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Seeking to sow unity amid a pending heat crisis, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani reaped a whirlwind of right-wing rage.
Mamdani’s post on X on Wednesday urged New Yorkers to turn their thermostats to 78 degrees F and turn off unneeded lights and electronics—nothing original. It echoed the advice of the state’s largest utility, ConEd, which also asked customers to limit air conditioning in a Tuesday press release. “Let’s ease demand — and get through the heat — together,” Mamdani wrote.
“Welcome to socialism,” shot back Nikki Haley, the former Republican governor, diplomat and presidential aspirant.
Reader-provided context beneath Haley’s post noted that she had made a similar plea for conservation during a 2015 cold snap when she was South Carolina’s chief executive. They also pointed out that former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican, urged an identical 78-degree limit on AC during a 1999 heat wave.
Trump held
an hourlong news conference in the main room at Mar-a-Lago. He insulted Kamala
Harris’s intelligence, lied about the state of the U.S. economy, and claimed
the country would be in mortal danger if he didn’t win the election.
In
other words, the usual Trump torrent of lies and insults.
But
what got my attention was his description of his departure from the White House
as a “peaceful” transfer of power, his insistence that the group that mounted
the assault on the Capitol was relatively small, and his boast that attendance
at his January 6 rally preceding the assault was larger than the crowd Martin
Luther King Jr. drew on the National Mall for his “I Have a Dream” speech.
“If
you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and
you look at ours — same real estate, same everything, same number of people, if
not — we had more.”
Friends,
these are not the statements of a sane person.
Vice President Kamala Harris attends a political event on July 17, 2024, in Kalamazoo, Mich. Chris duMond/Getty Images
Public opinion polls suggest that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is doing slightly better than Joe Biden was against Donald Trump, but Republican attacks against her are only now ramping up.
Even as a candidate for vice president, Harris was the target of an intense barrage of conservative attacks that claimed, among other things, that she slept her way to political prominence, a common slur against women in power.
The anti-Harris rhetoric is part of what a report by the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank, described as a broad pattern of gendered and sexualized attacks on prominent women in public discourse.
More recently, those comments were joined by conservative attacks branding Harris as the “border czar,” part of an effort to tie her to immigration, a hot-button topic for conservatives.
The intense attacks so far are only a fraction of what will come. Trump is skilled at both character assassination and political self-defense. Together, they translate into an exceptional ability to defeat his political rivals once they enter the presidential campaign arena.
But Harris also has sharp rhetorical skills that could make this a fierce election fight.
One twist in the otherwise unsurprising Rhode Island presidential preference primary: The protest “uncommitted” movement secured enough votes to have one delegate representative at the Democratic National Convention this summer.
The Rhode Island Democratic Party in a statement Thursday announced the 12 elected delegate winners from the April 2 primary, all of whom are pledged to President Joe Biden.
Biden secured a decisive victory with 80.7% of ballots cast in the Democratic primary, according to final results certified by the Rhode Island Board of Elections Thursday. However, 14.5% of Democratic voters statewide opted for the “uncommitted” option as a signal of support for Palestine in the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
In the 2nd Congressional District, the protest movement was even stronger, garnering 15.2% of votes cast — just over the 15% threshold required by state party rules in its proportional allocation of delegates.
Which means one delegate representing the 2nd District uncommitted voters will head to the DNC in Chicago in August, joining the 12 other elected delegates, along with seats reserved for state officials and national party leaders who live in Rhode Island. Rhode Island will send 30 Democratic delegates to the DNC in total.
The uncommitted delegate has not been chosen, since all of the candidates who ran for delegate in the primary were Biden supporters.
Any non-binary or male Democrat can compete for the uncommitted delegate spot during the state party convention on June 9, based on the party requirement for equal representation of men and women district-level delegates. Four of the five delegates already elected to represent the 2nd Congressional District are women.
Less than a month after No Labels announced it would nominate a "unity ticket" for the 2024 presidential election, the group said Thursday that it is abandoning its longshot third-party White House bid.
"No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House," the group said in a statement. "No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down."
As Common Dreams reported last month, No Labels—whose own leader has admitted is "not in it to win it" but rather to "give people a choice"—has poured millions of dollars in dark money contributions into a quixotic run that critics like MoveOn executive director Rahna Epting warned could "swing the election to Donald Trump," the twice-impeached former Republican president and presumptive GOP nominee, 91 federal and state criminal charges notwithstanding.
No Labels had floated former Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a failed 2024 GOP presidential contender, as possible "unity ticket" candidates. However, the group ultimately found no takers.
Top No Labels donors include billionaire and multimillionaire Trump supporters like Nelson Peltz, private equity executive Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone, and former 20th Century Fox CEO James Murdoch. Louis Bacon, the billionaire CEO of hedge fund Moore Capital Management, donated $1 million each to No Labels and the Republican Party after giving the maximum allowable contribution to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, formerly one of the conservative Democrats in Congress and now an Independent.
Lots of questions for Rhode Island Republicans to answer
By Will Collette
If you were wondering whether Rhode Island’s Republican Party had
succumbed to Trumpmentia like the GOP nationwide, RI's April 2 Presidential Preference Primary provided an answer.
While, as expected, Trump (and Joe Biden) easily won, although both saw around 20% of primary voters vote for someone
else or selected “uncommitted”, the more interesting
results were seen in the vote count for individual delegates.
All of Rhode Island’s Republican delegates are pledged to vote for
Donald Trump. Delegates pledged to other candidates, such as Nikki Haley, lost.
That included prolific Westerly Sun letter-to-the-editor writer Scott Bill
Hirst of Hopkinton who only received 751 votes out of 12,905 GOP votes cast.
The three slots for Congressional District 2 Republican delegates were
filled by three peculiar choices. In order, the three elected were:
#1: Lacey McGreevey with 3,781. McGreevy
was an unsuccessful Tea Party candidate for state Representative for South
Kingstown in 2014 losing to present incumbent Kathy Fogarty (D).
#2: Justin Price with 3,749. Price
was a Tea Party state representative from Richmond, first elected in 2014, the
same year McGreevey lost. Price achieved national notoriety as an
insurrectionist, MAGA devotee and far right crank. Incumbent Megan Cotter (D) ousted Price from office in 2022.
#3: Sean Todd with 3,326. Todd is
a former East Greenwich town council member who first drew statewide attention
for an incredibly sexist comment in 2017 that
led to protests, calls for his resignation and ultimately his ouster from office in 2018.
All three are Trump delegates.
In Charlestown, 153 Republicans voted, giving Trump 86.9% which is
higher than Trump’s margin statewide. 98 of them also picked Price over McGreevey.
These vote totals now justify challenging every Rhode Island
candidate running as a Republican whether they support Donald Trump’s MAGA
agenda: his national ban on abortion and
punishment for any woman who gets one;
his racism; his pro-Nazi, pro-Putin authoritarianism; his calls for violence and death for his opponents; His corruption and lies;
And this is hardly an all-inclusive list.
If you are an “R” where do you stand on these issues?
Let’s take a closer look at the two top GOP vote-getters, Lacey McGreevey
and Justin Price.
You may not remember McGreevey since she was only a blip on the
political scene with her 2014 state rep bid. But I remember her well. Here’s
how I wrote about her in 2014:
Kathy
Fogarty will now go on to battle Lacey McGreevy (R) in the November 4 general
election. I swear I am not making this up, and working hard to not make this
sound sexist, but when McGreevy announced her candidacy, she gave her frequent
efforts as a beauty pageant contestant as her main qualification. Sarah Palin also included this
in her resume, but she also had Mayor of Wasilla and a view of Russia from her
window to complete her qualifications.
From McGreevey's campaign website
Here’s how she describes
herself in her campaign bio: “Lacey McGreevy attended
South Kingstown high school then went on to Southern New Hampshire University
with a double major of marketing and fashion merchandising. She currently works
as a trade show consultant and helps to keep women safe with princess pepper spray.” [emphasis added and I am NOT
making this up.]
Kathy Fogarty went on to win the Representative District 35 seat by
thumping McGreevey by 16 points.
Here she is with The Donald. Where is Trump's left hand?
McGreevey pretty much fell off the political map after that, perhaps too busy home schooling her kid. She was an early Trumpnik, even posting a link to Amazon and a $20 Trump pool float ring. On her Facebook page, she has only increased her love for Trump and posted photos of her and Trump. In one of them, you’re left guessing where Trump’s left hand is.
So, do you think Lacey is going to try running for local office
again? What exactly does she stand for other than Trump-love and Trump tchotchke?
Finally,
let’s look at Justin Price and how renewed RI GOP support for him raises
questions about where they stand, not to mention whether they plan to back him if he tries a General Assembly comeback.
Price was a part of what I called “The Revenge of the Swamp Yankees.” In 2014, three of the best members of the General Assembly – Donna Walsh, Cathy Cool
Rumsey and Larry Valencia – were beaten by three right-wing nuts: Blake “Flip”
Filippi, Elaine Morgan and Justin Price.
All three were hard-right, but Price was really out there. In his
four terms as state Representative, Price accomplished nothing other than garnering state and national exposure for his positions not only on guns and taxes, but -
believe it or not - “chemtrails,” an obscure right-wing
conspiracy theory that contrails from high-flying jets are actually spewing
mind-altering chemicals on an unsuspecting public.
If there was even a germ of truth to this, I guess Price must have been an early victim.
His great legislative achievement was winning passage of a bill to create a “geo-engineering” study commission" to study chemtrails and other far right boogeymen. The commission never met and of course issued no findings.
Price managed to top that by being one of several serving state legislators to participate in the January 6 insurrection to overthrow the 2000 election.
He responded to calls for his resignation by claiming that (a) he
didn’t actually enter the Capitol building though he has never said how deep
into the fray he went and (b) that he saw Antifa actually lead the attack.
Both claims are bullshit and here’s why.
I worked on Capitol Hill for 10 years out of an office in the
United Methodist Building just across the street from the Capitol. I know the
area well and how the Capitol Police set up security cordons. For major events,
police “do-not-cross” lines are set well away from the building.
It is virtually impossible for Price to have not breeched those
lines and certainly must have done so if we are to believe his claim that
“Antifa did it.”
As for the briefly popular Antifa conspiracy claim, we now know beyond a doubt that the insurrection was planned by Trump supporters as well as
right-wing militias and white supremacists including the Oath Keepers and Proud
Boys.
The Antifa theory never made sense since there is no reason the
Left would storm the Capitol to overturn Joe Biden’s rightful election victory.
But Price also needs to account for his conduct and subsequent statements. His Antifa claim
is either a lie or an admission that he breeched his own sworn oaths.
As a member of the Marine Corps and as a member of the General
Assembly, Price sworn oaths to uphold the Constitution and to protect the
country from “all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
If he
truly believed he saw Antifa (or for that matter anyone), attacking police and
the Capitol Building, why did he rise to defend against these enemies of the
nation? It was his sworn duty, and he admits he did nothing. So is he a liar or
a coward?
Can Rhode Island Republicans explain why this ignorant man is going
to represent them at their national convention? Oh, oh, oh…wait, I forgot. Donald
Trump. Never mind.
When
former Vice President Mike Pence said last Friday that he would not be
endorsing his old boss Donald Trump for a second term as president, it made for
a good chuckle: Pence wouldn't be backing the guy who tried to have him
hanged on Jan. 6, 2021.
But
zoom out a bit and Pence's rejection of his former boss comes amid a
potentially meaningful groundswell of opposition from many of those who worked
closest with Trump—including his former top aides and Cabinet members.
The
Biden campaign sure thinks it’s notable. Shortly after Pence's statement, the
campaign's rapid response director, Ammar Moussa, blasted out a list to
reporters of former Trump staffers who don't think Trump and his autocratic
agenda should be "anywhere near the Oval Office."
Pence
topped the list, followed by former U.N. ambassador and Republican presidential
candidate Nikki Haley—but let's put a pin in that for a moment.
Other
former senior Trump officials who made Team Biden's "short list"
were:
In the 1980s, many Texans were alarmed that hordes of
immigrants were fleeing Rust Belt states and pouring across the Red River to
take our jobs. So my friend Steve Fromholz recommended a big beautiful wall
across our northern border to keep them
out.
Fromholz, a popular singer-songwriter and renowned
political sprite, was ahead of his time in the political sport of wall
building.
Instead of steel barriers and miles of nasty razor wire,
Steve proposed preventing Yankee refugees from entering the Lone Star State by
planting a 10-foot high, 10-foot thick wall of jalapeño peppers along the
length of the Red River. Eat your way through and you’d be accepted as a
naturalized Texan.
I thought of Steve’s impishness when I read that Nikki
Haley, Ron DeSantis, and other Republicans were concocting a whole new
xenophobic bugaboo to goose up their anti-immigrant demagoguery.
