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Police Report Reveals Disturbing Details Of Hegseth Sex Assault Charge

Police Report Reveals Disturbing Details Of Hegseth Sex Assault Charge

The police report detailing the sexual assault allegations against Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's pick for secretary of defense, will make your stomach churn.

According to a 22-page report, Hegseth was accused of raping an unconscious victim in the early hours of October 8, 2017, at a hotel after a Republican women's conference event in Monterey, California. The alleged rape was first reported to police by an emergency room nurse who treated the victim.

The victim, listed as Jane Doe in the police report, said she believes she was drugged at the event at a Hyatt Hotel, and "cannot remember most of the night's events." The victim said she had approached Hegseth at the event and told him she "did not appreciate how he treated women" after she saw him rubbing women "on their legs.”

During the confrontation, Jane Doe remembered Hegseth telling her he was a “nice guy.”

The next thing she remembered was being in an unfamiliar hotel room and Hegseth blocking her from leaving it. She told the police he took her phone. Then she said that Hegseth was on top of her and that he ejaculated on her stomach and told her to "clean it up." She remembered “saying ‘no’ a lot,” according to the report.

Through an attorney, Hegseth claimed to The Washington Post that the encounter was consensual. However, he paid the woman to remain silent.

Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, added that the police determined that “the Complainant had been the aggressor in the encounter.”

However, the report does not corroborate that.

What the police report documents was that Hegseth and Jane Doe were seen arguing by a pool at the hotel. A hotel employee, who responded to the incident, said it was Hegseth who “began to curse” when the employee showed up, and told the employee that he had “freedom of speech.” How very Republican of him.

In a statement to The Washington Post, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not address the sexual assault allegation and said Trump is standing by Hegseth to be secretary of Defense.

“Pete Hegseth is a highly-respected Combat Veteran who will honorably serve our country when he is confirmed as the next Secretary of Defense, just like he honorably served our country on the battlefield in uniform,” she said.

Hegseth is merely the latest Trump Cabinet nominee to be dogged by allegations of sexual impropriety.

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services, have both been accused of sexual misconduct.

Gaetz’s nomination to head the Department of Justice is in peril as allegations that he paid a minor for sex at a drug-fueled party are dogging his confirmation.

The New York Times on Wednesday reported that federal investigators, who probed the allegations against Gaetz but decided against filing charges, had records of payments to the women who testified that they were paid for sex by Gaetz.

The House Ethics Committee also probed the allegations. But Republicans on the panel decided on Wednesday to block the report from being made public—apparently caving to the will of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is trying to shield Gaetz from accountability.

The Hill newspaper reported on Thursday that Senate Republicans are worried that Gaetz's confirmation hearing will be like "Kavanaugh on steroids"—referring to the hearings for now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Trump's Supreme Court pick who was also accused of sexual assault.

But given the new details of the rape allegations against Hegseth, his confirmation hearing could be just as bad as Gaetz’s.

It’s unclear what will happen with Gaetz and Hegseth’s nominations. However, Republicans are good at making excuses for sexual assault. Trump himself was found liable for sexual abuse, and has been accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of women, yet Republicans have stood by him the entire time. A party that is fully rotten to the core.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Sean Duffy

Trump Taps 'Road Rules' Ex-Congressman To Run Transportation

Donald Trump has nominated former MTV Real World contestant, current Fox News host, and congressional quitter Sean Duffy as transportation secretary.

Duffy has zero qualifications for the job. He has no experience in the transportation field, which he’d be tasked with regulating and improving as head of the DOT. Maybe Trump picked him because he won both Road Rules: All Stars and Real World/Road Rules: Battle of the Seasons, idiotic shows that had “road” in the title.

“He will prioritize Excellence, Competence, Competitiveness and Beauty when rebuilding America’s highways, tunnels, bridges and airports,” Trump said in a statement, which unnecessarily capitalized numerous words. “He will ensure our ports and dams serve our Economy without compromising our National Security, and he will make our skies safe again by eliminating DEI for pilots and air traffic controllers.”

After his reality-TV career ended, Duffy went on to run for Congress in Wisconsin, where he served for eight years before resigning in 2019. Duffy resigned because he said his ninth child would be born with complications, including a heart condition, and he needed to spend more time on taking care of her.

Over the course of his eight-year tenure, Duffy had just two bills he sponsored signed into law, one of which was the renaming of a post office.

However, when he was in Congress, he did complain that his $174,000 annual salary was too low, saying he had to drive a—gasp—“used minivan.”

“With six kids, I still pay off my student loans. I still pay my mortgage. I drive a used minivan. If you think I’m living high off the hog, I’ve got one paycheck,” Duffy told an angry constituent at a town hall meeting. “So I—I struggle to meet my bills right now. Would it be easier for me if I get more paychecks? Maybe, but at this point I’m not living high off the hog.”

Of course, Duffy’s salary was far higher than the $43,000 average annual salary the rest of Americans earned in 2011, the year Duffy made the comment.

Speaking of salaries—Duffy criticized teachers during an 2022 appearance on Fox News, saying they don't deserve pay raises, even though the national average starting teacher salary this year is $44,530, according to the National Education Association.

After leaving Capitol Hill, Duffy and his unnaturally white teeth became a Fox News contributor and co-host of the Fox Business show The Bottom Line.

While working for the right-wing propaganda networks, he's peddled wild lies and conspiracy theories.

He falsely claimed Disney was trying to "sexualize our children," that white people are now living under a new "Jim Crow," that Democrats are trying to ban cows, and that former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin was associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2018, Duffy blamed the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, on abortion, saying the shooter may have carried out his killing spree because “[w]e dehumanize life in those video games, in those movies, and with abortion.”

Duffy also made an insanely racist comment in 2021 about Native Americans, saying that “they burned villages, raped women, seized children, took their—took the people they defeated, took their lands, scalped people.” Of course, he made no mention of the horrible injustices Native Americans have faced since Europeans colonized their land.

Duffy’s wife, fellow Real World contestant Rachel Campos-Duffy, is also a Fox News contributor, so she will be able to keep up the Duffy presence on the right-wing propaganda network.

Trump, a frequent Fox viewer, even mentioned that in his statement nominating Duffy.

“The husband of a wonderful woman, Rachel Campos-Duffy, a STAR on FoxNews, and the father of nine incredible children, Sean knows how important it is for families to be able to travel safely, and with peace of mind,” Trump wrote.

Don’t get us wrong, Duffy has spoken some truths in his career.

In 2013, Duffy said that Republicans can be "knuckle-dragging Neanderthals."

As the saying goes, a broken clock is right twice a day.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Hacked Court Documents Implicate Gaetz In Misconduct Or Worse

Hacked Court Documents Implicate Gaetz In Misconduct Or Worse

Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz's problems are growing by the day.

The New York Timesreported on Tuesday that a hacker obtained "damaging" testimony both from the Department of Justice investigation into the former congressman’s alleged child sex trafficking, and from the House Ethics Committee's probe into his alleged drug-fueled sex parties.

According to the Times, the hacker obtained 24 exhibits, including sworn testimony from two women: one who said she had sex with Gaetz when she was 17, and another who said she witnessed the two having sex.

The Times reported:

The material apparently taken by the hacker is unredacted and includes the names and other personal information of the witnesses but is otherwise said to be more damaging to Mr. Gaetz than to his accusers, according to the person familiar with the hack. The hacker had not contacted the lawyers as of Tuesday morning, and it was not clear what motive the person might have.

Also looming over Gaetz is whether the House Ethics Committee will release its report from its yearslong probe into a number of allegations around him, including whether he “may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct.”

The committee will meet on Wednesday to decide whether to publicly release the report.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to help Trump get Gaetz confirmed by keeping the report private, saying the Ethics Committee shouldn’t release the report because it would “be a terrible precedent to set” and “open a Pandora’s box” by saying the committee could release information on other former members of Congress. Gaetz resigned his seat shortly after Trump nominated him as attorney general, likely in an effort to keep this report from becoming public since the committee no longer has jurisdiction over former members.

House Ethics Committee Chair Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi said he won't be influenced by Johnson's desires.

“I appreciate Mike reaching out,” Guest told Politico, saying that Johnson called him to express his wishes for the report to remain sealed. “I don't see it having an impact on what we as a committee ultimately decide.”

Nearly 100 House Democrats also signed a letter urging the Ethics Committee to release the report.

From the letter:

We are aware that traditionally, the Ethics Committee stops investigations into alleged misconduct when a member of Congress resigns. However, there is precedent for the House and Senate ethics committees to continue their investigations and release findings after a member has resigned in a scandal. For example, the Committee continued investigating Rep. Eric Massa for inappropriate sexual behavior even after his resignation. Similarly, in 2011, the Senate Ethics Committee publicly released its report on Sen. John Ensign in the days following his resignation and forwarded the report to the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission.

We strongly believe that this situation meets or exceeds those standards. This is not a partisan issue. In a statement to reporters on November 14th, Republican Senator of Texas John Cornyn, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, noted, “I think that there should not be any limitations on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation including whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated.”

Given the seriousness of the charges against Representative Gaetz, withholding the findings of your investigation may jeopardize the Senate's ability to provide fully informed, constitutionally required advice and consent regarding this nomination. Representative Gaetz’s abrupt resignation from Congress should not circumvent the Senate’s ability to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities.

We urge you to immediately release the Ethics Committee’s report into allegations of serious misconduct by former Congressman Matt Gaetz.

Meanwhile, Gaetz’s former House colleagues have been trashing Gaetz publicly.

Republican Rep. Max Miller of Ohio said that Gaetz is "literally worse than gum on the bottom of my shoe.”

“I’m looking at him as a member of Congress and the job that he has done here, and it has been abhorrent,” Miller told CNN. “I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I just say the quiet part out loud, and I wish other of my colleagues would have the same courage to do so.”

Republican Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia criticized Trump for nominating Gaetz in the first place, telling CNN of Trump’s decision to pick Gaetz, “It wasn't my decision to make, but I would have made it differently, I can tell you that."

What’s more, Politicoreported late on Monday that nearly a dozen Senate Republicans wouldn't commit to voting to confirm Gaetz. Of course, most Republicans are cowards who regularly cave to Trump, so you can't count on that many "no" votes in a potential confirmation vote. But the fact that they aren’t gung ho to defend Trump on this one is a telling signal that they don’t want to put their necks out for Gaetz.

Meanwhile, a poll from Echelon Insights, a Republican firm, found that Gaetz is the least popular of the cast of misfits Trump has so far nominated to serve in his administration. According to the survey, just 26 percent strongly or somewhat support Gaetz, while 37 percent strongly or somewhat oppose him—an 11-percentage-point deficit.

Even Trump seems to understand the peril Gaetz’s nomination is in.

The Timesreported that Trump believes Gaetz's chances at confirmation are less than 50-50.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Ryan Walters

Oklahoma Backlash Over Trump 'Prayer Video' Mandate In Public Schools

Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters defended on Monday his decision to force his state’s public schools to show students a video in which he spews right-wing rhetoric and asks students to pray for Donald Trump.

Walters told CNN’s Pamela Brown that his video is following through on Donald Trump's call for bringing prayer back to schools.

"President Trump has a clear mandate. He wants prayer back in school. He wants radical leftism out of the classroom, wants our kids to be patriotic, wants parents back in charge with school choice," Walters said, avoiding Brown’s question about what authority he has to demand students be shown his Christian nationalist prayer. "We are acting upon that agenda here in Oklahoma. That's what our parents want. Every county in Oklahoma voted for President Trump. His agenda is crystal clear, and we're going to enact it in the state of Oklahoma."

But even the state's Republican attorney general says that Walters does not have the authority to force schools to show his video.

"There is no statutory authority for the state schools superintendent to require all students to watch a specific video," Phil Bacharach, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office, told the Oklahoman. "Not only is this edict unenforceable, it is contrary to parents' rights, local control and individual free-exercise rights."

Walters first sent the video to superintendents around the state on November 15, writing in an email:

Dear Superintendent:

We are in a dangerous time for this country. Student’s rights and freedoms regarding religious liberties are continuously under assault. The newly created Department of Religious Liberty and Patriotism will be working to thwart any attempts to disrupt our Oklahoma student’s fundamental freedoms.

In one of the first steps of the newly created department, we are requiring all of Oklahoma schools to play the attached video to all kids that are enrolled. We are also requiring that that school districts send this video to all parents as well.

Students are encouraged but not required to join me in this prayer.

The email linked to this video, in which Walters criticizes the “radical left” and “woke teachers’ unions,” adding, “I pray for our leaders to make the right decisions. I pray, in particular, for President Donald Trump.” (In the video, placed on the desk before Walters are a Bible and a coffee mug with the Latin phrase “Si vis pacem, para bellum,” or “If you want peace, prepare for war.”)

Many of the state's largest school districts aren't showing the video, which seemingly violates the Constitution's separation of church and state.

Oklahoma ranks 49th in the country for grade-school education quality, according to U.S. News & World Report.

Lawmakers in the state are slamming Walters for issuing the unconstitutional mandate to show his inappropriate prayer video.

“We’ve got such a deficiency in reading and mathematics. Those are the things that in public education, I think we need to be focusing on and not a culture war,” Republican state Rep. Mark McBride told a local Oklahoma news station

But rather than fund efforts to better educate Oklahoman kids, Walters is seeking to spend millions of the state's education funding on thousands of Trump-endorsed Bibles for classrooms, which Walters is mandating be taught in all public schools for kids in grades five through 12.

The ACLU is suing Oklahoma over the Bible-education mandate, saying that Walters’ policy “imposes his personal religious beliefs on other people's children—in violation of Oklahomans’ religious freedom and the separation of church and state.”

It’s not the first time Oklahoma has gotten in trouble for trying to infuse religion into public education.

Last June, the Oklahoma Supreme Court in a 7-1 decision blocked a state policy to fund religious charter schools, saying, “Under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school. As such, a charter school must be nonsectarian.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

House GOP Caucus Will Re-Elect Failed Speaker Mike Johnson

House GOP Caucus Will Re-Elect Failed Speaker Mike Johnson

Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana is expected to return as speaker in 2025, leading yet another narrow GOP majority that can barely agree on what color the sky is, let alone pass legislation.

NBC News, ABC News, and CNN all projected on Wednesday that Republicans will maintain control of the House, after the party clinched the 218 needed for a majority. And later that same day, Johnson secured the nomination of the House Republican caucus.

Some right-wing House members crowed about wanting to put up a challenge to Johnson, who became speaker in 2024 basically by accident after Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy and had an internal civil war about whom to replace him with—and Johnson coming out of nowhere to win that fight. But this time, the hard-line conservatives were unable to figure out who would challenge Johnson, according to The Hill.

But after Trump told House Republicans on Wednesday that he supported Johnson for another term as speaker, that opposition melted away.

That's unsurprising since when Trump says "jump," Republicans respond with "how high?"

“If Donald Trump says ‘jump 3 feet high and scratch your head,’ we all jump 3 feet high and scratch our heads,” Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas, clad in fugly gold sneakers and a Trump tie, told reporters on Wednesday.

When all is said and done, Republicans will likely have between 220 and 222 seats, virtually unchanged from this current Congress. The fact that the race for the House was basically a wash was thanks to strong Democratic recruiting and fundraising, which led Democrats to pick off Republican lawmakers in states like New York and California, despite a vicious gerrymander in North Carolina that alone cost Democrats three seats.

With such a narrow majority, Johnson will have little room for error to pass bills.

And Trump is already narrowing that majority further. Recently, he nominated Reps. Elise Stefanik, Mike Waltz, and Matt Gaetz for roles in his administration. If they are confirmed, that will leave three House vacancies for a few months, until special elections can be held.

Given that the House Republican conference is filled with a bunch of lunatics who would rather watch the world burn than pass actual legislation, that will be a problem for Johnson.

During this current Congress, with a similarly small majority, Johnson has needed to plead with House Democrats to vote for legislation to fund the government because he could not get enough of his own conference to vote for must-pass spending bills. That gave Democrats negotiating power.

Ultimately, now that Republicans will have unified control of Washington, any chaos that comes out of Capitol Hill will cause blowback to the GOP that Democrats can capitalize on for the 2026 midterms.

And knowing this cast of clowns, there will be chaos. Buckle up.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Trump Urges Federal Probe Of Rumors He'll Sell Truth Social Shares

Trump Urges Federal Probe Of Rumors He'll Sell Truth Social Shares

Donald Trump on Friday broke his post-election silence on his failing Truth Social platform, issuing threats against unnamed people who he said were trash talking his company.

"There are fake, untrue, and probably illegal rumors and/or statements made by, perhaps, market manipulators or short sellers, that I am interested in selling shares of Truth. THOSE RUMORS OR STATEMENTS ARE FALSE. I HAVE NO INTENTION OF SELLING!” Trump wrote in the TruthSocial post. “I hereby request that the people who have set off these fake rumors or statements, and who may have done so in the past, be immediately investigated by the appropriate authorities. Truth is an important part of our historic win, and I deeply believe in it. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

It was the first real comment he's made on his Truth Social feed since his victory on Tuesday. The few other posts he sent were merely images of newspapers announcing his win.

Trump's Truth Social stock price has fallen precipitously since the company went public in March.

Initially, the stock was trading around $60 when the company first went public. It's now trading at around $30, up from the nose-dive it took in September amid reports that Trump was eligible to start trading his own shares and possibly cash out on the failing platform.

The fact that Truth Social is trading at anything of value is confounding, as the site has barely any users and lost $19 million in the third quarter alone, Axios reported.

Now that Trump will take office again, it’s unclear whether he’ll put his shares in a blind trust to avoid flouting ethics rules. Of course, Trump has no ethics and did not put his companies in a blind trust the first time around, so it’s unlikely he’ll do so now.

Also absurd is that Trump said in his post the "truth is an important part" of his win.

Trump is a notorious liar.

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale wrote an article ahead of Trump’s win titled “Donald Trump’s campaign of relentless lying,” in which he implored media organizations to cover Trump’s lies more often.

“For the third consecutive presidential election, the Republican presidential nominee is running a relentlessly dishonest campaign for the world’s most powerful office,” he wrote. “Wildly exaggerating statistics, grossly distorting his opponent’s record and his own, regularly just plain making stuff up, Trump is lying to American voters with a frequency and variety whose only precedent is his own previous campaigns.”

In fact, during Trump’s first round, the Washington Post tracked over 30,000 misleading statements.

“If you met someone at a bar who told you 25 things that weren’t true, that would be one of the first things you told other people about this encounter,” Dale wrote. “Trump telling the American people 25 things that aren’t true in a rally speech should be one of the first things media outlets tell their readers and viewers about the speech. Maybe then Trump would care a bit more about being corrected.”

Here’s hoping the media takes Dale’s warnings seriously.

Former President Donald Trump

Donald TrumpFormer President Donald TrumpTrump Wants Everyone To Know He's Ready For His Perp Walk

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Democrat Crushes 'Black Nazi' Robinson In North Carolina Governor's Race

Democrat Crushes 'Black Nazi' Robinson In North Carolina Governor's Race

Republican Mark Robinson, a reportedly self-described “Black Nazi” and “perv,” handily lost his bid for governor of North Carolina on Tuesday night, giving him ample time to go back to doing what he allegedly loves: posting racist and creepy stuff on a forum for a porn site.

Robinson lost to North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, 58.1 percent to 37.8 percent, with 11 percent of precincts reporting, according to NBC News, which called the race less than an hour after polls closed.

Stein, who makes history as the state’s first Jewish governor, had a strong lead in the polling thanks to Robinson’s long history of making racist, sexist, and other incendiary remarks.

The Republican has denied the atrocities of the Holocaust, falsely saying, “This foolishness about Hitler disarming MILLIONS of Jews and then marching them off to concentration camps is a bunch of hogwash.”

Robinson also called for “wicked people” and socialists to be killed, saying in a speech ironically delivered at a church where parishioners are taught that murder is a sin, “Some folks need killing!”

However, the race was all but over in September, when CNN reported that Robinson had posted repulsive things on a porn website called Nude Africa.

Some of the horrific things he allegedly wrote include:

  • An assertion that he is a self-proclaimed “black NAZI!” and that “Slavery is not bad.”
  • Attacks on civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., whom Robinson called a “commie bastard,” “worse than a maggot,” a “phony,” and a “huckster.”
  • Robinson also said the only reason he wasn’t in the KKK was because it doesn’t “let blacks join,” and added of King, “If I was in the KKK I would have called him Martin Lucifer K--n!”
  • And a number of sexually explicit posts culminating in Robsinson calling himself a “perv.”

Republicans hoped they could get Robinson out of the race after the gross comments surfaced, but Robinson dug in his heels, denied the report, and stayed in the race, dooming the GOP’s chances at victory.

Revelations of the vile posts led Robinson’s campaign team to flee en masse, despite that his open Holocaust denial wasn’t too far for them.

Prior to the CNN report, Donald Trump had praised Robinson as “better than Martin Luther King,” but after it, he stopped inviting Robinson to his North Carolina rallies.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Trump, Harris

Trump Campaign Concludes With Incessant Whining About Bad Polls

Former President Donald Trump and his campaign are closing out the 2024 campaign not with confidence, but with a crap ton of whining about how unfair it is that he’s not being treated as the odds-on favorite.

The bellyaching began Saturday night, when Ann Selzer—an Iowa-based pollster who has been an oracle of sorts in predicting which candidate had the momentum in the final days of the last three elections—released a shock poll finding Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump in Iowa.

Trump accused Selzer of voter suppression, and said any polls showing him losing should be illegal.

“It is called suppression. They suppress,” Trump said of the Iowa poll at one of his low-energy rallies on Sunday. “And it actually should be illegal. Because in many ways, it is worse than the written word."

Trump’s campaign also sent out a memo accusing media outlets of trying to suppress the vote by releasing polls showing Trump losing.

“On Saturday, top Democrats appear to have received early access to an absurd outlier poll of Iowa conducted by the Des Moines Register. Not to be outdone, the New York Times arrived right on cue with another set of polling data being used to drive a voter suppression narrative against President Trump’s supporters,” the campaign wrote in the memo, referring also to a spate of NYT polls showing Harris ahead in Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Georgia—enough to give her an Electoral College victory. “Some in the media are choosing to amplify a mad dash to dampen and diminish voter enthusiasm. It has not worked. Our voters are like President Trump: they fight.”

Of course, if Trump’s campaign had internal numbers showing Trump ahead they’d release them to counter the narrative. Instead of doing that, they’re lashing out—a sign they know they are losing.

But it’s not just polls Trump and his allies are whining about.

CNN also reported that Trump is privately complaining to his close allies about why women don't like him—apparently not understanding that women don’t like it when their freedom to make decisions about their own bodies is taken away from them.

They’re also publicly incensed that Harris made a surprise appearance on “Saturday Night Live” on Saturday night in a pitch-perfect sketch.

"It's a campaign ad, I mean they're trying to get her elected,” Trump sycophant Brian Kilmeade moaned on Fox News.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida,, who gave up his dignity to back Trump, accused “SNL” and “virtually every single media outlet in America to depress and suppress Republican votes and Trump voters.”

Rubio said Harris, “went to ‘Saturday Night Live,’ by the way in violation of the law. My only hope, I hope she laughed on ‘Saturday Night Live’ in front of millions of people, millions of people probably heard her laugh for two or three minutes, because that’s probably worth 2- to 3-million votes right there."

Harris, meanwhile, is projecting strength in the home stretch. She’s filling rallies with tens of thousands of people, and ending on a closing message of hope.

“Trump is spending the closing days of his campaign angry and unhinged, lying about the election being stolen because he’s worried he will lose,” Harris spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth and will walk into the Oval Office focused on them—that’s Vice President Harris.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Republicans Enraged Their Wives Might 'Secretly' Vote For Harris

Republicans Enraged Their Wives Might 'Secretly' Vote For Harris

Right-wing Republicans are up in arms over a new campaign ad that reminds women their vote is private and they do not need to vote for former President Donald Trump just because their husbands want them to.

"In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know," actress Julia Roberts narrates in the ad. "Remember, what happens in the booth, stays in the booth. Vote Harris-Walz."

Pastor Doug Pagitt, the executive director of Vote Common Good, the group that made the ad, told The Wall Street Journal that he often hears from evangelical women that they feel obligated to vote the same way as their husbands. This ad, he said, gives those women the permission structure to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

The ad has Trump-supporting Republicans pissed.

Charlie Kirk, whose Turning Point USA organization is working on the turnout operation for Trump’s campaign, said it's horrible that women would “undermine their husbands” even though the husband “works his tail off to make sure that she can have a nice life.”

Fox News' Jesse Watters went even further, saying Wednesday night that he would consider it a form of cheating if his wife voted for Harris.

“If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that's the same thing as having an affair,” Watters said of his wife, who at one point was his mistress during his first marriage.

After seeing the Julia Roberts ad, John McEntee, a former Trump White House aide and Project 2025 author joked that giving women the right to vote should be repealed.

“This video has made me rethink the 19th Amendment,” McEntee said.

Trump-supporting “Christian influencer” Dale Partridge explicitly said women must vote how their husbands tell them. “In a Christian marriage, a wife should vote according to her husband’s direction. He is the head and they are one. Unity extends to politics. This is not controversial,” Partridge wrote on X.

The Republican rage that women would dare to vote Harris over Trump is yet another sign that they still do not understand that women are angry about Trump abortion bans across the country.

The Associated Press reported that women worried about reproductive freedom could swing the election to Harris in battleground states. Polling shows that women are supporting Harris by large margins, while men are backing Trump.

“In modern presidential politics, the gender gap has never been wider,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake and Republican pollster Amanda Iovino wrote in a joint New York Times op-ed published Wednesday.

Democratic strategists added that the male reaction to the Julia Roberts spot is evidence that the ad needs to exist.

“This type of sentiment is likely not new, but it's troubling that they're so willing to be out there with it,” Christina Reynolds, communications director of EMILY’s List, which backs female candidates who support abortion rights, wrote on X. “This is why we are reminding people their vote is private.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Beyonce Will Campaign With Kamala In Hometown Houston

Beyonce Will Campaign With Kamala In Hometown Houston

Ring the alarm! Queen Bey is hitting the campaign trail—to help get voters in formation for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Pop megastar Beyoncé will perform at a campaign rally for the Democratic presidential nominee in Houston on Friday, MSNBC reported. While this will be Beyoncé’s first rally with Harris, she authorized the use of her song “Freedom” back in July for the campaign to use in ads and at rallies.

The wildly popular singer and Houston native is one of a number of A-list stars hitting the trail for Harris in the final days of the election, along with Bruce Springsteen, Eminem, Usher, and Lizzo.

The Harris-Walz campaign said it is using carefully chosen celebrities to help get out the vote in specific states.

“We’re not throwing spaghetti against the wall. We have literally studied who these voters listen to,” a campaign official told CNN.

Beyoncé is one of the most well-known celebrities in the United States, with a Harris poll from April finding that 6 out of 10 Americans consider themselves fans.

Country singer-songwriter and Texas native Willie Nelson will also be at the rally. The Red Headed Stranger first endorsed Harris in September when he appeared in a campaign video with her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Polls show Texas may be a reach for Harris to win. But voters could very well oust Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who is neck and neck with Democratic Rep. Colin Allred in the race for a crucial Senate seat.

Friday’s rally will focus on reproductive rights, according to the Harris campaign. Texas has one of the strictest abortion laws in the country, with the procedure banned in nearly all cases.

The state’s draconian law was made possible by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which in effect eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion. Trump has bragged about being responsible for that decision, as he appointed three of the six conservative justices on the court who voted to overturn it.

A new Harris campaign ad features a Texas woman who almost died as a result of being denied abortion care in the state.

“[Trump] did this to me,” the woman, named Ondrea, says in the ad. “It almost cost me my life and it will affect me for the rest of my life.”

While Harris’ vocal support for women’s rights has earned strong endorsements from megacelebrities like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, fascist wannabe Trump is backed by washed-up has-beens like Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Kevin McCarthy

Under Threat From Far Right, McCarthy Announces Impeachment Inquiry

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced on Tuesday that he wants Republican lawmakers to launch a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, officially ceding to the demands of a large chunk of the Republican conference that has demanded McCarthy allow such an inquiry or else be stripped of his gavel.

McCarthy made a brief statement from the Capitol, saying, “Over the past several months, House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct — a culture of corruption.”

However, House Republicans have not presented any evidence of corruption on the part of Biden, despite their months’ worth of efforts.

In fact, McCarthy is not holding a floor vote to officially launch the inquiry, despite saying just 11 days ago that he would hold a vote.

“To open an impeachment inquiry is a serious matter, and House Republicans would not take it lightly or use it for political purposes. The American people deserve to be heard on this matter through their elected representatives. That’s why, if we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person,” McCarthy told Breitbart News, according to Fox News on September 2.

McCarthy isn’t holding a vote because he does not have the 218 votes he needs from his slim majority. A handful of GOP lawmakers have said that there is not enough evidence to warrant an inquiry.

“I think before we move on to [an] impeachment inquiry, we should … there should be a direct link to the president in some evidence,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told The Hill in August. “We should have some clear evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor, not just assuming there may be one. I think we need to have more concrete evidence to go down that path.”

Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) criticized Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has pushed for impeachment, noting that she’d filed articles of impeachment before Biden was inaugurated and calling it absurd to think that she is an expert on such proceedings.

“The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence linking President Biden, if there’s evidence linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor,” Buck said on MSNBC on Monday. “That doesn’t exist right now. … It’s based on the facts. You go where the facts take you.”

Some Senate Republicans say they too are not eager for an impeachment inquiry.

“My solution to changing things around here is to win elections,” Sen. John Thune (R-SD) toldPunchbowl News’ Andrew Desiderio. “But [McCarthy]’s under a lot of pressure over there.”

Meanwhile, Congress faces a critical deadline to fund the government and avoid a shutdown.

GOP lawmakers want McCarthy to allow spending bills that include steep cuts to the federal budget, violating an agreement McCarthy made with Biden on spending limits earlier this year. Those lawmakers are threatening to oust McCarthy from the speakership if he doesn’t heed their demands.

PBS reported that launching the impeachment inquiry, however, could mollify this contingent of lawmakers.

“We’ve got to seize the initiative. That means forcing votes on impeachment. And if @SpeakerMcCarthy stands in our way, he may not have the job long,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) tweeted on September 5. “Let’s hope he works with us, not against us.”

Polling shows launching an impeachment inquiry could harm the GOP politically.

A Public Policy Polling survey from the end of August found 56 percent of voters believe a Republican impeachment inquiry “would be more of a partisan political stunt,” with 51 percent saying the Republican inquiry would be “more about damaging President Biden politically” than about finding the truth.

Democrats, for their part, mocked McCarthy for launching the inquiry.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who was an investigator and a manager in the successful impeachments of former President Donald Trump, tweeted: “McCarthy’s reading of the Impeachment Clause: The President shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or … when the Speaker, lacking moral authority or control over his members, can’t remain speaker or fund the government without it.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a statement that McCarthy’s announcement “makes clear that so-called moderate House Republicans and Kevin McCarthy are beholden to Trump and the extremes of their party, not the American people.”

“The split-screen of MAGA House Republicans pursuing a purely partisan agenda while House Democrats fight to rebuild our economy and create jobs will show voters once and for all that only one party is focused on the issues facing everyday Americans,” DCCC communications director Courtney Rice said.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

If Elected Again, Trump Would Cut Taxes For The Rich Even More

If Elected Again, Trump Would Cut Taxes For The Rich Even More

Former President Donald Trump wants once again to slash taxes for the wealthy if he’s elected in November 2024.

Trump’s economic advisers are floating cutting the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 15 percent, the Washington Postreported. Such a cut would overwhelmingly favor wealthy corporations.

Trump already cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent with the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

That tax cut was deeply unpopular with voters. A November 2017 Quinnipiac University poll found that 52 percent of voters disapproved of the tax law, while just 25 percent approved of it.

“Tax cuts enacted in the last 25 years — namely, the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 under President [George W.] Bush, most of which were made permanent in 2012, and those enacted in 2017 under President Trump — gave windfall tax cuts to households in the top 1% and large corporations, exacerbating income and wealth inequality,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities senior tax analyst Samantha Jacoby said in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee in May.

Experts say cutting the corporate tax rate for a second time would likely be similarly unpopular.

“We have plenty of data showing most Americans want corporations to pay more in taxes, not less — this was true when Trump and his supporters in Congress enacted the 2017 law, and it’s still true today,” Steve Wamhoff, the federal policy director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said in a Sept. 11 tweet.

The Washington Post reported that the 15 percent corporate tax rate is a “preliminary” proposal that Trump’s economic advisers are kicking around.

“There are many ideas coming in about how to undo the damage Joe Biden has done, and President Trump’s America First economic focus remains how we create more higher-paying jobs for American workers, and he will do whatever it takes to make our Country competitive again,” Trump campaign spokesperson Jason Miller told the Post.

Trump proposed a 15 percent corporate tax rate in 2017 when the Republican-controlled House and Senate were crafting tax cut legislation.

President Joe Biden’s administration came out against Trump’s potential corporate tax cut proposal just hours after the Washington Post reported on it.

“Another wave of deficit-increasing tax welfare for big corporations — especially one directly tied to unprecedented price increases on American families — would turn back the clock to the trickle-down economics that hollowed out the American middle class and added trillions to the national debt,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told Axios on September 11.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

House Republicans Aim To 'Defund' Trump Prosecutions

House Republicans Aim To 'Defund' Trump Prosecutions

Three House Republican lawmakers either have filed or plan to file legislation that would strip federal funding for the work of prosecutors who have charged Donald Trump with crimes, baselessly accusing them of “weaponizing” the government against the former president.

On Monday, Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia became the latest GOP lawmaker to try to defund the efforts of three law enforcement officials who have brought charges against Trump.

Clyde, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, told Fox News that he wants to use the upcoming consideration by the committee of two government funding bills to propose amendments that would take federal funds away from the Fulton County district attorney’s office, the office of special counsel Jack Smith, and the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors from the three offices have charged Trump with dozens of crimes, ranging from violating the Espionage Act to conspiring to defraud the United States.

“Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars have no place funding the radical Left’s nefarious election interference efforts,” Clyde told Fox News. “Together, Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, and Fani Willis intentionally brought four sham indictments against the sitting president’s top political opponent, President Donald J. Trump, as the upcoming 2024 presidential election ramps up.”

Republican Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Andy Biggs of Arizona have filed similar legislation to pull federal funding from the prosecution proceedings.

In July, Gaetz introduced a bill that would have defunded Smith’s grand jury probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The legislation was filed days before the grand jury charged Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential election results, and conspiracy against Americans’ right to vote.

“The government is being weaponized to go after President Donald J. Trump. The House of Representatives must defund Jack Smith’s office and end the witch hunt,” Gaetz said in a statement. “The power of the purse is not some intermittent thing that we wield every fiscal cycle. It’s something that we have to wield day in and day out to achieve victory for our people and to stop this.”

In August, Biggs introduced a bill that would strip federal funds from the Fulton County district attorney’s office, which charged Trump and 18 of his allies with felony racketeering and conspiracy charges over their attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia in 2020.

Neither Gaetz’s nor Biggs’ bill has been taken up since they were introduced.

While GOP lawmakers have railed against prosecutors for charging Trump, polls show voters broadly agree that Trump should have been charged and that the charges are serious.

An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted August 15-17 found 49 percent of adults said Trump should suspend his 2024 presidential campaign because of his indictments.

A Politico Magazine/Ipsos poll from August 25 found 59 percent of voters believe the Justice Department indicted Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election “based on a fair evaluation of the evidence and the law.”

A Navigator Research survey from August found 62 percent of Americans believe Trump committed a crime.

On Monday, federal district court Judge Tanya Chutkan set a March 4 trial date in the case over Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. On March 25, the trial is set to begin in Manhattan of charges that Trump illegally made hush money payments to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign. And on May 20, Trump will appear in court in Florida to answer charges that he illegally withheld classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

All of these cases are set to take place during the Republican presidential primary.

Polls show Trump currently has a wide lead over the Republicans running against him: Trump leads the field with 49.5% of the vote, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a distant second with 15.2%, according to FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average.

Some Republican operatives have expressed fears that nominating Trump despite his legal perils will cost the party in 2024.

“If we make it about Donald Trump, it’s going to be a three-ring circus and we will lose,” former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan told CNN the day the Fulton County grand jury voted to indict Trump. “And the only place we’re going to be able to make our campaign speeches as Republicans are going to be on courthouse steps, because it looks like every Republican that hung out with Trump is going to get an indictment.”

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Donald Trump

Four New Polls Show Indictments Are Damaging Trump's Presidential Bid

Four new polls published Wednesday and Thursday have found that majorities of Americans believe former President Donald Trump’s spate of indictments are serious and that he committed crimes, which could be problematic for him in his comeback bid.

Polls from ABC News, Fox News, Quinnipiac, and a Democratic pollster found varying levels of trouble for Trump, who is charged with felonies in four different states on counts ranging from improperly withholding classified documents to conspiracy to defraud the United States through efforts to stay in office after losing the 2020 election.

ABC News released a poll on Thursday that found 50 percent of Americans think Trump should suspend his campaign because of his criminal indictments.

A Fox News poll published Wednesday night found that 53 percent of registered voters believe Trump did something illegal in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The Fox News poll found that while Republican voters don’t believe Trump did anything wrong, a majority of independent voters — whose votes Trump needs to win a general election — think Trump did something illegal and the Department of Justice is not acting out of political motivation. Nearly two-thirds, or 62 percent, of independent voters believe Trump did something illegal.

Meanwhile, a Quinnipiac University poll published Wednesday found that 54 percent of Americans believe Trump should be prosecuted.

More concerning for Trump is that the Quinnipiac poll show 68 percent of Americans believe that someone convicted of a felony should not be eligible to be president.

Trump is scheduled to go to trial in the classified documents case in Florida in May of next year. Special counsel Jack Smith wants a trial in January over Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And Fulton County District Attorney Fani Williams wants the trial over Trump’s efforts to overturn the Georgia election to be scheduled for March.

Finally, Semaforreports that a poll from the Benenson Strategy Group, which acted as the pollster for the presidential campaigns of former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, found that both independent and Republican voters are less likely to vote for Trump because of the indictments.

That poll found 61 percent of independent voters are somewhat or much less likely to vote for Trump against President Joe Biden because of the indictments; while 24 percent of Republican voters say they are somewhat or much less likely to vote for Trump over Biden for the same reason. Semafor reported that, according to a Benenson Strategy Group memo accompanying the poll, that’s “more than enough to swing a close general election.” The poll also found Trump and Biden tied 46 -- 46 percent in the general election.

Trump, for his part, has said the indictments will help him in the 2024 election.

According to the Associated Press, Trump said at a campaign event in Alabama on August 4, after he was arraigned in Washington, D.C., over efforts to overturn the 2020 elections: “Any time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls. We need one more indictment to close out this election. One more indictment, and this election is closed out. Nobody has even a chance.”

Trump’s support in the primary has actually grown since his first indictment. The FiveThirtyEight polling average has Trump at 53.8 percent, with his next closest primary opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, at just 15 percent.

But while the indictments may help him in a primary, Republican strategists are warning that’s not likely to be the case in a general election.

“Gonna be cool when the party’s nominee spends the summer in court and all of his donors’ money on legal expenses,” Republican strategist Rory Cooper tweeted after Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida set the classified documents case for May 2024. “That formula wins every time.”

“If we make it about Donald Trump, it’s going to be a three-ring circus and we will lose,” former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a CNN commentator, said on the network after the Georgia indictment, shown in a video clip tweeted on Tuesday by journalist Aaron Rupar. “And the only place we’re going to be able to make our campaign speeches as Republicans are going to be on courthouse steps, because it looks like every Republican that hung out with Trump is going to get an indictment.”

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Ruben Gallego

Polls: Gallego Beats Sinema And Republicans In Arizona Senate Race

Two newly released polls show Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego leading the field in a three-way Senate contest in Arizona, a critical race that could determine which party controls the chamber after the 2024 election.

Some commentators had predicted that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) would be a spoiler for the Democratic Party by splitting the Democratic vote with Gallego and allowing a Republican to pick up the seat in November 2024. But the new polls show Sinema pulling more votes from Republican voters than from Democrats.

Sinema left the Democratic Party in December to become an independent. She has not yet announced whether she will seek reelection.

Emerson College released a poll on Tuesday that found Gallego leading both Sinema and the two Republican candidates who have announced bids in the race.

In the first scenario, Gallego leads the polls with 36 percent of the vote, with Republican Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb in second at 29 percent and Sinema in third with 21 percent. In the second scenario, Gallego would get 37 percent, Sinema would pull 26 percent, and Republican Brian Wright would receive 25 percent of the vote.

“It appears Sen. Sinema pulls more support from Republican voters than Democrats on the ballot,” Spencer Kimball, the executive director of Emerson College Polling, said in a statement.

“About 21 percent of Republicans would vote for Sinema with Lamb on the ballot, and 34 percent of Republicans would support Sinema with Wright on the ballot,” Kimball added. “By contrast, Sinema only pulls about eight percent of Democratic support from Gallego.”

The Emerson results are similar to those of an August 3 poll from Noble Predictive Insights.

In a three-way race among Gallego, Sinema, and Lamb, NPI found Gallego leading with 33 percent, followed by Lamb at 25 percent and Sinema at 24 percent.

NPI also polled a potential three-way race between Gallego, Sinema, and Blake Masters, the failed Republican Senate candidate who lost to Democrat Mark Kelly in 2022 and is mulling whether to run again in 2024. The poll found Gallego in the lead with 32%, followed by Sinema at 28 percent and Masters at 24 percent.

“Sinema’s third-party run does not guarantee a GOP victory in Arizona’s Senate race,” Mike Noble, the founder and chief of research at NPI, said in a statement. “And what is even more interesting is that there appears to be a path to victory for Sinema in a three-way showdown. Buckle up and grab your popcorn because the Senate contest in Arizona is going to be one to watch.”

Arizona is a key race in the battle for control of the Senate. If Republicans net one seat and win the White House, they will regain control of the chamber. If Republicans lose the White House, they would need to net two seats for control.

President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by just 0.3 percent. Democrat Katie Hobbs beat Republican nominee Kari Lake in the gubernatorial election by 0.7 percent in 2022.

Inside Elections, the nonpartisan political handicapping outlet, rates the Arizona Senate race a toss-up.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Abortion Rights

Abortion Rights At Stake In Ohio Ballot Measure Tuesday

On Tuesday, Ohio voters will decide Issue 1, a ballot initiative that would make it harder to pass constitutional amendments in the state. The outcome of the special election could dramatically impact the future of abortion rights.

If Issue 1 passes, it would require citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to get 60 percent of the vote to pass, up from the simple majority currently required by law. And that would have immediate consequences for a reproductive freedom constitutional amendment, which will be on the ballot this November.

That amendment states, “Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.”

Republicans in the state have been campaigning for Issue 1. Secretary of State Frank LaRose said outright that the initiative is a direct effort to change the rules to block the reproductive freedom constitutional amendment from passing, stating in May, “It’s 100 percent about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our Constitution.” LaRose is running in the Ohio GOP Senate primary to take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2024.

A USA Today/Suffolk University poll from July found that 58 percent of Ohioans support the reproductive freedom amendment, just shy of the 60 percent threshold Issue 1 would impose.

Anti-abortion groups in the state support Issue 1.

Catholics for Catholics, a religious group that has the support of a number of far-right figures, including former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, held a prayer rally on Sunday in Ohio to urge support for Issue 1.

“Thousands rallied in support of #VoteYesOhio today in Cincinnati with @CforCatholics. I was proud to stand with them to protect Ohio’s constitution from the all out assault which radical coastal liberals have launched against us,” LaRose tweeted along with photos of himself at the event.

PBS Newshour reported that Protect Our Constitution, another group supporting Issue 1, is funded almost exclusively by Richard Uihlein, a Republican billionaire who also funded efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Meanwhile, abortion rights groups are urging voters to vote no on Issue 1.

“The good news: Via a ballot measure, Ohio voters will soon have the opportunity to enshrine reproductive freedom in the state constitution! The bad news: anti-abortion Republicans are trying to make it harder to pass ballot measures in the state,” NARAL Pro-Choice America tweeted on July 31. “Anti-abortion lawmakers are quietly dismantling our democracy to push their extreme agenda — but we won’t let them get away with it. If you live in Ohio, VOTE NO on Issue 1 on August 8.”

Aside from raising the vote threshold needed to pass constitutional amendments, Issue 1 would also make it much harder to get constitutional amendments on the ballot in the first place. It would require those proposing citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to collect signatures from five percent of voters in all 88 counties in Ohio. Currently, constitutional amendment petitions need signatures from 44 Ohio counties. The ballot initiative would also get rid of the current 10-day period that those proposing amendments have to replace signatures that have been determined to be invalid after the petitions are filed with the secretary of state’s office.

Polling from July showed that Issue 1 was headed to defeat, with 60 percent of voters in the state opposing the GOP effort to make it harder to pass constitutional amendments.

The Associated Press reported that early vote totals are higher than in the past two midterm election primaries in the state. As of August 4, 533,000 people had voted early in person or by mail, almost double the 288,700 people who voted early in the 2022 primary.

L2, a political data firm that is tracking early voting in the state, said as of August 4 that Democrats were casting more votes than Republicans by a margin of 52 percent to 40 percent.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Ron DeSantis

As DeSantis Feuds With Black Republicans, His Campaign 'Reboot' Sputters

Finding its candidate dropping in the polls and burning through money at a fast clip, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign announced this week that it was going to undergo a reboot in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

“Following a top-to-bottom review of our organization, we have taken additional, aggressive steps to streamline operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden,” Generra Peck, DeSantis’ campaign manager, said in a statement to the Associated Press on July 25. “DeSantis is going to lead the Great American Comeback and we’re ready to hit the ground running as we head into an important month of the campaign.”

Yet just a few days later, DeSantis’ attempted reboot is floundering as DeSantis and his team continue to earn negative press.

On Tuesday, the campaign announced that it laid off more than three dozen staffers in an effort to stop hemorrhaging the cash it needs to make it through the long slog of the GOP primary.

Among the staffers that were let go was Nate Hochman, a DeSantis speechwriter who made a pro-DeSantis video that included a symbol often used by Nazis and white supremacists.

That same day, four vehicles in DeSantis’ motorcade were involved in a car accident while traveling to a fundraiser in Tennessee. DeSantis was not injured and made it to the planned event, the Associated Press reported.

DeSantis’ troubles this week didn’t end there.

On Wednesday, a group of DeSantis staffers got into a feud with Rep. Byron Donalds, the lone Black Republican in the Florida congressional delegation.

Donalds tepidly criticized the new Black history curriculum in the state, which will instruct students about “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

“The new African-American standards in FL are good, robust, & accurate,” Donalds tweeted on July 26. “That being said, the attempt to feature the personal benefits of slavery is wrong & needs to be adjusted. That obviously wasn’t the goal & I have faith that FLDOE will correct this.”

Christina Pushaw, DeSantis’ rapid response director, responded to Donalds by tweeting, “Did Kamala Harris write this tweet?”

DeSantis press secretary Jeremy Redfern accused Donalds of “laundering a lie for the White House.”

Donalds wasn’t the only Black Republican to criticize Florida’s Black history curriculum.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who is also running for the Republican presidential nomination, said at a campaign event in Iowa “there is no silver lining” in slavery.

“What slavery was really about was separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was just devastating,” Scott said, according to NBC News. “So I would hope that every person in our country — and certainly running for president — would appreciate that. People have bad days. Sometimes they regret what they say. And we should ask them again to clarify their positions.”

Vice President Kamala Harris had made a similar criticism to Donalds, saying at the annual national convention of the historically Black sorority Delta Sigma Theta, “In the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.”

DeSantis, for his part, has struggled in the polls since officially launching his campaign in May.

When his candidacy was only rumored in the beginning of 2023, polls showed him neck and neck with former President Donald Trump. DeSantis had reached 40.3 percent in the FiveThirtyEightpolling average in early January, just two points behind Trump.

Yet now, even after Trump has been indicted multiple times, DeSantis has plummeted to just 15.5 percent in FiveThirtyEight’s national polling average, while Trump stands at 52.4 percent as of July 27.

“DeSantis’ path was always ‘Trump, but more electable and with the ability to get things done,’” Sean Trende, an elections analyst with RealClearPolitics, tweeted. “But for some reason DeSantis has opted for ‘Trump, but somehow crazier.’”

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.