DDT’s Trial Plus House, State Issues

DDT Trial Day 8:  After lawyers for Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) finished cross-examining David Pecker from the National Inquirer, two new witnesses testified. Rona Graff, DDT’s executive assistant and long-time senior executive at the Trump Organization, handled his phone calls and schedule. She had a “vague recollection” of seeing Stormy “waiting in the reception area of the 26th floor” of Trump Tower. DDT is paying for Graff’s lawyers, and she testified under subpoena. Bank executive Gary Farro had worked at First Republic Bank and said that DDT’s personal lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen was his client when Cohen wired $130,000 in “hush money” to Daniels’ attorney shortly before the 2020 election. Farro described Cohen’s “urgency” in opening new accounts and wanting no address on the checks. Thirteen days later, Cohen said he didn’t want to open that new account and instead wanted one for another corporation registered in Delaware, described as a real estate consulting company.

The trial resumes on Tuesday, April 30, when Farro returns to testify, and the hearing on DDT’s alleged violations of the gag order has been moved to Thursday, May 2.

Earlier this week, he ranted that his payment to Stormy Daniels was a “legal expense” that he didn’t even deduct—which looks suspicious. Former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa said:

“This guy deducted his son’s $5 Boy Scout dues as a charitable donation. More evidence of trying not to leave a paper trail.”

Anyone watching the television series Bull is aware of jury consultants who develop jury profiles to determine how jurors may vote. DDT is using Magna Legal Services that examine jurors’ answers and body language and provide detailed research about them. DDT’s legal team used Magna in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial that he lost.

The Supreme Court’s case about DDT’s absolute immunity concluded this year’s session, and the former conservative “originalists” who claimed that they strictly followed the text of the U.S. Constitution have morphed into activists to change the law—the same direction conservatives complained that liberal judges did. A majority of the justices indicate that any conclusion won’t happen for at least several months.

In 1974, the high court ruled that President Nixon had no right to withhold the Oval Office tapes from Congress in 99 days from the date that Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski served a subpoena for the tapes; the decision was 8-0 because William Rehnquist refused himself out of conflict of interest. In 2000, justices determined George W. Bush won the Florida election in only three days. The current court has already stalled the case for at least five months since Judge Tanya Chutkan declared the president is not a king and the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court concurred. Conservative justice show no sense of immediacy in making a decision. Will they decide that DDT was right when he told a rally that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue with no repercussions?

Giving up on President Joe Biden’s and Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachments, the House searched for a new victim and picked AG Merrick Garland. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Judiciary Chair, and James Comer (R-KY), Oversight chair, threaten to hold Garland in contempt for not giving them the audio recordings of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur in his classified documents investigation. The DOJ has already provided them with the transcripts and Hur’s interview with Biden’s ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer. DOJ Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote:

“[T]he Committees’ inability to identify a need for these audio files grounded in legislative or impeachment purposes raises concerns about what other purposes they might serve.”

Uriarte implied that Comer and Jordan can’t be trusted with the audio, writing that it could be manipulated by “cutting, erasing, and splicing” with concern “that the Committees may be seeking conflict for conflict’s sake.”

Tennessee Republicans have been busy passing laws. A year after a shooter killed six people at a school near Nashville, legislators’ cure for gun violence is to permit teachers to carry concealed guns in school. The law bans parents from knowing which teachers are packing, and schools cannot opt out. A parent submitted a letter with over 5,300 signatures warning that the legislation “ignores research that shows the presence of a gun increases the risks posed to children.” In another objection to the new law, several teachers at the site of the school killing were armed. The GOP rejected all Democrats’ amendments including guns being locked up until a security breach and teachers’ civil liability for using their guns.

Another new Tennessee law forces LGBTQ+ identified youth to be taken in by anti-LGBTQ+ foster and adoptive parents. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) has signed a law explicitly allowing anti-LGBTQ+ foster and adoptive parents to take in LGBTQ+ youth with no provision to take into account the young person’s wishes on the matter. The legislation states that “such beliefs do not create a presumption that any particular placement is contrary to the best interest of the child.” The state will review a decade-long policy requiring children to be cared for in a way that “promotes dignity and respect for all children/youth and families inclusive of their gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation.” Many foster youth have already been rejected or mistreated from their family of origin because of their sexual identity or orientation, and the new “parents” can force children into conversion therapy.

The conservative party of law and order reports that they don’t need to follow it themselves. Louisiana Superintendent of Education told schools to ignore President Joe Biden’s Title IX rules prohibiting anti-transgender discrimination, conflicting with the law banning trans athletes playing sports. The directive doesn’t mention trans athletes. This refusal makes schools at risk of losing federal funding. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis followed Louisiana by saying his state “will not comply” with Biden’s Title IX changes.

The conservative majority on the board of the Murrieta Valley Unified School District (MVUSD) voted to ignore California’s order rescinding the policy requiring teachers and school administrators to out any trans or nonbinary student asking to be called by a name or pronoun different than those on their birth certificates. The district’s law firm warned that the decision could cost $500,000 in legal expenses. The district is in Riverside County southeast of Los Angeles.

DDT may pick South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as his running mate after she bragged about killing her 14-month-old puppy and gunned down a goat, both in the family’s gravel pit. She said she killed the dog because she couldn’t train it, and the “nasty and mean” goat allegedly chased her children because it had not been castrated and smelled “rancid.” About a week earlier she put down three horses.  The stories are in her new book No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward. She wrote that this violence prove she is capable of dealing with anything that’s “difficult, messy and ugly.” In her book, Noem wrote, “hated that dog.”

Noem may have forgotten the criticism of Mitt Romney when he transported his dog on top of the car during a family vacation while he was a presidential candidate. Let’s wait for the GOP spin on Noem’s pride in killing animals because she can do “ugly” things.

Officials claim no problem, but bird flu has been detected in milk from 33 herds across at least eight states. Supposedly, pasteurization inactivates pathogens. The strain of avian flu, H5N1, has circulated for over 20 years but leaped into cows only recently. Jumping among animals increases the possibility of mutation for person-to-person transmission that can fuel a pandemic. Only one daily worker in Texas has tested positive for the virus in the current outbreak. Testing of cows has been voluntary, but a new federal rule requires testing and a 30-day wait before cows are moved across state boundaries. The nation has roughly 8 million lactating cows.

Another concern is the movement of the virus into pigs near the infected dairies because they are an intermediate host of avian viruses to humans. Scientists also worry that the USDA could be repeating mistakes that made Covid-19 devastating by moving too slowly  and not providing enough information. The USDA also doesn’t require tests of asymptomatic herds although it found one herd was infected.

Eric Hovde, who lives in California and running against Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin for U.S. senator from Wisconsin, declares he is deeply patriotic who loves the U.S. He expressed outrage about anyone disparaging the Pledge of Allegiance—but can’t remember it. Somehow he failed to say “under God” after “indivisible” and had to catch up to the recitation. Older people may struggle with this change by President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, but Hovde was born a decade after Eisenhower added the phrase. Hovde’s patriotism includes his bank Sunwest Bank, where he is CEO, named as co-defendant alleging elder abuse in a senior living facility that the bank partially owns. He had ragged about his expertise “in the nursing home industry as a lender to such residences.” Hovde also wants to block people in nursing homes from voting because they’re going to die, and he agrees with DDT that the 2020 election had “irregularities.”

News on April 9

A New York appellate court refused to postpone the April 15 criminal trial about alleged hush money business fraud by Deposed Donald Trump (DDT), but a full panel will consider whether to relax DDT’s motion for a more limited gag order. Manhattan DA’s office disagreed with a stay for the gag order, giving the history of DDT’s “uncontested history” of denigrating remarks such as calling witnesses “losers,” “horse face,” and “deranged psychopaths.”

Conflicts of interest are piling up around Jared Kushner, DDT’s son-in-law. After Saudi Arabia invested $2 billion in his new business venture, Kushner received another $1 billion, mostly from overseas investors who worked with Kushner when he was a White House senior adviser. Money has flowed in from Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Taiwan. The Kushner family has a history with Qatar: in 2017, while Kushner was a senior adviser for his father-in-law in the White House, the family almost defaulted on a $1.8 billion loan for a New York office building before being bailed out by an investment firm tied to the Qatari government.

Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, receives about $40 million a year in management fees from these investors before any share of profits from his 10 investment, many of them offshore—Dubai, Munich, and Abu Dhabi, for example. His business partner is part owner of Israel’s only domestic builder of warships, also major shareholders in vessels used against Gaza and armed with U.S.-made weapons. His newest plans, also benefiting from his relationships during DDT’s White House term, is a $500 million hotel and condo complex in Serbia and two other luxury developments in Albania. These involve the Serbian president and Albania’s prime minister. Kushner also advises the America First Policy Institute establish by former DDT officials preparing for DDT’s return to power. Kushner insists he is acting ethically, but House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY), who refuses to investigate Kushner, said he “crossed the line of ethics” in the Saudi funding for his investment firm.

In another questionable ethics issue, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) faces his second investigation in under a year for over $630,000 in advertising revenue moved from his podcast broadcaster, iHeart Media, to a super PAC backing his reelection. Six years ago, Cruz almost lost to Beta O’Rourke, and this year’s race with Colin Allred is even tighter. The FEC complaint alleges a violation of campaign finance rules for Cruz’s directing the transfer of funds.

Cruz is also one of Washington conservatives with a connection with far-right Argentine President Javier Milei, elected in October 2023, through Miami-based lobbyist Damian Merlo, a tie broken after Milei let Merlo’s pro-bono contract lapse. A vocal DDT supporter, Merlo represents El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, the self-described “cool dictator” making bitcoin an official national currency, who is also accused of human rights abuses.

The House is again stalling on its impeachment statement to the Senate about DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Before its recess, the delivery was scheduled for April 10; now it’s moved to April 15. Conservative senators had asked Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson to wait until they have more time to debate the matter, aka persuade reluctant voters.

Other GOP senators are urging Johnson to stand up to the House “chaos caucus” and move forward for Ukraine and Israel funding by standing up to critics such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) said Johnson could survive a challenge to his Speaker position. Two months ago, the Senate passed the $95 million billion emergency foreign aid package including $60 billion for Ukraine.

As Joyce Vance wrote, “Welcome to 1864!” DDT and MAGA want to return the U.S. to earlier days, and the Arizona Supreme Court decision of 4-2 just did that—160 years ago, 48 years before the territory became a state. The issue is an abortion ban mandating two to five years in prison for anyone aiding an abortion except to save the life of the pregnant woman. The court did stay enforcement for 14 days, and it didn’t go back to medieval times in England as Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for justification. The ruling should increase support for a potential citizens’ initiative to guarantee a “fundamental right” to receive abortion care up until fetal viability that already has over 500,000 signatures out of a required 383,923 on a petition. In 1864, Las Vegas was also part of the Arizona Territory, and the law would have covered that portion of Nevada.  

Also in Arizona, Republican Michelle Martin faces a problem getting on the ballot for a congressional district as a Libertarian in northeastern Phoenix, including Scottsdale, because of faulty signatures on her petition. People denied that they had signed the petition, and Jeremy Garrett, listed as a petition gatherer said he have nothing to do with the effort and never heard of her. The district is represented by Republican David Schweikert who was fined tens of thousands of dollars and almost censured after an ethics investigation into his payments to a consulting firm operated by his chief of staff.

Eric Hovde, a California resident running for Wisconsin U.S. Senate as a Republican against incumbent Democratic Tammy Baldwin, wants to stop nursing home residents from voting because they are too old and too close to death to vote. The average age of nursing home residents is 81, four years older than DDT, who would be 82 when he finished his term if elected in 2024. Hovde claimed that people in a nursing home have only “a five, six-month life expectancy.” DDT has endorsed Hovde. Contrary to Hovde’s claim that 100 percent of the people in the nursing home vote, the percentage in Milwaukee County is about 76 percent.  

Without changing the law, MAGA members have a number of voter oppression ideas: monitor polling places and ballot drop boxes to intimidate voters and election officials; use technology and purge registrants to challenge those who might vote for Democrats; and spread disinformation and conspiracy theories about mass voter fraud. A group is launching software to allow people throughout the U.S. to compare voter rolls with a postal service database—which unfortunately is unreliable. Georgia-based firm EagleAI NETwork has a database of voter information to “fast-track” the deletion of “ineligible” voters; at least one Georgia county has agreed to use it. Insignificant errors can disenfranchise eligible voters. Former DDT lawyer who helped with the bogus Arizona “audit” of Maricopa County’s ballots for 2020, Christine Bobb, is running the RNC’s “election integrity unit” which might be involved in this suppression effort by challenging “voter identification and signature verification rules.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is attempting to force news outlets, social media platforms, and advertisers to submit to conservative demands, most recently CBS News. Chair of the Judiciary Committee, he has scheduled a hearing next week on the decision to fire reporter Catherine Herridge in February for spreading lies about President Joe Biden’s alleged involvement ina foreign influence scheme. Last month, Jordan put pressure on advertising companies trying to prevent ads from placement on content spreading disinformation, accusing them of trying to “demonetize” conservatives.

Russia faces some bad press: 

Another Russian dissident, 61-year-old Alexander Demidenko, has died in custody after being arrested on charges of drinking alcohol in public and charged with a felony for arms trafficking. He had been helping Ukrainian citizens escape from Russia to Ukraine, one of them an elderly woman with cancer when he was arrested. Demidenko’s wife said she saw bruises on his body when police briefly brought him to their home when they searched the apartment and confiscated a laptop and a flare gun the he kept for self-defense. With no listed cause of death, Deminko died on April 5, but officials didn’t announce his death until April 8.   

On April 8, Ukraine burned the Russian missile ship Serpukhov, docked off Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea.

The U.S. has sent Ukraine thousands of Iranian-made rifles, machine guns, ammunition, and rocket-propelled grenades seized between 2021 and 2023 while they were in transit to Houthi militants in Yemen. The half-million rounds of ammunition could last a month if spread among 1,800 soldiers. The inventory doesn’t include artillery shells which Ukraine desperately needs. House Republicans have made no move to help Ukraine.

Melting snow has caused over 100,000 people in Russia and Kasahstan to be evacuated in the worst flooding in decades. Settlements in the Ural Mountains and Siberia close to rivers such as the Ural and Tobol have been overwhelmed after water rose by yards in a few hours to the highest recorded levels. Worst hit, the city of Orsk was inundated after a damn breeched.

At one time, “Moscow Mitch” was a popular nickname for the former Senate majority leader from Kentucky. That name has now been transferred to the House—“Moscow Marjorie” for Marjorie Taylor Greene because of her Kremlin talking points. In starting the nickname, former conservative Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) declared her “on the wrong side of history.” For years, Greene has blamed Ukraine for the Russian invasion.

QAnon is no longer a fringe movement: it’s just called the Republican Party, varying between bizarre and deranged. Like Democrats being an international cabal worshipping Satan and traffics children. Scores of insurrectionists on January 6 were part of the QAon movement, and Greene posted constantly on Facebook about QAnon before she was elected and still embraces extremist claims. If DDT returns to the White House, QAnon goes with him.

Whither a Government Shutdown, More Politics

With a government shut deadline only a few hours away, legislators have a text for the proposed $1.2 trillion spending bill. The biggest issue was the appropriations bill for Homeland Security; passing the six spending bills would settle the budget about six months late with the next one due by September 30, 2024. Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson (R-LA) will try to sell the deal with a $20 billion cut in IRS funding to protect the GOP wealthy constituency, but Republicans oppose the expansion of in vitro fertilization (IVF) for veterans. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) plugged the “$1 billion more to lower families’ childcare costs.

The bill first goes to the House which will have to waive the 72-hour rule wait for bills to avoid a shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said he will put it before the Senate immediately if the House passes it. The Senate will require unanimous consent to vote quickly.

Angry conservatives are considering a delay on the bill although GOP senators haven’t declared blocking it from passing before the deadline. They are angry with Speaker Johnson’s handling of the bills. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called the process “a total disaster.” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) asked until April 12 to review the legislation which would require a continuing resolution, which conservatives typically oppose.

Provisions in the Homeland Security appropriations bill:

• Increase funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to support 42,000 beds in detention facilities.
• Fund 22,000 Border Patrol agents.
• Cut U.S. contributions by 20 percent to nongovernment organizations providing services for new arrivals, possibly leading to illegal crossings.
• Prohibit federal funding for 12 months to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) after Israel’s evidence-free claims that some of the agency’s employees were involved in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. (Loss of funding would worsen the extreme humanitarian problems in Gaza.)
• Cut foreign aid programs, a tiny part of federal spending, by six percent.
• Block non-official flags, including Pride symbols, from flying on U.S. embassies and diplomatic outposts.
• Eliminate GOP attempts to limit abortion access and restrict LGBTQ+ rights.
• Provide an additional 12,000 special immigrant visas for Afghans who assisted the U.S. military and need to escape the Taliban government.

In other areas, Democrats put in $55 million for election security grants which House Republicans, obsessed by “election security,” wanted to eliminate. Much to the dismay of Republicans, the bill has no provision for members’ pay raise after a years-long freeze on legislators’ pay. The Transportation Security Administration received $1.2 billion over last year, over $1 billion increasing workers’ “pay equity investments started last year.” Conservatives also railed against the $200 million for the new FBI headquarters in Maryland, complaining about the “weaponized” law enforcement community.

Missing are hard-liners wishes to decrease salaries of  GOP-disliked Cabinet officials to $1 and to end the Pentagon policy reimbursing travel costs for service members forced to leave a state for reproductive care. Extremists are also insisting on 72 hours to review the 1,012-page document.

One of the largest complaints conservatives had was about the process used by leadership to roll out and consider the spending measure. Republicans lambasted top lawmakers for unveiling the legislative text at 2:00 in the morning and having fewer than 72 hours to review the 1,012-page package. If bringing up the bill suspends the rules in a fast-track process, a two-thirds vote is required for passage.

Only four times since 1977 has Congress passed all appropriations bills by the beginning of the fiscal year.

While the House stalled on the 2024 budget, the GOP-led House Budget Committee passed a 2025 budget resolution limiting access to social safety net programs, cutting federal domestic discretionary spending, and removing much of Biden’s agenda and regulations to fight climate change. The Republican Study Committee with a supermajority of GOP House members, recommends the Social Security retirement age be raised from 67 although it didn’t give a specific age, eliminating some healthcare subsidies in the Affordable Care Act, and largely restricting access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). The next fight has begun before the last one was solved.

President Joe Biden has a saying that budgets show what people value, and his budget proposal for 2025 shows his desire to narrow income inequality, address the housing crisis, bolster the working poor, and make the wealthy pay their share of Medicare taxes by removing the cap on people making over $400,000. Another part of his budget would help first-time home buyers plus subsidizing new construction and renovation. Republicans claim that they want to help families, but no support for them is evident in their budget, especially in their intent to extend DDT’s tax cuts.  

Called “Fiscal Sanity to Save America Plan” by members, the Republican Study Committee endorsed a series of bills “designed to advance the cause of life,” including the Life at Conception Act, which would aggressively restrict abortion and threaten IVF by legally protecting human beings at “the moment of fertilization.” It also recommends building the border wall, restricts LGBTQ+ rights, ends birthright citizenship (which is legalizes by the constitution), and attacks the critical race theory. Abortion restrictions would ban medication abortions, eliminate abortions for those in the U.S. military, and cut funding for U.S. universities “that partner with or host student health services that provide abortions.” The committee also wants people to pay higher prices for medications. It describes the provision of the Inflation Reduction Act that permitting government price negotiation with pharmaceutical companies “socialist price controls.”

In a symbolic measure with a vote of 390-9, all the opposition to a resolution condemning Russia’s taking Ukrainian children were Republicans: Andy Biggs (AZ), Eric Burlison (MO), Warren Davidson (OK), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), Clay Higgins (LA), Thomas Massie (KY), Matt Rosendale (MR), Chip Roy (TX), and Tom Tiffany (WI). Russia has taken an estimated 200,000 to 260,000 children. The nine supporting the kidnapping gave such reasons as the bill being a distraction from the southern border, building support for more Ukraine aid, and other concerns that it would obligate the U.S. in other ways. Greene refused to give any reason to a HuffPost reporter, saying only that “your publication is literally trash. I mean true garbage. That’s my statement to you.”

In the past, a small minority has voted against resolutions against Russia, and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) nicknamed the GOP “Putin wing.” A Washington Post reported added that these Republicans have formed “what some Democrats (and even critics on the right) have labeled ‘Putin’s Caucus.’” 

As conservative House members grow more disillusioned with the chamber’s management, the extremist Freedom Caucus is shrinking. Speaker Johnson plans to block a government shutdown by mostly ignored demands from the right-wing factions, and the center-right Republican Main Street Partnership is supporting opponents to the Caucus’ chair, Bob Good. Greene was ousted last summer, and last week Randy Weber (TX) lost his membership because he didn’t attend enough meetings. Weber said, “This just isn’t the Freedom Caucus I joined 10 years ago.” This week, Ken Buck (CO) was dismissed a few days before he quits Congress because he “hasn’t been with conservatives on several major issues.”

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is trying to block the biggest U.S. supermarket merger as Kroger wants to take over Albertsons. The FTC argues that the $24.6 billion takeover would narrow consumer choice, weaken product quality, and raise prices. The proposed transaction would also stop “aggressive competition” for employees in attempts to obtain better pay, benefits, and working conditions. The merger would result in over 5,000 stores in 48 states with almost 700,000 employees. Seven states and Washington, D.C. have joined the FTC lawsuit.

Gas prices are starting to increase although the average is only $0.02 more than last year at this time. One reason is that refineries are shut down while switching to more expensive summer fuel; another is the extreme cold of the past winter. Drone attacks on oil refineries inside Russia also play a part in raising gasoline and oil prices because the country will need to import gasoline for fuel. In addition, Houthi attacks in the Red Sea forced time and costs from the rerouting of oil tankers. At $81.70 a barrel, U.S. crude is 20 percent higher than the same time last year. And OPEC+, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, continues to limit supply to boost prices.

After a residency question about Eric Hovde’s run for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin against Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin from his home in California, he was found sheltering investments worth $74 million in companies based in Bermuda, until recently a tax-haven with no corporate income tax rate. He is wooing voters by promising to donate his entire $174,000 Senate salary ala DDT.

Stories about presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his possible running mate Aaron Rodgers keep getting crazier. According to recent revelations, Kenney believes plastic pollution turns people gay, and Rodgers recorded in a 2020 video that AIDS was “created” by corrupt pharmaceutical companies. Kennedy’s “idea” is similar to one from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones who falsely blames the government for putting chemicals in the water to make people more feminine.

Odd, Odder

Odd:

Ignoring the looming shutdown in another six working days—fewer if Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson sends them home for the weekend—the House passed a bill banning TikTok in the U.S. if China doesn’t sell the social platform company within 180 day in the vote of 352-65, the far-right/far-left nays of 15 Republicans joining 50 Democrats. Republicans voted for the ban despite TikTok’s support from Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) after his meeting with the company’s investor Jeff Yass, a large donor to the GOP and DDT. How each member voted.

Senators expressed concerns about free speech and targeting one specific business located in the U.S. Legislators have no evidence that China influences TikTok, extremely popular in the U.S. used by 7  million small businesses and 170 million people. Adults complain about youth getting their news from TikTok but get their news from Russia on other social platforms. Opposing the ban, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said that the bill makes the U.S. look like the Chinese government that bans TikTok. He added that the bill would take property from TikTok investors in the U.S. without first proving a crime. Nine months ago, Paul warned his GOP colleagues that banning a favorite Republican favorite app would “continuously lose elections for a generation” if they alienate tens of millions of young people.

Over half the House Republicans say they won’t attend Speaker Johnson’s retreat at the “family-friendly” resort in West Virginia instead of the more popular Florida ones. In addition to the disregard for the venue, they don’t want to spend time with Republicans. Even the far-right keynote speaker Larry Kudlow has abandoned ship.  A shortage of members present may hamper Johnson’s goal to build “consensus and unity” in the party. The situation is unusual; customarily, almost all the Republicans and their families attend.

Those not showing up at Johnson’s retreat may have felt burned at his annual Elected Leadership Committee retreat in Miami with GOP committee chairs and prominent members in the party’s conference. The event was billed as a way to keep the GOP majority, but Johnson’s highly religious speech explained that the country’s moral decline comes from declining church membership and shrinking religious identity. One attendee called the presentation “horrible,” stating, “I’m not at church.” The conservative Punchbowl News reported that the House has “the most chaotic, inefficient and ineffective majority we’ve seen in decades.”

Odder:

Anti-vaxxer and all-around conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who loves to show off his shirtless body, may be selecting NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former Minnesota governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura about being his vice president. Both are interested: Ventura has some government experience, but Rodgers has the advantage of being an anti-vaxxer.

The use of aspirin as a contraceptive is returning to popularity. Arizona state Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli, an election denier, recommended the off-label use of aspirin:

“Bayer Company invented aspirin. Put it between your knees.”

Borrelli also stated that “women wouldn’t need contraceptives if they weren’t so promiscuous” in response to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ promotion of The Right to Contraception Act which Republicans refuse to hear in committee. In 2001, Borelli pled guilty to domestic abuse and put his wife into the hospital with more wounds. In divorce documents, however, he possibly perjured himself, stating that his marriage was free from domestic violence.  

What should a Republican do after a failed experience? Fundraise—and that’s exactly what Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) is doing after massive ridicule about her presentation and lies at the response to the State of the Union address. She blamed “the dishonest leftist media and the liberal elites making a mockery of everything I’ve dedicated my entire life to protect ….” No, Mrs. Britt, they were mocking her lying and simpering. (When Britt expressed concerns before she gave the speech, Speaker Johnson said, “It’ll be fine.” He was wrong.)

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), leading critic of government “reckless spending,” also leads the House in 2023 office spending with rules permitting him to receive over $40,000 for housing and meals. He spent almost $43,800: $31,000, housing; $10,800, meals; and $1,900, car rentals, parking and taxis/ride shares.

Another fundraiser, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, appears aimed at the 2028 presidential race. He called his two-day presidential-donor gathering an “Investor Appreciation Retreat,” and he has hosted one-on-one thank-you calls with donors, small meetings with more of these “investors” in Naples and in Miami, and conference calls with former volunteers. DDT is back to calling DeSantis pejorative names again, likely feeling challenged by the 45-year-old man. In 2028, DDT will be 81, an age that MAGA believes is over the hill. And of course, what happens if DDT doesn’t survive until the 2024 election?

A Republican woman accused former state GOP chair Kelli Ward of assault during the state party’s January meeting at a Phoenix church. Ward allegedly hit the woman who had criticized Ward’s involvement at the meeting after she was no longer chair. The weapon was a yellow piece of paper, according to the police report, although the woman said Ward also used her fist. Police saw no injuries on the woman, and she didn’t report being injured. Ward supposedly cut in line to take a microphone from an attendee’s hand. In the contentious meeting, state committee members elected a new chair, replacing Jeff DeWitt, accused of bribery by failed gubernatorial candidate and current U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake. Ward cast her vote in an “isolated part of the church” away from the woman.

Kansas state Rep. Stephenie Sawyer Clayton has an answer for her male GOP colleagues pushing a law forcing doctors to asks a large number of invasive and inappropriate questions for women seeing abortions. She proposed an amendment requiring men seeking treatment for erectile dysfunction explain why they need help such as whether they wanted to conceive, give pleasure, or correct loss of confidence, stress, embarrassment, or shame possibly caused by their inability to get an erection. Republicans immediately objected because their abortion questionnaire collected information for semi-annual state reports, but Sawyer Clayton, a moderate Republicans until 2018 after the GOP lurch to the right, disagreed because erective dysfunction is tied “to our very important birth rate.” Her idea caught on with more amendments such as a survey for vasectomy recipients, rejected because it wasn’t germane to abortion.

Headed to the Senate, the bill is similar to those in eight other red states. Republicans are upset because a citizens’ initiative, passed after Roe v. Wade was overturned, permits abortions up to 22 weeks of pregnancy and beyond that if the mother’s life is at risk. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly won her 2022 election in part because she supports abortion rights.

Carpetbagger Eric Hovde, running for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin against Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin from his California home, is seriously anti-alcohol. In 2017, he wanted a law limiting alcohol to only people who brew or distill it themselves. Seven years later, he succeeded in shuttering the 90-year-old Silver Dollar Tavern near the state Capitol, the oldest family-owned bar in Madison (WI), after he bought and demolished the bar. Hovde’s family tried to buy the bar in the late 1990s and spent the next 25+ years in a pressure campaign to force out the owners by buying all the surrounding buildings. The area became rundown with empty, neglected buildings as Hovde failed to purchase the bar; now he plans to tear it down.

The former executive director of Wisconsin’s GOP, Mark Jefferson, resigned that position to be executive director of the state’s almost 90-year-old Tavern League which promotes the interests of Wisconsin bar and restaurant owners. His resignation came only five months before the national GOP convention in Milwaukee. Last year, a League victory celebrated the bipartisan victory of Wisconsin’s alcohol industry overhaul clarifying regulations including investments in new alcohol businesses, winery operations, and times when bars close during the RNC convention. Its donations to both parties shows the League’s bipartisan approach.

Alcohol, a major industry in the state, provides over 161,000 jobs paying $3.2 billion in wages and $2.6 billion in tax revenue. Just in Milwaukee, Miller, Schlitz, Pabst, and Blatz brands were founded. Covering up for Hovde’s history about anti-alcohol and anti-cannabis, his spokesman said Hovde, who claims to be a libertarian, supports decriminalization of marijuana and that he “proudly supports Wisconsin’s breweries, distilleries and wineries” after Hovde had highly criticized both of them.

If Hovde is elected, he would be junior senator to GOP Ron Johnson, well known for trying to overturn the 2020 election and lead conspiracy theorist in the chamber. Johnson agrees with conservative House members such as Ohio’s Jim Jordan, who rejected a bipartisan border bill negotiated in the Senate to let people “decide” about it in November—probably hoping for more senators like Johnson. The senator goes even farther, saying he wants Congress to stop working on all legislation in response to the bipartisan spending package passed last week to stop a partial government shutdown. Wisconsin already has Johnson. Do they also want Hovde?

The RNC made an attack video against President Joe Biden using artificial intellence, and in January an AI robocall impersonated Biden to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in the primary. DDT uses AI to indicate he has friends with invented Blacks. On DDT’s Truth Social, he accuses the videos of his speech problems at the Robert Hur hearing on March 12 of being AI, calling the event a “disaster for Biden” and “a two-tiered standard of justice.” DDT’s errors are so egregious that no one needs AI for them, but he did draw more attention to them.