Monthly Archives: May 2022

There are two Republican parties.

Thats a vast oversimplification, of course. Republican pollsters have been known to sort G.O.P. voters into seven categories or more, ranging from committed Christians to pro-business types to squishy never-Trumpers.

But when it comes to choosing sides in primaries, a split is widening. Theres the national party, led by Donald Trump in Florida and Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House, with Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, toggling between foe and ally as the occasion warrants.

And then theres the G.O.P. that is rooted in state power, run by a core group of pragmatic, often less hard-line governors who represent states as different as libertarian-leaning Arizona and deep-blue Massachusetts.

This week, the Republican Governors Association happened to be gathering in Nashville for its annual meeting. The guest of honor: Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, fresh off his 50-percentage-point drubbing of David Perdue, a former senator and businessman who had been dragooned into a primary by Trump. Kemp spoke at a dinner in Nashville on Wednesday night, thanking his donors and fellow governors for their support.

It was a celebratory moment for a tight-knit, fraternal group that was often in close contact during the crises of the coronavirus pandemic and the chaotic end of Trumps presidency. Trump has leaned particularly hard on two of the most influential governors of the bunch, Kemp and Doug Ducey of Arizona, to support his fictional stolen-election narrative.

Many G.O.P. governors emerged from the Trump years in strong political shape, despite intense criticism. All 10 of the most popular governors in the country are Republicans, according to polling by Morning Consult. And sitting Republican governors have kept their hands mostly clean of Jan. 6, a toxic subject among corporate donors in particular.

To an extraordinary degree, these G.O.P. governors have joined forces to fight off Trumps handpicked challengers as well as those currying his favor raising millions and intervening in primaries to support their colleagues like never before.

The president was on this campaign of vengeance, said Bill Palatucci, a Republican National Committee member from New Jersey who is close to former Gov. Chris Christie, describing the thinking of those gathered in Nashville this week.

But for lots of former and current Republican governors, its about doing the right thing for colleagues who have acquitted themselves well, Palatucci added. Christie, a previous R.G.A. chairman who now helps run one of the groups main fund-raising arms, remains actively involved in the organization.

Those running for office, like Kemp, have studiously avoided tangling with Trump. But others have been remarkably open about standing up to the man in Mar-a-Lago, unlike most of their colleagues in Washington.

Pete Ricketts, the governor of Nebraska and current co-chairman of the governors group along with Ducey, sided against Trumps pick in his states Republican primary, Charles Herbster, and flew to Georgia to help Kemp.

Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland and an R.G.A. board member, has spoken of fighting Trump cancel culture and called for a course correction away from Trump; Christie seems to be quoted criticizing the former president daily, including in a recent article in The Washington Post detailing the governors plans to stop what he called Trumps vendetta tour.

Opposing Trump is costly, though.

Governors races dont tend to attract the same big money that Senate races do. Why not? Because more donors across the country care more about the next majority leader than, say, who runs Nebraska.

But the cash Republican governors have raised to support one another is significant.

They spent $4 million in Ohio to help Gov. Mike DeWine, $5 million to help Kemp in Georgia, $2 million to support Gov. Kay Ivey in Alabama and put more than $80,000 behind Gov. Brad Little in Idaho, who was fending off a bizarre challenge from his own lieutenant governor.

To complicate matters further, there are states where Trump and the R.G.A. are on the same side. In Texas, Trump and the governors supported Gov. Greg Abbott. In South Carolina, both sides are backing Gov. Henry McMaster. And Trump is also supporting Mike Dunleavy, the governor of Alaska.

It gets trickier when there is no incumbent governor.

The most interesting test is coming up in Arizona, where Trump has endorsed Kari Lake, a charismatic former television presenter who is an avid proponent of his baseless election-fraud claims. Lake is leading in polls of the primary, ahead of the favorite of the local Republican establishment and the business community, Karrin Taylor Robson, and Matt Salmon, a former member of the U.S. House who was the Republican nominee for governor in 2002, losing by a whisker to Janet Napolitano.

Ducey, who is term-limited, has said that he reserves the right to endorse a candidate in the primary, and Robson, a developer who founded her own land-use strategy firm, would be the logical choice. In 2017, he appointed her to the Arizona Board of Regents, which governs the states public universities. Robson was in Nashville this week, according to a local ABC affiliate in Phoenix.

The primary begins earlier than the Aug. 2 date on the calendar suggests. Arizonans vote heavily by mail, and early ballots go out to voters in July. That means the next few weeks are critical, and an endorsement could happen soon.

Will Ducey come off the sidelines? His confidants arent saying. If he did so, it would be in his personal capacity. But because he is co-chairman of the R.G.A., his imprimatur would send a signal to donors and other insiders that Robson is the one to back.

It would also set off another confrontation with Trump, who has blamed Ducey for failing to overturn Arizonas election results in 2020.

Back in the fall, when Ducey was contemplating a run for Senate, Trump blasted him as the weak RINO Governor from Arizona and said he would never have my endorsement or the support of MAGA Nation!

He said much the same about Kemp and lost.

Blake

Is there anything you think were missing? Anything you want to see more of? Wed love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.

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Republican Governors Lose Their Dread of Trump - The New York Times

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It can be hard to get your head around what rightwingers in the US actually believe. On the one hand, they claim to love babies; on the other hand, theyre against government funds going towards helping to feed babies. They claim to love freedom and hate government meddling, but then theyre frenetically trying to pass bills that would take away a womans freedom over her own body and allow the government to meddle in intimate reproductive choices. Like I said, theyre a complex bunch! Still, Ive mapped their moral compass as best I can, and compiled this handy cheatsheet to help understand where conservatives stand on various issues. Here you go.

Essential to life, liberty and the pursuit of freedom; should remain freely available and shouldnt be controlled:

Highly dangerous and must be banned or tightly controlled:

Yep, you read that last item right: it seems doors are the newest enemy of the Republican party. In the wake of the horrific elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas where 19 children and two teachers were killed by a teenager with military-grade weapons some Republicans are choosing to channel their energy towards the important question of door control.

You want to talk about how we could have prevented the horror that played out across the street? the Texas senator Ted Cruz said on Wednesday, while standing outside Robb elementary school. Having one door that goes in and out of the school, having armed police officers at that one door.

An ordinary person would have paused for a second after saying something so patently ridiculous and then, hit by the realization that they had just blamed the massacre of school children on the problem of too many doors and not enough guns, curled up into a little ball of shame. Not Cancn Cruz, though. Cruz has demonstrated time and time again that he is incapable of shame. No, instead of realizing hed said something inane, Cruz just doubled down on it; he was so pleased with the concept of door reform that he repeated the idea later that day on Fox News.

Cruz isnt the only Republican waging a war on doors: the issue has long been a favourite talking point among conservatives trying to deflect from the idea of gun reform. After a 2018 shooting at a high school in Houston, for example, the Texas lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, blamed the massacre on doors. From what we know, [the shooter] walked in with a long coat and a shotgun under his coat, Patrick said during a news conference. Its 90 degrees. Had there been one single entrance possibly for every student, maybe he would have been stopped There are too many entrances and too many exits to our over 8,000 campuses in Texas.

It probably wont surprise you to hear that the National Rifle Association (NRA), who bankroll a long list of Republican politicians, including Cruz, are the ones responsible for coming up with the too-many-doors talking point. In 2013, in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, the NRA assembled a taskforce to come up with a school safety proposal that didnt involve meaningful gun control. The result was a dystopian 225-page report that included recommendations like: arm teachers; build bigger fences; get rid of trees; design windows, framing, and anchoring systems to minimize the effects of explosive blasts, gunfire and forced entry. These are recommendations, let me remind you, for schools. Not for maximum security prisons for schools. The report also contains pages and pages of recommendations about doors, including the idea that there should be a single, controlled entry point and that doors should have ballistic protective glass.

Many of the NRAs recommendations, it should be said, had been implemented by Robb elementary. In 2020, the Uvalde school district received $69,000 in state grants to enhance physical security in Texas public schools, which included installing exterior doors with push bars and door-locking systems. None of that stopped the shooter. It shouldnt need to be said, but doors are not responsible for school massacres. Guns are.

To be clear: Cruz and his buddies in the NRA may be morally bankrupt but they are not entirely stupid. They know very well that guns are dangerous. Thats why guns were banned from Donald Trumps speech at the NRA conference on Friday. It seems that they decided door control wouldnt quite cut it in that particular situation.

Perhaps you saw this headline and thought it probably referred to something that happened a very, very long time ago? Nope. The Chilean state has just apologized to a woman who was forcibly sterilized by doctors in 2002 because she was HIV positive. This wasnt a one-off: according to a 2004 study of the 23 women who were sterilized after learning they were HIV-positive, 50% did so under pressure or had been sterilized without their knowledge. Theres also, of course, a very long history of sterilization being forced on Indigenous women around the world. Rather than being a thing of the past, it still happens in places like Canada today.

For years Anthony Dixon was considered Britains most influential pelvic surgeon. Now a government inquiry has found that more than 200 women were harmed after he carried out unnecessary procedures on them.

I bloody hope so.

The bill makes it clear that silence or passivity dont equal consent.

Three hundred and twenty-nine years ago a woman called Elizabeth Johnson Jr was accused of witchcraft and sentenced to death. By some sort of witchery she managed to escape being hanged but was still branded as a witch. And shed still be considered a witch to this day if it werent for a bunch of meddling kids: in 2021 a group of middle-schoolers in Massachusetts took on her case and have finally cleared her name. Shes the last of the Salem witch trials convicted to be cleared.

After 19 years on air, Ellen DeGeneres has walked away from her famous talkshow. The last few years havent been great for DeGeneres: shes faced accusations of being one of the meanest people alive and presiding over a toxic workplace. Still, while shes very far from perfect, its important to remember that Ellen has done an enormous amount for the LGBTQ+ community. As a gay woman, Ill never forget the impact of her bravely coming out in 1997.

In a plot twist that everyone could have seen coming the romance novelist who wrote an essay titled How to Murder Your Husband has been found guilty of murdering her husband. You might be wondering if he was murdered with a door seeing as how deadly those things are? No, weirdly enough, it was a gun.

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After 21 people were killed, the Republican party's newest enemy is doors | Arwa Mahdawi - The Guardian

To the Editor:

In DeSantis Is the New Republican Party (Opinion guest essay, Sunday Review, May 15), Rich Lowry states that Ron DeSantis points to the Republican future.

If so, its a future of publicly bullying children, punishing the press and whistle-blowers, ignoring medical science and trash-talking world-renowned scientists in epidemiology, big government intruding on womens health, big government intruding on corporate freedom, big government handcuffing teachers about what they can say in the classroom and what books they can use, and the 24/7 politics of anger, resentment, hate, cynicism and demagogy.

Whatever this dystopian political future may hold, it isnt conservative. Its radical right, and has more in common with the politics of totalitarian states than it does with democracies.

Stuart RojstaczerPalo Alto, Calif.

To the Editor:

Rich Lowry praises Gov. Ron DeSantis as a Republican hero for his response to Covid-19. By doing so, he perpetuates a dangerous myth that Governor DeSantiss approach to Covid was the right path. This is tragically untrue.

The data tells the story. New York and Florida offer a comparison: They have fairly similar population size and numbers of Covid deaths. Florida has had 346 deaths per 100,000 people and New York 350 deaths per 100,000, as of May 24.

The difference is that New York had almost half of its Covid deaths from March to July 2020, when we knew little and had few protections. Florida, by contrast, saw over two-thirds of its Covid deaths in 2021 and 2022, when many were preventable.

The facts are clear, and history will judge that Governor DeSantiss Covid-19 policy had tragic consequences no matter how he is mythologized.

Stephen LevinBrooklyn

To the Editor:

As a conservative (though not a Republican), I am not as pleased as Rich Lowry is with Gov. Ron DeSantiss rise in the Republican Party, for one reason: his use of political power to bludgeon private businesses into conformity with his cultural preferences.

He should stick with traditional Republican doctrine and dont try to tell me how to run my business. If I want to spout off about laws I dont like or require my employees and customers to wear masks, thats none of his business.

To the Editor:

Regarding the Opinion online interactive and the May 22 Sunday Review article showing final text messages of those who died of Covid:

More than any obituary, death notice or tribute to a deceased individual, those simple text exchanges conveyed the sadness and pain of losing a loved one to Covid. The poignant and quotidian expressions of concern and anxiety were searing and unforgettable.

Estelle B. WadeNew York

To the Editor:

Re We Must Prepare for Putins Worst Weapons, by Mitt Romney (Opinion guest essay, May 23):

With some surprise, this liberal agrees with Mr. Romney on Vladimir Putins possible use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Unlike past nuclear confrontations, if Mr. Putin used them in crazed desperation, it would be against people who he claims are really Russians, rather than against the United States or other NATO countries.

He would be detonating them above his own troops, and depending on wind patterns heavy fallout could end up on Russian territory. Mr. Putin must know that NATO could quickly sink the entire Russian Navy and decimate his army with conventional weapons if he crossed the nuclear Rubicon.

President Biden and NATO cannot repeat the peace for our time mistakes of Neville Chamberlain by surrendering parts of Ukraine to Mr. Putin in a vain attempt to pacify this fascist.

Carl MezoffStamford, Conn.

To the Editor:

Re The Great Erasure, by Charles M. Blow (column, May 22):

The erasure of street art created after the killing of George Floyd is symbolic of the waning support for the Black Lives Matter movement. It is saddening, but it is not discouraging.

As a young Black person in America, I still believe in change. I dont expect change to come quickly or easily, and I expect many more unjust killings before it arrives, but I believe that it is possible.

I have this faith not because I am fond of Americas past, present or even immediate future, but because I know that change is needed and I believe that there are enough people who wont give up on fighting for it until it happens.

Rebekah BoiteyFayetteville, N.C.The writer is a high school student.

To the Editor:

Re How Far Should You Go to Save a Life?, by Daniela J. Lamas (Opinion guest essay, Sunday Review, May 15):

This article discussed the question of how far doctors and patients should go in cases in which an experimental treatment is the only alternative to certain death. My years as a psychiatric consultant to the medical services at a major teaching hospital taught me the value of hope.

We know that emotions affect the immune system, which affects the growth of many cancers. Sometimes the mere awareness of the possibility that an experimental drug could provide a miracle cure helps to regulate a patients immune system sufficiently to slow the progression of metastatic cancer.

The compassionate use program should be greatly expanded to allow more patients to benefit from this.

Harvey M. BermanWhite Plains, N.Y.

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Opinion | Is Ron DeSantis the Future of the Republican Party? - The New York Times

Having the RNC in Milwaukee is a disaster waiting to happen. Milwaukee and other cities in southeast Wisconsin have been rocked by tragedies and violence as of late. Our communities are hurting and grieving. Some of the most marginalized are finding ways to heal. We are anxious. We are on edge. Not even two weeks ago, a white supremacist murdered 10 people at a grocery store in a predominately Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. The killer had been radicalized by racist misinformation online. In Wisconsin, weve seen attacks on the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and anti-Semitic fliers left in peoples yards.

What does all of this have to do with the RNC? There is only one party that helps push out misinformation that costs people their lives. There is one party that demands a rebuttal to the phrase Black Lives Matter. There is one party at uplifts and supports the NRA. Obviously, there are exceptions but we see a pretty consistent pattern in the Republican partys stands on these issues. The Republican party is a party of hate. Former Chair of the Milwaukee County Democratic Party Chris Walton, sums it up pretty easily.

In a city where the majority of residents are people of color, the Republicans have largely stayed away. It was only in 2020 that the Republican party opened an office in Milwaukee for the first time. Their delayed engagement feels like its sole intent is to extract and chip away votes, not actually work on our issues. After not engaging with Milwaukee for so long, why would the Republicans want to have their convention here? I cant help but think that the party wants to antagonize an already hurting and broken city. The racial tensions are high and bringing in a party that represents hate puts our city in danger. Given the tragedy in Buffalo, a newsurvey says that 75% of Black people are afraid of another racially motivated attack.

We just hit the two-year anniversary of George Floyds murder and our country is still ripped apart at the seams, unable to move forward and protect Black lives. The Republican party, both nationally and locally, has consistently blocked legislation and real policy that would protect Black lives. But they want to hold their largest convention in the city of Milwaukee? A city that is only referred to by Republicans through racist dog whistles. Proposing having the RNC in our city feels as if leaders are spitting in the face of our real pain. Pain from the Republican party. Pain from a party that props up Kyle Rittenhouse, who murdered two people in Kenosha as they demonstrated to defend Black lives. There is a very real possibility that in the city of Milwaukee, the RNC will feature people like Rittenhouse.

Ive sat on this and thought about this for quite some time. What would this mean for our city? Sure there is an economic impact, but I struggle to find more benefits. Hate should not be welcomed in our city and its absurd that at this moment, with everything we have seen lately, we are considering this. The economic impact is not worth the potential violence (both physical and emotional).

Voces de La Frontera and other community organizations were right when they wrote in an open letter to the common council that this is a different Republican party. This is a party that seeks to lock up more Black and brown people, a party that proposes legislation in Madison aimed solely at hurting Milwaukee and starving the city of funds. With all of these dynamics, I cant help but think that we run the risk of turning Milwaukee into another Charlottesville, which violent white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups made a symbol of racism. Conventions already push out our most vulnerable, and bring additional law enforcement into our communities. There is no reason the RNC wants to have its convention here outside of scaring and terrorizing communities that they have already left behind, and communities they often attack. We have had so many conversations about safety recently. Right now we have an opportunity to keep our community safe by not allowing hate into the city we love so much.

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Keep the Republican convention out of Milwaukee - Wisconsin Examiner

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Physician Dr. Pierre Kory explained how his anti-establishment views on COVID-19 affected his change in political parties Friday on "The Ingraham Angle."

DR. PIERRE KORY: Science should not be involved with politics, and I'm seeing these divisions breaking out in medicine that seem to be influenced by political allegiances. And I'm not for that. But when you look at some of the things that have been going on, we're literally talking about disinformation boards and people going after my medical license because my scientific opinions are different from theirs and there's this single truth. It's extremely dystopian, and I find it really disorienting, and it's bad for medicine. It's bad for patients. The lack of self-awareness of really what I'm seeing now from the Left and from Left-leaning media that they're abandoning their principles. I used to be for free expression, free speech and really questioning authority, and now they're the authoritarians. And so like Elon [Musk], I'm very disoriented by it.

DRUG AGAINST COVID: US MOVES TO MAKE ANTIVIRAL MORE ACCESSIBLE

If you see how [Dr. Fauci's] opinions have shifted over time and that goes back to my point we need open, honest, scientific, transparent debate. That's how medicine advances. This is so bad for patients. For one person sitting atop the federal government health agencies telling us what is true and we're not allowed to debate that or question that's not how medicine advances. That's not how we discover how to help patients. It's absolutely going to hurt medicine if he keeps doing this, and it has to stop.

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Physician explains why heterodox views on COVID led to his Republican conversion - Fox News