Republicans Grill Wray

Yesterday, FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Donald Trump appointee, was on the hot seat in the House, as Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) battled with him. Jordan accused the FBI of targeting right-wing leaders and activists, school boards, and many other groups and organizations dear to his heart. He also accused Wray of not targeting Hunter Biden, who Jordan sees as one of the greatest criminals in American history. Every time Wray attempted to answer Jordan's questions, Jordan or one of the other Republicans interrupted him so he couldn't answer.

To the extent he was able to say anything, Wray, who is a registered Republican, rejected accusations that the Bureau was protecting Hunter Biden or Joe Biden or that it had targeted Trump. He also said that the 38,000 men and women working for the Bureau arrested over 20,000 violent criminals and child predators last year. Mostly he kept his cool under incoming fire, but got annoyed when Jordan suggested Congress would slash the Bureau's budget. He said it "would hurt American people, neighborhoods, and communities all across the country." If he had been a bit quicker on his feet, he could have said: "Oh, I see you are now in bed with Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), looking to defund the police. I didn't know that." Then he could have watched Jordan's head explode.

Defunding the FBI would never make it past the Senate, but one thing Jordan might be able to do is block the FBI's new headquarters, which the Bureau says it badly needs. Maryland and Virginia are both angling for the honor.

When he got his turn to speak, ranking member Jerry Nadler (D-NY) defended Wray, thus reversing the historical roles of the parties. For decades, Republicans were the party of law and order and defended all law enforcement agencies through thick and thin. Democrats were more inclined to point to police brutality than defend them. Now it is all upside down because Republicans are the perps law enforcement is investigating. Nadler also called Jordan's behavior "little more than performance art." It is very unlikely that any bills that Jordan produces as a result of this hearing will pass Congress. In fact, it is even unlikely any Jordan bills will pass the House. The 18 Republicans in Biden districts don't want to have to answer the question on the campaign trail: "Why do you hate the police?" They don't want to vote on any bill Jordan might cook up; they will tell Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) this in advance and warn him not to bring up any such bills because the votes aren't there. (V)

Clarence Thomas' Problems Keep Getting Worse

Justice Clarence Thomas is a friendly guy, apparently, as he has lots of friends. Billionaire Republican megadonor Harlan Crow is a long-time buddy. The guys at the Horatio Alger Association are more fun than a barrel of monkeys. And now, more of the justice's contact list has come out.

Several lawyers who had cases before the Supreme Court transferred money to one of Thomas' aides, Rajan Vasisht, in Nov. and Dec. 2019. The payments were made on Venmo and were public until Vasisht took them down. The purpose of the payments were things like "Christmas Party," "Thomas Christmas Party," "CT Christmas Party," or "CT Xmas party." The fact that four different subjects were used suggests that there were at least four payments, maybe more. The justice is entitled to hold Christmas parties if he wants to, of course, and he can even charge people admission, although inviting people with business before the Supreme Court to a party and then charging them an admission fee is very fishy. Supreme Court justices make $230,000. That ought to be enough to hold a party once a year and let your guests in for free. Well, unless he was chartering a private plane to bring Santa Claus in from the North Pole because the reindeer were on strike or something. But if he really wanted Santa to come to the party, he could have asked his good buddy Crow to go fetch Santa in his private jet. Of course, if Thomas also wanted to bring all the reindeer to the party as well, he might have needed a plane bigger than Crow's to hold them all. They could have asked Rudolph to help out, but unfortunately, he was holding a press conference at Four Seasons Landscaping.

The lawyers who sent the money included Patrick Strawbridge, a partner at Consovoy McCarthy, who recently argued that affirmative action violated the U.S. Constitution. Another payment came from Kate Todd, who served as a White House deputy counsel under Donald Trump. There was also one from Elbert Lin, who played a key role in the Supreme Court case that limited the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Then there was Brian Schmalzbach, who has argued many cases before the Supreme Court. There were others as well. Thomas had a pretty impressive guest list. On the other hand, Thomas is apparently a simple fellow at heart. Normally bribes are wired to numbered bank accounts in Zurich, Lichtenstein, or the Cayman Islands, or delivered in suitcases full of cash, not sent using Venmo.

Richard Painter, the chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said: "A federal government employee collecting money from lawyers for any reason? I don't see how that works." Then he added that if the payers were recent law clerks going to a paid party Thomas held, maybe. But senior litigators at major law firms sending money to the aide of a Supreme Court justice? No way.

Maybe this is all legitimate somehow and the amounts paid were $50 to cover drinks, but it clearly doesn't pass the smell test. A Supreme Court Justice should not be partying with lawyers with cases before the Court. Also, a guy making $230,000 and married to a woman making good money ought to be able to host a Christmas party without hitting up big-time lawyers for an admission fee. The whole thing needs to be investigated. Maybe when Jim Jordan finishes browbeating Christopher Wray, he could look at it, but we suspect he is too busy. Maybe Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) has the time. All he has to do to get started is to send a couple of subpoenas to Venmo to get copies of Vasisht's transactions and Thomas' transactions. (V)

Murdoch Is Losing Faith in DeSantis

Rupert Murdoch is not a kingmaker, but he is pretty good as a presidentmaker. Without Fox behind him, it is doubtful that Donald Trump could have won the GOP nomination in 2016 against over a dozen governors and senators. There was a period there when Fox was all Trump, all the time. Without all that free publicity, he probably couldn't have conquered so many well-known politicians.

Will history repeat itself and Fox News determine the next Republican presidential nominee? For a while, it looked like Fox boss Rupert Murdoch had his fill of the mercurial Trump and was ready to move on. Specifically, for a while, it appeared that Murdoch was going to switch horses to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). Like Trump in 2016, DeSantis could use a lot of publicity about how presidential he is. But that was a problem Fox News could fix. Furthermore, DeSantis is either an actual conservative, unlike Trump, or at least is better at playing the role of a conservative. There were plenty of news stories out there with headlines like "How Ron DeSantis won the Fox News Primary," "Fox News Has Found Their New Trump," and "Fox News Now Referencing DeSantis More Than Trump."

That was then and this is now. The bromance seems to be souring. Remember, Fox's primary goal is not to elect Republicans or even make the country conservative. Its primary goal is to make lots of money. Being the go-to television network for conservatives is simply the method being used. Backing a winner is important because viewers don't want to feel like losers. DeSantis is good enough at acting like a conservative to fool most of the viewers and he is young, smart, and telegenic (until he opens his mouth). He seemed like he could beat Trump in the primary and Joe Biden in the general election, so Murdoch was on board the S.S. DeSantis.

But now that DeSantis is an official candidate, is stumbling badly, and is way behind Trump in all the national and early state polls, Murdoch is privately voicing his doubts that the Florida Governor is capable of making a comeback. In particular, Murdoch doesn't think that DeSantis' strategy of betting the farm on cultural grievances and being the biggest LGBTQ hater in town is a winner. He also is afraid that DeSantis does not connect well to the average Republican voter or viewer. One insider said of Murdoch and his son, Lachlan, who now runs Fox's cable operation: "They are transactional and can smell a loser a mile away." The Murdochs fear that Trump will be the Republican nominee and if they support DeSantis and Trump is elected president, well, they know that Trump has promised to make his second term about "retribution."

The shift away from DeSantis is gradual, but clear. Last week Fox host Will Cain said DeSantis is not "connecting" with the voters. On Sunday, Maria Bartiromo asked DeSantis on air: "What's going on with your campaign?" while a chyron read "DeSantis Trails Trump by 34% for GOP Nomination." Murdoch's newspapers are taking pot shots at DeSantis now. The Wall Street Journal openly attacked Florida's new anti-immigration bill. The New York Post has begun looking askance at DeSantis and has written pieces like "DeSantis' Odd Choices." None of this is accidental. There is no way so many Murdoch properties would start dumping on Wonder Boy without direct instruction from on high.

But the Murdochs have a big problem. If they toss DeSantis under the bus, then what? Crawl back to Trump with their tails between their legs? They would kind of have to, since none of the other candidates will please their audience in the slightest. This would radically change the power relationship between Murdoch and Trump and not in Murdoch's favor. Murdoch understands that all too well, but he bet on the wrong horse and his horse appears to be losing. Now the consequences are sinking in.

One news story in The New York Times yesterday reports that Murdoch is interested in getting Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) to jump in. So far, Youngkin has repeatedly said that he is not running in 2024. He probably realizes that the rabid Trump base is not looking for a fleece-wearing guy who ran as a moderate and that he wouldn't have much of a chance to wrest the nomination from Trump even if Fox were to put him on every night. Youngkin has said that his goal is to capture both chambers of the Virginia legislature in 2024, so he can ram through all kinds of conservative legislation in 2025, his last year in office due to term limits. That could set him up for a race against Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) in 2026 and then on to the White House in 2028. (V)

A Loose Anti-MAGA Coalition Is Forming

In 2016, Donald Trump shocked the country by eking out narrow wins in Wisconsin (by 0.77%), Michigan (by 0.23%), and Pennsylvania (by 0.72%). He did this by winning over what he himself called "poorly educated voters," primarily men in the Rust Belt who saw their once-comfortable lives disrupted by job losses due to foreign competition, local factories being closed, automation, and other factors. They were angry and Trump seemed to care about them. He didn't, but they didn't know this (and still don't). Besides, Hillary Clinton seemed arrogant and very uninterested in their problems.

Since then, things have changed. Since 2016, Republicans have lost 23 of the 27 major elections in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia, the key swing states in 2024. When Trump took office, Republicans controlled four of the five governorships and six of the ten Senate seats in those five states. Now they have one governorship (Georgia) and one Senate seat (Wisconsin). What happened?

The 2016 election might go down in history as having had the effect of mobilizing an anti-MAGA coalition. When people saw that someone like Trump could actually win, it energized people who hate him as much as it energized people who love him. In particular, the anti-MAGA group has two important components. First are young people, then 11-17, now of voting age. To them, the Republican Party is Donald Trump and they don't like what they are seeing. They reject MAGA by 20 points. Second are people who voted for Barack Obama but skipped the 2016 election. They are known as the Obama-nones.

Catalist is a (Democratic-aligned) firm that maintains records on 256 million voting-age individuals, with many markers per person to make it possible to make a decent prediction about how someone might vote. For example, a retired gun owner who is a member of the NRA and owns a pickup truck is a possible Republican. A young professor who drives a used Prius and is a member of the Sierra Club is a possible Democrat. Candidates can rent carefully curated lists of voters for whatever city, county, district, or state they are running in. The data also make various statistical analyses possible.

Catalist computes the VCI (Voter Choice Index) for each person. This is the likely partisanship of the person. For a district, state, etc., it is possible to compute the margin by subtracting the number of likely Republicans from the number of likely Democrats. Negative margins are Republican districts, states, etc. and positive ones are Democratic. Since the database goes back to 2008, it is also possible to see how a district, state, etc. is changing over time. The graphic below shows every state, sorted by margin, from most Republican (Wyoming) on top to least Republican (Vermont) at the bottom. The orange dot is for people who voted in 2016. The green dot is for people who did not vote in 2016 but have voted since then. The green dot probably largely represents people who came of voting age from 2017 to 2022 and Obama-nones.

In those states where the green dot is to the right of the orange dot, the state has more Democrats now than it had in 2016. All states except West Virginia, Washington, and Hawaii fall in this category. Also note that the trend also holds in deep red states. Look at Wyoming, North Dakota, Idaho, and Alabama, for example. Even in these states, young people lean more toward the Democrats than their parents. Of course, the parents' and grandparents' generations, when combined, are bigger than the kids' generation, so these red states are still plenty red, but Republicans need to be thinking a bit about the future. The biggest gap on the chart is Kansas. Are you still surprised that the pro-choice side won the abortion referendum there in 2022?

The data suggest that the Democrats do not need to try to convince Trump voters to switch sides. What they need to do is make sure all of the anti-Trump voters get out and vote. This suggests the focus should be less on television ads and much more on registering young voters, making sure they get any ID required to vote, and getting out the vote as soon as early voting starts. (V)

Utah Supreme Court Considers the Issue of Gerrymandered Maps

While the U.S. Supreme Court thinks that even the most egregious partisan (as opposed to racial) gerrymandering is hunky dory, some of the state Supreme Courts are ruling that it violates the state constitution. A recent battle is in Utah, of all places. On Tuesday, Utah's highest court heard a case about the latest state congressional map. This map divides up Salt Lake County, which is heavily Democratic, and parcels its voters out among four congressional districts. This ensures that the congressional delegation is 0D, 4R instead of 1D, 3R.

The backstory here is of note. In 2018, the voters passed a ballot measure banning gerrymandering. However, this initiative was just a law, not an amendment to the state Constitution. So what did the legislature do? It simply repealed the law and went to work on a gerrymandered map. Tuesday's hearing was about whether the courts have a role in deciding what is a proper map or if that is simply a job for the political branches. It is not known when a ruling might be made.

The U.S. Supreme Court considered exactly the same question in 2019 and punted it back to the legislatures. However, Utah's constitution offers voting-rights advocates a stronger case. Specifically, the Utah constitution says that all political power resides with the people. This raises the issue of whether the legislature has the power to repeal a law the people passed by initiative. If the Court rules that the legislature doesn't have that power, then the law the people passed will remain in force and the legislature will have to draw a new map. If it draws a heavily gerrymandered map, Democrats will sue, claiming that the map violates state law.

The case could have national implications since similar cases are percolating up in other states. While no state is bound by decisions in other states, if a substantial number of state Supreme Courts have ruled that their state Constitutions and laws ban gerrymandering, that could influence judges in other states that have similar provisions in their Constitutions and laws. In fact, courts in Alaska, Maryland, New Mexico, and New York have already ruled that partisan gerrymanders are unconstitutional. So have courts in Ohio and North Carolina. In Ohio, the legislature just ignored the courts. In North Carolina, a newly elected (Republican-majority) Supreme Court is about to throw the old ruling in the waste basket and make a new ruling. (V)

Sununu May Retire

New Hampshire is a light blue state. Since the 1988 Bush landslide, the only time it voted for a Republican presidential candidate was in 2000. That's seven of the last eight times for the blue team. Both senators are Democrats. Still, the Republicans have the trifecta, so it really is a swing state. The current governor, Chris Sununu (R-NH), is personally very popular and has been elected to four 2-year terms. However, the Cook Political Report is reporting that Sununu is likely to retire and not run for a fifth term. He said: "I'll make a firm decision this summer. Not leaning towards it. We're crushing it in New Hampshire. This isn't a career, it's public service. Someone else kind of needs to take the mantle. I've got kids to put through college. I don't know. You go out on top. We've done great and it's time for someone else to come in. That's where my head is right now." This doesn't sound much like: "Hell, yes! I love my job. Of course I'm running."

If Sununu were to retire, it would change Cook's rating for the Republican gubernatorial race from "shoo-in" to "toss-up." That's a pretty dramatic change, but the Republican hold on the governor's mansion isn't ideological. It is because the voters like Chris Sununu personally. And in a small state like New Hampshire, chances are most of the voters have met the governor personally at least once. A friend of (V) lives in Vermont and has met Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) personally probably 20 times. New Hampshire and Vermont are really like that. If you live in New Hampshire and have met Sununu personally, let us know what he is really like.

The Democrats are already looking for a candidate. Even if Sununu runs, in a blue wave, a Democrat could win so it is worth trying. Three of the past governors have been Democrats and three have been Republicans, although one of the latter served for only 2 days. (When then-Gov. Maggie Hassan resigned as governor on Jan. 3, 2017, to be sworn into the U.S. Senate, President of the New Hampshire Senate, Republican state Sen. Chuck Morse, became acting governor until Jan. 5, 2017, when Sununu was sworn in.)

Democrat Cinde Warmington, who is on the New Hampshire Executive Council, and Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig have already filed to run for governor. Of the two, Warmington is slightly leftier than Craig, but national Democrats have said both women are fine candidates in their view.

There are plenty of Republicans in New Hampshire, so a number of them are already thinking about a gubernatorial run. Former U.S. senator Kelly Ayotte is one. She passed on running for the Senate in 2022, but that is likely because she didn't want to move to D.C. (she has two teenagers at home). If Ayotte moved to the governor's mansion in Concord, her children could stay in their current schools in Nashua, half an hour away, if they want to.

Morse, the 2-day governor, who is still president of the state Senate, could try for a 2-year term. If you can do it for 2 days, you can do it for 2 years. His slogan could be: "You can learn a lot in 2 days." Commissioner of Education Frank Edelblut (R) is also a possibility. If Ayotte ran, she would be the favorite to get the GOP nomination. Ayotte vs. one of the two Democratic women would be a close race and guarantee that New Hampshire would have its third female governor (the first two of whom are currently U.S. senators). (V)

Mayra Flores Is Running Again

On March 31, 2022, then-Rep. Filemon Vela Jr. (D-TX) abruptly resigned from the House to become a lobbyist with Akin Gump (which is not related to Forrest Gump). Mayra Flores, who had never run for public office before, filed to run as a Republican in the Texas district along the Mexican border that had been Democratic for ages. She won, causing massive panic among Democrats. If they couldn't hold a heavily Latino district like Flores', were Latinos deserting them? Flores was the first woman born in Mexico to win a House seat. She also filed to run in the 2022 election, but this time in a redrawn district (the special election used the 2020 boundaries). This time she lost to Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX). Democrats relaxed a bit.

Now Flores has announced another run against Gonzalez in 2024. Given the tiny majority the Republicans have in the House, every seat matters and if Texas Latinos are really moving toward the Republicans, she could win this one again, even with the redistricting. The NRCC is solidly behind her.

Flores said her campaign will focus on empowering Border Patrol agents, one of whom is her husband. She will no doubt again get millions of dollars in donations, just as in 2022. However, she won't be able to outgun Gonzalez, a wealthy lawyer who recovered millions of dollars for plaintiffs nationwide and who can self-fund his campaign. He is conservative enough for the largely Latino district, but still voted for Joe Biden's position 97% of the time.

This will be a high-profile race because it will test the hypothesis that Latinos are becoming Republicans. (V)

The Voters Just Don't Get It

It is considered in very poor taste for journalists, reporters, pundits, or even lowly bloggers to say it out loud, but many voters are stupid. There, we said it. It's uncouth but we value the truth over here. Climate change is real and all the floods in the Hudson Valley and Vermont, extreme heat in the South and West, smoke from Canadian wildfires in the Midwest, and 90F ocean water around Florida are not unrelated freak accidents. This is the new normal, as Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) put it, and it is due to anthropogenic climate change.

But the voters don't get it. Only 8% of registered voters see climate change as the biggest issue facing the country. It is in fifth place. Whether the planet remains compatible with human life is small potatoes. Even for Democrats, climate change is in fourth place. Independents ranked it fifth. Among Republicans it was tied with education in eighth place, with only 2% seeing it as the biggest issue—despite all the extreme weather in much of the country. Last Thursday was the hottest day in recorded history. The subgroups most concerned about climate change are people living in small cities (16%) and college graduates (11%). In no demographic subgroup do more than 16% of the people see climate change as the biggest problem the country has.

But maybe we are wrong and the voters are one step ahead of us. They see the problem and realize that the solution means making lifestyle changes they don't want, like trading in that big SUV for a small hybrid or electric car and not turning on the air conditioning until the temperature hits 80F. A study in 2019 showed that people learn to accept extreme weather as normal in as short a time as 2 years.

The effects of climate change are not distant and abstract. They are here and quite measurable. Around 1980, the average interval between weather events that caused $1 billion in damage was 82 days. Now it is 18 days, even when converting to 1980 dollars.

Of course, the reason for lack of action is that it has become a partisan issue. Many Republican leaders deny the obvious, promote fossil fuels, and oppose renewable energy. In a Congress balanced on knife's edge, this means not much can be done nationally, although Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act actually snuck in a fair amount of funding that addresses the transition to cleaner energy sources. Some of the states are trying to do something, but there is only so much they can do. Still, laws in California, Oregon, and Washington banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars starting in 2035 is something. If enough other states follow suit, it could add up. (V)

The Legal Pundits Don't Get It Either

Many news stories about Donald Trump's many legal problems are based on interviews with lawyers and former prosecutors. Most of them say that New York, Georgia, and the feds all have ironclad cases with mountains of facts and proof that Trump violated multiple laws. See here, here, and here. Most of them conclude that Trump's goose is cooked and he will never be acquitted.

That may well be true, but it misses the point. Lawyers naturally think in terms of "acquittal" and "conviction." That is what they are trained to do. But there is a third possibility: a hung jury. We see Donald Trump's actions pointing to a different legal strategy than that of his own lawyers. He probably knows that the chances of acquittal are very low. But if he can convince enough of his supporters that he is a victim, just as they are, and they should never desert him, he might be able to get at least one never-say-guilty supporter on each jury and end up hanging all the juries. In the event of a hung jury, the prosecution may try again, but if the new trial is in the same place as the previous one, the jury pool is going to be the same and there is an excellent chance of another hung jury. And another.

For example, Aileen Cannon's courthouse is in Fort Pierce, FL, which is in St. Lucie County. Trump won that county in 2020 with 50.38% of the vote. The surrounding congressional district, FL-21, is R+7. This means that there are likely to be half a dozen Republicans on the jury, and all it takes is one who believes Trump is being framed to get a hung jury. If one juror is convinced that Trump always tells the truth so the FBI must have secretly planted the evidence against him and he or she refuses to vote to convict, the trial will end in a hung jury. And since the next trial will probably be in the same place, the next jury could easily also have one juror who simply won't vote to convict either. And the next one and the next one.

The lawyers who are in the news all assume that jurors are all reasonable people who will listen to the facts and the judge's instructions and come to a logical conclusion. They don't count on a small number of people who see Trump as some sort of deity and who won't betray him, no matter what. The prosecution will try to weed them out during the voir dire process, but they have only a limited number of peremptory challenges.

Trump seems to understand the situation better than the lawyers and is thus focusing his campaign on trying to convince his supporters that he is a victim of the DoJ or the Deep State or the Democrats or something. All he needs is to get one diehard on each jury. After three or four trials with hung juries, the prosecution will probably give up, realizing that a conviction is never going to happen.

This doesn't mean Trump is out of the woods. The Mar-a-Lago case is probably the easiest case to prove, but it is not the only one. Trump showed classified documents to unauthorized people at his club in Bedminster, NJ. Bedminster is in Somerset County, where 38.7% of the vote went to Trump. It is in NJ-07, which is R+1. That is Republican enough that there could still be one Trump diehard who manages to get on the jury if a case is brought there.

The one place where a "hung-jury strategy" might not work is in D.C. If there are charges brought in conjunction with the coup attempt, the trial for that will be in D.C. There only 5.4% of the votes went for Trump. The chance that a dyed-in-the-wool Trumpist makes it onto the jury there is low because there are so few of them in the local jury pool.

In normal cases, the chances of a hung jury are fairly low because none of the jurors have ever heard of the defendant before and listen to the facts and the judge. Even if the crime is absolutely horrific and one juror wants the accused to get 50 consecutive life sentences, the other 11 jurors can say: "We agree whoever committed the crime should get 50 consecutive life sentences. Only it is really not certain the defendant committed the crime. We can't send an innocent person to die in prison for a horrendous crime that somebody else committed."

What makes the Trump cases so unusual is that many jurors have exceedingly well-formed opinions of Trump's guilt or innocence long before the trial starts and some of them may not be moved at all by new facts they don't like. In any event, we think Trump will continue his strategy of p*ssing in the jury pool, hoping for an endless string of hung juries rather than a clean acquittal in any case. (V)

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