In his subtle critique of the curriculum, the only Black Republican member of Florida’s congressional delegation gave the DeSantis administration an out.

Donald Trump continues to wield power over the Republican Party in a way that no other 2024er has been able to penetrate quite yet. As the former president out-fundraises his competition and enjoys wide leads in early voting states like South Carolina and Iowa, the man considered to be his most serious challenger, Gov. Ron DeSantis, is running out of money. Politico reported just this afternoon that the Florida governor is letting one-third of his staff go, reportedly amid concerns over campaign coffers.

And his position of dominance over the party extends beyond the campaign circuit and into Congress.

The retired school teacher who ultimately survived an expulsion vote brought by her Republican colleagues in the Tennessee state House earlier this year — part of an effort that did ultimately expel two of her younger, Black colleagues — is reportedly planning to challenge Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) for her seat next year.

No Democrat has won a statewide race since 2006, when then-Gov. Phil Bredesen secured his reelection. But a face-off between Blackburn — who has a history of staunch opposition to tightening gun control — and state Rep. Gloria Johnson, (D) whose expulsion vote was predicated on her support for children and parents protesting lax gun laws in the state legislature, could test the energizing power of gun reform in a state recently racked by a deadly school shooting.

Ron DeSantis is struggling in the polls, and at acting like a human being in public. The Murdochs are losing patience with his flailing efforts to become the alt-Trump for voters exhausted by MAGA. He’s getting a lot of negative headlines now that his Republican-dominated state legislature back home has ended its legislative session and is therefore no longer producing anti-woke bills for him to sign into law and pump into Fox’s news cycle.

So naturally he’s turning to a key voting bloc that — at times reluctantly — got behind Donald Trump in droves in 2016 to propel him to the White House: white evangelicals. It’s an intrinsic shift for any Republican but especially for one who is banking his entire 2024 bid on what he perceives to be his unique ability to scoop up disaffected Trump voters looking for an alternative to the former president’s various disagreeable features.

There are two new reports out this week that dig in on where Rupert Murdoch is leaning ahead of the 2024 Republican primary, as he creates distance between his conservative media empire and Donald Trump, whose 2020 election lies have already cost Murdoch’s Fox News three-quarters of a billionaire dollars in just one defamation suit settlement. Murdoch reportedly is doing whatever he can to avoid being “stuck” with Trump again in 2024, privately expressing repeatedly over the last two years that he thinks Trump is unhealthy for the Republican Party, according to the New York Times.

Republicans are continuing to backtrack on years of conspiracy-theory precedent after last year’s midterms taught them that demonizing certain popular types of voting for the sake of Donald Trump’s grievances might not be the best way to win friends and influence people.

The latest MAGA fan and one-time Big Liar to embrace the Republican National Committee’s early-voting about-face initiative: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

QAnon congresswoman-turned-GOP House leadership darling Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) membership with the House Freedom Caucus has been in question ever since she laid down her life/remaining dignity to back House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in his speakership race. Since then, she’s been picking fights and at odds with members of the rebellious faction for being too tight with the establishment crowd.

While there’s been speculation for weeks that the Georgia congresswoman may soon get the boot from the fringe group, it turns out that the Freedom Caucus has actually already voted to punish Greene for forgetting where she came from.

Special Counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed the Arizona secretary of state’s office as recently as May for information related to the unsuccessful lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign and the Arizona Republican Party about supposed errors in the 2020 election. As you’ll recall, Arizona was a hotbed of conspiracy theories tied to the effort to overturn the election after President Biden flipped the longtime Republican stronghold state, leading to Trumpworld outrage, a phony and expensive state election “audit” and the lawsuits.

The Washington Post published a piece this weekend on the ways in which moderate Republicans in the House are getting sick of the far-right Freedom Caucus’ ongoing revolt as its members flex their power over House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), pushing increasingly extreme and sometimes bizarre messaging bills that will harm those in swing districts in 2024. There’s an interesting nugget of reporting tucked into the piece that touches on the trend we’ve seen since Roe was overturned: Republicans are seeing the writing on the wall with abortion and it’s not looking pretty.

There is a ballot initiative on track to go before New York voters next fall that, if approved, would codify abortion access and several other things, including LGBTQ rights, into the state constitution. While it is jarring to imagine a world in which such a protection would be necessary in very blue New York, it falls in line with efforts in other blue and purple — and even some red — states post-Dobbs, as the rogue Supreme Court signals that other privacy-related rights may also be at risk.

But New York Democrats are also taking political lessons from other states that have witnessed the energizing power of abortion for the party in elections since Roe’s overturning and are viewing the ballot measure as a tool to boost Democrats’ chances of retaking the House.