingly red state, but the most prominent of the bunch is Trump-endorsed Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, who is also an ally of far-right conspiracist groups. Little, however, has enjoyed a massive financial lead, and he posted a huge 60-29 lead over McGeachin in an independent poll conducted in mid-April.

● ID-02 (R) (60-37 Trump): Longtime Republican Rep. Mike Simpson faces a primary rematch against attorney Bryan Smith, whom he beat 62-38 in 2014, in an eastern Idaho constituency that barely changed following redistricting; three little-known contenders are also on the ballot.

Just as he did eight years ago, Smith is arguing that the congressman is insufficiently conservative, though this time he’s also attacking Simpson for the doubts he expressed about Trump in 2016. The incumbent, for his part, is once again portraying the challenger as a greedy lawyer. Pro-Simpson groups have spent $1.7 million here, while Smith’s allies have dropped $680,000.

● ID-AG (R) (64-33 Trump): Five-term Attorney General Lawrence Wasden faces an intra-party challenge from former Rep. Raúl Labrador, who spent his four terms in the House as one of the most prominent tea party shit-talkers before losing his 2018 bid for governor in the GOP primary. Conservative activist Art Macomber is also in the mix. The Club for Growth has run commercials attacking Wasden for refusing to join other GOP attorneys general in suing to overturn Biden’s win, and Labrador has also taken him to task for not working with hardline conservatives in the legislature. A trio of polls, including a Club internal, have found Labrador in the lead.

OREGON

Polls close in most of Oregon at 11 PM ET/8 PM local time; they close an hour earlier in the small portion of the state in the Mountain Time Zone, but few if any votes will be reported before 11 ET.

● OR-Gov (D & R) (56-40 Biden): Democratic Gov. Kate Brown is termed-out of an office her party has held since the 1986 elections, and both sides have competitive races to succeed her. The two candidates who emerge Tuesday will be in for an expensive general election that will also feature former state Sen. Betsy Johnson, a conservative Democrat-turned-independent who's been a strong fundraiser.

There are 15 different Democrats in the running, but the only two serious contenders are state Treasurer Tobias Read and former state House Speaker Tina Kotek, who would be the first lesbian elected governor anywhere in the country. Kotek’s ads have emphasized her role in passing progressive policies, while the more moderate Read has argued that he represents a “new approach” for the state. A mid-April Reed internal had Kotek ahead 25-20.

The 19-person GOP field is similarly crowded but more in flux. The only recent poll we’ve seen was an independent survey from early May that showed former state House Minority Leader Christine Drazan leading former state Rep. Bob Tiernan, who has been self-funding, 19-14, with 2016 nominee Bud Pierce at 10%. The field also includes 1998 nominee Bill Sizemore; consultant Bridget Barton; businesswoman Jessica Gomez; Baker City Mayor Kerry McQuisten; and Sandy Mayor Stan Pulliam.

● OR-04 (D) (55-42 Biden): Veteran Rep. Peter DeFazio is retiring from a district along the state’s south coast that Democrats in the legislature made several points bluer, and eight fellow Democrats are running to replace him.

The top fundraiser is state Labor Commissioner Val Hoyle, who has endorsements from DeFazio and Sen. Jeff Merkley. Around $580,000 in outside spending has gone to supporting Hoyle, with most of that coming from the crypto-aligned Web3 Forward. Also in the race are former Airbnb executive Andrew Kalloch; Corvallis school board chair Sami Al-Abdrabbuh; and Doyle Canning, who badly lost the 2020 primary to DeFazio. The winner will go up against 2020 GOP nominee Alek Skarlatos, a National Guard veteran whose 52-46 loss last cycle represented the closest re-election contest of DeFazio's career.

● OR-05 (D & R) (53-44 Biden): Rep. Kurt Schrader, who has long been one of the most visible moderates in the Democratic caucus, faces a challenge from the left in a central Oregon seat that he currently represents just under half of. Schrader’s sole intra-party foe is Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who would be Oregon's first LGBTQ member of Congress and has attacked the incumbent for his ties to special interests.

McLeod-Skinner has raised a serious amount of money, but Schrader has still massively outspent her. The congressman has also received $2.1 million in outside support, with most of it coming from super PACs dedicated to electing centrist Democrats, while the Working Families Party has deployed about $340,000 for the challenger. Biden has also endorsed Schrader.

Five Republicans are facing off as well. The two serious contenders are former Happy Valley Mayor Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who lost two competitive races for the state House in 2016 and 2018, and businessman Jimmy Crumpacker, who took fourth place in the 2020 primary for the old 2nd District.

● OR-06 (D & R) (55-42 Biden): Democrats have experienced a massively expensive nine-way race for this brand-new seat in the mid-Willamette Valley that the state earned in reapportionment, though the bulk of the outside spending has benefited just one of them. That candidate is economic development adviser Carrick Flynn, who's been backed by a staggering $11.4 million from cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried's super PAC, Protect Our Future. House Majority PAC, a decade-old group that exists to help Democrats in general elections, has also spent $940,000 to support Flynn, an unprecedented departure condemned by Sen. Jeff Merkley. A third super PAC called Justice Unites Us is running ads for Flynn as well.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a heavy donor to HMP that was furious about the PAC's intervention, has spent around $1.5 million to support state Rep. Andrea Salinas, who would be Oregon’s first Latina member of Congress. The field also includes state Rep. Teresa Alonso León; self-funding perennial candidate Cody Reynolds; Oregon Medical Board member Kathleen Harder; former Multnomah County Commissioner Loretta Smith; and cryptocurrency developer Matt West, though none of them have received any outside support. An early May Salinas internal poll showed her edging out Flynn 18-14, with everyone else in single digits.

The seven-person Republican primary is similarly crowded but far cheaper. The field includes three candidates who have histories in older versions of the 5th District, from which the new 6th draws the bulk of its DNA: former Rep. Jim Bunn, who was elected to his only term in the 1994 Gingrich revolution; Mike Erickson, who was the GOP's unsuccessful 2006 and 2008 nominee for the next incarnation of the 5th; and former Keizer city councilor Amy Ryan Courser, who lost to Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader in 2020. Also in the running are Army veteran Nate Sandvig, state Rep. Ron Noble, Dundee Mayor David Russ, and Air Force veteran Angela Plowhead.

Kentucky Democrat makes impassioned plea in defense of reproductive rights. You need to see this

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Let’s see: In the past few years, Republicans have hitched themselves to Vladimir Putin, violent insurrectionists who tried to overthrow the legitimate government of the United States, a sore-loser campaign to undermine democracy, a former president who stole boxes of classified information from the White House and called a murderous tyrant a savvy genius, and a cruel campaign to gut (particularly poor and vulnerable) people’s reproductive freedoms.

Seems like that’s a fuckuvalot for Democratic hopefuls to campaign on! Tell me again why so many of us are so pessimistic about the midterms?

Every time I see Republicans attempt to establish a tough-on-Putin narrative after spending four years suckling the scurfy teats of the Moscow murderer’s mucilaginous manservant, I want to effing scream. Where’s the pushback on these ghouls? Come on, now! Let’s get fired up, hey! Let’s get fired up!

In other words, we need more fire like this: Kentucky state Sen. Karen Berg has some choice words for her GOP colleagues when it comes to their support of cruel and benighted anti-choice legislation. In the following clip, she responds to a vote on Kentucky’s SB 321, which would ban abortions after 15 weeks. The bill is designed to mirror a similarly restrictive Mississippi law that’s currently being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court. If SCOTUS upholds that law, Kentucky’s own back-alley clinic bill will be ready to go on Day One. This is straight fire, y’all.

if you watch one thing today make it this pic.twitter.com/RN2wiq61rr
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) March 19, 2022

BERG: “You know, I’m a diagnostic radiologist, and diagnostic radiologists, historically, and in many places in this state still do all of the first trimester OB ultrasound. So I am extraordinarily, personally familiar with the development of a fetus in the womb. And for you to sit here and say that at 15 weeks a fetus has a functional heart, a four-chamber heart, that can survive on its own is fallacious. That is not true. There is no viability. You know, I look around at my colleagues on this committee. I am the only woman on this podium right now. I am the only physician sitting on this podium. This bill is a medical sham. It does not follow medicine. It does not even purport to listen to medicine. And for each and every one of my colleagues to be so willing to cast an aye vote, when what you are doing is putting your finger, putting your knee, putting a gun to women’s heads. You are killing women, because abortion will continue. Women will continue to have efficacy over their own body, whether or not you make it legal. I vote no and I really, really apologize to the people of Kentucky that we are spending this much time and this much energy when we have families in poverty. We have single women heading households in poverty at a higher rate than any other group in the state. And you all are not addressing that. You are making it worse. Thank you.”

Democrats! This is how you do it! Interjection! Show excitement! Or emotion! Alleluia!

Republicans’ war on women’s reproductive rights has now come dangerously close to victory. By a wide margin, most Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade—but the GOP clearly doesn’t care about most Americans’ opinions.

Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of Republicans opposed Volodymyr Zelenskyy before they supported him. And their longtime standard-bearer, Grampa Rage Diapers, is best buds with the butcher of Mariupol and still refuses to directly criticize him.

Of course, if you want to support Democrats across the country in November, tossing a few ha’pennies Berg’s way might be a good start.

Thank you to those asking where you can support my re-election. Here is the link: https://t.co/oQfaCkggft
— Karen Berg (@karenforky) March 19, 2022

Thanks, Karen. We need more Democrats like you. Hell, we need more Karens like you. Republicans are counting on a wave election in November. Let’s show them we have enough fight and grit left in us to withstand their tsunami of everlasting bullshit.

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.