Trump ridiculed for accepting ‘participation trophy’ after Rick Scott shares photo of ‘pathetic’ award

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Donald Trump was mocked on Monday after Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) shared a photo of a so-called Champion of Freedom Award that was given to the former president over the weekend.

The photo was taken at a Saturday event where Trump called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a “dumb son of a bitch.” But the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) promoted the event by retweeting Scott’s photo on Monday.

The photo was taken at a Saturday event where Trump called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a “dumb son of a bitch.” But the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) promoted the event by retweeting Scott’s photo on Monday. Continue reading.

Texas Attorney General Paxton Won’t Release Texts He Sent During Capitol Riot

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is refusing to release text messages that he either sent or received while attending the pro-Donald Trump rally that devolved into the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan 6, which resulted in five casualties.

Several news outlets are attempting to obtain copies of the attorney general’s work-related email and text communications, despite Paxton’s office being uncooperative. The Texas Public Information Act ensures the public’s right to public officials’ government records.

Lauren Downey, the public information coordinator at the Office of the Attorney General, said, “The Office of the Attorney General is in full compliance with the Public Information Act.” Continue reading.

How the corporate backlash to Georgia’s new voting law is shaping other fights around the country over access to the polls

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Behind closed doors, aides to Georgia’s top Republicans and its leading business interests spent the final days of March hashing out new voting legislation in an effort to quell a growing outcry that GOP lawmakers were pushing measures that would severely curtail access to the polls.

The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and representatives of major corporations, including ­Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, worked directly with legislative leadersand the office of Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to exclude some of the more controversial proposals, according to people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Republicans agreed to drop, for instance, language barring most Georgians from voting by mail and curtailing early voting on weekends. They even expanded early-voting hours in the final bill.

The hope of Republicans involved, according to a half-dozen people familiar with the process, was to pull off a delicate political balancing act: satisfying voters who believe former president Donald Trump’s false claims that he lost the 2020 election because of rampant fraud — while heading off accusations of voter suppression from the left. Continue reading.

More than 100 corporate executives hold call to discuss halting donations and investments to fight controversial voting bills

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More than 100 chief executives and corporate leaders gathered online Saturday to discuss taking new action to combat the controversial state voting bills being considered across the country, including the one recently signed into law in Georgia.

Executives from major airlines, retailers and manufacturers — plus at least one NFL owner — talked about potential ways to show they opposed the legislation, including by halting donations to politicians who support the bills and even delaying investments in states that pass the restrictive measures, according to four people who were on the call, including one of the organizers, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor.

While no final steps were agreed upon, the meeting represents an aggressive dialing up of corporate America’s stand against controversial voting measures nationwide, a sign that their opposition to the laws didn’t end with the fight against the Georgia legislation passed in March. Continue reading.

Democrats see opportunity in GOP feud with business

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The feud between Republicans and major corporations over voting laws is creating an opportunity for Democrats and President Biden to build new political ties.

GOP ties with big business frayed during the Trump era, when corporations sometimes found themselves at the end of then-President Trump’s barbs, and were often uncomfortable with his rhetoric about women, minorities and immigrants. 

Now the tensions are rising again as companies speak out against Georgia’s voting law, and Major League Baseball pulls its All-Star Game from Atlanta in protest. Continue reading.

Democrats see political winner in tax fight

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As President Biden races ahead with a mammoth plan to bolster the nation’s infrastructure, Democrats are gambling they’ll get a political boost from an accompanying proposal: the tax hikes designed to defray the massive costs.

Biden on Wednesday outlined a slate of tax reforms aimed at raising $2.5 trillion — much of it from large corporations — to underwrite the new infrastructure spending. The proposal was quickly roasted by Republicans, who have long portrayed Democrats as the party of higher taxes and are now warning that Biden’s plan would hurt small businesses and kill American jobs.

Yet national polls have consistently revealed that tax hikes on corporations and other wealthy taxpayers enjoy strong support among a broad array of voters, including independents. And some Democrats are practically drooling at the prospect of bringing that debate to the national stage to highlight the GOP’s resistance to a popular concept. Continue reading.

EXCLUSIVE: Leaked chats show Proud Boys integral to planning for ‘White Lives Matter’ rallies

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Two self-identified Proud Boys have been involved in the internal planning for a set of simultaneous “White Lives Matter” rallies scheduled for Sunday, according to chat logs leaked to the media.

The association with the White Lives Matter rallies, which are promoting overtly white supremacist messages about a supposed white genocide, is a liability for the Proud Boys, a violent proto-fascist group that claims to be non-racist. The leaked chats show that a Proud Boy responsible for organizing the Michigan White Lives Matter rally went to some effort to hide the fact that members of his group are involved in the effort.

The Telegram user “Telly Savalas,” who was the admin for the @WLM_Michigan channel, expressed concern on April 5 about a user named “BamaPatriot 2º” who wrote, “POYB,” with an A-OK emoji. Those are signifiers associated with the Proud Boys. Continue reading.

This columnist pulls the mask off far-right Sen. Josh Hawley as he tries to play the victim

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During a Thursday-night appearance on Fox News this week, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri railed against the “woke corporations” that have been speaking out against Georgia’s new voter suppression law. Georgia-based companies like Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola have been among the law’s outspoken opponents, and Major League Baseball has decided to move its 2021 All-Star Game from Georgia to Colorado because of the law — all of which infuriates Hawley. Liberal Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent is vehemently critical of Hawley’s comments in his Friday column, stressing that although the far-right Republican senator promotes himself as a populist, there is nothing populist about voter suppression.

On Fox News, the-far Hawley complained, “What’s happening in Georgia is what they tried to do to those of us who stood up for election integrity back in January. Anyone who has said that our elections need to be free, they need to be fair, we need to consider election reform — they try to cancel you. And now, the woke corporations are trying to do the same thing to Georgia. And they’re going to try to do it to anybody, any state, any person who stands up for election integrity.”

Hawley was trying to paint himself as a victim. But as Sargent points out, the far-right Missouri senator was being very anti-democracy when he refused to honor the results of the 2020 presidential election — and he is being just as anti-democracy now by supporting voter suppression in Georgia. Continue reading.

GOP leaders in ‘a state of confusion’ after Trump’s loss leaves them with almost no policy agenda: NYT

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While President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress were pushing through a massive pandemic relief package earlier this year, the leaders of the Republican Party seemed obsessed with talking about Dr. Seuss.

As the New York Times reports, this is a marked difference in how Republicans in 2009 were relentlessly focused on attacking former President Barack Obama’s “socialist” economic and health care plans, and it marks a shift in the party toward non-stop culture war grievance above all else.

The Times notes that the all-culture-war-all-the-time focus of the GOP has left party leaders in “a state of confusion over what they stand for,” with many of them now going so far as to say they want corporate America to stay out of politics. Continue reading.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn: Taking care of our elders is a waste of taxpayer dollars

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She’s also voted to strip health care from Americans with preexisting conditions and deny parental leave to federal employees.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Wednesday criticized President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion jobs and infrastructure proposal, the American Jobs Plan — specifically because it includes funding for caretaking of the elderly.

“President Biden’s proposal is about anything but infrastructure,” she tweeted, alongside an image superimposed with large text reading, “400 BILLION TOWARDS ELDER CARE.”

Biden’s plan proposes to allot approximately $400 billion, disbursed over an eight-year time period, toward care for the elderly and those with disabilities. The funding is specifically intended to bolster “home- or community- based care” for these groups, and would extend Money Follows the Person, a Medicaid program which aims to move elderly nursing home residents back into home-based care. Continue reading.