As always, please go to the links for the full articles/op eds.
The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch summarizes the imminent danger posed by the most evil personage ever to appear in American politics, after his most recent rally in Texas:
What happened in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday night was not politics. A politician seeking to regain the White House might craft a narrative around Biden’s struggles with inflation or with COVID-19 and make a case — no matter how absurd, given Trump’s failings on the pandemic and elsewhere — that he could do better for the voters. But increasingly Trump is less a politician and more the leader of a politics-adjacent cult. He does not want to make America great again so much as he wants to keep Donald Trump out of prison, and the most narcissistic POTUS of all time is willing to rip the United States in two to make this happen.
Trump’s chief weapons are fear and intimidation. To save American democracy, the people tasked with getting to the bottom of a former president’s high crimes and misdemeanors — on Capitol Hill and in those key courthouses — must be ready for the violence that Trump is inciting, and must summon the courage to finish their job. My fear is that Trump’s speech in Conroe will live in infamy — but the only reason it happened at all is because we have not held Trump to account for attempting to wreck American democracy on Jan. 6 ... not yet. Now, Trump has told us in no uncertain terms how he plans to break the nation this time. We can act forcefully to stop his new insurrection and punish his past crimes — or we can sit back and let the comet of autocracy strike.
The totality of what the Malignant Loser said in his Texas rally crossed several lines, including dangling pardons for the January 6 insurrectionists, and basically calling for an insurrection in the event of his indictment on any number of charges at the local, State and Federal levels. A cornered animal like the Malignant Loser is going to use every means available to fight back, and we must be prepared for even more unprecedented, unhinged behavior from him and his cult.
The Malignant Loser's violent rhetoric has already triggered a reaction from a potential target:
The Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney is asking for the FBI's help in providing security for buildings and staff one day after former President Donald Trump called prosecutors investigating him "racists" and said his supporters should hold "the biggest protests we have ever had" in cities like Atlanta if the prosecutors "do anything wrong or illegal."
DA Fani Willis and her office are investigating Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. A special grand jury will be seated as part of that investigation on May 2.At a rally in Conroe, Texas, Saturday night, Trump, without naming them, railed against Willis plus New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr., who are investigating his business empire, calling them "racists." The three are Black. Trump provided no evidence of racial discrimination.
"These prosecutors are vicious, horrible people. They're racists and they're very sick -- they're mentally sick," he said. "They're going after me without any protection of my rights from the Supreme Court or most other courts. In reality, they're not after me, they're after you."
So far, in more than two dozen maps passed around the country, Democrats would net an additional five districts that Joe Biden would have won in 2020. The New York map, which is expected to be voted on this week and signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), would bring that up to eight seats. As redistricting began last year, Republicans hoped to gain at least enough seats to overcome the current 10-member advantage held by Democrats.
Democrats are not guaranteed wins in those districts in November. The party in the White House has historically lost ground in midterm elections and turnout is generally much lower in non-presidential-election years.
The map made public Sunday would result in lines that would give Democrats 22 seats to four Republican ones. The New York delegation is currently 19 Democratic seats to eight seats for Republicans. The state lost a seat because of slow growth over the past 10 years.
As the article points out, nothing is guaranteed due to the redistricting, so Democrats still need to out strategize, out organize and out vote the party of sedition in every Congressional district and every Senate race in November.
As Russian troops mass on the Ukrainian border and worries of an invasion grow, Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to push a familiar Russian line about the conflict: that Ukraine belongs to Russia and that the two are “one people — a single whole.”
Specifically, much of Russia’s political positioning to launch an incursion into Ukrainian territory is based on Putin’s claim that Ukraine — like Russia, a former Soviet state — is an extension of Russia, the “little brother” that has been led astray by the West and must be reincorporated into the family. Thus, he sees Ukraine’s increasing westward turn as a provocation, by both Ukraine and NATO.
In reality, however, Ukraine has long been distinct from Russia, experts told Vox, and Putin’s current mythologizing of the Russia-Ukraine relationship fits a pattern of falsehoods designed to reconstitute imperial glory, and more importantly, to shield Putin from the threat of democracy in former Soviet republics — and possibly in Russia itself.
