Category Archives: Republican

As a former county chairman of the Republican Party, I am horrified by the recent actions taken by the Aroostook County Republican Party to formally censure Sen. Susan Collins for her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump. The blanket statements in the resolution do not reflect the values of our party as a whole, and they certainly dont reflect my views.

Sen. Collins has said that you can be a good Republican without agreeing with every single position taken by the party, and she is absolutely correct. I may not always agree with her, but thats not because shes not Republican enough its because we are each individuals with our own thoughts and values. Mainers havent elected Sen. Collins for a record five terms because we want a follower; we support her because shes a leader.

Just a few short months ago, Mainers re-elected Sen. Collins in a landslide. By staying true to herself and our state, Sen. Collins earned the support of Donald Trump and Joe Biden voters alike. If the Republican Party ever wants to regain the ground its lost, it will need to embrace more candidates like Susan Collins, who appeal to those who dont identify with the fringe of the base.

In my view, this recent censure is just another example of how the Aroostook County Republican Party has lost its way. This groups views do not reflect the Republicans I grew up with.

Shalom, Peace, Salaam be upon Sen. Collins as she keeps up her endeavors for Aroostook County Republicans and all Mainers.

Richard RhodaHoulton

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Letter to the editor: With Collins rebuke, Aroostook Republican Party shows it's lost its way - pressherald.com

The Republication Accountability Project, a political action committee formed by the conservative group Defending Democracy Together, has launched a $1 million ad campaign directed at six House Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, for their objection to the results of the 2021 presidential election.

Since the night of Jan. 6, most Republicans in Congress have been trying to make us forget what happened or rewrite the story, said Sarah Longwell, executive director of RAP. We wont allow them to get away with helping incite an insurrection. They cant be trusted with power, and we wont forget it.

Targeting Congressmen Kevin McCarthy, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Madison Cawthorn and Brooks, the PAC highlights their support of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was not free and fair, in the lead up to the ratification of the Electoral College votes and the sacking of the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The same group also launched billboards calling on congressmen, including Brooks, to resign for their role in the Capitol attack.

The Alabama ad, scheduled to broadcast next week on local Alabama newscasts and, features Brooks saying, There was massive voter fraud and election theft, during a Fox News interview on Jan. 3.

The ad also highlights Brooks today, American patriots start kicking ass comment at the Capitol rally, said directly before a mob stormed into the Capitol through the doors of the Capitol. The video will also appear in digital ads and will also be broadcasted nationally on MSNBC, CNN and Fox.

If Mo Brooks wont support democracy, we wont support him, the ad states.

A national ad, directed toward Republican voters, will air multiple times next week on CNNs New Day. The ad closes with a call for voters, businesses, religious and civic organizations to pledge not to support Republican members of congress who objected to the ratification of the electoral college results on Jan. 6.

In addition, RAP released a legislative search engine to be used by voters to search if their legislators voted against the ratification.

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Conservative PAC targets Brooks, 5 other Republicans in new ad campaign - alreporter.com

Cars enter and leave a drive-thru voting site in Houston on Election Day in 2020. Texas Republican lawmakers are looking to ban the practice. David J. Phillip/AP hide caption

Cars enter and leave a drive-thru voting site in Houston on Election Day in 2020. Texas Republican lawmakers are looking to ban the practice.

Last year, when Isabel Longoria had to figure out how to safely hold an election during a pandemic, she saw the daunting task as an opportunity to do things differently.

"I just started dreaming," says Longoria, the elections administrator for Harris County in Texas. "And I just said, 'OK, let's start from the beginning not with what's possible first but what do voters want, and what's going to make it safer?' "

Harris County is home to Houston, and is one of the most populous and diverse areas of the country. Longoria says figuring out how to make polling locations less crowded was a main focus in the leadup to the 2020 elections, but she had always wanted to make voting easier as well.

One of her solutions was to increase the hours that voting centers were open. Some polling locations were open 24 hours at one point. Longoria says being open late at night gave shift workers including first responders more opportunities to vote. She says it also "spread out the number of people voting at any time" at a location.

Longoria also looked to local businesses, which were shifting to curbside options for their customers. She came up with drive-thru voting.

"Most folks who are fortunate to have a car use it to do all sorts of things banking, grocery shopping," she says. "What makes voting different? In my opinion, nothing."

Longoria and her team also tried to make mail voting easier by sending out ballot applications to all eligible voters, in case people didn't know they had that option.

But Republican leaders in Texas say all of these efforts were an overreach.

During a recent news conference, Gov. Greg Abbott argued that local election officials including those in Harris County were doing things not explicitly allowed by law. He also accused them of effectively opening the door to voter fraud.

"Whether it's the unauthorized expansion of mail-in ballots or the unauthorized expansion of drive-thru voting," Abbott says, "we must pass laws to prevent election officials from jeopardizing the election process."

In response to those local efforts, Republicans who control the state legislature filed a series of restrictive voting bills. Researchers last year said "Texas is the state with the most restrictive voting processes," but it's likely its laws will become stricter.

One measure that's been proposed would make distributing ballot applications to voters who didn't ask for one a felony. Others would outlaw drive thru-voting, and not allow polling locations to be open for more than 12 hours specifically beyond 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Another would require that election administrators put the same amount of voting machines in every one of their polling sites, no matter what.

That last one makes no sense to Chris Davis, the election administrator in Williamson County, a swing county in central Texas.

"If you have a smaller-size room in one part of your county that can only fit eight [voting machines]," he says, "well, by golly, eight is as many as you can have in an arena, or a lecture hall or high school gym."

Davis says the proposed changes to how local officials run elections are "incredibly short-sighted" and could lead to a misuse of public resources. And he also takes issue with proposals that would allow people to record video and sound in polling locations and ballot counting sites. He says that creates election security concerns.

But mostly Davis says he feels like lawmakers are accusing election administrators of doing bad things, which he says just isn't true.

"We contend that this isn't based in reality," he says. "It's a perception brought on by very, very visible candidates. And that perception has taken on a life of its own."

Committees in the Texas House and Senate began hearing two of the most notable Republican voting bills this week including House Bill 6 and Senate Bill 7.

Texas Democrats have raised concerns that certain bills would make running elections harder because of the fear of prosecution looming over many possible mistakes.

Harris County's Longoria says the reaction from state leaders has been disappointing because she was successful in getting more people to vote while also limiting the potential spread of the coronavirus. Turnout in Harris County hit about a 30-year high in 2020.

"We were really proud," she says.

Longoria, as well as voting rights advocates in Texas, are also worried these voting bills could make it harder for marginalized communities to vote. Longoria says it's difficult to disregard the role of race in this effort as lawmakers zero in on things like drive-thru voting.

"One hundred twenty-seven thousand voters did drive-thru voting the majority of which were Black and brown voters," she says. "It's hard to not draw a line and say, 'Why are you going after this innovation?' "

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Texas Republicans Look To Curb Local Efforts To Expand Voting Access - NPR

Republicans are outraged outraged! at the surge of migrants at the southern border. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, declares it a crisis created by the presidential policies of this new administration. The Arizona congressman Andy Biggs claims, we go through some periods where we have these surges, but right now is probably the most dramatic that Ive seen at the border in my lifetime.

Donald Trump demands the Biden administration immediately complete the wall, which can be done in a matter of weeks they should never have stopped it. They are causing death and human tragedy.

Our country is being destroyed! he adds.

In fact, theres no surge of migrants at the border.

US Customs and Border Protection apprehended 28% more migrants from January to February this year than in previous months. But this was largely seasonal. Two years ago, apprehensions increased 31% during the same period. Three years ago, it was about 25% from February to March. Migrants start coming when winter ends and the weather gets a bit warmer, then stop coming in the hotter summer months when the desert is deadly.

To be sure, there is a humanitarian crisis of children detained in overcrowded border facilities. And an even worse humanitarian tragedy in the violence and political oppression in Central America, worsened by US policies over the years, that drives migration in the first place.

But the surge has been fabricated by Republicans in order to stoke fear and, not incidentally, to justify changes in laws they say are necessary to prevent non-citizens from voting.

Republicans continue to allege without proof that the 2020 election was rife with fraudulent ballots, many from undocumented migrants. Over the past six weeks theyve introduced 250 bills in 43 states designed to make it harder for people to vote especially the young, the poor, Black people and Hispanic Americans, all of whom are likely to vote for Democrats by eliminating mail-in ballots, reducing times for voting, decreasing the number of drop-off boxes, demanding proof of citizenship, even making it a crime to give water to people waiting in line to vote.

To stop this, Democrats are trying to enact a sweeping voting rights bill, the For the People Act, which protects voting, ends partisan gerrymandering and keeps dark money out of elections. It passed the House but Republicans in the Senate are fighting it with more lies.

On Wednesday, the Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz falsely claimed the new bill would register millions of undocumented migrants to vote and accused Democrats of wanting the most violent criminals to cast ballots too.

The core message of the Republican party now consists of lies about a crisis of violent migrants crossing the border, lies that theyre voting illegally, and blatantly anti-democratic demands voting be restricted to counter it.

The party that once championed lower taxes, smaller government, states rights and a strong national defense now has more in common with anti-democratic regimes and racist-nationalist political movements around the world than with Americas avowed ideals of democracy, rule of law and human rights.

Donald Trump isnt single-handedly responsible for this, but he demonstrated to the GOP the political potency of bigotry and the GOP has taken him up on it.

This transformation in one of Americas two eminent political parties has shocking implications, not just for the future of American democracy but for the future of democracy everywhere.

I predict to you, your children or grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy? Joe Biden opined at his news conference on Thursday.

In his maiden speech at the state department on 4 March, Antony Blinken conceded that the erosion of democracy around the world is also happening here in the United States.

The secretary of state didnt explicitly talk about the Republican party, but there was no mistaking his subject.

When democracies are weak they become more vulnerable to extremist movements from the inside and to interference from the outside, he warned.

People around the world witnessing the fragility of American democracy want to see whether our democracy is resilient, whether we can rise to the challenge here at home. That will be the foundation for our legitimacy in defending democracy around the world for years to come.

That resilience and legitimacy will depend in large part on whether Republicans or Democrats prevail on voting rights.

Not since the years leading up to the civil war has the clash between the nations two major parties so clearly defined the core challenge facing American democracy.

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Republicans have taken up the politics of bigotry, putting US democracy at risk - The Guardian

Even after being elected to the Senate in 2012, the Hawaii Democrat Mazie Hirono was, by her own choosing, a politician little known outside her home state. Then, around 2016 and the election of a particularly divisive president, Hirono, who was born in Japan and is the Senates only immigrant, decided that staying under the radar was unsustainable. She frequently made herself available to the national media. She publicly said President Trump was a misogynist and a liar and called for his resignation (as early as 2017, mind you). She unabashedly punctuated her comments with salty language. And it wasnt just her unexpected transition that raised her profile: Senator Hironos forceful questioning during the Kavanaugh and Barrett Supreme Court confirmation hearings, as well as, more recently, calling on President Biden to nominate more diverse people for senior positions in his administration, have also been central to her earning national stature. Its not the easiest thing for political people to speak candidly with the national media, says Senator Hirono, who is 73 and whose memoir, Heart of Fire, will be published on April 20. Im not doing it for effect. I dont go out there and spew things. Ive thought things through.

The Senate is supposed to be the worlds greatest deliberative body, and instead its where so much legislation goes to die. Do you feel that its broken? What I see in the Senate is how important one person is. That person on the Republican side is Mitch McConnell. There are very pragmatic reasons that he holds his caucus together: He is the money person. The Republican senators having tough races, they go to him, and he provides resources. If Mitch McConnell said, OK, were going to work with the Democrats, it would happen even if there would be holdouts like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Tommy Tuberville and that handful of people who I dont know who they think theyre representing except themselves. Mitch McConnell is a guy who single-handedly made the Supreme Court an eight-person court. Whoever heard of such a thing? And he got away with it. When one person has outsize influence like Mitch McConnell, we need to figure out ways to deal with it, and one way is filibuster reform. It could be totally removing the filibuster. I dont think a lot of my colleagues are there.

Senator Mazie Hirono, then a state legislator, at a committee hearing in Honolulu around 1993. From Senator Mazie Hirono

I dont think anyone doubts that McConnell and the Republican caucus would, if it were in their best interest, eliminate the filibuster. But there are questions about the Democrats resolve in that regard. Are those questions warranted? I think the Democrats have been much more concerned about the process. We actually care about the fairness of it all. Then you have another party that just wants power. I would say that is a fair assessment. Not every Republican is that bad, but Ill tell you, they pretty much toe the line. As we try to enact legislation that weve been talking about supporting, and that the House is going to keep sending over to us, there will be a growing recognition that we cant just go, Oh, well, the process is so important. The process cannot overtake the substance of results that we need to have.

What does it mean to say both that Democrats believe in process and also that process cant overtake what the party is trying to achieve? I never thought that the ends should justify the means. You know fairness when you see it. Like you know art when you see it. We still need to be fair, and therefore the talking filibuster, if we go there, would apply to everybody; there might come a time when the Democrats are in the minority, and that would apply to us. Limitations or changes in the process should apply to everyone. That strikes me as fair.

Hirono at her congressional campaign headquarters in Honolulu in 2006. Marco Garcia/Associated Press

What, if any, pressure is being exerted to move the Democratic senators hesitant about eliminating the filibuster like Manchin and Sinema in the direction that you think the party needs them to go? While were going to have differences, the bottom line is that the Democrats want to do things that help people as opposed to just trying to help the richest and most powerful. And for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, as we try to get bipartisan legislation and it continues to be stymied, slow-walked or watered down to such an extent that its not tenable for us to support anymore, the realization will sink in that were going to need to take dramatic steps in order to pass legislation that Joe Biden wants and that we support.

Senator Manchin is mentioned in your book. Its after Al Franken has said hes resigning, and Manchin gives you a hard time for going to his resignation speech after you said he should step down without realizing that Frankens office had given you the OK to be there. What was your intention in including that scene? The whole thing was painful. Al Franken, I really liked him. But this unacceptable behavior on the part of people with power I and so many others are sick of it. So anyway, I mentioned Joe because he was the only one who said, What a bunch of hypocrites you are to show up after you forced him to resign. No, we did not force him to resign. He made that decision. I think that he made the right decision, although he has since said that he didnt. But I like Joe. He sits in front of me. I said to him during the long period, Do you think it should have taken 11 hours for your concerns to be resolved? He said he thought he had made it plain to our leadership that he didnt want to extend unemployment insurance benefits longer than July. He had his perspective.

Should Governor Cuomo resign? These kinds of allegations should be investigated. That certainly didnt happen in the Kavanaugh case, by the way. The sham FBI investigation was so limited in its scope that Dr. Blasey wasnt questioned, and other people who could have corroborated the allegations were never questioned.

You wrote in your book about a meeting you had with Dr. Blasey in Hawaii after Kavanaughs confirmation. She wanted to thank you for saying you believed her allegations. What else did she say about how that situation played out? She said it was bad enough when he was a federal judge and she was hoping, hoping, hoping that he would not be nominated to the Supreme Court. But when that did happen she had to come forward. She said she was prepared: She knew that he was probably going to be confirmed but she still had to go through with it. She conducted herself with such grace. It was such a contrast to Kavanaugh, who is just a political operative. In my view hes not a very good lawyer. Ive gotten to know Merrick Garland a little bit, and he told me he was watching the Kavanaugh hearings. Merrick Garland is not somebody who says anything bad about anybody, but the Garza case when Kavanaugh said that was a parental-consent case, did you almost fall off your chair, as I did?

Garland said that to you about the Garza case? No, I said that to Garland. He just kind of looked at me like, Yeah. I knew that he was astounded.

Hirono with Joe Biden, then the vice president, in 2013. Joshua Roberts/Reuters

In your eyes, did the way that the Justice Kavanaugh and Barrett confirmations were rammed through hurt the legitimacy of the Supreme Court? The Supreme Court has become ideologically far to the right. So youre going to see 6-3 decisions along ideological lines, and that is not good for our country. Its not good for all the circuit courts and district courts. Its going to lead to a lot more cases being brought to the Supreme Court by right-wing groups. Janus was a case in point.

Wouldnt the left be doing the same things if Democrats had appointed the last three Supreme Court justices? I get that kind of argument often. I expect the Supreme Court to actually expand peoples individual rights and freedoms. I dont expect the Supreme Court to be constraining voting rights and a womans right to choose. I expect the Supreme Court to be protective of minority rights, and that is not where this Court is. So this is not an equivalency. I dont mind conservatives on the Court. I mean, of the three new ones Gorsuch is pretty conservative, but hes a literal person: If it says so right there in black and white, then hell go with it. Sometimes it results in really stupid decisions, in my view. If the law was there to protect people from falling through a round hole and a person fell through a square hole too bad for you. Hes smart enough to know thats a ridiculous posture.

When you questioned Barrett at her appeals-court nomination hearing, it seemed as if you were trying to figure out how her Catholicism might influence her rulings. That avenue of questioning made some people uncomfortable. Wheres the line with religious questions for judicial nominees? It wasnt her Catholicism. It was her position. She was a co-author of an expansive law-review article talking about how judges should decide death-penalty cases. It was an area of inquiry, but her Catholicism frankly, Im a Buddhist. Im not even a daily-practicing Buddhist because I find all religion to be very Buddhism accepts other religions more so than many other religions I can think of. So it wasnt that she was a Catholic, but that theres supposed to be this thing called separation of church and state, which is becoming blurred. Her religion, I didnt care. What I care about is the use of religion as basically trumping every other right. I was presiding over the Senate, and Senator Tuberville says something like we should bring morality back and God and prayer should come back into our schools. Im sitting there going, What? But that is the view of too many Republicans.

Hirono at the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett in October 2020. Shawn Thew/Getty Images

You cut yourself off earlier. You find all religion to be very what? I find a lot of religion to have all of the proscriptions and not openness and acceptance of other peoples legitimately held faiths. That is why I describe myself as a Buddhist. Buddhism, we dont even have a book. It is a way of living and being, which is to be compassionate and kind. I think those are two good things to try to follow. Im not perfect in that. I can be very terse with people. Part of it is that I dont think many of my colleagues have dealt with short Japanese women. So here I come, and Im saying, [expletive] you to them, and they dont quite know how to react.

Can you think of an example? Ted Cruz. I was his ranking on his Constitution subcommittee and we had a number of these hearings; not very many of my Democratic colleagues would come. A reporter asked me why and I said they have better things to do than to come to these half-assed hearings. There was one in which all these Republicans who showed up went over their five minutes, and it got me kind of irritated. I said to Cruz, Are you going to let everybody go eight minutes, nine minutes? And he said, When you get the gavel, you can do whatever you want. I put my hand on his shoulder this was pre-Covid and I said, It cant happen soon enough. At that same hearing we had a break so the mics were not on; its not like Im saying this in an open hearing he said, Look, its not my fault that your people are not here. I said, I dont give a flying [expletive] what your reasoning is. He stopped and said, I will always treat you with decorum, even if its not reciprocated. I said, I wasnt swearing at you.

Lately theres been a real rise in anti-Asian racism and violence. What steps need to be taken to stop it? Racism is never far below the surface in our country. The Chinese Exclusion Act, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the Muslim ban. By now this kind of overt racism is frowned upon to say the least, but President Trump brought it to the surface, calling the virus the China virus. We have an environment now where random acts of violence against Asian-Americans happen way too often. We need to prosecute these people. There are a number of bills that some of us have introduced. But it helps that you have a president who says this is totally unacceptable and an attorney general who is on that page.

Is there something distinct about how we understand anti-Asian racism as opposed to anti-Black or anti-Muslim racism? Well, were very identifiable as Asian, and it is very clear that we all look alike to people who think that we are the other. The systemic racism against Blacks in our country has been ongoing. Thats a huge issue. The racism against Asians comes up in certain instances, like World War II, but weve always been the other. Were probably not as threatening to whites as Blacks are. Maybe thats one distinction.

There is the model-minority myth. And we all know thats a myth! But were not as threatening maybe, and when you raise that, in a way its easier to target a minority group like Asians. But this is the U.S. of A., and people who do this kind of thing should be prosecuted to the ultimate.

Im curious about interpersonal relationships in the Senate after Jan. 6 and also in the light of continued threats of violence at the Capitol. Have things changed on a human level with you and your Republican colleagues since then? It is hard to talk with them in any other way than purely transactional. What am I going to say? How could you not condemn the incitement to insurrection? I often wonder how they wake up in the morning and face themselves, but they are obviously able to bifurcate. They act as if nothing happened. Thats the amazing thing. You have Cruz, Hawley and all these guys who continued to protest the counting of the electoral votes even after what we experienced. I dont know how they live with themselves. Then you have people like Lindsey Graham: When you enter the moral dead zone that is the Trump ambit, youve lost your soul. So I am pretty much just transactional with them. Some of them can be nice. But then when they vote en masse to screw people over, its hard to be all warm and fuzzy and Im not a warm and fuzzy person to begin with.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.

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Sen. Mazie Hirono Wonders How Some Republicans Live With Themselves - The New York Times

The American Rescue Plan, President Bidens $1.9 trillion relief effort, is law. But its only a short-term measure, mainly designed to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic and its immediate aftermath. The long-term stuff which is expected to combine large-scale infrastructure spending with tax increases on the rich is still being formulated. And everyone says that turning those longer-term plans into law will be much harder than passing the ARP.

But what if everyone is wrong?

Just about every analyst I follow asserted, almost until the last moment, that $1.9 trillion was an opening bid for the rescue plan and that the eventual bill would be substantially smaller. Instead, Democrats who, by standard media convention, are always supposed to be in disarray held together and did virtually everything they had promised. How did that happen?

Much of the post-stimulus commentary emphasizes the lessons Democrats learned from the Obama years, when softening policies in an attempt to win bipartisan support achieved nothing but a weaker-than-needed economic recovery. But my sense is that this is only part of the story. There has also been a change on the other side of the aisle: namely, Republicans have lost their knack for demonizing progressive policies.

Notice that I said policies. Theres certainly plenty of demonization out there: Vast numbers of Republican voters believe that Biden is president thanks only to invisible vote fraud, and some even buy the story that it was masterminded by a global conspiracy of pedophiles. But the G.O.P. has been spectacularly unsuccessful in convincing voters that theyll be hurt by Bidens spending and taxing plans.

In fact, polling on the rescue plan is so positive as to seem almost surreal for those of us who remember the policy debates of the Obama years: Something like three-quarters of voters, including a majority of Republicans, support the plan. For comparison, only a slight majority of voters supported President Barack Obamas 2009 economic stimulus, even though Obama personally still had very high approval ratings.

Why the difference? Part of the answer, surely, is that this time around Republican politicians and pundits have been remarkably low energy in criticizing Bidens policies. Where are the bloodcurdling warnings about runaway inflation and currency debasement, not to mention death panels? (Concerns about inflation, such as they are, seem to be mainly coming from some Democratic-leaning economists.)

True, every once in a while some G.O.P. legislator mumbles one of the usual catchphrases job-killing left-wing policies, budget-busting, socialism. But there has been no concerted effort to get the message out. In fact, the partisan policy critique has been so muted that almost a third of the Republican rank and file believe that the party supports the plan, even though it didnt receive a single Republican vote in Congress.

But why this somnolence? Republicans may realize that an attempt to revive Obama-era critiques would expose them to ridicule over their record of hypocrisy: After declaring deficits an existential threat under Obama, then dropping the issue the minute Donald Trump took office, its hard to pull off another 180-degree turn.

They may also be inhibited by the utter failure of their past predictions, whether of inflation under Obama or a vast investment boom unleashed by the Trump tax cut, to come true although inconvenient facts havent bothered them much in the past.

And at a deeper level, Republicans may simply have lost the ability to take policy seriously.

Jonathan Cohn, author of The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage, argues that the most important reason Trump failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act was that Republicans have largely forgotten how to govern. They no longer know how to think through hard choices, make the compromises necessary to build alliances and get things done.

That same loss of seriousness, Id suggest, inhibited their ability to effectively oppose Bidens rescue plan. They couldnt do the hard thinking required to settle on a plausible line of attack. So while Democrats were pushing through tax credits that will cut child poverty nearly in half and subsidies that will make health insurance more affordable, Republicans were focused on cancel culture and Dr. Seuss.

And looking forward, why should we expect the G.O.P. to do any better in opposing Bidens longer-term initiatives?

Bear in mind that both infrastructure spending and raising taxes on the rich are very popular. Democrats seem united on at least the principle of an invest-and-tax plan and these days they seem pretty good at turning agreement in principle into actual legislation.

To block this push, Republicans will have to come up with something beyond boilerplate denunciations of socialists killing jobs. Will they? Probably not.

In short, the prospects for a big spend-and-tax bill are quite good, because Democrats know what they want to achieve and are willing to put in the work to make it happen while Republicans dont and arent.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Opinion | The Decline of Republican Demonization - The New York Times

Jon Greenbaum, the chief counsel for the nonpartisan Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said Republicans were engaged in an all-out effort to change the voting rules in lots of ways that would allow for greater opportunity for them to challenge the eligibility of electors, and that the party would add micromanagement by state legislatures to the process of running an election.

State Representative Barry Fleming, a Republican who has been a chief sponsor of the bills in Georgia, did not respond to requests for comment. In a hearing on the bill this month, he defended the provisions, saying, We as legislators decide how we will actually be elected, because we decide our own boards of elections and those of the counties we are elected from.

Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, has not weighed in publicly on the changes to election administration and oversight. Asked for comment, his office offered only that he was in favor of strengthened voter ID protections.

At the local level, at least nine Republican counties in Georgia have passed local legislation since November dissolving their current election boards often composed of three Republicans and two Democrats and replacing them with a new membership entirely appointed by the county commissioner, resulting in single-party boards.

A new law in Iowa restricting access to voting also targeted county election officials. In addition to barring them from proactively sending out absentee ballot applications, the bill introduced criminal charges for officials who fail to follow the new voting rules.

The threat of increased punishment seemed to be directed at three county election officials in the state, who last year chose to mail absentee ballot applications to all registered voters in their counties, drawing the ire of state Republicans.

We can be fined heavily now, removed from office, said one of those officials, Travis Weipert, the Johnson County auditor. And instead of just saying, Dont do it again, they brought the hammer down on us.

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Republicans Aim to Seize More Power Over How Elections Are Run - The New York Times

The Republican Party has lost majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and now leaders of the party are trying to strategize the path forward. Many Republicans disagree on whether or not former President Donald Trump should have a critical role in the party moving forward.

Kimberley Hirschi and Patti Siegmann say they were both attracted to the Republican Party because of its core values. While they both voted for President Trump in both 2016 and 2020, Hirschi stopped supporting the former President completely in the aftermath of the insurrection on January 6.

"We need the Republican leaders to stand up against Trump and say we're not going to allow him to have an influence, we're not going to allow him to incite any further violence, we're not going to allow him to overthrow democracy," Hirschi said.

Hirschi said she always had concerns about President Trump, but could not support any of his Democratic opponents. Now she says she would not vote for Trump even if he was the only Republican in a race.

Siegmann, on the other hand, has been and still is a loyal supporter of Trump and says he should still continue to play a critical role in the party moving forward.

"I do believe that Trump united a lot of people, more people than others can even imagine and we voted for Trump not that he was a pastor or that he had this tremendous, perfect life; we voted for him because he is a businessman and he had to lead and get us out of tremendous problems," Siegmann said.

Both women say they believe that the future of the Republican Party is strong and neither thinks that a third party will emerge made up of Trump supporters.

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San Diego County Republicans Weigh in on Trump's Future in the Party - NBC San Diego

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Sam Webb says hes not against vaccines. His kids are up to date on their vaccines for school, and he got a flu shot a few years ago, the Weatherford truck driver said.

But he wont be getting a COVID-19 shot.

Webb, a former Army medic, is among the thousands of Republicans in Texas and across the country who say they do not trust COVID-19 vaccines and will refuse to get one even as public health experts and elected leaders say mass vaccinations are the key to a return to normalcy from the pandemic that has plagued the nation for a year.

At the beginning of the nations vaccine rollout, experts warned that people of color, particularly Black and brown people, could be skeptical or fearful about getting vaccinated. But over the past few months, white Republicans have emerged as the demographic group thats proven most consistently hesitant about COVID-19 vaccines.

In Texas, 61% of white Republicans, and 59% of all Republicans regardless of race, either said they are reluctant to get the vaccine or would refuse it outright, according to the February University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll. Thats not an insignificant portion of the states population over 52% of the states ballots in November were cast for former President Donald Trump.

Only 25% of Texas Democrats said they were hesitant or would refuse to get a COVID-19 shot, according to the poll.

Scientists and doctors stress that vaccines are safe and highly effective at preventing the worst outcomes of COVID-19, including hospitalizations and deaths. No one has died because of the vaccines, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Some people may experience short-term side effects, but those effects quickly subside.

But the trend among Republicans is nationwide. A Civiqs poll updated in March indicated that white Republicans make up the largest demographic of people in the U.S. who remain vaccine hesitant with 53% saying they were either unsure about or not getting the vaccine.

Meanwhile, people of color have shown increased confidence in the vaccine over the past few months. In October 2020, 53% of Black Texans said they would not get a COVID-19 vaccine a percentage that dropped to 29% when asked last month, according to UT/Texas Tribune polls. By comparison, 43% of Texas Republicans said they would not get the vaccine in October, compared with 41% last month.

Most hesitancy among Republicans stems from a distrust of scientists and an unfounded concern about how new the vaccine is, said Timothy Callaghan, an assistant professor of health policy management at the Texas A&M School of Public Health.

What you do find is that over time conservatives have been more vaccine hesitant than liberals, which you can largely attribute to higher levels of distrust in the scientific establishment among conservatives, Callaghan said. However, the actions of certain political actors over the past few years have sort of intensified those beliefs within the party.

For Webb, he said he thinks its more about Republicans being distrustful of the government, and this has been pushed really hard by governmental authorities.

I'm not against vaccines, Webb said. Im against something that was rushed out so quickly.

Scientists and medical experts say no corners were cut for the COVID-19 vaccines. Built on years of research of coronaviruses, combined with global collaboration and large infusions of funding, COVID-19 vaccines were able to be developed quickly. Each of the three vaccines approved so far in the U.S. underwent clinical trials meticulously reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration.

It wasn't just this brand new thing, said Dr. Philip Huang, Dallas Countys health and human services director. It was built on prior research and development, but it is a great tremendous scientific breakthrough.

Andrea Norman Harmon, a Springtown resident, said she distrusts the vaccine and is relying on her Christian faith.

I haven't even done any research on it, because in my mind, there's no way that you can 100% convince me that you can tell me what the effects are five years down the road if I take this vaccine today, said Harmon, a conservative. Research shows strong evidence that mRNA vaccines like the COVID-19 vaccines will not cause long-term harm.

Harmon said she does not trust government officials, regardless of party. Shell only get her high school-aged son vaccinated for COVID-19 if it is required for school, although her children are vaccinated for other diseases, she said.

If it's voluntary, and it stays voluntary, I will never take the vaccine, she said. If it comes down to I have to take it in order to keep my job I will be in heavy prayer over what I need to do.

That pervasive distrust across such a broad demographic is particularly concerning for public health experts with the goal of reaching herd immunity.

Anytime there are pockets or segments of the population that don't get vaccinated, it creates pockets of vulnerability, Huang said. We want everyone to take this public health measure.

Epidemiologists estimate to reach herd immunity, between 70% and 90% of the population needs to be vaccinated. Because the vaccines arent approved for people under 16, that means virtually all adults in Texas.

Its not only Texas, but we look at some other states where a large proportion of them are Republicans, said Jamboor K. Vishwanatha, founding director of Texas Center for Health Disparities. Its a brutal fact I mean it's going to affect all, because we will not be able to reach herd immunity. And with all of these new variants that may be coming, COVID may be with us for the long haul.

COVID doesnt discriminate between political affiliation, Vishwanatha added. [But] unfortunately, it got politicized from the beginning.

Elected leaders like former President Donald Trump have at times downplayed the severity of the virus while denigrating scientists who urged for increased caution. Trump, who received the vaccine, did so off camera and did not make a strong public push for Americans to get vaccinated.

Tasha Philpot, a University of Texas at Austin political science professor, said Republican Gov. Greg Abbotts messaging has been tepid in its encouragement of Texans getting vaccinated. Abbott received his first dose live on TV, but he also stresses in his public statements that the vaccines are always voluntary, a nod to members of his party who reject the vaccine.

Philpot said Abbotts decision to end most of the states COVID-19 restrictions earlier this month also sent a message to his party: The pandemic is over.

It's a signaling game, she said. I think if the signal had come from a credible source in their eyes, that we would be having a completely different discussion going on right now.

Abbott did not respond to request for comment.

Many Republican officials are attempting to simultaneously appeal to two different crowds with the Republican party nearly split down the middle on attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines, she said.

The last thing they want to do is upset their base, said Callaghan, the health policy management professor at Texas A&M. If Abbott came out, full-throated, saying everyone really needs to do this so we can put the pandemic into decline and get back to normal and get Texas back to the way it should be that might send a different signal to get more Republicans to vaccinate.

Dallas GOP chairperson Rodney Anderson stressed that the Republican Party isnt a monolith there are many who want the vaccine and there are a variety of reasons some might not want it. However, Anderson declined to share his personal views on the vaccine.

Anderson said most of his fellow party members that hes talked to cite concerns that the vaccine was quickly developed. He said he thinks those who believe in conspiracy theories surrounding the vaccines or virus are in the minority.

But Anderson said GOP leaders like Abbott and others have done an admirable job encouraging Texans of all political leanings to be vaccinated.

The communication at the state level between the governor, lieutenant governor of encouraging individuals [to] get vaccinated, get vaccinated, get vaccinated, has been appropriate and has been effective, he said.

When the vaccine first began rolling out, headlines and polls emerged indicating that people of color, especially Black and Hispanic people, were more hesitant about getting vaccinated than other demographics.

However, over time those numbers have changed. According to the UT/Texas Tribune polls, Black Texans hesitancy dropped by 24 percentage points from November to February.

Among Hispanic Texans, attitudes toward the vaccine diverge based on political affiliation. About half of Hispanic Republicans said they were either against or unsure about getting a vaccine, compared with 34% of Hispanic Democrats who said the same.

Still, a higher percentage of Hispanic Republicans in Texas who were polled said they would get vaccinated than white Republicans.

The UT/TT Poll did not receive a large enough sample of Black Republican respondents to derive meaningful results.

Some initial surveys indicated that there was vaccine hesitancy among people of color, but recent polls are showing that sentiment has largely decreased, Vishwanatha with the Texas Center for Health Disparities said, saying the problem is more about access.

The sentiment that Black and Hispanic people are less likely to want the vaccine is dangerous, Vishwanatha said, because of the disparities that persist. Black and Hispanic Texans already face disproportionately higher rates of dying or being hospitalized after being infected with COVID-19. And according to state data, they are being vaccinated at rates much lower than white people.

By kind of pushing this narrative that Black people don't want the vaccine anyway it's kind of blurring over the fact that there's this racial divide in terms of the dissemination of the vaccine and who gets who's actually getting access to it, Philpot said.

Also notable is the difference in the root cause of why people of color are hesitant to get vaccinated compared to white Republicans.

The huge difference between those two groups is this unique mistreatment of the Black community by the medical establishment, both historically and in modern times, that gives them additional pause about participating in a new vaccination program, Callaghan said. And that's simply just not a reason why Republicans are hesitant to vaccinate against COVID-19.

Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Texas white Republicans are the most hesitant of COVID-19 vaccine - The Texas Tribune

There was an era when New Jersey Republicans could be proud of their partys role in furthering the cause of ending discrimination against African-Americans. And the high-water mark of that era in Garden State politics was the election of 1985.

That was the year in which incumbent Republican Governor Tom Kean scored a landslide reelection victory over Democrat Essex County Executive Peter Shapiro. Going into 1985, Shapiro was viewed as THE coming superstar in the Democratic firmament of New Jersey politics.

In the 1985 gubernatorial general election, however, the Shapiro supernova was irrevocably extinguished, as Tom Kean carried every county in the state and actually won an astounding 60 percent majority of the African-American vote. In the words of that great political sage, Lorenzo Pietro Berra, a/k/a Yogi Berra, it never happened before, and it hasnt happened since.

The GOP 1985 triumph among Black voters was a tribute to three individuals: Governor Tom Kean, the then Department of Energy Commissioner Lennie Coleman, and the late New Jersey GOP State Chair Frank B. Holman, Jr. In the second Kean term, Coleman served as the Commissioner of the Department of Community Affairs.

Each of these three individuals served separate distinguishable roles in that memorable 1985 campaign. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, no Republican trio in any state has more effectively conducted outreach to and dialogue with the African-American community in any state in the nation.

Tom Kean set the tone of this relationship with his slogan, The Politics of Inclusion. For Tom, this was more than a mantra: it was a determination to have government decision making include in its process those ethnic groups and economic sectors that had been traditionally excluded. This was a key factor as to why Kean will rank in history as New Jerseys greatest governor of the Twentieth Century.

To me, Lenny Coleman is an authentic New Jersey hero. He is a proud African-American who overcame the most severe obstacles of racism to achieve outstanding success in the arenas of academia, government, and business. He was the ideal ambassador of the Kean administration to and from the African-American community.

My only regret: Lenny Coleman was a superb president of baseballs National League, but he should have been the Commissioner of baseball as well.

Frank Holman, a great patriot, was a Brigadier General in the US Air Force, serving during the Korean War. He had a gruff voice and a tough way of presenting himself, but that was all a cover for a heart of gold. His heart and strength made him the greatest street politician I ever saw in either party during my nearly four decades of involvement in New Jersey politics.

And as Tom Kean put it in his book, The Politics of Inclusion, Frank Holman was absolutelycommitted to reaching out to the people Republicans have always ignored. This made Frank a beloved figure among all New Jersey racial and ethnic groups.

Frank was a dear friend of mine, and I have often compared him to my all- time favorite baseball manager, Leo Durocher. Leo was a virtual father figure to Willie Mays, and like Frank Holman, he didnt care what was your race or creed, as long as you helped his team win. When Southerners on the Brooklyn Dodgers in spring training in 1947 circulated a petition in opposition to Jackie Robinson playing, Leo awakened his teamat 1:00 amand screamed, I dont care what color Jackie Robinson is I dont care if he has stripes like a f__k__g zebra! The man is going to win us a lot of ball games! Then Leo proceeded to tell the racist players on the Dodgers, in most colorful terms, that they could use that petition for toilet paper.

I could have seen Frank Holman doing the same thing if he had been the manager of the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers!

The triumvirate of Kean, Coleman, and Holman made me proud to be a New Jersey Republican. It was truly a party promoting racial and ethnic understanding.

Todays New Jersey Republican Party, however, under the leadership of Republican State Committee Chair Mike Lavery, is now marching in lockstep with the national Republican Party in a determined effort to suppress the African-American vote.

My hero of the 2020 presidential election was the African-American voter. The increased participation of African-American voters, men and women, was the key factor in the defeat of Donald Trump, an authoritarian racist who would have further destroyed the social fabric of America during his second term.

A major factor in the increased African-American vote was the passage of state statutes throughout the nation enhancing and protecting the ability to vote by mail. Republicans opposed passage of these statutes, claiming that they would result in voter fraud. This proved to be nonsense. Trumps owndirector of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, called this 2020 election the most secure in American history.

The leadership of the national Republican Party knows this, and they are hellbent on suppressing the African-American vote wherever possible. They are engaged in massive efforts to erect barriers to voting by mail, and they also are trying to get states to require voter ID, which severely impacts the ability of African-Americans to vote.

Minority voters disproportionately lack government issued identification cards. Nationally, up to 25 percent of all African-Americans lack government issued identification cards, compared to only eight percent of whites.

And requiring these African-American voters to obtain voter ID places a further impact on their exercise of the voting franchise. They have to bear the cost of obtaining the underlying documents necessary to support the application for the ID,the expense of travel to the place of filing of the application, and the decrease in income attributable to the lost time at work spent in pursuit of the application.

There was a time nationally when the Republican Party could well be proud of its effort to both protect and enhance the right of African-Americans to vote. In 1965, one of the truly good and great men of American history, Republican US Senate Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois played a vital role in the shaping and passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Today, the national Republican Party, massively infested with the racist cancer of Donald Trump, is led by a pusillanimous collection of morally myopic fools dedicated to the maximum possible vitiation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They are at war against the passage of House Resolution One, the For the People Act, a vitally needed set of measures that will honor the heritage of those who heroically marched on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1965 and provide a permanent protection of the hard won African-American right to vote.

In the era of Tom Kean, the New Jersey Republican Party would have stood in firm opposition to the national Republican Partys effort to suppress the African-American vote by the erection of barriers to vote by mail and the implementation of voter ID requirements. Todays New Jersey Republican Party, however, has rejected Tom Keans Politics of Inclusion and replaced it with the Politics of Exclusion.

The new NJGOP Politics of Exclusion first manifested itself during the 2020 campaign when the New Jersey Republican State Committee, under the leadership of former Chair Doug Steinhardt, ina despicable act of blatant attempted racial voter suppression, joined Trump for President, Inc. and the Republican National Committee infiling suit to invalidate New Jersey Governor Phil Murphys Vote-by-Mail plan. I authored a column at that time denouncing the suit, No White Republican will be Elected Governor or U.S. Senator in N.J. for at Least a Decade.

https://www.insidernj.com/no-white-republican-will-elected-governor-senator-decade/

The lawsuit failed, and I hoped that the New Jersey Republican State Committee would thereafter refrain from further efforts to Suppress-the-African-American vote.

The Politics of Exclusion reigns supreme at the New Jersey Republican State Committee, however, and on March 2, 2021, the New Jersey Republican State Committee issued a report drafted by its dubiously named Election Improvement Committee, which advocated both the enactment of Voter ID and making the exercise of vote-by-mail more burdensome. The report had the endorsement of both Chair Mike Lavery and National Republican Committeeman Bill Palatucci. The link to the report follows:

https://www.njgop.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/NJGOP-EIC-Report.pdf

I cannot say whether or not Doug Steinhardt, Mike Lavery, or Bill Palatucci are personally racist. Yet it strains credulity to believe that either the aforesaid lawsuit or this Election Improvement Committee Report is anything but a blatant effort to suppress the African-American vote, motivated by the fact that the African-American vote leans so heavily Democratic.

During the era when the Tom Kean Politics of Inclusion prevailed in the New Jersey Republican Party, the message to the New Jersey African-American community was a positive one: We want to facilitate the exercise of your right to vote, and we hope that you will vote Republican.

Under the Politics of Exclusion which now prevails in the Republican Party both nationally and in New Jersey,the message to the African-American community is a negative one: We know you vote Democratic, and we will do everything possible to suppress your right to vote.

The Republican Party has been irrevocably poisoned by Trumpian racism. The party of Lincoln is now the party of hate mongers like Ron Johnson, QAnon, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. In New Jersey, it is also the party of State Senator Mike Doherty, who denies the existence of systemic racism. The profoundly anti-racist brand of conservatism of a William F. Buckley is totally ignored in todays Trumpian-dominated Republican Party, both nationally and in New Jersey.

No thoughtful right-of-center voter who rejects racism can any longer maintain allegiance to todays Trumpian Republican Party. The creation of a new center-right political party is sorely needed,both nationally and in New Jersey. How this could come about will be a focus of my future columns.

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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Under its New Politics of Exclusion, The New Jersey Republican State Committee Joins the National Republican Suppress-the-Black-Vote Effort -...