A top former director at the Republican National Committee who helped bring about the GOP’s “Fire Pelosi” campaign against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is expressing regret in wake of the brutal assault on Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi.
Continue reading “‘Fire Pelosi’ GOP Strategist Condemns ‘Toxic Politics’ That Led To Attack”GOP Nom Wrote ‘Sequel’ To Anne Frank’s Diary In Which She Finds Jesus
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
But Why Tho
The GOP nominee trying to unseat Rep. Lizzie Pannill Fletcher (D-TX) published a book titled “The Lost Diary of Anne Frank” in 2020 that was meant to be some sort of sequel to Anne Frank’s diary after she gets taken to the concentration camps, JTA reports.
- Johnny Teague, an evangelical pastor and businessman, conjures up an imaginary world in which Frank discovers Jesus while she’s in the camp.
- As JTA aptly puts it:
It’s common for evangelical Christians to engage in proselytizing, including toward Jews, and surveys have indicated that nearly half of American adults believe the country should be “a Christian nation.” But the size and scope of Teague’s efforts to undermine Anne Frank’s Judaism in his book is unusual even in such circles.
- Teague’s fictional Anne Frank writes that she’d “love to learn more about Jesus” and “all He faced in His dear life as a Jewish teacher.”
- Eventually, Anne Frank arrives at the conclusion that “every Jewish man or woman should ask” questions like “Where is the Messiah?” and “Did He come already, and we didn’t recognize Him?”
- Problematic much? Yes, yes it is:
DOJ Says Arizona Drop Box Surveillance Is Probably Illegal
The Justice Department officially stepped into a lawsuit over right-wing vigilantes’ monitoring of ballot drop boxes in Arizona on Monday by filing a “statement of interest” backing the League of Women Voters’ argument that the surveillance was voter intimidation.
- The risk of violating federal law, specifically the Voting Rights Act, “is significant” when private citizens “attempt to take over the State’s legitimate role of overseeing and policing elections,” the DOJ argued in its filing.
- A federal judge in a similar lawsuit refused to stop drop box surveillance by right-wing group Clean Elections USA on Monday.
Trump Turns To SCOTUS To Shield Tax Records From House
As expected, the ex-president on Monday asked the Supreme Court to bar the IRS from handing over his tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee.
Pelosi Attack Suspect Planned To Break Her Kneecaps, DOJ Says
David DePape was handed federal charges on Monday after he allegedly broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) San Francisco home and assaulted her husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer.
- In addition to the state charges filed last week, DePape now faces federal charges of assaulting a U.S. official’s immediate family member and attempted kidnapping of a U.S. official. The charges carry maximum prison sentences of 30 years and 20 years, respectively.
- According to the FBI, DePape told investigators that he was specifically targeting the House speaker (who wasn’t home) and wanted to hold her hostage for some kind of interrogation (law enforcement allegedly found zip ties and duct tape at the scene).
- DePape allegedly said he would break the lawmaker’s kneecaps if she “lied” to him.
Paul Pelosi Making Steady Progress With Recovery, Speaker Says
The House speaker on Monday gave a status update on her husband, who’s currently recovering from surgery for a fractured skull after he was struck with a hammer during the break-in on Friday:
Bolsonaro Still Silent About Defeat
Far-right Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro, who had claimed in a Trumpian fashion that only a rigged election would lead to his defeat in his country’s election, hasn’t had anything to say about his stunning ouster by ex-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday.
- The soon-to-be former leader was “holed up” at his presidential offices and speaking to his advisers plus the minister of defense on Monday, in the New York Times’ words.
- Bolsonaro plans on giving some kind of public response today, according to the New York Times. We don’t know what that response will be–specifically whether he’ll concede the race or not.
Key Analysis
“The Supreme Court Has No Reason to End Affirmative Action. They’re Doing It Anyway.” – Slate
Although these cases involve both public and private institutions, the Supreme Court has consistently held that federal law simply applies the equal protection clause to private universities that receive federal funds. So, in theory, the justices should’ve been debating the meaning of the Constitution. Instead, the conservative justices continually reverted to free-floating policy discussions about how affirmative action makes them feel. (Hint: they feel bad.)
GOP Nevada Senate Nom’s Campaign Staffer Tied To Hateful Tweets
Jewish Insider found that GOP Nevada Senate nominee Adam Laxalt’s campaign had paid more than $6,500 to a staffer on its payroll who ran a now-deleted anonymous Twitter account called “LaxaltStan” that repeatedly posted anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and anti-LGBTQ+ tweets.
- Screenshots of the account (which was suddenly deleted on Thursday) show the staffer calling Judaism a “cult,” arguing that “guns should have more rights than women,” mocking gender-affirming care as “child abuse,” and other ugly tweets.
- Laxalt’s press secretary said that the staffer was fired in August and “is not affiliated with the campaign in any way.”
- This marks the fourth time a high-profile Republican campaign or a major GOP organization was recently found to have an outspoken anti-Semite on its payroll:
- We’ve got GOP Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano’s campaign and Gab founder Andrew Torba.
- Then there’s the Florida Republican Party and Charlottesville white nationalist rallygoer Christopher Monzon.
- And then there’s the Washington state Republican Party and a neo-Nazi blogger Greyson Arnold.
Oz Unaware Pennsylvania Isn’t On The Coast
Pennsylvania GOP Senate nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz complained to Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday that “we do not have a Republican senator north of North Carolina on the Atlantic coast until you get to Maine, if I don’t hold this seat.”
Then again…
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Where Things Stand: We’re Hosting A Midterms Event This Week And You Should Come
It’s virtual, and anyone can join.
If you’ve been following my colleague Josh Marshall’s ed-blog posts the last several months, you’ve likely read a few of his pieces centered on the theory that Democrats should be putting the disastrous Dobbs decision at the forefront of their messaging campaign to voters this midterms cycle. His case has been simple: Democrats need to make the calculus clear to demoralized liberal voters. Yes, they had 50 seats in the Senate for the last two years, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the filibuster to pass Roe-like protections (or to pass any number of other Democratic priorities). Like it or not, there were two Democratic holdouts on the filibuster.
So Democrats, Josh argued, needed to go to voters with a clear promise: Give us two more senators, and help us hold the House, and we promise — we’ll restore the right to an abortion that the conservative Supreme Court took away.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: We’re Hosting A Midterms Event This Week And You Should Come”Right-Wing Justices Highly Dismissive Of Affirmative Action Merits
The Supreme Court has reviewed affirmative action multiple times, and repeatedly upheld race-conscious admissions. Despite the weight of such precedents, the right-wing justices did little to disguise their dismissal, at times disdain, of the arguments before them.
Continue reading “Right-Wing Justices Highly Dismissive Of Affirmative Action Merits”Feds Charge Suspect In Pelosi Attack Who Said He Wanted To Hold Speaker Hostage And Break Her Kneecaps
The Justice Department charged David DePape Monday with assault and attempted kidnapping for his alleged attack on Paul Pelosi, and laid out in detail a gruesome plan that officials say DePape prepared, including holding Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) hostage and breaking her kneecaps.
Continue reading “Feds Charge Suspect In Pelosi Attack Who Said He Wanted To Hold Speaker Hostage And Break Her Kneecaps”The Criminal Complaint
Here’s an annotated version of the criminal complaint against David DePape, the QAnon domestic terrorist who allegedly broke into the home of Speaker Nancy Pelosi to kidnap her and shatter her legs.
Continue reading “The Criminal Complaint”On Twitter and Elon Musk
I’ve written several posts about Twitter and new boss Elon Musk recently. I’ll probably be writing more. I realize that for those of you who aren’t on Twitter this might seem like an odd or perhaps even annoying focus. This is a political news site, Josh. Why are you going on about Twitter? At one level, I’ve always followed the rule of letting my interests drive my writing focus at TPM. But I don’t write about my ideas about medieval history or my estimation of the new Charlie Watts biography. Here I write about things in the broadly political domain. And Musk’s absurd but consequential Twitter adventure is right at the center of the bigger political issues that animate our age.
Continue reading “On Twitter and Elon Musk”Trump Refuses To Allow Bolduc To Escape Election-Denier Past
It hasn’t escaped ex-president Donald Trump’s notice that GOP New Hampshire Senate nominee Don Bolduc is trying to wiggle away from his devout election denialism in his bid to unseat incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH).
Continue reading “Trump Refuses To Allow Bolduc To Escape Election-Denier Past”Elon Musk Responds With ‘No U’ Defense After Posting And Deleting Conspiracy Theory About Pelosi Attack
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, aka the new owner of Twitter, deleted on Sunday his tweet boosting a far-right conspiracy theory about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband, Paul Pelosi — but instead of issuing a correction to his 112.4 million followers, the billionaire is attacking the media for reporting on his tweet.
Continue reading “Elon Musk Responds With ‘No U’ Defense After Posting And Deleting Conspiracy Theory About Pelosi Attack”A Note on the Polls
One simple note about the polls, especially if you’re a poll obsessive. There’s little question that trends have moved in a GOP direction since mid-October. But there is an important caveat to this. In key Senate races around the country, the polling zone has been absolutely flooded over the last couple weeks with partisan GOP polls. In some cases, I mean literally polls fielded by GOP committees or organizations. In other cases I mean polls like Rasmussen or Trafalgar which may be nominally independent but are clearly partisan and routinely have poll results more friendly to Republican candidates.
Continue reading “A Note on the Polls”