Driving the Day:
Must Read Stories
FBI agents and prosecutors argued over Trump before the August 8 raid
- Washington Post: Showdown before the raid: FBI agents and prosecutors argued over Trump: Months of disputes between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents over how best to try to recover classified documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence led to a tense showdown near the end of July last year, according to four people familiar with the discussions. Prosecutors argued that new evidence suggested Trump was knowingly concealing secret documents at his Palm Beach, Fla., home and urged the FBI to conduct a surprise raid at the property. But two senior FBI officials who would be in charge of leading the search resisted the plan as too combative and proposed instead to seek Trump’s permission to search his property, according to the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive investigation.
Ron DeSantis employs “authoritarian” tactics, as he and Donald Trump continue to pose threats to American freedoms
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Guardian: Ron DeSantis called a ‘tyrant’ as Trump supporters barred from book signing: Ron DeSantis is a “tyrant”, the far-right activist Laura Loomer said, after she and other Trump supporters were barred from a book signing staged by the Florida governor. “They told me to say anybody wearing Trump has to go right now,” a uniformed officer said in video posted online by Loomer, a failed congressional candidate, conspiracy theorist, Islamophobe and rightwing political gadfly. “DeSantis people are in there telling me to come out to tell you guys not to be here while he’s here,” the officer said.
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Axios: Trump’s February bump: Four new polls show former President Trump has received a boost in Republican support — with one survey showing him hitting 50% support in a crowded GOP field. The beginning of the 2024 campaign is feeling similar to the 2016 race, when Trump’s GOP rivals assumed he would automatically fade without them doing anything to stunt his momentum.
- Washington Post: The Trump-DeSantis contest may come down to education: Over the course of the 2022 primaries, an interesting pattern emerged. Candidates who had been endorsed by former president Donald Trump — candidates who tended to espouse his particular brand of right-wing rhetoric — often fared better in places with fewer college graduates. Places with more college graduates tended to prefer non-Trump-endorsed candidates. We saw this repeatedly as results trickled in on primary election nights and in subsequent analyses. More college degrees, less enthusiasm for Trump’s agenda. But that’s a reflection of contests pitting a Democrat against a Republican. What we saw in the primaries last year was that Trumpism fared better with Republicans in places without as many college degrees. This was entangled with other factors; places with more college degrees tend to be more urban, for example, which is not where the most conservative Republicans tend to live.
- New York Times: This Is Trump’s ‘Magic Trick’: In his effort to outflank Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida — his most potent challenger-in-waiting for the Republican presidential nomination — Donald Trump goes only in one direction: hard right. Trump’s strategy requires him to continue his equivocation on white supremacism and his antisemitic supporters and to adopt increasingly extreme positions, including the “termination” of the Constitution in order to retroactively award him victory in the 2020 election. The more he attempts to enrage and invigorate his MAGA base in the Republican primaries, the more he forces his fellow partisans and conservatives to follow suit, threatening Republican prospects in the coming general election, as demonstrated by the poor showing of Trump clones in the 2022 midterm contests.
Trump’s “Judge Whisperer” used his position to create a for-profit empire
- Politico: Dark money and special deals: How Leonard Leo and his friends benefited from his judicial activism: A network of political non-profits formed by judicial activist Leonard Leo moved at least $43 million to a new firm he is leading, raising questions about how his conservative legal movement is funded. Leo’s own personal wealth appeared to have ballooned as his fundraising prowess accelerated since his efforts to cement the Supreme Court’s conservative majority helped to bring about its decision to overturn abortion rights. Most recently, Leo reaped a $1.6 billion windfall from a single donor in what is likely the biggest single political gift in U.S. history.
In The States
GEORGIA: Hours after NBC News revealed that at least 92,000 voter registrations were challenged last year, Georgia Republicans proposed changes to make challenges even easier.
- NBC: Georgia Republicans want to make it easier to challenge voters’ eligibility: Georgia Republicans introduced legislation Tuesday to make it easier to kick voters off the rolls through mass challenges, according to a copy of the bill sent to lawmakers and shared with NBC News by an aide to two of the bill’s sponsors. Changes to the challenge rules were proposed to Senate Bill 221 on Tuesday night, part of a committee substitute replacing a previous version of the bill. A draft of proposed legislation was released hours after NBC News exclusively revealed that at least 92,000 voter registrations were challenged in Georgia last year. Amateur fraud hunters largely used voter rolls, public records (including change-of-address data from the U.S. Postal Service) and some door-to-door canvassing in their claims that voters were ineligible. Most of the challenges were rejected, and some counties said broadly that having mail forwarded was not enough evidence to conclude a voter had moved. Some people spend time at other addresses without abandoning residency in the state, advocates and election administrators said.
MICHIGAN: Michigan could become the 13th state to ban guns at polling places if two election security bills become law.
- NPR Michigan: House elections committee considers election security bills: Michigan legislation to ban guns from coming within 100 feet of polling locations and ballot counting centers got a hearing Tuesday before the state House Elections Committee. Representative Stephanie Young (D-Detroit) sponsors a bill in the package. She said her bill is for election workers who felt threatened during recent election cycles. “I believe that it is our job as legislators to do something about making certain people are safe and feel safe,” Young said during Tuesday’s meeting. It’s a sentiment some who spoke in opposition to the bill shared as well. Another pair of bills in the legislation would make it a felony punishable by up to five years in prison to intimidate or keep an election official from doing their job. Over the course of the over an hour-long meeting, several speakers shared stories of election workers who felt threatened by individuals showing up at their workplaces and homes in the time around the 2020 presidential election.
FLORIDA: GOP lawmakers move to silence and disband opposition voices
- WFLA: Florida lawmaker wants to get rid of the Democratic Party: Florida Democrats took on tremendous losses last election cycle, and now a Republican lawmaker seeks to eliminate the party entirely with a bill filed Tuesday. “The Ultimate Cancel Act” (SB 1248), sponsored by state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia (R-Spring Hill), would cancel the filings of any political party that supported slavery during the Civil War. “The Democrat party adopted pro-slavery stances in their party platforms and this bill says that if you have done that in the past then the Secretary of State shall de-certify and get rid of the party,” Ingoglia said. If the controversial bill were approved, voters registered with any “canceled” party would become Non-Party Affiliated voters. Any “canceled” party could register again, but the name of the organization must be substantially different from the name of any other party that was previously registered with the department.
- Tallahassee Democrat: ‘Disaster for free speech’: Florida defamation, libel bill alarms advocates: Weeks after Gov. Ron DeSantis said he wants to make it easier to sue media outlets, proposed legislation that would do that and more has emerged in the Republican-led Florida Legislature. Sponsored by Rep. Alex Andrade, R-Pensacola, that proposal, House Bill 991, would lower the bar on who’s considered a public figure under defamation law – and lower the bar on what’s considered defamation. Andrade touts the legislation as a way for people to get justice for harms – not just from journalists but anyone making defamatory statements, like over social media. It’s justice that he says is currently “almost completely being denied.” But the bill has alarmed free speech advocates, who say its consequences could be severe and wide-ranging. It’s sent “ripples of consternation” across the United States, says First Amendment Foundation executive director Bobby Block. “I believe it will introduce a whole new Wild West of litigation,” Block said. “This is about intimidating free speech, chilling free speech and silencing critics.”
What Experts Are Saying
Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego, re: Trump’s 2024 strategy: “This is not so much a dilemma for Trump, who has always catered assiduously to his followers with only the feeblest attempts to expand his appeal beyond them. But it is a dilemma for the Republican Party generally, which cannot win without the enthusiastic support of the MAGA faction but also has a hard time winning when they dominate the party’s image with the wider public. At present, party leaders (notably McCarthy) seem more worried about keeping the far right happy than about any long-term damage to the party’s image, and this does put them in something of a trap, because it is hard to see how they can gracefully move toward any more moderate and popular stances without upsetting the extremists.” NYT’s Thomas B. Edsall Op-Ed: This Is Trump’s ‘Magic Trick’
Norm Eisen, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow: “Norm Eisen, senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, noted that Michigan served as a petri dish for this strategy during the midterms: Republican officials in Wayne County, for example, encouraged poll workers to break election rules during a virtual training session right before the state’s primary election…But Eisen notes that the ongoing persistence of election denialism as a movement should be taken seriously. ‘It suggests that we need to remain vigilant,’ he told TPM. ‘We need to continue to not just be aware of the threat, but push back on it in a bipartisan way.’” Talking Points Memo: Election Deniers Who Lost In Midterms Advance Trumpian ‘Precinct Strategy’ As State GOP Chairs
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian at New York University: “Ron DeSantis will destroy our democracy with deadly precision. I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous he is.” Tweet
Headlines
The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections
CNN: House’s MAGA wing torn over Trump as loyalists eye other 2024 candidates
Trump 2024
Politico: Trump ties GOP in knots over Medicare and Social Security
Daily Beast: Trump: ‘Crooked Democrat Prosecutors’ Trying to ‘Steal’ 2024 Election
CNN: Fox learns the hard way about being beholden to the GOP base
January 6 And The 2020 Election
Washington Post: Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio aligned plans with Trump ‘stop the steal’ campaign organizers, knowing by Jan. 6 that followers might explode into violence, U.S. says
Spectrum News 1: McCarthy defends giving Tucker Carlson Jan. 6 trove access
ABC News: Dem leaders Schumer, Jeffries send Rupert Murdoch letter demanding Fox stop spreading election lies
New York Times: Fox Leaders Wanted to Break From Trump but Struggled to Make It Happen
Politico: During a border security hearing, Mark Lamb, who’s mulling a GOP Arizona Senate bid, said Joe Biden won the 2020 election and there wasn’t enough fraud to sway the results.
Wall Street Journal: Federal Agencies Didn’t Share Some Threat Insights Before Jan. 6 Attack, Report Says
New York Times: Prosecution’s Witness at Proud Boys Trial Shows Complexities of the Case
The Hill: More Americans disapprove of McCarthy sharing Jan. 6 footage with Carlson than approve: poll
Opinion
Washington Post: Trump’s enablers must face consequences, too
New York Times: My Liberal Campus Is Pushing Freethinkers to the Right
Washington Post: Some GOP governors are breaking with MAGA. Biden can help them do it
In The States
Guardian: ‘We will prosecute death threats’: Arizona’s new attorney general fights to protect election workers
CNBC: Key Georgia election official rips Marjorie Taylor Greene ‘conspiracies’ after tense meeting
KUT (NPR Texas): A Texas Republican says banning college polling places is about safety. Students don’t buy it
WUNC (NPR North Carolina): North Carolina legislators seek to remove racist literacy test from state constitution
Bolts: West Virginia Adds to Election Deniers’ Ongoing Takeover of State Politics
