Steve Williams is the type of voter Republicans have been working furiously to court over the past four weeks in Georgia’s Senate runoff race.
The 33-year-old laments high inflation and voted for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R). During an interview in a park here in Duluth, he criticized Democrats’ stance on “culture war” issues such as gender identity, which GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker has played up in campaign ads.
Yet Williams backed Democrat Raphael G. Warnock for Senate in November and plans to do so again on Tuesday. He said he wants to underscore a message that he thinks many voters sent this midterm cycle: Republicans “can’t expect us to vote for garbage candidates.”
Georgia remains “culturally red,” he said. But “we’re not just partisan machines.”
Democrats are hoping that many independents and Republicans will vote similarly on Tuesday, allowing the party to bolster their slim majority in the Senate. For both parties, the runoff election — triggered when neither Senate candidate won a majority of the vote in November — provides a final test of their ability to motivate their base and persuade the political middle in an increasingly purple state.
Despite a relentless grilling on ABC’s “This Week,” Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) on Sunday refused to condemn Donald Trump’s jaw-dropping demand to terminate the Constitution and anoint him as president.
Trump was so incensed over new information that Twitter aimed to moderate misinformation about Hunter Biden’s laptop — and insisted it somehow made the 2020 election fraudulent — that he demanded the bedrock document of American rights and laws be tossed out, and make him president again, or hold a new election. [snip]
Yet Joyce, who is chair of the Republican Governance Group, did everything he could to dodge criticizing Trump’s statement — and even vowed to support him if Trump becomes the GOP nominee for president.
Joyce bizarrely insisted Trump’s statement needs to be taken in “context” (though failed to explain what that might be) and that Trump “says a lot of things.”
Joyce also insisted he “can’t be chasing every one of these crazy statements” and that terminating the Constitution is “fantasy,” not a reality. In fact, a president can unilaterally declare a “national emergency,” vastly expanding his powers, including over Constitutional rights. That’s exactly what critics feared Trump would do during the Jan. 6 insurrection last year. [snip]
“This Week” host George Stephanopoulos didn’t let Joyce off the hook. He repeatedly and bluntly asked him if and how he could support a presidential candidate who called for terminating the Constitution.
It’s “an extraordinary statement,” Stephanopoulos said at one point. “You can’t come out against someone who supports suspending the Constitution?”
Joyce could not.
The attack initially left roughly 45,000 households and businesses without power, Duke Energy said in a statement. Roughly 35,000 remained without power Sunday night. It may take until Thursday to repair the damaged equipment and restore power across Moore County, a spokesperson for Duke Energy said.
“The person who did this knew what they were doing,” said Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields, who described the attack as deliberate. “It appears they were trying to shut down the county.” Officials do not have a motive or suspect.
Electricity went out in tens of thousands of buildings in Moore County shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday. Sunday evening on Twitter, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called the outage a “serious incident” and said her department is working with federal partners as the investigation continues.
Investigators are looking into whether the incident is linked to a drag queen show that took place in the town of Southern Pines that evening, but they have so far not found any connection, Fields said.
Community members said far-right activists have tried to shut down the event for weeks, the Fayetteville Observer reported Friday.
These domestic terrorists need to be apprehended and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The incident is also shocking evidence of how vulnerable our power grid is to someone armed simply with a gun. The latest National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin issued by the Department of Homeland Security warned us to be on alert for such attacks, though it sloughed over the fact that the vast majority of acts of domestic terrorism in recent years have been conducted by right- wing extremists. It's long past time to get real.
