Burned by the backlash that ensued upon former President Trump’s endorsement of celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz in the hotly contested Pennsylvania Senate GOP primary, Trumpworld figures are rushing to contain the fallout that has MAGAland in a frenzy.
Continue reading “Trumpworld Attempts Damage Control After Oz Endorsement Angers MAGA Crowd”Chaos-Creating GOP Govs and Press Failures
It’s hard to keep up these days with the tides of Republican malevolence and press failures. But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this one. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been mounting various stunts in recent weeks to keep the border immigration issue at a boil for his own 2022 reelection campaign. His latest move was to impose universal safety inspections on trucks coming from Mexico into Texas to snarl the border, drive up prices and possibly create food shortages in the United States. The proximate reason for this move is President Biden’s decision to phase out COVID-era restrictions on asylum seekers. Price spikes and border chaos are his weapon against Biden.
Continue reading “Chaos-Creating GOP Govs and Press Failures”DeSantis Has A Plan To Cram Much Of Florida Into New GOP Districts
Two days after Florida’s Republican legislative leaders publicly announced that they would let Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) draw the state’s new congressional map — an unprecedented move in its own right — the governor released a map Wednesday afternoon that was wildly slanted in his own party’s favor.
Continue reading “DeSantis Has A Plan To Cram Much Of Florida Into New GOP Districts”Davids and Goliaths
Yesterday evening U.S. time, Ukraine reportedly used a Neptune missile to strike and apparently destroy the flagship vessel of the Russian Black Sea fleet, the missile cruiser Moskva. There’s still conflicting reports about the fate of the ship. Ukraine says it was struck and sank. Russia says it was badly damaged, evacuated and is now under tow. Russia also seems to dispute that there was a successful missile attack, seemingly claiming a munitions explosion on board. Regardless of exactly what happened it seems Ukraine scored a rather stunning success either destroying or taking out of commission a major Russian warship.
Continue reading “Davids and Goliaths”Kentucky Wins Red State Race To Completely Block Abortion Access Even While Roe Stands
Kentucky Republicans overrode Gov. Andy Beshear’s (D) veto Wednesday night on an abortion law so restrictive that the state’s few remaining clinics will no longer be able to operate. It’s effective immediately.
Continue reading “Kentucky Wins Red State Race To Completely Block Abortion Access Even While Roe Stands”Elon Musk Offers To Buy Twitter For $43 Billion In Attempt At Hostile Takeover
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who recently bought a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter and thus became its biggest shareholder, has upped the ante in his bid for control over the social media giant with a new offer: to buy the company for $54.20 a share, which amounts to about $43 billion.
Continue reading “Elon Musk Offers To Buy Twitter For $43 Billion In Attempt At Hostile Takeover”Lawmaker Argues That If Hitler Could Pull Himself Up By His Bootstraps, So Can You
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
You Do Not, Under Any Circumstances, Gotta Hand It To Hitler
Tennessee state Sen. Frank Niceley (R) gave what he called a “history on homelessness” on the Senate floor on Wednesday in which he claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler managed to escape homelessness when he “practiced his oratory and his body language and how to connect with citizens” on the streets “and then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books.” So what’s your excuse, homeless people?
- “They can come out of these homeless camps and have a productive life,” Niceley declared before quickly backpedaling, sort of. “Or in Hitler’s case, a very unproductive life,” he added.
- BTW, Niceley also believes that the Civil War isn’t really over and the South’s winning it, actually.
The Villages? More Like The Voter Fraudages
Two residents from The Villages in Florida have confessed and pleaded guilty to committing voter fraud by casting two ballots in the 2020 election. One of them is a registered Republican, the other isn’t affiliated with a party in Florida, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
- Two other residents from The Villages (one a registered Republican, the other unaffiliated) were similarly arrested around the same time as the first two for allegedly double-voting. Those two have pleaded not guilty.
Meadows Kicked Off North Carolina Voter Rolls
The Macon County Board of Elections director in North Carolina has removed former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows from the state’s voter rolls amid the State Bureau of Investigation’s voter fraud probe into the ex-Trump official.
Kentucky GOPers Override Dem Guv’s Abortion Ban Veto
Kentucky’s Republican-controlled state legislature on Wednesday voted to override Gov. Andy Beshear’s (D) veto of a bill that would ban abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest, only medical emergencies.
- The legislation also adds extra burdens on receiving drugs for medical abortions and on abortion access for minors.
- Kentucky Republicans also overrode Beshear’s veto of a ban on transgender female athletes participating in women and girl’s sports.
Biden Swats Away Trump’s Executive Privilege Claim Over More Jan. 6 Docs
The House Jan. 6 Committee is slated to get more of Trump’s White House records in connection with the Capitol attack after Biden decided once again not to invoke executive privilege over them this week.
- The committee will receive the documents on April 28, barring interference from the courts, the archivist informed Trump in a letter on Wednesday.
- It’s not clear what this latest tranche of documents contains.
Brooklyn Subway Shooting Suspect Arrested
Frank James, 62, who is suspected of opening fire in a New York City subway car in Brooklyn on Tuesday, was arrested Wednesday after the police got a tip from a bystander who reported seeing James casually stroll around in the East Village. New York’s finest, everyone!
Impeachment Trial For Hit-And-Run Attorney General Set
The GOP-controlled South Dakota state Senate on Wednesday scheduled a two-day impeachment trial for state Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg (R), who ran over and killed a man with his car, beginning on June 21.
- The state Senate will need to reach a two-thirds majority of 24 lawmakers to convict Ravnsborg and kick him out of office after the House impeached him on Tuesday.
- The lead prosecutor in the trial will be a state’s attorney who was originally part of the team that investigated the incident. However, that attorney left the team before the prosecutors handed Ravnsborg a mere three trafficking misdemeanors, one of which was dropped when he pleaded no contest to the other two.
Trump Deigns To Give Some Cash In Other People’s Races For The First Time Because Revenge
Trump’s Save America PAC has raised more than $110 million since he left office (most of which probably came from his exquisite How Fauci Stole Christmas stickers) but hasn’t spent much of it on anyone who isn’t named Donald Trump (which is very shocking) up until now.
- Save America recently funneled $500,000 into a superPAC dedicated to ousting Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), one of Trump’s biggest punching bags, ahead of the state’s May 24 primary, when Kemp will be facing off against the Trump-endorsed David Perdue.
- Trump’s nervous about Perdue trailing Kemp in the race, according to Politico. Right now the incumbent governor’s trouncing Perdue in the polls and has spent/reserved way more money on TV ads than the former governor.
We’ve Reached More Than Half A Billion COVID Cases Worldwide
As of Thursday morning, there are more than 501 million cases of COVID-19 in the world, according to John Hopkins University’s pandemic tracker.
Must Read
“‘Down With France’: Former Colonies in Africa Demand a Reset” – The New York Times
No Longer Just Whispers
San Francisco Chronicle: “Colleagues worry Dianne Feinstein is now mentally unfit to serve, citing recent interactions”
McConnell Didn’t Call Out Trump’s Election Lies Because Of Georgia Senate Races
According to CNN’s excerpt of an upcoming book by two New York Times reporters, the reason then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) didn’t publicly acknowledge that Trump was lying about the 2020 election before Jan. 6 was because he didn’t want to piss off the then-president and jeopardize the Georgia Senate runoff elections with Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Loeffler and Perdue ended up losing the runoffs anyway.
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Trump Insisted Other States Would Decertify Biden’s Win If Kemp Did So, New Book Reports
Amid his refusal to concede, then-President Trump reportedly clued-in Senate Republican leaders about a far-fetched plan to stay in office weeks after losing the 2020 presidential election.
Continue reading “Trump Insisted Other States Would Decertify Biden’s Win If Kemp Did So, New Book Reports”Where Things Stand: Just A Reminder That SCOTUS Is Poised To Loosen New York’s Gun Restrictions
The suspected shooter who fired a gun inside a New York City MTA train car in Brooklyn yesterday was arrested this afternoon after a 24 hour-plus manhunt. The man is suspected of releasing smoke grenades inside the moving train and firing a gun 33 times, shooting 10 people and injuring 29 others. None of the victims have died.
The attack roiled New York on Tuesday, the realization of a nightmare scenario in a city that relies heavily on its massive and largely underground transit system.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Just A Reminder That SCOTUS Is Poised To Loosen New York’s Gun Restrictions”A Crucial Target In Republicans’ War On Fair Elections: Voting Rights Groups
The 2020 election may be remembered for Donald Trump’s attempt to steal a second term in the White House, but there’s another fundamental truth about the last election: Tens of millions of people voted amid a historic pandemic, largely without a hitch. In other words, it went well. Really well.
Continue reading “A Crucial Target In Republicans’ War On Fair Elections: Voting Rights Groups”