Mike Pence has been tip-toeing around actually criticizing Donald Trump ever since his former boss convinced a hoard of his supporters to bust into the United States Capitol and try to overturn the 2020 election, and to call for Pence to be murdered while they were at it.

His 2024 campaign announcement wasn’t all that different.

In March, TPM reported on several years of Facebook comments by North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson that spanned an impressive range of bigotry that targeted gay people, Black people, immigrants of many backgrounds, and Jews. At one point he even seemed to question the Holocaust.

And yet, Robinson remains the leading contender to become the Republican candidate for governor of his state.

Astoundingly, a new report in the conservative publication The Dispatch suggests that Robinson himself may believe the enormous pile of damning past comments that TPM and other news outlets have surfaced publicly is just the tip of an even more enormous iceberg of toxic material contained in Democrats’ opposition research file, which has yet to drop in full.

As my colleague Josh Marshall spelled out earlier, there is one very loud voice that is notably absent from this conversation.

Donald Trump has remained largely silent on the debt ceiling ever since the Biden White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) settled a deal over the weekend to ransom the debt ceiling hostage in exchange for some GOP legislative priorities, most notably work requirements for SNAP recipients.

A few hours after the janky roll out of his 2024 campaign, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offered The Donald a compelling consolation prize if he were to beat the former president in the 2024 primaries.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin today warning that there is a “heightened threat environment” for violent attacks in the U.S. as we head into the 2024 election cycle.

Department officials specifically warned that “perceptions of the 2024 general election cycle” and “legislative or judicial decisions pertaining to sociopolitical issues” could be mobilizing issues for those wishing to carry out acts of violence. It also specifically warns of the potential for attacks on “individuals or events associated with the LGBTQIA+ community.”

As he stood before one of the friendliest crowds imaginable this weekend, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was still hesitant to spend much time touting the passage of a strict six-week abortion ban in Florida, a law that he only briefly described as “a landmark piece of legislation for this state.”

DeSantis made a big show of signing his state’s 15-week ban into law last year. He televised the bill’s signing and dragged in a bunch of Republican state lawmakers, children holding pro-life signs and a packed crowd to applaud his signature. But when he signed his six-week ban into law in April, he did it privately. His office marked the occasion by putting out a press release in the middle of the night. When he gave a speech at Liberty University the next day, he didn’t even bring it up.