We had our local school board elections here in Western New York State this past week. It was a little worrying because school boards have become the focused of an organized, homophobic, and racist right wing. All over the country, the right is going to the first line of elected official — school boards — to try to advance their power. They are looking to ban books, remove any mention of gay people, and eliminate any diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. In many ways this mirrors their efforts 15 years ago to take over local and state government.
One way in which it differs from that effort is in its embarrassing and amazing failure to win most of its elections.
Here is the scoreboard from this week in Western New York State:
Yup “Moms for Liberty” that lovely organization looking to ban books ran candidates in 11 local school board elections and won (checks notes) 0 seats. Zero. None. Nada.
None of these are the urban school districts full of progressive voters. Some of them are bluish suburbs, some are reddish suburbs, and others are rural areas and Republican strongholds. They failed everywhere.
And it wasn’t just in my neck of the woods.
Here is a story from Vox → The Republican plan to take over school boards may be backfiring
In an Oregon school district in the predominantly rural Clackamas County, where students have protested a recent onslaught of book bans, several “parental rights” candidates lost their bids for the school board.
In Illinois and Wisconsin, a key swing state, school board candidates who ran on culture war issues largely failed in April.
That tracks with Tuesday night’s losses for three parental rights candidates, including two incumbents, in Oregon’s Canby School District
It’s not clear, however, that Republicans’ focus on education is continuing to pay dividends. In addition to suffering the losses in Pennsylvania and in Illinois and Wisconsin last month, 35 parental rights candidates were defeated in New York school races last year. That meant that many of them decided not to run again this year, with many seats going uncontested in Tuesday’s school board elections in New York.
And we aren’t seeing these losses just on school boards.
There was a huge upset in Florida this week → Florida Dems Shock GOP With Jacksonville Mayor Win
Democrat Donna Deegan became the first woman to be elected mayor of Jacksonville, Florida—beating out Republican Daniel Davis, a former state legislator who had the backing of Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a runoff.
Deegan’s win, with 52 percent of the vote, is a stunning upset by Democrats. Jacksonville is a longtime GOP stronghold and, before Tuesday, stood as the largest city in the country to have a Republican mayor. There hasn’t been a Democrat in charge since 2015.
and this:
This is a continuation of the losing streak that has been going on for a while:
Republicans keep having bad elections
Republicans haven’t really had a good election day since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade 11 months ago, and that continued Tuesday night.
The big news out of Tuesday’s slate of non-primary elections is that Republicans lost mayoral seats they have long dominated in two larger cities: Jacksonville, Fla., and Colorado Springs. But Democrats also got some relatively good signs elsewhere in special elections. Together, this fills out a picture of a 2023 election cycle in which they continue to overperform, as they began to do almost immediately post-Roe.
Elsewhere, Democrats continued to overperform the 2020 results. In a special election for a Kentucky state Senate district, Democrats slightly improved upon both their 2016 and 2020 presidential performances. And in a New Hampshire state House district, a 27-point Biden district delivered a 43-point win.
All told, according to the Daily Kos Elections numbers, Democrats have overperformed the 2020 presidential results by an average of six points across 18 state legislative races this year. (And again, that was a good election for them.) They’ve also beaten their 2016 margins by an average of 10 points.
And that doesn’t include the highest offices on the ballot thus far in 2023. In a crucial Wisconsin state Supreme Court race, the Democratic-aligned candidate won by 11 points, ending 15 years of conservative control of the court. And in the only special congressional election of 2023 so far, in Virginia, Democrats beat their 2020 margin by double digits.
This is, of course, still a relatively small number of races, and it’s still a long way until the 2024 election. The value of these results in predicting races that are more than 17 months away is small, as FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich wrote back in February. But special elections have historically provided significant clues about where things stand, especially when you look at them holistically rather than analyzing one or two high-profile contests.
This all bodes well for 2024. Does it mean we will win, for sure? Oh heck no. It means that, if we work hard, we have a really really good chance.
This is the time for hard work.
What can you do?
now onto the good news!
Democrats are Doing Great Things
Jamaal Bowman Finds His Voice. Some Republicans Don’t Like the Sound.
The Democratic congressman has made a habit of brashly confronting Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, often in public displays meant to attract attention.
Many of his colleagues had already left for the night, but as Representative Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York, stepped out onto the Capitol steps on Wednesday, he had business left to do: heckling Republicans.
“Have some dignity!” he yelled toward Representative George Santos, the New York freshman who is fighting federal fraud charges, and to a sea of TV cameras waiting below.
“Listen, no more QAnon, no more MAGA, no more debt ceiling nonsense,” he said as he pivoted to another confrontation, this time with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who stood nearby.
In this hyperpartisan era, the country has no shortage of politicians willing to savage each other from across a hearing room or on social media. But Mr. Bowman, a media-savvy democratic socialist from the Bronx, has rapidly made a name for himself this spring by going where most of them have not: up to his opponents’ actual faces.
Mr. Bowman’s platform includes far-reaching left-wing policies that split his party. Still, his style — “middle school principal energy,” he calls it — appears to have captured the id of even more moderate Democrats and has fueled party speculation about his ambition.
Bad News For Trump
Georgia D.A. investigating Trump hints at time frame for charges
The Atlanta-area district attorney investigating former president Donald Trump and his allies for potential election interference notified top county officials that most of her staff will work remotely for many days in the first three weeks of August, a signal she may file indictments in the high-profile case within that period.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) had previously said in a letter to law enforcement officials that she would announce possible criminal indictments in the case between July 11 and Sept. 1.
But in a letter Thursday to Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Ural Glanville, Willis appeared to narrow that window even further, writing that her office’s in-person staff will be reduced by about 70 percent on most Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays — the days when criminal grand juries are scheduled to meet — from July 31 to Aug. 18.
Trump 2020 lawyer indicated he may be target of Fulton County probe, court docs say
Ray Smith III, a lawyer who represented President Donald Trump in litigation aimed at reversing Georgia’s 2020 election results, has indicated he may be a target of Atlanta-area District Attorney Fani Willis’ criminal probe.
Smith’s attorney, Bruce Morris, characterized Smith as “something between a target and witness” in Willis’ nearly completed investigation, according to documents filed Wednesday in a federal civil lawsuit in Washington D.C. That characterization was revealed by lawyers for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit — two former Georgia election workers who are suing Rudy Giuliani for defamation.
It’s the latest indication of the wide net Willis is casting as she nears the expected indictment phase of her investigation. She recently indicated that she has obtained information about potential crimes committed by at least one or two of the false presidential electors enlisted by Trump as part of a last-ditch bid to overturn the election results.
New evidence in special counsel probe may undercut Trump’s claim documents he took were automatically declassified
The National Archives has informed former President Donald Trump that it is set to hand over to special counsel Jack Smith 16 records that show Trump and his top advisers had knowledge of the correct declassification process while he was president, according to multiple sources.
Bad News For DeSantis
Disney Pulls Plug on $1 Billion Development in Florida
In March, Disney called Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida “anti-business” for his scorched-earth attempt to tighten oversight of the company’s theme park resort near Orlando. Last month, when Disney sued the governor and his allies for what it called “a targeted campaign of government retaliation,” the company made clear that $17 billion in planned investment in Walt Disney World was on the line.
On Thursday, Mr. Iger and Josh D’Amaro, Disney’s theme park and consumer products chairman, showed that they were not bluffing, pulling the plug on an office complex that was scheduled for construction in Orlando at a cost of roughly $1 billion. It would have brought more than 2,000 Disney jobs to the region, with $120,000 as the average salary, according to an estimate from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.
DeSantis’s feud with Disney is costing Florida — and possibly his 2024 campaign
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, reportedly on the precipice of announcing his 2024 presidential campaign, has achieved what he may not have thought possible: He’s driving Disney’s business out of the state.
For DeSantis, the fight may have gotten too hot. While it may have initially favored him politically to go after a company that was perceived as pursuing a progressive cultural agenda, the conflict has become “more personal and petty,” and he’s “definitely lost some ground,” said Carlos Curbelo, a former GOP congressman from Florida.
It’s especially an embarrassment for him on a national stage, just before he’s reportedly planning to announce his 2024 presidential campaign, said David Jolly, a former GOP congressman from Florida
DeSantis’s book banners face a tough new foe: Angry moms with lawyers
In one of the big political surprises of 2023, pockets of stiff resistance have sprung up to defend teachers, textbooks, novels and libraries against censorship efforts across the country. This liberal counter-mobilization is substantially less organized than the right’s culture-warring, but it has great untapped potential for Democrats.
These efforts just took an important turn, with a lawsuit filed by Florida parents in federal court Wednesday to try to stop book bans in school libraries in Escambia County, red-leaning terrain in the state’s panhandle. The suit could become a model to challenge bans across Florida and elsewhere.
What’s striking is that this lawsuit is being brought by mothers who want their kids exposed to ideas that the censors have decreed are unsuitable. The suit is spearheaded by PEN America and is joined by several writers whose books have been banned, along with Penguin Random House, which published them.
Bad News for Other Bad People
A few hours in and Kari Lake's trial is already over (or it should be)
Kari Lake on Wednesday opened her (second) trial challenging the 2022 election ... with a complete and total fizzle.
Her attorney, Kurt Olsen, told the judge he’d be presenting evidence that Maricopa County didn’t verify the voter signatures on “hundreds of thousands” of early ballots, instead hiring signature reviewers who just went through the motions while the county looked on.
“This isn’t a question of not doing it well enough,” he said. “They’re simply not doing signature verification.”
Then he called his first witness: A “whistleblower” who proceeded to annihilate Lake’s case.
“They (supervisors) told us, ‘You need to be very cautious. You need to pay attention to what you’re doing and remember that whatever you reject or approve, you can be called in to testify,’ ” she testified.
As a witness for the defense, Onigkeit was dynamite.
The problem is, she was supposed to be the star witness for Lake.
When Bad Plans Fall Apart its Good News
John Durham Owes the American People an Apology for Wasting Their Money
Special counsel John Durham’s final report reveals that four years, a $6.5 million spend, and many dining dates with former Attorney General Barr yielded nothing. As a prosecutor who served as a supervisor on an independent counsel investigation, I find Durham’s investigation to be a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.
Recall that Durham was handpicked by Barr to investigate the probe commenced by the FBI in 2016 into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia that formed the basis for the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller. The Mueller probe yielded indictments of 34 individuals, two companies, and convictions of top Trump campaign officials.
By comparison, Durham’s investigation sent no one to jail but did manage to lose two jury trials
Even Steve Bannon Blasts ‘Clown Show’ John Durham’s ‘Epic Failure’
Former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon tore into Special Counsel John Durham on Tuesday over his failure to secure any major criminal convictions during his four-year probe of the FBI’s Russia investigation, describing Durham’s final report as an “epic failure.”
Bannon’s harsh criticism of Durham, who he also described as a “clown show,” sharply contrasts with the bluster coming from the rest of MAGA media and former President Donald Trump himself.
The failure of the Durham report
Special counsel John Durham’s four-year effort to investigate the Trump-Russia investigators has ended with a whimper.
Durham tried to prove a Democratic plot to frame Trump. He couldn’t.
Despite the hype from Trump allies that Durham would prove criminal conduct by top government officials or Democrats and reveal a perfidious plot to frame the former president, the probe has ended with two failed prosecutions, one guilty plea, and a 306-page report released publicly Monday with harsh words about certain officials but little new information.
Facts matter: Another disastrous spate of failed GOP investigations
The Comer crash and burn: Since the GOP won the House majority, it has labored to find some evidence of President Biden’s corruption or criminality, a futile effort to create a moral equivalence between Biden and the most corrupt, scandal-plagued and disgraced president in history (now facing multiple criminal indictments). The problem: a total lack of facts.
“A top witness in a Republican investigation into the Biden family has apparently up and disappeared without a trace — or at least that’s what Rep. James Comer (R-KY) said Sunday on Fox News,” the Daily Beast reported. You really cannot make this stuff up. Comer said, “We’re hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible.” But if the sources for this scandal are missing or in jail (!), maybe an expensive wild goose chase is not the best use of congressional resources.
Comer’s news conference the previous week turned out to be a nothingburger “largely consisting of Comer throwing around vague, unsubstantiated accusations and failing to link the president to any of his relatives’ alleged ‘influence peddling’.” Even one of the most egregious conspiracy mongers, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), confessed, “You’re not going to get necessarily hard proof but there’s such a huge body of evidence,” he said without identifying what that was. We just have to “infer” wrongdoing, said Johnson.
Other Good News
The Supreme Court decides not to break the internet
The Supreme Court handed down two high-stakes tech decisions on Thursday — cases that, if handled ineptly, could have destroyed much of the internet and subjected social media companies to devastating liability.
The good news is that none of that will happen.
Both Justice Clarence Thomas’s unanimous opinion in Twitter v. Taamneh and the Court’s brief, unanimous, and unsigned opinion in Gonzalez v. Google show admirable restraint. The justices add clarity to a 2016 anti-terrorism law that, if read broadly, could have made tech companies whose products form the backbone of modern-day communications liable for every violent act committed by the terrorist group ISIS.
Instead, the Court’s Twitter and Google decisions largely ensure that the internet will continue to function as normal, provided that websites like Twitter or YouTube do not actively provide assistance to terrorism.
I’ve never seen the Kremlin so rattled
If the Ukrainians and their allies wanted to rattle the Russian leadership, it’s working.
Never, in more than two decades of covering Vladimir Putin’s regime, have I seen it in such an obvious state of chaos and disarray. These days, Kremlin-watchers don’t have to read tea leaves or decode cryptic utterances from the leadership to spot the signs of intrigue — it’s all out in the open, thanks to Putin confidant Yevgeniy Prigozhin.
The sense of confusion at the highest ranks of the Kremlin is boosting the chances that Kyiv’s counteroffensive will succeed
None of this, of course, guarantees that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be a success. For the time being, though, Kyiv has every right to congratulate itself on the effectiveness of its psychological war against Putin’s regime.
On The Lighter Side
What are you doing to save democracy?
I am so proud and so lucky to be in this with all of you 💖💛💚✊🏽✊🏻✊🏽💚💛💖
