Leader Hakeem Jeffries: ‘It’s not our responsibility’ to help GOP count votes

Posted on February 8, 2024 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Wednesday that the debacle of Republicans’ failure to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was merely a “setback,” a numbers game and not a colossal failure on his team’s account. “Sometimes when you’re counting votes and people show up when they’re not expected to be in the building it changes the equation,” he said. Those tricksy Democrats hiding their votes.

Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries was having none of that when he talked to reporters Wednesday. “It’s not our responsibility to let House Republicans know which members will or will not be present on the House floor on any other day or in connection with any given vote.”

YouTube Video

He slammed Republicans for the political distraction:

What does the impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas have to do with the economy? Nothing. What does the impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas have to do with addressing the affordability issues in the United States of America? Nothing. What does the impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas have to do with fixing our broken immigration system and addressing challenges at the border? Absolutely nothing.
It's incredible to me that instead of extreme MAGA Republicans pivoting to working with us in a commonsense way to solve real problems for the American people, their focus is on how do we get Steve Scalise back to Washington so we can continue to do the bidding of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump and impeach Secretary Mayorkas? That tells you everything we need to know about this do-nothing, chaotic, dysfunctional and extreme Republican majority.

That is what Johnson is focused on: Getting Rep. Steve Scalise—who is recovering from a stem cell transplant—back to work and bringing the resolution back to the floor just as he’s available. Johnson and his team are not going to address the issue that three of their members are opposed to this impeachment because it’s bullshit.

“People around here should take note of it because they’re losing a group of Republicans that are really important,” Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, one of those “no” votes on Tuesday, told The Hill. “The vote is a matter of numbers always. But I don’t think it’s a matter of numbers when you’re looking at the Constitution and whether it’s the right thing to do.”

Speaker Mike Johnson had a stunningly awful day—and he did it to himself

House GOP forms circular firing squad over their epic failures

Campaign Action

Speaker Mike Johnson had a stunningly awful day—and he did it to himself

Posted on February 7, 2024 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Mike Johnson is no Nancy Pelosi. In fact, he just put himself in the running for the worst speaker in the modern age, surpassing even ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy with unforced errors. His ineptitude was on full display Tuesday when he plowed ahead with two critical bills, knowing there was a very good chance of defeat. That’s either hubris—believing he could bully his way through—or wishful thinking, but either way, it’s incompetence.

Let’s start with the failed vote on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Impeaching a cabinet secretary is a very big deal. It hasn’t been tried since 1876, when the House impeached Secretary of War William Belknap for blatant corruption, taking kickbacks to fund an extravagant lifestyle. Even then, the Senate voted to acquit (though Belknap had already resigned). So what Johnson was doing with this impeachment resolution would already have been historical, even if it hadn’t been so blatantly unjustified. This is the epitome of the kind of vote you don’t gamble on, but that’s exactly what Johnson did.

He brought the resolution to the floor Tuesday, knowing that three Republicans opposed it. Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who was supposedly the surprise “no” vote that tanked the resolution, says he had been telling leadership for months that he was against the impeachment. And while Johnson also knew that every Democrat would vote against it, he rolled the dice on Democratic Rep. Al Green not being present—and Johnson lost, which he also knew could happen.

As if that weren’t bad enough, Johnson made his day worse by pushing through a stand-alone Israel assistance bill that needed a two-thirds majority to pass. He knew that a majority of Democrats opposed it. He knew it would fail, and he inexplicably went with it anyway, apparently thinking he could blame the Democrats for defeating it. The end result, however, is that pro-Israel groups are now worried that this sends a message that Congress is divided on support.

Is Johnson feeling any chagrin over this debacle? Nope. It’s not his fault. Asked by reporters why he gambled on the impeachment resolution, he said, “[D]emocracy is messy. … We have a razor-thin margin here, and every vote counts. Sometimes, when you’re counting votes and people show up when they’re not expected to be in the building, it changes the equation.” Those tricky Democrats, all showing up to stand for the principle that you can’t impeach an official over a policy dispute.

Asked about criticism of his leadership and inexperience, including from his fellow Republicans, he said, “I don’t think that this is a reflection on the leader. It’s a reflection on the body itself and the place where we’ve come in this country.” That’s definitely hubris because it is all a reflection on his leadership.

You know who else had a razor-thin majority in a deeply divided Congress? That’s right, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who would have never allowed such a humiliating defeat to happen. In the previous session of Congress, with the slimmest Democratic majority in the House in roughly 80 years, Pelosi passed massive legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act, American Rescue Plan Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act, all of which are helping drive the U.S. economy’s strong comeback.

Johnson’s going to try again on the impeachment resolution when Republican Rep. Steve Scalise returns following medical treatment, and on the Israel funding bill next week, but the outcome isn’t any more certain on either. Scalise might be able to return from his stem cell transplant recovery soon, or he might not. The special election to replace the expelled Rep. George Santos in New York next Tuesday could go to a Republican, or it could reduce the GOP majority by one more vote. And while Johnson is considering putting the Israel bill back on the floor through the rules process so it would just need a simple majority vote, that’s a dicey plan. One of the hard-line GOP Rules Committee members, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, is publicly trashing his leadership, saying replacing McCarthy has “officially turned into an unmitigated disaster.”

Johnson has demonstrated his incompetence and turned far-right members against him multiple times over. This debacle will only make the hard-liners madder and more ungovernable, and everyone else in the GOP conference frustrated. And this is what he has to work with to fund the government in about a month’s time.

The honeymoon is definitely over for Speaker Mike Johnson

Defense bill deal made, hard-right House members fume

Republicans demanded border security, worked on a compromise deal with Democrats, and now want to blow the whole thing up. Biden is promising to remind Americans every day that the Republican Party is at fault for the lack of solutions to the problems they claim are most important.

Embedded Content

Campaign Action

House GOP forms circular firing squad over their epic failures

Posted on February 7, 2024 by Mark Sumner

On Tuesday, things went so wrong for Republicans that the level of their dysfunction became the focus of the story. At Fox News, Steve Doocy was busy dressing down House Majority Whip Tom Emmer for his role in throwing away a border security bill that is the best Republicans might ever get. Meanwhile, The New York Times was reporting that “dysfunction reigns in Congress” as the Republican majority in the House showed an incredible ability to lose its way with a “humiliating series of setbacks.”

Whatever Emmer was whipping, it wasn’t votes.

Now Republicans need someone to blame for those failures. Like all parties that revolve around a single authoritarian leader, the most important thing is not to fall under the baleful glare of the Eye of Donald Trump. And the best way to do that is … to point the finger at someone else.

After Republicans’ failure to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made a bid to blame Democrats because Rep. Al Green turned up to vote in a wheelchair when Republicans thought they had safely scheduled this vote at a time when Green couldn’t appear due to emergency surgery.

Greene: Democrats hid one of their members trying to throw us off on the numbers pic.twitter.com/8Da16eNJcj
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 7, 2024

But blaming everything on the old hidden Democrat trick was not enough for others. Rep. Greg Steube went on Newsmax to point at a Republican absence—House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who had the audacity to be out for cancer treatment. “If Scalise would have been here … the bill would have passed,” Steube said.

There were claims overnight that Scalise would return for a Wednesday vote, though his office said otherwise. Dragging Scalise out of cancer treatment so that Republicans can squeak out a sham impeachment with a one-vote margin would be a top entry in the annals of both cruelty and pathos.

Other Republicans widened the scope of their blame to take in the whole of Republican leadership in the House, which led to one of the strangest aspects of a strange day: nostalgia for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

“Getting rid of Speaker McCarthy has officially turned into an unmitigated disaster,” tweeted Rep. Thomas Massie. “All work on separate spending bills has ceased. Spending reductions have been traded for spending increases. Warrantless spying has been temporarily extended. Our majority has shrunk.”

Massie wasn’t the only Republican suddenly longing for the Golden Age of Kevin, but the irony meter had to be definitively fried by this statement from Rep. Matt Gaetz.

"I also wonder, wouldn't it have been nice to still have Kevin McCarthy in the House of Representatives," Gaetz said on Newsmax. "Never thought you'd hear me say that."

Is that even irony? Irony squared? Irony times hypocrisy over the reciprocal of karma?

Whatever it was, Gaetz went on to blame McCarthy for getting rid of former Rep. George Santos. This definitely did not happen, since Santos was expelled two months after Gaetz engineered the ouster of McCarthy from the speaker’s chair.

Still, Santos sent Republicans a little something to remember him by in their moment of darkness.

Miss me yet? pic.twitter.com/sw4j7VcjJk
— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) February 6, 2024

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson kept it simple: He blamed everyone but himself. "I don't think this is a reflection on the leader,” Johnson told reporters. “It's a reflection on the body itself." Sure. That’ll do it.

Following the loss on impeaching Mayorkas, one senior Republican aide was pushing a hard line, writing, “If we lose the Israel vote after losing Mayorkas impeachment: VACATE.”

Then they lost the vote on Israel.

Rep. Mike Gallagher grabbed a pen for a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday, to take a swipe at every Republican in Congress who voted to impeach Mayorkas. “Impeachment not only would fail to resolve Mr. Biden’s border crisis,” wrote Gallagher, “but would also set a dangerous new precedent that would be used against future Republican administrations.”

But Gallagher was alone in trying to stop the bleeding. The remainder of the caucus had their eyes firmly fixed on what’s important: pleasing Donald Trump. After all, Trump doesn’t want issues at the southern border solved; he wants them front and center in the fall election. And in that cause, congressional Republicans are fully prepared to humiliate themselves all over again today, and tomorrow, to infinity and beyond.

As The New York Times reports, Republicans thought they had set a trap for Democrats on the border issue, one that would give them a potent issue for the fall and powerful leverage to get policies they wanted. But Democrats “tripped them up,” in the Times’ words, by giving Republicans unexpected concessions on border security and tying it to military assistance for Ukraine.

Now Republicans are scurrying to explain how what they demanded is the wrong thing all along. Congress is flailing, multiple issues get ignored in the storm of finger-pointing, and no one wants to name the person primarily responsible for this mess.

Because that person is Trump. And if Republicans have to burn down their own house and throw their friends under buses to make Trump happy … just line up those buses.

Campaign Action

Embedded Content

Republican Party suffers the most humiliating 24 hours in recent memory

Posted on February 7, 2024 by Mark Sumner

Every party loses an election now and then. Both parties have spent whole decades on the outs, railing from the sidelines while their opponents controlled the agenda. However, it’s hard to think of a 24-hour period where any party has suffered so many self-inflicted disasters as the Republican Party experienced on Tuesday.

This beautiful run of disintegrating dignitas began on Monday evening when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke out to explain why the border security deal that had been negotiated over months was exactly what was needed to address “a humanitarian and security crisis of historic proportions.” Then he went behind closed doors three hours later to kill the bill on orders from Donald Trump.

The morning opened to chaos. Sen. James Lankford, who had been McConnell’s chief negotiator on the bill, explained how it felt to be run over by a bus. McConnell, who once completely dictated the actions of Republicans in the Senate, was revealed as a sad puppet. The remaining Republicans were left stumbling over themselves, trying to justify sabotaging the best deal they’re ever going to get.

In hours Republicans took the issue at the heart of their 2024 campaign and turned it into an anchor that President Joe Biden will hang around their necks.

And their day only went downhill from there.

After a morning spent scrambling to create a reason for their actions that went beyond simple fear of Trump, Republicans got some troubling news about their golden ruler. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia took Trump to task with a 57-page decision that shredded any delusions about “absolute immunity.”

For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.

The unanimous decision was extensive and authoritative enough that experts are suggesting the Supreme Court might not consider Trump’s appeal, assuming Trump’s crack legal team manages to meet the short filing deadline provided by the appellate court.

But that was far from the end. Over on the House side of the Capitol, Republicans had cooked up the ridiculous impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for not being tougher on the border. Despite having just shot down a bill to get tougher on the border, they were determined to plunge blindly ahead under untested Speaker Mike Johnson.

Once again, Republicans learned that just because Nancy Pelosi made running a House vote look easy, that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

The reason Republicans were so eager to hold the vote on Tuesday evening was because they knew that Democratic Rep. Al Green was in the hospital after undergoing emergency abdominal surgery on Friday. Republicans hoped to take advantage of Green’s absence to give them a buffer against any Republican defections from their unjustified and patently ridiculous impeachment.

But with the vote already underway, Green appeared in a wheelchair to cast the decisive vote, putting the motion into a 215-215 tie. Johnson was forced to flip his vote to preserve the issue for a re-vote at a later date, resulting in a stunning and deeply embarrassing loss for the Republicans.

Democrat Al Green surprised Rs when he showed up for the Mayorkas impeachment vote tonight -- and ultimately helped Ds sink sink measure. (It will pass when when Scalise returns.) But Dem leaders were ready. "It was not a surprise," House Minority Whip Katherine Clark told me pic.twitter.com/HpyJbWBt75
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 7, 2024

And the night still wasn’t over.

Earlier in the week, Republicans had prepared a stand-alone aid package for Israel in hopes that they could avoid having to vote on the Ukraine assistance and border security bill they had demanded for months. Johnson tried to push the Israel assistance package through using an accelerated procedure that required two-thirds of the votes.

Proving once again that counting is considered higher math for this Republican team, that bill also failed, falling over 30 votes short.

Republicans have suggested that House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who missed the Tuesday night vote while undergoing cancer treatment, will be back on Wednesday so they can call a do-over. However, there is disagreement on this point.

Scalise’s office tells me his return “won’t be tomorrow” https://t.co/ZxyY0McK3S
— Morgan Phillips (@_phillipsmorgan) February 7, 2024

But if there is one thing this Republican-led House knows how to do, it’s hold one humiliating vote after another. So they will probably make it happen someday.

But even after these two disastrous votes, the day still wasn’t over.

Soon after Johnson finally gaveled an end to fruitless efforts in the House, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel announced that she was stepping down. McDaniel has been under heavy pressure from Trump for failing to keep the RNC coffers filled with cash.

McDaniel is the niece of Sen. Mitt Romney, but she stopped using her family name at Trump’s request. Now he has essentially fired her. As usual, Trump’s idea of loyalty is strictly one-way.

Republicans are rolling into the new day with absolutely nothing to show for surrendering everything to Trump. The best bill they could have hoped to negotiate is gone, they didn’t get their sham impeachment, they didn’t get their Israel-without-Ukraine funding package, and the chair of the party is packing up to leave. Meanwhile, Trump is entering the day with a much greater chance that he will face criminal proceedings before the election.

There aren’t a lot of New York Times headlines that bear repeating, but this one works:

And it’s only Wednesday.

Campaign Action

House GOP’s unprecedented stunt to impeach Mayorkas fails

Posted on February 6, 2024 by Joan McCarter

In a stunning collapse, House Republicans failed Tuesday to approve the impeachment resolution against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, with four Republicans voting against it. Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado, Tom McClintock of California, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, and Blake Moore of Utah—who switched his vote at the last minute to be able to bring it to a vote again—joined Democrats to defeat the resolution.

One of those Republicans had an all-too rare moment of honesty in this debate, with McClintock calling the impeachment what it was: a “stunt.”

YouTube Video

“Cabinet secretaries can't serve two masters. They can be impeached for committing a crime related to their office but not for carrying out presidential policy,” McClintock said Tuesday on the floor, adding that this issue is one that needs to be decided at the ballot box in November. “I'm afraid that stunts like this don't help."

How much of a stunt is it? Republicans have tacitly admitted that the move has been purely political from the beginning, driven as it was by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. In fact, Greene is so instrumental to this impeachment push that prior to the vote, it was reported that she had been tapped to be an impeachment manager in the Senate, presenting the supposed case to the chamber.

It’s also nearly unprecedented. The House hasn’t attempted to impeach a Cabinet member since 1876. But what’s more unprecedented is the House leadership advancing such an historic vote when the outcome was uncertain. Democratic Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi would never have dreamed of bringing a vote of this magnitude to the floor without knowing she had the votes to get it done—nor would former GOP Speakers Paul Ryan or John Boehner have done so, for that matter.

Instead, newbie Speaker Mike Johnson played to his MAGA base. “There is no other measure for Congress to take but this one,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday, ahead of the vote. “It’s an extreme measure, but extreme times call for extreme measures.”

Watch: Republicans slammed for 'debasing and demeaning' the Constitution

Republicans admit impeaching Mayorkas is all politics

Campaign Action

Morning Digest: Democrats spend big to pick preferred GOP opponent in Montana primary

Posted on January 29, 2024 by Daily Kos Elections

The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

Subscribe to The Downballot, our weekly podcast

Embedded Content

Leading Off

● MT-Sen: Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale has now all but announced that he'll seek a rematch with the man who beat him in 2018, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester—news that brought smiles to Democrats and angst to the NRSC and its allies.

The GOP establishment is all-in for wealthy businessman Tim Sheehy, but Democrats have already spent millions on messaging designed either to knock Sheehy out in the June 4 primary or damage him for the general election.

But Sheehy might be his own worst enemy. News of a 2019 plane crash involving the death of a pilot and the injury of a teenager on the ground resurfaced Friday after Politico reported that someone identified as "Timothy Sheehy" listed "plane crasher" as his occupation when making political donations. And there's reason to think this wasn't the work of a troll with money to burn.

Read Jeff Singer's piece for much more on the unfolding race between two flawed Republicans—including why Rosendale's alliance with Florida's most infamous congressman helps explain why Democrats would still rather face him again.

4Q Fundraising

NE-02: Don Bacon (R-inc): $780,000 raised, $1.5 million cash on hand; Tony Vargas (D): $552,000 raised
PA-10: Janelle Stelson (D): $282,000 raised
NC-AG: Jeff Jackson (D): $2 million raised (in two months)

Senate

● WV-Sen: Disgraced coal baron Don Blankenship decided to add "perennial candidate" to his résumé on Friday when he filed to run as a Democrat for West Virginia's open Senate seat.

The state Democratic Party quickly made it clear it wanted nothing to do with Blankenship, who spent a year in prison in connection to the 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners at one of his properties. "Blankenship, or as he’ll forever be known, federal prisoner 12393-088, lost a previous race for U.S. Senate when he ran as a Republican," said chairman Mike Pushkin. "He followed that up with a failed race for president running on the Constitution Party ticket," Pushkin noted.

House

● CO-05: Former Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said on Friday that he would not enter the GOP primary to succeed retiring Rep. Doug Lamborn but would instead endorse conservative radio host Jeff Crank.

● IN-08: State Sen. Mark Messmer on Thursday became the first elected official to announce a bid to replace retiring Rep. Larry Bucshon, a fellow Republican. Messmer previously served as the chamber's majority floor leader, but he set his sights higher in 2022 when he challenged Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray for the top job. Bray prevailed, though, and the Indiana Capital says that Messmer lost his leadership positions afterward.

● MD-02: Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger on Friday became the first Democratic congressman to announce his retirement in the new year. His decision marks the close of a long career that saw Ruppersberger rise high in Old Line State politics―though not quite as high as he had envisioned.

Going Dutch. Ruppersberger was elected Baltimore County executive in 1994, and he seemed primed to run for governor in 2002. However, his troubles at home, including an embarrassing loss at the ballot box for a measure he'd supported, kept him out of the contest.
"Ruppersberger facing uphill battle." The termed-out executive still got his chance to run for higher office that same year after Democrats in the legislature redrew the congressional map, but he had to go through an unexpectedly bruising primary just two months before a general election showdown with former Republican Rep. Helen Bentley—one he was no longer expected to win.
Not going way down in the hole. It would take more than a decade before Ruppersberger finally put his gubernatorial ambitions to rest. However, he quickly became so secure in Congress that even the most famous politician on "The Wire" wouldn't challenge him.

Check out Jeff Singer's piece for more on Ruppersberger's career―and how one local Democrat has spent months laying the groundwork to succeed him.

● NC-06: Journalist Bryan Anderson reported Thursday that Speaker Mike Johnson has yanked back his endorsement of former Rep. Mark Walker, though Walker claims the reversal actually happened several months ago.

The former congressman tells The News & Observer that Johnson backed him before becoming speaker in October but then notified him the following month that he would now be neutral in the March 5 Republican primary. Walker also showed the paper a text that reporter Danielle Battaglia says "seemingly confirms" he was Johnson's initial pick.

However, Johnson, at least, did in fact support Walker at some point. Not so, however, with another member of Congress whose endorsement Walker has claimed. Walker has posted on social media that he had the backing of Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, but the senator's staff now tells N&O that no such endorsement ever happened. "I don’t know what’s going on," said Mullin's chief of staff.

● NJ-07: Summit Councilman Greg Vartan announced Thursday that he was dropping out of the Democratic primary to take on Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. Vartan's departure leaves former Working Families Party state director Sue Altman and former State Department official Jason Blazakis as the only notable candidates competing in the June 4 nomination contest.

● NY-16: The House Ethics Committee announced Thursday that it was ending its probe into Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman for pulling a fire alarm at the Capitol in September. The body said that it would not sanction the congressman even though it found his explanations about the incident "less than credible and otherwise misleading," adding that he "failed to take appropriate steps to mitigate the risk of unnecessary harm."

Bowman, who has insisted he believed the alarm would open a locked door as he was "rushing to a vote," pleaded guilty in October for "willfully or knowingly" instigating a false alarm. The case was dismissed Thursday after it was determined that Bowman had paid his $1,000 fine and apologized to the Capitol Police. The congressman faces serious opposition in the June 25 primary from Westchester County Executive George Latimer, though the challenger did not mention the fire alarm incident in his December launch video.

Ballot Measures

● OH Ballot: Republican Attorney General Dave Yost has, for the second time, rejected the proposed ballot summary for an initiative that would enshrine extensive voting access protections and policies in Ohio's constitution, which we've previously detailed.

Yost claims that the measure's proposed title, which supporters have called the "Ohio Voters Bill of Rights," is misleading, even though the amendment would, among other things, establish voting as a "fundamental right" and prohibit "any means whatsoever" that have the intent or effect of denying or unreasonably burdening the right to vote.

Proponents can revise and resubmit their summary, but this rejection further delays the start of gathering voter signatures, which must be submitted by an initial July 3 deadline to qualify for November's ballot.

Legislatures

● NC Redistricting: U.S. District Judge James Dever, a George W. Bush appointee, has rejected a request to block a pair of state Senate districts in northeastern North Carolina that Black plaintiffs alleged violate the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Black voters.

Plaintiffs quickly indicated they would appeal Dever's ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while the case continues at the district court level. Republicans passed new gerrymanders last year and claimed the VRA no longer applied in North Carolina despite extensive evidence that voting patterns remain polarized along racial lines, particularly in rural regions such as those challenged in this case.

Grab Bag

● Where Are They Now?: The Justice Department determined that former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed at least 13 different women who worked in state government between 2013 and 2021, findings that were made public as part of a settlement with the governor's office. Investigators concluded that Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace amid the threat of impeachment in 2021, had created "a sexually hostile work environment" and engaged in "a pattern or practice of retaliation" after employees complained.

The agreement requires Cuomo's successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul, to institute a number of reforms to prevent future civil rights violations. They include expanding her office's human resources department and implementing policies that require complaints against the governor and "high-level" aides to be reported and investigated externally. In response to the settlement, an attorney for Cuomo issued a statement denying her client had committed sexual harassment.

Cuomo has reportedly been considering bids for Senate and for New York City mayor.

Ad Roundup

NE-02: Nebraska for Us - anti-Don Bacon (R-inc) (part of $282,000 buy)

Campaign Action

Senate inches closer to border deal. Will House GOP and Trump kill it?

Posted on January 10, 2024 by Joan McCarter

Senate negotiators made some progress in talks over the holiday break on a potential border and immigration deal, which was the Senate Republicans’ requirement for agreeing to a vote on President Joe Biden’s Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan supplemental funding package. Over the weekend, the lead Republican in the talks, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, said text could be released soon. The fate of that agreement, however, lies in the hands of his fellow Republicans and their fealty to their de facto leader, Donald Trump.

“Text hopefully this week, to be able to get that out,” he told Fox News on Sunday. “This agreement has to work. Everyone’s counting on this actually working.” Senate leaders were cautiously positive on Monday. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor statement that “it’s been a very promising few days. We have made more progress in the past couple of days on the border than we have in the past few weeks.”

“I was encouraged to see that Senator Lankford and our Democratic colleagues made progress toward an agreement to put meaningful border security policy at the heart of this supplemental,” said Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. “Russia is openly mocking the fickleness of Western support for Ukraine,” he intoned with a shocking lack of irony, since it’s entirely congressional Republicans’ fault that U.S. support to Ukraine is endangered. "The Senate cannot afford to get this wrong," McConnell declared.

As Monday wore on, Lankford tempered his optimism and his revised deadline for delivering text to next week, with a Republican conference on the negotiations hastily scheduled for Wednesday to brief skeptical conservatives, showing the cracks that could make Senate Republicans get this very wrong.

Ukraine aid needs at least 10 Republican senators to support it, and they are skeptical at best right now, both on Ukraine and on the immigration deal Lankford is trying to secure. Last month, Republican senators voted unanimously to keep Ukraine aid from moving to a floor vote over the border issue, and now there is a contingent of Republicans who seem intent on torpedoing Lankford’s efforts.

One of them is McConnell’s previous number two, Sen. John Cornyn, who is taking a hard line in the talks on the president’s authority to provide immigration parole to people who have financial sponsors coming from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti. These immigrants are not crossing at the southern border; they fly into the country. Cornyn and others want to severely restrict, if not end, Biden’s humanitarian parole authority. “We can’t fix asylum and then just have them release people on parole,” Cornyn told The Washington Post. “That would be a disaster politically, and otherwise.”

Other Republican senators like MAGA star J.D. Vance of Ohio are egging the House extremists on in their threats to shut the government down over immigration. “I think that we have a real fiscal crisis in our country, but I think the most significant crisis we have is what is going on at the southern border,” Vance told the Post. “And I encourage my Republican friends in the House to use all the negotiating leverage they can to solve this problem politically.” Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas will reportedly try to force a “no confidence” vote on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in support of the House’s impeachment effort, which won’t advance in the Democratic Senate.

It seems like the most fervent Republican backer of Ukraine, McConnell, is following rather than leading his fellow Republicans at this point, going along with the demands from his hardliners on immigration. That’s a problem for the future of Ukraine, particularly with House Speaker Mike Johnson taking hard line on talks, insisting that the extreme House immigration bill passed last year is a “necessary ingredient” for the deal. He also moved forward with Mayorkas’ impeachment, despite the lack of cause.

When it comes to immigration, Johnson is catering to the Freedom Caucus. That group hasn’t backed off last week’s government shutdown threats over immigration, and are now even more adamant after Johnson’s agreement for a government funding deal with Schumer.

Hanging over all of this is Trump: Republican lawmakers’ fealty to him; his increasingly bombastic, Hitleresque immigration rhetoric; and his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. He would likely end all support to Ukraine and hand the country over to Russia if he got back into office.

The specter of Trump hangs over Congress and over Ukraine. There need to be enough Republicans willing to buck Trump for the bleak outlook for Ukraine aid—and thus Ukraine’s future—to improve.

Senate Republicans hand Putin a propaganda victory

Senate Republicans do Trump's bidding on Ukraine, immigration

Campaign Action

New report shows Mike Johnson’s role as pivotal ‘architect’ of 2020 election denial efforts in House

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Charles Jay

Mild-mannered House Speaker “MAGA” Mike Johnson is not a headline-seeking showboater when it comes to election denialism. Instead, he largely avoided attention as he worked to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. And now he’ll be holding the gavel when the House reconvenes on Tuesday with one of its main priorities being continuing the baseless impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden.

You won’t find Johnson engaging in over-the-top provocative actions, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene did when she posed with QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley during a December meeting in Arizona of Turning Point USA, a right-wing youth group. And on Jan. 6, 2021, Johnson avoided direct involvement in the “Stop the Steal” rally outside the White House that ended in the attack on the Capitol. But he did play a key role in providing the legal fig leaf that enabled 147 Republican lawmakers—139 House members and eight senators—to vote against approving the Electoral College count and Joe Biden’s victory.

Johnson was not among the six Republican lawmakers—including current House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio and Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Andy Biggs of Arizona—who were subpoenaed to appear before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Johnson received just one passing mention in the committee’s final report, Politico reported.

But a report released last week by the Congressional Integrity Project to mark the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection highlighted Johnson’s role as “congressional architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election, advocating an interpretation of the Constitution so outlandish that not even the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority could swallow it,” reported the Brennan Center for Justice.

Politico wrote:

A relatively junior House Republican at the time, Johnson was nevertheless the leading voice in support of a fateful position: that the GOP should rally around Donald Trump and object to counting electoral votes submitted by at least a handful of states won by Joe Biden.

And The New York Times said:

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio was the most prominent public face of the congressional effort to fight the results of the 2020 election, his mentee, the newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson, was a silent but pivotal partner.

So let’s take a closer look at Johnson’s record as a propagator of the Big Lie, because it exposes the danger of what might happen if there is another close presidential election and the GOP retains control of the House with Johnson as speaker.

“You don’t want people who falsely claim the last election was stolen to be in a position of deciding who won the next one,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told The Associated Press.

“Johnson is more dangerous because he wrapped up his attempt to subvert the election outcomes in lawyerly and technical language,” Hasen said.

Before being elected to Congress in 2016, Johnson, a constitutional law attorney, served as senior legal counsel from 2002-2010 for the Alliance Defense Fund (now known as the Alliance Defending Freedom), a Christian conservative legal advocacy group that opposes abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Johnson himself wrote opinion pieces against marriage equality and endorsing briefs filed by the ADF meant to criminalize sexual activity between consenting adults, Rolling Stone reported. The Southern Poverty Law Center designated the ADF as a hate group in 2016.

So it was no surprise that Johnson sent out this tweet on Nov. 7, 2020, when media outlets largely called the race for Biden:

I have just called President Trump to say this: "Stay strong and keep fighting, sir! The nation is depending upon your resolve. We must exhaust every available legal remedy to restore Americans' trust in the fairness of our election system."
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) November 7, 2020

Two days later, Johnson sent out another tweet indicating that he was in regular contact with Trump:

President Trump called me last night and I was encouraged to hear his continued resolve to ensure that every LEGAL vote gets properly counted and that all instances of fraud and illegality are investigated and prosecuted. Fair elections are worth fighting for!
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) November 9, 2020

Politico wrote that in an interview with a Louisiana-based radio host on Nov. 9, Johnson added details on his call with Trump and made clear that “they already had their eye on a Supreme Court showdown.” Johnson said he thought “there’s at least five justices on the court that will do the right thing.”

Then on Nov. 17, Johnson repeated the debunked claim put forth by Trump lawyers that there was an international conspiracy to hack Dominion voting machines so Trump would lose the election, The Associated Press reported. The AP quoted Johnson as saying:

“In every election in American history, there’s some small element of fraud, irregularity,” Johnson said in the interview. “But when you have it on a broad scale, when you have a software system that is used all around the country that is suspect because it came from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, when you have testimonials of people like this, it demands to be litigated.”

As more states moved to confirm their election results, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a hail-Mary lawsuit in early December asking the Supreme Court to reject the election results in four states carried by Biden—Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—on the basis that those states introduced pandemic-related changes to election procedures that were illegal.

In Congress, Johnson, who had served on Trump’s first impeachment defense team in early 2020, helped lead the effort to get 126 Republican lawmakers to sign an amicus brief supporting the Texas lawsuit. Johnson tweeted:

President Trump called me this morning to let me know how much he appreciates the amicus brief we are filing on behalf of Members of Congress. Indeed, "this is the big one!" https://t.co/eV1aoNlpvq
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) December 9, 2020

Then on Dec. 11, in a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court rejected the Texas lawsuit. On Dec. 14, the electoral college members met in their states to cast their ballots for president. That same day Johnson said in a radio interview that Congress still had the final say on whether to accept Biden’s electors on Jan. 6, 2021, Politico reported.

On Jan. 5, Johnson met with fellow GOP House members in a closed-door meeting to discuss what they should do in Congress the next day.

Politico wrote:

”This is a very weighty decision. All of us have prayed for God’s discernment. I know I’ve prayed for each of you individually,” Johnson said at the meeting, according to a record of his comments obtained by POLITICO, before urging his fellow Republicans to join him in opposing the results.

On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, just hours before the mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, Johnson tweeted:

Rep. Mike Johnson, Jan. 6, 2021: “We MUST fight for election integrity, the Constitution, and the preservation of our republic! It will be my honor to help lead that fight in the Congress today.” pic.twitter.com/4gTYgv3Pc8
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) October 25, 2023

After the mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, Johnson condemned the violence, according to The New York Times, but he defended the actions of Republican lawmakers to object to Biden’s victory. And when Congress reconvened, more than half of the House GOP caucus supported objections to Biden’s victory.

In an October 2022 report published weeks before the midterm election, The New York Times emphasized Johnson’s role in the vote:

In formal statements justifying their votes, about three-quarters relied on the arguments of a low-profile Louisiana congressman, Representative Mike Johnson, the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.

On the eve of the Jan. 6 votes, he presented colleagues with what he called a “third option.” He faulted the way some states had changed voting procedures during the pandemic, saying it was unconstitutional, without supporting the outlandish claims of Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters. His Republican critics called it a Trojan horse that allowed lawmakers to vote with the president while hiding behind a more defensible case. …

Even lawmakers who had been among the noisiest “stop the steal” firebrands took refuge in Mr. Johnson’s narrow and lawyerly claims, though his nuanced argument was lost on the mob storming the Capitol, and over time it was the vision of the rioters — that a Democratic conspiracy had defrauded America — that prevailed in many Republican circles.

Johnson has not wavered from his position that he and other House GOP members had been right to object to the election results.

In its report, the Congressional Integrity Project noted that Johnson had voted against creating a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack, calling it “a third impeachment.” He also voted against holding former White House adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 select committee.

And just months before the House GOP caucus voted unanimously in October to install Johnson as speaker, he gave oxygen to the baseless conspiracy theory held by right-wing Republicans that federal agents orchestrated the Jan. 6 insurrection. He alleged that FBI Director Christopher Wray was “hiding something” about the FBI’s presence in the Capitol on Jan. 6, the Congressional Integrity Project reported.

In November, Johnson fulfilled a promise he made to far-right members of the House GOP caucus in order to secure the speaker’s post when he announced plans to publicly release thousands of hours of security camera video footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, blurring the faces of individual protesters. Earlier last year, then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson used selectively edited security camera footage to make the claim that Jan. 6 was largely a peaceful protest and the demonstrators were “not insurrectionists, they were sightseers.”

In its report, the Congressional Integrity Project said one of the biggest dangers is that the attempted Jan. 6, 2021 coup never ended because Johnson and the same Trump allies behind that insurrection are now fully behind the sham Biden impeachment effort.

These Republicans include Johnson, Jordan, Comer, and such firebrands as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Matt Gaetz of Florida, the report said.

With the report, Kyle Herrig, the executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, issued a statement that read:

“The same MAGA Republicans who led Donald Trump’s deadly insurrection and attempt to overthrow an election he knew he lost, are the same ones pushing the bogus impeachment of President Biden. MAGA Republicans are a threat to all Americans and our democracy. They will stop at nothing to pursue their radical, out-of-touch agenda, including violence. All of their actions on behalf of the disgraced former president in an attempt to distract from his 91 criminal indictments and help him return to the White House in 2024—and they don’t care who stands in their way.”

Campaign Action

House GOP’s New Year resolution: Don’t be like us in 2023 but give us more MAGA

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Joan McCarter

Stung by all those stories about how much they didn’t do last year, House Republicans are looking ahead to 2024 with trepidation and the realization that their razor-thin majority is on the line, The Washington Post reports. They recognize that they need to start governing after last year’s abysmal performance, but at the same time remain loyal to their MAGA roots—and Donald Trump. It’s early days, but it seems clear that they’re not going to succeed in accomplishing both things.

“We have to start governing. … Playing politics with every single issue is not helpful” swing-district Rep. David G. Valadao of California—one of the Biden 17—told the Post for this story. “We need to get to the point where we can start passing legislation and getting something to the president’s desk that actually solves problems for the American people.”

Meanwhile, the first serious order of business for the House to kick off this session is beginning baseless impeachment hearings for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They are also preparing to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress in that all-important Biden impeachment inquiry, seemingly the top priority for House Republicans since every House Republican—including Valadao—voted to move forward with it. That’s not exactly governing.

It doesn’t help the cause of governing, of passing legislation and getting bills signed into law by President Joe Biden, when they’re picking these very political fights. It also doesn’t help when the entirety of the House GOP leadership has endorsed Donald Trump even before voting begins in the 2024 primaries.

It doesn’t help governing to have the chair of the House Republican Conference, the fourth-ranking House Republican, parroting Trump on national television and defending his Nazi rhetoric, but that’s exactly what Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York did on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Stefanik called the arrested Jan, 6 insurrectionists "hostages," just like Trump did. She refused to commit to certifying the results of the 2024 election, and she defended Trump’s Hitleresque claim that migrants are “poisoning the blood” of America. “Our border crisis is poisoning Americans through fentanyl … so yes, I stand by President Trump,” Stefanik told host Kristen Welker. Pressed to answer if that meant she stood by Trump’s words, Stefanik said “yes,” then said Trump has the “strongest record when it comes to supporting the Jewish people.”

That’s Republican leadership, but there are still rank-and-file “moderates” telling the Post they “believe their chances of keeping the House rely on reelecting swing-district incumbents and other conservatives willing to compromise.” Because those conservatives have been so willing to compromise so far.

They’re right about one thing: Keeping the House would be easier if they abandoned MAGA politics and compromised. Recent polling from the Post demonstrates that the majority of voters won’t be amenable, for example, to the idea that the convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionists are “hostages” since 50% of Americans view the Jan. 6 crowd as “mostly violent.”

To win in 2024, House Republicans—especially swing-district incumbents—need something to hang their hats on that isn’t MAGA. So far they’ve done nothing to show they’ll be able to accomplish that.

Speaker Mike Johnson faces same old GOP dysfunction in the new year

GOP infighting intensifies as Matt Gaetz targets Republicans

House GOP kicks off a new year of dysfunction with another impeachment

Campaign Action

Profiles in cowardice: Three years after Jan. 6, GOP leaders won’t hold Trump accountable

Posted on January 6, 2024 by Charles Jay

Sen. John F. Kennedy wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Profiles in Courage” in 1956, focusing on eight U.S. senators Kennedy felt were courageous under intense pressure from the public and their own party. If you were to write a book about Republican House and Senate members in the three years since the Jan. 6 insurrection, you’d have to title it “Profiles in Cowardice.”

Just weeks before the Iowa caucuses, all the members of the GOP House leadership have endorsed former President Donald Trump. That’s the same Trump who sicced a mob on the Capitol, urging his supporters to “fight like hell.” Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a presidential candidate, was asked Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” why Republican politicians remain loyal to Trump. He replied that it’s “a combination of two emotions: fear and ambition.”

That fear can be understood given the results of a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll published Tuesday. It shows that “Republicans are more sympathetic to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and more likely to absolve Donald Trump of responsibility for the attack then they were in 2021.” That’s despite the twice-impeached former president facing 91 felony counts in four criminal indictments. The poll found:

More than 7 in 10 Republicans say that too much is being made of the attack and that it is “time to move on.” Fewer than 2 in 10 (18 percent) of Republicans say Jan. 6 protesters were “mostly violent,” dipping from 26 percent in 2021.

The poll also found that only 14% of Republicans said Trump bears a great or good amount of responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack, compared with 27% in 2021. So it’s no surprise that Trump feels comfortable on the campaign trail where he regularly downplays the violence on Jan. 6. Yet nine deaths were linked to the Capitol attack, and more than 450 people have been sentenced to prison for their roles in it. The Associated Press reports:

Trump has still built a commanding lead in the Republican primary, and his rivals largely refrain from criticizing him about Jan. 6. He has called it “a beautiful day” and described those imprisoned for the insurrection as “great, great patriots” and “hostages.” At some campaign rallies, he has played a recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by jailed rioters — the anthem interspersed with his recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

YouTube Video

Just Security reported that special counsel Jack Smith has taken notice of “Trump’s repeated embrace of the January 6 rioters” as part of the federal case against him for allegedly plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

Trump probably should have stuck to the script he read in a video released on Jan. 7, 2021. Trump was under pressure to make a statement after two Cabinet members and several other top administration officials had resigned over the Capitol violence. Trump denounced what he called the “heinous attack” on the U.S. Capitol and said:

“Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem … America is and must always be a nation of law and order.

"The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay."

pic.twitter.com/csX07ZVWGe
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2021

Of course, Trump couldn’t stick to that script. But the Jan. 6 attack prompted some to prematurely declare the death of Trumpism. In an opinion piece in The Hill on Jan. 7, 2021, Glenn C. Altschuler, professor of American Studies at Cornell University, wrote:

Trumpism has been exposed for what it is: a cancer on the Republican Party and a real threat to democracy in the United States. It is in our power — starting with Republican politicians in Washington, D.C. and red states, the mass media news outlets, as well as voters throughout the country — to make Jan. 6, 2021 the day Trumpism died.

Initially, Republican congressional leaders showed some spine. The New York Times wrote:

In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building, the two top Republicans in Congress, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell, told associates they believed President Trump was responsible for inciting the deadly riot and vowed to drive him from politics.

Mr. McCarthy went so far as to say he would push Mr. Trump to resign immediately: “I’ve had it with this guy,” he told a group of Republican leaders, according to an audio recording of the conversation obtained by The New York Times.

But within weeks both men backed off an all-out fight with Mr. Trump because they feared retribution from him and his political movement. Their drive to act faded fast as it became clear it would mean difficult votes that would put them at odds with most of their colleagues.

Just hours after the Capitol attack, 147 Republican lawmakers—a majority of the House GOP caucus and a handful of Republican senators—voted against certifying Biden’s election. Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the current House speaker, played a leading role in the effort to overturn the presidential election results. In a radio interview he even repeated the debunked claim about an international conspiracy involving deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to hack voting machines.

On Jan. 13, 2021, the House voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection, but only 10 House Republicans supported the resolution. Only two of them remain in Congress. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy read the writing on the wall: He made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago on Jan. 27 to bend the knee to Trump. He realized that he never would become House speaker without Trump’s support. Trump’s Political Action Committee Save America put out this readout of the meeting:

“They discussed many topics, number one of which was taking back the House in 2022,” the statement read. “President Trump’s popularity has never been stronger than it is today, and his endorsement means more than perhaps any endorsement at any time.”

The Senate impeachment trial represented a last chance to drive a stake into Trump’s political career because conviction would have kept him from holding office again. Seven Republican senators voted to convict Trump, but the tally fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction.

McConnell voted to acquit Trump. In his Feb. 13 speech to the Senate, he said Trump “is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events” of Jan. 6. He suggested that Trump could still be subject to criminal prosecution: “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”

In 2023, McConnell stayed quiet when asked for reaction to Trump's criminal indictments. But McCarthy and other Republicans joined in defending Trump and criticizing prosecutors. On Aug. 14, 2023, after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced her racketeering and conspiracy indictment against Trump and 18 allies for allegedly trying to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia, McCarthy posted:

Justice should be blind, but Biden has weaponized government against his leading political opponent to interfere in the 2024 election. Now a radical DA in Georgia is following Biden’s lead by attacking President Trump and using it to fundraise her political career. Americans…
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) August 15, 2023

Trump has now made the outlandish claim that he’s immune from criminal prosecution over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election because he was serving as president at the time. In a brief filed last Saturday to a federal appeals court, Smith warned that Trump’s claims “threaten to undermine democracy.”

The events of Jan. 6 were a warning that Trump and his MAGA cultists really don’t believe in the Constitution. McKay Coppins, who wrote a biography of Mitt Romney, wrote in The Atlantic that the Utah senator wrestled with whether Trump caused the downfall of the GOP, or if it had always been in play:

Was the authoritarian element of the GOP a product of President Trump, or had it always been there, just waiting to be activated by a sufficiently shameless demagogue? And what role had the members of the mainstream establishment—people like him, the reasonable Republicans—played in allowing the rot on the right to fester?

The feckless Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has been a weather vane of what’s been happening within the GOP. During the 2016 campaign, he dismissed Trump as a “kook” and “race-baiting bigot” unfit to be president. Then Graham stuck his head up Trump’s posterior once the reality show host became president. On Jan. 6, 2021, Graham declared he had “enough” of Trump and voted to confirm the election results. But in February 2021, Graham made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to make peace with Trump. Graham’s remarks at the time proved to be quite prescient:

"If he ran, it would be his nomination for the having …" Graham told The Washington Post. "Because he was successful for conservatism and people appreciate his fighting spirit, he's going to dominate the party for years to come.”

Recently, Graham even defended Trump’s presidential immunity claim on CBS’ “Face the Nation”:

“Now, if you're doing your job as president and January 6th he was still president, trying to find out if the election, you know, was on the up and up. I think his immunity claim, I don't know how it will bear out, but I think it's a legitimate claim. But they're prosecuting him for activity around January 6th, he didn't break into the Capitol, he gave a fiery speech, but he's not the first guy to ever do that.”

After Jan. 6, some ultra-right Republicans tried to portray what happened as a largely peaceful protest and absolve Trump of any blame. Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia said many of the people who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 behaved in an orderly manner as if they were on a "normal tourist visit." Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar blamed the violence on left-wing activists, calling it an “Antifa provocation.”

But now the fringe conspiracy theories have moved into the party’s mainstream as MAGA Republicans have gained influence in Congress. As speaker, McCarthy granted then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 42,000 hours of Jan. 6 security footage. Carlson used the footage for a show that portrayed the riot as a peaceful gathering. “These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers,” Carlson said.

Trump claimed Carlson’s show offered “irrefutable” evidence that the rioters had been wrongly accused of crimes and called for the release of those jailed on charges related to the attack, the Associated Press reported. In the December Republican presidential debate, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy pushed the conspiracy theory that the Jan. 6 attack looked “like it was an inside job” orchestrated by federal agents.

Trump has pushed these “deep state” conspiracy theories in filings by his lawyers in the case brought by Smith accusing Trump of attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, The Washington Post reported. The Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that 34% of Republicans believe the FBI organized and encouraged the Jan. 6 insurrection, compared with 30% of independents and 13% of Democrats.

In a CNN Town Hall in May, Trump said he had no regrets about what happened on Jan. 6 and repeated the Big Lie that the 2020 election “was rigged.” Trump has also portrayed Ashli Babbitt—the Jan. 6 protester who was fatally shot by police as she tried to force her way into the House chamber—as a martyr. He has cast the jailed Jan. 6 insurrectionists as “patriotic” heroes. That should raise alarm bells because there’s a dangerous precedent. After his failed 1923 Munich Beer Hall putsch, Adolf Hitler referred to Nazi storm troopers killed in the attempted coup as blood martyrs. It took Hitler a decade to become chancellor of Germany in 1933.

As we mark the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump is on a faster track to become president again, aided and abetted by right-wing news outlets and social media platforms like Elon Musk’s X.

Biden understands the growing threat to American democracy. That’s why he’s following up his Friday speech in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, about democracy on the brink with an advertising push starting Jan. 6. In the Biden-Harris campaign’s first ad of 2024, Biden says: “Now something dangerous is happening in America. There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy. All of us are being asked right now, what will we do to maintain our democracy?”

YouTube Video

Campaign Action