I want to return to what will be a recurring theme this year: Donald Trump’s total takeover of the Republican Party as a precursor to what he wants to do to America.
For the center-left, there’s an abundance of schadenfreude watching Trump humiliate, demean, and marginalize any Republican who opposes him. The ritualistic dignity loss carries an amusing undertone, especially when the target had already prostrated themselves at the altar of Trump, to no avail.
I enjoy it in a way, too, so I’m not scolding here. But the truth is that Trump’s consolidation of the GOP as a far-right party is already accomplished. He did that in his first term. What we’re witnessing now is his conversion of it from a political party into a tool of his personal political power. He wants it to be obedient to him, to serve him, to vanquish his enemies internal and external, to be an extension of himself. I’m not sure we’ve seen before the complete absorption of a major U.S. political party into a cult of its leader’s personality.
The WaPo has a story up this morning on Republican fears that they will be the targets of Trump’s promised retribution if he is re-elected. You should read it. It’s an important story. But what’s happening on the Hill right now is, in its own way, a far better measure of what Trump is doing to the GOP than the vague, contingent fears of what he might do to Republicans down the road.
Trump has demanded loyalty on the border issue that he is making a centerpiece of his campaign, and Republicans have fallen in line with remarkable speed, ditching months of negotiations in which they got much of what they asked for. Trump has humbled not just backbenchers or vulnerable incumbents, but Mitch McConnell himself.
To those who argue this isn’t new, that Trump has been doing this to Hill Republicans for eight years now, I can only say that all the reporting over the past few months points to a Trump demanding whole new levels of blind loyalty while amassing a coterie of sycophants to serve as enforcers within the party and ultimately within the federal government. A primary goal of Trump II is to eliminate the barriers that constrained Trump I.
Trump’s plan is to hitch this cult of personality to the powers of the office of the presidency and run roughshod over the rule of law and any person or thing that stands in his way, including the co-equal branches of government, the states, and our allies abroad. The fact that he’s doing it first to his ostensible allies in the GOP should be a bright red flashing light of what is to come.
Ukraine-Border Package Deal Collapses
Senate Republicans backed away from the Ukraine funding-border package so fast, it set a land speed record for crawfishing.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is desperate to pass Ukraine funding, gave the greenlight to filibuster the bill he had just allowed to be negotiated. It’s so bad that even the top Republican negotiator, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), said he would vote against proceeding to a vote on his own handiwork.
With Senate Republicans running for cover and the House GOP loudly proclaiming the bill DOA, the whole enterprise seems quite doomed.
I’m not sure it’s fair to call anything a “deal” when one side of the negotiation can’t deliver the support it purported to have. The whole exercise becomes surreal. And so here we are.
Bogus Impeachment Of Mayorkas Expected Today
In the absence of actual governing (see above), the House GOP gets back to its performative bullying with an expected impeachment vote today against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – despite the absence of any high crimes or misdemeanors.
Trump Jan. 6 Trial Remains In Limbo
Still nothing on immunity from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan indicated in open court that she might still be able to try the case over the summer
With the March trial date gone now and the immunity appeal dragging on, squeezing the trial in before the election gets harder with each passing day. But the March trial date always had a little cushion, with the possibility it could be pushed back to the summertime.
For her part Chutkan yesterday sounded prepared to cancel an August trip abroad if necessary for a new trial date.
Project Veritas Settles Lawsuit Over Bogus Voter Fraud Claim
NBC News: “Conservative provocateur James O’Keefe and his former organization Project Veritas have settled a lawsuit filed by a Pennsylvania postmaster after the group spread a Postal Service worker’s false claims of voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.”
2024 Ephemera
In the face of Trump’s vitriol, Nikki Haley seeks Secret Service protection.
Democrats invoke George Santos in last-minute ad buy for his empty NY seat.
In 2024, the right-wing surge in the polls seems bigger and bolder, with one predicting the nationalist right and far right could pick up nearly a quarter of seats in the European Parliament in June.
Even if the center right — currently tipped to come first in the election — refuses to form a governing coalition with ever more powerful firebrand fringe parties, there’s still a significant chance the far right will, for the first time, be able to influence Europe’s policy agenda. That will enable it to threaten the EU’s sacred values on rule of law and human rights, and block or even overturn major green and climate laws.
EU To Unveil Ambitious New Emissions Goal
Reuters: “The European Commission is poised to recommend on Tuesday the EU reduces its net greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040…”
This article first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
When Sarah Lee Hooper’s mail-in ballot for Nevada’s presidential primary arrived last month, the Las Vegas Republican was utterly confused.
The candidate she wanted to vote for, Vivek Ramaswamy, wasn’t included. Neither were Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and, most notably, former President Donald Trump. The only name she recognized was former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
“What the heck? This is weird,” she remembered thinking. “Are they trying to convince people Nikki is the only option?”
A quick internet search turned up the answer: The Nevada Republican Party opted to eschew the state-run presidential primary on Feb. 6, in favor of running its own caucus two days later, which will decide who wins Nevada’s delegates to the national GOP convention. Presidential contenders who participate in the primary are prohibited by the party from also being candidates in the caucus.
While legal, the party’s decision to host a competing nominating contest in the state has confused and angered GOP voters.
Hooper had no idea there would also be a caucus or that Ramaswamy opted to participate in it instead of the primary before dropping out of the race.
“If you don’t want me to be a conspiracy theorist, then be transparent,” Hooper said. “Send me all of the information at once.”
Since Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election, supporters have cultivated an ecosystem of confusion around election processes through unfounded claims of voter fraud, demands for paper ballots and hand counts, and state-by-state efforts to subvert the 2020 results.
Leaders of the caucus effort are among those who tried to keep Trump in power. Three caucus overseers face felony charges for their roles in trying to overturn the 2020 election. Others running the caucus have been on the vanguard of those pushing unfounded election fraud allegations in the state.
These Republicans claim the caucus will serve as a model for how to run a more secure election — a claim disputed by election experts who note the drastic differences between a caucus, which attracts a fraction of the electorate to decide a single race, and elections, where many more voters cast ballots for local, state and federal offices.
The primary election is run by state election officials and adheres to Nevada’s voting laws — which allow for mail-in ballots, early voting and same-day registration. The Nevada Republican Party’s rules for its caucus reflect some GOP leaders’ efforts to limit voting. Participation requires registering as a Republican 30 days in advance, arriving at a set location and time, and presenting identification.
The confusion created about how elections work, including fraud allegations and now around how Nevada will choose who it backs in the Republican primary, has provided fertile ground for conspiracy theories and misinformation to take hold, experts say, causing a greater share of voters to distrust election results and democratic institutions.
“It does make the misinformation environment more dangerous,” said Gowri Ramachandran, deputy director of elections and government for the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program. “These information gaps about voting, how it works, that sort of thing, can get filled in by incorrect information.”
“It’s clear from Jan. 6 that when that kind of misinformation spreads, it has a negative impact on people’s trust in elections and willingness to abide by the results,” she added. “It’s had a negative effect on democracy over the years.”
Confusion Over Competing Contests
When primary ballots absent Trump’s name began hitting mailboxes, Republicans across the state reacted with angry bewilderment.
Some thought he had been kicked off the ballot by a court because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, as happened in a Colorado case that is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. (A judge in Nevada rejected a similar challenge.) Others latched on to a false rumor that an inept campaign staffer forgot to file paperwork to get Trump on the ballot. Voters also wondered whether they could participate in both contests, or if casting a primary ballot and caucusing would constitute an illegal attempt to vote twice. (Nevada’s attorney general and secretary of state have assured voters they are free to participate in both.)
“I haven’t heard anybody who is happy with this unless they are with the state party and the county parties,” said Assemblywoman Danielle Gallant, R-Las Vegas, who has spent recent weeks explaining the situation to her constituency of mostly older voters.
The Nevada Republican Party’s decision to force candidates to forgo the primary if they wanted to be included in the caucus will likely hand the state’s 26 convention delegates to the former president. (At this point only one other obscure candidate remains in the caucuses.) It also foreclosed on any of Trump’s opponents building momentum from a strong showing in the state’s primary even as the field has shrunk since Iowa and New Hampshire, leaving Haley and a handful of lesser-known contenders.
Trump’s allies in the state, including Nevada’s popular Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, have urged GOP voters who participate in the primary to mark “none of these candidates” on the ballot rather than vote for a candidate. They hope to avoid Haley emerging with a larger vote total in the primary than Trump receives in the caucus, a possibility because more voters are expected to cast a ballot in the primary than attend the caucus.
In a Jan. 27 campaign visit to Las Vegas, Trump urged supporters to skip the primary entirely, describing it as a “con job” and a “meaningless event.” The caucus, he said, “is the right way and the legitimate way.”
“Don’t go on Tuesday, Feb. 6,” he told the crowd. “Don’t do it. Don’t use the mail-in ballot.”
“We Will Deliver You 100% of the Delegates”
Because of the primary-caucus confusion, candidates and the national political press have largely ignored Nevada’s “First in the West” contests despite the state’s early spot on the presidential nominating calendar. Trump is the only candidate to visit the state more than once since August.
Democrats have worked since 2007 to establish Nevada as an important early primary state. The effort was spearheaded by the late U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., who used caucuses as a party-building exercise. Since then, both parties have held early caucuses with varying success at making them relevant and competitive.
A couple of years back, that looked to be changing. With the caucus process coming under fire for hindering participation, the Nevada Legislature passed a law in 2021 to create this year’s presidential preference election. Although that effort was led by Democratic lawmakers, Republicans had tried years earlier without success to swap the caucus for a primary.
The Nevada GOP rejects the notion that by holding a caucus it has rigged this year’s contest for the former president. But Trump has been actively preparing to secure the nomination for the past year, including courting party insiders across the country. Those efforts extended to Nevada. Early last year he wooed GOP leaders — including Nevada Republican Chairman Michael McDonald, National Committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid and Bruce Parks, chairperson of the second-largest county party — at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
McDonald, DeGraffenreid and Jim Hindle are under indictment for acting as fraudulent electors for Trump in his effort to overturn the 2020 election — charges to which they’ve pleaded not guilty and are arguing to have dropped. Hindle, as Storey County clerk, is responsible for administering elections, putting him in the novel position of overseeing parts of both the primary and the caucus.
“I’m just doing the job I was elected to do,” Hindle said.
Despite claims of neutrality, McDonald has referred to Trump as the “next president of the United States.” At Trump’s January rally, McDonald stated his intentions more explicitly, referring to Trump simply as “the president.”
“When I talked to the president, I said, ‘I guarantee you Nevada will show up and we will deliver you 100% of the delegates for the state of Nevada to Donald J. Trump,’” he said.
While the caucus favors Trump, the party was transparent with Republican voters and GOP presidential candidates in creating it, McDonald argued.
McDonald blamed the state’s lack of a voter identification requirement for the party’s decision to run a caucus, saying Republican voters don’t trust the system without it.
Parks, chairperson of the party in Washoe County, home to Reno, has also been a leading voice in promoting unfounded election fraud allegations. Under his leadership, the county party adopted a resolution in 2022 declaring Joe Biden’s presidency to be illegitimate. Trump endorsed Parks in his reelection bid for county party chair last year, which Parks described as “one of the proudest moments of my life.”
In an interview with ProPublica, Parks said the party’s central committee decided not to participate in Nevada’s new presidential preference primary election because it wants to demonstrate what he contends is the proper way to run an election: required identification, paper ballots and hand-counting with results reported on the same day.
“There was much discussion — the pros and cons were weighed and measured — and in the end, the people decided we are going to do a caucus because it is more secure and more transparent than a universal mail-in system that does not require ID,” he said.
“Anybody who wants to observe is welcome to,” he said before catching himself. “Let me rephrase that: Anybody who is a Republican and can participate in the process is welcome to observe.”
Until ProPublica raised the issue with the state party, Parks said he wouldn’t allow the news media into Washoe County sites. Now, he said he will allow a few reporters into a single caucus site. McDonald said each county’s chairperson decides whether reporters can observe the proceedings. In the past, reporters have not been barred from observing caucuses held by either party in Nevada.
When asked why the GOP was changing its policy, Parks said, “For obvious reasons. There seems to be a shortage of honest reporters. We’re not going to open the doors and allow a particular narrative to be put out there that is not truthful. That is just not going to happen.”
Anyone who disagrees with the way the caucuses are being run can register with the party and keep an eye on things themselves, he said. “You want to make sure everything is above board? Get involved. Most importantly, change your registration and become a Republican,” he said.
Counting caucus results is not the same as counting election results, Ramachandran said. Hand-counting an election with hundreds of thousands of voters and dozens of races is neither efficient nor accurate.
“It’s really important when people are looking at those issues not to make the mistake of comparing apples to oranges,” she said.
Unknown Impact on the General Election
How the confusion and resulting disinformation from the presidential nominating process will influence general-election voter behavior is difficult to forecast. Ramachandran said it’s challenging to study how disinformation affects turnout.
“It’s hard to know who’s been subjected to that confusion or has become susceptible to misinformation, and it’s really hard to tie that to impact on turnout or specific candidates,” she said.
Gallant, who is running for reelection to the Assembly this year, isn’t so sure. Beliefs about unfounded voter-fraud accusations kept Republican voters home in 2020, she said, describing it as “oops, we screwed up.” Polling has backed that up, with surveys showing claims of fraud have made Republicans less likely to vote.
“We’ve done a lot of reeducation around that,” Gallant said, referencing the national party’s “Bank Your Vote” campaign that now encourages Republicans to vote early and by mail.
Jeremy Hughes, a Republican political consultant who is not involved in any of the presidential campaigns this year, said too much is being made over the caucus confusion.
“Donald Trump would have won the primary and he will win the caucus, so the mode of voting isn’t going to matter,” he said. “I have zero concern with it affecting voting behaviors.”
I noted below that we might know tonight where the Senate GOP is going on the compromise legislation they said they wanted. Well, it’s not even 8 p.m. And we know. They’re going to filibuster it. The explanation of the evening is that voting this week is too soon. They need more time. But of course more time is just to build opposition to it. Trump was able to shut this down pretty quickly. If anything it’s now turning into a secondary effort to show Trump’s dominance over McConnell in the Senate. But that’s a topic for another post. The White House now needs to shift gears and make this a central element of its campaign. There was a bipartisan compromise to crackdown on border crossings. It included lots of what Republicans have demanded for years. But Republicans killed it because Donald Trump told them to.
According to The Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov, Russian forces in Ukraine are about to capture the first Ukrainian city since the capture of Bakhmut last May. According to him it’s a “direct result of acute ammunition shortage — caused by the U.S. Congress withholding further military aid to Ukraine.”
Pretty rapidly Senate Republicans seem to be falling in line behind Donald Trump’s demand to kill the Senate border deal.
Sen. Mike Rounds now says he’d be no on cloture if Sen. Schumer brings the bill up for a vote this week, as he said he would. For clarity, “no on cloture” is Senate-speak for supporting filibustering the bill, which he’s actually been a supporter of. In other words, he’s leaving open the possibility he might vote for it later after amendments. But that likely means after adding poison pills to scare off Democratic votes. At a minimum GOP Senators are saying, okay nice start. Make it more draconian and we’ll talk.
At least for now it seems like Trump’s demand to kill the bill have made it impossible for it to get to 60 votes. Trump’s got supporters of the compromise lining up to announce they’re against it.
Nikki Haley, the sole remaining challenger to Donald Trump in the GOP presidential primary, has asked for Secret Service protection in the face of new threats against her, she confirmed in an interview today with the Wall Street Journal.
Following up on the post below about this Senate border bill. However this goes I suspect it will go quickly. No one in the Senate wants to get caught out on the losing side of it. With that in mind Politico’s Burgess Everett just reported that Sen. John Thune says he’s “still reviewing the text and I think James Lankford worked as hard as he could to get the best deal under the circumstances.”
I wouldn’t be so quick to assume Democrats got taken by working with Senate Republicans to put together this bipartisan border deal. There are a number of provisions in this deal which many Democrats won’t like at all just on the merits. That is an important question. But here I’m talking about the politics. It’s House Republicans who are in an awkward position now.
House Republicans are now clearly refusing to support provisions they’ve been demanding for years. Now they claim that they are refusing to support or even allow a vote on the deal because it doesn’t go far enough. But it’s a bit late for that since they were already pretty open about simply refusing to vote for anything until Trump becomes President again.
There was a helpful article in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend illustrating some of the actual situation in Israel-Palestine. It’s a profile of far-right Kahanist politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is one of the two ultra-far-right figures keeping Netanyahu in power. Through the article he pines for the return of Donald Trump who would, Ben-Gvir says, finally give Israel the free hand it needs to encourage the “voluntary” departure of the Gazan population and resettle the strip with Israel settlements.
“Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel [to Gaza], which goes to Hamas,” Ben-Gvir told the Journal. “If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”
It’s a measure of the GOP’s successful demagoguing of Ukraine that the bill finally released last night on the Senate side is widely referred to by the shorthand “border bill.” If you win the naming war, you win a lot.
Border concessions were of course the ransom the GOP demanded be paid. Now Dems have agreed publicly to pay it — and Republicans look ready to walk away. It’s not clear a majority of Senate Republicans will support the package. House Republicans have already called it DOA.
It’s not just Ukraine aid that is at stake. Aid to Israel and Gaza is included. All of it in jeopardy over yet another negotiation in which Democrats are held hostage, negotiate against themselves, and watch Republicans walk away from the deal they demanded because not only is no deal good enough but any “deal” is by definition a cave, a surrender, a capitulation to the evildoers on the other side of the negotiating table.
Republicans as a whole aren’t a viable negotiating partner because any one Republican, including any Republican at the negotiating table, can be quickly outflanked on the right and lose any bargaining power.
Democrats participate anyway because, to give it the most most favorable interpretation I can, they believe that they will come out looking better having tried and having exposed GOP bad faith. No matter that this has failed to come to fruition countless times in the past decade. No matter that it cedes the framing of the debate to the GOP, lets Republican electeds off the hook, concedes way too much, and generates news coverage helpful to the GOP and problematic for Dems.
We’ve seen this play before.
Our Generation’s Henry Ford
Elon Musk embraces the Great Replacement Theory, and historian Kevin Kruse unpacks the racist stupidity: “I know, I know, it’s hard to believe a guy whose grandfather left Canada because it was becoming too diverse and decided to relocate the family to a newly-segregated South Africa could ever embrace paranoid racist nonsense, but here we are.”
Reap What You Sow
Dearborn, Michigan, ramped up police patrols at places of worship in response to fallout from a WSJ op-ed titled “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital.”
Why Fani Why?
Morning Memo kept its powder dry until Atlanta DA Fani Willis formally responded in court to the claims she had a romantic relationship with the Nathan Wade, one of the special prosecutors she hired to help handle the Georgia RICO prosecution of Donald Trump et al — though it became pretty apparent before her response Friday that she wasn’t denying it.
Willis and Wade admitted to the relationship in the filing, but they hung a lot on their claim that it didn’t begin until after he’d been hired and they’d begun working together. If that holds up to scrutiny, I guess that makes it slightly better?
But it sucks that anyone working on any of the historic and high-profile Trump cases would do anything to give him an edge, advantage or fodder with which to work. The stakes are too high. The sacrifices that everyone else is making — witnesses, investigators, line prosecutors, jurors, court personnel — to bring to Trump to account deserves deference and respect. If you don’t want to make those sacrifices yourself, fine. Get out of the way.
Unfortunately, Willis committed her entire office to this effort and she can’t easily get out of the way without jeopardizing the case against Trump. So we’re stuck with her. Most legal observers don’t think this gives Trump an actual advantage in court, just in the political and public fray. We’ll see in a few days when the trial judge addresses all of this in an evidentiary hearing.
One coda to all this: I do wonder whether a male prosecutor would have been tagged with the same kind of public humiliation if he had engaged in similar conduct as Willis.
It’s Official
What’s been obvious for a couple of weeks is now official: U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan formally cancelled the March 4 trial for Donald Trump in the big election subversion case while his immunity appeal drags on.
And We Wait …
Still nothing from the DC Circuit on presidential immunity.
Jack Smith Hits Back Hard At Trump
Special Counsel Jack Smith is forced to educate U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon at length on why Trump’s counter-narrative in the Mar-a-Lago case is bogus, evidence-free, and self-serving. It’s quite a read.
DQ Clause Week In DC
As we prep for Supreme Court oral arguments Thursday on whether Trump is eligible for the presidency under the Constitution’s Disqualification Clause, some reading for you diehards:
Yale historian Timothy Snyder: Bad Arguments and Good Historians
Politico: Here’s What Happens if Trump Gets Kicked Off the Ballot
From The Department Of Ignorance Is Bliss
Philip Bump: Most Republicans aren’t aware of Trump’s various legal issues
J.D. Vance: I’d Have Coup’ed, Too
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) wasn’t in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 but he made it clear in an interview with George Stephanopoulos that if he had been in Vice President Mike Pence’s shoes he’d have gone along with Trump’s fake electors scheme.
[Sponsored] An Inside Story Of The Democratic Party At A Moment Of Great Peril
The Truce, from journalists Hunter Walker (of Talking Points Memo) and Luppe B. Luppen, explores the major fault lines that define Democratic politics today and asks big questions about the future of the party. An engrossing page-turner, The Truce grapples with the dangers that threaten American democracy and the complicated cast of characters who are trying to save it.
