TN Rs took the red state attack on urban political power to a new peak w/their vote. The expulsions went beyond making structural changes to diminish the power of big-city residents, to entirely erasing those voters’ decision on whom they want to represent them in the legislature
Similarly, red state are preempting prosecutor & policing powers of blue metros in GA/MS/MO/FL/TN/TX & more. But @GregAbbott_TX raised this to a new level by preemptively announcing he would approve a pardon for a man convicted of killing a #BLM protester just 1 day before
While many Rs are moving to constrain law-enforcement officials in blue counties, Abbott would invalidate a decision by a blue county jury. And while most preemption targets prosecutors b/c of cases they won’t prosecute, Abbott is overriding a prosecutor b/c of a case he did
“I guess it means if you are going to kill somebody in Texas, you need to make sure it’s somebody @GregAbbott_TX thinks ought to be killed; because if that’s the case, then he’ll pardon you," Gerry Morris, former prez of national criminal defense atty association, told me.
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"The Crow company bought the properties for $133,363 from three co-owners — Thomas, his mother and the family of Thomas’ late brother, according to a state tax document and a deed dated Oct. 15, 2014, filed at the Chatham County courthouse"
"Soon after the sale was completed, contractors began work on tens of thousands of dollars of improvements...[including] a carport, a repaired roof and a new fence and gates, according to city permit records and blueprints."
"A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires justices & other officials to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000. Thomas never disclosed his sale of the Savannah properties. That appears to be a violation of the law, 4 ethics law experts" said
On every front the environment is even less hospitable today than it was during Obama’s presidency for the kind of budget deal that House Republicans are now demanding in order to raise the debt ceiling.
Although Obama’s team and many congressional Democrats genuinely believed that a big long-term deficit-reduction plan was both good politics and good economics, Biden, as well as most congressional Democrats today, are much more skeptical of that proposition.
Rs back then could at least formulate specific spending-cut demands back then, but they are far less likely to reach consensus today on a meaningful plan-b/c more of them recognize their political base, centered on older whites, is fine w/entitlement spending targeted toward them
The GOP #SCOTUS majority is again key to this process. It has already shelved 2 key tools vs gerrymanders by ending Justice Dep't pre-clearance & blocking fed lawsuits vs. partisan lines. Now it could further limit Voting Rights cases & hobble (or ban) state Supreme Court review
In near-term #SCOTUS would mostly help Rs. Long-term impact is creating more districts where pols pick their voters not the other way around. "The alarming thing is you are taking the voters out of the equation," says former NRCC chair Tom Davis.
State Supreme Court reviews overturned 4 GOP gerrymanders in late 2010s that helped Ds recapture control. There’s a case House control flipped b/c a D majority NY court overturned a gerrymander from its own party while a Republican majority high court in FL did not.
The House GOP majority has signaled its investigative agenda will channel the preoccupations of the former president and his die-hard base of supporters.
But it has set this course immediately after a midterm election in which voters outside the core conservative states sent an unmistakable signal of their own by repeatedly rejecting Trump-backed candidates in high-profile senate and gubernatorial races.
all sides in the GOP are likely to support efforts to probe the White House’s policy record. such as border security, the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and how it is allocating the clean-energy tax credits and loan guarantees that the Inflation Reduction Act established.
In Democratic-leaning & swing states, voters last week delivered an unmistakable cry of resistance to the restrictive GOP social agenda symbolized by the drive to ban abortion.
But in red states where Republicans have actually imposed that agenda over the past two years, GOP governors cruised to reelection without any discernible backlash.
That sharp contrast underscored the depth of the divide between red and blue America and points toward the further partitioning of the nation into divergent, and increasingly hostile, blocs living under fundamentally different rules for civil rights and liberties.
That coalition of young voters, people of color, college-educated white voters and women frayed at its edges. And because Ds began w/so little margin for error, that erosion—combined w/high GOP turnout—seemed likely to let GOP take the House & possibly the Senate as well.
But even if the GOP does squeeze out majorities in one or both chambers, its margins will be exceedingly narrow. Voter dissatisfaction w/Biden’s performance meant that Ds faced losses, but continuing unease about the Trump-era GOP lowered the ceiling on its gains
These relatively positive results for Democrats were so striking because the findings of the national exit poll, like virtually all preelection polling, showed deeply pessimistic attitudes that typically spell doom for the sitting president’s party.