Main page    Dec. 18

Pres map
Previous | Next | Senate page | Menu

New polls: (None)
Dem pickups: (None)
GOP pickups: AZ GA MI NV PA WI

Trump Has Sued Ann Selzer

ABC News just paid Donald Trump $15 million to make his lawsuit go away. On the Internet there is a golden rule: Don't feed the trolls. ABC News violated that and now all media outlets, journalists, and others are going to pay the price. Trump sees a lawsuit as easy money. Shake down the media. It costs almost nothing to file a lawsuit but the payoff can be huge. It can be habit forming.

After getting a big payoff from ABC News, he has now sued The Des Moines Register and its parent company, Gannett. His nominal complaint is that the Register published a poll from Ann Selzer predicting that Kamala Harris would win Iowa by 3 points. In reality, he won it by 13 points. Trump claims this is election interference.

He has also sued Selzer personally in Polk County, IA under the Consumer Fraud Act. He claimed that incorrect polls forced Republicans to divert money from other states to Iowa at the last minute. He wants to force Selzer to spend all her money on lawyers and go into bankruptcy. It is not clear if the paper will cover her legal fees, but even if it does, the emotional stress on her will be enormous. This is Trump's chosen weapon to silence the opposition: Sue them into silence. This is also a clear example of why the general rule in civil cases in Europe is better. There, the loser pays the winner's costs. Then frivolous lawsuits like this end up costing the person who filed them, not the target.

Trump knows polling is not election interference. If it were, every poll would be election interference, including polls that showed him leading in many states. He also knows he could never win this case in court. He doesn't expect to or care. What he wants is: (1) for the Register to cave and give him money to "settle" the case and (2) to scare the hell out of Selzer, other pollsters, and journalists. This is not much different than "settling" the case with a mobster who says "Nice house you have there. It would be a pity if something happened to it."

If the Register decides to pay Trump, there will be no stopping him. Every media outlet in the country except those that worship him will be targets and he will go after the biggest ones first. Jeff Bezos will discover firsthand that merely pulling an endorsement of Kamala Harris offered no protection at all. Although Bezos is clearly a smart guy, there may be no way out for him other than to fight it out in court and try to win and then sue Trump for damages. He might also decide that owning a newspaper in the era of Trump is nothing but a pain. If he wants to support good journalism—and his move of buying the Post in the first place suggests he does—maybe he can create a foundation, transfer the Post to it and follow that up with a few hundred million dollars of seed money, and get out of the news business himself.

Will anyone be willing to run polls in the future? It is not clear that ending the polling industry will especially benefit Republicans in the future. It is likely that Trump's method of getting retribution on his "enemies" won't be to ask AG-designate Pam Bondi to indict them, something she might refuse to do, but to sue them and saddle them with massive legal costs. That might be much easier to pull off than having his "enemies" indicted and eventually being found innocent.

Trump suing a media outlet is not new. He has sued book publishers, CBS, CNN, the Post, and The New York Times multiple times. He has never won a case in court, but filing suit sends a message to his followers that the media are the enemy of the people. If the courts don't agree, then the courts are also the enemy of the people. It is win-win for him.

In related news, Trump sued reporter Bob Woodward for releasing the audio tapes of interviews Trump did with Woodward for one of Woodward's books. Woodward has asked the judge to throw the case out and the judge has been thinking about it for months. Yesterday, Trump's lawyers asked the judge to get a move on and stop dawdling. Trump is demanding $49 million from Woodward and the publisher.

Sometimes Trump doesn't even have to threaten a lawsuit to get the media to fawn over him. Publications sometimes comply in advance voluntarily. Consider The Wall Street Journal. It is owned by Rupert Murdoch, but was always an independent conservative voice. In the past, though, it had some integrity. It took positions that it thought were good for at least the titans of industry, including being pro-immigration, pro free-trade, and anti-tariffs, while being moderate on social issues. Now it is all Trump, all the time. For example, in 2022, it endorsed Kari Lake for governor of Arizona. We doubt there is a single titan who actually wanted her to be governor. Every titan knows crazy people are bad for business. But the Journal knows that by kowtowing to Trump in advance, he won't sue them. Trading in your integrity for not being subject to a lawsuit you could probably win has become the flavor of the day, week, month, and year now. (V)

When Is a Christmas Tree Not a Christmas Tree?

A week from today it is Christmas, so it is time for Christmas trees. No, not that kind. We are a political site, after all. There is a long-standing tradition in Congress to fail to pass a budget for the new fiscal year on time. If there is no budget, then the government has to shut down, with dire consequences for many people. To prevent that, typically a few minutes before midnight of the last possible day, to prevent the government from turning into a pumpkin, Congress passes a bill called continuing resolution (CR) that funds the government for a few weeks or months at current spending levels. The official parliamentary term for this is "Kicking the can down the road."

When the Republicans control the House, the Freedom Caucus often tries to hold the bill hostage, in order to force big cuts in social programs. This forces the speaker to make a deal with the Democrats to get enough votes from them. But the Democrats don't sell their souls for nothing. They want a quid pro quo for their support. The quid (or is it the quo?) is including all kinds of spending for things the Freedom Caucus despises. As a result, the CR is full of shiny little ornaments that are unrelated to the basic kicking-the-can-down-the-road function of the bill. The resulting bill is called a "Christmas tree" by its opponents on account of all the gifts associated with it. This whole process happens regularly.

Sure enough, it happened again yesterday. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) revealed a CR with shiny little ornaments with Democratic fingerprints all over them. Among them are $100 billion in disaster relief, $10 billion to help farmers get credit and $2 billion to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore that was destroyed by a rogue container ship earlier this year. The latter ornament was a special Christmas present for the retiring (and much liked by his colleagues on both sides of the aisle) Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), even though he is Jewish. The bill also has $29 billion for FEMA, $21 billion for the Dept. of Agriculture, money for the SBA, money for a new stadium in D.C. and more. Because Congress is going home on Friday, it is take it or leave it for House members. They saw this coming and were furious in advance and still are even though Johnson is proclaiming loudly that it is NOT a Christmas tree.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said: "It's not a CR, which is a continuation of the budget. It's turning into an omnibus." Other FC members were less gentle. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), said: "We get this negotiated crap, and we're forced to eat this crap sandwich." Roy does not want to negotiate with the Democrats. He wants the Republicans to ram all bills through with only Republican votes. The problem is that Republicans are badly divided on many issues, which makes that impossible.

Moderate Republicans saw how this was going to end and were complaining about it as well. At the House conference yesterday, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) complained that the process was not member driven. He said Johnson was cooking up the whole thing himself and not following the regular order, with committee hearings and markups. When Lawler asked the speaker's office about some proposed provision, he claims he was told: "Jeffries and Schumer don't support it." Lawler said to the conference: "I am not a fucking Democrat." Many of the Republicans are furious that Johnson is beholden to the Democrats to get enough votes to pass the bill, but his core problem is that there is no bill that could get 218 Republican votes. This is an ominous sign for the new Congress, where the Republicans' margin in the House will be even smaller than the current one. And remember, this bill isn't a real budget. It just keeps the lights on until March, when the real fight will occur.

Normally, members are given 72 hours to read bills before voting, but Johnson has not committed to following the rule this time because Santa Claus is approaching and there might not be enough time left.

Leaning on Democrats to keep the lights on could have repercussions on Jan. 3. The FCers might not be willing to support Johnson for speaker again, at least not without major concessions. While the FCers might be furious with Johnson, the question is whether they can come up with someone else who can get 218 votes when the speaker is elected. Complaining is the easy part. Finding an alternative who can get 218 votes is the hard part. (V)

Over a Dozen Fake Electors Voted Yesterday

As we noted on Monday, the Electoral College held its first and only class of 2024 yesterday. Donald Trump was elected president. There were no irregularities.

One interesting fact about yesterday's election is that 13 of the 538 presidential electors this year were fake electors for Donald Trump in 2020. These are all party activists in Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania who are so deeply involved in Republican politics that they managed to get themselves on the actual 2024 slates of electors, despite what they did in 2020, namely signing fraudulent Certificates of Vote. In the end, those certificates were rejected, but falsifying an official document is a crime in every state, and some of them may yet face consequences.

What this shows is that the Republican organs in at least three states consider trying to overturn the 2020 election an honorable thing rather than a crime. Good to know.

Being an elector is considered a great honor, since only 538 people get to actually vote for president every 4 years. The honor is normally bestowed on people who have worked hard for a party for years and who are honored members of their communities, not criminals. Among the 15 electors in Michigan this year are six who were charged with a forgery offense by the Michigan AG Dana Nessel (D) in July 2023. Of the six Nevada electors this year, two were charged by the state AG earlier this month. In Pennsylvania, there are 19 electors this year and five of them were fake electors in 2020 but have not been charged because they hedged their language in the certificates and said that these were the electoral votes provided that the courts rule the real ones invalid. (V)

The Big Apple Loves Trump

Earlier this week, Stephen Bannon was the featured speaker at the 112th New York Young Republican Club gala dinner. When he talked about Donald Trump's third term in 2028, the 1,000+ crowd roared its approval. When he asked if Trump won in 2020, the crowd certainly responded that he did. The fact that Bannon was in a t-shirt and everyone else was either in a tux or an elegant evening gown didn't matter a whit.

Bannon's argument is that the Twenty-Second Amendment bans only more than two consecutive terms, not two total terms. Of course this is just his imagination running wild. In the states where the number of consecutive terms is limited, but the total number of terms is not limited (e.g., Virginia and Florida), the state Constitution is very clear about that. Bannon did not discuss the most likely legal scheme of getting elected speaker of the House and then having the president and vice president resign so Trump would not be elected president more than two times.

Bannon wasn't the only person praising Trump to the moon. So did all the other speakers. The voters are also welcoming back Trump. He closed his campaign with a massive rally at Madison Square Garden and also held huge rallies in the Bronx and on Long Island. He got 30% of the vote in New York City, the best showing for a Republican presidential candidate since George H.W. Bush in 1988. (V)

Republicans Argue over How to Do the Border and Taxes

Donald Trump has two priorities for early in his second term: immigration (bad) and cutting taxes (good). Some Republicans in Congress want one giant bill with everything and some want separate bills. It could matter. Longer bills are harder to write and shepherd through Congress, especially if the Republicans have only a 217-215 or 217-214 margin for the first 3 months. A bigger bill has a larger attack surface. But two bills requires two big campaigns to get them through and the folks who opposed the first one may double down to kill the second one.

One argument for two bills is that a tax bill is entirely about the budget and can be done using the budget reconciliation process. Defending the border has some budget aspects—for example, appropriating more money for the Customs and Border Patrol—but other issues, like creating new border-related crimes or increasing penalties for existing crimes, probably would be flagged by the Senate parliamentarian, slowing down the process. First getting a clean tax bill through and then fighting about the border might make parliamentary sense. The only problem there is that the base cares not a whit about slashing Elon Musk's tax bill. If Trump gets a tax bill through quickly and the border bill then gets tied up in Congress, that sends the base the (correct) message that Trump's real priority is cutting taxes for billionaires.

But even if Trump takes the "easy" path of tax bill first, then the border, some deficit hawks may balk at increasing the deficit and may demand contentious cuts in popular programs that other Republicans may be afraid to cut. Also, incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has said that his first priority is the border, which may put the tough bill first and may mean not achieving any quick wins, especially if the House has to wait for all the special elections in April to get back to a 220-215 House.

One possibility is to revive the Lankford bill that Trump killed earlier this year. The problem with that is now the Democrats may not want to give Trump an early win and could filibuster it in the Senate unless they get some goodies that are anathema to Trump—for example, a path to citizenship for the Dreamers.

A huge factor in all this is Donald Trump's strategy. The trouble here is that Trump does not have a legislative strategy. He has a wish list. They are not the same. An additional complication is that there are many, many lobbyists from big corporations who: (1) want the tax bill first and (2) want most of the cuts to go to big corporations. That may be in conflict with the wishes of billionaires like Elon Musk who might prefer cutting the top tax rate for individuals as the highest priority. In short, the sausage(s) haven't been made yet and the process will surely be messy and probably slower than Trump would like. It may also produce less sausage than he's wanting. (V)

The Knee Bone Is Connected to the Thigh Bone

Donald Trump is famous for not thinking ahead and that failing may come back to bite him in the rear soon. Sometimes things he wants have consequences he does not want or think about until they occur and it is too late to prevent them.

One of his top priorities is tariffs. He had said he wants a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada. Turns out that Canada has a lot of oil and the U.S. imports some of it. That oil won't be easy to replace in the short term. The tariff will increase gas prices by about 40¢/gallon. And guess who that will affect the most: (1) someone living in rural Wyoming, or (2) someone who lives in New York City and doesn't have a car? In addition to raising gas prices for consumers, it will also raise the price of fuel for trucks, and all the products they deliver, increasing inflation for many products. Increasing inflation was not one of Trump's campaign promises, but it is one of the things Democrats can run on in 2026: He sent prices skyrocketing.

Another pet project of his is deporting undocumented immigrants. How will he find them? The easiest way is to find places where there are high concentrations of them. The go-to place is in the meatpacking industry. Work in slaughterhouses is horrible, with blood, carcasses, and the screams of animals that see what is going on everywhere. Working at McDonalds or Walmart is heaven compared to this, so few Americans aspire to a job slaughtering cows or pigs. More than any other industry, these jobs are filled by undocumented immigrants who are willing to work for a subminimum wage and won't file complaints about it. Deporting these people will be straightforward. The problem comes later when the slaughterhouses have to greatly increase the wages of their workers to beat McDonalds and Walmart in order to attract legal workers. This is going to make the cost of meat skyrocket. You don't think people will notice? Democrats will make sure they do.

And Trump will make it worse by insisting that the first few raids on slaughterhouses be recorded so he can brag about how he is deporting undocumented people. This will have the effect of causing undocumented immigrants in other slaughterhouses to look for other work, to avoid deportation. And there are even more effects. There are animal parts that Americans won't eat but which people in other countries will. About one-third of the value of a hog is in the exported animal parts. Higher wages in slaughterhouses and retaliatory tariffs will hit hog farmers right in the pork belly.

Many of Trump's other policies will impact his supporters much more than they will impact Democrats. Trump wants to slash Medicaid, thinking the main users are Black Democrats in cities. Wrong. There are more people in rural areas on Medicaid than in cities. About one-third of rural hospitals are now under financial stress. If he cuts reimbursement rates for Medicaid, some rural hospitals will become insolvent and close. Imagine what will happen if a farmer has a serious accident with farm machinery and the nearest hospital is 100 miles away in a different state. Nearly half of all children in rural areas get health care through Bill Clinton's Children's Health Insurance Program, which Trump wants to cut.

Trump's plan to offer "school choice" (in order to combat "wokeness") could destabilize schools in small towns more than it will in cities. Many of them are already facing financial strain from declining enrollments. People there actually understand that the public schools are a crucial pillar of their communities. They demonstrated this by voting down voucher plans in Nebraska and Kentucky on Nov. 5. If Trump plows ahead with his voucher plan, it will be rural areas that suffer the most.

Now back to tariffs again. The U.S. agricultural system is very efficient, so American farmers can produce food cheaper than farmers in many other countries. When China gets hit with tariffs, China will hit back where it hurts Trump the most, by raising tariffs on, or even banning the import of, soybeans and other U.S. agricultural products. That will hit farmers, who largely support Trump, hard. In Trump v1.0, we got a preview of this and Trump had to ask Congress for $28 billion in free money to give to farmers to compensate for the loss of sales. With a smaller margin in the House this time, the deficit caucus may balk at giving away free money. And that may not be a one-off problem. China and other countries may permanently change their buying patterns to buy more food from Brazil and Australia going forward, permanently reducing the size of the export market. Farmers won't like this. At least one study shows that by 2028, farmers may lose half of their export income.

All of these things will put these supporters in a bind. They will love his attacking minorities and transgender people, but will lament their income dropping, their health systems collapsing, their schools hanging on by a thread, and in general, life getting tough. This could give Democrats an opening in 2026 by talking about reversing their economic decline. Some Trump voters might even grudgingly accept gender-affirming surgery in California if the alternative is living in poverty with no schools or health care and watching their little town die. (V)

Biden Tries to Protect the ACA against Congress Repealing It

Republicans have been trying to eviscerate or eliminate the ACA for years, even though their voters profit from it more than Democrats' voters do. Donald Trump doesn't care for it much either. In January, Republicans will have the trifecta and could once again try to gut it. Out-and-out repeal of the ACA might prove a bridge too far, but they could cut the subsidies offered to the point few people could afford to buy health insurance on the ACA platforms. That would not be as satisfying for Republicans as a successful vote to repeal the law, but it could be an acceptable second choice. After all, the goal is punishing poor people. Only the Republicans (mistakenly) think it will primarily punish poor Black people in cities, when actually it will punish poor white people in rural areas. But whatever.

Joe Biden is aware of all this and is doing his best to prevent this from happening. Obviously, he can't prevent a Republican trifecta from repealing the ACA law or slashing the subsidies, but he can make the process as painful as possible, and that is what he is working on as his administration winds down. His main goal is to get as many people as possible enrolled in the program before Jan. 20. He knows very well that for people who have heard a little about the ACA and think it is for poor Black people in cities, killing it is not a big deal. But for people actually enrolled in it to discover next year that they won't have health insurance anymore is a very big deal and they are going to blame the guy in the White House. It is always like that.

For 2024, 21.3 million people are covered by the ACA. Most of them are voters. Biden extended the sign-up deadline to Dec 18. Many people put things off and having even a few more days can bring in millions of new people. That is especially important this year, because so much air time on television was devoted to campaign ads that messages to sign up were often drowned out. The more people who sign up this week, the more people who will be unhappy when they learn the Republicans are going to try to kill—or at least starve—the program. (V)

Poll: 41% of Young Adults Consider the Killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Acceptable

An Emerson College poll that asked about the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in cold blood revealed a startling result: 41% of adults 18-29 found the killing acceptable. In fact, 17% said it was completely acceptable, with 24% saying it was somewhat acceptable. On social media, the killer is being celebrated as a hero, rather than being treated as a cold-blooded killer. The poll shows that the feeling across social media is shared by a large number of young people. However, 40% consider the killing unacceptable. Still, about half don't have a lot of trouble with it. That is shocking.

The partisan breakdown was as follows: 22% of Democrats, 16% of independents, and 12% of Republicans found the killing acceptable.

The legal system thinks otherwise. The suspect, Luigi Mangione, was indicted on 11 counts yesterday, including first degree murder and terrorism. That said, if sympathy for his actions is so widespread, it could be very tough to get a jury to vote unanimously to convict. (V)

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, Day 11: Gabbard Christmas Cards

Today, it's Tulsi Gabbard Christmas cards. You may detect a theme running through them, even more than with the Jeff Bezos cards:

Tomorrow, it's Barack and Michelle Obama. There's still time for suggestions at comments@electoral-vote.com. (Z)


Previous | Next

Main page for smartphones

Main page for tablets and computers