Is It A Sign?

For the record, my crystal ball has been in the shop since forever.

Seems like the Bat Shit Caucus and Wingnut Media get wackier and more apocalyptic-sounding every day.

I get the feeling it's because they know - and Trump knows - they're losing badly and Trump is almost literally 9 or 10 months away from at least one long stretch at The Grey Stone Hotel.

Privateering

1. Cut the budget
2. Cut the budget some more
3. Shit on under-paid, over-worked teachers every chance you get
4. Point at "those failing government schools"
5. Run for re-election on "properly funding education" and "parents' rights"
6. Push for school vouchers
7. Push hard
8. Push harder, and wait for the whole thing to crumble
9. Sell off the assets of failed school systems to your brother-in-law, who very recently discovered he has a burning passion for K-12 education
10. Start it all over with "those failing government water works"

This is the Plutocracy Project.

They Got Nuthin'

Gay nutcrackers

Satanic trees

90-dollar turkeys

Living in the Age Of Poe

Making America Grumpy Again

While Republicans continue to bitch about how we need to unbundle the budget, and vote on individual spending bills, they insist on tying Ukraine aid to their demands to fund shittier treatment of immigrants.

There is no bottom that these clowns can't dig under.

Opinion

How Trump is wrecking hopes for a ‘reasonable’ Ukraine deal

Sen. Thom Tillis wants you to know that he’s very “reasonable.” That’s the word the North Carolina Republican used with reporters this week while describing immigration reforms that the GOP is demanding from Senate Democrats in exchange for supporting the billions in Ukraine aid that President Biden wants.

But the demands from Tillis and his fellow Republican leading the talks, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, are not reasonable at all — they’re following Donald Trump’s playbook. Under the guise of seeking more “border security,” they’re insisting on provisions that would reduce legal immigration in numerous ways that could even undermine the goal of securing the border.

According to Democratic sources familiar with the negotiations, Republican demands began to shift soon after the New York Times reported that in a second Trump term, he would launch mass removals of millions of undocumented immigrants, gut asylum seeking almost entirely, and dramatically expand migrant detention in “giant camps.”

As one Senate Democratic source told me, Republicans started acting as though Trump and his immigration policy adviser Stephen Miller were “looking over their shoulders.”

Biden has asked Congress to provide tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine and Israel, and an additional $14 billion to buttress the southern border with new law enforcement agents, expanded detention and other increased security measures. But Republicans won’t agree to that latter request — or the Ukraine aid — without substantial changes to immigration policy as well.

This week, Tillis told reporters that without “language on parole,” any compromise would not constitute “border security,” and without it, Republicans will oppose aid to Ukraine. That’s a reference to Biden’s use of parole authority for humanitarian purposes to allow 30,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to gain entry to the U.S. each month.

According to the Democratic sources, Republicans are demanding that presidential parole authority be scaled back so it can only be applied on an individual case-by-case basis, not to large groups from a single nationality.

That would functionally gut those programs entirely — an absurd demand. Under those parole grants, if migrants gain U.S. sponsors and pass background checks, they can live and work here for two years. This provides an orderly alternative to the mode of entry that enrages Republicans, in which migrants breach the border, seek asylum and disappear into the country while awaiting a hearing. Gutting parole could mean more of the latter.

“Canceling parole would significantly heighten the pressures on the border and the numbers of migrant crossings,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “It’s the opposite of what’s needed to strengthen border security.”

In another absurdity, Republicans have said publicly that Democrats must agree to reduce illegal border crossings by more than 50 percent. But that’s a fuzzy demand: It’s unclear how policy changes could dramatically slash the number who attempt to enter and simply get intercepted by law enforcement. When Democratic staffers sought clarification on this point, the sources say, they got nothing back.

Republicans would also raise the legal standard to qualify for asylum, and here the situation gets particularly frustrating. One can envision a compromise that provides changes to the asylum standard in exchange for, say, legalizing “dreamers” brought here illegally as children. But Republicans have ruled out making any such concessions. (Spokespeople for Tillis and Lankford didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

What’s really bizarre about the impasse is that Republicans should support much of what’s in Biden’s initial request for border security funding. After all, it would also fund expedited asylum processing, which could reduce the window for migrants to exploit the system and prompt faster removals for those who don’t qualify. Aren’t those things Republicans want?

To his credit, Tillis did compromise on this issue last year, when he and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) negotiated reforms that ultimately died in Congress. And Democrats say Lankford, who has acknowledged the need for both sides to compromise, is acting mostly in good faith. But Trump’s seemingly unshakable influence over the GOP stands to reshape these ongoing negotiations.

Trump’s loud broadcasting of plans for an extraordinarily cruel immigration crackdown if he is elected president again appears to be rendering Republicans even less open to compromise without him being in the room. Hence, their slapdash demand for cuts to legal immigration and other radical measures, which seems to cast about for some way to satiate the former president’s taste for draconian nativist savagery.

The bottom line: Senate Republicans are demanding that Democrats add numerous extreme concessions to a package that already gives Republicans many border security measures they ordinarily support, in exchange for Ukraine aid that many already back anyway.

Tillis and Lankford can either be “reasonable” in these negotiations, or they can satisfy Trump and Miller. But they can’t do both. Unfortunately, they appear to be privileging the latter.

What Were We Expecting?

US LIFE EXPECTANCY

Pre-Pandemic     2019:    78.8 years

Pandemic   2020-2021:    76.4 years

Post-Pandemic   2022:    77.5 years

New CDC life expectancy data shows painfully slow rebound from covid

Federal death data from the past decade and a half shows an ominous long-term trend in mortality that is not solely due to the coronavirus or other high-profile killers, including drug overdoses and gun homicides. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Newly published data on life expectancy in the United States shows a partial rebound from the worst phase of the coronavirus pandemic, but drug overdoses, homicides and chronic illnesses such as heart disease continue to drive a long-term mortality crisis that has made this country an outlier in longevity among wealthy nations.

Life expectancy in 2022 rose more than a full year, to 77.5 years, in data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than four-fifths of this positive jump was attributable to a drop in covid-19 deaths.

But the rebound in 2022, which the CDC had anticipated after studying death rates, regained less than half the years lost to the pandemic, the federal health agency reported.

“The amount of recovery is not as much as we’d like to see,” Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, said after reviewing the report.

He said many peer countries suffered smaller drops in life expectancy and rebounded more quickly from covid-19’s impact.

“It’s disturbing but not surprising to me that we have not experienced the recovery that other countries have,” Woolf said.

In 2019, U.S. life expectancy at birth stood at 78.8 years. That figure cratered to 76.4 in 2021, the lowest since 1996. That was due partly to the extraordinary wave of covid deaths in January and February of that year as the United States had only begun to roll out vaccines. The following winter saw another short but intense wave of deaths as the omicron variant of the virus reached the country, creating the last major surge in pandemic deaths.

“There appears to have been some recovery from covid, but we still have a way to go,” said William Schaffner, an infectious-disease physician at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

“Covid remains with us and continues to put people in the hospital, and have a substantial mortality rate associated with it, particularly among older people and people who are immunocompromised,” Schaffner said.

An epidemic of chronic illness is killing us too soon.

The rise in certain chronic diseases in the United States — and slower progress in combating others — put the nation in a vulnerable position when the novel virus arrived. A scattered and politically polarized response to the pandemic played a role in the dire death toll that followed, as did resistance to vaccination and other public health measures. No other wealthy country experienced so high a rate of death per capita from covid.

The new numbers are clearly positive — compared with 2021. But the same data show the dramatic, and protracted, impact of the pandemic. Between 2019 and 2021, life expectancy dropped 2.4 years, and the 2022 jump restored only 1.1. years of that deficit. (Men lost 2.8 years in those first two years, and women 2.1 years.)

The United States has dug itself into a huge life-expectancy hole, and not just because of the virus that slipped into the country in stealth fashion in 2020. In articles this year, The Washington Post has explored the many reasons this country lags peer nations in life expectancy, and a major finding is that chronic conditions such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes and cancer play an underappreciated role in suppressing life spans.

Fatty liver was a disease of the old. Then kids started getting sick.

The new report affirms that conclusion. Although the coming and going of covid explains much of the shape of the mortality curve during the past several years, the CDC death data from the past decade and a half shows an ominous long-term trend in mortality that is not solely due to the coronavirus or other high-profile killers, including drug overdoses and gun homicides.

Life expectancy rose in a relatively steady fashion for all of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. But starting in 2010, the country entered a decade of stagnation in this key metric. Drug overdoses, homicides and suicides played major roles in flattening the life expectancy curve. But the greatest erosion in life spans comes from chronic illnesses, The Post found in its analysis of death data.

Life expectancy peaked at 78.9 in 2014, and then dipped or remained flat through 2019. The new CDC data, despite showing an improvement in 2022, suggests that this period of disappointing life expectancy will continue.

“The pattern is consistent with the stagnation that we’ve seen since 2010,” said Elizabeth Arias, a demographer with the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics and lead author of the new report.

“Even without the pandemic, life expectancy was flat or declining,” Arias said. “This is a whole new territory that we’re in, beginning a decade ago.”

Very few countries have yet published life expectancy data for 2022, as reflected in records at the international human mortality database. The few that have, however, all show quicker recovery from the pandemic.

Sweden in 2022 was back to the same life expectancy as before covid, 83.1 years, more than 5½ years longer than in the United States.

In 2022, Belgium, Denmark and Norway had just slightly lower life expectancy than before the pandemic.

Among countries reporting data for 2022, Finland comes closest to the profile of the United States in terms of recovery from the devastation wrought by the pandemic. In Finland, life expectancy was down 0.6 years compared with 2019. But that loss is less than half of the U.S. decrease of 1.3 years since 2019.

Life expectancy at birth is not a prediction for any individual, but a statistical artifact, one that aggregates death rates from many different age cohorts and creates a handy, if potentially confusing, measure of a nation’s overall health.

Schaffner, the Vanderbilt doctor, said the lingering effects of the pandemic and other health challenges provide a reminder that the United States needs to continue its comprehensive childhood vaccination program, which typically requires children to be immunized before attending school.

“And now we have a slow erosion of that, with increasing vaccine skepticism and more and more parents withholding their children from comprehensive vaccination,” Schaffner said. “We don’t want to erode these very successful preventive health initiatives.”

The new CDC report, which is considered “provisional” in advance of a final report due in December, captures the racial and ethnic disparities in life expectancy that were exacerbated by the pandemic.

All race and ethnicity groups in the country have lower life expectancy as of 2022 than before the pandemic. Native Americans suffered the largest overall decline, almost four years, to less than 68 years. Black people suffered the second-largest life-expectancy setback, of two years. Hispanic life expectancy is 1.9 years less than before covid. The overall decline for White people is 1.3 years, and for Asian people 1.1 years.

The Turning Worms

Steve Deace is a star in the evangelical firmament, as is Bob Vander Plaats.

They're finally decided to admit they've been hornswoggled part of the whole fucking scam all along.

And when Vander Putz carps about how his support isn't for sale? Bullshit. He listed his price: 

1. Moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem
2. Three SCOTUS seats that killed Roe v Wade

Trump did what they paid him to do - what they traded their integrity for - and now suddenly they've discovered what a fuckin' dirt bag the guy is?

Vampire Politics

Typically, the Republican Way is to run everything on vague hints and innuendo.

Trump gave us at least two instances when he told Zelenskyy all he wanted was the announcement of an investigation, and again in 2020 when he told acting AG, “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen”.

Years before that was the endless "investigations" of Hillary & The E-mails, and Hillary & Benghazi. There was never anything of substance, and Kevin McCarthy came straight out and admitted it was all about driving her approval numbers down.

Now we've got almost exactly the same playbook in action, as dog-ass Republicans try to make us believe Biden is exactly the Crime Family Boss that we all know Trump to be.

Daddy State Awareness

THE BASICS:

• The Daddy State lies as a means of demonstrating power.
• The lies have practically nothing to do with the subject of the lies.
• Lying about everything is a way to condition us - to make us accept the premise that they can do anything they want.

The goal is to dictate reality to us.

THE RULES:

1. Every accusation is a confession.

Raskin rips GOP for not agreeing to open hearing for Hunter Biden

House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) ripped his GOP colleagues for rejecting Hunter Biden’s request for an open hearing on Dec. 13, when the president’s son is set to appear for a closed-door deposition.

In a statement Tuesday, Raskin called the GOP move “an epic humiliation” and “a frank confession that they are simply not interested in the facts and have no confidence in their own case or the ability of their own Members to pursue it,” referring to the Republicans on his committee.

“Let me get this straight,” Raskin said in his statement. “After wailing and moaning for ten months about Hunter Biden and alluding to some vast unproven family conspiracy, after sending Hunter Biden a subpoena to appear and testify, Chairman Comer and the Oversight Republicans now reject his offer to appear before the full Committee and the eyes of the world and to answer any questions that they pose?”

Raskin’s statement comes after Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, responded on Tuesday to a subpoena from the Oversight committee proposing a public hearing on Dec. 13, instead of the committee’s proposal of a closed-door deposition.

In Lowell’s letter, he wrote that he did not trust the committee to provide an accurate account of closed-door proceedings.

“We have seen you use closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public. We therefore propose opening the door,” Lowell wrote in a letter to Comer on Tuesday. “If, as you claim, your efforts are important and involve issues that Americans should know about, then let the light shine on these proceedings.”

Comer rejected the request Tuesday, saying the committee expects Hunter Biden to sit for a deposition on Dec. 13, but that he should have the opportunity to testify in public at a later date.

“Hunter Biden is trying to play by his own rules instead of following the rules required of everyone else. That won’t stand with House Republicans,” Comer said in a statement.

Raskin argued that Republicans were afraid a public hearing would make clear that House Republicans did not have evidence proving President Biden committed any wrongdoing.

House Republicans have brought public impeachment hearings against Biden in attempts to produce evidence and prove allegations that President Biden is involved in his son’s legal troubles. The first public impeachment hearing, however, came up short, with the GOP key witness admitting there was not yet evidence proving the president committed any impeachable offenses.

“After the miserable failure of their impeachment hearing in September, Chairman Comer has now apparently decided to avoid all Committee hearings where the public can actually see for itself the logical, rhetorical and factual contortions they have tied themselves up in. The evidence has shown time and again President Biden has committed no wrongdoing, much less an impeachable offense,” Raskin wrote.

“Chairman Comer’s insistence that Hunter Biden’s interview should happen behind closed doors proves it once again,” he added. “What the Republicans fear most is sunlight and the truth.”

Other high-profile Democrats echoed this sentiment.

“The reason GOP don’t want a public hearing on Hunter Biden is because @OversightDems have hoisted them by their own petards in every public hearing this year. They’re scared of getting humiliated for not having an actual case (again), so they need to hide,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) wrote in a post on X.

COVID-19 Update

COVID variant BA.2.86 triples in new CDC estimates, now 8.8% of cases
healthwatch

Nearly 1 in 10 new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are from the BA.2.86 variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Monday, nearly triple what the agency estimated the highly mutated variant's prevalence was two weeks ago.

Among the handful of regions with enough specimens reported from testing laboratories, BA.2.86's prevalence is largest in the Northeast: 13.1% of cases in the New York and New Jersey region are blamed on the strain.

Monday's figures mark the first time BA.2.86's prevalence has surged enough to be listed as a standalone variant on the CDC's estimates. Scientists first warned of the highly mutated strain's discovery over the summer.

"In previous Nowcast updates, BA.2.86 was too uncommon to be shown separately and was grouped with other BA.2 strains," the CDC said Monday.

Before this point, officials have said the vast majority of new COVID-19 cases have been blamed on the XBB variant and a crowd of XBB's closely related descendants. Those include the HV.1 and EG.5 variants that are currently predominant nationwide.

The CDC's estimates carry wide margins of error around BA.2.86's prevalence. As little as 4.8% or as much as 15.2% of circulating SARS-CoV-2 could be from BA.2.86, the agency says.

However, this latest estimate – 8.8% through Nov. 25 – is virtually triple what it was on Nov. 11, when 3.0% of new cases were estimated to be BA.2.86. The CDC typically publishes its variant estimates every other Friday, but had delayed last week's release until after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

"It is important to note that early projections tend to be less reliable, since they depend on examining growth trends of a smaller number of sequences, especially as laboratory-based testing volume for SARS-CoV-2 has decreased substantially over time," the agency said.

The World Health Organization also recently stepped up its classification of BA.2.86 and its descendants to a "variant of interest" after a rise in cases from the strain.

Early data on BA.2.86 suggests it does not appear to lead to worse or different symptoms than previous strains, the World Health Organization said in its Nov. 21 risk evaluation, but noted a "substantial rise" in recent BA.2.86 reports.

The CDC said it did not disagree with the WHO's assessment that BA.2.86 likely posed a "low" public health risk, adding that for now the strain "BA.2.86 does not appear to be driving increases in infections or hospitalizations in the United States."

It comes as the CDC has begun to track a renewed increase in indicators tracking COVID-19's spread across the U.S. headed into the winter.

After weeks of largely slowing or flat trends, the CDC said this month that figures like emergency department visits had begun to increase nationwide from COVID-19. Virtually all regions of the country are now seeing at least slight increases.

Some of the highest increases are in the Midwestern region covering Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin, where trends are nearing levels not seen since early January.

Is the JN.1 variant to blame?

Since August, BA.2.86's broad array of mutations did not appear to be enough for the strain to gain a foothold over XBB and its descendants. Months of the highly mutated variant's spread only resulted in a small share of cases throughout the world.

But scientists in recent weeks have been studying a steep increase in a BA.2.86 descendant called JN.1, which quickly rose to become the fastest-growing subvariant worldwide.

Many cases have been reported in Europe, which has seen increasing cases from BA.2.86 and its descendants.

Authorities in France said on Nov. 13 that JN.1 was largely driving that country's increase in BA.2.86 infections, climbing to 10% of sequences in the country. Early investigations of JN.1 had not turned up any worrying signals so far compared to other BA.2.86 infections, they said, though more in-depth analyses were underway."

Data from recent weeks tallied from the GISAID virus database suggests as much as a third of COVID-19 variants reported from labs in the U.S. have been of JN.1.

It is unclear what proportion JN.1 makes up of the CDC's BA.2.86 estimate.

A spokesperson for the agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last month, the CDC said it expected COVID-19 tests and treatment would remain effective against JN.1, which is closely related to BA.2.86 aside from a single change to its spike protein that early research suggests is enabling it to spread faster.

This season's vaccines are also expected to work against JN.1 similar to what was estimated for its BA.2.86 parent, the agency said.

Where's That Money Going?

First - the modern iteration of a made-for-reality-TV "debate" thing is nonsense. They're not debates at all. They're platforms for a series of empty platitudes, and sound bites, and live 90-second campaign ads.

If somebody wants the debate to be a real debate, then they put the candidates in a studio with no live audience, and wire up about 10,000 remote viewers with those little opinion tracker thingies, so you can gauge their responses in a more objective way.

Second - there may be something telling that can be divined from the falling levels of donations, WaPo, but when you quote a few insiders and leave it at that, you're not doing that journalism thing we're paying you to do - not all of it anyway.

Might there be some other avenue for those donations to travel?

The $9 million in the RNC's bank account is the money we can see, but Dark Money is no secret, so maybe we could get you to look a tiny bit harder(?) Just a thought.

Donations to GOP drop as worries mount about the party’s finances

Donors have not cut as many large checks to the RNC in recent years, and the party’s small-dollar program has also suffered

The Republican Party’s finances are increasingly worrisome to party members, advisers to former president Donald Trump, and other operatives involved in the 2024 election effort, according to 10 people familiar with the matter.

The Republican National Committee disclosed that it had $9.1 million in cash on hand as of Oct. 30, the lowest amount for the RNC in any Federal Election Commission report since February 2015. That compares with about $20 million at the same point in the 2016 election cycle and about $61 million four years ago, when Trump was in the White House.

The Democratic National Committee reported having $17.7 million as of Oct. 30, almost twice as much as the Republican Party, with one year before the election.

“It’s a revenue problem,” Tennessee RNC member Oscar Brock said. “We’re going through the same efforts we always go through to raise money: the same donor meetings, retreats, digital advertising, direct mail. But the return is much lower this year. If you know the answer, I’d love to know it. The staff has managed to tighten down on expenses to keep the party from going into the red.”

Donors have not cut as many large checks to the RNC in recent years, and the party’s small-dollar program has also suffered, according to people familiar with the party’s finances, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal party details. Some donors aren’t giving to the RNC because they think that will help Trump, which they don’t want to do, these people said, while others have said they prefer to wait until 2024 to give. Some have grown frustrated with the party’s leadership, people close to major donors said.

The party cut certain expenditures this year after projected money did not come in, according to people familiar with the decisions.

An RNC spokeswoman said the party has nonetheless deployed staff in 15 swing states to start working on get-out-the-vote efforts and election monitoring. The party is also pursuing 70 lawsuits in 19 states challenging voting rules and is encouraging Republicans to use early voting and mail ballots — methods Trump and his allies have disparaged, even as McDaniel repeatedly touts the importance of the “Bank Your Vote” initiative.

All federal party committees — Democratic and Republican — have seen downturns in revenue since 2021, a trend that operatives usually attribute to inflation and donor fatigue. And occasionally during the Trump presidency, the DNC had about as much money on hand as the GOP has now, records show.

In an interview, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said that donors are currently more focused on giving to individual candidates during the presidential primary and that the party’s fortunes will improve once there’s a nominee.

“I think there’s more donors just fully committed to their candidate right now, saying I am all in, and once the nominee is set, I’ll be there. That’s what I hear more than anything. And they’re really solidly in the camps of their candidate, which is normal,” McDaniel said. “There’s nothing unusual about this, because they know that once their candidate gets in that we will merge and that we’ll be working together to win the White House.”

There's no way McDaniel believes that - not with kind of internal structural problems that keep boiling to the surface. And certainly not when the probable GOP candidate is shit-talking the party almost daily.

The party’s spending buttresses the Republican presidential nominee’s campaign along with down-ballot races in the Senate and the House of Representatives. In 2020, the party was flush with cash, while the Trump campaign pulled advertisements because of a cash crunch. RNC officials say the party currently has no debt.

Still, the RNC’s dwindling cash position — combined with Republican losses in this month’s off-year elections, frustrations over the 2022 midterms and grousing over the chaotic presidential primary debates — has caused renewed questions about the committee’s effectiveness and McDaniel’s leadership.

“The RNC’s electoral record since 2017 speaks for itself,” said Virginia RNC member Patti Lyman, who opposed McDaniel when she was reelected to another term in January. “The damage from that chair election goes far beyond the drop in donations. Our base was demoralized.”

McDaniel, who took over as RNC chairwoman in 2017, is the party’s second female leader and has been reelected three times. Outside her office, portraits of the 61 men and one woman who led the party before her adorn the walls. She has tried to walk a tightrope, sticking close to Trump while also keeping anti-Trump members close, her allies say, earning majority support among the committee’s 168 members.

The Wisconsin and Iowa GOP chairs sent unsolicited statements to The Washington Post praising McDaniel’s leadership of the party.

“She has strong support within the RNC. She won 110-plus votes during the election in January, and I think she has stronger support now than in January,” said Michael Whatley, the North Carolina state chairman. “I think her and the RNC team are focused on what they need to be focused on right now.”

Whatley said that the party needs “to raise more money” but that he believes that will be remedied next year.

Maybe most important for McDaniel, Trump continues to back her — although more tentatively than in the past — and associates her with his 2016 win, advisers said. In an Oct. 28 speech, Trump said that McDaniel has “done a fantastic job” and called her “a real good friend.”

Still, he has publicly and privately expressed disappointment with the RNC holding presidential debates over his objections. His team believed that McDaniel would not continue with debates after his statements, and he expressed surprise when she announced new ones.

“RNC must save money on lowest ever ratings debates. Use it against the Democrats to STOP THE STEAL! If not, REVAMP THE RNC, NOW!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week.

And Trump has also voiced doubts about the RNC’s readiness for the 2024 campaign and commitment to fighting what he insists, without evidence, is voter fraud.

Some of his senior advisers have continued to complain to him about McDaniel, though she has a defender in Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief adviser. “He doesn’t like [that] she says she is ‘neutral,’” a Trump adviser said of McDaniel.

Donors sometimes complain to Trump about McDaniel, and Trump has been asking people what they think of her, which is often an ominous sign that someone is losing their standing with him, according to three people close to the former president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions. People close to both McDaniel and Trump say they have frequent and friendly conversations.

A Trump spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

Republican frustrations burst into the open this month after GOP losses in races for the Virginia legislature, the Kentucky governorship, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and on an Ohio ballot initiative on abortion rights.

In October, the RNC rejected a request for additional funding for the Virginia GOP this fall, said the state party chairman, Rich Anderson. RNC officials said they had budgeted based on a meeting earlier in the summer with Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s team in which they didn’t ask for money.

Other state party officials have grown frustrated when they’ve asked the RNC for money to pay legal bills and been turned down, according to people familiar with the discussions.

In TV and podcast interviews after the elections, McDaniel repeatedly defended the RNC’s refusal to pay, arguing that federal campaign finance laws limit the national committee’s involvement in state elections. In fact, there are no limits on RNC transfers to state parties.

McDaniel has also faulted Republican campaigns for avoiding the subject of abortion instead of adopting a message she has encouraged, to prevent abortion after 15 weeks and allow for a range of exceptions. And her allies say that many of the election losses she has been blamed for were elections in which Trump was widely viewed as the main issue on the ballot.

Numerous conservative organizations have ginned up online attacks on McDaniel, questioning the party’s spending and preparedness — and her loyalty to Trump.

During the third GOP debate, candidate Vivek Ramaswamy went so far as to call on McDaniel to resign. An online video showed Ramaswamy talking before the debate with right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, workshopping an attack on McDaniel and deciding to use it as his opening salvo in the debate.

The chairwoman said she believes other groups and critics have a financial interest in attacking her.

“When you have the RNC and when you’re in this position, there’s always going to be outside groups criticizing because it helps them raise money. They have to have a foil, right? So you’re going to go against the RNC because it helps your organization raise money and do things,” she said.

While Trump has been demanding that the RNC cancel future debates, Ramaswamy and other trailing candidates have complained about the qualifications, format, scheduling and moderators. Trump has grown agitated that the RNC is having them at all. The RNC took over organizing the debates in 2015 because of campaigns’ dissatisfaction with the media-run free-for-all forums in the 2012 primary.

“I think we’ve taken it a step further by having a small-dollar donor component and also reasonable polling thresholds that I think are very, very reasonable, but also eliminating that double debate stage,” McDaniel said, referring to the situation in 2015 when lower-ranking candidates in the large field debated separately. “The RNC is always going to be a bit of a punching bag.”

But that approach this year has made the RNC the target of criticism, and some top Republican Party officials have privately conceded that the debates have often gone off the rails.

“Who in the world would schedule a debate on the same night as the Country Music [Association] Awards unless you were actually trying not to reach Republican primary voters?” said former RNC executive director Scott Reed, referring to the Nov. 8 debate. “I don’t believe the party should be in the debate business. Let the conservative marketplace decide, and let the campaigns decide where they want to show up. It’s been a colossal failure.”

The attacks have take a personal toll on McDaniel. People close to her said she has not been enjoying the job this year. They said she assiduously monitors criticism online and has frequently complained about the difficulties of her job.

“Republicans have the infinite capacity to eat our own and participate in circular firing squads as opposed to attacking the real culprits for America’s decline,” said Steve Hantler, an adviser to megadonor Bernie Marcus, who supported McDaniel’s opponent in January’s election for party chair.

McDaniel appeared unfazed during her visit to a meeting of the South’s RNC members this month, according to Jonathan Barnett, an RNC member from Arkansas who supported McDaniel’s challenger in January.

“Ronna is going to take the punches, no problem at all,” he said. “It doesn’t do any good for anyone on the RNC to do anything to remove her. We all just have to focus on our states and the presidential primaries and move on.”

Programmable Bags Of Meat

Sorry not sorry, but how the fuck does a Trump MAGAt rate a Dead Head t-shirt - and pretzel yourself to where you can believe you're justified in it? (about 2:45)

But I'm not going to say "make it make sense." Because it's not supposed to make sense.

The people pulling the strings on this shit go out of their way to make it not make sense. They have to keep the rubes off balance and dependent on whatever The Daddy State tells them at any time on any day, in order to keep them compliant.