Mar04




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Haley Finally Notches a Win

The two dozen or so Republicans who are registered to vote in Washington, DC, went to the polls yesterday and gave Nikki Haley a resounding victory. It's not only her first big win of the campaign, it's her first win of any sort (outside of the non-binding Nevada primary, where she got more votes than any human, but fewer than "none of the above").

OK, maybe there are more than two dozen Republicans who vote in the nation's capital, but not many more. Haley collected 1,274 votes with 100% reporting, which is good enough for 62.8% of the overall total, and entitles her to 19 delegates. Donald Trump got 676 votes, which is 33.3%, and earns him zero delegates. The remaining 4% of the vote went to candidates who have already dropped out, or who we have never heard of (David Stuckenberg, whose "campaign" is apparently still active, got 8 votes, which is 0.4% of the total).

Nominally speaking, it is good news for Haley that she finally won one. That said, the utility of this win is severely limited by two things. First, she got trounced on Saturday in three different states, and she's going to get trounced again in roughly 15 states on Tuesday. When you lose three, win one, then lose 15 more, it's not the win that people remember. Ask the New York Jets if you have any questions on that point.

Haley's second problem is that D.C.'s Republican electorate is as wonky as it gets. Not only is it very small, but it's made up almost entirely of political insiders, with the great majority knowing the candidates and/or their staff personally. It's no doubt great to be embraced by people who are truly in the know, but their political preferences have nothing to do with what Joe Sixpack is looking for.

That said, it is clear once again that the people who govern, even the Republicans, mostly don't like Trump and wish he would go away. They largely can't say that publicly (unless they want to end their careers), and they largely can't act on that instinct (except when they are doing so anonymously, as when casting ballots), but it's clear that the sentiment is there and that it's widespread. That means there's at least some chance that the GOP returns to the control of normal Republicans once Trump exits the political stage, depending on whether or not someone else is able to seize the MAGA throne. (Z)

Supreme Court Will Issue an Order This Morning

Depending on when you read this, it may be old news already, but the Supreme Court has said it will release an order at 9:30 a.m. ET today. Prof. Rick Hasen of UCLA, a leading election expert, wrote that this is a huge break in protocol and he believes the only conceivable reason is that the Court will announce that Donald Trump is eligible to run for president, despite having participated in an insurrection. He believes the Court wants to get this out there before the voting begins on Super Tuesday. The specific case for which it heard oral arguments is about Colorado, and Colorado votes tomorrow, so it was now or never and the Court chose now.

Hasen says that the main thing of interest is the Court's reasoning and whether it creates more problems than it solves. There are various off-ramps that might clear up ambiguities and not cause future problems. One is to rule that Sec. 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is not self-executing and Congress must first pass a law clarifying the procedure. A second is to rule that until a person has been found guilty in court of participating in an insurrection, then the person is presumed innocent and can't be considered an insurrectionist. A third is to use the actual wording of Sec. 3, which starts: "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States ..." The Constitution does not literally ban anyone from running for office, only holding an office. So technically, an insurrectionist could run for office, just not be sworn in. Presumably if an insurrectionist won but couldn't be sworn in, then the procedure to be followed would be the one dealing with the case that the winner of an election died the day before inauguration. Maybe the Court can think of something else, but Hasen is absolutely sure this break in protocol can only mean that it will not block Trump from running. We will see whether the decision is 9-0 or whether there are dissents. (V)

The Fourteenth Amendment, Part III: Was It Not Real?

As many readers will remember, we produced a pair of pieces on the historical background of the Fourteenth Amendment, and we promised a third. Unfortunately, illness interfered with that plan—we made some mention of this, but we did not reveal how long (Z) was ill, nor how seriously. Truth be told, it was more than 2 months, and on most of those days (basically, mid-November to mid-January), minimum functionality was all that was available. The historical pieces require considerably more than minimum functionality to produce.

We have always intended to complete the set, and with the news out of the Supreme Court (see above), time has run out. It's now or never. And so, we bring it on home. To start, let us remind readers that in the first installment, we covered the context in which the Fourteenth Amendment was written, and the various stakeholders that had input into the text. In the second installment, we covered the very few occasions—six of them—when the Amendment was enforced by the generation that produced it. Recall that the disqualifying elements of the Fourteenth affected thousands of former Confederates that might otherwise have run for (and won) elective office. However, most of them did not try it, because they knew they were disqualified. The point is that one should not take the existence of just six enforcements as a sign that the Fourteenth Amendment was narrow in scope, or that the Civil War generation did not take it seriously, or that it was only applied in very specialized circumstances. None of these things is true.

Moving along, and as we began to introduce in the second piece in the series, the years from 1870 or so to 1900 were a time when "healing" was the order of the day—at least, a healing of the relationship between white Northerners and white Southerners. Some white Americans were weary of the long period of violence that commenced with the Civil War, and continued through the Reconstruction. Others felt a much greater sense of community with white Southerners than with Black people of any sort. Still others, informed in particular by the lessons of both Abraham Lincoln and Jesus of Nazareth, felt that forgiveness was the appropriate course to pursue. And there were also folks in positions of power by the 1880s and 1890s who had little or nothing to do with fighting the Civil War, and so did not see any particular need to safeguard its legacy (or to even think about what that legacy might be).

The result of this was, for lack of a better term, a serious backsliding on the strong measures that were taken immediately after the Civil War to both punish and remake the American South. Undoubtedly, readers will be familiar with the various ways in which racial equality was undermined, from dehumanizing advertisements and theatrical performances (minstrelsy), to lynching, to the re-imposition of Jim Crow laws, to the Supreme Court's giving its blessing to those laws in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Somewhat less known to most students of history, but absolutely the counterpart to the subjugation of Black Southerners (and Black Americans in general) was the redemption of white Southerners. Nearly all of them, with just a very few exceptions like Jefferson Davis, saw their citizenship restored (Davis eventually got his back, too, but it was long after he died). On top of that, Congress passed two Amnesty Acts, one in 1872 and one in 1898 that said that the vast majority of surviving Confederates were no longer disqualified from serving in office. The Fourteenth Amendment, of course, specifically grants Congress the power to remove disqualifications.

Because there was such a widespread reversal of post-Civil War actions, and because the South had much success in rewriting the story of the war to be pro-Confederate, it certainly made things confusing for scholars and other people who knew the history of the war. "Was it not real?" was a question that was asked by many, so much so that the phrase was used as the chapter heading for the very last segment of Ken Burns' Civil War.

This meant that, at the dawn of the twentieth century, there was little sense of the circumstances under which the Insurrection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment should be applied, or whether it should be applied at all. After all, the folks who had written the legislation were mostly dead by the year 1900, and the people in power at the turn of the century were more interested in national unity (particularly given the need to win the Spanish-American and Philippine Wars) than in score-settling. Consequently, from the end of the Reconstruction to the present day, only two more people have been disqualified from office-holding due to the Insurrection Clause. Here they are:

1. Victor L. Berger: Berger was a newspaper publisher and socialist from Milwaukee (which, in the first several decades of the 20th century, was a hotbed of ultra-left-wing political activity). He was elected to Congress in 1910, and served one term before losing his seat. Then, he returned to his newspaper, which he used to rally opposition to World War I after U.S. entry into that conflict in 1917. In 1918, Berger and several other socialists were indicted for violating the Espionage Act, and in January 1919 they were convicted and sentenced to prison terms. The judge in that case, incidentally, was Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who is better known as the first commissioner of Major League Baseball.
   
   There was one small fly in the ointment here, however. In between his indictment and conviction, Berger was elected to a seat in the U.S. House again. When Berger presented his credentials, several members objected, and the matter was referred to a special committee. The main argument made by Berger's counsel was that the Amnesty Act of 1898 had permanently canceled the Insurrection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This was a pretty weak argument, since if Congress could strike parts of amendments at will, then what is the point of the (very onerous) amendment process? Not surprisingly, the special committee didn't buy it, and its report stated that: "The contention that Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is no longer applicable, is not worthy of serious consideration." Berger therefore lost his case, and was not allowed to take his seat; the House voted 311-1 in favor of that conclusion. A special election was called to fill the vacancy, Berger won election again, and he was rejected by the members of the House once again, this time by a vote of 330-6.
   
   At the same time Berger was squabbling with his would-be colleagues in Washington, he was also challenging his conviction under the Espionage Act. In 1921, the Supreme Court agreed to toss it, because Landis was an outspoken anti-German bigot, and should have recused himself from the case. Berger won yet another election in 1922, and with there being no conviction on his record, was allowed to take his seat. He served three terms, from 1923-29, and then returned to Milwaukee to resume publication of his newspaper.
   
   
2. Couy Griffin: This is the one that might ring a bell for readers, as it's the most recent imposition of the Fourteenth Amendment (and, obviously, the only one in the last 100 years). He was elected in 2019 as a county commissioner for District 2 of Otero County, NM. Griffin is ultra-Trumpy, and earned some amount of notoriety for founding and leading the PAC Cowboys for Trump. The members of the group, including Griffin, ride horses to various Trump campaign events. Seems a little precious to us, but what do we know?
   
   Griffin, as you might guess from knowing he's a Trump fanatic, tried to block certification of the election results from his county. He was joined by two other commissioners, but they backed down when faced with prison time for their defiance. Thereafter, Griffin traveled to Washington, where he was a participant in the events of 1/6. He did not ride a horse that day, which means he failed to really commit to the bit. However, he was quite active, such that it's easy to see him climbing through windows and committing other such illegal acts in footage recorded on that day.
   
   Now, you might want to sit down before you read this next part, but Griffin—surprise!—is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. In case it is not enough that he allowed himself to be filmed committing criminal acts, he also attended a public meeting in his official capacity, and vowed that he would return to Washington for the inauguration of Joe Biden, this time armed to the teeth. The obvious implication was that Griffin intended to "finish the job." All he really did, however, was make it very easy for the FBI to arrest him for his actions on 1/6. He was quickly convicted and sentenced to 14 days in jail. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) joined with several New Mexico residents to argue, in court, that Griffin was therefore disqualified from holding political office under the terms of the Insurrection Clause. District Court Judge Francis J. Mathew found that Griffin is indeed disqualified, and the New Mexico Supreme Court affirmed that decision. Griffin has appealed to the Supreme Court, which has not made a ruling, but one suspects he's going to get an answer within a few hours of your reading this.

And now, based on this three-part history lesson, let's draw some conclusions, keeping in mind some of the potential "off-ramps" Hasen discusses in his piece (again, see above):

• Enabling Legislation: There is absolutely no evidence for the argument that Congress has to pass special legislation for the Insurrection Clause to take effect. First, they've never done it before, in any of the eight cases where someone was disqualified from office. Second, other portions of the Constitution don't require enabling legislation, unless that necessity is explicitly specified. Third, Congress HAS passed legislation removing the disability from Confederate veterans and officeholders. If enabling legislation was necessary, then those people would not have needed the Amnesty Acts of 1872 and 1889; the members of Congress could have just announced that any representative-elect would be welcomed with open arms.
  
  
• Conviction Required: Of the eight people removed from office under the Insurrection Clause, only two were convicted of an insurrection-related crime (and a third might have been; documentation is scarce). That's five people who were removed from office, and countless hundreds or thousands who didn't bother to run for office in the 1860s and early 1870s, who did not have a conviction on their records. Clearly, a conviction is not necessary.
  
  
• Doesn't Apply to the President: There are actually two, related arguments here. The first is that the Fourteenth Amendment doesn't apply to presidents, because while it mentions "presidential electors" and a bunch of other offices, it does not mention the president. The second is that the Fourteenth only applies to officers of the United States, and the president is not an officer of the United States, he effectively IS the United States, from which the power and authority of his or her officers flow. This notion is not unlike how the King of England does not need a driver's license, since British licenses are issued in the name of the monarch. Ergo, Charles doesn't need permission from Charles to drive a car.
  
  Both of these arguments are pretty easy to put to rest. During the discussions of the Fourteenth Amendment, while Congress was hammering the legislation out, Sen. Reverdy Johnson (D-MD) wondered why the text did not include the president. Sen. Lot Morrill (R-ME) replied: "Let me call the Senator's attention to the words 'or hold any office civil or military under the United States.'" Johnson admitted he was in error, and the question never came up again during the deliberations. Clearly, the men who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment believed that: (1) the president is an officer of the U.S., and (2) the Insurrection Clause applies to presidents. It is also worth noting that these men were familiar with U.S. legal history, especially the history of constitutional law, and that they knew that the Founding Parents referred to the president as an "officer of the United States" all.. the... time.
  
  
• Doesn't Apply to Office-Seekers: This is actually the argument that has the most merit. As we have noted, a lot of people who were covered by the Insurrection Clause did not bother to run for office, since they knew they were wasting their time. And every one of the eight who rolled the dice was not disqualified until after they were already in office.
  
  So, if SCOTUS announces today that Trump can be on any and every ballot in the U.S., but that if he is elected, he is subject to removal, then the justices would be on solid ground when it comes to precedent. However, they would also be creating a constitutional crisis. Trump would obviously stay in the race, and would spend the entire election cycle goading his followers with the observation that "See? They're trying to steal the election from me." Then, if he won and was removed... well, that would certainly create the circumstances necessary for mass violence. We generally don't believe his followers are willing to rebel like that, but if tensions build for months and months and then burst in such a foreordained way, well, it could well get ugly.
  
  
• It Wasn't an Insurrection: The Fourteenth Amendment says that a person is disqualified if they took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." Obviously, "insurrection" is a squishy term, but there are several things to point out here: (1) Someone, namely Griffin, has already been disqualified on the basis of 1/6 being an insurrection; (2) Someone else, namely Berger, was disqualified solely on the basis of the ideas he expressed; (3) Even if you argue Trump wasn't present at the actual 1/6 insurrection, his words certainly encouraged it (and so the Berger precedent applies), and they also certainly "gave aid and comfort" to the people who DID storm the Capitol.

We haven't the faintest idea what the Supremes will do today, beyond the fact that we find it very unlikely they will end Trump's presidential campaign right now. Whatever happens, however, they are almost certainly going to violate one or both of two doctrines that the right-wingers have previously presented as sacrosanct:

1. Originalism: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, in particular, have asserted that the intent of the people who wrote the laws is paramount, and nothing else matters. There can be zero question as to the intent of the men who wrote the Fourteenth Amendment. And so, unless the justices disqualify Trump immediately, or they warn he can be disqualified if he wins, then their ruling is not originalist.
   
   
2. Real World Implications: The Court invariably claims that it cannot be concerned with the effects of its decisions, and that it must simply call balls and strikes and let the cards fall where they may. In particular, you saw this argument from them a lot after the Dobbs decision, when the conservative justices said they were not responsible for any fallout that might come. Well, if they just call balls and strikes here, they might well determine the outcome of a presidential election, and could well lay the groundwork for widespread violence. We are not saying that they should ignore these considerations, because we think they are valid areas of concern. What we ARE saying is that previous claims that the Court cannot be bothered to worry about consequences were empty and indefensible, and we imagine SCOTUS is about to prove it.

To the prediction SCOTUS won't boot Trump, we'll add a prediction that somehow the Supremes will find a way to make this Congress' problem. Beyond that, the crystal ball is murky. (Z)

What Will Tanya Chutkan Do?

Starting in July, Judge Tanya Chutkan is going to have to make one of the most controversial decisions in the history of the United States judiciary. She didn't ask to be put on the spot, but there she is anyway. Almost every legal expert thinks that the Supreme Court will ultimately rule that, no, Donald Trump is not a king, and can stand trial now for crimes he committed while president. The ruling is expected in June.

Then what? Judge Tanya Chutkan has one tough call to make. She could schedule the trial for August. That would outrage Trump, who will ask for a trial next February. He will argue that a candidate should not be put on trial during a campaign. Special Counsel Jack Smith will argue that the voters are entitled to know if a candidate is a criminal before the election, not after it. No matter what she decides, she will get a lot of incoming flak. There is no way out for her.

Chutkan's decision will go to the heart of whether former presidents and current presidential candidates are above the law. DoJ policy is that a sitting president cannot be indicted, but Trump is not a sitting president. It is also DoJ policy to avoid making announcements that could affect an election within 60 days of the election. However, that policy went out the window when former FBI Director James Comey announced "More e-mails" 11 days before the 2016 election. That announcement possibly threw the election to Donald Trump. Chutkan could interpret Comey's announcement as the end of the "no announcement" policy.

On his boutique social media site, Trump recently wrote: "The Very Strict Rules and Regulations of the Department of Injustice STATE CLEARLY that you can't prosecute a Political Opponent, or anyone, RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF HIS/HER CAMPAIGN." That's completely false. He made that up out of thin air. There is no DoJ policy that says candidates can't be put on trial during a campaign. If anything, DoJ policy is that candidates are treated the same as everyone else. If standard procedures and timing would cause a trial to be in the middle of a campaign, so be it. There is no Get-Out-of-Trial card a candidate can play.

Chutkan has already stated that Trump's political schedule will not affect her decisions. She will be guided only by the law. If she starts the trial in August, Trump's lawyers will undoubtedly appeal her decision. They will think of something, like people over 6 foot tall can only be tried in a month with an "R" in the name. It doesn't matter how nonsensical it is as Trump doesn't want to win the appeal, only to stall. What will happen in that case? We don't know. Chutkan might claim that the appeal has to wait until after there is a decision and start the trial anyway.

If that doesn't work, Trump may claim he needs 4 months to prepare his trial. Chutkan can parry that by saying that he was indicted on Aug. 1, 2023, so he has had a year to prepare. If his lawyers failed to prepare because they were expecting to win the immunity case, she can say they were foolish and continue with the trial anyway.

If she starts the trial in August, it will probably run about 2 months. This will be extremely bad for Trump in two ways. First, normally, the defendant is expected to be in the courtroom the whole time. Every day Trump is sitting in a D.C. courtroom is a day he is not out holding rallies in Michigan or Wisconsin (we assume he wouldn't want to campaign in Arizona in August anyway).

Second, the optics of him being on trial and evidence being presented daily will remind the voters that he is a criminal. His base won't care, but those Republicans who voted for him because they don't like the Democrats may decide enough is enough and grudgingly vote for Biden.

Could the trial be ongoing on Election Day? It is possible, but Smith might be willing to reduce the amount of evidence he wants to present to speed up the trial. Trump might also want to get it over so he can go campaign. Even if the verdict is "guilty," the appeals will take months. If Trump wins the election and the Supreme Court gets the case after he is inaugurated, we'd certainly be in uncharted territory. Can the DoJ drop a case after there has been a trial and a verdict? Trump might try. Boy is Chutkan going to earn her 15 minutes of fame, and then some. (V)

Republican Activists Are Secretly Working to Remove Voters from the Rolls

A network of Republican activists are quietly challenging thousands of voter registrations in battleground states around the country. They call themselves election investigators and are focusing on challenging voters in heavily Democratic areas. For example, in the Detroit suburb of Waterford, a clerk removed 1,000 names from the rolls based on an obscure 1950s-era law. Some were snowbirds who went south for the winter (but were still eligible to vote by absentee ballot) as well as active-duty military personnel. Removing them was illegal. When Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) was alerted to this, she ordered the clerk to reinstate them all because the procedures in the law for removing voters were not followed. She also issued a warning to all the state's other clerks.

In a number of states, if a registered voter has not voted in a certain number of recent elections, that person is a candidate for removal. However, the law almost never gives the clerk the power to simply remove the person. In most cases, the clerk is required to send a letter to the registered address with a form asking the voter if he or she is still living there and wants to continue to be registered there. Only after several failed attempts to contact the voter may the clerk remove the voter.

The activists are being led by former Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell and True the Vote, which claim that excess registrations are being used to stuff the ballot box. There is absolutely no evidence that this is true. Also, Republicans are operating in bad faith here. There is an interstate organization, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), whose mission is to help clean up the rolls. In particular, when a voter moves across state lines and registers in the new state, that state sends a message to the old state to remove the voter. This is perfectly legitimate. However, in recent years, Republican-controlled states are dropping out of ERIC (because it also encourages eligible people to register). If Republicans were seriously worried about double-voting, they would support ERIC.

In some states, someone merely challenging a voter's registration has consequences, including blocking the voter from getting an absentee ballot or requiring additional documentation at the polls. The potential for partisan mischief here is enormous and Mitchell considers it a (partial) victory when her team can make it harder for someone in a heavily Democratic area to vote. The Democrats are not playing this game, so it is asymmetric warfare.

Another tactic her group uses is called Check My Vote. It scans addresses for irregularities, such as a missing apartment number or a very high number of voters at some address. Needless to say, the group in Michigan looks only at Detroit and Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan.

The state with the most challenges is Georgia. In the 2021 Senate runoff, 360,000 voters were challenged. In some cases, one voter brought thousands of challenges. True the Vote is planning to ramp up challenges this year. It is developing new software to help it and will also train other people in challenging votes. Karli Swift, a member of the DeKalb County board of elections, said there was no evidence to support the group's claims, but they were unable to handle the onslaught.

In Nevada the Pigpen Project is working on cleaning the voter rolls, sometimes by going door to door to get landlords to go to the county registrar's office to flag the registrations of former tenants. They often claim to be quasi-governmental officials, which they are not. Again, here, the registrar is forbidden by law from just taking the landlord's word for it and removing the voter. There is a procedure to be followed, including sending a letter to the registered address asking the voter if he or she is still there. (V)

Eight States Have Passed Voter ID Laws Since 2020

As tens of millions of people go to vote tomorrow, some of them are going to be surprised when they are asked for photo ID in order to vote. Many will say: "When I voted in 2020 I didn't need one. Why now?" The answer will be: "Because the state legislature passed a new law after the 2020 election." Eight states have done that, namely Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio and Wyoming. All in all, now 36 states, including nearly all red states, require some form of ID to vote. Fourteen states and D.C. do not require ID. Signing in and swearing under penalty of perjury that you are an eligible voter in that state is sufficient there. Here is a map showing where ID is requested, required, or not and where the law has changed since 2020.

The link to the map above also gives the detailed requirements for each state. States where ID is requested generally have a provision that a voter who doesn't have ID at the time of voting gets a provisional ballot. If the voter then shows up with ID within a certain period of time after the election, the vote is counted; otherwise it is discarded. In some states, the voter has to jump through more hoops to validate a provisional ballot. In Arizona, North Dakota, and Wyoming, ID is needed but it need not be photo ID. Often a utility bill with the voter's address on it will do.

In most other countries, some form of ID is needed to vote and the whole procedure is not controversial. In the U.S., the ID laws are controversial because it is primarily poor people who don't have a car or a driver's license who don't have any acceptable form of ID and these people would generally vote for Democrats. So the voting ID laws are specifically intended to disenfranchise people who strongly skew Democratic. It is a partisan thing. In some states, the DMV issues voter ID cards for free, but often there are still obstacles in the path of anyone wanting one. For example they may need to present an official birth certificate (which costs $23 in Texas). In many cases, to get a birth certificate, you have to show up in person with some proof of who you are and then only during limited hours in the middle of the day (when some people can't get off from work). (V)

The Fallout from the Hamas Attack on Israel is Ongoing

The Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli attack on Gaza is affecting the Democratic primaries big time. On the one hand, progressives are demanding a ceasefire and opposing any candidate who is not calling for one. Arab Americans in Michigan are extremely unhappy with Joe Biden and threatening to stay home in November, which could cost Biden that important swing state and the election.

But there is also the other side of the coin. AIPAC is planning to spend $100 million to replace progressive Democrats with centrist Democrats by attacking the progressives and funding the centrists in the Democratic primaries. From the point of view of the Democratic Party, this might not be a bad thing since in many districts, centrists are more electable than progressives. Also, in districts that are blue enough to elect Progressive Democrats like Reps. Jamaal Bowman (NY, PVI D+20), Cori Bush (MO, D+27), Ayanna Pressley (MA, D+35), or Rashida Tlaib (MI, D+23), any Democrat who is on the ballot will win. No Republican has a prayer in any of those districts.

Among Squad members, Bowman and Bush are top targets, mostly because their Democratic primary opponents are well funded. Bush, for example, had $215,000 at the start of this year while her opponent, St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell (who is also Black) had $400,000. AIPAC recruited and has funded former Westchester County Executive George Latimer to challenge Bowman. Latimer is white, Bowman is Black, but the district is 37% white, 33% Black, and 23% Latino.

AIPAC funding is also playing out in over a dozen other districts. Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) is retiring from the House to run for the Senate. There is a huge primary battle for her swing seat in Orange County between state Sen. Dave Min and lawyer and community organizer Joanna Weiss. AIPAC is showering money on Weiss and attacking Min. The ads are clever. They don't talk about his position on Israel, but focus on his night out last May at the expense of some lobbyists and his drunken driving arrest on the way home.

The Democratic leadership of the House has not criticized AIPAC, probably because it is also making large donations to Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Pete Aguilar (D-CA), and other leaders, as well as to many members of the Progressive Caucus, Black Caucus, and Hispanic Caucus who have not criticized Biden or Israel. On the whole, AIPAC money is not going to hurt the Democrats at all, although it may change the composition of the Democratic caucus in the House. AIPAC is the largest PAC contributing to Democrats. It is not against Democrats at all, just against Israel-skeptical Democrats. This is not entirely surprising since the vast majority of American Jews strongly favor the Democrats and wouldn't want to do anything to hurt the Party's chances. (V)

Democrats Lose a Big Case in Wisconsin

Democrats won a big victory in Wisconsin when the state Supreme Court ruled that the state legislative districts were unconstitutional. The new maps are fair, rather than being gerrymandered for the Democrats, which means the state legislature will be up for grabs in November. This means the Democrats have a plausible shot at getting the trifecta in state government in January.

The bad news for the Democrats is that on Friday the state Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the state's equally gerrymandered congressional map. Newly elected justice Janet Protasiewicz did not vote because she was not on the court when the hearing was held.

The current makeup of the congressional delegation is 6R, 2D, in a very evenly balanced state. That map will be used for the November elections. If the Democrats win the trifecta in November, the new legislature can simply draw a new map if it wishes to. Or they could try to cook up another lawsuit so Protasiewicz could vote. But the former requires some version of a blue wave in Wisconsin, while the latter requires some pretty slick lawyering. In any event, if Democrats retake the U.S. House in November, it largely won't be because Wisconsin and New York handed it to them. (V)

Johnson Is Trying to Get Trump To Increase His Majority

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is desperately trying to increase his tiny (two-seat) House majority in November. And he is doing it in a novel way: He is trying to get Donald Trump to avoid blowing winnable races. There have been more recent examples than you can shake a stick at of races that favored the Republicans that were lost because Trump endorsed some far-out MAGA candidate who could win a primary but couldn't win a general election. What Johnson is actively trying to do now is stop Trump from endorsing people with a "candidate quality" problem. This is hard for Trump because the kinds of candidates he loves often have a "candidate quality" problem. Asking him to reject Trumpy election deniers for the good of the party is not an easy sell, but Johnson is trying anyway.

For example, OH-09 is an R+3 district in northwestern Ohio that has been represented for 42 years by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH). She is the longest-serving woman in either chamber of Congress ever. Republicans really want to knock her off this time. She is a pro-life economic populist with a conservative disposition and is an excellent fit for the district. In 2022, the Republicans nominated a Trumpy firebrand, J.R. Majewski, who lied about serving in Afghanistan. Stolen valor is not a winning approach in the working-class district. Kaptur beat him by 13 points. He started to run again, behaving in his usual way—for example, calling athletes with mental disabilities in the Special Olympics "retarded." Trump contacted him. Saturday, Majewski dropped out, putting the district nominally back in play. There is still a Republican primary, between former state Rep. Craig Riedel and current state Rep. Derek Merrin, but neither is as deeply flawed as Majewski. It looks like Johnson's approach of getting Trump to realize supporting people with a "candidate quality" problem is bearing fruit, tough as it may be for Trump's ego. Johnson's pitch to Trump has no doubt been something like: "If the Democrats control the House, they are going to impeach you every month. We need to make sure this doesn't happen."

Another example is NC-01, a D+2 district currently represented by Rep. Don Davis (D-NC). Johnson is backing retired Col. Laurie Buckhout against Sandy Smith, a Trumpy firebrand who ran and lost in 2022 amid allegations that she tried to run over her husband with her car. Johnson's super PAC has already spent $200,000 backing Buckhout and he really doesn't want Trump to ruin it by backing Smith.

Johnson has a wishlist of candidates he wants Trump to endorse or not endorse. The problem is sometimes that other MAGA Republicans oppose the Speaker's wishes. For example, Johnson wants Trump to endorse the not-so-Trumpy Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) in the primary even though Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has endorsed Bost's much-Trumpier opponent. Johnson is walking a fine line here, asking Trump to reject Trumpy candidates for the sake of the Party. Trump is not one to take one for the team with grace. Johnson is arguing that Trump is smart enough to make the right choices, but history shows that is not generally a correct assumption. (V)

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