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DeSantis Previews His Presidential Campaign in His State of the State Speech

On Tuesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) gave his state-of-the-state address. The speech was essentially a dress rehearsal for his presidential stump speech. Executive summary: I made Florida conservative again and I can do it for the whole country.

Some of the high points of his speech were:

It sounds a lot like Donald Trump, only formulated more sharply and better focused. This is a result of DeSantis having seen where Trump succeeded and where he failed, his being smarter than Trump (two Ivy League degrees is better than one), and his being a much better politician. He also can point to many more "successes" than Trump (e.g., making Disney back down), in no small part because he very carefully picked battles that he knew he could win (e.g., getting a law passed censoring books in school libraries). That is a lot easier than promising a 1,000-mile wall in very difficult terrain and getting Mexico to pay for it.

The speech was on the occasion of the start of the 2-month legislative session. Florida already has enough laws, so the legislature meets only 2 months a year to consider new ones. Since DeSantis' staff writes the bills, all the legislature has to do is have a few quick legislative committee meetings and then bring the bills to the floor for approval. That doesn't take much time. DeSantis wants new laws allowing open carry of firearms, tort reform, taxes, and banning the Chinese government from buying land in Florida. All of the laws are designed to give the governor something to brag about during the primaries. One of his main themes will be: "Trump had good ideas, but he didn't deliver on them. I delivered in Florida and I can deliver in the White House."

He didn't talk much about abortion, but less than an hour after his address, Republicans in the state House and Senate introduced bills to ban abortions after 6 weeks of pregnancy. Those bills may not move quickly, though, because there is an abortion-related case pending in the state courts and the president of the state Senate would prefer to see how that plays out before changing the law. If it needs to be tweaked to make it acceptable to the courts, that can be done before passing it.

In the coming weeks, DeSantis is planning to visit New Hampshire and Iowa to road test his speech. Then when he officially announces in May or June, he will have it fine tuned to get lots of applause. Trump will get a run for his money. He has never faced any opponent who is going to try to outflank him on the right, who is extremely well prepared, and who is willing and eager to fight dirty. Trump may or may not fully understand this, but he has hired some experienced advisers, especially Susie Wiles, who is an expert on Florida politics, and they know what is coming. They know that Trump cannot bully DeSantis as he did Jeb! and Little Marco. DeSantis is a tough as nails and much better focused that Trump himself. It will be quite a battle. (V)

Biden Proposes Increasing Medicare Tax for High Earners

Joe Biden understands that Republicans are going to attack him on the campaign trail for letting Social Security and Medicare go bust (even though they are actively trying to destroy them). He is already working to defeat that argument by proposing a fix for Medicare to keep it solvent for at least 25 more years. He wants to increase the Medicare payroll tax from 3.8% to 5% for people earning over $400,000 per year. The new rate would apply to both earned income and passive income (e.g., interest and dividends).

The plan also requires that pharmaceutical companies pay more into Medicare when they raise their prices faster than inflation. It also caps the cost of certain drugs at $2/month and expands Medicare's power to negotiate drug prices.

Biden clearly understands that saving Medicare and reducing costs of medicine is potentially a winner with seniors. He also knows that when the proposal is turned into a bill it will fail in the House and be filibustered in the Senate if it is also introduced there. Getting a law passed now isn't the goal. He knows which party will oppose all these nice goodies for seniors and will surely mention that a few times on the campaign trail. His message to the seniors will undoubtedly be: "Vote a straight Democratic ticket so we can do all these things for you." Republicans will rant that Biden is a socialist, but no doubt at least some seniors will be thinking "If socialism consists of saving Medicare and lowering my cost of medicine, maybe that isn't so bad." So this is not a serious legislative proposal for this session of Congress, but something to whack the Republicans with when they kill it.

Biden's budget for 2023 will be released today. It is expected to cut the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next 10 years. It will have some higher taxes and also cut some wasteful spending, something Republicans are always demanding. Only Biden's idea of wasteful spending is giving money to Big Oil and Bog Pharma, which probably isn't every Republican's idea of wasteful spending.

Presidential budgets rarely pass Congress unscathed, especially when the opposition party controls one of the two chambers. Nevertheless, House Republicans can't just remove everything they don't like because the budget also has to pass the Senate. It will be a nasty battle between the upper and lower chambers. (V)

Trump Is Considering Four Women for Veep

Axios has a scoop on who Donald Trump is considering for his running mate. According to Axios' sources, Trump knows he has a massive problem with college-educated suburban women and is thinking about how he can fix that, especially since the Democratic veep candidate is almost certainly going to be a woman (i.e., Kamala Harris). The sources say Trump is seriously looking at these women, each of whom has different strengths and weaknesses from his point of view.

Our take is that Lake is a sore loser, which Americans don't like, Haley is unlikely to be Trump's choice because of her lack of enthusiasm for election denial and her heritage. Sanders is totally and completely unqualified to become president on a moment's notice if it comes to that. That leaves Noem as the most logical choice, since she is both very Trumpy and has both legislative and executive experience. She doesn't have any foreign policy experience, but she can surely pick a suitable secretary of state and let the secretary handle foreign policy. Or she can just leave Trump's pick in place. (V)

Republican States Are Leaving ERIC

Get this. Republican states that constantly whine about (virtually nonexistent) voter fraud are leaving the main organization that combats voter fraud. This is ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center. ERIC is responsible for interstate coordination to prevent people from voting in more than one state. When someone moves from one state to another, they typically register to vote in the new state but usually forget to deregister in the old one. This leaves open the possibility of voting twice. ERIC helps the states cross check to make sure people are registered in only one state. It also helps purge dead people from the voter rolls since many people forget to deregister just before dying.

Florida, Missouri, and West Virginia have announced that they are pulling out of the group. Alabama and Louisiana pulled out last year. Still, over two dozen states, both red ones and blue ones, are still in it. Given how much Republicans claim that voter fraud is rampant, dropping out of the primary organization actively trying to prevent it seems a bit hypocritical.

Much of the problem is centered around one of ERIC's other tasks: encouraging EBUs to vote. What are EBUs, you might ask? These are Eligible But Unregistered voters. ERIC's bylaws state that members are expected to contact all the EBUs in their state every 2 years to ask them if they would like to register. To some extent, this activity could increase voter turnout and that is anathema to Republican politicians, even though studies have shown that the EBUs tend to break the same way as the registered voters. They are not all lazy Democrats, but the Republican secretaries of state in the above five states aren't taking any chances, so they want out.

Another issue is ERIC's board. It is made up of one senior official from each member state as well as a few ex officio members. Republicans want to eliminate the ex officio members because one of them, David Becker, has been a vocal defender of election security in 2020 and 2022 and has loudly said that there was virtually no election fraud either year. Since some of the secretaries of state are election deniers themselves, they don't want to hear this and want to get rid of Becker.

Interestingly enough, in 2019, Ron DeSantis pushed for Florida to join ERIC after former governor Rick Scott had opposed it. As late as last summer, DeSantis praised ERIC for helping to catch voter fraud. But now working with Democrats on anything, even catching voter fraud, is unacceptable to the base, so out goes Florida. All of the other secretaries of state were caught off guard by Florida's announcement that it is leaving.

It is possible that some of the Republican-controlled states may set up their own organization. This one might not only pursue illegal voting, but maybe legal voting as well. Who knows? (V)

Supreme Court May Cripple the CFPB

The current Supreme Court is always keen on overturning laws signed by Democratic presidents. It may soon get a chance to hugely weaken one of them. The upcoming case is about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose job is to ride herd on businesses that mislead or scam consumers on financial matters (e.g, predatory lending where the loan conditions are deeply hidden in a massive contract). It was the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and was signed into law by Barack Obama. Warren was also the first director of the agency (this was before she was a senator). A recent poll showed that 80% of Americans approve of the organization, but that doesn't matter if five or six members of the Supreme Court do not approve of it.

Going after scammy businesses requires a big staff of investigators and lawyers, and that costs money. A typical investigation the CFPB did is one in which Wells Fargo unlawfully repossessed vehicles, froze accounts, and charged overdraft fees even when customers had sufficient funds in their accounts. The CFPB collected so much evidence of the bank's wrongdoing that in December it agreed to pay $3.7 billion rather than go to trial. That took a lot of legwork.

Congress created the CFPB, so the Court can't just kill it off outright. It's opponents, namely the banks, payday lenders, credit card companies, and other financial players, know that. So their goal is: Defund the CFPB. Consequently, the legal case hinges on its funding mechanism. Most federal agencies get an annual appropriation from Congress. The CFPB gets its funding from the Federal Reserve. The conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has already ruled that this funding is unconstitutional. Republicans hope the Supreme Court will uphold the Fifth Circuit. If the decision is sustained, the CFPB will still exist on paper, but won't have much money to hire staff to actually look for scams and prosecute cases. For the financial firms, this will do until a future Republican trifecta eliminates the Bureau entirely.

But wait. The CFPB is small potatoes. Many other federal agencies are also funded by various methods other than an annual appropriation from Congress. If the Supreme Court rules that Congress does not have the authority to pass laws funding agencies by any mechanism other than by an annual appropriation, then a huge number of Executive agencies will be effectively defunded. Also not funded by annual appropriation? Congress itself. It's set up that way so it can keep working on the annual budget when, inevitably, it fails to pass the annual budget in time. So, maybe it will have to shut down.

Needless to say, there is nothing in the Constitution stating how Congress must fund agencies, so it might seem odd that the Supreme Court suddenly discovered that only one mechanism is constitutional. If Congress decided that some other mechanism was appropriate, where does the Court get the power to say Congress can't do that? Answer: We have six votes saying we have the power. The case is known as CFPB v. CSFA. (V)

Newsom Boycotts Walgreens

On Monday. we had an item on how Walgreens has decided to stop selling the abortion pill mifepristone in states where the (Republican) AG doesn't want them to sell it, even though states have no authority to unapprove drugs the FDA has approved. As a result, some pro-choice supporters have urged a boycott against Walgreens for its cowardice. The idea is that if the financial hit for dropping mifepristone is big enough, the company might decide to change its mind.

A guy in California thought a boycott was a splendid idea. His name is Gavin Newsom. You might have heard of him. He is the governor of the state. Earlier this week, he said: "California is reviewing all relationships between Walgreens and the state. We will not pursue business with companies that cave to right-wing bullies pushing their extremist agenda or companies that put politics above the health of women and girls." Newsom wants to find out how much stuff California buys from Walgreens and look for alternative suppliers. If that requires a new law stating that bidders on state contracts that supply medicines to, say, Medi-Cal, must offer all FDA approved medicines, Democrats have enough votes in the state legislature to pass something along those lines. Then Walgreens will have to decide if it is willing to forgo a large chunk of business to placate anti-abortion activists.

Newsom is a potential presidential candidate in 2024 if Joe Biden declines to run and a potential 2028 presidential candidate if Biden does run. He understands that standing up to companies that cower before right-wing bullies is going to be a selling point in the Democratic primaries, whenever he runs. Just as Ron DeSantis is going to run on what he delivered, Newsom would love to be able to say: "I forced Walgreens to back down and sell the abortion pill, even in Repiblican-controlled states."

Newsom is definitely not an all bark, no bite, kind of guy. Late yesterday, he suspended a $54 million contract between Walgreens and the state of California. Just in case Walgreens didn't get the point, he noted that California has one of the largest economies in the world and "we will leverage our market power to defend the right to choose." Take that Walgreens! Now Walgreens is the one who is going to have to choose.

Oh, and one other thing. Walgreens is headquartered in Illinois and Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) said that he was going to have a little chat with the company's CEO later this week. If all the big blue states follow California's lead, Walgreens is going to have an Excedrin-extra-strength headache. Fortunately, they sell that product in all states. (V)

Poll: Trump Crushing DeSantis in New Hampshire

A new Emerson College poll of New Hampshire Republicans has Donald Trump at 58% and Ron DeSantis at 17%. The state's governor, Chris Sununu (R) came in third at 7%. Nikki Haley was fourth at 6%. For Haley, that's pretty good.

What is a bit surprising is that Sununu has an approval rating of 64%, yet he couldn't even hit 10% in the primary poll. If that continues, he won't even be a favorite-son candidate who can use his delegates to bargain with the leading candidates.

Trump is also doing well in other state-level polling. For example, a Roanoke College poll last week had Trump ahead of DeSantis by 11 points in Virginia.

Does that mean Trump will coast to the nomination? Maybe, but remember, if Trump is indicted in Georgia—and possibly convicted—before the primaries start, that could cause some people to change their minds. In addition, if Fox News goes all in for DeSantis, that could matter. Finally, other candidates, like Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), could jump in.

Ronald Brownstein of CNN has analyzed the crosstabs of recent Republican primary polls and concluded that the Republicans have a "wine track' and a "beer track," just like the Democrats. Trump has an ironclad hold on the beer-track voters—that is, blue-collar workers without a college degree. All the other candidates, including Nikki Haley, Chris Sununu, Glenn Youngkin, and the Mikes Pence and Pompeo, all get their support from wine-track (i.e., college educated) Republicans. But there aren't enough of them left in the GOP to win a primary, as large numbers of college-educated voters have moved off to the Democrats. If the beer-track voters have one candidate and the wine-track voters are split six ways, then Trump wins. It couldn't be plainer. The only chance the college-educated Republicans might be able to beat Trump is to consolidate around one candidate before the voting actually starts. That could happen, of course, since a year of polling showing DeSantis as the only viable Trump opponent might do it. (V)

Democrats Are Worried about a "No Labels" Third-Party Ticket

Democrats love to worry. It is their nature. One of their new worries is about the centrist group "No Labels," which is toying with the idea of running a unity ticket for president. Such a ticket would have a Democrat and a Republican on the ticket. Just as a thought experiment, imagine former Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R) for president and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) for vice president.

No Labels hopes to raise $70 million from people who believe "Why can't the parties just work together?" Short answer: Because they want contradictory things. It is also busy trying to get on the ballot in swing states, where it could matter.

Democratic groups think that such a fusion ticket would pull in many more conservative Democrats than liberal Republicans because the latter are a nearly extinct species. Consequently, there is a chance that No Labels could act like a spoiler and potentially elect Donald Trump again, something the group does not want. Consequently, the decision to go forward might be canceled if polling showed that its main effect was to reelect Trump.

This Democratic fear is not unfounded, since No Labels is specifically targeting "double haters," that is, people who dislike both parties. In particular, it is planning to target states that Joe Biden won in 2020. Undoubtedly No Labels knows that it is never going to win Texas, but Michigan and Georgia are potential wins for it. Whether this threat materializes depends on: (1) how the campaign materializes, (2) how the funding goes, and (3) whether the group can find plausible candidates. So far, Hogan and Manchin are noncommital about their potential interest. To make a dent, the group would have to find a well-known Democrat and a well-known Republican willing to play spoiler. Hillary-Jeb! 2024? (V)

Doug Mastriano Is Weighing a Senate Run

Extreme right-wing candidate Doug Mastriano, who was crushed by now-Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) last November, is currently weighing (well, technically, praying for guidance about) a run for the seat of Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA). If God says "Go, Doug, Go!" he could jump in. Mastriano, we mean, not God. Mastriano was able to get the Republican nomination last time and stands a good chance to get it again, unless Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) picks someone else and pours tens of millions of dollars into the primary to defeat Mastriano. However, while McConnell is not averse to picking candidates, he surely knows that beating a popular three-term incumbent Democrat in blue state will be very tough even with a perfect candidate, so he might prefer to write off Pennsylvania and concentrate on Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia.

Mastriano is saying that 2.2 million people voted for him (800,000 fewer than voted for Shapiro), so he has a future in Pennsylvania politics. But God gets to decide first and then his wife (Mastriano's wife, not God's wife) gets to make the final call.

As is common with ultra-MAGA politicians, Mastriano has few contacts with Republican politicians other than Donald Trump. In fact, many of them blame him for the Democrats' clean sweep of the state, winning not only the governorship, and the Senate seat, but also a majority of state House contests. This means he won't get any help from the Republican establishment. If God and Mrs. Mastriano want him to run, he'll jump in. No doubt there will be others as well. One possibility is Dave McCormick, a resident of Connecticut, who ran for the GOP nomination for the Senate in 2022 and lost out to Mehmet Oz, a resident of New Jersey. McCormick never really acted like he wanted to be a senator and was more cajoled into running than anything. Whether he would try again, against another Trumper, remains to be seen. But probably not, especially when unseating a long-time incumbent is very difficult.

Mastriano is hoping God and the wife give him the green light because he is already holding rallies. He was confident that he would win last time. It didn't happen last time and it won't happen this time, in part because the Republican establishment will almost certainly oppose him in the primary. But a guy can always hope. (V)

Why the Trans Hate?, Part III

We have gotten so many messages about trans hate that we're going to keep this going for at least a few more days. Again, we take this as evidence that the subject is of interest. If it's not your bag, then you can always skip over these items.

In yesterday's entry, we had a few folks that offered up criticism of the movement for trans equality. We're going to start with some more of those, because we would not want to be an echo chamber or to be building a bubble, and we believe that if we're going to do this thing, then we need to include many and varied viewpoints (as long as those viewpoints don't cross the line into being abusive). And with that preview, away we go:

Tomorrow will be all responses from trans and nonbinary readers. (Z)


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