(U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman.)
(WED 5/18/22)
Finland, Sweden Apply to NATO … It’s official. Finland and Sweden formally applied in Brussels to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Wednesday, thus expanding the western military coalition to 32 members. Vladimir Putin will not be pleased. UPDATE -- NATO failed to reach consensus Wednesday with Finland and Sweden over their applications for membership, but vowed to continue talks (AP).
•••
CPAC goes full-metal authoritarian … Meanwhile, the 48-year-old Conservative Political Action Committee, which has held lovefests most recently to Donald J. Trump in Orlando and Dallas goes to Budapest, Hungary, Thursday and Friday for an “extraordinary session” where authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbån and Fox News host Tucker Carlson will speak together in a video address, according to Newsweek.
Orbån’s CV: He criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his April election victory speech and although Hungary is one of the 30 current members of NATO and counting, Orbån is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, Orbån referenced his regard for the Great Replacement theory in a speech Monday following the killing of 10 Black shoppers at the Tops grocery store in Buffalo allegedly by a white supremacist.
•••
Fetterman v. Oz … or McCormick … John Fetterman (pictured above), the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor who pushed back against Donald J. Trump’s challenge of his state’s 2020 presidential election results, calling the 45th president “no different than any other random internet troll” will face either Dr. Mehmet Oz or David McCormick for the U.S. Senate seat of retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R). Fetterman, who put a scare into his supporters last weekend when he announced he had suffered a mild stroke, and will undergo surgery to have a pacemaker implanted, beat Rep. Conor Lamb 61.4% to 29.2% to win Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, while Oz (31.2%) – Trump’s candidate – led McCormick (31.1%) by 1,114 votes as of 9 a.m. Wednesday, according to Ballotpedia. That’s close enough for an automatic recount.
Oz and McCormick easily led third-place Kathy Barnette, at 24.8% and four other candidates, though Barnette, a political commentator who attended the January 6 Capitol insurrection had surged in recent polls.
The GOP will have a gubernatorial candidate who had attended then-President Trump’s January 6 “rally,” Doug Mastriano, who says he left before violence began. He easily beat Lou Barletta, 42.3% to 22.7%, and seven others Tuesday and will face Democrat Josh Shapiro in the November finals. Current Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf cannot run for another term because of term limits in the state.
North Carolina primaries: Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s (R-NC) behavior, which includes his accusing congressional colleagues of inviting him to sex and drug parties, carrying a loaded gun into an airport and release of sex tapes from his own youth was too much even for the current Trump GOP. He lost his bid for a second House of Representatives term Tuesday in North Carolina’s Republican primary, although by just 1,319 of fewer than 66,000 votes. Edwards won 44.7% of the vote to Cawthorn’s 42.7%, with third-place Matthew Burke at 12.6%.
Also in North Carolina, U.S. Rep. Ted Budd beat former Gov. Pat McCrory in the GOP Senate race and will face Democrat Donald Davis in November.
Idaho: Incumbent Republican Gov. Brad Little, with 60.9% of the vote, beat Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, 24.9%. The lieutenant governor position in Idaho is elected separately. During the pandemic, McGeachin banned mask mandates and expanded state prohibitions against state entities requiring vaccination and testing while Little was out of state, at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Kentucky: Sen. Rand Paul easily won the GOP primary. His Democratic challenger this November is former state legislator Charles Booker.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods
(TUE 5/17/22)
Shooting Aftermath … President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden travel to Buffalo today to meet with first responders and family members of the 13 victims of Saturday’s mass shooting (including 10 fatalities) at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood, NPR reports. FBI Director Christopher Wray has called the shooting a “targeted attack” and a hate crime.
Federal investigators also are calling a “hate crime” the attack Sunday on a church in Laguna Woods, California, which ended with five wounded and one dead in the Taiwanese congregation. The suspect is David Chou of Las Vegas, a Chinese-born American citizen whose motives are believed to be political.
Domestic Terrorism bill: The attack on a grocery store in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo has revived the bipartisan Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, Punchbowl News reports. The bill would create offices inside the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to “monitor, investigate and prosecute cases of domestic terrorism.” The legislation passed by voice vote in the House of Representatives during the 116th Congress, then stalled in the Senate.
House Democratic leaders had to pull the bill three weeks ago after Democratic progressives revolted, Punchbowl News says. The bill has three Republican co-sponsors in the House: Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Fred Upton of Michigan and Don Bacon of Nebraska.
What Tucker said: Few dots were needed to connect Fox News’ Tucker Carlson with Buffalo shooting suspect Payton Gendron over their apparent agreement on “Great Replacement Theory,” including our own post in this space yesterday. So, what did the host of Tucker Carlson Tonight say about the shooting Monday night?
He began his opening monologue talking about “at least 104 Americans shot in major American cities” as well as the apparently politically motivated shooting at the Taiwanese church in Orange County – and conflated these with the Buffalo shooting.
Carlson calls the 180-page document of suspect Payton Dendron “definitely racist,” but “what he wrote does not add up to a manifesto… .” Carlson distances the suspect’s rantings from his own stated beliefs saying, “he writes like the mental patient he is[VJ1] .” If you care to watch the rest of his monologue, it is available at the Fox News website.
Note: Carlson’s argument that the suspect’s mental illness was a factor in his motivations is legitimate. But mental illness and a belief in the Great Replacement Theory are not mutually exclusive.
•••
This Tuesday’s primaries … Primaries are held Tuesday in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Idaho, and Oregon, says Ballotpedia. Most closely watched are North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, the latter of which has contentious battles in both parties for the Senate. Incumbent Republican Pat Toomey, considered too moderate for the MAGA GOP, is not running for re-election.
In the Democratic primary, John Fetterman, who as lieutenant governor became an anti-MAGA hero for pushing back against pro-Trump attempts to overturn the state’s Electoral College vote for Joe Biden in 2020, faces U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, who has been redistricted. Fetterman revealed Sunday that he is recovering from a stroke, which has the Democratic National Committee worried about the popular lieutenant governor’s chances for winning.
How far right will Pennsylvania Republicans go?: That’s the question for Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate primary Tuesday, where Kathy Barnette has had a late surge in the polls against Donald J. Trump’s pick, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and financier Dave McCormick, who is married to former Trump aide Dina Powell.
Here’s the kicker: Barnette is to the right, politically, of both Oz and McCormick.
•••
No more post-election limits … In another win for conservative anti-campaign finance reform (see Citizens United v. FEC, 2010) the Supreme Court Monday struck down, in a 6-3 vote, a law that limited post-campaign contributions to $250,000, NPR’s All Things Considered reports. This part of the bipartisan 2002 Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) was designed to prevent such contributions from influencing newly elected or re-elected candidates.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) filed the case, Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz for Senate after his 2018 victory over Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke, which became the most expensive Senate race to that point, according to SCOTUSblog.Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had filed a Friend of the Court brief asking that the entire McCain-Feingold reform legislation be struck down.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods