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

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.

Trump and McConnell

“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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Trump’s new low: Swiping at McConnell’s childhood polio

President Donald Trump insulted Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and questioned his childhood battle with polio after the senator opposed anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation Thursday to be the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. 

When asked by a reporter whether McConnell’s past bout with polio influenced his “no” vote, Trump responded, “I have no idea if he had polio. All I can tell you about him is that he shouldn’t have been leader.”

The president added, “[McConnell’s] not voting against Bobby, he’s voting against me.” He later called McConnell “a very bitter guy.”

McConnell has voted against several of Trump’s recent Cabinet picks, including Tulsi Gabbard (for director of national intelligence), Pete Hegseth (for secretary of defense), and Kennedy. In the cases of Gabbard and Kennedy, McConnell was the only Republican to buck the president. With Hegseth’s vote, however, two other Republican senators—Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—joined him in voting against Trump’s nominee.

In addition to calling Trump a “despicable human being,” a “narcissist,” and “stupid” in a recent biography, McConnell has blasted Trump’s sweeping use of tariffs. He said they were “bad policy” and would raise prices.

Trump’s “aggressive proposals leave big, lingering concerns for American industry and workers,” McConnell wrote in a Wednesday op-ed for Louisville’s Courier-Journal.

Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky

McConnell wasn’t always this big of a thorn in Trump’s side, though. At the beginning of Trump’s first term, the senator helped Trump confirm hundreds of judges and fill three Supreme Court vacancies—moves that will shape the judiciary for a generation. (Notably, in 2016, McConnell helped block Merrick Garland, whom then-President Barack Obama nominated to the Supreme Court, from getting a hearing.) McConnell was also instrumental in Trump’s 2017 effort to pass sweeping tax cuts for the wealthy.

Despite minor disagreements, the Republicans’ relationship didn’t turn icy until the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. McConnell called Trump “practically and morally responsible” for the insurrection, but ultimately, he did not vote to convict the president.  

The two also squabbled over the party’s failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act during Trump’s first administration. (More recently, McConnell said the repeal effort against the law seems “largely over.”) And they have traded a fair share of nasty personal attacks. Despite this, McConnell still endorsed Trump’s reelection bid. 

McConnell, who will turn 83 this month, is up for reelection in 2026, but it’s unclear whether he’ll run again. He’s suffered a series of falls as of late, including two last week. A spokesperson for the senator suggested that “the lingering effects of polio in his left leg” contributed to it, but said the fall would not disrupt McConnell’s “regular schedule of work.”

It makes sense, then, that McConnell would vote against Kennedy, an alleged animal abuser with a history of attacking vaccination and promoting bogus conspiracy theories. Shortly after his confirmation, Kennedy appeared on Fox News and confirmed there were plans to cut the number of HHS employees. Notably, Kennedy said those who have been “involved in good science” (whatever that means!) have “nothing to worry about.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine nut now in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services

“If you care about public health, you’ve got nothing to worry about. If you’re in there working for the pharmaceutical industry, then I should say you should move out and work for the pharmaceutical industry,” he said.

On Thursday, Trump questioned McConnell’s mental acuity and said “he’s not equipped” to lead the GOP. This is the Trump way: viciously attack anyone who doesn’t do your bidding, regardless of how they’ve helped you in the past. It’s also a classic authoritarian tactic, and given that Trump is a petty narcissist, it’s not shocking that he’s going after McConnell.

That said, McConnell doesn’t deserve a pat on the back for voting against just a handful of Trump’s awful nominees. The senator’s pushback is not just politically convenient—he’s no longer Senate majority leader—but it also comes far too late in the game. 

Maybe McConnell feels guilty for elevating Trump and is voting against the Cabinet picks as a way to make up for his past transgressions. Either way, given how much he helped Trump to get to where he is now, he’s just as complicit in the downfall of American democracy

McConnell doesn’t get a pass.

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McConnell’s still whining about Trump—even though he voted for him

Outgoing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell once again sat for an interview in which he crapped all over Donald Trump, warning that the president-elect’s foreign policy ideas pose a danger not only to the United States but to the whole world.

In an interview with the Financial Times, McConnell said Trump and the Republican Party's isolationist views are a threat, as “the cost of deterrence is considerably less than the cost of war."

“To most American voters, I think the simple answer is, ‘Let’s stay out of it.’ That was the argument made in the ’30s and that just won’t work,” McConnell told the Financial Times. “Thanks to [Ronald] Reagan, we know what does work—not just saying peace through strength, but demonstrating it.”

Yet in that very same interview, McConnell admitted that he voted for Trump anyway.

“I supported the ticket,” McConnell said, refusing to even utter Trump's name.

What’s more, McConnell declined to say whether he should have done more to stop Trump from becoming president for the second time. McConnell had the chance to prevent Trump from running for president again during the Senate impeachment trial over Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. McConnell voted to acquit Trump, even though he said Trump was responsible for the insurrection at the Capitol that sought to overturn the free and fair election of Joe Biden.

It's not the first time McConnell has spoken ill of Trump. In October, excerpts from a McConnell biography were released in which McConnell called Trump “stupid,” a “narcissist,” and a “despicable human being." 

Yet despite thinking Trump is an awful person, McConnell endorsed Trump's 2024 comeback as he made those same attacks against the leader of the Republican Party.

“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support," McConnell said in March.

But McConnell's hypocrisy is not a surprise. Earlier in December, McConnell accused federal judges of playing politics by reneging on their decisions to retire in order to prevent Trump from choosing their replacements. But McConnell wrote the book on playing politics with the courts, as he stole a Supreme Court seat from former President Barack Obama, as well as a number of other judicial seats on lower courts. 

He also blocked a bicameral commission to probe the Jan. 6 insurrection, even though he believed Trump was responsible for the riot that led to the assault of more than 140 law enforcement officers.

While McConnell won’t be part of Senate GOP leadership next year, he is sticking around Capitol Hill. He claimed to the Financial Times that without the constraints of being in leadership, he will now push back on Trump and his own party’s isolationist policies.

“No matter who got elected president, I think it was going to require significant pushback, yeah, and I intend to be one of the pushers,” McConnell said.

But given that he’s always capitulated to Trump, color us skeptical. 

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Senate leader vote could indicate troubles ahead for Trump and MAGA

Rick Scott of Florida was ousted from the race for Senate Republican leader on Wednesday, losing on the first ballot of the race to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell.

Scott garnered just 13 votes from the 51 Republicans voting in the first round.

His poor performance came even as Scott had the endorsement of MAGA loyalists, including Elon Musk, the freak right-wing billionaire who is acting as a sort of shadow president-elect. And let’s not forget MAGA media personalities like racist 9/11 truther Laura Loomer, Russia apologist Tucker Carlsonbigot and misogynist Charlie Kirk, and plagiarist and Russia's useful idiot Benny Johnson.

“Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader!” Musk wrote in a post on X, after Scott endorsed Trump’s demand to allow him to make recess appointments for his administration to bypass the Senate’s advice and consent role.

“Rick Scott of Florida is the only candidate who agrees with Donald Trump,” Carlson wrote in a post on X. “Call your senator and demand a public endorsement of Rick Scott."

"A vote for Rick Scott is a vote to END the anti-Trump rot of Mitch McConnell in the US Senate,” Johnson said on X. “Thune and Cornyn are a continuation of McConnell's total failure."

Those endorsements led Trump supporters to flood the phone lines of Senate Republicans, demanding that GOP senators vote for Scott in the leader race.

Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, one of the dumbest senators in history and a Scott supporter, said his office "phone has been ringing off the wall” from MAGA faithful who wanted Scott as leader.

But Scott, who was cocky in the run-up to the vote declaring that he was going to win, couldn't translate that into a victory among Senate Republicans. 

Republicans instead chose Sen. John Thune, the South Dakota Republican who currently serves as minority whip.

Thune won on the second ballot over Sen. John Cornyn of Texas by a vote of 29 to 24, Punchbowl News’ John Bresnahan reported.

Of the three men running, Thune has the rockiest relationship with Trump. Thune slammed Trump after the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—though Thune ultimately voted against convicting Trump in the second impeachment trial for inciting insurrection. 

“What former President Trump did to undermine faith in our election system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable,” Thune said at the time.

Trump was so angry at him for that remark that Trump called on Thune to face a primary, though he easily beat it back. The Wall Street Journal, however, reported in October that Thune has since been working to mend his relationship with Trump.

MAGA world is already threatening Thune to jump when Trump asks.

Kirk wrote on X: “John Thune is Senate Majority Leader. He has a short window to show us he will support President Trump, fill his cabinet, confirm his judges, and pass his agenda. If he does, we will support him. If he doesn't, we will work to remove him.”

Thune now replaces noxious Kentucky Republican McConnell, who announced in February he was stepping down from his leadership role but not the Senate itself.

McConnell is largely responsible for obliterating norms in Washington. He helped Republicans steal two Supreme Court seats from Democrats as well as a number of other federal judgeships he held vacant when Barack Obama was in office. He also used the filibuster to obstruct at a historic level and squandered the opportunity to rid the country of Trump when he refused to convict him in the Jan. 6 impeachment trial, among other things.

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The race to replace Mitch McConnell is on—and the worst one wins

Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky—who infamously stole two Supreme Court seats and refused to convict Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection—isn't leaving Congress.

But McConnell won't be Senate majority leader when the new GOP majority is sworn in in January, announcing in February that he was stepping down from the role when the new Congress is sworn in.

Republicans are now jockeying to replace him, with Sens. John Thune of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas, and Rick Scott of Florida all running for the role.

And the race is already getting ugly, with Scott working hardest to cozy up to Trump and his vile allies—including racist 9/11 truther Laura Loomer—in an effort to try to come out on top.

“I’m going to win. And here’s why. I’ve been talking to my Republican colleagues, Guess what? They want change. They know that Donald Trump has a mandate. They want to be part of that mandate. They want to be treated as equals. They want to be part of a team. They want to have a working relationship with the House,” he said in an interview with former Trump administration official and current Fox Business host Larry Kudlow on Wednesday.

On Monday, Scott also went on Fox News, saying he will end the “dictatorship” of McConnell’s long tenure as GOP leader.

People across this country are ready for change. As the next Senate Majority Leader, I’ll deliver that change. It’s time to Make Washington WORK! pic.twitter.com/GQsJQrDqNK

— Rick Scott (@ScottforFlorida) November 4, 2024

The Hill reported that Scott is seen as a long shot for the job, and that he could be ousted on the first ballot. Yet, that could change if Trump allies like Loomer are successful at getting Trump to endorse in the race. Scott appeared on Loomer’s podcast in October, after which Loomer endorsed Scott for Senate GOP leader.

“Sadly, there are a few bad people who have been around Donald Trump lately who are giving him terrible advice on who to support in this Senate GOP race so that his entire 2nd term is undermined by people who have always hated him,” Loomer wrote in a post on X, adding that Scott is “a true Trump loyalist and is someone we can trust to support Donald Trump.”  

Republicans have begged Trump to stay out of the race. However, all three candidates have been kissing up to the now president-elect in the lead up to the race, knowing that if Trump endorses it will likely help put that person over the edge.

Scott, who perpetrated one of the largest Medicare frauds in history, ran against McConnell in 2022 and lost, receiving just 10 votes from the GOP conference. But he's seen as the man closest to Trump among the three, and a Trump endorsement could change his fortunes.

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota

Thune, who is seen as the favorite in the race, has a rocky relationship with Trump, as Thune criticized Trump after he incited an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

“What former President Trump did to undermine faith in our election system and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power is inexcusable,” Thune said at the time, even though he voted to acquit Trump in the impeachment trial after the insurrection. 

It led Trump to call for Thune to face a primary in Thune's reelection, though Thune easily beat back the primary opponent and won reelection.

The Wall Street Journal reported in October that Thune has been working to get back in Trump’s good graces. 

Cornyn has also been spending time with Trump during the campaign.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a Thune backer, has publicly called on Trump not to endorse.

“I’d advise him just to stay out of the race,” Mullin told CNN.

But given Trump’s wildcard persona and inability to get over grudges, you never know what will happen.

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McConnell called Trump a stupid narcissist but will vote for him anyway

Proving that a broken clock is right twice a day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell trashed former President Donald Trump in private following the 2020 election, calling Trump “stupid,” a “narcissist,” and a “despicable human being,” according to a soon-to-be-released biography of the Kentucky Republican.

McConnell’s frank assessments of the leader of the GOP were made in recorded diaries given to Michael Tackett, the Associated Press deputy Washington bureau chief, for his new McConnell biography titled “The Price of Power.” According to publisher Simon & Schuster, it’s based on “thousands of pages of archival materials, letters, and more than 100 interviews with associates, colleagues, and McConnell himself.”

In those diaries, McConnell said “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump was out of the White House, adding that Trump’s 2020 loss “only underscores the good judgment of the American people.”

"They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him," McConnell said.

Yet despite McConnell’s disdain for Trump, he gave up on the best opportunity to rid his party and the country of the man he called a liar when he voted against convicting Trump for inciting the violent and deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Had McConnell worked to rally the Republican senators he leads to vote to convict Trump on the single impeachment charge of inciting insurrection, Trump could have been barred from running for office again in the future. McConnell’s decision to let Trump slide helped pave the way for Trump to wage his current comeback bid. Trump has vowed to destabilize American democracy by threatening to jail his political enemies and using the military to go after American citizens whom he described as “the enemy from within.” 

What’s more, even though McConnell thinks Trump is “stupid” and a “despicable human being,” he endorsed Trump in his 2024 comeback bid, saying in March: “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

McConnell endorsed Trump because he is trying to prevent what he called his “worst nightmare” which he described as a Democratic sweep of the White House, the House, and the Senate. 

While McConnell has stuck by Trump, a number of other Republicans have said they won’t be voting for him and instead endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, declaring that they are putting “country over party.”

Those Republicans include: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Wyoming Rep Liz Cheney; former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois; former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan; Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general in former President George W. Bush’s administration; and former Trump White House aides Cassidy Hutchinson, Stephanie Grisham, and Olivia Troye, among others.

Harris and her campaign have been reaching out to Republicans, hoping that their defections from Trump could be decisive in what’s currently predicted to be a toss-up election in November.

She held a rally on Wednesday in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with over 100 Republicans who are supporting her campaign. Two of those Republicans, Bob and Kristina Lange, spoke at the event, describing themselves as lifelong Republicans who voted for Trump. 

“Never in a million years did either of us think that we'd be standing here supporting a Democrat. But we've had enough. We've had enough,” Kristina Lange said at the event.

If only McConnell had as much courage as the Langes. 

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There are many reasons to hate Mitch McConnell—here are 5

Mitch McConnell has wreaked destruction during his reign as Senate minority leader, and even though he’s stepping down from that post, he’s still exerting his malign influence. In a sort of exit interview with Punchbowl News, the lame duck leader was at his worst. 

Here are five reasons why he is simply awful. 

1. He believes Supreme Court reform is just like Jan. 6.

McConnell equated President Joe Biden’s moderate plan for Supreme Court reform with the mob that attacked the Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “That’s what some people were trying to do Jan. 6—to break the system of handing an administration from one to the next,” McConnell told Punchbowl. “We can have our arguments, but we ought to not try to break the rules.”

This is the McConnell who called what happened that day a “violent insurrection.” He said the “unhinged crowd … tried to disrupt our democracy.” And Biden’s idea that the justices have to comply with ethics rules and be subject to term limits is just like that.

2. He blasts Trump’s foreign policy, but still endorses him.

After Jan. 6, McConnell called Trump a “son of a bitch” and told fellow Republicans that the Democrats would take care of him with impeachment. Now he’s endorsing that SOB while at the same time ridiculing Trump’s foreign policy approach as “nonsense. … I mean, even the slogans are what they were in the ‘30s—‘America First.’” 

3. McConnell is betraying Ukraine.

McConnell is still going to the Senate floor on a regular basis to talk about the importance of helping Ukraine and defeating Russia. At the same time he’s backing Trump’s pick of Sen. JD Vance—one of the most vocal pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine senators—to be vice president.

“It’s not my job to tell the president who he ought to run,” McConnell said. “With regard to Sen. Vance … yeah, we have a different point of view.” 

He knows that a Trump/Vance team would hand Ukraine over to the Russians in the guise of a peace settlement, and yet he doesn’t seem to care.

4. He champions flawed and dangerous GOP challengers.

McConnell famously declared that the reason Republicans didn’t take the Senate in 2022 was because of a “candidate quality” problem. Now he’s enthusiastically endorsing a raft of Senate GOP candidates who are a bunch of misogynistic weirdos

McConnell told Punchbowl that the GOP has “fabulous candidates” in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Nevada

5. He puts winning above governing.

“The way you win the argument is to get more people elected,” McConnell said. Even if those people are Trump’s MAGA darlings.

Let’s take this last opportunity to humiliate McConnell with another Senate loss. Help these candidates keep the Senate blue.

11 times Donald Trump escaped justice—until now

Donald Trump is an enigma inside a riddle wrapped in 34 felony convictions, so it’s difficult to work out exactly where he goes from here. Conventional wisdom tells us the presidential campaign of a traitorous Putin sympathizer with this much legal baggage should officially be over, but this is Trump we’re talking about. The dude makes no apologies, has no shame, and continually respawns like a Grand Theft Auto character on a 24-hour killing rampage. 

And since the Republican Party is now basically the Jonestown Cult without the complimentary beverages, few GOP luminaries—including elected officials—will dare gainsay him.

Indeed, in the wake of his conviction, the party of law and order is queuing up to kiss his arse in perpetuity. And Trump himself is trying to divert attention from his own crimes by claiming that New York—and the nation as a whole—is hopelessly steeped in lawlessness because Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is only paying attention to this one case.

(Actually, the crime wave that started under Trump has now ebbed, and crime as a whole is close to a 50-year low—except among former U.S. presidents, of course. Among that admittedly narrow cohort, it’s up approximately 100%.)

Ah, but now is not the time to be complacent. Trump’s goose might look cooked, but one thing we’ve all learned over the years is that no matter how grotesque and silly he might appear at any given moment, he keeps coming back. He’s sort of like Jason Voorhees that way. Or Infrastructure Week.

Indeed, we’ve seen this movie many times, and it’s always set us up for sequels. Which means we’re not done fighting this cancer—not by a long shot.

Here are 11 times it looked like the Trump train had—or should have—officially derailed, only for some weak-kneed enabler (I’m looking at you, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell) to lift it back onto the tracks and send it on its merry way. (Note: This list is not chronological, and it’s by no means exhaustive.)

1. The “Access Hollywood” tape

For many, this was the first time it looked as though Trump was cooked for sure. You can’t gleefully admit to serial sexual assault and still be elected president, right? Right?! It’s over! Let’s spike the ball right here—on the 10-yard line. What could possibly go wrong now?

Ah, memories. As we now recall, this seismic October surprise was ultimately papered over with the infamous Jim Comey letter, and Trump was elected our 45th—and first future felon—president. 

2. His campaign launch

Many forget that Trump’s campaign stumbled right out of the gate when he infamously declared that Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists. The remarks were offensive (and false) enough to prompt NBC to sever ties with their star reality show host. Sadly, they weren’t quite offensive enough for Republican primary voters. Indeed, his remarks probably gave him an edge over his opponents, who were still relying on dog whistles as Trump was blithely blowing an airhorn.

3. Mocking a disabled reporter

There have been numerous instances involving Trump saying or doing something so beyond the pale, it felt like no one outside the fringiest of fringes could possibly still support him. And yet they did.

In November 2015, he cruelly mocked reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a condition that “can impact the function and range of motion of joints and can cause muscles to atrophy.” 

It was the ugliest thing most longtime political observers had ever seen, and yet it somehow failed to dissuade millions of Republican primary voters, who proudly nominated him as the Republican presidential candidate in July of the following year.

As long as I live, I will never understand how this alone wasn’t the end of it. pic.twitter.com/2MaLkBJ2Xo

— Damien Owens (@OwensDamien) November 15, 2016

4. Disrespecting Gold Star families and John McCain

In July 2015, Trump downplayed GOP Sen. John McCain’s military service, saying, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Roughly a year later, he was disrespecting military families again (well, their lost loved ones were suckers and losers, right?). After Gold Star father Khizr Khan, whose son died in the line of duty in Iraq, spoke on Hillary Clinton’s behalf during the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Trump showed once again that he has the impulse control of an Arby’s grease fire.

In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Trump first claimed that, contrary to what Khan had said in his address, Trump actually had made sacrifices for his country by employing “thousands and thousands of people.”

Then he attacked Khan’s wife, Ghazala, saying, “If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably—maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me."

Oh, boy! He won’t survive this one! He’s like a shark with three barrels stuck in him! It’s over! Right?

5. The Mueller probe

We all thought this investigation would enfeeble Trump beyond hope of recovery, didn’t we? And then Bill Barr happened.

After months of waiting for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to drop his report on Russian election interference, we did get some real answers about the Trump campaign’s extensive contacts with the Russians involved in ratfucking the 2016 presidential election—and we also discovered that Trump had gone out of his way to obstruct the investigation. But Barr furiously spun the report’s findings, and nothing much came of them.

Trump continued to claim his innocence, even after a later Senate investigation definitively proved collusion between Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and a Russian intelligence officer. But by that time the public had largely moved on.

6. Charlottesville

We all recall when Trump both-sidesed Nazis. Nazis! How the fuck can you both-sides Nazis?!

Well, Trump can—and he did.

“You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” Trump said in the wake of the violent white-ring Charlottesville protests.

Seriously, dude, these are NAZIS! World War II—and pretty much every war movie filmed in its wake—made very clear that these are the bad guys.

Ah, but Trump loves to move the Overton window, and sadly, Nazi apologia was not a bridge too far for the GOP. 

7. Extorting Ukraine/first impeachment

You’d think withholding congressionally approved military funds meant to aid a democratic ally caught in a life-or-death struggle with a hostile authoritarian regime would be enough to get you impeached and convicted. Especially if you were doing it to compel that ally into digging up dirt on your likely future opponent.

You’d think.

Well, you’d be wrong, because … Republicans.

The Government Accountability Office determined that Trump had broken the law in withholding the funds, but that wasn’t nearly enough for the law-and-order party, which continued to pretend Trump was the most brutally persecuted—and unluckiest—human in history.

8. The Helsinki Surrender Summit

If you had any doubts about Trump’s lickspittle obeisance to Russian war criminal Vladimir Putin, they were put to rest after this sorry incident.

At a joint press conference with Putin in July 2018, Trump took the dictator’s word over the findings of our own intelligence agencies (who had determined Russia interfered in our elections).

“[Putin] just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be,” he said.

For once, Trump’s remarks actually seemed to scandalize stalwart Republicans. As The Associated Press wrote at the time, “The reaction back home was immediate and visceral, among fellow Republicans as well as usual Trump critics. ‘Shameful,’ ‘disgraceful,’ ‘weak,’ were a few of the comments. Makes the U.S. ‘look like a pushover,’ said GOP Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee.”

But, in the end, nothing really changed, as Republican spines dissolved faster than Lindsey Graham’s dignity at the Mar-a-Lago omelet bar

9. Jan. 6 and the Second Impeachment

Okay, he’s really done now, right? Right?

Violently attempting to overthrow the government is so egregious, even Graham dropped the ocher abomination. (Sadly, a little more than a month later, he came groveling back.)

Unfortunately, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, while clearly upset by Trump’s outrageous attack on democracy, refused to back his conviction, preserving his eligibility for future office. And before the month was over, Rep. Kevin McCarthy—apparently assuming Trump was the ticket to a long and rewarding speakership—helped rehabilitate his image among the “fuck your feelings and our 245-year-old democracy crowd” by hurrying to Mar-a-Lago to sample every square inch of Trump boots.

Thanks, guys!

10. The E. Jean Carroll judgment

Yeah, Trump was found civilly liable for lying about sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll in a department store. And, sure, he’s being forced to cough up $83 million. What of it?

Trump assured us Carroll wasn’t his type, and as we all know, Trump never lies. The fact that he later thought an old picture of her was a photo of his ex-wife Marla Maples is irrelevant, and definitely not something you should spend any time thinking about. Especially if you’re a Republican.

MAGA ‘24, baby!

11. Four—four!—felony cases ... and 4 million Republican yawns

It might seem like a cop-out to shove all of these into one catchall category, but when you really think about it, one felony charge should have been enough. And yet Republicans were able to ignore 91 with unprecedented aplomb.

Besides, two of those four felony cases were related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and install himself as a dictator, and Republicans had already established that they don’t care about such picayune matters.

Also, who doesn’t steal box loads of highly sensitive government secrets and randomly stack them in a heavily trafficked ballroom at a country club? That’s what the U.S. is all about. If they can go after Trump for that, they can go after you for doing the same thing. Think about it. It’s just common sense.

And if it’s this easy to ignore 91 felony charges, ignoring 34 convictions should be a doddle, now shouldn’t it? 

Of course, both President Joe Biden and Trump have stressed that the real verdict will come on Nov. 5. And they’re not wrong.

As we’ve clearly seen, we voters are the only ones who can put an end to this feral fuckery. No doubt y’all are happy about this verdict—I know I am—but there’s “happy” and then there’s “cosmically orgasmic.” We haven’t attained the latter yet—and we won’t until Trump is permanently consigned to the Walmart parking lot dumpster of history.

In other words, now is no time to get cocky. We need to run through the tape all the way through November—which means our work has just started.

We can all do something to help push Biden over the goal line, whether that involves donating or getting out the vote (phone-banking, door-knocking, postcard-writing, talking to friends, etc.). But the last thing we can be is complacent. We all remember how we felt when Clinton lost in 2016—it’s far too early to let our guard down. Too much is at stake.

So by all means, celebrate over the next couple of days, but then get back in the trenches and fight like your life depends on it. Because, you know, it very well might.

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

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

New study finds one-third of Congress is now iffy on democracy

If your doctor diagnoses you with cancer, and then in the next breath tells you it’s nothing to worry about because eventually the cancer will get tired of making new cells and decide to leave on its own, you should probably get a new doctor. Because if Donald Trump is elected president again, that doctor will be appointed head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and he’ll no longer have time for you anyway.

But—also!—cancer is bad, and expecting it to leave on its own is perhaps the most fatuous thing one can do as a human, apart from making a guy who thinks Hitler did “a lot of good things” president—again.

And yet here we are. Three and a half years removed from President Joe Biden’s victory in a free and fair election, and our country and Congress are riddled with cancer. And there’s a nonzero chance the patient—the world’s preeminent democracy—will die. 

That’s by no means a foregone conclusion, of course, but as with actual cancer, the patient is getting sicker by the day, and lots of people who know better are just standing around watching it happen. Shockingly, these people now include roughly one-third of our Congress.

As The Associated Press reports:

As Trump makes a comeback bid to return to power, Republicans in Congress have become even more likely to cast doubts on Biden’s victory or deny it was legitimate, a political turnaround that allows his false claims of fraud to linger and lays the groundwork to potentially challenge the results in 2024.

A new report released Tuesday by States United Action, a group that tracks election deniers, said nearly one-third of the lawmakers in Congress supported in some way Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 results or otherwise cast doubt on the reliability of elections. Several more are hoping to join them, running for election this year to the House and Senate.

More specifically, States United Action found that 170 representatives and senators of the total 535 Congress members are election deniers of some kind. Meanwhile, the group determined that two new Senate candidates and 17 new House candidates fall into the same category. And the situation is even more dire if you look at the Republican National Committee, which is now in the clutches of Trump lackeys: Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law, and prominent election denier Michael Whatley. (In fact, the RNC is now explicitly asking job candidates if they believe the 2020 election was stolen. What do you suppose happens if they say no?)

While boiling frog syndrome certainly applies here—we’ve gotten so used to election denial from these scoundrels it barely registers anymore—we’re actually a bit more like humans sitting in a hot tub inhaling psychedelic toad venom like it’s strawberry Fun Dip. Because I don’t know about you, but to me the past three years feel more like a hallucination than history—though, unlike congressional Republicans, we don’t have the luxury of denying reality.

As the AP points out, it’s particularly concerning that Congress members, of all people, are abandoning democracy, considering their traditional role in upholding it: 

The issue is particularly stark for Congress given its constitutional role as the final arbiter of the validity of a presidential election. It counts the results from the Electoral College, as it set out to do on Jan. 6, 2021, a date now etched in history because of the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

Of course, as we all know, the clear threat Trump poses to democracy and the rule of law could have been dealt with immediately after Trump had exhausted his legal remedies for challenging the election results. In a healthy, well-functioning democracy, members of both major parties would have stood arm in arm in opposition to Trump’s outrageous attacks on the election. Republicans in Congress would have denounced Trump’s baseless claims from the outset, making it abundantly clear that he was not just lying but corroding the very foundations of our country.

Instead, we got Republican officials spewing nonsense like, “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change. He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”

Ah, the classics.

Of course, scores of Republicans who might have been appalled or felt chastened by Trump’s brazen coup attempt are now basking in the beatific glow of Trump’s gooey orange id. In fact, for roughly half of Congress, fascism has become tres chic

This is exactly why you cut the cancer out as soon as it’s identified. Because if you don’t, you could sprout a tumor that looks unnervingly like J.D. Vance.

Perhaps reasoning that it’s better to be vice president than sew hair onto Trumpy Bears in a work camp for 18 hours a day, Republican vice president hopefuls are now auditioning for the role by telling the feral leader of a cult of personality exactly what he wants to hear.

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida is the latest Republican to telegraph his intention to embrace Trump’s bullshit if and when the ocher abomination face-plants in November. On Sunday, he told Kristen Welker of “Meet the Press” that he wouldn’t commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election, because they could end up being “unfair.” 

Hmm, what are the chances Trump will decide the election was stolen if he loses: 100% or 110%?

Rubio joins other vice president hopefuls whose election denialism has been especially vociferous. They include Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who in January refused to commit to certifying the 2024 election results if they went against Trump; Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who, when asked if he would accept the 2024 election results, said, “At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump”; and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who has refused to acknowledge that former Vice President Mike Pence did the right thing in certifying the 2024 election. (Come on now, Governor! That dog won’t hunt. And not just because you repeatedly shot it in the face.)

Of course, it’s telling how defensive they all get when asked these questions, almost as if they know they’re doing the devil’s work.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky knew when he excoriated Trump over his actions on Jan. 6 but refused to back a conviction in his impeachment. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina knew when he said “count me out, enough is enough” in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s bumbling coup. Former Attorney General Bill Barr knew when he determined Trump was making up stories about the 2020 election to justify a government takeover.

And yet all three of these self-proclaimed patriots have endorsed this cancer’s return to Washington. Then again, Trump is a wildly charismatic, larger-than-life character with a smile that can light up a roomful of tiki torches.

Of course, anyone with three minutes to spare can quickly determine that Trump had always planned to claim the election was stolen if he lost. In fact, Axios reported that in the days before the election.

Behind the scenes: Trump has privately talked through this scenario in some detail in the last few weeks, describing plans to walk up to a podium on election night and declare he has won.

  • For this to happen, his allies expect he would need to either win or have commanding leads in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Iowa, Arizona, and Georgia.

Why it matters: Trump's team is preparing to falsely claim that mail-in ballots counted after Nov. 3—a legitimate count expected to favor Democrats—are evidence of election fraud.

Meanwhile, not a shred of credible evidence has ever surfaced to suggest the election was stolen on Biden’s behalf. Though we’ve seen lots of absurd and completely discredited “evidence”—evidence that has so far cost Fox News $787 million and Rudy “Just Say We Won” Giuliani $148 million. That should have definitely proved to all of these independent thinkers that Trump was systematically undermining global democracy so he wouldn’t feel like the colossal loser he actually is.

In other words, enough is enough. 

We were right to be alarmed by Trump’s rhetoric, and those who thought it was okay to “humor” Trump, or to fail to hold him accountable after Jan. 6 (thanks, Mitch), were disastrously wrong. If we get through this fraught period in our history, we need to repair our faith and trust in democracy, which includes calling out fascist rhetoric wherever we see it. Because this slippery dope has already brought us dangerously close to the brink.

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

Morning Digest: You’ve got to try hard to raise as little as this Republican

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

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Leading Off

NY-03: Thanks to a series of signature challenges, Republicans now know that their hopes of avenging their loss in February's special election for New York's 3rd District will rest with former Assemblyman Mike LiPetri. But even though supporters of LiPetri were behind those challenges, there's good reason to wonder whether he can pose a serious threat to Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi.

LiPetri's campaign has denied involvement in the efforts to boot four other candidates, including Air Force veteran Greg Hach and businessman Jim Toes, from the June 25 primary ballot. But Hach and Toes were quick to accuse the Nassau County Republican Party, which has endorsed LiPetri and seldom brooks dissent in nominating contests, of trying to pre-ordain the outcome in comments to the Long Island Herald's Will Sheeline.

Hach and Toes also pointed out the disastrous fates of the Nassau GOP's last two hand-picked choices for this seat: George Santos, who was expelled from Congress last year, and Mazi Pilip, who got crushed by Suozzi in the special to replace Santos.

Republicans should be concerned about LiPetri, too: After announcing his campaign on March 11, he raised all of $52 for the rest of the month—a sum so small that you'd almost have to make an effort not to raise more. Suozzi, by contrast, still had $1.1 million banked at the end of March, despite his heavy spending on the special. (Hach at least had self-funded almost $700,000, and both he and Toes managed to bring in about $100,000 from donors.)

There's still time for LiPetri to turn things around, but since this Long Island-based district is contained entirely inside the ultra-expensive New York City media market, he'll need lots of dough to get his name out, especially given how well-known his Democratic rival is. And LiPetri can't count on outside GOP groups to make up the difference, as Pilip hoped they would, since third parties pay much higher advertising rates than candidates.

Senate

 AZ-Sen: A new report from Politico points out that national Republican groups have yet to make ad reservations for Arizona's Senate race despite the eight-figure sums Democrats have already booked, and it's almost certainly because of their likely nominee's never-ending record of self-sabotage.

Perhaps no incident better sums up the problem posed by Kari Lake, the far-right former TV anchor who narrowly lost her bid for governor in 2022, than her incoherent response to a recent state Supreme Court ruling upholding an 1864 law banning nearly all abortions.

Following that ruling, Lake reportedly urged state lawmakers to repeal the ban, according to multiple media reports. But just days later, on a trip to Idaho—Lake has a penchant for out-of-state travel—she reversed herself completely.

"The Arizona Supreme Court said this is the law of Arizona, but unfortunately, the people running our state have said we're not going to enforce it," she told a conservative outlet called the Idaho Dispatch. "So it's really political theater." (The state did ultimately undo the ban earlier this month.)

Episodes like this have made many Republicans wary of Lake, including Mitch McConnell. As Politico points out, the minority leader recently failed to mention Arizona when listing the GOP's top four targets this year, which he gave as Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.

Lake is also getting swamped by her likely Democratic opponent, Rep. Ruben Gallego, who has raised $21 million this cycle compared with just $5.5 million for the Republican. In addition, Gallego has been on TV continuously since March while Lake has barely advertised.

Lake may be getting some help soon, though: Politico reports that the NRSC "is preparing to launch a joint TV ad buy" with the candidate. However, any such coordinated expenditures would be limited to about $720,000 in total, since it's unlikely that hybrid ads would be effective in swingy Arizona.

 NV-Sen, OH-Sen, PA-Sen, WI-Sen: More big ad reservations from both sides are flooding into a quartet of top-tier Senate races.

AdImpact reports that Duty and Honor, a Democratic super PAC affiliated with the Senate Majority PAC, has booked at least $7 million to start running ads in Ohio later this month. Meanwhile, the firm says that the GOP group One Nation has reserved $8.5 million in Pennsylvania, almost $4 million in Wisconsin, and $1.5 million in Nevada. These spots are set to begin sometime this summer.

Governors

 WV-Gov: With just days to go before West Virginia's primaries, the Club for Growth has started airing ads attacking Secretary of State Mac Warner, who has been mired in fourth place in the polls and had been ignored by outside groups until now.

The new spots, from the Club's affiliated Black Bear PAC, slam Warner for failing to endorse Donald Trump's third bid for president (and par for the course for this race, it also manages to throw in a transphobic jab). It's not clear how much the Club is putting into this latest offensive, but the GOP firm Medium Buying points out that Warner's campaign has spent a measly $17,000 on TV and radio so far.

Early on in the contest, the Club, which is hoping to see Attorney General Patrick Morrisey secure the Republican nod for the open governorship, focused its fire on businessman Chris Miller, apparently seeing him as the biggest threat. But several weeks ago, it began hammering former Del. Moore Capito, who recently earned the endorsement of term-limited Gov. Jim Justice.

According to 538's polling average, Morrisey remains the frontrunner with the support of 33% of primary voters with Capito not far behind at 26. Miller is further back at 20 while Warner brings up the year with just 12% of the vote.

House

 NJ-10: New Jersey Redevelopment Authority COO Darryl Godfrey and Shana Melius, who worked as a staffer for the late Democratic Rep. Don Payne, each joined the July 16 special Democratic primary election to succeed Payne before filing closed Friday

Godfrey is a top official at an independent state agency that describes its mission as "transform[ing] urban communities through direct investment and technical support." The New Jersey Globe says that Godfrey, who previously worked in banking, says he's willing to do some self-funding, though it remains to be seen to what extent.

Godfrey grew up in the 10th District in Newark, but he currently lives in Morristown in Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill's neighboring 11th District. The candidate, writes the Globe, intends to move back to this constituency. (Members of Congress do not need to live in the district they represent.) He does not appear to have sought office before. 

Melius, meanwhile, spent three years in Payne's office, and she also co-founded a group to improve "diversity and social equity within the cannabis industry." Melius is a first-time candidate.

Godfrey and Melius are two of the 11 Democrats competing in the special election for this safely blue Newark-area seat. The other main contenders are all current or former elected officials: Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver, who has the backing of several influential figures in populous Essex County; Linden Mayor Derek Armstead; Hudson County Commissioner Jerry Walker; and former East Orange City Councilwoman Brittany Claybrooks, who worked as North Jersey political director for Rep. Andy Kim's Senate campaign.

Kim's Senate campaign was part of a successful lawsuit that barred Democrats from utilizing the county line system in this year's primaries, a ruling that applies to this contest. That's a big difference from the 2012 special election to Payne's father and namesake, where the younger Payne's favorable ballot position, as well as name identification, helped him easily beat several opponents.

Whoever secures a plurality in the July 16 primary should have no trouble beating Carmen Bucco, a perennial candidate who has the Republican side to himself, in the Sept. 18 general election.

Payne's name remains on the ballot for the regularly scheduled June 4 primary, where he's the only candidate listed. Local Democratic leaders will be tasked with selecting a new nominee sometime after results are certified on June 17. The New Jersey Globe previously reported that party officials "are not expected" to act until after the special Democratic primary.

 NY-16: Westchester County Executive George Latimer is airing what appears to be his first negative ad targeting Rep. Jamaal Bowman ahead of next month's Democratic primary, featuring several people who castigate Bowman's record and views.

"One of only six Democrats to oppose the historic infrastructure bill," says one woman. "Just to stick it to President Biden," adds another in disgust.

Bowman said in 2021 that he'd voted against the infrastructure bill because it had been severed from a climate change and healthcare reform measure known as Build Back Better, though many of those priorities became law thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in 2022. (Bowman voted for the latter bill.)

The spot then shifts to address reports from earlier this year about the congressman's questionable beliefs.

"Bowman even promoted dangerous conspiracy theories about 9/11," says another woman. "That's a disgrace."

In January, the Daily Beast's Will Bredderman revealed that Bowman had written a "free verse" poem embracing conspiracies about the attacks in 2011, which Bowman sought to dismiss as an old attempt at intellectual exploration. Just days, ago, however, Bredderman also reported that Bowman had subscribed to all manner of fringe channels on his YouTube account, including some operated by flat earthers and UFO obsessives.

The ad concludes with various individuals praising Latimer for "modernizing our infrastructure" and "protecting our reproductive rights."

 OR-03: State Rep. Maxine Dexter reported raising more than $218,000 on a single day recently, a haul that OPB's Dirk VanderHart says "appears" to be linked to the prominent pro-Israel group AIPAC.

Federal candidates normally report fundraising data on a quarterly basis, but in the 20 days prior to an election, FEC rules give them just 48 hours to declare any new donations of $1,000 or more. With Oregon's primary looming on May 21, that accelerated reporting period began earlier this month, prompting Dexter's disclosure.

VanderHart says that the "vast majority" of donors who gave to Dexter on May 7 "have a history of giving to AIPAC," though AIPAC itself did not comment. Dexter's campaign also noted that the group has not issued an endorsement in the Democratic primary for Oregon's 3rd District, a safely blue open seat based in Portland.

Dexter faces two notable rivals in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Earl Blumenauer: former Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal, who is the sister of Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales.

Jayapal had led the pack in fundraising through the end of March, but a different set of reports that were due at the FEC on Thursday showed Dexter surging during the month of April. (Twelve days before their primaries, candidates must also file a pre-election report that details all fundraising from the end of the previous quarter through the 20th day before the primary. After that point, the 48-hour reporting rule for large donations goes into effect.)

In her pre-primary filing, Dexter reported raising $575,000 while Jayapal took in $160,000 and Morales pulled down $112,000. Dexter also outspent her opponents in April and entered the stretch run with more cash on hand. That advantage has only grown since then, though: While both Jayapal and Morales had each filed one 48-hour report through Friday, their total hauls were a more modest $18,000 and $8,000 respectively.

 TX-13, TX-22, TX-38: It's Texas Week for the House Ethics Committee, which issued announcements concerning inquiries into three different Lone Star Republicans on Thursday and Friday.

The committee revealed in a press release that it's investigating Rep. Ronny Jackson, who two years ago was the subject of a report by the independent Office of Congressional Ethics concerning alleged improper spending.

That earlier report, which the Ethics Committee did not reference in its release, concluded there was "substantial" evidence that Jackson had spent campaign money for membership at a private social club, which is prohibited by federal law.

At the time, an attorney for Jackson, who had refused to cooperate with the OCE's investigation, said the congressman had sought to use the membership for campaign events. In response to the latest developments, a spokesperson called the accusations "baseless," though she claimed that Jackson had "fully complied" with the committee.

Separately, the committee said it would extend a previously announced probe into Rep. Troy Nehls that began in March. It also released a report from the OCE saying there was "probable cause to believe" that Nehls had made personal use of campaign funds and had failed to provide required information on the annual financial disclosure forms that all members of Congress must file.

The OCE's report focuses on payments from Nehls' campaign to a company he owns called Liberty 1776, ostensibly to rent office space to run his campaign. However, Nehls listed a property run by an entity called Z-Bar as his headquarters on his FEC filings, though he never recorded paying any rent to Z-Bar and only made irregular payments to Liberty 1776.

An attorney for Nehls denied the OCE's allegations, and Nehls, like Jackson, has refused to cooperate with the office's investigation. He said, however, that he would cooperate with the Ethics Committee.

Finally, the committee acknowledged it's looking into Rep. Wesley Hunt, though there's been no reporting as to what this investigation might concern. A spokesperson for Hunt told the Dallas Morning News that the congressman was cooperating with the committee and was "extremely confident that the matter will be dismissed shortly."

All three Republicans secured renomination two months ago, and all of them are defending reliably red seats this fall.

 UT-03: Sen. Mitt Romney has endorsed attorney Stewart Peay in the race for Utah's open 3rd District, where he's one of five candidates hoping to succeed Rep. John Curtis, who himself is running to replace Romney. Peay's wife, Misha, is a niece of Romney's wife, Ann.

Ballot Measures

 FL Ballot, FL-Sen: A new survey of Florida from a Republican pollster finds an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution passing despite strong numbers for Republican candidates at the top of the ticket.

The poll, conducted by Cherry Communications for the Florida Chamber of Commerce, shows Amendment 4 earning the support of 61% of voters while just 29% are opposed; to become law, it needs to win a 60% supermajority. A separate measure known as Amendment 3 that would legalize recreational marijuana is just short of the threshold at 58-37.

In the race for Senate, though, Republican incumbent Rick Scott holds a wide 54-39 lead over his likely Democratic opponent, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, while Donald Trump is up 51-42 against Joe Biden.

 NV Ballot: The Nevada Supreme Court has upheld a February ruling by a lower court that blocked a pair of amendments that would establish a bipartisan redistricting commission from appearing on the ballot this fall. That earlier ruling disallowed the amendments because they would not raise the revenue needed to operate the commission they sought to create.

Obituaries

 Chris Cannon: Former Utah Rep. Chris Cannon, an ardent conservative who lost renomination to Jason Chaffetz in the 2008 Republican primary, died Wednesday at age 73.

Cannon served six terms in Congress and compiled a very conservative voting record, but he also supported a pathway to citizenship and government benefits for some undocumented immigrants. His decisive defeat foreshadowed the direction his party was heading in a full eight years before the ascendence of Donald Trump was complete.

Cannon first won his seat in 1996 by unseating Democratic Rep. Bill Orton 51-47 in the 3rd District, and he went on to serve as one of 13 House managers in the 1999 impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. However, while Cannon never had trouble turning back Democrats, his views infuriated the GOP's nativist base.

"We love immigrants in Utah. We don’t make distinctions between legal and illegal," he said in 2002—comments that would be unthinkable for a Republican now.

Cannon passed his first major test in the 2004 primary when he held off former state Rep. Matt Throckmorton 58-42. Two years later, his 56-44 triumph over developer John Jacob in the primary was viewed by national observers as a major win for George W. Bush's immigration goals. (Jacob infamously told the Salt Lake Tribune ahead of that race, "There's another force that wants to keep us from going to Washington, D.C. It's the devil is what it is.")

However, Cannon's victories proved misleading. Chaffetz, a former chief of staff to Gov. Jon Huntsman, made a nativist pitch similar to that of Cannon's prior opponents while arguing that the party as a whole had "lost its way." Chaffetz won in a 60-40 landslide that presaged years of turbulence and waning influence for the old GOP establishment.

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