Today's Press Poodle

I guess I shouldn't just dismiss this piece as more butt-hurt red state whining, but that seems to be Mr Cullen's whole fucking point. He wants us to know the big squishy American Middle is struggling - but he goes to great lengths to tell us the problem isn't really with the semi-idiot DumFux News faction of the American Right, it's all the fault of the Democrats who seem unwilling or unable to pander to these boneheads the way they long to be pandered to.

And don't get me wrong, most of us could do with the warm fuzzy feeling we get when the politicians do a little pandering, but these clod-hoppers don't just need a pacifier - they expect everybody the suck on it for them too.

Art Cullen knows all, sees all, and like the "good people" of North Bumfuck Iowa, he needs to get his head out of his ass just long enough to learn the Dems are (mostly) the ones who're keeping his readers afloat.

Want to Know Why Democrats Lose Rural America?

STORM LAKE, Iowa — Democrats are getting their derrières handed to them by the kickers and the Busch Light drinkers from out here on the edge of the Great Plains all the way to Appalachia, where the Republicans roam.

So what do the Democrats do?

Dump the Iowa caucuses into the ditch. At the hand of President Biden, no less. He decreed that South Carolina’s primary should go first on the presidential nominating calendar, displacing Iowa. The Democratic National Committee seems happy to oblige.

We get it. Let someone else take a turn up front. But discarding Iowa is not a great way to mend fences in rural America — where the Democratic brand has become virtually unmarketable.

The Democratic big shots hated Iowa’s pride of place since the caucuses rose to prominence a half-century ago because money couldn’t control the outcome. Jimmy Carter broke through from Plains, Ga., with nothing but a toothy smile and an honest streak. Candidates were forced to meet actual voters in village diners across the state. We took our vetting role seriously — you had better be ready to analyze Social Security’s actuarial prospects.

Candidates weren’t crazy about it. The media hated Storm Lake ice in January. We did a decent, if imperfect, job of winnowing the field. Along with New Hampshire, we set things up so South Carolina could often become definitive, which it will be no longer.

Iowa has its problems. We are too white. The caucuses are complicated, confusing and clunky. The evening gatherings in homes, school gyms and libraries are not fully accessible and not as convenient as a primary for people with jobs and kids at home.

But diversity did have a chance here. Barack Obama was vaulted to the White House. Iowa actively encouraged Black candidates to challenge the white establishment. Mr. Obama beat Hillary Clinton here. Iowa had no problem giving a gay man, Pete Buttigieg, and a Jewish democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, the two top tickets out to New Hampshire last cycle. Black, white or Latino, it’s organization that matters in Iowa. You have to herd your people to the caucus and keep them in your pen for an hour while other campaigns try to poach them. It’s town hall democracy. Mr. Obama won with it. Candidates who ran feeble campaigns have to blame something. Latinos in Storm Lake overwhelmingly caucused for Mr. Sanders. Julián Castro can complain all he wants.

The talking heads say Iowa messed up by not reporting the results quickly. The problem was that a cellphone app suggested to the Iowa Democratic Party by the Democratic National Committee crashed. The democratic process worked — the app didn’t.

Anyone looking for an excuse to excise Iowa and further alienate rural voters could find one. The time was ripe.

Mr. Biden doesn’t owe Iowa a thing. He finished fourth in the caucuses. He did owe Representative James Clyburn, the dean of South Carolina Democrats, big time for an endorsement just ahead of the Palmetto State primary, where Black voters put Mr. Biden over the top. It was sweet payback. We get that, too.

Actually, the caucuses haven’t been the best thing for Iowa. The TV ads never stop. It puts you in a bad mood to think everything is going wrong all the time. We asked good questions, and the candidates gave good answers, then forgot about it all. Despite all the attention, nothing really happened to stop the long decline as the state’s Main Streets withered, farmers disappeared, and the undocumented dwell in the shadows. Republican or Democrat, the outcome was pretty much the same. At least the Republicans will cut your taxes.

So it’s OK that South Carolina goes first. Iowa can do without the bother. The Republicans are sticking with Iowa, the Democrats consider it a lost cause. No Democratic state senator lives in a sizable part of western Iowa. Republicans control the governor’s office, the Legislature and soon the entire congressional delegation. Nobody organized the thousands of registered Latino voters in meatpacking towns like Storm Lake. Democrats are barely trying. The results show it.

The old brick factory haunts along the mighty Mississippi River are dark, thanks to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and everyone else who sold us out for “free trade.” Keokuk, the gate city to the river, was once a bustling industrial and shipping hub but recently lost its hospital. Your best hope in rural Jefferson was to land a casino to save the town. You essentially can’t haul a load of hogs to the packinghouse in a pickup anymore — you need a contract and a semi. The sale barn and open markets are quaint memories. John Deere tractor cabs will be made in Mexico, not Waterloo. Our rivers are rank with manure. It tends to frustrate those left behind, and the resentment builds to the point of insurrection when it is apparent that the government is not here to help you.

It’s hard to feel from 30,000 feet. So Donald Trump landed in Sioux City on the eve of the midterm election to claim his stake before a large crowd buffeted by the gales out of Nebraska. “The Iowa way of life is under siege,” Mr. Trump bellowed. “We are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation.”

They loved him. The Democrats view the crowd as deplorable, and told Iowa to get lost.

Today's Faint Glimmer

Warnock beats Walker in Ga. runoff, growing Democrats’ Senate majority

ATLANTA — Democrat Raphael G. Warnock on Tuesday was projected to win reelection to represent Georgia in the Senate, defeating Republican Herschel Walker in a tight runoff and expanding his party’s slim majority in the chamber.

It was a hard-fought victory for Democrats in an increasingly purple state that was central to the party’s gains last election cycle and is expected to be a key battleground in 2024. Rural turnout for Walker, 60, a former Georgia football star, was not enough to offset a strong Atlanta-area performance by Warnock, 53, a pastor at a historic church in the city.

Warnock’s win gave Democrats their 51st Senate seat — handing them more leverage in a chamber that for two years has been evenly split, with Vice President Harris empowered to break ties and two swing-vote Democrats able to make or break their party’s plans.

The result also capped a disappointing midterm cycle for Republicans, who expected a red wave but fell short of retaking the Senate and reclaimed the House majority by a margin of just a few seats. Walker, a first-time candidate ridiculed for gaffes, accused of serious misconduct and elevated by former president Donald Trump, exemplified broader Republican concerns that their nominees — and Trump — undermined their chances. His loss spurred more calls to rethink the party’s direction and strategy.

With more than 97 percent of the vote counted Tuesday night, Warnock led Walker by nearly 2.5 percentage points. An estimated 3.5 million people voted in the runoff, slightly down from the 3.9 million ballots cast in the general election.

The DJ at Warnock’s election night party played “All I Do Is Win” by DJ Khaled right after CNN posted that Warnock was projected to win. Declaring victory late Tuesday, Warnock said he was honored to “utter the four most powerful words ever spoken in a democracy” — “the people have spoken.”

- more -

Learning

The Dems are not planning to "fight" by bending over backwards trying to be accommodating of a buncha crazed Berserker Republicans - not this time.

Because you can't do that with these assholes, and then expect to be accommodated in return.

They're assholes.

(pay wall)

Nonprofits With Ties to Democrats Plan Counteroffensive Against Congressional Investigations

The groups want to take pressure off the administration by pushing back in a more adversarial manner than President Biden’s team.

The Biden administration has added lawyers and communications staff members, while working with outside lawyers to prepare for an anticipated barrage of subpoenas.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — With Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, a loose network of groups allied with Democrats is planning a multimillion-dollar counteroffensive against an expected onslaught of oversight investigations into President Biden, his family and his administration.

The White House, which is building its own defense team, has quietly signaled support for some of the efforts by nonprofit groups with ties to some of the biggest donors in Democratic politics, according to people familiar with the groups.

The efforts appear intended to take pressure off the administration by pushing back in a more adversarial manner than Mr. Biden’s team on sensitive subjects, including the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the administration’s Covid response and — perhaps most notably — the foreign business dealings of Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

“The White House cannot be the sole nucleus for publicly responding to the onslaught of congressional investigations,” reads a memo from a nonprofit group called Facts First USA that has been circulating among major Democratic donors, members of Congress and others.

It lays out a $5 million-a-year “SWAT team to counter Republican congressional investigations,” including on issues that “may be too personal or delicate for the White House to be responding or to even be seen as directing a response” — an apparent reference to Hunter Biden.

David Brock, the Democratic activist behind Facts First, said his group “intends to work with the White House where appropriate but will make our own judgments.”

Another group, the Congressional Integrity Project, announced Wednesday that it intended to launch a multimillion-dollar “war room” to undermine investigations from the Republican-led House. People involved in that initiative, which was first reported by Politico, have previously worked with Mr. Brock’s team and have close connections to the White House and the Democratic Party.

The political arm of the Center for American Progress, the influential progressive think tank, is planning to cast the Republican investigations as “politically motivated revenge politics,” according to its chief executive, Patrick Gaspard.

The rush by some of the left’s leading figures to mount responses underscores mounting concerns that Republicans could use their investigations to damage Mr. Biden and other Democrats headed into the 2024 presidential election. The scramble also highlights an old Washington dynamic: When there is divided government, lawmaking tends to grind to a halt and Congress is dominated by oversight fights.

That is likely to be particularly true when Republicans take control of the House of Representatives next year with a majority that is slimmer than the party had hoped. In such an environment, it can be easier to win support for oversight investigations, which require less consensus than major legislative initiatives.

The battles could be turbocharged by new outside groups like Facts First, which is funded by “dark money” from donors whose identities can be kept secret. The ongoing law enforcement inquiries into two figures who loom largest in the oversight investigations — Hunter Biden, who is under investigation for tax-related violations and other issues, and former President Donald J. Trump — add another layer of intensity to the fight.

Mr. Trump declared his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election on Tuesday, even as he faces investigations related to his handling of classified materials, his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his business.

While some in the party blame him for disappointing results in this month’s midterm elections, his allies in Congress have indicated that they intend to use the oversight investigations to damage Mr. Biden and avenge Mr. Trump.

Many of the planned oversight investigations align closely with Mr. Trump’s grievances, including accusations of politically motivated Justice Department investigations into him, criticisms of the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan and border policies, and claims about the business dealings of Hunter Biden and other members of the president’s family.

House Republicans have been working closely for months with outside groups affiliated with Mr. Trump and funded by anonymous cash to plan for the oversight.

Representative James Comer of Kentucky, who is in line to become chairman of the Oversight Committee, and Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who is expected to be chairman of the Judiciary Committee, planned to hold a news conference Thursday morning on “investigative actions.”

The White House declined to comment.

But it has been gearing up for the oversight battles ahead as well, by compiling research on Republican arguments and the members of Congress making them, including trawling deeply conservative corners of the internet to build out a rapid-response database, according to a person familiar with the effort.

The White House also added lawyers and communications staff members, while working with outside lawyers to prepare for an anticipated barrage of subpoenas, as well as possible efforts to impeach Mr. Biden. An administration official said that additional personnel would be added to handle the inquiries in the White House and the agencies under Republican scrutiny, including the Defense Department, the Education Department, the Health and Human Services Department, the Homeland Security Department and the State Department.

“Republicans are going to launch baseless broadsides against the White House,” Eric Schultz, who handled the Obama administration’s response to congressional oversight investigations, said in an interview. “They already have been. Holding them accountable for their own word as a measure of their credibility, that’s entirely fair game.”

Hunter Biden will be assisted in the congressional investigations by Joshua A. Levy, who previously represented the opposition research firm Fusion GPS when it became the target of Republican congressional investigations.

Mr. Levy declined to comment.

Hunter Biden himself has mostly stayed quiet as Republicans have worked to make him into a boogeyman.

It is a void that Mr. Brock and Kevin Morris, a close adviser to Hunter Biden, are preparing to fill.

Mr. Morris, a Hollywood lawyer who has been helping Hunter Biden with financial and legal support, offered to collaborate with the Facts First effort during a meeting in September in Los Angeles with Mr. Brock, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Mr. Morris has assembled a team of lawyers, computer forensic experts and public relations professionals, according to a person familiar with Mr. Morris’s plans. They have discussed plans to go on offense against allies of Mr. Trump who targeted Hunter Biden, including those who disseminated or highlighted a cache of files with embarrassing information that appears to have come from an abandoned laptop.

Mr. Brock has far more political experience than Mr. Morris, but he also has a track record of bare-knuckle tactics that have drawn criticism on both sides of the aisle.

Once a self-described “right-wing hit man,” Mr. Brock switched sides and became an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton, setting up a political action committee that coordinated with her 2016 presidential campaign to defend her against media scrutiny and attacks from rivals.

Over the last two decades, Mr. Brock built a network of nonprofit groups that are supported by some of the biggest donors on the left, and that play important roles in the Democratic Party’s ecosystem.

Mr. Brock is stepping away from his position as chairman of two of his main groups, Media Matters and American Bridge, to focus on Facts First USA, for which he will serve as president. It is in some ways modeled on the PAC he used to attack Mrs. Clinton’s rivals, and he left open the door to Facts First coordinating with the White House, the Democratic National Committee or other Democratic groups, including a potential Biden campaign, if the president declared for re-election.

“We’re an outside independent group,” he said, “and we hope that lots of people are willing to join the fight against Republican disinformation and conspiracy mongering, including the White House and all allied groups.”

His group, the Congressional Integrity Project and the White House seem aligned so far on one thing — targeting the Republicans driving the oversight.

Mr. Brock’s group and the White House are assembling research intended to cast Republicans involved in the oversight as hypocrites, pointing to those who defied subpoenas in the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Colorado As Microcosm

"An extinction level event"

Republicans were hoping to make gains in Colorado this election.

The party recruited more moderate and younger candidates, women, and people of color, and focused largely on pocketbook issues. And given an unpopular sitting President and Democratic control in Colorado and nationally, the focus of the media and political observers was the scope of the inroads Republicans would make.

Instead, the opposite happened. A blue wave hit Colorado and left Republicans in a worse spot, with deeper electoral losses than they ever imagined, shocking both Republicans and Democrats alike.

“Honestly I think Colorado Republicans need to take this and learn the lesson that the party is dead. This was an extinction-level event,” said Republican state Rep. Colin Larson. “This was the asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaur, and in this case, the dinosaur was the Republican party.”

Larson’s pessimism is understandable. He was poised to be the incoming House minority leader after the sudden death of state Rep. Hugh McKean. Instead, Larson unexpectedly lost his own race in Jefferson County.

He was already the last Republican representing the suburban county just west of Denver. That’s a huge shift from just a decade ago when Jeffco was considered one of the swing regions of the country and a focus of both candidates during the 2012 presidential race.

Republicans lost seven seats in the state legislature, and another Republican state senator had become a Democrat prior to the election.

This leaves the party with less than a third of the seats in both chambers, the deepest Republican minority in state history.

“Frankly, it couldn't be much worse,” said Dick Wadhams, the former chair of the Colorado Republican Party. Wadhams largely blamed demographic shifts and the national Republican brand.

“And I think we put up very strong candidates who were worthy of consideration by all Colorado voters and yet they were soundly rejected in favor of Democratic candidates,” Wadhams said. “So I don't know what it's gonna take for this to come back the other way.”

And it wasn’t just the statehouse, the losses were steep at the top of the ticket as well. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis defeated Republican Heidi Ganahl with nearly 58 percent of the vote, and even won in the Republican stronghold of Douglas county where she lives.

Larson said he thinks it’s going to take a seismic shift to turn things around and said both the local and national party must fully repudiate former President Donald Trump, the January 6th insurrection, and election denialism. He believes only then would enough voters in the state even consider Republicans as a “serious viable option.”

“January 6th, we just thought it had fallen from most people’s minds,” he said. “That just was not the case. They weren’t willing to look past the party.”

Larson said it’s even difficult for him personally. Although he’s always voted for Republicans, if Trump is the party’s presidential nominee in 2024 he said he couldn’t back him.

“We don’t solve our problems with violence and insurrection and conspiracy theories,” Larson said.

Jan. 6, 2021, was a turning point for Dana Basquez, a voter from Lakewood. For much of her adult life, she was a Republican. She became a Democrat about a decade ago, but even then she said would consider Republican candidates and normally split her ticket. After January 6th that all changed.

“On January 6th it was cemented in my brain that I cannot trust these people,” Basquez said. “That our nation, everything that I hope for my grandchildren is in jeopardy.”

She grew up in a Republican family in Texas and said her father voted for Trump both times. She said he regretted it and was heartbroken at the state of the Republican party.

“They were trying to overthrow our government. He felt he had played a part in that. And that man was 86 years old, had suffered with prostate cancer for better than a year,” Basquez said. “And he was gone by May. He was just devastated by what they did.”

Some candidates did try to distance themselves from Trump, but it still didn’t help. Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet handily defeated Republican businessman Joe O’Dea, even though O’Dea broke with Trump, defended the 2020 election, and took relatively moderate positions on abortion rights, immigration, infrastructure, and same-sex marriage.Hart Van Denburg/CPR NewsColorado Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea, accompanied by his wife Celeste, tells supporters he called his opponent, incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, to concede defeat on Election Day night, Nov. 8, 2022, at the Hilton DoubleTree hotel ballroom in the Denver suburb of Greenwood Village.

Zack Roday was O’Dea’s campaign manager and said they knew going into the race that defeating Bennet in a state Trump lost by 13 points, was a longshot, but they didn’t expect the margins to be as wide as they were.

“Our polling did show that it was tightening, the public polling did show that it was tightening and history. I mean the incumbent [President] was under 50 percent in all credible polls,” Roday said. “Gravity, midterms, all of that indicates that the challenger is gonna close hard and fast."

But as the election approached the campaign started to see troubling indications about the Republican party’s brand. Roday said the campaign sent text messages and received some responses along the lines of, “I really like this guy. This is the type of guy I could support. I'm just not voting Republican right now.”

O’Dea did perform several points better than Republican gubernatorial candidate Ganahl, who courted leaders in the election denial movement, and drew attention for her embrace of “parents’ rights,” and unsubstantiated claims that children are “identifying as cats … all over Colorado” and schools are “tolerating” it.

Roday said this election showed that the Republican party’s problems are bigger than any one candidate.

“It's reality that (Trump) lost the midterms for us in 2018,” Roday said. “He lost the White House in 2020.”

Roday said that effectively put a limit on what the party could achieve, “in what should have been an extremely favorable environment in 2022. And there's only one way to move forward, and that is to shed ourselves of that cancer.”

Still, he said he was proud that O’Dea stood up to Trump publicly.

“Going toe to toe with the former president of the United States and not backing down, that is in the history books. Even with us coming up short,” he said.

Votes are still being tabulated, but by winning about 42.4 percent of the vote, O’Dea narrowly outperformed Trump’s 41.9 percent share of the Colorado vote in the 2020 general election. That race had 23 candidates dividing votes, compared to just five in this year’s Senate race. In both cases, the Libertarian candidate was the biggest third-party draw, with 1.61 percent of the vote in 2020 and 1.7 percent this year.

Republicans also narrowly lost Colorado's new 8th Congressional District and Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s race in the 3rd Congressional District is still too close to call, in a seat where Republicans hold a 9-point advantage, although she is leading her Democratic opponent Adam Frisch.

Some Democrats point to the Supreme Court and the Roe v. Wade decision as the turning point that helped them and mobilized voters. For Democratic U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, who was not on the ballot, it comes down to Colorado having what he believes is one of the strongest economies in the country.

“I'm not saying it's perfect here. And there are a lot of people feeling inflation and the interest rates on their credit or credit bill or on their house mortgage, they care about that,” Hickenlooper said. “But they're also more optimistic and they feel our future's good. That's not true everywhere in America.”

But as the dust is settling, at the state level, Colorado Republicans will next have to figure out how to slow or moderate Democratic priorities in the state legislature, despite not having the votes to stop anything. Even though the party was already in the minority, Larson said with fewer Republicans, Democrats now have even less incentive to tack to the middle.

“There’s going to be a lot of negative policy outcomes from not having a sane and relevant loyal opposition party,” he said, noting that despite some strong new members, some of the more moderate lawmakers are no longer at the Capitol.

Former Democratic state Rep. Tracy Kraft-Tharp agrees that having more Republicans at the statehouse can be a good thing. She was term-limited in 2020 and is now a Jefferson County Commissioner. During some of her time at the Capitol Republicans controlled the state Senate.

“Actually it worked out really well. It forced people to be able to negotiate, work together, find common ground in order to get things done,” Kraft-Tharp said.

And now with Republicans out of power at the state and federal level, local races may become an increased area of focus. When Republican Congressman Mike Coffman lost his re-election bid in 2018 he went on to become the Mayor of Aurora.

“It's clear that it's a blue state statewide, and Republicans can be successful in certain districts or certain pockets of the state and city council,” said Michael Fields, the head of the conservative Advance Colorado Institute.

Fields has helped spearhead successful ballot initiatives in recent years including proposition 121 which lowers the state income tax rate from 4.55 percent of income to 4.40 percent of income. It had widespread support and passed in every county in the state except Boulder.

“We can win on issues. We just cut taxes and 65% of voters agreed with us. They're still paths to enact policy,” Fields said. “And I think policy is the most important thing. And we haven't had power for four years (when Republicans last controlled the state Senate), but we've done a lot on the policy front, regardless, as conservatives.”

Congressional Circus

Let me start with this:

    Ain't it funny how we never see the headline, "GOP In Disarray!"

The Senate stays Majority Democrat, and while the House is likely to go Republican, that's not a sure thing.

Now then - here's a money quote from WaPo's The Early, this morning:

Sen Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who ran the National Republican Senatorial Committee this cycle, said on Fox on Sunday that “there’s no plan” and leaders want to “rush through an election because they don’t want to do any assessment of what we’ve done wrong.”

But Scott was charged with retaking the majority as NRSC chair — so it’s unclear who he wants answers from. It’s a bit like the chef asking who cooked such a terrible meal.

(pay wall)

Republican leaders try to weather the storm

The House and the Senate are back in Washington for the first time in six weeks, with the Republican Party in tumult and Democrats in ecstasy over the results of the midterm elections.

Republicans in both chambers are scheduled to elect their leaders for the next Congress this week (the House on Tuesday, the Senate on Wednesday) in what promises to be a tense few days as rank-and-file members ask what went wrong, who’s to blame and what’s going to be done about it.

The midterm elections didn’t go how most expected. Democrats maintained control of the Senate, and control of the House is still unknown, which means what will happen during the lame-duck session is TBD — and the agenda for the next Congress is completely up in the air.

The House could have the slimmest majority since the 72nd Congress in 1931, when 218 Republicans, 216 Democrats and one Farmer-Labor Party representative made up the chamber.

Let’s break it down

Every competitive House Republican leadership race has been thrown for a loop.

The conference will gather today to hear from the candidates in what is expected to be a lively and interesting closed-door conversation.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who is desperate to be speaker, is feeling the most heat.

If Republicans do take the House, it will be by the narrowest of margins, empowering members of both the far-right and moderate wings to seek concessions from leaders.

To secure support for his potential speakership, McCarthy is talking to many members, including the chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), according to two Republican aides who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Perry and members of the Freedom Caucus want more representation on committees and changes to the rules that empower rank-and-file members. McCarthy needs their votes.

The race to be Republican whip has also been thrown for a loop. Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who ran the House Republicans’ campaign arm, is struggling to maintain his support after the midterms, especially since he told The Early on Friday that Republicans “should be extremely happy” that they won the House majority (which, let us repeat, hasn’t been called yet).

Meanwhile, critics are highlighting that Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) failed to endorse former president Donald Trump’s still-unannounced 2024 presidential run when Banks appeared on Fox News on Sunday. But Banks is planning to endorse Trump after his expected announcement Tuesday night, a person familiar with Banks’s intentions said.

Trump has become a litmus test (again), but in perhaps a different way than before. He is weakened after many blame him for the GOP’s bad midterms outcome, but he also remains the de facto leader of the party — for now. Whether to pledge allegiance to him has become more complicated for ambitious Republicans.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) — who is running for reelection as conference chair, which would make her the No. 4 Republican in the House if the GOP is in the majority — last week endorsed Trump for president, but some members are frustrated she did so before he announced and while the fallout from the midterms remains murky.

Senate Republicans

Several GOP senators are calling for a postponement of GOP leadership elections. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who ran the National Republican Senatorial Committee this cycle, said on Fox on Sunday that “there’s no plan” and leaders want to “rush through an election because they don’t want to do any assessment of what we’ve done wrong.”

But Scott was charged with retaking the majority as NRSC chair — so it’s unclear who he wants answers from. It’s a bit like the chef asking who cooked such a terrible meal.

Several senators who have backed postponing leadership elections, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), have long had grudges with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and have sidled up to Trump and the Trump wing of the party. But Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a sort of weather vane for which way the political winds are blowing and a loyalist to the former president, called for a delay as well Sunday night.

Senate leadership aides said there is no intention to postpone the election and that no one has stepped up to challenge McConnell, but when Senators meet on Tuesday at their weekly lunch, they, too, are expected to have a tense discussion.

Even if he is elected leader again, McConnell will face questions about how much influence he’ll have. Trump attacks him regularly, many candidates trashed him on the trail and some of his old allies have retired. He may get the title, but what he can do with it remains an open question.

House Democrats

House Democrats are in limbo, waiting to see if they defy the odds and maintain control of the House. There will be no movement on leadership elections before the majority is called.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who was expected to step down after this term, declined to say Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether she’s going to leave leadership.

“My decision will then be rooted in what — the wishes of my family and the wishes of my caucus,” she said. Pelosi said she would announce her decision ahead of the House Democrats’ leadership elections on Nov. 30.

Senate Democrats

It’s possible that every Democratic senator up for reelection will return to Washington next year — depending on whether Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) prevails in a runoff election next month — and the conference is thrilled with the election results. The Senate Democratic caucus is the most drama-free group on the Hill right now.

Democratic senators will meet Tuesday for their regular lunch, which is likely to be a celebration, and they’ll start to plot out their lame-duck priorities through the end of the year.

They won’t hold their leadership elections until December. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) is expected to be unopposed.

Today's Wonderment:

What happens if/when a few members (MTG, Scott Perry, Josh Hawley, et al) are indicted for their roles in Jan6?

Messages

Brian Tyler Cohen with Pete Buttigieg

.@GavinNewsom on right-wing media and empathy for MAGA supporters: "I get why people believe this stuff. They're not deplorable. The people promoting the BS are," he said. "At the end of the day, there's this quest we're all on for belonging. We all want to be loved." #TribFest22 pic.twitter.com/NUbMolixUa

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) September 24, 2022

 .@GavinNewsom criticizes the GOP and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz on recent book ban efforts, recalling Cruz's laments in 2021 that Dr. Seuss Enterprises stopped selling certain books: "But he said not a word about 801 books that have been banned in his own state." pic.twitter.com/MqKJFqMetm

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) September 24, 2022

 .@GavinNewsom blasts the migrant busing policies of Govs. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis and the character of the GOP in "celebrating that act of cruelty." #TribFest22 pic.twitter.com/STJVHfqO3B

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) September 24, 2022

Today's Bidening

A farmer hears the guy on the radio saying there's a bad flood coming his way. He says to himself, "I'm a god-fearing man - I go to church - I have faith that god will save me."

The water rises and the farmer retreats to his porch.

A sheriff's deputy stops by as the road is beginning to flood and offers to take him to safety. The farmer replies, "I'm a god-fearing man - I go to church - I have faith that god will save me." And the deputy drives away.

The water rises and the farmer retreats to a room upstairs.

A man comes by in a boat and offers to take him to safety. The farmer replies, "I'm a god-fearing man - I go to church - I have faith that god will save me." The man in the boat motors away.

The water rises and the farmer is up on his roof, barely hanging on. A helicopter appears with a rope ladder. The farmer waves them off, yelling, "I'm a god-fearing man - I go to church - I have faith that god will save me." The helicopter flies away.

The water surges, destroying the farmer's house and washing him down river to a watery grave.

The farmer arrives at the pearly gates to find god waiting for him. The farmer says, "I was a god-fearing man - I went to church - I had faith - why didn't you save me?"

God replies, "I sent a car, a boat, and a helicopter - what the fuck you are doing here?"

Joe POTUS brought the fire last night, and today, Republicans are still insisting he's being mean to them. They're trying to spin it, saying he's the one being divisive - that he wants us to hate "half the country" and blah blah blah.

First - not "half the country". Gotta admire a buncha numb-nuts who look at maybe 10 or 15 percent of the country, then turn around and try to sell the notion that it's actually "half".

(I'm not sure "admire" is the right word, but that's what I've got for now)

Second - if you're not among the fascist assholes Biden's talking about, then don't go gettin' any knots in your Underoos.

Third (and kinda the big one) - Biden keeps offering the "mainstream old guard GOP" a way out of the totally fucked up mess they've gotten themselves into (see car, boat, helicopter above).

But it's like they've become frozen in place, which is the basic problem with the kind of monumental ego some of these clods have always had, or develop over a career spent figuring out what ass to kiss and how deep into the shit they need to dive without blowing it all up or revealing to the world what craven, opportunistic, cynically manipulative transactional assholes they really are.

So here's the speech:

A Minor Harbinger

... hoping it's more major.

For the first time in almost 50 years, Alaska is sending a Democrat to the House of Representatives.

She still faces an uphill battle in the fall, when she has to run again to stay in the House, but there's something happening that feels pretty encouraging right now.

(pay wall)

Democrat Mary Peltola wins special election in Alaska, defeating Palin

Peltola scored a rare Democratic win in the state while also becoming the first Alaska Native elected to Congress

Democrat Mary Peltola has won a special election for the U.S. House in Alaska, defeating Republican Sarah Palin and becoming the first Alaska Native to win a seat in Congress as well as the first woman to clinch the state’s at-large district.

Peltola’s win flips a seat that had long been in Republican hands. She will serve the remainder of a term left open by the sudden death of Rep. Don Young (R) in March. Young represented Alaska in Congress for 49 years.

Who is Mary Peltola?

Peltola, who’s Yup’ik, is a tribal fisheries manager and former state representative who led in initial counts after the Aug. 16 election. But her win wasn’t assured until Wednesday, when Alaska election officials made decisive second-choice counts using the state’s new ranked-choice voting system. Republican Nick Begich III, who finished third, was eliminated, and his supporters’ second-choice votes were redistributed to the remaining candidates.

“It is overwhelming. And it’s a very good feeling. I’m very grateful Alaskans have put their trust in me,” Peltola said in an interview with The Washington Post shortly after her victory at the office of her campaign consultants, where she had to break away in the middle of the conversation to take a call from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “I will be immediately going to work.”

Alaska’s special-election results come after other summer special elections for the House in which Democrats outperformed President Biden’s showing in their districts. Those outcomes, all following the Supreme Court decision to end a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, have been hailed by Democrats as encouraging signs for the November midterms that show voters are angered by the court’s decision and eager to vote for candidates supporting abortion rights.

Graphic: How second-choice votes pushed a Democrat to victory in Alaska

The Alaska race adds another data point to the clues both parties are examining as they gear up for the stretch run to the Nov. 8 elections. But since it was decided under a unique new voting system, the Alaska race could be harder to read as an indicator of the national environment than the other contests.

For the moment, it helps Democrats expand their current narrow House majority and gives the party a better chance of winning the seat in the fall, according to at least one nonpartisan elections analyst.

Peltola had nearly 40 percent of first-choice votes after preliminary counts, which put her about 16,000 votes ahead of Palin. Half of the Alaskans who made Begich their first choice ranked Palin second, and 21 percent did not make a second choice. The remaining 29 percent — a surprisingly large fraction, even to some of Peltola’s supporters — ranked Peltola second, flipping from a Republican to a Democrat. The second-choice support for Peltola was enough for her to hold off Palin, leaving the Democrat about 5,200 votes ahead.

Peltola said in the interview that she thinks her win shows that Alaskans “want someone who has a proven track record of working well with people and setting aside partisanship.” She added, “I think it also reveals that Alaskans are very tired of the bickering and the personal attacks.”

Palin’s defeat comes in her first campaign since she stepped down as Alaska’s governor in 2009; former president Donald Trump endorsed her and held a rally on her behalf in Anchorage.

Peltola’s campaign focused on local issues, such as what to do about declining salmon returns. She is expected to be sworn in to office in mid-September.

The Democrat ran as a relatively moderate candidate with bipartisan bona fides; she conditionally supports hot-button natural resource projects like oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Ambler road, which would cross Gates of the Arctic National Park to access promising mining claims in the foothills of Alaska’s Brooks Range. But she also touted her abortion rights stance.

Asked in the interview about the significance of her soon becoming the first Alaska Native in Congress, Peltola said, “There’s maybe a little bit of personal significance, but really, I am a congressperson for every Alaskan, regardless of their background.” She added, “I am Alaska Native, but I am much more than just my ethnicity.”

Until she ran for Congress, Peltola was the executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, which co-manages federal salmon fisheries in a partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Peltola’s Yukon-Kuskokwim region — named for two major salmon rivers that flow through the area — has seen unprecedented collapses of key subsistence salmon runs in recent years. Peltola pledged to tackle the issue if elected.

Peltola, who turned 49 on Wednesday, is the daughter of a Yup’ik mother and a father from Nebraska, who started in Alaska as a teacher in the village of Fort Yukon. There, he worked with Young, who also was a teacher before he ran for Congress. Peltola’s family was close with Young’s, and her father flew Young on campaign stops when he was first seeking statewide office; her mother also campaigned for Young while she was pregnant with Peltola, speaking in the Yup’ik language.

Peltola was in the Alaska state House for 10 years, ending in 2008, and served while Palin was governor. She was first elected to the state House at age 25, two years after losing her first attempt, which began at age 22.

Forty-eight candidates ran in a special primary election in June. That race narrowed the field to four — independent Al Gross later dropped out — before the Aug. 16 general election.

Meanwhile, a regularly scheduled election is playing out to decide who will hold the same U.S. House seat for the next two years, once the rest of Young’s term concludes. The primary for that race also was held Aug. 16, and Peltola, Palin and Begich are projected to advance, according to the Associated Press. There will also be a fourth spot on the ranked-choice ballot in November.

“Mary Peltola’s victory is a clear message from AK voters that they will not compromise their values or their rights at the ballot box. Mary is a pro-choice, pro-fish, common sense leader who knows what it takes to protect and create AK jobs. On to November!” tweeted former Democratic senator Mark Begich of Alaska. Nick Begich III is the nephew of the former senator.

Following Peltola’s win, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved the Alaska seat’s rating from “Likely Republican” to “Toss-up.”

National Democratic groups did not participate in the special election race even as Peltola was outraised by Palin, according to federal campaign finance reports. But party officials say they’re closely watching the general election race.

Palin and Peltola were at a candidate forum earlier Wednesday. Peltola mentioned the joint appearance in the interview with The Post and said that she had not yet heard from Palin, but “we are going to be reaching out to her.”

Asked what both campaigning for the seat and representing Alaskans in Congress would look like in the months ahead, Peltola said, “I don’t.” She added, “I will supposedly have the benefit of incumbency.” She added, “We’ll see how that works.”

Palin, Begich and other conservatives have sharply criticized Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system, and the nonpartisan primary system that accompanies it. Palin, in an election night statement, called it “convoluted,” “cockamamie” and untrustworthy.

“The biggest lesson as we move into the 2022 General Election, is that ranked choice voting showed that a vote for Sarah Palin is in reality a vote for Mary Peltola. Palin simply doesn’t have enough support from Alaskans to win an election,” Nick Begich III said in a statement Wednesday.

The system’s supporters — some of whom are aligned with Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski — argue that it will result in the election of more-moderate candidates and reduce the risk of third-party politicians “spoiling” an election, because their supporters will be able also to rank mainstream candidates.

In the congressional race, Alaska Republicans ran a campaign urging voters to “rank the red” and fill out ballots for both Palin and Begich, rather than just one of them.

John Coghill, a Republican former state senator who ran in the special primary, attributed Peltola’s win to negative campaigning between the two GOP candidates in the race — which, according to Coghill and multiple strategists, may have made Begich supporters less likely to rank Palin second.

“They started taking shots at each other, and the supporters of one would not dare vote for the other Republican, because of so many cross words,” Coghill said in a phone interview Wednesday. “It’s a new system, and people campaigned like it was the old system.”

Coghill served with Peltola in the Alaska Legislature and said that he was still somewhat pleased to see her elected even though he only ranked the two Republicans on his own ballot. “I think she represents a very good chunk of Alaskans, and she has a broad view,” he said. “She and I argued a lot. And I found her to be a formidable debater, but willing to work where you could.”

Not A Real Party Anymore

A reminder: Donald Trump did not remake the GOP in his own image. He is the perfect reflection of what that party has been morphing into for at least 2 or 3 generations.

The message I think I'm picking up is that the GOP is in fact pushing hard to tear down our experiment in self-government in order to replace it with plutocracy.

They want plutocracy, it's just that they haven't quite settled on the right plutocrat yet.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Opinion
Voters are a problem. But GOP leaders are steering the radicalism.

Rep. Liz Cheney’s loss this week means that at most just two of the 10 House GOP members who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump last year will stay in Congress. Casting out Cheney, who had become the more forceful anti-Trump figure in the party, is the latest illustration of the hard-right views of many GOP voters. Not only did those voters choose Trump over a field of much more mainstream and qualified GOP presidential candidates back in 2016, but this year they also have nominated dozens of candidates across the country who won’t fully acknowledge that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

But while the choices of Republican voters have been very bad, it’s Republican elected officials at the local, state and federal level who are really driving the party — and therefore the country — in a radical, undemocratic direction. These officials and politicians, including Trump, are the party’s most important and influential extremists.

To understand, and perhaps even combat, the GOP’s radical turn, it’s important to understand its root causes. I think of the GOP as having five distinct power centers: the party’s voters, elected officials, superwealthy conservative donors, GOP-appointed judges and grass-roots activists.

I have ranked these power centers in order of importance, at least in my view. But the precise order is less important than the general idea that the party’s radicalism is being reinforced at several different levels.

1. Republican elected officials

It’s Republican politicians who pass deeply unpopular laws that roll back individual rights. They break with traditional democratic norms and values, including by spreading the election misinformation that helped lead to Jan 6. They demean institutions and people who try to act in nonpartisan ways, including the FBI, which was viciously attacked by some Republican politicians last week after its search of Trump’s house. And to insulate themselves from accountability from voters, GOP officials aggressively gerrymander legislative districts, particularly at the state level.

It’s not clear that there was a groundswell of Republican voters in early 2021 who had even heard of critical race theory, much less wanted to ban books written by numerous LGBTQ and Black authors from public schools and libraries. The results from a ballot initiative in Kansas this month suggest many Republican voters are wary of the near-total bans on abortion being adopted in red states. Likewise, many of these Republicans vote in favor of raising the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid and limiting gerrymandering on ballot referendums, policies that GOP legislators won’t adopt even though they are common-sense and popular.

Wyoming voters chose to formally end Cheney’s tenure in Congress. But in reality, Republican Party officials had all but guaranteed that result by their actions over the last year. After the majority of House Republicans voted to disqualify some of the 2020 election results, and after all but 10 opposed Trump’s impeachment, any GOP official who said that Biden won the election and voted for impeachment was going to seem anti-Republican to party activists.

And GOP officials then took even more steps to make sure Wyoming voters got the message that Cheney was no longer a Republican in good standing. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) backed the effort to remove Cheney from her leadership post, and he joined with Trump and others to aggressively campaign against her reelection.

2. Superwealthy conservative donors

Wealthy conservatives are a huge reason the Republican Party has moved in an extreme direction. They pump millions into conservative policy groups such as the Federalist Society. They fund media and grass-roots organizations that move voters to the right. They create super PACs that help Trump-aligned conservatives win Republican primaries. And, just as importantly, they often don’t fund organizations or candidates who would move the party back to the center.

Charles Koch, who with his now-deceased brother David created a network of right-wing organizations that have pushed state-level GOP politicians to the right, is perhaps the conservative billionaire most responsible for the party’s turn to extremism. But that title could also go to Rupert Murdoch, who founded Fox News and has allowed it to become a haven for anti-Black and anti-Latino sentiments.

3. GOP-appointed judges

Conservative judges, including those on the Supreme Court, usually aren’t executing the most extreme parts of the GOP’s agenda. But through their rulings, these judges enable and at times even encourage it. The aggressive gerrymanders and voter suppression laws adopted by GOP-controlled states over the past decade never would have happened if the Supreme Court had struck down a few of them. They set off a wave of aggressive antiabortion laws by overruling Roe v. Wade.

4. Republican activists and organizations

Republican elected officials don’t come up with their extreme rhetoric and ideas totally on their own. Conservative activists and organizations often write radical proposals and then demand party officials pass them into law. For example, the leading figure in the party pushing for limits on how racism is taught in public schools is Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute.

In Cheney’s case, the Wyoming Republican Party central committee, made up of party activists, censured her in February 2021, only weeks after she voted for Trump’s impeachment. Cheney wasn’t alone: Many of the congressional Republicans who voted either for Trump’s impeachment or his conviction were quickly censured by local and state Republicans. Those censures sent a clear message to the rest of the party: Activist Republican types whose support GOP officials need to stay in office were standing firmly behind Trump — and would disavow anyone who did not.

5. Republican voters

I don’t want to understate the role of Republican voters in moving the party toward radicalism. Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and other extremist Republicans would not have power without voters backing them in primaries and general elections. In Wyoming, Republican primary voters could have ignored the views of Trump and other Republican leaders and reelected Cheney, who remains very conservative on most policy issues.

In polls, the clear majority of Republican voters say that Biden didn’t legitimately win the 2020 election, meaning that they either believe the “big lie” or simply aren’t willing to accept that their candidate lost. Despite Jan. 6 and all of the other terrible things he did while in office, and since leaving, Trump is the leading candidate when Republican voters are asked about a potential 2024 primary — numbers that no doubt are part of the reason he might run for president again.

And the Republican voters who oppose Trump-style politicians and back ones such as Cheney in primaries aren’t blameless either. These voters tend to back Trumpian candidates in the general election. Trump himself won more than 90 percent of self-identified Republicans in 2016 and 2020, meaning nearly all of those who opposed him in the 2016 primary eventually fell in line. The Wyoming Republicans who backed Cheney in this week’s primary probably won’t support Democratic candidate Lynnette Grey Bull in the general election.

Trump-skeptical Republican voters, in my interviews with them, tend to be very tied to their identity as Republicans. They are largely unwilling to vote for any Democrat. And they are very open to arguments that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other figures on the left are just as dangerous as Trump-style Republicans, which frees them to vote for candidates such as Greene.

The big problem is that these five groups create a kind of feedback loop: GOP voters initially chose Trump; party donors, activists, judges and elected officials started embracing Trump-style politics and elevating Trumpian figures; now, the Trumpian figure in a given GOP primary is often also the person who has been on Fox News and raised the most money, so the voters are very likely to choose her. And that person will then move the party further right. It’s not an accident that the Trump presidency produced someone such as Greene.

Because these five groups are reinforcing one another, I see no easy or clear path for the Republican Party to shift toward a George W. Bush-style conservatism (one that embraces multiculturalism and respects core democratic values) anytime soon. As someone who started his political journalism career in 2002, I never expected Republicans to deem someone whose last name is Cheney insufficiently conservative. But that’s today’s Grand Old Party.

What Liz Said

It's important to remember that Liz Cheney voted more than 95% of the time in favor of everything that was considered "Trump's agenda". She supports a governing philosophy that would deny her own sister the rights guaranteed to everybody else under the constitution. And she has said straight out that Democrats are baby-killers.

So let's make sure we don't include Liz Cheney's pinch-faced puritanism in the whole hero thing being piled up around her.

That said, it's equally important to make common cause with anyone willing to stand up against the shit storm that comes with Daddy State rule.

Here's Cheney's concession speech from last night:

A Democrat Did That?

Over the last few weeks - maybe months - Democrats have been getting their game faces on.

Here's a clip from Beto O'Rourke reacting appropriately (IMO) to some dick who decided to mock him for speaking out about the violent death of 21 people at an elementary school in Uvalde TX.

This, plus various other instances, indicate to me that Dems are done fuckin' around and trying to play nice.

I'm hoping to see a lot more of these assholes getting kicked right in the nutsack.

Inching Ever Closer

The US Senate is about to finish up their Vote-A-Rama thing, and they should be able to put the Inflation Reduction Act in Nancy Pelosi's capable hands pretty quickly.

Bits and pieces via NYT: (pay wall)

- snip -

Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, announced on Thursday that she would support moving forward with her party’s climate, tax and health care package, clearing the way for a major piece of President Biden’s domestic agenda to move through the Senate this weekend.

To win Ms. Sinema’s backing, Democratic leaders agreed to drop a $14 billion tax increase on some wealthy hedge fund managers and private equity executives that she had opposed, to change the structure of a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations, and to include drought money to benefit Arizona.

For decades, as prescription drug costs soared, Democrats battled with the pharmaceutical industry in pursuit of an elusive goal: legislation that could drive down prices by allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with drug makers.

Now they are on the verge of passing a broad budget bill that would do just that.

- snip -

At the center of the climate and tax package that Democrats appear to be on the verge of passing is one of the most significant changes to the United States’ tax code in decades: a new corporate minimum tax that could reshape how the federal government collects revenue and alter how the most profitable companies invest in their businesses.

The proposal is one of the last remaining tax increases in the package that Democrats are aiming to pass along party lines. After months of intraparty disagreement over whether to raise taxes on the wealthy or roll back some of the 2017 Republican tax cuts to fund their agenda, they have settled on a longstanding political ambition to ensure that large and profitable companies pay more than $0 in federal taxes.

How the Deal Was Salvaged:

A frenzied and improbable effort by a tiny group of Democrats, carried out over 10 days and entirely in secret, succeeded in reviving the centerpiece of President Biden’s domestic policy plan.

Climate:

The bill would put the United States much closer to its goal of cutting global warming pollution in half by 2030.

Inflation:

The package, which includes tax increases, lower drug prices and other provisions aimed at reducing the federal budget deficit, could alleviate rapid price gains over time.

The Math of the Deal:

The legislation, which involves at least $260 billion in spending over 10 years and an even larger raise in taxes, has prompted Republican claims that the bill would be too expensive and represent a giant tax increase. But outside estimates found the bill to be fiscally responsible.

Sinema Will Support Bill:

Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, her party’s last remaining holdout, said that she would support the package. To win Ms. Sinema’s support, Democrats agreed to drop a modest change to the so-called carried interest loophole, which allows wealthy hedge fund managers and private equity executives to pay lower tax rates than entry-level employees.

What's in it?

WaPo: (pay wall)

Overheard

We're flying battery-operated helicopters

on Mars - remotely controlled

from a hundred million miles away -

while people in Houston

can't even run a load of dishes

because the electrical grid is down again.

And that's because we have smart,

educated, highly qualified professionals

in charge of space exploration,

and they have a buncha

dumbass, all-hat-no-cattle

Republicans in charge of Texas.