#Ted Cruz donor meetings

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

This was taken down by twitter but has been trending on Reddit. Share the joy while you can.

[qidynamics]

“It’s an outlined program for Christian supremacy."

“That’s not a 501(c)(3) activity.”

A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.

These previously unreported plans are the work of a group named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the nation, including the billionaire Uihlein family, who made a fortune in office supplies, the Greens, who run Hobby Lobby, and the Wallers, who own the Jockey apparel corporation. Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups.

EXCERPTS:

“We are in a spiritual battle and locked in a terrible conflict with the powers of darkness,” says a strategy document that lays out Ziklag’s 30-year vision to “redirect the trajectory of American culture toward Christ by bringing back Biblical structure, order and truth to our Nation.”

Ziklag was the brainchild of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Ken Eldred. It emerged from a previous organization founded by Eldred called United In Purpose, which aimed to get more Christians active in the civic arena, according to Bill Dallas, the group’s former director. United In Purpose generated attention in June 2016 when it organized a major meeting between then-candidate Trump and hundreds of evangelical leaders.

After Trump was elected in 2016, Eldred had an idea, according to Dallas. “He says, ‘I want all the wealthy Christian people to come together,’” Dallas recalled in an interview. Eldred told Dallas that he wanted to create a donor network like the one created by Charles and David Koch but for Christians.

The group’s stature grew after Trump took office. Vice President Mike Pence appeared at a Ziklag event, as did former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz, then-Rep. Mark Meadows and other members of Congress. In its private newsletter, Ziklag claims that a coalition of groups it assembled played “a hugely significant role in the selection, hearings and confirmation process” of Amy Coney Barrett for a Supreme Court seat in late 2020.

The Christian nationalism movement has a variety of aims and tenets, according to the Public Religion Research Institute: that the U.S. government “should declare America a Christian nation”; that American laws “should be based on Christian values”; that the U.S. will cease to exist as a nation if it “moves away from our Christian foundations”; that being Christian is essential to being American; and that God has “called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.”

The Seven Mountains theology embraces a different, less democratic approach to gaining power. “If the Moral Majority is about galvanizing the voters, the Seven Mountains is a revolutionary model: You need to conquer these mountains and let change flow down from the top,” said Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies and an expert on Christian nationalism. “It’s an outlined program for Christian supremacy."

A driving force behind Ziklag’s efforts is Lance Wallnau, a prominent Christian evangelist and influencer based in Texas who is described by Ziklag as a “Seven Mountains visionary & advisor.” He was one of the earliest evangelical leaders to endorse Trump in 2015 and later published a book titled “God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling.”

One key document says that “the biblical role of government is to promote good and punish evil” and that “the word of God and prayer play a significant role in policy decisions.”

Other internal Ziklag documents voice strong opposition to same-sex marriage and transgender rights. One reads: “transgender acceptance = Final sign before imminent collapse.”

A prominent conservative getting money from Ziklag is Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer and Trump ally who joined the January 2021 phone call when then-President Trump asked Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to flip Georgia in Trump’s favor.

Mitchell now leads a network of “election integrity” coalitions in swing states that have spent the last three years advocating for changes to voting rules and how elections are run. According to one internal newsletter, Ziklag was an early funder of Mitchell’s post-2020 “election integrity” activism, which voting-rights experts have criticized for stoking unfounded fears about voter fraud and seeking to unfairly remove people from voting rolls. In 2022, Ziklag donated $600,000 to the Conservative Partnership Institute, which in turn funds Mitchell’s election-integrity work. Internal Ziklag documents show that it provided funding to enable Mitchell to set up election integrity infrastructure in Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

EagleAI, which has claimed to use artificial intelligence to automate and speed up the process of challenging ineligible voters.

Now Mitchell is promoting a tool called EagleAI, which has claimed to use artificial intelligence to automate and speed up the process of challenging ineligible voters. EagleAI is already being used to mount mass challenges to the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in competitive states, and, with Ziklag’s help, the group plans to ramp up those efforts.

According to an internal video, Ziklag plans to invest $800,000 in “EagleAI’s clean the rolls project,” which would be one of the largest known donations to the group.

Operation Checkmate

Ziklag lists two key objectives for Operation Checkmate: “Secure 10,640 additional unique votes in Arizona (mirroring the 2020 margin of 10,447 votes), and remove up to one million ineligible registrations and around 280,000 ineligible voters in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin.”

In a recording of an internal Zoom call, Ziklag’s Mark Bourgeois stressed the electoral value of targeting Arizona. “I care about Maricopa County,” Bourgeois said at one point, referring to Arizona’s largest county, which Biden won four years ago. “That’s how we win.”

Targeting Transgender

Operation Watchtower

For Operation Watchtower, Wallnau explained in a members-only video that transgender policy was a “wedge issue” that could be decisive in turning out voters tired of hearing about Trump.

The left had won the battle over the “homosexual issue,” Wallnau said. “But on transgenderism, there’s a problem and they know it.” He continued: “They’re gonna wanna talk about Trump, Trump, Trump. … Meanwhile, if we talk about ‘It’s not about Trump. It’s about parents and their children, and the state is a threat,’” that could be the “target on the forehead of Goliath.”

As preacher and activist John Amanchukwu said at a Ziklag event, “We need a church that’s willing to do anything and everything to get to the point where we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”

“I am troubled about a tax-exempt charitable organization that’s set up and its main operation seems to be to get people to win office,” said Phil Hackney, a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on tax-exempt organizations.

“They’re planning an election effort,” said Marcus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a former director of the IRS’ exempt organizations division. “That’s not a 501(c)(3) activity.”

“It’s an outlined program for Christian supremacy."

“It’s an outlined program for Christian supremacy."

[potatoes83]

Random...

I'm getting roughly half a dozen texts a day that Android is shooting straight to spam... Hello Friend! It's me, Donald/Eric/Lara/Donald Jr. Trump/Rudy Giuliani/Rick DeSantis/Ted Cruz/Speaker Johnson... I had to STEP OUT OF MY MEETING WHEN I SAW THIS. I was reviewing my list of donors, and YOUR NAME WASN'T THERE! I am texting PERSONALLY to you, Patriot, asking you to donate $500 to the GOP. We can't do this without you... Mmmyeah... Texting me personally. President Donald J. Trump himself. Right. I support the conservative cause, I do, but cut the bullshit, yeah?

Or, We want to make a CASH OFFER on your house/I still haven't heard from you regarding our offer to BUY YOUR HOUSE. Crazy thing, I'm sort of busy living in it. Kind of using it right now, that's why I bought it, yeah? 🥔

[dankusner]

After Punishing Primaries, Key Runoffs Could Tilt Texas Legislature Further Right

The man who walked in the door last fall looked like Texas personified.

A sixth-generation rancher, he carried a gritty, everyman vibe that would lead his new friend to call him “Mr. Smith Goes to Austin.”

That new friend was Texas author Lawrence Wright, and “Mr. Smith'' was, in fact Glenn Rogers, a Republican state representative for House District 60, west of Fort Worth.

The two men agreed to meet at a Starbucks in the Tarrytown neighborhood of Austin, where Rogers wanted to tell Wright how Texas politics really work.

“He found my number somehow and called me up,” Wright told the Observer. “He was pretty steamed.”

In a GOP divided by issues such as school vouchers and the Paxton impeachment, Rogers found himself with more opposition than usual, and most of it from within his own party.

Far-right billionaires like the Wilks brothers (oil) and Tim Dunn (also oil) were bankrolling his primary opponent, as they had in the last two contests.

Now, they were joined by Gov. Greg Abbott, who endorsed Rogers in 2020 but soured on the lawmaker after Rogers opposed school vouchers.

Rogers’ primary opponent, Mike Olcott, received endorsements from Abbott, Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton, Sen. Ted Cruz and former President Donald Trump.

This is the way things are now, Rogers told Wright:

In the modern Texas GOP, you get in line or you get primaried.

A small number of influential donors are working to bend the Legislature to their will by throwing millions of dollars behind candidates like Olcott.

As a result, seemingly “disloyal” Republicans like Rogers suffered major losses in the recent March 5 primaries.

“He gave me material that would’ve been perfect for my book,” Wright says, referring to his recently released novel, Mr. Texas. The book’s hero, Sonny Lamb, is a rancher-turned-politician who discovers the Legislature is rife with corruption. “Unfortunately,” Wright adds with a chuckle, “it was already in galleys.”

Then he turns serious, reflecting on Rogers’ loss.

“It’s a shame,” he says, “because, as you know, it’s hard to get good people in politics.”

On March 5, half of the challengers endorsed by Abbott won their races, and another five advanced to the May 28 runoffs. Only two lost.

The attorney general had a much lower win rate, but it's hard to say he wasn't successful in his efforts as well:

Eight Paxton-endorsed candidates won their races, and 21 lost; eight others are headed to runoffs.

Sometimes Abbott and Paxton endorsed the same challenger.

Other times, a Paxton enemy would earn Abbott’s imprimatur, likely because of support for school vouchers.

“The rural wins were the most impactful, because that's where Abbott found the most resistance,” says Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston.

At the same time, Rottinghaus says the messy nature of warring endorsements — not to mention the presence of former President Donald Trump and gobs of oil money — makes it difficult to attribute victories to a sole person.

Nevertheless, Abbott claims he now needs just two more votes to pass his school voucher bill, and he could get even closer after the late May elections.

The runoffs represent another installment in the ongoing GOP civil war, and experts, strategists and candidates interviewed for this story worry the results of those races could tilt the ultraconservative Legislature even further to the right.

“The conservative wing of the Republican Party has made their bones on forcing their opponents into runoffs and then picking them off,” Rottinghaus says. “But runoffs can be unpredictable.”

One of the most compelling races is that between Dade Phalen, the current speaker of the House, and David Covey, a Paxton-backed candidate vying for House District 21 in the Beaumont area.

In the March 5 primaries, Phelan received roughly 1,000 fewer votes than his Paxton-backed opponent, forcing the first runoff involving a House speaker in 52 years.

Both Paxton and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are vocal critics of Phelan, who led the House — and voted to oust Paxton — when his chamber impeached the attorney general on abuse of office charges in May 2023. (Paxton was acquitted by the Texas Senate four months later.)

In many ways, the Phelan-Paxton feud personifies their party’s infighting.

In the runup to the primaries, Phelan’s team cut a campaign ad calling attention to an extramarital affair of the AG that was brought up time and again during the Paxton impeachment.

Paxton, meanwhile, has repeatedly accused Phelan of being in league with liberals.

An ad supporting Covey echoed this claim, prominently featuring Paxton and a tweet by Trump, in which the former president calls Phelan a “RINO” (Republican in Name Only).

Further, the “too liberal” critique of Phelan was at the heart of the censure the Texas GOP’s executive committee delivered to the House speaker a few weeks before the primaries.

Phelan had demonstrated a “lack of fidelity to Republican principles and priorities,” the censure argued.

His specific sins were his role in the Paxton impeachment and his appointing of Democrats to chair roles on House committees.

“The civil war has left countless Republicans politically homeless.” – Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright

Notably, the pro-Covey ad featuring Paxton and Trump was funded by Texans United for a Conservative Majority, a PAC funded by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks — the same billionaire thorns in the side of Glenn Rogers and dozens of other Republicans this past primary season.

The PAC is a spinoff of Defend Texas Liberty, another Dunn and Wilks PAC that met serious controversy after The Texas Tribune reported that its then-president, Jonathan Stickland, met with white supremacist Nick Fuentes for seven hours in early October 2023.

A few months earlier, the PAC donated $3 million to Lt. Gov. Patrick. Patrick, who is not up for reelection until 2026, was presiding over the Paxton impeachment trial at the time.

When news of the donation surfaced, Phelan called on Patrick to return the money. Patrick, in turn, called on Phelan to resign.

The lieutenant governor has since aligned himself with Covey, even appearing at the challenger’s election night watch party.

“Dan Patrick has been pushing for a more conservative House even longer than Greg Abbott,” notes Rottinghaus. “He's the big winner [of the primaries], and that's gone a bit unheralded. Dan Patrick helped to put Dade Phelan into a vice grip.”

Once it became clear that he was headed to a runoff, Phelan released a statement decrying the “tidal wave of outside influence and the relentless flood of special interest dollars” that shaped the primaries.

He wasn’t the only target of that tidal wave.

Texans United for a Conservative Majority spent millions on a smattering of far-right candidates, including former Trump aide Katrina Pierson, who forced Justin Holland into a runoff in his Rockwall-area district.

Holland has been the target of criticism from his own party since at least last May.

Shortly after a gunman killed eight people at an Allen outlet mall last May, the Republican state representative voted to advance a bill that would raise the legal age for buying semiautomatic rifles.

The bill ultimately failed, but the Rockwall County Republican Party cited Holland’s vote (as well as his support for Phelan and his opposition to school vouchers) in a January notice to voters that said the lawmaker has “belittled Republican voters” and “disregarded Republican principles.”

Gov. Abbott eventually endorsed Pierson (after the primary), and according to SMU political scientist Cal Jillson, the former Trump aide stands a strong chance in the May runoff.

“There's a solid group of Republican voters that want a steadier brand of conservatism, not someone like Pierson,” Jillson notes. However, “the fact that it's going to be a low-turnout election bodes well for Pierson.”

According to Jillson and other experts interviewed for this story, runoffs typically attract a lower turnout than primaries, which themselves have significantly lower turnouts than general elections. In other words, the most motivated voters (or, in this case, the most conservative voters) will likely turn out to vote in the late-May GOP runoffs.

Beyond that, the turnout may pale in comparison to the relatively high vote tallies seen in March.

Like the Phelan-Covey matchup, the Pierson-Holland race is a contest between old-school conservatism and the GOP’s far right.

But if Pierson wins, her victory may be more about school vouchers and less about Holland’s perceived lack of party loyalty.

“Most voters want to see proof,” Rottinghaus says, “and just saying someone is more conservative won't do the job.”

Some polling indicates vouchers have more fans than detractors.

This may help explain why Abbott-endorsed candidates had a higher win rate than Paxton’s chosen politicians in the most recent primaries.

The governor has made school vouchers a clarion call, while Paxton seems more intent on ousting those who voted for his impeachment.

“Republican voters care about both school vouchers and the Paxton impeachment, but the former is more concrete,” Jillson says. “There's actual polling about it. I think there are a lot of voters who think Paxton is a drag on the party, even as they defend him against the RINOs.”

Meanwhile, many Democrats are also preparing for runoffs in May.

In Houston, Lauren Ashley Simmons is running to replace Shawn Thierry in District 146.

Weeks before the primary, Thierry voted for Senate Bill 14, which bars gender-transitioning care for children and teens.

“There’s a fear of what our Legislature is going to look like,” Simmons told the Observer in an interview. “We have to protect public education and protect our families.” Thierry did not respond to a request for an interview.

This is Simmons’ first race, and she says she “had a hard time visualizing” what thousands of votes would look like. Now that she believes her race is truly winnable, she is more determined than ever, in her words, “to finish this thing.”

“I took maybe 72 hours off, and then the next weekend we were back in the field,” she says.

In Dallas, former sheriff and gubernatorial hopeful Lupe Valdez is headed to a runoff for her old seat.

As the Observer has reported, current Sheriff Marian Brown has faced repeated criticism — including from her own staff — for her and her team’s handling of the pandemic and the winter storm that devastated Texas in 2021.

Valdez is no stranger to controversy, either. Between 2005 and 2016, when she was sheriff, there was a death in Dallas County Jail roughly every six weeks.

“The battle lines are drawn, and our resolve has never been stronger.” – Ken Paxton, Texas attorney general.

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Despite these tight, headline-grabbing contests, much of the focus this May will be on the GOP side, where conversations between candidates are light on substance, instead often devolving into a referendum on what it means to be conservative and a Texan.

In a statement after March 5, Paxton cast the ongoing elections as a “battle for the soul of Texas.”

“​​This runoff is not a defeat, but rather a call to arms for all who stand for the principles of the America First movement,” he said. “The battle lines are drawn, and our resolve has never been stronger.”

Lawrence Wright doesn’t identify as either a Democrat or a Republican (“I’m a pragmatist,” he says), but he cares deeply about Texas.

And like Jillson, the political scientist from SMU, Wright sees the influence of high-dollar donations pushing the state Legislature further to the right.

“The civil war has left countless Republicans politically homeless,” he says. “They don’t want to vote for Democrats, but they hate Republican leadership. From the outside, it seems impossible to reconcile.”

He doesn’t know how this war will end, but he worries that Republicans like Rogers — people who, in his estimation, are trying to represent their district — will become harder to find. When this happens, he says, “what you get is a collection of zombies parroting the official line from people with a billion dollars who want to shape the world in their perspective.”

That’s one area in which the gritty “Mr. Smith” and his author friend agree.

In an op-ed for the Weatherford Democrat after his loss, Rogers wrote that it had been “the greatest honor” to serve his district.

He argued that he wasn’t the biggest loser, though — that title belonged to Texas public schools, rural Texas and representative government.

“History will prove that our current state government is the most corrupt ever and is ‘bought’ by a few radical dominionist billionaires seeking to destroy public education, privatize our public schools and create a Theocracy that is both un-American and un-Texan,” he wrote. “May God save Texas!”

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: January 2021

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of January 2021 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

Once again, we knew that Donald Trump wasn’t going to take losing well, but when a legion of his most boneheaded supporters storm the Capitol demanding the election result be overturned because a certain thin-skinned orange gobshite had spent several weeks screaming about electoral fraud and, by the way, also set the date of January 6th for some major event, even Mike Pence couldn’t sanction his buffoonery any longer - especially when said buffoonery involved him saying “I love you” to people who were guilty of sedition and, by the way, murder - all of which led to him finally, finally, getting the boot from various social media platforms

...all while Lauren Boebert appeared to be trying to help out the insurrectionists by livetweeting the location of Nancy Pelosi, presumably because Boebert forgot about that Glock she claims to take to work with her every day and was looking for a convenient meat shield, which naturally has nothing to do with her tweeting the day would be like 1776 earlier that morning

...but the real victim in all of this was Melania Trump as it interrupted a photo shoot she was doing, which she somehow thought it was a good idea to mention several days later in a statement riddled with two opinions: “both sides” and “me, me, me” which shows she didn’t realise the optics of rearranging the china as Washington burned around her

...but according to Laura Kuenssberg it was merely a “scuffle” at Congress, as opposed to an organised group attempting to stage an armed insurrection against the government complete with at least one member carrying zip ties

...and finally, we had Ian Austin reminded us that he’s still alive by saying the exact same thing would have happened in the UK with Jeremy Corbyn supporters storming parliament, as if that happened in the four years Corbyn was wishing Austin would go away, then did go away, but sadly didn’t go away

Once again the Tory government think they know better than virologists, epidemiologists and pharmacists with their one-two punch of thinking they can just mix and match the various vaccines available rather than give people two doses of the same vaccine, but they further weaken any chance of vaccination succeeding by ignoring Pfizer’s recommendation the second dose be given within three weeks of the first by adopting a policy of the second dose is given three months later, and it it’s just as likely to be the less effective but cheaper Oxford vaccine they get a dose of

...swiftly followed by the BBC did their bit to encourage people to get vaccinated by reporting a story of a nurse getting a dose of Covid six weeks after her first vaccination jab not by reporting how she was three weeks overdue for the second dose (or, if you prefer, six weeks before her second one) but simply saying that people vaccinated can get Covid, which goes beyond the BBC’s sociopathic inability to criticise Tory fuckups into being downright fucking dangerous - as does their putting sentient testicle Toby Young on Newsnight to say how we’re all overreacting as it's not as bad as all that

Of all the things proven liar Boris Johnson should have said when the UK’s Covid death toll officially passed 100,000 (as opposed to unofficially, which would have been last December), “We have done our best” was not it, because if their best includes not going into lockdown in order to protect landlords, having Dominic Cummings dictate herd immunity in spite the fact that you need vaccinated people for it to work, refusing to have quarantine at airports until July, thinking it would be a bright idea to tell people it’s their patriotic duty to go to the pub, giving them £10 vouchers to go to restaurants, putting children going back to school ahead of any concerns about every single school could become a petri dish and countless other horrifically mismanaged instances, then we should be kept up at night dreading what their worst would be

The fact that Chartwells were given a contract to provide free school dinners with a budget of £30, and the supposed lunches that arrived had £5 worth of food in them which begged the obvious question where the other £25 went, is appalling - but not surprising, as the Tory government gave them the contract and, equally unsurprising, Chartwells was founded by a Tory donor, and equally unsurprising their response to their grift being exposed was to tell all the public school clients they cater to a pack of lies while hoping nobody found out about them doing so...which worked about as well as you can guess

Something possessed the EU to ramp up the row over the AstraZenica vaccine not passing the rigorous tests for over-65s by threatening to trigger Article 16 and limit the number of vaccines that Northern Ireland received, and that something was it was hopelessly misguided as it allowed the Tories to get their hapless response to the pandemic off the front pages for a few days and let the Leave headbangers say this is why we left the EU...in spite this threat would have never been in play if we were still in the EU

There is no way to make jokes about Kellyanne Conway posting what was, in effect, revenge porn photos of her 16-year old daughter, because that sentence is so far out there that it is borderline incomprehensible

In the space of less than twenty seconds proven liar Boris Johnson claimed that there was no prior warning of the new strain of Covid, he had the SAGE paper stating it was coming which was handed to him last September held up in his face, and then said the government acted accordingly.  Yes, you read that right, he claimed the government acted accordingly to something they had no prior warning about, which is literally impossible, all in the space of ten seconds

In the latest hire by the BBC which is cause for both comment and concern, they announced their new chairman would be Tory donor Richard Sharp, whose credentials for the position are being Rishi Sunak’s ex-boss at Goldman Sachs, donating at least £400,000 to the Tory party, and having no background in journalism whatsoever

Smirking bully Priti Patel said that the UK should have closed its borders in March 2020 in order to prevent the spread of Covid.  Presumably she forgot that she was a.) Home Secretary in Marsh 2020 so could have done that, and b.) Home Secretary when she said that the borders should have been closed as that indicates she doesn’t know what’s going on

The terrifying world which Alison Pearson lives in has now started to cross over into our reality due to her responding to one of the four people she hasn’t blocked on Twitter calling her what she is - namely a liar - by siccing the Torygraph’s lawyers on them claiming libel, doing the usual cry bully tactic of learning the person she is harassing works for GlaxoSmithKline so promptly went to their CEO demanding he be fired, and howling about the hate campaign being waged against her - while telling the person, who was saying he was thinking suicidal thoughts after the pile-on that Pearson had instigated even after he had deleted the tweet and apologised , that “You’re finished”

Someday in the future, scholars will study Ted Cruz responding to Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement within hours of getting his feet under the Oval Office desk by pontificating about how terrible it is that Biden is more interested in the citizens of Paris than the jobless of Pittsburgh and wonder just how somebody who doesn't know why the Paris Climate Agreement was named the Paris Climate Agreement ever got to be a senator

...and judging by how Lauren Boebert also latched onto this brainless rhetoric, not only can it be asked how she got to be a senator when she had the opportunity to actually realise Cruz’s mistake, she also begs the question how she can be a senator after her publicly trying to use Nancy Pelosi as a meat shield during the Capitol riots

Unifying force Keir Starmer stated that Labour should be devoting their time to fighting the Tory government rather than fighting court cases, somehow forgetting that by breaking the guidelines of the EHRC report (which he pledged to follow without question months before it was published) is the reason that they’re fighting court cases, and just so happens to be the reason why people are asking how a meeting attended by Starmer, Angela Rayner, Len McCluskey and others either didn't have a single person taking notes, which is David Evans’ entire defence, or they did take notes by quite conveniently lost them

Oh boy, did Wall Street cheerleaders not take it well when r/WallStreetbets exposed to the entire world that the stock market is little more than a game people play with other people’s money - because the teams the Wall Street cheerleaders support started losing, and all it took was a few Redditors investing in Gamestop and Bed Bath & Beyond 

Nice of Shaun Bailey to remind everyone that he’s a Tory by giving his suggestion for how the homeless could get on the property ladder, namely by saving a minimum of £5000

Clearly Marjorie Taylor Greene didn’t get the memo about the Streisand Effect, as the first thing she did after taking her seat in the House of Representatives was go on a mass deleting spree of Facebook posts - which only served to draw attention to her video saying that Nancy Pelosi be executed for treason, her track record of spreading conspiracy theories about the Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings, and her claims that a Jewish space laser is responsible for the 2018 California wildfires

Insufferable self-promoter Jess Phillips got her 2021 off to a good start by tweeting out that, as Britait has happened, we should shut up and accept it.  To the surprise of nobody other than insufferable self-promoter Jess Phillips, this led to a lot of people saying that, no, they will not accept an advisory referendum somehow being bolted onto the Ten Commandments, especially as numerous things that were promised wouldn’t happen such as a border in the Irish Sea, leaving Erasmus, losing freedom of movement, leaving the Common Market have all happened

It is wrong to say that smirking bully Priti Patel has lost 150,000 police files.  The actual figure is closer to 400,000 - which begs the obvious question as to what those files were, for example if those files also happened to fall under the same category as the ones that 55-year old ex-minister Mark Francois might want to have disappear for the sake of convenience

At last CD Projekt Red took some responsibility for Clusterpunk 2077 being such a cyberfuck...if by “taking responsibility” you mean “taking responsibility, dumping it all on the QA testers, and saying that everyone should blame them for everything” - and then with perfect comedic timing CD Projekt Red released an update for Clusterpunk 2077 that was so broken they had to release a hotfix for their broken patch

Expenses-fiddler Robert Jenrick decided that the most important thing to protect in the United Kingdom at this exact moment in time is...statues.  Not key workers, not the vulnerable, not any human life at all.  Statues.

So either Rafael Behr wrote a column for The Guardian where he tried to blame Jeremy Corbyn for his heart attack which saw Guardian higher-ups remove that passage from their print edition but forgot to remove it from the online version of the article, or The Guardian deliberately left the passage in the online version of the column in order to get some form of engagement from rage clicks while allowing Behr to act as if he is suffering some great injustice

Of course it wouldn’t take long for Steve Baker to try and claim some spurious victory for Britait, namely him claiming that tampon tax he spent so long fighting against being abolished is proof of the sunlit uplands of our post-EU nation...which ignores the fact that a.) It had nothing to do with the EU in the first place, and b.) The fact that Baker voted to keep it in place in a 2015 Commons vote

Employer of the year WWE went for an interesting twofer, as one minute they were proudly stating that WrestleMania would go ahead with a prospective 30,000 in attendance without any concerns for social distancing or any other Covid preventative measures, and the next telling the wrestlers on their roster that they would not be supplying them with Covid vaccines at the exact same time the NBA were floating the idea of providing vaccines for all their players

Make no mistake, the criticism that Erik Lamela, Sergio Reguilon, Giovani Lo Celso and Manuel Lanzini have received due to the four of them flouting lockdown regulations to attend a New Year’s party is justified - however, the fact that Duncan Castles tried to chase a headline by claiming that Lo Celso and Lamela had tested positive for Covid in a swiftly-deleted tweet is a new low for the noted barrel scraping rumour monger

Self-awareness sceptic Laurence Fox was entirely predictable in his response to the news that talkRADIO had been booted from Youtube for repeated violations of their ToS, specifically the part about spreading Covid misinformation, screaming the usual things about being “cancelled” - and then, within hours, responded to the BBC announcing a plan of educational programming to help during Lockdown III by saying he will be shielding his children from being “indoctrinated” by the BBC’s “left-wing bias” - which not only means he’s cancelling the BBC, but also had people remember that Billie Piper has custody of his children so it's not like he can even enforce his rules on what his children can and cannot watch

...by the way, Fox said nothing about Lord Sumption appearing on the BBC’s Question Time (the same show where failed actor on the grift Laurence Fox announced his new career as a clueless right wing irritant) where he told a woman with bowel cancer that her life wasn’t valuable, it was merely less valuable as she has less life left.  Yes, that is eugenics getting free airtime on the BBC, thanks for noticing

Somehow the best choice of words the BBC could find when reporting the death of Phil Spector was “talented but flawed” as if murder is some character flaw instead of, oh I don’t know, a criminal activity?

You would have thought that Twitch would have simply retired the PogChamp emote permanently in the wake of Gootecks going all insurrectionist, but no, instead they thought of having a rotating cycle of emotes of various creators, in spite of those creators telling them this would be a bad idea - and those creators were proven right when Critical bard was inundated with racist and homophobic abuse in his chat that led him to close his social media profiles when he was selected for rotation, with Twitch doing fuck all about it

Fashion editor no matter what she claims she is Hadley Freeman had a really clever take about The Sopranos...actually, no she didn’t, she had an absurd belief that it’s the exact same show as Sex in the City but people overlook it Because Misogyny, and when she was lambasted for missing the point so badly she had noted dipshit David Baddiel rushing in to her rescue to mock those getting “triggered” by her insipid take while saying he never liked The Sopranos because, as he isn't an Italian-American mobster, the show did not speak to him - in other words, he made himself a subject of equal mockery

...but there was no sign of Baddiel when Hadley Freeman then jumped on the BidenErasedWomen bandwagon alongside the TERFs of Twitter as soon as Biden got his feet under the desk, which also happened to show hard centrist extremist Freeman say how she thought Trump did far more for women than Biden ever has, which as takes go is so bad that the best explanation is that she briefly forgot the difference between the words “for” and “to”, before she then deleted the tweet and tried to deny ever posting it with increasingly nonsensical explanations that rapidly looked uncannily like gaslighting

...although David Baddiel wasn’t quite done being a bellend, as he was soon yukking it up with professional victim Rachel Riley about his latest book which accuses the entire progressive left of antisemitism

The oppressed underclass known as Manchester United fans really showed their colours, first by responding to a loss to Sheffield United by sending racial abuse to Axel Tuanzebe and Anthony Martial on social media, and a couple of weeks later responded to a draw with Arsenal by sending racial abuse to Marcus Rashford, because apparently when your team drops points the most important thing is to look for which member of your team you can racially abuse

And finally, oh so finally, we have Donald Trump and his discovery of electoral fraud at last - electoral fraud that consisted of Donald Trump calling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding he change the result and all he needs is Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes while also saying that he had proof of vote-counting machines being removed early...and when told they were still in Georgia, changed his lie to say the inner workings had been removed without anyone noticing.  By the way, the only reason anyone knows about this is because Raffensperger told Trump that he wouldn’t release the call to the public if Trump didn't say anything about it - so, of course, the Orange Overlord took to twitter, ran his mouth, and the Washington Post had one hell of an exclusive as a result

[theculturedmarxist]

Idiotic “Conspiracy Theory”: John Boyega was cast as one of the leads in Star Wars because The Jews want to normalize miscegenation in an effort to effiminize American men and replace the White race!

Legitimate theory of a conspiracy: The Democrats have repeatedly stated how unpopular Bernie Sanders is with the wealthy capitalists that make up and fund their party leadership in spite of his overwhelming public support, and considering the political and professional ties of those involved and the vested interest the wealthy have in not seeing a man that wants to increase their taxes and undo some of the harm they’ve caused to the working class, the events in Iowa are at least somewhat suspicious.

The bourgeoisie get so incredibly nervous whenever people question their narrative because they are literally conspiring against the working class all the fucking time. This is in spite of the fact that they themselves admit it, boldly and openly. It’s just that when they do, they don’t use the words “conspiracy.”

Behind a Key Anti-Labor Case, a Web of Conservative Donors

In the summer of 2016, government workers in Illinois received a mailing that offered them tips on how to leave their union. By paying a so-called fair-share fee instead of standard union dues, the mailing said, they would no longer be bound by union rules and could not be punished for refusing to strike.

“To put it simply,” the document concluded, “becoming a fair-share payer means you will have more freedom.”

The mailing, sent by a group called the Illinois Policy Institute, may have seemed like disinterested advice. In fact, it was one prong of a broader campaign against public-sector unions, backed by some of the biggest donors on the right. It is an effort that will reach its apex on Monday, when the Supreme Court hears a case that could cripple public-sector unions by allowing the workers they represent to avoid paying fees.

One of the institute’s largest donors is a foundation bankrolled by Richard Uihlein, an Illinois industrialist who has spent millions backing Republican candidates in recent years, including Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. Bruce Rauner of Illinois.

Tax filings show that Mr. Uihlein has also been the chief financial backer in recent years of the Liberty Justice Center, which represents Mark Janus, the Illinois child support specialist who is the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case.

And Mr. Uihlein has donated well over $1 million over the years to groups like the Federalist Society that work to orient the judiciary in a more conservative direction. They have helped produce a Supreme Court that most experts expect to rule in Mr. Janus’s favor.

The case illustrates the cohesiveness with which conservative philanthropists have taken on unions in recent decades. “It’s a mistake to look at the Janus case and earlier litigation as isolated episodes,” said Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a Columbia University political scientist who studies conservative groups. “It’s part of a multipronged, multitiered strategy.”

Today, MLB's Owners Decide How To Wage War

MLB's 30 owners will meet in Baltimore today to elect the first new commissioner since Bud Selig took the reins in 1992—unless there is enough discord and politicking to prevent any candidate from receiving the required 23 votes. Which there almost certainly is! Today will see the first open, public battle in a vicious power struggle that promises to define MLB's relationship with its players over the coming decades, and, more immediately, the likelihood of a work stoppage in 2016.

The three finalists named by the search committee last week are MLB COO Rob Manfred, MLB VP of business Tim Brosnan, and Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner.

As has been reported out over recent weeks and months by The New York Times, this is a two-horse race between Manfred, Selig's underboss and presumptive successor, and Werner, a dark-horse candidate backed by a coalition of maverick owners led by White Sox boss Jerry Reinsdorf.

The battle here is not between Manfred and Werner; it's between Selig and Reinsdorf, two of the last remnants of baseball's old guard from the biliously anti-labor power structure of the 1980s, when owners illegally colluded to fix the free agency market to keep salaries down. (As always, it's important to remember that the players' strike of 1994 was really about the owners' collusion in the 1980s.)

Koch Brothers’ Internal Strategy Memo on Selling Tax Cuts: Ignore The Deficit

The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch spent much of the eight years of the Obama presidency stoking fears about the budget deficit. Their political network aired an unending cascade of campaign advertisements against Democratic politicians, sponsored several national bus tours, and paid organizers in communities across the country to mobilize public demonstrations, all focused on the dangers of increasing the deficit.

One such ad even warned that government debt would lead to a Chinese takeover of America — which, for many voters, is a concern linked to debt. Another effort, also quietly bankrolled by the Koch network, used Justin Bieber memes to try to reach millennials about too much government borrowing.

Now that Republicans control all levers of power in Washington and the Koch brothers are poised to reap a windfall of billions of dollars through tax cuts, they have a new message: Don’t worry about the deficit.

The Intercept obtained a messaging memo from the Koch brothers’ network on how to sell tax reform legislation. The memo went out to members of the network of likeminded Republican donors, which includes dozens of wealthy investors and business executives.

“Network,” “web,” “association,” “coalition,” “group,” “foundation.” When you strip away all the corporate newspeak, they are saying that these people are engaged in a conspiracy.

Historically, anti-labor conspiracies have themselves been big business. Just take the Mohawk Valley Formula for example:

The Mohawk Valley formula is a plan for strikebreaking purportedly written by the president of the Remington Rand company James Rand, Jr. around the time of the Remington Rand strike at Ilion, New York in 1936/37.

The plan includes discrediting union leaders, frightening the public with the threat of violence, using local police and vigilantes to intimidate strikers, forming associations of "loyal employees" to influence public debate, fortifying workplaces, employing large numbers of replacement workers, and threatening to close the plant if work is not resumed.[1][2]

The authenticity of the written plan has never been clearly established. Although it was allegedly published in the National Association of Manufacturers Labor Relations Bulletin, no original copy has been found, nor does NAM list it among its pamphlets from that era.[3][non-primary source needed] Parts of the plan use language sympathetic to the views of labor organizers. The Remington Rand company did indeed ruthlessly suppress the strikes, as documented in a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, and the plan has been accepted as a guide to the methods that were used.  At least one source names the strikebreaker Pearl Bergoff and his so-called "Bergoff Technique" as the origin of the formula.[4]  Rand and Bergoff were both indicted by the same federal grand jury for their roles in the Remington Rand strike.

Noam Chomsky has described the formula as the result of business owners' trend away from violent strikebreaking to a "scientific" approach based on propaganda. An essential feature of this approach is the identification of the management's interests with "Americanism," while labor activism is portrayed as the work of un-American outsiders. Workers are thus persuaded to turn against the activists and toward management to demonstrate their patriotism.[5][6]

The following is the text of the Mohawk Valley formula as quoted in the labor press:

When a strike is threatened, label the union leaders as "agitators" to discredit them with the public and their own followers. Conduct balloting under the foremen to ascertain the strength of the union and to make possible misrepresentation of the strikers as a small minority. Exert economic pressure through threats to move the plant, align bankers, real estate owners and businessmen into a "Citizens' Committee".

Raise high the banner of "law and order", thereby causing the community to mass legal and police weapons against imagined violence and to forget that employees have equal rights with others in the community.

Call a "mass meeting" to coordinate public sentiment against the strike and strengthen the Citizens' Committee.

Form a large police force to intimidate the strikers and exert a psychological effect. Utilize local police, state police, vigilantes and special deputies chosen, if possible, from other neighborhoods.

Convince the strikers their cause is hopeless with a "back-to-work" movement by a puppet association of so-called "loyal employees" secretly organized by the employer.

When enough applications are on hand, set a date for opening the plant by having such opening requested by the puppet "back-to-work" association.

Stage the "opening" theatrically by throwing open the gates and having the employees march in a mass protected by squads of armed police so as to dramatize and exaggerate the opening and heighten the demoralizing effect.

Demoralize the strikers with a continuing show of force. If necessary turn the locality into a warlike camp and barricade it from the outside world.

Close the publicity barrage on the theme that the plant is in full operation and the strikers are merely a minority attempting to interfere with the right to work. With this, the campaign is over—the employer has broken the strike.[2]

A similar, although more nuanced and longer, version was published in The Nation in 1937.[1]

The louder the capitalists cry and whinge about “conspiracy theories” the more certain you can be that the capitalists are engaged in a fucking conspiracy.

[theliberaltony]

via FiveThirtyEight

The new rules for the Democratic presidential primary debates have gone public. And for those concerned that the vast size of the candidate field means the Democratic contest will look like the Republicans’ melee in 2016, these rules offer little solace.

The party has capped the number of debate participants at 20, and to qualify to take the stage, a candidate will need to get at least 1 percent support in three national polls or polls of early primary states, or raise money from a minimum of 65,000 donors from 20 states, including at least 200 unique donors per state. If more than 20 candidates meet this criteria, the party will give preference to candidates who clear both the polling and fundraising thresholds, and if that’s still too many people, invitations will go to candidates who have the highest polling averages. And if the number of qualifying candidates is too unwieldy for a single debate, the Democratic National Committee said it’ll hold primary debates on multiple nights if necessary, assigning candidates randomly to the two debates rather than dividing them based on polling like Republicans did in 2016.

On the whole, the new rules make the barrier to entry in the Democratic primary debates … low. And this is probably intentional, given the backlash the DNC faced in 2016, when critics argued that its debate schedule favored longtime front-runner and eventual nominee, Hillary Clinton. If 2016 is any guide, unwieldy debates among lots of candidates who are polling in the low single digits won’t result in a few of the strongest competitors separating themselves from the pack, which is undoubtedly what the party would prefer. The problem is there’s no real way for primary debates to resolve the party’s conflicting goals — inclusion and unity.

Primary debates are meant to winnow the field

Contemporary presidential nominations almost always have a clear front-runner. Since at least 1972, parties have fielded an average of about 10 major candidates for president (excluding primaries for parties that were fielding a president running for re-election). And most of the time, one or two candidates have an outsized advantage. There have been exceptions, though. The Democratic contest in 1988, with no clear dominant figure and several well-qualified senators and governors in possible contention, offers a rare parallel for this year’s contest. And, of course, the 2016 Republican primary is the most recent example of a crowded primary field, with 17 major candidates.

When the candidate field grows very large, as it did in 2016, participation in the early primary debates becomes contentious. The giant field meant that 2016 Republican debates were often split in two events — a prime time debate for the polling leaders and an “undercard” or “JV” debate for the rest of the qualifying candidates. Being relegated to the second-tier event did not sit well with some candidates, who pushed for rule changes that would get them onto the bigger stage, in some cases successfully.

Had the qualifying polling average been higher, it likely would have reduced the chaos of the early 2016 Republican debates by limiting the field to a more manageable number of candidates. For example, had the cutoff to qualify for the Oct. 28, 2015, “prime time” debate been 6 percent, rather than 3 percent, the number of participants would have dropped from 10 to six.1 And with a smaller group on stage, each candidate would have had more time to make their views known to potential voters. As it was, the crowded debate field greatly advantaged those candidates whose names and platforms were already widely known.

But winnowing has to be seen as legitimate

But while low thresholds invite chaos,2 the party’s efforts to slim down the field can anger voters and the media outlets who carry the debates. In 2008, the New Hampshire Republican Party withdrew from collaboration with Fox News when the network declined to include Republican then-Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Fox was also accused of selectively enforcing its rules in 2007 when it didn’t invite Chicago businessman John Cox to debate in South Carolina — even though he was on the ballot there.

In addition to network complications, the party itself is stuck juggling a set of difficult tradeoffs. On the one hand, the party wants to assert some control over the process. It can’t invite the more than 180 people who have filed to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, and even including just the candidates who have some experience as elected officials leaves a daunting number of debate participants.

On the other hand, the party wants its attempts to control the process to be seen as legitimate. If a few candidates with decent followings and resources are excluded from the debates, they would likely complain, file lawsuits and hold press conferences claiming that the system was rigged and the nomination contest is illegitimate.

This is dangerous for any party, but it’s particularly dicey for Democrats in the wake of the 2016 nomination. Many voters were skeptical of that process, and leaked emails from the DNC suggested that the committee was biased against Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign rather than maintaining strict impartiality as it has often claimed. A Fairleigh Dickinson University poll released in October 2016 found that 64 percent of respondents said it was either “definitely” or “possibly” true that “both political parties rig the primaries so that outsider candidates have a hard time getting the nomination.” Distrust of the party has lingered, and party leaders are working to respond to concerns about fairness to all candidates, as the committee can’t afford to risk any more legitimacy problems.

The fundraising minimums imposed by the DNC this year are new, and while they may help lesser-known candidates with strong grassroots support earn a seat at the debates, they could leave the party vulnerable in other ways. Relying on small-dollar donors may help immunize candidates from allegations that they serve corporate interests, but those small donors are some of the most ideologically polarized political backers, which could push an extreme candidate to the front of the field and hurt Democrats’ chances in the general election. Alternatively, a self-financing billionaire with low name recognition might be left off the debate invitation list which means that candidate would get less the vetting than others but would still be able to exert significant influence on the primaries and caucuses in 2020.

But more inclusive thresholds for who gets to debate might mean that the field remains fractured and chaotic for longer. As long as parties face pressure to both winnow the primary field and be inclusive of all kinds of candidates, they’ll have to choose one direction or another — it’s hard to do both at once.

[patriotsnet]

How Did Republicans Do In The Primaries

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-did-republicans-do-in-the-primaries/

How Did Republicans Do In The Primaries

Allegations Of Inciting Violence

Inside Texas Politics: What did Texas Republicans, Democrats do right this election cycle?

Research suggests Trump’s rhetoric caused an increased incidence of hate crimes. During his 2016 campaign, he urged or praised physical attacks against protesters or reporters. Since then, some defendants prosecuted for hate crimes or violent acts cited Trump’s rhetoric in arguing that they were not culpable or should receive a lighter sentence. In May 2020, a nationwide review by ABC News identified at least 54 criminal cases from August 2015 to April 2020 in which Trump was invoked in direct connection with violence or threats of violence by mostly white men against mostly members of minority groups. On January 13, 2021, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection for his actions prior to the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob of his supporters who acted in his name.

Who Can Vote In A Primary

Only Democrats can vote in the Democratic Primary.

Only Republicans can vote in the Republican Primary.

The last day to register to vote before the Primary is the 4th Saturday before the Primary.

The deadline to change party affiliation before the Primary is the last Friday in May.

You can register to vote and change your party affiliation after the Primary.

Results Of The 2016 Republican Party Presidential Primaries

    Donald Trump

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This article contains the results of the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and caucuses, the processes by which the Republican Party selected delegates to attend the 2016 Republican National Convention from July 1821. The series of primaries, caucuses, and state conventions culminated in the national convention, where the delegates cast their votes to formally select a candidate. A simple majority of the total delegate votes was required to become the party’s nominee and was achieved by the nominee, businessman Donald Trump of New York.

The process began on March 23, 2015, when Texas SenatorTed Cruz became the first presidential candidate to announce his intentions to seek the office of United StatesPresident. That summer, 17 major candidates were recognized by national and state polls, making it the largest presidential candidate field for any single political party in American history. The large field made possible the fact that the 2016 primaries were the first since 1968 in which more than three candidates won at least one state.

Recommended Reading: Should Republicans Vote In Democratic Primary

May 2016: Trump As Presumptive Nominee

142 delegates were awarded between the Indiana primary and the final primaries in June; however, with Trump the only candidate remaining, Washington, Oregon, West Virginia and Nebraska became essentially uncontested, although Cruz and Kasich remained on the ballot. Trump won handily in West Virginia, Nebraska and Oregon, although Kasich received one delegate from West Virginia and five in Oregon, while Cruz took five in Oregon as well. The next week, Trump won decisively in Washington State, taking 76% of the vote and 41 of 44 delegates, with the other three uncommitted.

May 1024 results 11%

After becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, Trump said regarding the Republican primaries: “You’ve been hearing me say it’s a rigged system, but now I don’t say it anymore because I won. It’s true. Now I don’t care.”

On May 26, 2016, the Associated Press announced that Trump had passed the threshold of 1,237 delegates required to guarantee his nomination, thanks to unbound delegates from North Dakota who declared their support for Trump.

Professional Input Checks The Power Of Billionaires And The Media

The conventional assumption that primaries are less elite than party selection overlooks the way todays primaries actually work. Thanks to court decisions such as SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission, there is today no limit on the size of contributions to independent groups; the groups, in turn, are free to support and oppose candidates provided that they not coordinate their activities with the candidates and parties. In other words, todays campaign-finance rules funnel vast sums of unaccountable money to the political systems least accountable actors.

odays campaign-finance rules funnel vast sums of unaccountable money to the political systems least accountable actors.

That said, even if small donors were a perfectly representative group, they would still provide a pathway around gatekeepers, and that is a mixed blessing. True, candidates who rely on small donors are less beholden to big donors and special interests, which may make them more independent-minded; also true, they are less beholden to their political peers, party leaders, and important constituencies, which may make them more reckless and demagogic.

Then there are the media, whose power in influencing candidate choice has grown enormously since the McGovern-Fraser reforms. Writing as long ago as 1978, Jeanne Kirkpatrick tartly observed:

Things have only gotten worse in the transition from Walter Cronkite to Sean Hannity and todays bevy of extremist internet sites.

Also Check: What Major Cities Are Run By Republicans

Sen Josh Hawley Of Missouri

Though controversial, Hawley, 41, is a fundraising machine and hes quickly made a name for himself. The blowback Hawley faced for objecting to Bidens Electoral College win included a lost book deal and calls for him to resign from students at the law school where he previously taught. His mentor, former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, said that supporting Hawley was the biggest mistake Ive ever made in my life.

Still, he brought in more than $1.5 million between Jan. 1 and March 5, according to Axios, and fundraising appeals in his name from the National Republican Senatorial Committee brought in more cash than any other Republican except NRSC Chair Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. Just because youre toxic in Washington doesnt mean you cant build a meaningful base of support nationally.

One Republican strategist compared the possibility of Hawley 2024 to Cruz in 2016. Hes not especially well-liked by his colleagues , but hes built a national profile for himself and become a leading Republican voice opposed to big technology companies.

Hawley and his wife, Erin, have three children. He got his start in politics as Missouri attorney general before being elected to the Senate in 2018. Hawley graduated from Stanford and Yale Law.

Statehood And Indian Removal

Defense of Florida’s northern border with the United States was minor during the second Spanish period. The region became a haven for escaped slaves and a base for Indian attacks against U.S. territories, and the U.S. pressed Spain for reform.

Americans of and began moving into northern Florida from the backwoods of and . Though technically not allowed by the Spanish authorities and the Floridan government, they were never able to effectively police the border region and the backwoods settlers from the United States would continue to immigrate into Florida unchecked. These migrants, mixing with the already present British settlers who had remained in Florida since the British period, would be the progenitors of the population known as .

These American settlers established a permanent foothold in the area and ignored Spanish authorities. The British settlers who had remained also resented Spanish rule, leading to a rebellion in 1810 and the establishment for ninety days of the so-called Free and Independent Republic of on September 23. After meetings beginning in June, rebels overcame the garrison at , and unfurled the flag of the new republic: a single white star on a blue field. This flag would later become known as the “”.

Some Seminoles remained, and the U.S. Army arrived in Florida, leading to the . Following the war, approximately 3,000 Seminole and 800 Black Seminole were removed to . A few hundred Seminole remained in Florida in the .

Recommended Reading: How Many Democrats Have Been President Vs Republicans

Anger At Past Outside Interference

The discontent over unaffiliated voter participation in partisan primaries stems from the 2016 approval of two ballot measures allowing unaffiliated voters to select one of the two partys primary elections to cast a ballot in. Before the change, unaffiliated voters had to sit on the sidelines for primaries. 

From 2010 through 2016, Republican primary voter turnout outpaced that of Democrats. But in 2018 and 2020, the first two years unaffiliated voters could participate in primaries without affiliating with one of the two major parties, participation in the Democratic primaries soared.

Meanwhile, more Coloradans are becoming unaffiliated voters, reaching 43% at the end of July, while the Republican Partys share of voters is decreasing at a faster pace than the Democratic Party.

Colorado candidates can get on the primary ballot by one of two paths. They can be nominated and go through the state caucus and assembly process, where they must get 30% of the vote, or they can gather signatures from voters.

Some GOP candidates have had trouble making the ballot in the past. In 2016 and 2018, scandals over petition signatures foiled one U.S. Senate candidate and led a gubernatorial candidate, Walker Stapleton, to go the assembly route at the 11th hour after initially gathering petition signatures.

In 2020, allegations of fraud arose out of caucuses in Weld and El Paso counties. The state GOP, however, ultimately determined nothing illegal took place in either instance. 

Convention And Vp Selection

Midterm elections: Do Republicans have a chance of keeping the House?

The delegates at the Republican National Convention formally nominated Dole on August 15, 1996, as the GOP presidential candidate for the general election. Dole was the oldest first-time presidential nominee at the age of 73 years, 1 month .

Former Congressman and Cabinet secretary Jack Kemp was nominated by acclamation as Dole’s running mate the following day. Republican Party of Texas convention delegates informally nominated Alan Keyes as their preference for Vice President.

Other politicians mentioned as possible GOP V.P. nominees before Kemp was selected included:

Don’t Miss: How Many Seats Do The Republicans Control In The Senate

Just How Bad Was The 2018 Election For House Republicans

On Thursday, Democrat Jared Golden beat Maine Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin, marking the 33rd seat pickup for Democrats in the 2018 election.

There are seven races in the House left uncalled all are Republican-held seats; Democrats lead in five of the seven. If they win all the races where their candidates are winning at the moment, Democrats will net 38 seats. If they lose them all which is very unlikely they will hold at a 33-seat gain.

In an interview Wednesday with the conservative Daily Caller website,  President Donald Trump insisted that by his aggressive last-minute campaigning across the country he had saved House Republicans from seat losses that could have numbered into the 70s. I think I did very well, he concluded.

So did he? As compared to history?

Not really, is the answer.

Theres no question that Trump did not suffer the massive seat loss that his immediate predecessor Barack Obama did in his first midterm election in 2010. In that election, Republicans netted an astounding 63-seat gain, the largest since Democrats lost 72 House seats in the 1938 midterms.

But more broadly, the 33 seat loss by Republicans in 2018 places this election firmly in the upper echelon of House-seat losses by a presidents party in modern midterms.

Read Thursdays full edition of The Point newsletter, and to get future editions delivered to your inbox.

What Do Party Preferences Mean When Listed With Candidates’ Names On The Ballot What Are The Qualified Political Parties And Abbreviations Of Those Party Names

The term “party preference” is now used in place of the term “party affiliation.” A candidate must indicate his or her preference or lack of preference for a qualified political party. If the candidate has a qualified political party preference that qualified political party will be indicated by the candidate’s name on the ballot. If a candidate does not have a qualified political party preference, “Party Preference: None” will be indicated by the candidate’s name on the ballot.

Similarly, voters who were previously known as “decline-to-state” voters are now known as having “no party preference” or known as “NPP” voters.

Abbreviations for the qualified political parties are:

DEM = Democratic Party

Also Check: How Many Registered Republicans In Illinois

Civil War And Reconstruction

American settlers began to establish cotton in north Florida, which required numerous laborers, which they supplied by buying slaves in the domestic market. By 1860, Florida had only 140,424 people, of whom 44% were enslaved. There were fewer than 1,000 free before the American Civil War.

On January 10, 1861, nearly all delegates in the Florida Legislature approved an ordinance of secession, declaring Florida to be “a sovereign and independent nation”an apparent reassertion to the preamble in Florida’s Constitution of 1838, in which Florida agreed with Congress to be a “Free and Independent State.” The ordinance declared Florida’s secession from the , allowing it to become one of the founding members of the .

The Confederacy received little military help from Florida; the 15,000 troops it offered were generally sent elsewhere. Instead of troops and manufactured goods, Florida did provide salt and, more importantly, beef to feed the Confederate armies. This was particularly important after 1864, when the Confederacy lost control of the Mississippi River, thereby losing access to Texas beef. The largest engagements in the state were the , on February 20, 1864, and the , on March 6, 1865. Both were Confederate victories. The war ended in 1865.

It Was An Election For A Mini

There was some talk that Democrats may have pulled their punches in the 25th district because, after all, the special election was for the remainder of Hills term and the two candidates will meet again in a more consequential rematch where conditions may favor Smith. Over-confidence probably wasnt a problem since signs of a Garcia win were abundant going into the election.

Republicans, of course, busily spun the win into a sign of a Republican resurgence in California and possibly an omen that the GOP will retake the House even as Trump cake-walks to a second term on the strength of a rapidly rebounding economy that he championed even as Democrats pursued perpetual shutdowns. While the results may legitimately indicate that theres no continuing wave from 2018 that will crash with renewed force in favor of Democrats in November, its more likely that we are seeing a reversion to the mean rather than some new pro-Republican wave. There are enough special circumstances surrounding Garcias win to make its recurrence questionable when he appears on the ballot on Election Day with Donald Trump, who remains as unpopular as ever in California.

There is one wrinkle in Garcias special election victory worth a closer look. In 2018 a number of Republican incumbents famously led early on until later-arriving mail ballots swept Democrats into office. There were signs on Election Day that Garcias early lead might be durable, as California political observer Miriam Pawel noted:

Don’t Miss: How Many Registered Republicans In California

What Makes The 2024 Presidential Election Unique

The lead up to the 2024 presidential election is different from past years because of former President Donald Trump. Hes eligible to run for a second term, and has publicly toyed with the idea while also weighing in on other Republicans he thinks could be the future of the party. If Trump does run in 2024, hed start out with unparalleled name ID and massive support, but if he doesnt, the field could be wide open for other Republicans hoping to win over his supporters. President Joe Biden said recently he expects to run for reelection in 2024.

Related

Golden Trump statue at CPAC 2021 was no graven image, according to the artist

This early on, wannabe candidates must raise their profiles, show their commitment to the party, and raise money, one Republican strategist said, to get on peoples radars even when your candidacy is in a holding pattern.

Some of the most visible 2024 presidential candidates will surely flame out long before the Iowa caucus, and theres always the chance that the next Republican nominee isnt yet considered a serious player . Theres a million and one things that will happen between now and then that will shape the race in ways we cant now predict, but the invisible primary that comes before any votes are cast has started.

Heres your very early guide to some of 2024s Republican presidential candidates, based on early polling, interviews with Republican donors and strategists and results from online political betting markets.

The Louisiana Primary System

The Louisiana system, sometimes called the “Cajun Primary,” eliminates the primary election altogether. Instead, all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, run on the same ballot in November. If a candidate receives more than half of the votes, that candidate is elected. If no candidate wins with a majority, the top two vote-getters face off in a December runoff election. Qualified absentee voters receive a ballot for the November election and a ranked ballot for the December runoff, so that they can vote as normal in the general election and then have their ranked ballot count for whichever runoff candidate they ranked highest in the runoff election.

Although Louisiana law refers to the election in November as the “primary” and the December runoff as the “general” election, the November election takes place on the federally mandated Election Day and most candidates win office by receiving a majority vote in that election, so it is best understood as a general election, with the December election as a contingent runoff.

The Louisiana system is sometimes mistakenly equated with the Top Two system, but holding the first election in November and electing any candidate with more than 50% of the vote in that election makes it sufficiently distinct that it should not be understood as a mere variant of Top Two.

Read Also: How Many Republicans Caucused In Iowa

Trump Election Lawsuits Have Mostly Failed Here’s What They Tried

In the Senate, Democrats have so far gained one seat, but they need three with a Biden win to take over the chamber. Democrats still have a chance of doing that with two runoff elections in Georgia. That’s seen as possible, but not likely.

It wasn’t expected to be this way. Democrats had put lots of Senate races in play, ones not expected to go their way at the beginning of the 2020 cycle, places like Kansas and Montana.

To be sure, many of the Senate races were expected to be close, perhaps with razor-thin margins, and a Democrat-controlled Senate was never an assured outcome. But when you look at the average of the polls in the last week of the election versus the ultimate result, it’s clear that Republicans were underrepresented all across the country.

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All of these races, except Colorado and Alabama, were within single digits in the polls. Colorado, a state Biden won handily, wound up pretty close to the average. Alabama, a state Trump won by a lot, was an even bigger blowout than expected.

Many of the supposedly tightest races didn’t wind up tight at all. Maine is perhaps the most stunning one. Biden won the state by 9 percentage points, but Republican incumbent Susan Collins won reelection by 9 points.

Not only was Collins down by 4 points heading into Election Day in an average of the polls in the week before the election, but she led in just one poll in all of 2020. And that was back in July. That’s one poll out of almost three dozen.

Relationship With The Press

Did The 2014 Primaries Do The GOP Any Good? | Drinking And Talking

Throughout his career, Trump has sought media attention, with a “lovehate” relationship with the press. Trump began promoting himself in the press in the 1970s. Fox News anchor and former House speaker have characterized Trump as a “” who makes controversial statements to see people’s “heads explode.”

In the 2016 campaign, Trump benefited from a record amount of free media coverage, elevating his standing in the Republican primaries.New York Times writer wrote in 2018 that Trump’s media dominance, which enthralls the public and creates “can’t miss” reality television-type coverage, was politically beneficial for him.

As a candidate and as president, Trump frequently accused the press of bias, calling it the “fake news media” and “the .” In 2018, journalist recounted Trump’s saying he intentionally demeaned and discredited the media “so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”

As president, Trump deployed the legal system to intimidate the press. In early 2020, the Trump campaign sued The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN for alleged defamation in opinion pieces about Russian election interference. Legal experts said that the lawsuits lacked merit and were not likely to succeed. By March 2021, the lawsuits against The New York Times and CNN had been dismissed.

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Garcia Was An Unusually Good Candidate

Republicans lucked into an unusually strong candidate in Garcia, a former Navy pilot running in a district with a significant defense presence, and a Latino in a district whose electorate has become one-third Latino. He managed to beat the previous Republican holder of the seat, Steve Knight, in the February primary in order to win a Top Two position opposite Smith, which was welcomed by Republican strategists. His campaign was well-financed.

Republican Party Primaries 2020

2020 Republican Party primary elections Battleground primaries Primaries by state Submit

Ballotpedia covered every Republican Party state and federal primary in 2020 to highlight the intraparty conflicts that shaped the party and the general election. This page is an overview of those primaries, with links to Ballotpedia’s coverage of all Republican U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and state-level primaries.

to read about Democratic Party primaries in 2020.

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Former Us Ambassador To The United Nations Nikki Haley

Haley, 49, stands out in the potential pool of 2024 Republican candidates by her resume. She has experience as an executive as the former governor of South Carolina and foreign policy experience from her time as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Haley was a member of the Republican Partys 2010 tea party class. A former South Carolina state representative, her long shot gubernatorial campaign saw its fortunes improve after she was endorsed by Sarah Palin. Haley rocketed from fourth to first just days after the endorsement, and she went on to clinch the nomination and become her states first female and first Indian-American governor.

As governor, she signed a bill removing the Confederate flag from the state Capitol following the white supremacist attack at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston. She left office in 2017 to join the Trump administration as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Quinnipiac poll found she was at one point the most popular member of Trumps foreign policy team.

I think that shes done a pretty masterful job in filling out her resume, said Robert Oldendick, a professor and director of graduate studies at the University of South Carolinas department of political science.

Haley criticized Trump following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, saying she was disgusted by his conduct. Oldendick said he thought her pretty pointed criticism of the president will potentially cause some problems.

‘im Going To Be In Your Backyard’: Trump Sons Threaten Primaries For Gop Lawmakers

Fox News, which had been carrying the remarks live, dropped its feed of the rally after the expletives uttered by the president’s son aired uncensored.

Donald Trump Jr. speaks Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, at a rally in support of President Donald Trump called the “Save America Rally.” | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

01/06/2021 11:48 AM EST

Link Copied

President Donald Trumps eldest sons threatened Republican lawmakers at a large rally outside the White House on Wednesday, pledging that their family would continue to dispute the results of the 2020 election just hours before Congress was set to certify President-elect Joe Bidens Electoral College victory.

To those Republicans, many of which may be voting on things in the coming hours: You have an opportunity today, Donald Trump Jr. told the crowd gathered for the Save America March on the White House Ellipse. You can be a hero, or you can be a zero. And the choice is yours. But we are all watching. The whole world is watching, folks. Choose wisely.

Several House Republicans and roughly a dozen senators have announced plans to object to individual states electoral vote counts when Congress meets for a joint session this afternoon. And though their effort to reverse the elections outcome has virtually no chance of succeeding, the president had applied increasing public pressure on Vice President Mike Pence who will preside over the proceedings to attempt to thwart Bidens win.

Recommended Reading: Are There Any Republicans For Impeachment

[statetalks]

How Did Republicans Do In The Primaries

Allegations Of Inciting Violence

Inside Texas Politics: What did Texas Republicans, Democrats do right this election cycle?

Research suggests Trump’s rhetoric caused an increased incidence of hate crimes. During his 2016 campaign, he urged or praised physical attacks against protesters or reporters. Since then, some defendants prosecuted for hate crimes or violent acts cited Trump’s rhetoric in arguing that they were not culpable or should receive a lighter sentence. In May 2020, a nationwide review by ABC News identified at least 54 criminal cases from August 2015 to April 2020 in which Trump was invoked in direct connection with violence or threats of violence by mostly white men against mostly members of minority groups. On January 13, 2021, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection for his actions prior to the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a violent mob of his supporters who acted in his name.

Who Can Vote In A Primary

Only Democrats can vote in the Democratic Primary.

Only Republicans can vote in the Republican Primary.

The last day to register to vote before the Primary is the 4th Saturday before the Primary.

The deadline to change party affiliation before the Primary is the last Friday in May.

You can register to vote and change your party affiliation after the Primary.

Results Of The 2016 Republican Party Presidential Primaries

    Donald Trump

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This article contains the results of the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and caucuses, the processes by which the Republican Party selected delegates to attend the 2016 Republican National Convention from July 1821. The series of primaries, caucuses, and state conventions culminated in the national convention, where the delegates cast their votes to formally select a candidate. A simple majority of the total delegate votes was required to become the party’s nominee and was achieved by the nominee, businessman Donald Trump of New York.

The process began on March 23, 2015, when Texas SenatorTed Cruz became the first presidential candidate to announce his intentions to seek the office of United StatesPresident. That summer, 17 major candidates were recognized by national and state polls, making it the largest presidential candidate field for any single political party in American history. The large field made possible the fact that the 2016 primaries were the first since 1968 in which more than three candidates won at least one state.

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May 2016: Trump As Presumptive Nominee

142 delegates were awarded between the Indiana primary and the final primaries in June; however, with Trump the only candidate remaining, Washington, Oregon, West Virginia and Nebraska became essentially uncontested, although Cruz and Kasich remained on the ballot. Trump won handily in West Virginia, Nebraska and Oregon, although Kasich received one delegate from West Virginia and five in Oregon, while Cruz took five in Oregon as well. The next week, Trump won decisively in Washington State, taking 76% of the vote and 41 of 44 delegates, with the other three uncommitted.

11%

After becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, Trump said regarding the Republican primaries: “You’ve been hearing me say it’s a rigged system, but now I don’t say it anymore because I won. It’s true. Now I don’t care.”

On May 26, 2016, the Associated Press announced that Trump had passed the threshold of 1,237 delegates required to guarantee his nomination, thanks to unbound delegates from North Dakota who declared their support for Trump.

Professional Input Checks The Power Of Billionaires And The Media

The conventional assumption that primaries are less elite than party selection overlooks the way todays primaries actually work. Thanks to court decisions such as SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission, there is today no limit on the size of contributions to independent groups; the groups, in turn, are free to support and oppose candidates provided that they not coordinate their activities with the candidates and parties. In other words, todays campaign-finance rules funnel vast sums of unaccountable money to the political systems least accountable actors.

odays campaign-finance rules funnel vast sums of unaccountable money to the political systems least accountable actors.

That said, even if small donors were a perfectly representative group, they would still provide a pathway around gatekeepers, and that is a mixed blessing. True, candidates who rely on small donors are less beholden to big donors and special interests, which may make them more independent-minded; also true, they are less beholden to their political peers, party leaders, and important constituencies, which may make them more reckless and demagogic.

Then there are the media, whose power in influencing candidate choice has grown enormously since the McGovern-Fraser reforms. Writing as long ago as 1978, Jeanne Kirkpatrick tartly observed:

Things have only gotten worse in the transition from Walter Cronkite to Sean Hannity and todays bevy of extremist internet sites.

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Sen Josh Hawley Of Missouri

Though controversial, Hawley, 41, is a fundraising machine and hes quickly made a name for himself. The blowback Hawley faced for objecting to Bidens Electoral College win included a lost book deal and calls for him to resign from students at the law school where he previously taught. His mentor, former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, said that supporting Hawley was the biggest mistake Ive ever made in my life.

Still, he brought in more than $1.5 million between Jan. 1 and March 5, according to Axios, and fundraising appeals in his name from the National Republican Senatorial Committee brought in more cash than any other Republican except NRSC Chair Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. Just because youre toxic in Washington doesnt mean you cant build a meaningful base of support nationally.

One Republican strategist compared the possibility of Hawley 2024 to Cruz in 2016. Hes not especially well-liked by his colleagues , but hes built a national profile for himself and become a leading Republican voice opposed to big technology companies.

Hawley and his wife, Erin, have three children. He got his start in politics as Missouri attorney general before being elected to the Senate in 2018. Hawley graduated from Stanford and Yale Law.

Statehood And Indian Removal

Defense of Florida’s northern border with the United States was minor during the second Spanish period. The region became a haven for escaped slaves and a base for Indian attacks against U.S. territories, and the U.S. pressed Spain for reform.

Americans of and began moving into northern Florida from the backwoods of and . Though technically not allowed by the Spanish authorities and the Floridan government, they were never able to effectively police the border region and the backwoods settlers from the United States would continue to immigrate into Florida unchecked. These migrants, mixing with the already present British settlers who had remained in Florida since the British period, would be the progenitors of the population known as .

These American settlers established a permanent foothold in the area and ignored Spanish authorities. The British settlers who had remained also resented Spanish rule, leading to a rebellion in 1810 and the establishment for ninety days of the so-called Free and Independent Republic of on September 23. After meetings beginning in June, rebels overcame the garrison at , and unfurled the flag of the new republic: a single white star on a blue field. This flag would later become known as the “”.

Some Seminoles remained, and the U.S. Army arrived in Florida, leading to the . Following the war, approximately 3,000 Seminole and 800 Black Seminole were removed to . A few hundred Seminole remained in Florida in the .

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Anger At Past Outside Interference

The discontent over unaffiliated voter participation in partisan primaries stems from the 2016 approval of two ballot measures allowing unaffiliated voters to select one of the two partys primary elections to cast a ballot in. Before the change, unaffiliated voters had to sit on the sidelines for primaries. 

From 2010 through 2016, Republican primary voter turnout outpaced that of Democrats. But in 2018 and 2020, the first two years unaffiliated voters could participate in primaries without affiliating with one of the two major parties, participation in the Democratic primaries soared.

Meanwhile, more Coloradans are becoming unaffiliated voters, reaching 43% at the end of July, while the Republican Partys share of voters is decreasing at a faster pace than the Democratic Party.

Colorado candidates can get on the primary ballot by one of two paths. They can be nominated and go through the state caucus and assembly process, where they must get 30% of the vote, or they can gather signatures from voters.

Some GOP candidates have had trouble making the ballot in the past. In 2016 and 2018, scandals over petition signatures foiled one U.S. Senate candidate and led a gubernatorial candidate, Walker Stapleton, to go the assembly route at the 11th hour after initially gathering petition signatures.

In 2020, allegations of fraud arose out of caucuses in Weld and El Paso counties. The state GOP, however, ultimately determined nothing illegal took place in either instance. 

Convention And Vp Selection

Midterm elections: Do Republicans have a chance of keeping the House?

The delegates at the Republican National Convention formally nominated Dole on August 15, 1996, as the GOP presidential candidate for the general election. Dole was the oldest first-time presidential nominee at the age of 73 years, 1 month .

Former Congressman and Cabinet secretary Jack Kemp was nominated by acclamation as Dole’s running mate the following day. Republican Party of Texas convention delegates informally nominated Alan Keyes as their preference for Vice President.

Other politicians mentioned as possible GOP V.P. nominees before Kemp was selected included:

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Just How Bad Was The 2018 Election For House Republicans

On Thursday, Democrat Jared Golden beat Maine Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin, marking the 33rd seat pickup for Democrats in the 2018 election.

There are seven races in the House left uncalled all are Republican-held seats; Democrats lead in five of the seven. If they win all the races where their candidates are winning at the moment, Democrats will net 38 seats. If they lose them all which is very unlikely they will hold at a 33-seat gain.

In an interview Wednesday with the conservative Daily Caller website,  President Donald Trump insisted that by his aggressive last-minute campaigning across the country he had saved House Republicans from seat losses that could have numbered into the 70s. I think I did very well, he concluded.

So did he? As compared to history?

Not really, is the answer.

Theres no question that Trump did not suffer the massive seat loss that his immediate predecessor Barack Obama did in his first midterm election in 2010. In that election, Republicans netted an astounding 63-seat gain, the largest since Democrats lost 72 House seats in the 1938 midterms.

But more broadly, the 33 seat loss by Republicans in 2018 places this election firmly in the upper echelon of House-seat losses by a presidents party in modern midterms.

Read Thursdays full edition of The Point newsletter, and to get future editions delivered to your inbox.

What Do Party Preferences Mean When Listed With Candidates’ Names On The Ballot What Are The Qualified Political Parties And Abbreviations Of Those Party Names

The term “party preference” is now used in place of the term “party affiliation.” A candidate must indicate his or her preference or lack of preference for a qualified political party. If the candidate has a qualified political party preference that qualified political party will be indicated by the candidate’s name on the ballot. If a candidate does not have a qualified political party preference, “Party Preference: None” will be indicated by the candidate’s name on the ballot.

Similarly, voters who were previously known as “decline-to-state” voters are now known as having “no party preference” or known as “NPP” voters.

Abbreviations for the qualified political parties are:

DEM = Democratic Party

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Civil War And Reconstruction

American settlers began to establish cotton in north Florida, which required numerous laborers, which they supplied by buying slaves in the domestic market. By 1860, Florida had only 140,424 people, of whom 44% were enslaved. There were fewer than 1,000 free before the American Civil War.

On January 10, 1861, nearly all delegates in the Florida Legislature approved an ordinance of secession, declaring Florida to be “a sovereign and independent nation”an apparent reassertion to the preamble in Florida’s Constitution of 1838, in which Florida agreed with Congress to be a “Free and Independent State.” The ordinance declared Florida’s secession from the , allowing it to become one of the founding members of the .

The Confederacy received little military help from Florida; the 15,000 troops it offered were generally sent elsewhere. Instead of troops and manufactured goods, Florida did provide salt and, more importantly, beef to feed the Confederate armies. This was particularly important after 1864, when the Confederacy lost control of the Mississippi River, thereby losing access to Texas beef. The largest engagements in the state were the , on February 20, 1864, and the , on March 6, 1865. Both were Confederate victories. The war ended in 1865.

It Was An Election For A Mini

There was some talk that Democrats may have pulled their punches in the 25th district because, after all, the special election was for the remainder of Hills term and the two candidates will meet again in a more consequential rematch where conditions may favor Smith. Over-confidence probably wasnt a problem since signs of a Garcia win were abundant going into the election.

Republicans, of course, busily spun the win into a sign of a Republican resurgence in California and possibly an omen that the GOP will retake the House even as Trump cake-walks to a second term on the strength of a rapidly rebounding economy that he championed even as Democrats pursued perpetual shutdowns. While the results may legitimately indicate that theres no continuing wave from 2018 that will crash with renewed force in favor of Democrats in November, its more likely that we are seeing a reversion to the mean rather than some new pro-Republican wave. There are enough special circumstances surrounding Garcias win to make its recurrence questionable when he appears on the ballot on Election Day with Donald Trump, who remains as unpopular as ever in California.

There is one wrinkle in Garcias special election victory worth a closer look. In 2018 a number of Republican incumbents famously led early on until later-arriving mail ballots swept Democrats into office. There were signs on Election Day that Garcias early lead might be durable, as California political observer Miriam Pawel noted:

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What Makes The 2024 Presidential Election Unique

The lead up to the 2024 presidential election is different from past years because of former President Donald Trump. Hes eligible to run for a second term, and has publicly toyed with the idea while also weighing in on other Republicans he thinks could be the future of the party. If Trump does run in 2024, hed start out with unparalleled name ID and massive support, but if he doesnt, the field could be wide open for other Republicans hoping to win over his supporters. President Joe Biden said recently he expects to run for reelection in 2024.

Related

Golden Trump statue at CPAC 2021 was no graven image, according to the artist

This early on, wannabe candidates must raise their profiles, show their commitment to the party, and raise money, one Republican strategist said, to get on peoples radars even when your candidacy is in a holding pattern.

Some of the most visible 2024 presidential candidates will surely flame out long before the Iowa caucus, and theres always the chance that the next Republican nominee isnt yet considered a serious player . Theres a million and one things that will happen between now and then that will shape the race in ways we cant now predict, but the invisible primary that comes before any votes are cast has started.

Heres your very early guide to some of 2024s Republican presidential candidates, based on early polling, interviews with Republican donors and strategists and results from online political betting markets.

The Louisiana Primary System

The Louisiana system, sometimes called the “Cajun Primary,” eliminates the primary election altogether. Instead, all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, run on the same ballot in November. If a candidate receives more than half of the votes, that candidate is elected. If no candidate wins with a majority, the top two vote-getters face off in a December runoff election. Qualified absentee voters receive a ballot for the November election and a ranked ballot for the December runoff, so that they can vote as normal in the general election and then have their ranked ballot count for whichever runoff candidate they ranked highest in the runoff election.

Although Louisiana law refers to the election in November as the “primary” and the December runoff as the “general” election, the November election takes place on the federally mandated Election Day and most candidates win office by receiving a majority vote in that election, so it is best understood as a general election, with the December election as a contingent runoff.

The Louisiana system is sometimes mistakenly equated with the Top Two system, but holding the first election in November and electing any candidate with more than 50% of the vote in that election makes it sufficiently distinct that it should not be understood as a mere variant of Top Two.

Read Also: How Many Republicans Caucused In Iowa

Trump Election Lawsuits Have Mostly Failed Here’s What They Tried

In the Senate, Democrats have so far gained one seat, but they need three with a Biden win to take over the chamber. Democrats still have a chance of doing that with two runoff elections in Georgia. That’s seen as possible, but not likely.

It wasn’t expected to be this way. Democrats had put lots of Senate races in play, ones not expected to go their way at the beginning of the 2020 cycle, places like Kansas and Montana.

To be sure, many of the Senate races were expected to be close, perhaps with razor-thin margins, and a Democrat-controlled Senate was never an assured outcome. But when you look at the average of the polls in the last week of the election versus the ultimate result, it’s clear that Republicans were underrepresented all across the country.

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All of these races, except Colorado and Alabama, were within single digits in the polls. Colorado, a state Biden won handily, wound up pretty close to the average. Alabama, a state Trump won by a lot, was an even bigger blowout than expected.

Many of the supposedly tightest races didn’t wind up tight at all. Maine is perhaps the most stunning one. Biden won the state by 9 percentage points, but Republican incumbent Susan Collins won reelection by 9 points.

Not only was Collins down by 4 points heading into Election Day in an average of the polls in the week before the election, but she led in just one poll in all of 2020. And that was back in July. That’s one poll out of almost three dozen.

Relationship With The Press

Did The 2014 Primaries Do The GOP Any Good? | Drinking And Talking

Throughout his career, Trump has sought media attention, with a “lovehate” relationship with the press. Trump began promoting himself in the press in the 1970s. Fox News anchor and former House speaker have characterized Trump as a “” who makes controversial statements to see people’s “heads explode.”

In the 2016 campaign, Trump benefited from a record amount of free media coverage, elevating his standing in the Republican primaries.New York Times writer wrote in 2018 that Trump’s media dominance, which enthralls the public and creates “can’t miss” reality television-type coverage, was politically beneficial for him.

As a candidate and as president, Trump frequently accused the press of bias, calling it the “fake news media” and “the .” In 2018, journalist recounted Trump’s saying he intentionally demeaned and discredited the media “so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”

As president, Trump deployed the legal system to intimidate the press. In early 2020, the Trump campaign sued The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN for alleged defamation in opinion pieces about Russian election interference. Legal experts said that the lawsuits lacked merit and were not likely to succeed. By March 2021, the lawsuits against The New York Times and CNN had been dismissed.

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Garcia Was An Unusually Good Candidate

Republicans lucked into an unusually strong candidate in Garcia, a former Navy pilot running in a district with a significant defense presence, and a Latino in a district whose electorate has become one-third Latino. He managed to beat the previous Republican holder of the seat, Steve Knight, in the February primary in order to win a Top Two position opposite Smith, which was welcomed by Republican strategists. His campaign was well-financed.

Republican Party Primaries 2020

2020 Republican Party primary elections Battleground primaries Primaries by state Submit

Ballotpedia covered every Republican Party state and federal primary in 2020 to highlight the intraparty conflicts that shaped the party and the general election. This page is an overview of those primaries, with links to Ballotpedia’s coverage of all Republican U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and state-level primaries.

to read about Democratic Party primaries in 2020.

You May Like: What Are The Views Of Republicans

Former Us Ambassador To The United Nations Nikki Haley

Haley, 49, stands out in the potential pool of 2024 Republican candidates by her resume. She has experience as an executive as the former governor of South Carolina and foreign policy experience from her time as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Haley was a member of the Republican Partys 2010 tea party class. A former South Carolina state representative, her long shot gubernatorial campaign saw its fortunes improve after she was endorsed by Sarah Palin. Haley rocketed from fourth to first just days after the endorsement, and she went on to clinch the nomination and become her states first female and first Indian-American governor.

As governor, she signed a bill removing the Confederate flag from the state Capitol following the white supremacist attack at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston. She left office in 2017 to join the Trump administration as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Quinnipiac poll found she was at one point the most popular member of Trumps foreign policy team.

I think that shes done a pretty masterful job in filling out her resume, said Robert Oldendick, a professor and director of graduate studies at the University of South Carolinas department of political science.

Haley criticized Trump following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, saying she was disgusted by his conduct. Oldendick said he thought her pretty pointed criticism of the president will potentially cause some problems.

‘im Going To Be In Your Backyard’: Trump Sons Threaten Primaries For Gop Lawmakers

Fox News, which had been carrying the remarks live, dropped its feed of the rally after the expletives uttered by the president’s son aired uncensored.

Donald Trump Jr. speaks Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, at a rally in support of President Donald Trump called the “Save America Rally.” | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

01/06/2021 11:48 AM EST

Link Copied

President Donald Trumps eldest sons threatened Republican lawmakers at a large rally outside the White House on Wednesday, pledging that their family would continue to dispute the results of the 2020 election just hours before Congress was set to certify President-elect Joe Bidens Electoral College victory.

To those Republicans, many of which may be voting on things in the coming hours: You have an opportunity today, Donald Trump Jr. told the crowd gathered for the Save America March on the White House Ellipse. You can be a hero, or you can be a zero. And the choice is yours. But we are all watching. The whole world is watching, folks. Choose wisely.

Several House Republicans and roughly a dozen senators have announced plans to object to individual states electoral vote counts when Congress meets for a joint session this afternoon. And though their effort to reverse the elections outcome has virtually no chance of succeeding, the president had applied increasing public pressure on Vice President Mike Pence who will preside over the proceedings to attempt to thwart Bidens win.

Recommended Reading: Are There Any Republicans For Impeachment

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-did-republicans-do-in-the-primaries/

[orbemnews]

Conservative agenda dominates Texas, despite Democratic hopes of turning the state blue Still, Trump’s lead in Texas was the narrowest for a Republican presidential candidate in years. In 2012, Mitt Romney won the state by 16 points. In 2016, Trump won by 9 points. And with only a few days left in the session, lawmakers are still trying to push an election overhaul with new voting restrictions and legislation that would ban the teaching of critical race theory, among other agenda items. The state is changing demographically and is set to gain two congressional seats in the upcoming redistricting process, due to the state’s rapid population growth over the past decade. While some Republicans are on edge about the future of the party, many of its state leaders see the GOP’s success in Texas last cycle as a mandate to continue moving to the right. Republicans also tout the gains that Trump made in the typically Democratic stronghold of South Texas, flipping several counties that voted for Clinton in 2016 and making massive inroads in others. Of the 17 counties that Clinton won in 2016, Trump took back seven of them. In Starr County, along the southern border, for example, Trump had lost to Clinton by 60 percentage points. But in 2020, he lost to Joe Biden by only 5 percentage points in the same county. “For every Karen we lost in the suburbs, we gained a Julio,” said one GOP operative in the state. ‘I don’t want to be roadkill’ Lt. Col. Allen West walked across the street of an affluent neighborhood in a Dallas suburb, followed by a throng of supporters who gathered at a fundraiser to meet the former congressman who’s now chairman of the Texas Republican Party. He came outside for an interview — CNN had been initially invited to the event but was escorted off the property upon arrival — as dozens of donors surrounded him. He was there to speak to The Southlake Families PAC, a group that funded school board candidates who opposed teaching critical race theory in a local election that gained national attention. West, who helped spearhead the GOP agenda for the legislative session, pushed back at critics who think the Legislature is shifting too far to the right. He pointed to the droves of people moving to Texas from traditionally blue states like California, New York and New Jersey as examples of the party’s success in policy. “Texas is a strong, successful, constitutional conservative red state,” he said. As for concerns that the agenda might push away middle-of-the-road voters, West used an old political trope. “You know what my dad taught me?” he said. “I grew up in Georgia. He said the only thing in the middle of the road is roadkill, and I don’t want to be roadkill.” It’s a sentiment underwritten by Trump’s still influential and unabashed style. Many of the state’s leaders, who are up for reelection next year, are keenly aware of the power he continues to hold over the party, especially with potential endorsements. Attorney General Ken Paxton, who could soon be facing a primary challenge from Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush, is among the former President’s biggest allies. He helped lead a lawsuit alleging election fraud in four states that was ultimately rejected by the Supreme Court. Trump said in a statement that he’ll be making an endorsement in the primary race, which Bush is expected to join next week. Even Bush, whose family, critical of the former President, has been routinely maligned by Trump in recent years, has shown support for him. “I like them both very much,” Trump said in the statement Tuesday. “I’ll be making my endorsement and recommendation to the great people of Texas in the not-so-distant future.” Trump’s baseless claims that the election was stolen still loom large nationwide and here in Texas. For his part, West attended a “Stop the Steal” rally in Dallas after the election and refuses to acknowledge that Joe Biden got more votes than Trump. When asked three times about the election results in November, West responded with the same carefully crafted answer: “I believe that there were unconstitutional actions that led to nefarious things that happened in five battleground states.” ‘It’s a really weird place to be in’ Democratic state Rep. Donna Howard has been representing the Austin area in the Texas Legislature since 2006. She fought hard this year against the abortion bill, and she joined fellow Democrats onstage late Tuesday night to celebrate one of the few victories her party had this year: running out the clock on a bill that would prevent transgender students from playing on sports teams that aligned with their gender identities. “We’ve just swung totally to the right,” she said, standing outside her office underneath the state Capitol and reflecting on the past few months of the legislative session. “It’s been like steamrolling of all these red meat wedge issues and not focused on what we came in here to deal with.” Howard acknowledged Texas is still a red state but was among those who had expected Democrats to do better here in the 2020 election, especially after they performed well in the state in 2018 and Beto O’Rourke came close to defeating incumbent GOP Sen. Ted Cruz. Like many Democrats, Howard argued that her party suffered in 2020 from adhering to social distancing guidelines and not doing the kind of in-person door knocking and grassroots politicking that can be so effective. They’re already focused on trying to regain momentum for the 2022 midterm elections. “The blue wave is growing,” she said. “But I don’t know when it’s actually going to get here.” That’s in large part because primaries are king in Texas. Very few state lawmakers have competitive general elections, so courting the base is still the main objective for most politicians. “There’s no real political incentive for those in the state House or in the state Senate, who are Republicans, to do anything but appeal to the base,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a veteran GOP strategist in the state. “They’re not having to necessarily wage a competitive general election campaign, and so until that changes — and we are seeing trends that that’s going to happen — I think you’ll continue to see this out of our state Legislature,” he added. Steinhauser ran the campaign for Michael Wood, an anti-Trump Republican who competed and lost in this month’s special election to replace Republican Rep. Ron Wright of Arlington. Wright died from Covid-19 in February, and Trump endorsed his widow, Susan Wright, who has advanced to a runoff this summer for the final election. While many Republicans, like Allen West, think that Trump steered the party in the right direction, some conservatives, like Steinhauser, are concerned that as the electorate in Texas becomes younger and more diverse, Republicans will have problems. For Steinhauser, that fear of a blue wave down the road is very real. “We find ourselves having been very successful in the last cycle, but also kind of worried about the long-term future of the party, worried about demographic changes,” he said. “It’s a really weird place to be in.” Source link Orbem News #agenda #Blue #Conservative #ConservativeagendadominatesTexas #Democratic #despiteDemocratichopesofturningthestateblue-CNNPolitics #dominates #hopes #Politics #state #Texas #turning

[keywestlou]

COCKTAILS AT 5

Not my usual Cocktails at 7 friday nights with friend Cathy in Seattle. Yesterday was boys’ night out. Four of us at Guy deBoer’s home for drinks.

A terrific two hours.

Guy deBoer had set up the event at his home so Fred and I could meet. Fred is a labor lawyer from New York City. He has a home in Key West, also. There is a connection between Fred and I. He too writes a blog. Friday Night with Fred. Read it. You will enjoy. www.gothamnetworking.com/blogs.

Fred is a labor lawyer closing in on retirement. Seventy nine at the moment.

Fred and I have communicated via e-mail a few times. It was Guy who brought us together.

Last night was our first face to face meeting. Fred’s friend David Berger was with us also. Berger a mere 65 and already retired. A Long Island doctor. Anesthesia his specialty.

He too has a home in Key west.

Fred a Syracuse graduate. He was wearing s Syracuse T shirt last night. We were at Syracuse a brief time together. One year. Fred was an undergraduate University freshman and I a senior in the law school. We never met back then.

A lot of Syracuse talk ensued. Some of Fred’s fraternity brothers were football and basketball players. Like Ernie Davis and Dave Bing.

We spoke of Joe Biden. Another Syracuse alumnus. The law school.

David had spent some time in Syracuse as a student. Although Upstate Medical is not a part of the University, it sits right next to the campus. Doctors to be and for real ones staff the facility.

Guy’s race came up. Time was spent discussing the race. I am ashamed to admit I did not know it was such a big deal.

Called the Golden Globe Race. Not run every year. The first was 1968, the last 2018.

Guy’s race is labeled Golden Globe 2022. The race begins September 27, 2021. Ends 530 days later in 2022. The race begins somewhere in the Canary Islands. It is the longest and loneliest race in the world. Each boat is piloted by one person. No one else on the boat for company or to help.

Guy solo! All alone by the telephone as Irving Berlin once wrote. I’m not sure if even telephone service is available, however.

Buy’s boat the Tashiba. Thirty six feet long

The trip non-stop.

I thought 412 days of self-quarantine was difficult. Guy is going to do 530 on the high seas which probably will have its moments for concern.

Guy, I think you’re crazy. I wish you well, however.

Do not plan crossing the Seven Mile Bridge saturday from 6-9 in the morning. The Annual Seven Mile Bridge run will be taking place. A thousand plus will be making the run.

Read an article this morning that Trump’s donors are flocking to Florida Governor DeSantis. Now I am convinced Trump’s supporters were and are crazy.

I have for the past year pointed out how incompetent and inept DeSantis is. He is a lousy Governor, he would make a worse President. Trump constantly referred to DeSantis as the best governor in America. No wonder, DeSantis did everything the President suggested.

The title of the article referred to is “A Nicer Version of Trump.” We can do without DeSantis.

Insanity prevails in the Halls of Congress. Especially the Senate.

I cannot understand how some Senators think.

Josh Hawley was an open supporter of January 6 before it even began. Ted Cruz for all his intelligence and experience has lost it. He probably thinks his conduct will buy him the Republican Presidential nomination in 2024. Will he be surprised!

Whatever, both are targeting Major League Baseball for its position re the new Georgia voting laws. Both want Major League Baseball “to pay.” Their voices in unison with Trump who said, “I would say boycott baseball.”

Not what is happening in this country. What has happened in this country?

Ivanka Trump in the news in a good way. She got her first vaccine shot yesterday.

She reacted like most others who have or are getting their shots. Thrilled! She told the world on Twitter. Again on Instagram with a photograph of her receiving the shot.

She said in Twitter and Instagram, “I got the shot. I hope you do too.”

Republican donors and fans are upset. They view her as a turn-coat.

Virginia Torrelino and I are Facebook friends. Have been so for quite a while. She lives in the Philippines.

Loves music! Says “music is my stress removal friend.”

Recall the Three Tenors. What great singing!

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a 3 person group who sang like the Three Tenors. In fact, held themselves out as  Three Tenors. Ages between 30 and 40.

I saw their video on the internet. Decided a few days later, I wanted to share it with everyone who reads my blog. The three sang that well.

When I went find it, I could not. Knowing how Virginia feels about music, I asked her to look. She is. In the meantime, Virginia sent me a video of the original Three Tenors Luciano Pavarotte, Placido Domingo, and Jose Carreras. A performance they gave in Italy in 1994.

Moving!

Enjoy your day!

  COCKTAILS AT 5 was originally published on Key West Lou

[verycleverboy]

Welcome to October 5th.

Where we are today: President Donald Trump continues to be treated for COVID-19 at Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. According to the man himself, he is scheduled to be released at 6:30pm this evening, after which he would continue to be treated at the White House, although questions are still flying about whether that release timetable is too soon.

Indications are that Trump is beginning to get a little stir crazy, and possibly still isn’t taking his disease seriously. A controversial drive around the block to wave at well-wishers, putting everyone in the hermetically-sealed SUV at risk of infection or possibly death for the sake of a photo op, was followed by reports that he was demanding his release on Sunday. “He is done with the hospital,” sources told CNN.

While he was waiting this morning, Trump fired off a tweet storm, his first since entering Walter Reed. He claims he “understands” the virus now that he has it, but read the last paragraph again, along with what may eventually shape up to be a historically infamous message to his loyalists, and see if you agree.

Meanwhile, as new cases in the President’s circle and Congress come to light, the administration’s handling of Trump’s illness, and their internal COVID-19 response in general, has come under fire. Yesterday, The White House Management Office sent its first staff-wide email since the President’s condition was revealed, leaving staffers in the dark all weekend as to what was expected of them when the work week began. A State Department cable from the weekend surfaced today, instructing American diplomatic posts what to say about the President’s diagnosis without giving details on the President’s health. According to CNN, many diplomats didn’t see the guidance message until they were forwarded it on Monday morning.

The most telling messaging failure came yesterday, when White House communications aide Alyssa Farah’s assertion that the West Wing would be releasing numbers of staffers who have tested positive for coronavirus was contradicted later in the afternoon by press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who said that would not be happening due to privacy concerns. Then Monday morning came, and McEnany became one of those numbers. So it goes.

Meanwhile, both Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who comes after Mike Pence in the line of succession if things take a turn) are getting updates on Trump’s condition from the media, not from the White House  Transparency isn’t in the cards in an administration where painting over the windows is the standard operating procedure.

Mitch McConnell has adjourned the Senate for a two-week recess in light of recent positive developments, but in spite of three members of the Senate Judiciary Committee either being positive cases or in precautionary self-quarantine, he still says the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Amy Coney Barrett are going forward as scheduled. 

First Lady Melania Trump, who did not join her husband at Walter Reed, continues to rest at the White House during her recovery.

Other confirmed positives for COVID-19:

(This is not intended to be a complete list, and is based on news reports concerning those who are known to have been in contact with other infected individuals in connection with recent events. Status changes since last night will be listed in bold. Updated throughout the day as new information becomes available from the CNN, NBC News, and CBS News live update pages.)

White House

Hope Hicks: Began showing symptoms on Wednesday, tested positive on Thursday morning. Was not in attendance at Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination event on September 26th.

Nicholas Luna, personal assistant to the President: Luna is a “body man”, whose duties require him to be in close proximity to the President at all times.

Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary:  She was not aware of the Hicks diagnosis when she addressed the press on Thursday.

Chad Gilmartin and Karoline Leavitt, members of Kayleigh McEnany’s staff.

Three initially unidentified members of the White House press corps and an unidentified staffer who works with the media. Per the White House Correspondents’ Association president Zeke Miller: Individual #1 attended a Sunday briefing and tested positive on Friday after exhibiting symptoms on Thursday. Individual #2 (later confirmed to be Michael Shear of the New York Times) was part of the press pool which traveled to last Saturday’s Pennsylvania rally; also exhibited symptoms on Thursday and tested positive on Friday. Individual #3 was in the press pool for the Barrett Rose Garden event and also travelled with the press pool on Sunday. #3 exhibited symptoms on Wednesday and tested positive Friday afternoon. The press at the Barret event were confined in a crowded “penlike enclosure” behind the invited guests (per Washington Post).

Campaign personnel

Chris Christie: Attended the Barrett nomination event and was part of Trump debate prep. Christie, whose asthma puts him in a higher risk group, checked himself into Morristown Medical Center as a precautionary measure.

Kellyanne Conway: Attended the Barrett nomination event and was part of Trump debate prep. The initial news came in the form of a string of snarky Tiktok posts on Friday from her daughter Claudia, followed much later by a confirmation from Kellyanne herself.

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel: Isolating at home since last Saturday, tested Wednesday.

Bill Stepien, current Trump 2020 campaign manager: In the White House on Monday, in Cleveland for Tuesday’s presidential debate, traveled with Trump and Hicks aboard Air Force One afterwards.

US Congress

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Per CNN: “Johnson was not at the Amy Coney Barrett ceremony because he was quarantining from a prior exposure, during which he twice tested negative for the virus, according to the spokesperson.” He was exposed “shortly after” returning to Washington.

Sen. Mike Lee, (R-UT): Attended the Barrett nomination event.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC): Attended the Barrett nomination event.

Others

University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, CSC: Attended the Barrett nomination event. Jenkins was told that he didn’t need to wear a mask to the event after he and other guests tested negative at the White House.

Confirmed negatives:

(Because of the nature of COVID-19, this list is subject to change.)

Mike and Karen Pence: The Pences have been testing daily since the announcement of the Trumps’ diagnosis.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner: Recently traveled with Hope Hicks

Barron Trump

Eric Trump (at debate)

Lara Trump (at debate)

Donald Trump Jr. (flew on Air Force One to Cleveland debate, did not fly back)

Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff

Stephen Miller, Senior Advisor to the President

Pat Cipollone, White House counsel

Dan Scavino, Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and Director of Social Media

HHS Secretary Alex Azar

Attorney General Bill Barr

Defense Secretary Mark Esper

WH Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany

Justin Clark, deputy campaign manager

Rudy Giuliani: Was in Trump debate prep.

Jason Miller: Was in Trump debate prep.

Alice Marie Johnson (flew on Air Force One to Cleveland debate)

Judge Amy Coney Barrett: Barrett and her husband had coronavirus earlier this year and recovered, per AP News.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, (D-CA): Tested out of "an abundance of caution” because of Steve Mnuchin meeting earlier this week.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): Few on Air Force One to Cleveland debate, did not fly back.

DNC Chairman Tom Perez: In front row for Tuesday’s debate.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO):  Attended the Barrett nomination event, was seen there without a face covering.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): Precautionary quarantine because of close contact with COVID-19-positive individuals.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE): Precautionary quarantine because of close contact with COVID-19-positive individuals.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK):  Precautionary quarantine because of close contact with COVID-19-positive individuals.

Status unknown as of Monday midday:

Kimberly Guilfoyle (at debate)

Alyssa Farah, White House Director of Strategic Communications

Robert O’Brien, national security adviser (tested positive for coronavirus in July)

Tiffany Trump (at debate)

Derek Lyons,  Counselor to the President

Sen. Chuck Grassley, (R-IA), Senate pro tem: Declined to be tested, claiming physician’s advice as his reason; attended a meeting Thursday with Sen. Mike Lee.

30-50 donors who were in close contact with President Trump during an in-person event held at Trump’s Bedminster golf club on Thursday night. According to the official story, the event was held hours before President Trump’s positive test came back, but Hicks’s positive came back immediately before he left (although for a variety of reasons, the validity of that timeline is up in the air). 

And because they’re stuck in this story, too:

Joe and Jill Biden: negative, committed to regular testing on all campaign event days.

Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff: negative

(A necessary reminder: Incubation time of COVID-19 varies among infected individuals, and some of the “rapid” tests have a high rate of false negatives, so this list is subject to change in both directions as new information is made available.)

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to a weekly collaboration between FiveThirtyEight and ABC News. With 5,000 people seemingly thinking about challenging President Trump in 2020 — Democrats and even some Republicans — we’re keeping tabs on the field as it develops. Each week, we’ll run through what the potential candidates are up to — who’s getting closer to officially jumping in the ring and who’s getting further away.

This week, the presidential field grew more diverse with the entrance of Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Harris — who was born to an Indian mother and Jamaican father — announced her presidential campaign on “Good Morning America” and Buttigieg — who could make history as the nation’s first openly gay presidential nominee of a major party — posted video about his forming an exploratory committee on Wednesday.

They join a growing and diverse field of Democratic hopefuls, a cadre that could prove too large for a single debate at the first opportunity in June. Anticipating a crowded field, Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez revealed in December that the DNC would set thresholds, including polling and fundraising targets, to pare down the first group of candidates, then “draw lots,” should the group still be too large. However, the DNC has yet to reveal specific targets for those thresholds, but some figures — including Harris, who aides tell ABC News brought in $1.5 million in her first day as a candidate — are already clearly aiming for one of the coveted spots.

Jan. 18-24, 2019

Michael Bennet (D)

The Colorado senator attracted attention Thursday when he criticized fellow Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Bennet labeled Cruz’s current government shutdown-related concerns “crocodile tears,” and reminded Cruz of actions that led to a 2013 shutdown while Bennet’s home state was dealing with flooding.

Asked on MSNBC Thursday afternoon whether he was running for president, Bennet said he was “thinking about it … like every other person in [the Senate.]”

Joe Biden (D)

At a National Action Network Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast in Washington, Biden said that white Americans need to acknowledge and admit the fact that systemic racism still exists and must be rooted out.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that in a paid speech given by Biden in Michigan in October, the former vice president praised Republican Rep. Fred Upton, who then went on to defeat his Democratic opponent. The remarks were criticized by local Democrats, who saw it as a damaging error, according to the Times report. On Friday, at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Biden defended the speech, explaining that he was proud of Upton’s work on a cancer research funding bill and argued that not everything should be viewed through the lens of partisanship.

Michael Bloomberg (D)

Bloomberg spoke at a National Action Network Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast in Washington on Monday, during which he joked he would ask former Vice President Joe Biden, who was also in attendance, for tips on living in Washington. He added, of himself and Biden: “I know we’ll both keep our eyes on the real prize, and that is electing a Democrat to the White House in 2020, and getting our country back on track.”

The former New York City mayor faced criticism from Democrats this week after defending the use of stop-and-frisk policing during a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland Tuesday, and labeling efforts to legalize marijuana “perhaps the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.”

Cory Booker (D)

The New Jersey senator spoke at a South Carolina statehouse rally on Martin Luther King Jr. Day Monday after brief stops over the weekend in Louisiana and Georgia. In Georgia, Booker met with former President Jimmy Carter and the pair appeared on an Instagram Live video. “I’m very glad to have you here this morning, and I hope you come back,” Carter said to Booker. “And I hope you run for president.”

Sherrod Brown (D)

On Wednesday, Brown told MSNBC that he continues to “very seriously” consider a presidential campaign. As has been the case in past interviews on the subject, the Ohio senator referred to the importance of Democrats competing in the center of the country and a focus on employment and job conditions.

“To win Ohio, to win the industrial Midwest, the heartland, and the Electoral College you’ve got to speak to the progressive base, to be sure, as I have my whole career, but you’ve got to talk to workers and live where they live,” he said, later echoing the sentiment on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” where he said his party can’t choose between progressives and workers, but represent both groups.

Brown kicks off his “Dignity of Work” tour in Cleveland on Wednesday, followed by a visit to Iowa Thursday.

Pete Buttigieg (D)

Buttigieg announced the formation of a presidential exploratory committee Wednesday, with the 37-year-old South Bend, Indiana mayor explaining that he felt it was time for a generational shift in the nation’s leadership.

“I belong to a generation that is stepping forward right now,” Buttigieg said in a video announcing the committee, “We’re the generation that lived through school shootings, that served in the wars after 9/11. And we’re the generation that stands to be the first to make less than our parents, unless we do something different.”

Asked Wednesday by KCBS about potential concerns about his youth and experience, Buttigieg said his two terms as mayor and service in the Navy were more executive and military experience than President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

Julian Castro (D)

Castro spent Martin Luther King Jr. Day in San Antonio, where he took part in the city’s parade, marching alongside his brother Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas.

An adviser to Castro told The Daily Beast that the former Housing and Urban Development secretary’s campaign already formulated workplace harassment policies and that it would support unionization among its staffers, should they decide to do so.

John Delaney (D)

Delaney spent last weekend in New Hampshire at multiple meet-and-greet events and attended the Concord Women’s March. After speaking with reporters and editors at the Nashua Telegraph last Friday, the newspaper’s editorial board described the former Maryland congressman as “somewhat impressive.”

Tulsi Gabbard (D)

In an interview with CNN Sunday, Gabbard said she did not regret her 2017 meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, arguing that it is “very important for any leader in this country to be willing to meet with others, whether they be friends or adversaries or potential adversaries if we are serious about the pursuit of peace and securing our country.”

Eric Garcetti (D)

Garcetti helped facilitate negotiations in the Los Angeles teacher strike, which ended in a deal that the mayor called “a historic agreement.”

Jeff Flake (R)

At a Vanderbilt University panel, Flake criticized the Republican Party for moving away from “traditional conservatism.” He also said, “The Trump base is very real, very solid, but politically it’s just not large enough to carry ahead. I say that’s a good thing.”

Despite his differences with the president, Flake said at the event, “I hope we don’t go through an impeachment process because of what it does to a divided public.”

Kirsten Gillibrand (D)

In her first week since the announcement of her presidential exploratory committee, Gillibrand visited Iowa, where she addressed the Des Moines Women’s March Saturday. The New York senator addressed allegations of anti-Semitism against two of the Women’s March leaders, saying that there was “no room for anti-Semitism” in the movement and that the movement is empowered when everyone lifts each other.

At additional stops across Iowa, Gillibrand explained the moderate positions dotting her past, including her former defense of the Second Amendment: “I had only really looked at guns through the lens of hunting. My mom still shoots the Thanksgiving turkey,” she said, later noting that the NRA now gives her an F rating.

On Monday, Gillibrand spoke at the National Action Network’s King Day Public Policy Forum in New York, invoking the Bible as she discussed “speak[ing] truth to power,” in a moment that NAN’s founder Al Sharpton characterized as “preaching.”

Kamala Harris (D)

Harris officially announced Monday that she is running for president, telling ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she feels “a sense of responsibility to stand up and fight for the best of who we are” and that she’s confident in her “ability to lead” and “listen and to work on behalf of the American public.” She then grabbed a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich, before heading back to Washington and answering questions from reporters at her alma mater, Howard University.

In the 24 hours following her announcement, aides to Harris told ABC News their campaign raised $1.5 million from 38,000 donors.

The California senator hits the campaign trail starting Friday in South Carolina to speak at an event held by a local chapter of her sorority. On Sunday, Harris will hold a campaign launch event in Oakland, then on Monday she’ll participate in a CNN townhall in Iowa.

John Hickenlooper (D)

On Sunday, the former Colorado governor is visiting Iowa for a stop at a house party and a local brewery, one of his advisers told ABC News. On Tuesday, he told CNN that he would decide whether to run for president by March, and that he could separate himself for the field by sharing his bipartisan record.

“I’m probably one of the few, if not the only candidate who’s actually been able to bring people together who were in conflict, they were feuding, and get them to put down their weapons, take the time to hear each other and then actually achieve progressive goals through their willingness to work together and create a compromise,” Hickenlooper said.

Jay Inslee (D)

The Washington governor visited New Hampshire Tuesday to speak with students at Dartmouth and Saint Anselm colleges. He spent much of his time talking about climate change, an issue he claimed wasn’t being highlighted by other possible presidential nominees.

“Here’s an existential threat to the United States, and they do their rollouts and the words ‘climate change’ don’t appear,” he said.

Inslee also told the Associated Press that he’s been emailing with the billionaire Tom Steyer, a fellow environmentalist who recently passed on a presidential run of his own, but who has not committed to supporting another candidate.

John Kasich (R)

Kasich repeated a position he’s shared before when asked about a potential 2020 run during a question and answer session at the University of Florida Wednesday: “If I can’t win, I’m not going to do it,” he said.

The former Ohio governor wrote an op-ed for the Boston Globe to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He decried the political division that led to the ongoing government shutdown and called upon Americans to take personal action to better their communities.

“Instead of sitting around worrying about what’s broken and not working in Washington, we’ve got to get off the couch and figure out what we can do by ourselves — right here at home, where we live. Volunteer at the food bank. Engage with your schools if something needs to be fixed. Drop in on a neighbor who has no one else to listen,” he wrote. “The opportunities are there, but we need to grasp them. That’s the cure for the breakdown in Washington.”

John Kerry (D)

Asked during a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, if he had any message for Trump, Kerry answered that he should “resign.”

Amy Klobuchar (D)

Klobuchar delivered last week’s weekly Democratic address, criticizing Trump for “holding the hardworking people of America hostage by requiring them to pay ransom to reopen their government,” referring to Trump’s insistence on the inclusion of border wall funding in any appropriations bill to end the government shutdown.

Mitch Landrieu (D)

Landrieu spoke to MSNBC Wednesday where he discussed the government shutdown, saying, “The president is way stuck on stupid right now.”

“There is no mayor in America in his right mind, or her right mind, that would ever think about shutting down the government,” the former New Orleans mayor continued. “This is why the people of America are really frustrated with Washington.”

Terry McAuliffe (D)

Though he didn’t definitively commit to the race, McAuliffe told the New York Posts’s Page Six of a presidential run: “It’s not easy — but I’m a heck of a fighter.”

The Associated Press dug into McAuliffe’s PAC’s 2018 spending and found that it raised over $300,000 in the second half of 2018 and spent money on donations to the state Democratic parties of New Hampshire and Iowa — expenditures that a spokesperson maintains said were not related to a presidential campaign.

“Funds from Common Good were used to support governor candidates and state parties across the country who share Governor McAuliffe’s values,” Carson told the AP, adding that the PAC is closing.

Jeff Merkley (D)

In an interview with the Associated Press, Merkley said he would decide on a presidential run before the end of April.

Beto O’Rourke (D)

O’Rourke continued his tour of the American heartland, visiting Kansas and Colorado this week and blogging about it — to some mockery — along the way.

The New York Times reported Saturday that some Democrats were perturbed by O’Rourke’s individualistic style, and his merely lukewarm embrace of fellow Texas Democrat Gina Ortiz-Jones during the midterms.

Mother Jones dug up a video of O’Rourke covering The Ramones in a onesie and a sheep mask.

Bernie Sanders (D)

Sanders spoke at a rally at South Carolina’s statehouse on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and remained in the Palmetto State for three additional events on Tuesday. During a NAACP forum he said of a presidential campaign, “I’m going to look at it; I’m going to assess it.”

In a GQ profile Thursday, Sanders detailed what he felt his 2016 presidential campaign was able to achieve, even without capturing the Democratic nomination. ““We have had more success in ideologically changing the party than I would have dreamed possible,” he said. “The world has changed.”

Howard Schultz (D)

Advisers to the former Starbucks CEO are probing the possibility of an independent presidential campaign, The Washington Post reported last Friday, citing two sources with knowledge of the conversations. CNN matched the story Monday, quoting a source who said Schultz is “thinking deeply about his future and how he can best serve the country.”

Eric Swalwell (D)

Swalwell visited South Carolina Saturday to speak at the Greenville Women’s March and a gala for the Spartanburg County Democratic Party. During the day, he told the Spartanburg Herald Journal that he is “getting close to deciding” about a presidential run and discussed the role that the state will play in deciding the Democratic nominee.

“Any presidential contender better come through Spartanburg County if they are going to be in the White House,” he said. “It’s a steep mountain to climb for a Democrat in South Carolina since the state is mostly Republican.”

Elizabeth Warren (D)

Though still only in the exploratory committee phase, Warren continues to travel. She held an organizing event in New Hampshire last Friday, attended a Martin Luther King Jr. Day memorial breakfast in Boston Monday, visited Puerto Rico for a “community conversation” Tuesday, and visited South Carolina for another organizing event Wednesday. Friday, Warren stops in Las Vegas for an additional organizing event.

The Massachusetts senator was asked about the state of the presidential race in a CNN interview Tuesday, demurring when questioned whether she was “too far to the left.”

“I’m out talking about the economic issues, about how government works, about what’s happening to middle class families, working families, all across this country — why the path has gotten rockier and rockier. This is what I’ve worked on all of my life,” Warren said. “I’m delighted that there are lots of Democrats who want to talk about ideas, who want to talk about a way to build a stronger America; I believe in that.

Andrew Yang (D)

Yang, an entrepreneur, was interviewed by Rolling Stone this week about his under-the-radar campaign, where he explained why he was running for president.

“I was stunned when I saw the disparities between Detroit and San Francisco or Cleveland and Manhattan. You feel like you’re traveling across dimensions and decades and not just a couple of time zones,” he said. “None of our political leaders are willing to acknowledge the elephant in the room that is tearing our communities apart, in the form of technological change.”

He additionally outlined a key component of his platform: a universal basic income of $1,000 per month for all Americans 18 and older, which would be funded by a value-added tax, explaining: “If you have a town in Missouri with 50,000 adults and they’re all getting $1,000 a month, that’s another $50 million in purchasing power that comes right into that town’s local economy — into car repairs, tutoring or food for your kids, the occasional night out, home repairs. And that money ends up circulating all through that town.”