Category: Republican Reality

Justice Dept. Warns States on Voting Laws and Election Audits

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The department said that auditors could face criminal or civil penalties if they flouted elections laws.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Wednesday sent another warning shot to Republican state legislatures that have initiated private audits of voting tabulations broadly viewed as efforts to cast doubt on the results of the presidential election.

The department warned that auditors could face criminal and civil penalties if they destroy any records related to the election or intimidate voters in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and federal laws prohibiting voter intimidation.

The admonishment came in election-related guidance documentsissued as part of the department’s larger plan to protect access to the polls, announced by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in June. Another document released on Wednesday outlined federal laws on how ballots are cast and said that the department could scrutinize states that revert to prepandemic voting procedures, which may not have allowed as many people to vote early or by mail. Continue reading.

Charlie Kirk’s pro-Trump youth group stokes vaccine resistance as covid surges again

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Turning Point USA and its affiliates are urging students to resist mandates and spreading baseless claims about ‘medical raids’ as part of a bid for donations

A young emergency room doctor stood before dozens of students in a Tampa convention center this month and gave them a script for resisting coronavirusvaccines.

“You say, ‘I’m 18 years old. I have no health conditions. Based on the five-year mortality data, I have a highly likelihood of dying from flu versus covid, and I don’t get the flu vaccine, so I’m not going to get this one,’” Sean Ochsenbein, a 33-year-old attending physician in Johnson City, Tenn., told students gathered for a summit hosted by the conservative youth group Turning Point USA, according to a recording of the session obtained by The Washington Post. “Drop the mic. You’re done. That’s it.”

That presentation is just one way the group led by Charlie Kirk, 27, has recently sought to rally young people against vaccine mandates. Continue reading.

As Trump pushed for probes of 2020 election, he called acting AG Rosen almost daily

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President Donald Trump called his acting attorney general nearly every day at the end of last year to alert him to claims of voter fraud or alleged improper vote counts in the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

The personal pressure campaign, which has not been previously reported, involved repeated phone calls to acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen in which Trump raised various allegations he had heard about and asked what the Justice Department was doing about the issue. The people familiar with the conversations spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive legal and political issues that are not yet public.

Rosen told few people about the phone calls, even in his inner circle. But there are notes of some of the calls that were written by a top aide to Rosen, Richard Donoghue, who was present for some of the conversations, these people said. Continue reading.

Paul Krugman: GOP ‘family values’ rhetoric is as ‘intellectually bankrupt’ now as it was in 1992

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“Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, who is seeking the GOP nomination in Ohio’s 2022 U.S. Senate race, was cynically playing the family values card when he railed against the “childless left” during a speech on Friday night, July 23 — and he even mentioned some Democrats by name. Liberal economist Paul Krugman has responded to Vance’s speech in his July 26 column for the New York Times, stressing that Republican “family values” rhetoric is as empty and vacuous in 2021 as it was when the GOP made “family values” the theme of the 1992 Republican National Convention.

Vance was speaking at an event hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Democrats he singled out as examples of the “childless” trend in the U.S. included Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City. And Vance praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — a far-right authoritarian — for encouraging more procreation in his country. Booker and AOC, reporter Martin Pengelly noted in The Guardian, don’t have any children. Harris has two stepchildren with her husband, Doug Emhoff.

Vance’s speech, Krugman writes, brought back memories of the GOP’s “family values” rhetoric of 1992. Continue reading.

GOP liaison to Arizona reverses course after vowing to resign

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Twitter recently suspended a number of pro-election-audit accounts — including one that’s been cited as the partisan ballot review’s official page.

The Republican serving as liaison between the Arizona state Senate and the private company conducting a partisan ballot review said Wednesday that he intended to resign, then walked it back.

Ken Bennett, a former Arizona secretary of state, said he’d decided to resign when it became clear he would not regain access to the Phoenix fairgrounds where the private company, Cyber Ninjas, continues its examination of millions of ballots cast last November in Maricopa County.

“Right now I’m the liaison in name only,” he told conservative radio host James Harris on Wednesday morning. “I don’t know if that makes me a LINO or what.” Continue reading.

Turns Out Mo Brooks Was Wearing Body Armor to Trump’s Very Peaceful Jan. 6 Rally

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Rep. Mo Brooks may be done with Jan. 6, but Jan. 6 isn’t done with him.

The Alabama representative, notorious for his speaking role at the Jan. 6 rally leading up to the invasion of the Capitol, did not watch Tuesday’s first hearing of the House select committee investigating said invasion.

“I was in the House Armed Services Committee, Science, Space, Technology Committee, and had at least one Zoom meeting, and all sorts of other things,” he told me Wednesday when I encountered him outside the House chamber. “Busy day.” Not that a clear schedule would have made a difference. Continue reading.

Scoop: Trump team blames conservative for loser endorsement

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Donald Trump’s advisers are angry at David McIntosh, president of the conservative Club for Growth, for persuading the former president to endorse a losing candidate in the special election for Texas’ 6th District.

Why it matters: Susan Wright’s defeat Tuesday in a Republican runoff with Navy veteran Jake Ellzey dealt a blow to Trump’s aura of invincibility as a Republican kingmaker. It’s critical to his 2022 midterm endorsements and continued hold on the GOP.

  • Trump advisers and allies have been ambivalent about the Club’s advice and thought he should stay out of this Republican-on-Republican contest. Continue reading.

GOP ‘holds’ threaten quick action on supplemental spending bill

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Funds included for National Guard deployments, Afghan relocation

A $2.1 billion emergency spending bill to bolster Capitol Hill security, reimburse the National Guard and relocate Afghans who helped the U.S. government during two decades of war in that country stalled Wednesday after several Senate Republicans put holds on the bill.

Senate Appropriations ranking member Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., said as many as seven lawmakers have objections to the $1.1 billion the legislation would provide to help relocate Afghans to ensure their safety as U.S. troops withdraw.

“I believe we have an obligation to the Afghan people who are our allies, who helped us. We know what’s going to happen to a lot of those people,” Shelby said, adding that it would be “shameful” not to help those Afghans now. Continue reading.

‘Do your job’: Was Line 3 message from powerful Minnesota legislator a form of intimidation — or ‘respectful’ advocacy?

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A voicemail from Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka to then-MPCA Commissioner Laura Bishop about Enbridge’s controversial oil pipeline project offers a rare glimpse of political machinations at the Minnesota Capitol. 

In the fall of 2020, Laura Bishop, then commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, got an unusual voicemail.

Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka, a Republican from East Gull Lake, had called her to urge the approval of a key water-quality permit for Enbridge Energy’s planned Line 3 oil pipeline. For years, the 337-mile pipeline across northern Minnesota has been one of the state’s most controversial environmental issues, and Enbridge needed what’s known as a 401 certification before construction could begin.

Listen: Gazelka’s voicemail to Bishop

“I just can’t stress enough how important it is that you do your job with these and that the permits get issued,” Gazelka told Bishop.

The false GOP claim that Pelosi turned down National Guard before Jan. 6 attack

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“There’s questions into the leadership within, the structure of the speaker’s office, where they denied the ability to bring the National Guard here. … We start with a committee chair who will tell you, ‘Everything’s on the table except the speaker’s office.’ How can you ever get to the bottom of the questions? How can you ever get to the solutions to make sure the Capitol is never put in this position again?”

— House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), at a news conference, July 27, 2021

“It is a fact that … in December of 2020, Nancy Pelosi was made aware of potential security threats to the Capitol and she failed to act. It is a fact that the U.S. Capitol Police raised concerns and rather than providing them with the support and resources they needed and they deserved, she prioritized her partisan political optics over their safety.”

— House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), at the news conference, July 27, 2021

Republicans accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of failing to protect the U.S. Capitol from the attack on Jan. 6, claiming she ignored warnings about potential threats and denied a request to bring in reinforcements from the National Guard.

Many fact-checkers have rated these claims false. In March, we gave Four Pinocchios to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a close ally of former president Donald Trump, for leveling the same accusation at Pelosi without proof.

Five months later, it’s not just Jordan anymore. In a news conference held moments before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack held its first hearing, McCarthy and Stefanik, two top Republican leaders, said Pelosi failed to act on warning signs leading up to the riot. Continue reading.