Category Archives: Republican

Hurd: Heres the secret sauce: EveryoneI dont care what country you come from, Latino, African Americanyou care about putting food on your table, a roof over your head, and making sure that the people you love are healthy and happy. When you talk about those issues, that's going to resonate.

Too often, we get caught up in the conversations going on on social media and cable news. When I went into these communities to do town halls, nobody brought up those issues on the chyron at the bottom of the newscast. They cared about making sure their kids were going to be able to be competitive and go to college. They wanted to make sure that the industry they're working in was going to survive. They cared about having good roads. They cared about border securityfor people who live on the border, its called public safety.

Green: In Texas, the state party didnt invest money in getting the census distributed until really late in the game. And at the national level, the Trump administration attempted to insert a citizenship question, which a lot of people thought was an effort to try to disincentivize Latinos from answering the survey. But if what youre saying is true, counting Latinos is potentially going to be part of Republican success in Texas, not a deficit. I wonder if you think the Republican Party hamstrung itself.

Hurd: Theres folks who believe that more people voting or engaged in civic society is going to be bad. If youre afraid of new voters, then to me that's a sign that you need to rethink your strategy.

Read: History will judge the complicit

Green: At the national level, do you think the Republican Party has done a good job of making it clear that it doesnt want to be mostly a white party?

Hurd: We have to be better. We cant be seen as being jerks, racists, misogynists, or homophobes. We oftentimes describe the Republican Party as only a handful of national figures. The Republican Party is the people who vote. We are the party thats going to help everybody move up the economic ladder. And that work is made more difficult by some individuals within the party.

Green: Are you frustrated that the oxygen gets sucked up by people like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who have become these figureheads for what the new Republican Party looks like?

Hurd: Yes, when oxygen on these national conversations gets sucked up on things, its hard, because we are in a new cold war with the Chinese government. Their GDP is going to be larger than the United States of Americas. And they have made it clear that they are trying to surpass the United States as a sole hegemon in the world. These are the conversations that we should be having on a national scale.

We have some serious, generationally defining challenges that we have to address, and these politics are getting in the way of having real discourse. Thats where I get frustrated.

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Will Hurd on the Future of the Republican Party - The Atlantic

America prefers to look forward rather than back. Were a land of second acts. We move on.

This can be a strength. We dont get bogged down in outmoded traditions, old grudges, obsolete ways of thinking. We constantly reinvent. We love innovation and disruption.

The downside is a tendency toward collective amnesia about what weve been through, and a corresponding reluctance to do anything about it or hold anyone accountable.

Now, with Covid receding and the economy starting to rebound and the 2020 election and the attack on the Capitol behind us the future looks bright.

But at the risk of being the skunk at the picnic, let me remind you: we have lost more than 580,000 people to Covid-19. One big reason that number is so high is our former president lied about the virus and ordered his administration to minimize its danger.

Donald Trump also lied about the results of the last election. And then you remember, dont you? he tried to overturn the results.

Trump twisted the arms of state election officials. He held a rally to stop Congress from certifying the election, followed by the violent attack on the Capitol. Five people died. Senators and representatives could have been slaughtered.

Several Republican members of Congress encouraged the attempted coup by joining him in the big lie and refusing to certify the election.

This was just over four months ago, yet we seem to be doing everything we can to blot it out of our memory.

Last Tuesday, the Washington Post hosted a live video chat with the Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley, a ringleader in the attempt to overturn the results of the election. Hawley had even made a fist-pump gesture toward the mob at the Capitol before the attack.

But the Post billed the interview as being about Hawleys new book on the tyranny of big tech. It even posted a biography of Hawley that made no mention of Hawleys sedition, referring instead to his supposed reputation for taking on the big and the powerful to protect Missouri workers and as a fierce defender of the constitution.

Last week, CBS This Morning interviewed the Florida Republican Rick Scott, another of the senators who tried to overturn the election by not certifying the results. But there was no mention of his sedition. The CBS interviewer confined his questions to Bidens spending plans, which Scott unsurprisingly opposed.

Senators Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson and the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, also repeatedly appear on major news programs without being questioned about their attempts to undo the results of the election.

What possible excuse is there for booking them if they have not publicly retracted their election lies? If they must appear, they should be asked if they continue to deny the election results and precisely why.

Pretending nothing happened promotes Americas amnesia, which invites more attempts to distort the truth.

On Monday, Trump issued a proclamation seeking to co-opt the language of those criticizing his falsehoods. The Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 will be, from this day forth, known as the BIG LIE! he wrote, repeating his claims that the 2020 election was stolen and that President Biden is illegitimate. Most Republican voters believe him.

Trumps big lie is being used by Republican state legislatures to justify new laws that restrict voting. On Thursday, hours after Florida installed new voting restrictions, Texass Republican-led legislature pushed ahead with its own bill that would make it one of the hardest states in which to cast a ballot.

The Republican-controlled Arizona senate is mounting a private recount of the 2020 presidential election results in Maricopa county farming out 2.1m ballots to GOP partisans, including at least one who participated in the 6 January raid on the Capitol.

The Republican party is about to purge one of its leaders, the Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, for telling the truth.

It is natural to want to put all this unpleasantness behind us. We are finally turning the corner on the pandemic and the economy. Why look back to the trauma of the 2020 election?

But we cannot put it behind us. Trumps big lie and all that it has provoked are still with us. If we forget what has occurred, the trauma will return, perhaps in even more terrifying form.

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Republicans tried to overturn the election. We cant just forget that - The Guardian

When the tea party movement emerged in 2009, Republican leaders assumed they could humor its followers and capture their intensity, while keeping them under control.

They were wrong. Instead, the partys leaders were consumed by the movement they tried to corral, and by the grass-roots anger they thought they could use to their advantage.

Tea party energy helped propel Republicans into a House majority and make John Boehner the speaker of the Houseyet he was never able to contain the movement he was riding and eventually resigned in frustration.

The task of riding herd over the tea party caucus fell to three younger House leaders, who fashioned themselves as the Young Guns: Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy. Mr. Ryan became Speaker but he, too, eventually left Congress in frustration. Mr. Cantor was beaten in a Republican primary by a tea party upstart.

That left Mr. McCarthy, who today is the top House Republican. And he is, to some extent, struggling to manage an angry army of insurrectionists within his own party, this time in the form of former President Donald Trump and his followers.

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As With the Tea Party, Republican Leaders Try to Control a Rebel Army - The Wall Street Journal

Shortly after signing House Bill 1775, Governor Kevin Stitt released this video on Twitter explaining why he signed the bill into law. Oklahoman

Idaho's governor last week signed into law a bill whose purpose, at face value, is noncontroversial. The lawprohibits public schools and colleges from teaching that "any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior."

The catch?Baked into the legislation is an effort to stamp out conversations about race and equity. A dozen or so states including Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and West Virginia have introduced bills that would prohibit schools from teaching "divisive," "racist" or "sexist" concepts.

Critics warn these measures are part of a larger movement to draw Americas culture wars into classrooms. And this war centers on a once-obscure legal theory about how the legacy of slavery continues to permeateAmerican society today.

Teachers from Capital City Public Charter School in Northwest Washington and others decorate their school fence with yellow paper to spell the words Black Lives Matter on June 18, 2020. In an apparent backlash against the teaching of anti-racism lessons in schools, proposed legislation has cropped up in at least a dozen states attacking a once obscure legal premise critical race theory, which questions how the legacy of slavery still affects American society today.(Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP)

Critical race theory goes beyond advocating for civil rights or banning discrimination. Proponents see it as a framework to examine how the taint of racism still affects Black Americans and other people of colorin matters ranging from who gets bank loans and admissioninto elite universitiesto how suspects are treated by police.

Detractors dismiss critical race theory as a method for teaching kids to hate their country or to promote public school wokeness.

But while such talking points play well among conservative media circles, political and legal experts contend they obscure more meaningful discussion about the role systemic racism plays in the American experience.

The bills seeking to prohibit the instruction of divisive concepts seldom mention critical race theory directly, but in many cases legislators have cited it as a driving force behind the measures.

Rhode Island state Rep. Patricia Morgan said critical race theory must be stopped while promoting a bill that purports to be about prohibiting the teaching of divisive concepts that can make individuals feel distress on account of their race or sex.(Photo: Patrick Anderson, Kris Craig, The Providence Journ)

In an April Facebook post promoting a billin Rhode Island that has since stalled in committee,state Rep. Patricia Morgan, a co-sponsor,wrote, "Critical Race Theory must be stopped." After quoting Martin Luther King Jr., she went on to say,"Our state must reject the neo-racism and race-shaming of Critical Race Theory. We have no time to waste in rooting out this disturbing, divisive and false ideology."

While discussing a new civics education initiative in Florida's public schools, Gov. Ron DeSantissaid, "Theres no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory. Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayermoney."

While promoting a new civics initiative, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called out critical race theory as teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other.(Photo: Andrew West/The News-Press Part of the USA Today Network, The News-Press)

Overall, such legislation would better enable opponents to ensure that so-called ideology doesn't fester in institutions such as schools, Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, has said in his newsletter. "Our movement to abolish critical race theory indoctrination in public schools," he wrote in one issue,"has caught fire."

The bills' language reflects many conservatives' view that critical race theory portrays the United States as a racist country, that certain people are "inherently oppressive" and that those people are accountable for the sins committed by their predecessors. In their interpretation, the theory seeks to make particular individuals namely, white people feel uncomfortable and guilty abouttheir race.

This was the premise of former President Donald Trump's executive order banning diversity trainings for federal workers a directive that garnered lawsuits, wasblocked by a federal judge and was eventually rescinded by President Joe Biden.

"They were teaching people that our country is a horrible place, its a racist place," Trump said during the first presidential debate. "And they were teaching people to hate our country."

The ideas behind critical race theory were developed in the 1970s by a group of legal scholars who became interested in how anti-discrimination law wasnt addressing the persistent inequalities they were seeing, said Adrienne Dixson,a professor of critical race theory and education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

The recent wave of attention on critical race theory didnt start with Trump but rather became crystalized during his administration, Dixson said. Former President Barack Obama's election "was shocking and traumatic for people who always imagined the U.S. as a white nation, she added, and since then, theres been a profound ignorance about what critical race theory really is.

Adrienne Dixson is a professor of education policy and critical race theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign(Photo: Adrienne Dixson)

Interest in the topic has grown over the past year, fueled in partbyBlack Lives Matter activism following the murder ofGeorge Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer.Google search trends show a spike this spring.

In some states, political debates have erupted over the role and design of racial justice-minded education.In March, activistslaunched a national,largely conservativegrassroots organization called Parents Defending Education aimed at resisting what members believe areactivists and ideologues "pumping divisive, polarizing ideas into classrooms," according to the group's literature.

Much of the group's advocacy focuses on challenging curriculabased on the 1619 Project,a series of stories by The New York Timesin 2019 that frames U.S. history within the context of slavery. (A separate series of state bills have also sought topunish schools for incorporating the project into lesson plans.)

A recent poll by Parents Defending Educationfoundmore than two-thirds of respondents "opposed schools teaching that America was founded on racism and is structurally racist." Close to 3 in4respondents said schools shouldn't teach students that white people are inherently privileged and people of colorinherently oppressed.

The group has taken to filingfederal civil rights complaints against districts that say structural racism plays a role in schools. The complaintsin cities such as Columbus, Ohio;Hopkins, Minnesota;Webster Groves, Missouri; and Hillsborough, North Carolina, contend such admissions amount to districts violatingfederal anti-discrimination law, which should void theirfederal funding.

"We would like the Department of Education to investigate these incidents in order to determine whether these allegationsare true and if so, how best to remedy the situation to prevent future discrimination by that district," Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, told USA TODAY in March.

Educators who study critical race theory see value in teaching about America's history with slavery and discrimination. But Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Fordham Institute, is concerned about the growing trend of anti-racism lessons in schools.

Pondiscio doesnt oppose the founding principles of critical race theory.But hesays teachers can better combat systemic racismbysetting high expectations for all students, using a rigorous and rich curriculum and focusing on literacy notideologies.

Whenever you have a phenomenon like this that people dont fully understand, itll be ripe for demagoguery,he said in an interview.

Legislation targeting critical race theory isnt the answer, he added.

Robert Pondiscio is senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.(Photo: Robert Pondiscio)

People make the assumption that you can pass a law and it changes what gets taught, he said. That's not how it works.

The legislation also raises free-speech concerns, said Emerson Sykes, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union'sSpeech, Privacy and Technology Project.

"The underlying impetus for these bills is antithetical to the free-speech values that many of these legislators claim to hold dear," he said, adding that the ACLU is in the process of evaluating its litigation options in response to the bills.

Sykes said the proposals are a form of prior restraint "censorship before someone has even had the opportunity to speak" and called inserting schools intocontroversial political debatesand mandating that teachers take a side is "hugelyproblematic."

The pushback has received its own pushback, prompting some of the bills including New Hampshire's to stall or die in committee. Others are proceeding at full speed.

Iowa's Department of Education had to postpone a conference related to social justice and equity in schools in anticipation of that state's bill being signed into law,Iowa Public Radio reported.Officials decided to put off the event until the fall.

In Idaho, Republican representatives said they wouldn't support a bill related to educators' salaries unless it alsoincluded lines reflecting the state's critical race theory-related legislation and banned schools from incorporating social justice into their teaching.

Non-legislative efforts to oppose critical race theory in schools have unfolded as well, including political task forces, campaign initiatives and school board debates.

In Anchorage, Alaska, the school board's move to adopt anti-racism policies drew criticism from one member who argued the measures would usher critical race theory into lesson plans. In California, activists launched a fight against both critical race theory and ethnic studies in schools. In April, theysued the San Diego Unified School District, claiming it'sunlawfully training educators in critical race theory.

In Texas,critical race theory's potential as a political lightning rod became clear following aDallas-areaschool district's efforts to soothe feelings after a viral TikTok video showed agroup of white teens shouting racial slurs.

School board meetings grew heated afterthe Carroll Independent School Districtcreated a diversity council thatdrafteda plan aimed at making its classrooms anti-racist. At one meeting,a Black student and member of the newdiversity council was booed after testifying"my life matters," according to the Dallas Morning News.

This month, opponents of the planwon a handful of seats including the mayor's office and positions on the school board in an election that garnered record-high voter turnout.

Their victory was described by The Federalist, a conservative online magazine, as a harbinger of "a new cultural Tea Party." It marks"an escalating movement to reclaim K-12 schools infected by the racism of critical race theory," the publication wrote.

In that kind of political climate, critical race theory has become a rallying cryto stoke conservative voters' fears, saidthe University of IllinoisDixson even though the theory was originally intended to advocate forthe same principles the legislation attacking it purports to promote.

What critical race theory doesnt do is indict entire races of people and blame the inequality on all white people, Dixson said. I dont know that any school teaches critical race theory in the way that these [legislators] interpret it.

Contributing: Jessica Guynn

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Teaching kids to hate America? Republicans want critical race theory out of schools - USA TODAY

The Monmouth Poll is considered to be the Gold Standard of polling in New Jersey. And under the leadership of its Executive Director, Patrick Murphy, the poll now has a top-flight national reputation as well, rated as A-plus by Nate Silvers Five Thirty Eight Blog.

So when the Monmouth Poll releases its findings, New Jersey political players and journalists stop what they are doing to evaluate the latest news from Sir Patrick. And if the New Jersey Republican Party was a stock, there would have been a substantial amount of short selling by its shareholders last week.

The news released from the Monmouth Poll last Wednesday, May 5, 2021 regarding NJGOP prospects in this Novembers gubernatorial election was most discouraging. In a nutshell, incumbent Governor Phil Murphy continues to enjoy substantially positive job approval (57%-31%) and reelect (48%-43%) ratings. While not as high as before, the Murphy numbers continue to presage a most comfortable reelection margin. https://www.insidernj.com/monmouth-poll-murphy-job-approval-rating-57/

Yet the following news, released by the Monmouth Poll the next day, Thursday, May 6, 2021, would be even worse for the NJGOP.New Jerseyans, by a wide margin (66%-27%) say that Governor Murphy is doing a good job handling the Coronavirus Pandemic, and nearly as many say the restrictions he has imposed to slow the spread of Covid-19 have been appropriate. Specifically,58 percent of New Jerseyans say the measures Murphy took to slow the spread of coronavirus have been appropriate, while 27 percent say they went too far and 14 percent say they didnt go far enough.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/06/new-jerseyans-still-giving-murphy-high-marks-for-his-handling-of-the-pandemic-poll-finds-485553

The news regarding the Murphy management of the state Pandemic response is absolutely devastating to the hopes of all GOP gubernatorial aspirants. Virtually every credible New Jersey GOP strategist has based Republican aspirations of defeating Phil Murphy on the possibility that the electorate would judge him negatively on his handling of the Pandemic. Instead, the opposite turns out to be true. Murphys handling of the Pandemic gives him a solid electoral advantage this November.

The Democrats have a registration advantage of 1,000,000 voters. In order for the Republicans to have a scintilla of a chance to oust an incumbent Democratic governor, two conditions must be extant.

First, the incumbent governor must have negative job approval and reelect numbers. Second, there must be a compelling issue upon which the NJGOP can base an effective negative campaign.

Neither of these two conditions exist. The absence of any compelling negative issue against Murphy is particularly ruinous to the hopes of New Jersey Republicans to recapture the governorship in this election. Unless there is a totally unanticipated crisis or scandal involving Phil Murphy prior to November, the Republicans have as much chance of defeating him as right-wing extremist kook Seth Grossman has of receiving a racial understanding award from the New Jersey NAACP.

In short, regarding the 2021 New Jersey gubernatorial election, this rodeo is over for the NJGOP, folks. Yet not all is bleak for the future of the New Jersey Republican Party.

There is an anti-Trump Republican office holder in the Garden State who will emerge from both the current national Republican civil war and the likely NJGOP debacle this November as the winter book favorite for the 2025 Republican gubernatorial nomination. He is highly regarded by both Never Trumpers and grass roots conservatives as well. He can also overcome the twin albatrosses of Donald Trump and Chris Christie and lead the NJGOP into a more hopeful era.

This Republican will face Democrat Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill for the governorship in the 2025 general election. Ill reveal his identity in my next column. Stay tuned.

Alan Steinberg served as Regional Administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.

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Murphy's Handling of the Pandemic: The Worst News for the Republicans from the Monmouth Poll - InsiderNJ

A Texas congressional district that had been trending leftward in recent elections performed a sudden about-face on Saturday in a special election for a U.S. House seat. Though Donald Trump won the states sixth district by just three points over Joe Biden in November, last weekend none of the Democrats even made it to the finals.

WSJ Joshua Jamerson and Eliza Collins report:

Republican candidates won more than 60% of the votes cast in the crowded primary, while Democrats won roughly 37%. Democrat Jana Lynne Sanchez, who had finished just nine percentage points behind Ron Wright in the 2018 general election, placed third on Saturday. At least one incumbent U.S. House member is blaming fellow Democrats for not supporting Ms. Sanchez. The Washington Posts David Weigel and Amy Wang report:

Is the increasingly white Democratic coalition as bigoted as this elected Democrat suggests? Further south in Texas, Jennifer Medina reports for the New York Times on the Latinas who have been moving to the GOP:

Ms. Medina tells the story of Adrienne Pena-Garza, chair of the Hidalgo County Republican Party and daughter of a former Democratic state legislator:

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Is Texas Becoming More Republican? - The Wall Street Journal

The chair of the Orleans Parish Republican Executive Committee on Monday condemned statements about the good aspects of slavery by Martha Huckabay, president of the Womens Republican Club of New Orleans and a vocal, far-right conspiracy theorist.

Parish Republican chair Adrian Bruneau denounced Huckabay, who over the weekend defended state Rep. Ray Garofalo, R-Meraux,after the lawmaker suggested thereweregoodaspects to slavery.

These are atrocious, Bruneau told Gambit regarding Huckabay's statements, adding, This is not what we stand for. We dont agree with her stance in fact, we vehemently disagree with her stance.

Huckabay told Gambit on Tuesday evening, "My comment is a series of statements taken out of context. Nobody believes there is anything good about slavery."

But on May 2 she lashed out at state Rep. Stephanie Hilferty, R-New Orleans, after Hilferty correctly pointed out there are no good parts of slavery during consideration of Garofalos legislation to ban teaching critical race theory, which examines systemic racism.

In a rambling Facebook post, Huckabay, whose views often reflect the QAnon movement, claimed Hilferty and other conservative legislators were becoming indoctrinated by Communist beliefs. She also insisted slavery resulted in hard working ethics and love and respect between some enslaved people and slave owners.

In the United Statesand other parts of North America,millions ofAfricanswereraped, tortured andforced into labor. The United States was one of the last Western nations to end the practice during theCivil War. Since thattime,Jim Crow policies and other forms of institutionalized race-based discrimination have persisted in Louisiana and the rest of thecountry.

Huckabay argued Garofalo's words were appropriate and lamented that the Republican-dominated state legislature has been infiltrated with marxisum[sic] and said the topic of slavery is a one-sided leftist trap.

She wrote, Slavery goes all they [sic] way back to biblical times, and if youve read your Bible, you would know that many of the slaves loved their masters, and their masters loved them, and took very good care of them, and their families.

The post captured the attention of lawmakers and political organizations after the Twitter account,@HellOrBywater which frequently tracks Huckabays online activity sharedscreenshotsof it that went viral.

On May 4, Huckabay postedSlavey[sic]is an evil stain on humanity on her Facebook page after Bruneau posted a message condemning her comments.

Bruneau says the official committee stands with Hilferty, and sought to distance his party from Huckabay, saying the conspiracy theorist has zero clout with the GOP.

This lady Id never heard of her; I dont know her. I know there are two Republican womens groups in New Orleans, possibly three. Im not familiar with her group, Bruneau told Gambit.

However, Huckabayis clearly a fixture in Republican circles.Her personalFacebook page and the page for the WRCNO arelitteredwith grip and grin photo op shots with most of the states leading Republicans, including House Minority Whip SteveScaliseand Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.

Martha Huckabay's Facebook rant

But while those sorts ofpicturesarefairly routine virtually anyone can get in line for a picture with Scalise at a public event, for instance lawmakers and party leaders have clearly made it a point to attend her events, which the name of the organizationnotwithstanding, are typically held in Metairie. TheMetairieCountry Club and DesiVegas Steakhouse which has had itsownproblems with racismin recent months have served as venues.

These events regularly draw Republican elected officials, candidates and party leaders as guest speakers.According to the groups Facebook page, since 2019 guest speakers at WRCNO lunches have includedlosinggubernatorial candidateEddieRispone, Lt. Gov.Billy Nungesser, Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, state Sen. Kirk Talbot, and Jefferson Parish Judge Scott Schlegel and his wifeLaurie,aswell as representatives for other politicians, including U.S. Sen.Bill Cassidy who has since been denounced by Huckabayas a traitorafter he voted to convict former president Donald Trump during his second impeachment trial.

Nungesser on April 29 was also a guest on her conspiracy talk radio show Liberty or Lockdown." His office did not respond to requests for comment.

Additionally, Huckabay has long been an early adopter of many of the dangerous ideas that have become articles of faith for some of Bruneaus party.

She has encouraged flouting public health guidelinesthroughout theCOVID-19 pandemic, claimedthere has been widespread voter fraud favoring Democrats and that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.She also believes the government is exerting controlby distributingFDA approved coronavirus vaccines, which weregreen-litunder the Trump administration.

Manyof her positions are extreme, even for the modern Republican Party.

In recent weeks shehas alsosuggested White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are the same person andclaimedGeorge Soros funds Gambit, which she believesemploys nefarious operativesattempting to destroy New Orleans.

Gambit is owned by Dathel and John Georges, who are of no relation to Soros.

This story has been updated to include a follow-up statement from Martha Huckabay.

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It's 2021, but Louisiana Republicans are still fighting over whether slavery is evil - NOLA.com

Mitt Romney was loudly booed at the Utah Republican party convention on Saturday and called a traitor and a communist as he tried to speak.

Arent you embarrassed? the Salt Lake City Tribune reported the Utah senator asking the crowd of 2,100 delegates at the Maverik Center in West Valley City. Im a man who says what he means, and you know I was not a fan of our last presidents character issues.

Romney was the sole Republican to vote to impeach Donald Trump twice for seeking political dirt on opponents from Ukraine and for inciting the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January, before which Trump told supporters to fight like hell in support of his lie that the presidential election was stolen by Joe Biden.

Six other Republican senators voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment.

You can boo all you like, Romney told a crowd the Tribune said spat insults like so many poison darts.

Ive been a Republican all my life. My dad was the governor of Michigan and I was the Republican nominee for president in 2012.

Romney, who will not face re-election in 2022, was also a governor of Massachusetts and would ordinarily be a member of the GOP establishment.

But the party is firmly in the grip of Trump and his supporters according to a CNN poll this week, 70% of Republicans believe the lie that Biden did not win enough legitimate votes to be president.

At the Utah convention, a motion to censure Romney failed narrowly, by 798 votes to 711. The author of the resolution, Davis county delegate Don Guymon, said Romneys votes to remove Trump from office hurt the constitution and hurt the party.

This was a process driven by Democrats who hated Trump, Guymon told the Associated Press. Romneys vote in the first impeachment emboldened Democrats who continued to harass Trump.

Some in the crowd applauded Romney and after the state party chair, Derek Brown, asked delegates to show respect, the senator ended with a plea to come together in strength and unity.

Emily de Azavedo Brown, a delegate from Salt Lake county, told the AP: If the point of all this is to let Mitt Romney know were displeased with him, trust me, he knows. Lets not turn this into a Trump or no Trump thing. Are we a party of principle or a party of a person?

On Sunday the Maine senator Susan Collins, like Romney a senior figure in the centre of the party, told CNNs State of the Union she was appalled by events in Utah.

Mitt Romney is an outstanding senator who serves his state and our country well, she said. We Republicans need to remember that we are united by fundamental principles we are not a party that is led by just one person.

Collins refused to say who she voted for in the presidential election. Romney has said he did not vote for Trump but not who he voted for instead. He has said that in 2016 he voted for his wife, Ann, rather than Hillary Clinton.

Cindy McCain, the widow of the Arizona senator and 2008 presidential nominee John McCain, also spoke to CNN. She said refusal to accept the result of the 2020 election as in her state, where Republicans are carrying out a controversial audit of votes in the most populous county was just aloof and crazy.

Other speakers at the Utah convention faced dissent, among them governor Spencer Cox. He told a largely maskless crowd he knew some hated him for his Covid-19 mitigation measures but touted other moves such as banning vaccine passports in state government.

Private businesses in Utah can still demand proof of vaccination.

In one of many attacks on Bidens attempts to pass new spending bills on top of the $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill passed in March, Utahs other senator, Mike Lee, said Democrats followed one idea: unquestionable trust in government.

Chris Stewart, a congressman, told the crowd Biden was pursuing an agenda of radical socialism. He also said the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, kind of sucks.

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Mitt Romney booed and called traitor at Utah Republican convention - The Guardian

A Republican Party event in Texas next week will hear from eight potential candidates for the party's presidential nomination in 2024, without former President Donald Trump, a source involved in the planning said on Friday.

The May 7 event at a hotel in Austin is being co-hosted by U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, to thank donors who helped fund a voter registration drive and get-out-the-vote efforts in the state.

High-profile Republican politicians who are considering whether to seek the party's nomination in 2024 are expected to speak to the crowd of about 200 donors.

They include former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and U.S. senators Marco Rubio, Tim Scott and Rick Scott, the source said.

The event comes as Republicans wrestle with whether to try to move past Trump in the next election cycle or fall in line behind him. Trump told Fox Business Network's Maria Bartiromo on Thursday that he was "100%" considering another run after losing in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump was not invited to Texas, the source said. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was invited but was unable to attend, the source said.

Members of the Texas congressional delegation will interview each speaker at the event, which is being organized with the help of long-time Republican operative Karl Rove.

For example, U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, a top Republican on the House of Representatives foreign relations committee, will interview Pompeo, and Cornyn will interview Pence.

Many Republican insiders doubt Trump will follow through on his musings about running for president in 2024, leaving a void that other party leaders will seek to fill.

Pence emerged from seclusion for the first time since he and Trump left office on Jan. 20 and gave a speech in Columbia, South Carolina, on Thursday, to the Palmetto Family Council, a Christian conservative group.

He gave no indication that he was planning to run in 2024.

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Donald Trump incited a riot in order to overturn an election he lost. Hes responsible for hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths, as well.

Trump was never popular. He never came close to winning the popular vote in 2016 or 2020. But if voter suppression laws recently passed by Republican state legislatures stand, he could become even more unpopular and still capture the presidency again.

The Republicans motivations are clear. They believe that if you wont vote for them, you shouldnt vote at all. They are threatened by the multi-racial majority in this country. When they suppress the votes of my Black and Brown sisters and brothers, they harm us all. We cant let that happen.

Saving our democracy is much easier than people think. But our senators must hear from us.

Step 1: Get rid of the filibuster

Step 2: Pass the voting rights legislation known as the For the People Act.

All it will take is 50 votes in the Senate to get it done. Call Sen. Dick Durbin and Sen. Tammy Duckworth. Demand that they stand up for people of color and our democracy.

Neal Waltmire, Berwyn

SEND LETTERS TO: letters@suntimes.com. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes. Letters should be approximately 350 words or less.

Firearm Owners Identification cards popularly called FOID cards do not prevent any law-abiding citizen from owning a firearm. The ID acts only as a barrier to people who should not own a firearm from owning one. And the cards $10 fee impedes firearm ownership no more than the price of a gun charged by a firearms dealer.

Yet the Illinois Supreme Court is now being asked to decide whether FOID cards are a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The Second Amendment was penned in the 18th century. No one can seriously argue that the Founding Fathers were so wise they could predict the advances that would be made in the science of firearms more than 200 years into the future. The Second Amendment needs an update, not revocation.

Warren Rodgers, Jr., Matteson

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End filibuster to save democracy from Republican schemes to suppress the vote | Letters - Chicago Sun-Times