President Joe Biden
A new Civiqs poll for Daily Kos shows why the issue of abortion is so perilous for the Republican Party, with voters viewing themselves as significantly more aligned with Democrats on the matter.
By 15 points, registered voters say their opinion on abortion is closer to that of Democrats in their states than Republicans, at 48% to 33%, according to the poll released Wednesday.
President Joe Biden also fares eight points better than Donald Trump on the question of how voters think the candidates' abortion views track with their own, with 44 percent choosing Biden compared to 36 percent picking Trump.
Democratic lawmakers likely performed slightly better than Biden on the abortion measure partly because voters generally view Trump as more socially liberal on abortion than most Republican lawmakers overall.
For instance, a December 2023 Data for Progress poll found that roughly two-thirds of voters believed congressional Republicans would take action to pass a national abortion ban if they took control of Congress in 2024, ranking only second to the belief that they would build a wall at the southern border. Meanwhile, only 48 percent of voters said Trump would pass a national abortion ban as president, putting the issue seventh on his likely to-do list.
The disparity between how voters view Republicans lawmakers versus Trump on abortion is exactly why the Biden campaign hammered Trump’s pretzel twisting on abortion last week after Arizona’s Supreme Court ordered the enforcement of a draconian Civil War-era abortion ban.
The Biden campaign’s rapid response team also made an explicit effort to link Trump to anti-abortion zealot House Speaker Mike Johnson, deploying roughly 18 tweets in a 24-hour period featuring the two men together.
Notably, the Civiqs poll also found that independents view Democrats as more closely aligned with their abortion views than Republicans by 12 points, at 41 percent to 29 percent. Biden and Trump run about even among independents, with 35 percent saying their views track more closely with Biden's, and 36 percent choosing Trump.
The bottom line: Any time candidates of either party talk about abortion or the topic dominates the headlines—as happened last week—it’s a win for Democrats and Biden.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
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Arizona House Rep. David Livingston celebrating defeat of abortion ban repeal on April 17, 2024
Republicans in the Arizona legislature weren't afraid to do an endzone dance after voting to keep a Civil War-era law on the books that effectively bans all abortions in the Grand Canyon State.
According to Talking Points Memo reporter Kate Riga, Rep. David Livingston (R) "applauded his supporters" in the gallery overlooking the House of Representatives and raised his fists in a celebratory fashion after the vote to repeal the law failed on party lines. House Majority Whip Teresa Martinez (R) reportedly mouthed the words "we got you" to others in the gallery who were advocating for repeal, and even gave them a mocking thumbs-up gesture.
"They were posing for their far-right base," Assistant House Minority Leader Oscar De Los Santos (D) told Talking Points Memo.
Wednesday marked Democrats' fourth unsuccessful attempt in two weeks to repeal the law, which was passed when Arizona was still a territory that had not yet officially joined the U.S. and before women had the right to vote. The state already had a strict 15-week abortion ban in place before the Arizona Supreme Court recently ruled to uphold the far more stringent law from 1864.
"In light of this Opinion, physicians are now on notice that all abortions, except those necessary to save a woman’s life, are illegal, and that additional criminal and regulatory sanctions may apply to abortions performed after fifteen weeks’ gestation," Justice John Lopez wrote on behalf of the GOP-aligned majority.
The 1864 law, which remains on the books, allows for the punishment of abortion providers who help individuals terminate their pregnancies. Any provider who performs the procedure faces a prison sentence of anywhere from two to five years under the 19th century legislation. Attorney General Kris Mayes (D) clarified her office would not prosecute abortion providers under that law.
"Make no mistake, by effectively striking down a law passed this century and replacing it with one from 160 years ago, the Court has risked the health and lives of Arizonans," Mayes stated, adding that the "decision to reimpose a law from a time when Arizona wasn't a state, the Civil War was raging, and women couldn't even vote will go down in history as a stain on our state."
That 1864 law is likely to mobilize large amounts of Democratic voters to turn out in the 2024 election in the Grand Canyon State, which may end up deciding partisan control of the House, Senate and White House in November. Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake — who ran a failed campaign for governor in 2022 — previously praised the anti-abortion law as "great," before eventually condemning it as "out of step with Arizonans." She has called on Governor Katie Hobbs (D) and the GOP-controlled legislature to pass a work-around.
If Republicans aim to recapture the U.S. Senate, they'll need a net gain of two seats in November. This will require flipping seats like Arizona's, where outgoing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) declined to seek another term in office. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), the likely Democratic nominee, is currently leading in polls with RealClearPolitics showing him ahead of Lake by an average of six points.
Arizona narrowly went blue in 2020, with President Joe Biden taking the state's Electoral College votes with less than 11,000 total votes. That margin could widen with abortion rights on the ballot, as that issue has led to stunning Republican losses even in red states like Kansas, Kentucky and Montana in 2022, and Ohio in 2023.
Click here to read Talking Points Memo's full report.
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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President Vladimir Putin, left, and former President Donald Trump
"Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it's infected a good chunk of my party's base." That acknowledgement from Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was echoed a few days later by Ohio Rep. Michael Turner, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. "To the extent that this propaganda takes hold, it makes it more difficult for us to really see this as an authoritarian versus democracy battle."
It has been two months since the Senate passed, by 70-29 (including 22 Republicans), a $95 billion foreign aid bill that included $60 billion for Ukraine. The Republican-controlled House, by contrast, has been paralyzed. This week, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that Ukraine will lose the war if the aid is not approved.
The Republican party is now poised to let a brave, democratic ally be defeated by the power that the last GOP presidential nominee save one called "without question, our No. 1 geopolitical foe." One member of Congress has sworn to introduce a resolution to vacate the chair if the House speaker puts aid for Ukraine on the floor, and the entertainment wing of conservatism — most egregiously Tucker Carlson — has gone into full truckling mode toward the ex-KGB colonel in the Kremlin.
It's worth exploring how the Republican party, the party of "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," became the party that now credulously traffics in blatant Russian disinformation while it flirts with betraying an important ally — along with all of its principles.
Trump's particular preferences and ego needs play a starring role in the GOP's devolution. Cast your minds back to 2016 and the revelation that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee. To rebut this damaging development, Fox News conjurers got busy inventing a tale about CrowdStrike, the company that documented the hack, alleging that the servers had been mysteriously moved to Ukraine so that the FBI could not examine them. Trump raised the CrowdStrike issue in his infamous call with Zelenskyy.
This was bonkers. As the Mueller report made clear, the FBI did get all the data regarding the DNC hack. There was never a shred of evidence that the servers were moved to Ukraine, and in any case physical control of the servers was unnecessary. But what was Zelensky supposed to say? He promised to look into it just as a courtier to a mad king will say, "Yes, your majesty, we will look into why your slippers are turning into marshmallows when the sun goes down."
Because Trump regarded any implication that he had received assistance from Russia as impugning his victory, he latched onto the idea (perhaps whispered by Putin himself in one of their many private conversations) that, yes, there had indeed been foreign interference in the election, but it was Ukraine boosting Hillary Clinton, not Russia aiding Trump. Now, it's true that Ukraine's friends reached out to Clinton, but why wouldn't they? Trump's campaign manager was Paul Manafort, a paid agent of Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted pro-Putin Ukrainian leader.
Trump nurtured his misplaced grudge for years. Recall that when Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Trump's initial response was that it was a "genius" move. "You gotta say, that's pretty savvy."
A non-sociopath would say it was raw aggression of the worst kind. A normal Republican of the pre-Trump mold would have been outraged at the attempted rape of a peaceful, democratic neighbor.
Most Republican officeholders are not sociopaths, but they take their marching orders from one and have adjusted their consciences accordingly. The talking point Sen. J.D. Vance and his ilk favor is that they cannot be concerned about Ukraine's border when our southern border is also being invaded. Of course it's absurd to compare immigrants looking for work or safety to tanks, bombs and missiles, but that's what passes for Republican reasoning these days. In any case, it was revealed to be hollow when Biden and the Democrats offered an extremely strict border bill to sweeten aid for Ukraine, and the GOP turned it down flat.
Russia's fingerprints are all over the Republicans' failed attempt to impeach (in all senses of the word) Joe Biden. Their star witness, Alexander Smirnov — who alleged that Hunter and Joe Biden had been paid $5 million in bribes by Burisma — was indicted in February for making false statements. High-ranking Russians appear to be his sources.
Whether the subject is Ukraine, Biden's so-called corruption, or NATO, Putin seems to have pulled off the most successful foreign influence operation in American history. If Trump were being blackmailed by Putin, it's hard to imagine how he would behave any differently. And though it started with Trump, it has not ended there. Putin now wields more power over the GOP than anyone other than Trump. GOP propagandists indulge fictions that even many Russians can see through: Ukraine is governed by Nazis; Russia is a religious, Christian nation; Russia is fighting "wokeness."
Republicans are not so much isolationist as pro-authoritarian. They've made Hungary's Viktor Orban a pin-up, and they mouth Russian disinformation without shame. Putin must be pinching himself.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
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Donald Trump's first criminal trial may contain a few surprises, according to the former president's ex-lawyer, and star witness, Michael Cohen.
Ahead of the trial's jury selection — which began Monday, April 15, — Cohen shared with Politico that Americans may already know Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments — but that's not the whole story.
During his conversation with Cohen, Politico chief Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza mentioned that "credibility is one part of this trial," but, "The other c-word that comes up is 'corroboration.'
Lizza asked the former Trump attorney, "What can you tell us about that? Is this a stronger case when it comes to corroboration than people understand on the outside?"
Cohen insisted, "If it wasn’t, Alvin Bragg and his team of prosecutors would never have brought this case."
In fact, when Lizza asked Cohen whether he thinks the public will "be surprised" by the corroborating evidence, the star witness replied, "I do."
He emphasized, "In fact, most people don’t really know anything. They only know what the headlines have been. And as you know very, very well, headlines do not necessarily tell the story."
Lizza also noted one obstacle in the DA's case against the ex-president "seems to be how Bragg connects the misdemeanor of falsifying business records that recorded what were actually hush money payments — the payments to you to reimburse you for the payments to Stormy Daniels — to another crime that Trump was trying to commit, which then makes this a felony."
The Politico reporter asked, "Do you think Bragg has strong evidence on that portion of the case?"
Cohen replied, "Let me say it to you this way — it may not be satisfying to you, and I do certainly appreciate the attempts to drill down despite me telling you I cannot go into into this case: Alvin Bragg would not have brought this case — he would not have that as an element of this case — if he did not believe that he would be able to prove this at trial to a jury of 12."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
Expose Of Stefanik's Privileged Life Blows Up Her 'Humble Origins' Myth
Rep. Elise Stefanik
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has often painted herself as someone who came from a humble working-class background but pulled herself up by the bootstraps.
Stefanik, who Donald Trump is reportedly considering as a possible running mate in the 2024 presidential race, acknowledges that she attended Harvard University. But she paints her Ivy League education as an example of beating and overcoming the odds — not an example of privilege.
In an article published on April 14, however, Daily Beast reporters William Bredderman and Jake Lahut stress that Stefanik has had a much more comfortable life than she claims.
"If Stefanik was supposed to remember where she came from," Bredderman and Lahut explain, "she seems to have forgotten — to the point of making blatantly misleading statements, beginning in her first congressional campaign — how her family's wealth has given her a leg up, from providing her with an expensive private-school education to her parents buying her a $1.2 million D.C. townhouse when she was just 26. Instead of acknowledging those advantages, Stefanik has repeatedly downplayed her wealth, including in a statement to The Daily Beast."
Bredderman and Lahut add that Stefanik's "humble origin story falls away under a little pressure."
"From the start, she has maintained that she saw her parents 'risk everything' to establish Premium Plywood Products when she was a child," the reporters note. "But even the story she has told of the company's founding is incomplete. While every business venture involves risk, the Stefaniks didn't shoulder it alone: less than two months after incorporating Premium Plywood Products in late 1991, public records show they secured a Small Business Administration-guaranteed loan worth $335,000 — roughly $755,000 in today's money."
According to Bredderman and Lahut, Stefanik's "private education at Albany Academy for Girls offered a crash course in the ways of the New York capital’s moneyed elite."
"The children of political tycoons, from former President Theodore Roosevelt to former Gov. Mario Cuomo, have sent their children to its all-male counterpart across the street, The Albany Academy, where students pay the same tuition — $25,600 for the most recent academic year," Bredderman and Lahut report. "After graduating from Harvard in 2006, Stefanik decamped to D.C. to serve in then-President George W. Bush's administration — a role one of her Ivy League mentors helped her land. She would work her way up into the White House Chief of Staff's Office."
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
'New York Times' Poll Reverses Itself On Trump Gaining Minority Support
A newly released New York Times/Siena poll shows a wholesale reversal from its previous February poll that suggested President Joe Biden was bleeding support among Latino voters.
The Times/Siena poll released Saturday showed Biden gaining significant ground with minority voters, including opening up a 9-point lead over Trump with Latinos, 50 percent - 41 percent. That's a 15-point turnaround since February, when theTimes/Siena survey gave Trump a six-point advantage among Latino voters, winning 46 percent of the group to Biden's 40 percent.
Biden's growth among nonwhite voters—including a net 10-point gain with Black voters—has effectively erased Trump's lead among registered voters overall in the latest Times/Siena survey, with Biden at 45 percent to Trump's 46 percent. The Times' February poll gave Trump a five-point advantage overall, at 43 percent Biden -- 48 percent Trump.
Taking the poll at face value, Trump's Latino support is still historically high at 41 percent, while Biden's is historically low at 50 percent. The high-water mark for any Republican presidential candidate is President George W. Bush's 40 percent share of the Latino vote in 2004.
In 2020, Biden won Latino voters 59 percent -- 38 percent, so the incumbent still has considerable room to grow support among the group while Trump may already be close to hitting his ceiling.
Last week, we covered polling from the Pew Research Center that draws into question whether Trump—as many outlets including the Times have reported—has really made significant inroads with Latino voters and, if so, whether those gains would be enough to swing an election given Biden's relative strength thus far with white voters.
Biden's continued strength with white voters puts the onus on Trump to win over a historically high share of voting groups that don't typically lean Republican...The conventional wisdom over the past few months has been that Biden is in trouble because he's bleeding support among Latinos (and potentially Black voters, too).
But with current polling showing Biden and Trump relatively evenly matched at this stage of the contest, it's entirely plausible for the Biden campaign to woo back some voters who are more naturally predisposed to voting for Democrats.
Biden now appears to be doing exactly that: consolidating support among Latino and Black voters as he gains ground on Trump.
And as we noted in Friday's piece, the same Pew Research Center polling suggests Democrats haven't suffered a significant falloff in support among Black and Latino voters during the Trump era. In fact, Pew's data called into question the entire premise that some sort of racial realignment has taken place among voters over the past several years.
The Times/Siena poll isn't the only survey showing Biden cutting into Trump's lead since the State of the Union address in early March. In The Tilt newsletter Saturday, the Times' Nate Cohn found Biden gaining an average of +1.4 points on Trump in 16 polls taken before and after the fiery speech.
While none of these revelations feel like tectonic shifts in the presidential contest, they do appear to reflect the Biden campaign's increasing advantages over Trump when it comes to electoral fundamentals such as fundraising, time spent campaigning, and investments in advertising and organizing.
An old adage comes to mind: The only nonrenewable resource in a campaign is time. And while Biden continues to campaign across the country, Trump will be spending the lion's share of his time in a courtroom over the next half-dozen weeks.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
Gov. Chris Sununu
Namby, meet pamby. I’m talking, naturally, of Chris Sununu, governor of New Hampshire, who slithered into a Zoom call on This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday to explain why he will be voting for Donald Trump for president come November. Not because Trump doesn’t have any responsibility for the attempted coup and attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He does. Sununu thinks that all the insurrectionists “must be held accountable and prosecuted.” Except one: the man he’s voting for in November.
Watching him answering the questions of Stephanopoulos was like watching something with more legs than two crawl out from beneath a wet rock on a rainy day. Sununu, who supported Nikki Haley in the primary until she dropped out, doesn’t see anything wrong with now supporting Donald Trump for president. To explain why, he attacked the “wokeness, the fact that folks in Washington, liberal elites in Washington, want to stand on the shoulders of hard-working American families that built this country, that defended this country, and tell them how to live their lives.” Apparently, Sununu has recognized that sounding exactly like Marjorie Taylor Greene will help you as a Republican in America, even up there in the Granite State.
Stephanopoulos should have asked Sununu just what he meant by that statement. Telling people how to live their lives isn’t “woke,” it is part of the business of government. If you earn money, you pay taxes. If you form a company and the company earns money, you pay corporate taxes. If your company is publicly traded, so individual American citizens can invest in it, can give you money so that you can spend it to help your company earn more money, you must register that company with the SEC, you cannot spend your investors’ money on yourself and your own lifestyle, and you must return some of the profits you earn to your investors. If you drive on Interstate highways, you must follow the speed limit. If you manufacture cars, you must install seat belts and airbags in those cars to keep safe the people who drive them. If you buy a firearm at a firearms store, you must pass a background check to make sure that you are not a felon with no right to buy or own a firearm.
Sununu has learned the lesson all Republicans have learned, that it is not necessary to make sense and to tell the truth. When asked by Stephanopoulos if he indeed believed “that a president who contributed to an insurrection should be president again,” Sununu was ready with a lie: “As does 51 percent of America, George. I mean, really.”
Trump lost the election of 2020, 51.3 percent of the vote for Biden, 46.9 percent for Trump. He lost the electoral college by 74 electoral votes. Here is how Sununu explained what happened in the last election: “I hate the election denialism of 2020. Nobody wants to be talking about that in 2024. I think all of that was absolutely terrible, but what people are going to be voting for, what I -- what -- the reason I’m supporting not just the president, but the Republican administration. That's what this is.”
Stephanopoulos didn’t ask him how it is that the “nobody” Sununu identifies as not wanting to talk about election denialism does not include the man he says he’s voting for, Donald Trump, who has made denying the truth of the 2020 election the centerpiece of his campaign.
Listen to Sununu, until now considered one of the so-called reasonable Republicans, as he summed up why he’s voting for Trump: “States rights come first, individual rights come first, parents rights come first.” That’s the Trumpian Republican Kool-Aid right there in a single sentence. That is the reasoning behind the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe and created the nightmare women are facing in states exercising their “states rights” around the country. That is the rhetorical sewer from which the book bans and Black history denialism has emerged over the last several years.
And it’s coming out of the mouth of Chris Sununu. Sununu said previously that Trump should drop out of the race if he is convicted of a crime. Does he think that now? “No, no, no, of course not. That is not to be expected at all. There is clearly politics to bear in some of these cases, that is undeniable. The average American just says it’s more of reality TV in prosecution of him at this point. He plays that victim card very, very well. His poll numbers only go up with this stuff. So, to think of this as some kind of deal breaker, again, I’ll go back to where I started, that people are saying, yep, if he’s convicted, I’m walking away. That’s just not going to happen. If he’s going to be the standard bearer of it, we’ll take it if we have to. That’s how badly Americans want a culture change.”
Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and Mike Pence are the only two prominent Republicans who are not named Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger who have announced they will not vote for Donald Trump, and only Kinzinger has said he will instead vote for Joe Biden.
And to think that these are the reasonable Republicans among us.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.
Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.
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Anti-missile system operating against Iranian drones,seen near Ashkelon, Israel on April 13, 2024
Iran has launched a swarm of missile and drone strikes on Israel from Iranian territory, marking a significant military escalation between the two nations. Israel and Iran have been engaged in a so-called shadow war for decades, with Iranian proxies like Hezbollah rocketing Israel from Lebanon and Syria, and Israel retaliating by launching air strikes on Hezbollah missile sites. Israel has also launched strikes on Iranian targets in other countries, most recently an airstrike on part of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, which killed several top Iranian “advisers” to its military, including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior officer in Iran’s Quds Force, an espionage and paramilitary arm of Iran’s army.
After the strike on part of its embassy in Damascus on April 2, Iran announced that it would retaliate against Israel. Tonight, that retaliation began at just before 2 a.m. Israeli time, as Iran launched what appears to be a sustained missile attack on Jerusalem. CNN and MSNBC are showing images of multiple explosions in the skies over Jerusalem. It’s hard to make out what’s happening, but it looks like Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense system is hitting multiple Iranian missiles, causing showers of missile shrapnel, some of it on fire, to cascade down on Jerusalem and the surrounding area.
Israel has scrambled its fighter jets, which are circling above Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and some of the fighters appear to be engaging Iranian targets, which could include Iranian cruise missiles flying at relatively low altitude and Iranian ballistic missiles arcing down from high altitudes. Air raid sirens have sounded all over the Jerusalem area sending Israelis into air raid shelters.
Iran announced earlier that they have also launched a drone attack on Israel. Drones fly much slower than cruise and ballistic missiles, so they are not expected to reach Israeli airspace until later. The United States has announced that our military forces have shot down some of the Iranian drones, probably from U.S. military sites in northern Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. It is about 1,000 miles from the areas of western Iran where its missile bases may be located to eastern Israel, such as Jerusalem.
Israel just announced that Iran launched more than 200 missiles of various kinds at Israel. Iran has apparently launched its missiles in a coordinated fashion, so that they arrived in Israel airspace in a swarm. It takes about two hours for a cruise missile to travel from Iran to Israel, but only 12 minutes for a ballistic missile to fly the same distance. From what I could see on CNN, it appeared that Iran had succeeded in achieving its aims of swarming Israel’s Iron Dome air defense. Israel has not announced how many Iranian missiles got through its defenses, but an IDF spokesman said Israel intercepted “the vast majority” of Iran’s missiles.
There have been no reports of Hezbollah launching its missiles on targets in Israel in coordination with the Iranian attack. However, Hezbollah announced earlier this evening that its forces had launched missiles at an Israeli barracks in the Golan Heights at about midnight Israel time. Hezbollah is known to have thousands of ground-to-ground missiles along the border with Israel. Their missiles can reach Haifa and other cities in northern Israel. Israel has part of its Iron Dome missile defense system defending northern Israel, but Hezbollah has enough ground-to-ground missiles that it, too, could launch a swarm attack on Israel.
Israel has closed its Ben Gurion Airport and other airports in the country and banned gatherings of more than 1,000 citizens. Israel put a deadline of 48 hours on the closures, but that could change. Airspace in Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq is closed, according to Flightradar24, a website that tracks flights of aircraft around the world in real time.
President Biden met tonight with his national security team in the White House Situation Room. Biden put out a statement that U.S. support for Israel is “ironclad.”
The danger of an attack of this size anywhere in the Middle East, but especially by Iran on Israel, is that hostilities could spread rapidly around the region. There is a possibility that Israel will launch a missile or air attack on targets in Iran, including its missile launch sites and command and control centers. That has not happened yet, however.
Air raid sirens have gone silent in Israel at this hour, according to the New York Times.
At a rally in Pennsylvania tonight, Donald Trump announced his support for Israel, claiming it was under attack “because we show great weakness.”
Trump provided no explanation how “weakness” in the United States could affect the actions of the Iranian regime in Tehran, 6,300 miles away, or what that “weakness” might consist of. House Republicans have held up for months the passage of a bill that would fund support for our ally, Ukraine, which is running out of ammunition and other supplies in its war against Russian aggression. The bill is being held up in part on the orders of Trump himself, who has told aides he does not want President Biden to have a legislative victory during the campaign for president.
There’s showing some weakness for you.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.
Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.
- The Anguish And Courage Behind Schumer's Break With Netanyahu ›
- What Biden Must Do Now To Curb Israel In Gaza And Protect Innocent Civilians ›
President Joe Biden
Barack Obama got it right. He refused to be held captive to his party's left wing. He adopted a strenuous policy of border enforcement, even as some Latino activists threatened to withhold their support for him. He had tense relations with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, but when anti-Israel protesters interrupted a Biden fundraiser over the Gaza conflict, Obama reprimanded them: "Here's the thing, you can't just talk and not listen." And the hall broke into applause.
Should Biden worry about keeping members of the Democrats' perpetually unhappy left on his team come November? Not to the extent that it costs broader public support — or goes against U.S. interests. The far left's power comes not in its big numbers but in its members' ability to bully Democrats into taking positions that cost them elections.
It's happened time and again. During the 2000 presidential campaign, prominent leftists urged followers to vote for spoiler Ralph Nader instead of the moderate Democrat Al Gore. A handful of Nader votes in Florida delivered the presidency to George W. Bush. In 2016, Bernie Sanders and many followers slashed the tires under Hillary Clinton's campaign, thus helping elect Donald Trump, who had cleverly egged them on.
Many of the disrupters waving Palestinian flags feel genuine despair at the Gaza horror. They have much company in this. But a lot of what they're after is attention. Getting pats on the head on social media is more important than helping defeat Donald Trump.
Exactly what was the point of pro-Palestinian demonstrators' disrupting an Easter Vigil mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral other than to get on the news? They know where the cameras are.
Come November, the hard left may deprive Biden of some needed votes. How much wiser to concentrate on Nikki Haley Republicans in the battlegrounds where moderate Republicans reside. And the Biden campaign is reportedly doing that.
According to a February Quinnipiac poll, 37% of Republican-leaning voters who supported Haley said they'd vote for Biden. That doesn't include the percentage of Republicans who would simply sit out an election that has Trump on the ballot.
Biden can't emphasize enough his support for the border enforcement bill that Trump had killed precisely because it would have worked, thus depriving him of a potent campaign issue. Any notion that this stance would turn off Latino voters is belied by polls showing Trump actually gaining some support among them as well as Blacks. And that's despite Trump's talking about mass deportations.
Perhaps Blacks and Latinos want different things from their political leaders than having their identities massaged. Other polls show illegal immigration — as well as crime — rank high on the list of these voters' concerns.
No surprise there. Poorly controlled borders intensify competition for workers without college degrees. These jobs are in construction, manufacturing, restaurants and hotels, retail — positions that are heavily occupied by people of color.
Contained in Obama's message to the anti-Israel left was the reality that the conflict in Gaza is complicated. But when you get down to the Squad level on the left, the problem isn't so much what many believe as their lack of depth in understanding the issues.
Trump Republicans can't help but love them. Here are would-be Democrats helping a candidate who, as president, introduced a ban on Muslims even entering the country — and says he would restore it in a second term.
Haley voters could well be the key to a Biden victory, especially if the president doesn't torment them with woke nonsense. Biden needs to keep Democrats united as is politically doable while getting the never-Trump Republicans to actually cast a vote — if not whole-heartedly for him, at least for the democracy.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
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Donald Trump
A long-promised Donald Trump statement on abortion has finally been released. As expected, it was vague and pleased few. The former president both bragged about his appointment of three Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, and stopped short of endorsing a national abortion ban, instead pledging to leave the decision up to the states.
While it may anger the faction of his party endorsing a national ban, the statement proves the almost certain Republican Party presidential nominee, as transactional and self-serving as ever, can read the polls and the political winds.
Remember, this is the man with a history of declaring himself “pro-choice,” “pro-life” and in favor of punishing women who seek abortions. I’m not sure what he truly believes, but it’s clear from his dancing around the issue that he knows he could pay a price for the GOP’s anti-abortion rights stance in November.
But maybe dealing in contradictions won’t hurt him and his party as much as Trump believes and Democrats hope.
It may not make perfect sense, but a certain voting pattern has been happening lately. Citizens in red states surprise observers when they lean blue on the issue of reproductive and abortion rights, yet continue to reelect the politicians who support those bans.
Ohio has proven that two things could be true at once: Democrat Tim Ryan, Ohioan through and through, could experience defeat in a 2022 Senate race at the hands of Donald Trump-endorsed Republican J.D. Vance, who just a few years ago was tagged as an elitist leaving behind background and family with his best-selling “Hillbilly Elegy.” This was after calling Trump an “idiot” in 2016.
And those same voters could troop to the ballot box in November 2023 to make sure a right to abortion is enshrined in the state’s constitution — after earlier rejecting a state GOP attempt to make it more difficult to win that right.
Vance was shaken by that result last year, writing “we need to understand why we lost this battle so we can win the war.”
But in spite of the surprise Ohio voters handed Republicans, incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is still facing a tough reelection race in the fall. That’s despite his working-class credibility across the state, a record of accomplishments that have benefited Ohio and endorsements from groups such as the 100,000-member Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council. Brown criticizes free-trade agreements, even those coming from his own party, when he says they hurt his constituents.
His GOP opponent, wealthy businessman Bernie Moreno, may have no experience and a background many voters are still filling in, but he has something much more important — a Donald Trump endorsement.
In a state that voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 by a comfortable margin, that may be more than enough. The fact that Ohio voters have proven to be on board with a Democrat’s record and his party’s stand on the issue of reproductive rights is fighting a growing partisan divide that sees a lot less ticket-splitting.
Inside Elections rates both Brown’s race and that of established Montana Sen. Jon Tester, another Democratic incumbent in a red state, as Toss-ups.
Democrats see abortion rights giving them a fighting chance in states they’ve recently seen as lost causes. It wasn’t that long ago (2008 and 2012, in fact) that the party won both Ohio and even, yes, Florida. With an abortion rights initiative on the Sunshine State’s ballot in November, Democrats have even been dreaming of a resurgence in the land of Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.
It will take more than dreams in a time when party is also identity.
I admit I was surprised the first time I saw someone at a Trump rally years ago wearing a T-shirtthat read: “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.” But today, with Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin, siding with the strongman against U.S. generals and NATO allies, is it so surprising that traditional hawkish, national security views have been upended by the strongman who is the head of the GOP?
Does it work the other way around? We’re about to see in my home state of Maryland, where the very popular Republican former governor in that usually Democratic state, Larry Hogan, is looking strong as he runs for the U.S. Senate. Democrats haven’t even chosen his opponent yet. But will voters in a state that soundly rejected Trump vote for a politician they may like but may not trust once he gets to D.C. on issues such as abortion?
This dynamic may be tested most in states that, unlike Ohio or Maryland, are not so branded with one party in its political representation. Following the slew of red-state laws limiting abortion, will voting reveal more ambivalence on the issue than state legislatures believed?
One that could be a test case is Arizona, which President Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020, and was looking tight in early 2024 polls. With the state’s Republican, very conservative high court this week upholding an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions, the upcoming U.S. Senate race, likely between Republican Kari Lake and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, has gotten especially interesting.
Lake has followed the lead of her favorite politician, running away from a law she once praised. Arizona organizers say they already have enough signatures for a ballot measure to enshrine abortion in the state’s constitution.
Whether abortion rights will be the issue to cause voters to question party loyalty up and down the ballot is a question the fall elections could answer.
Reprinted with permission from Roll Call.
The Pew Research Center released polling this week that casts serious doubt on recent surveys showing Donald Trump making significant gains among Black and Latino voters.
The Pew survey suggested majorities of Latino, Black, and Asian voters continue to largely favor the Democratic Party. The results show very little change among Black and Latino Americans since the early 1990s, while white voters remain almost exactly as aligned with the Republican Party as they were in the early ‘90s.
"Not much 'racial realignment' in these Pew numbers," Vanderbilt political science professor John Sides tweeted, attaching a series of Pew graphs tracking party alignment over three decades.
On Latinos specifically, Pew’s 2023 data showing Democrats with a 61 percent to 35 percent edge seemed to counter recentNew York Times/Siena polling showing Trump with a 46 percent to 40 percent edge over Biden—6 points above George W. Bush's 40 percent share of the Latino vote in 2004, the high-water mark for Republicans.
Pew puts considerable effort into surveying the U.S. Latino population, and some political analysts consider it the gold standard on Latino polling. The differences in outcomes between the Pew and Times polls are due to a number of variables, including the fact that Pew asked about party affiliation while the Times polled Trump-Biden support.
But another factor—and a potential cautionary tale about polling Latinos—might be differences in the way the polls were conducted. In the fine print of its graph, Pew explains why its data for Latino voters only dates back to the mid-aughts while information for its other three demographic graphs date back to the 1990s.
"Data for Hispanic voters shown only for years with interviews in English and Spanish," the text reads. In other words, the polling organization didn't view polling of Latinos conducted in English as sufficiently representative, even if the sample sizes were technically large enough.
The Times poll conducted just three percent of its interviews of self-identified Latino voters in Spanish—a fact that UCLA political science professor, Democratic pollster, and Biden campaign adviser Matt Barreto currently highlights in his pinned tweet.
"Let's look at their brilliant Latino methodology: 97 percent English," Barreto tweeted incredulously last month, when the poll was released. Barreto added emphatically that Trump's 6-point advantage in the Times survey "does not match ANY actual bilingual large-n polling of Latinos. ZERO CHANCE. Are people frustrated? Yes. Is Trump +6. ZERO CHANCE."
Even the Times piece detailing the poll's findings among Latino voters warned, "For a subgroup that size, the margin of error is 10 percentage points."
But if Barreto's tweet sounds urgent, it's because Biden's share of Latino voters matters. Latinos, who now account for roughly 15 percent of eligible voters, can be difference-makers in 2024. That is particularly true in a swing state like Arizona, where Latinos are expected to account for around one-quarter of voters this year.
There's good reason to question polling suggesting such a dramatic shift among a group of voters who present unique challenges to pollsters.
As Republican political consultant and Lincoln Project co-founder Mike Madrid tweeted, Pew's "numbers are much more in line with where Hispanics will likely end up. Lower for GOP than most current polls but high historically."
Trump's big purge of old-school and more moderate Republicans, such as supporters of his primary rival Nikki Haley, has also put more pressure on him to overperform among groups that typically haven't favored Republicans—including Latinos.
The smartest reporting out there on the topic of Trump's potential gains with minority voters this cycle comes from CNN analyst and The Atlantic senior editor Ronald Brownstein, who has been at the forefront of tracking demographic trends since coining the term "the blue wall" in 2009.
As Brownstein points out, one underreported trend in this cycle's polling is Biden's relative strength among white voters. In most state and national polls, Biden is "matching or even exceeding" his winning 2020 share of the white vote.
So with Biden and Trump running roughly even in national polling now, Biden's continued strength with white voters puts the onus on Trump to win over a historically high share of voting groups that don't typically lean Republican.
As Brownstein tweeted, "Trump's gains w/Black & Hispanic voters have drawn justified attn. But w/little notice, Biden is matching or beating his 2020 # w/Whites in most ntl & state polls. That means to win,Trump may need to hold more minority votes than any GOP nominee in 60+ yrs."
That's going to be a tall order, particularly among Latinos, given the full-court press the Biden campaign rolled out last week with its new targeted outreach strategy, "Latinos con Biden-Harris."
The conventional wisdom over the past few months has been that Biden is in trouble because he's bleeding support among Latinos (and potentially Black voters, too).
But with current polling showing Biden and Trump relatively evenly matched at this stage of the contest, it's entirely plausible for the Biden campaign to woo back some voters who are more naturally predisposed to voting for Democrats, as the Pew polling suggested.
As Democratic strategist Joe Trippi recently explained on his podcast, “That Trippi Show,” "We don't have to gain back 20 points with Blacks, we don't have to gain back 20 points with Latinos, or with young people. If we're in a dead heat when we've lost 20 points with all those folks across the board, you get 2 points, 3 points, 4 points of them back, and Trump is dead."
It's another case of: We'd much rather be us than them.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
