Post Politics Now Bucking Trump, Pence to rally with Georgia Gov. Kemp this month

Biden last Wednesday introduced a new term to modern American politics: “ultra MAGA.”

“Let me tell you about this ultra-MAGA agenda,” Biden said during a speech on the economy, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer report.

Using Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan — “Make America Great Again” — as a pejorative, Biden introduced a subset of Republicans who are pushing an agenda that is “extreme, as most MAGA things are.”

Since then, Biden and his team have continued using the term to describe Republicans, attacking them as “MAGA” and “ultra MAGA.” At one point, he dismissed Trump as “the great MAGA king.”

But, as Ashley and Michael write, the effort could be backfiring:

It took scant time for Republicans to gleefully seize on the moniker as their own, triumphantly elevating it as a brand worthy of celebration.

“I am ultra MAGA, and I’m proud of it,” said Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican, after a reporter Wednesday noted that she was “being called ultra MAGA.”

The same day, Trump’s Save America super PAC sent out a fundraising email featuring a $45 T-shirt bearing the image of Trump as Superman — a Trump “T” stretched across his chest rather than Superman’s iconic “S” — flying below the banner of “SUPERMAGA” in a red-and-yellow comic book font. ...

And Wednesday night, Trump also blasted out a meme featuring himself as Aragorn — a selfless hero of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy — complete with the caption, “The Return of the Great MAGA King.”

Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesman, told our colleagues that the term “admits the power and influence of the MAGA movement and President Trump’s strength over the party, and for some reason Biden thinks that’s an insult.”

The administration doesn’t seem to mind that the GOP is flocking to the moniker. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that if these Republicans “are embracing their opposition to a woman’s right to make choices about her own health care, if they’re embracing a plan that will raise taxes on 75 million Americans, if they’re embracing the importance of fighting Mickey Mouse over virtually any other issue, I guess that’s their platform.”

“Good for them,” Psaki concluded. “We’re happy to have a debate about that.”

Read more about “ultra MAGA” here.

New York Republican Elise Stefanik, chair of the House GOP conference, appeared to allude to a bizarre and baseless claim popular in some conservative circles when, on Friday, she tweeted that Democrats and the “usual pedo grifters” are “out of touch” with Americans.

The claim that “pedos” — short for “pedophiles” — infiltrate the ranks of government is central to QAnon, the collection of right-wing debunked claims that former president Donald Trump was secretly leading a war against an elite cabal of pedophiles who control Washington, Hollywood and the world.

In her tweet Friday, Stefanik claimed Democrats have “no plan” to deal with the national baby formula shortage. The White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced steps in recent days to address the shortage.

And while Stefanik was commenting on the shortage, her tweet drew criticism for the insinuation that she may be appealing to promoters of disinformation.

While other House Republicans have directly promoted the false accusation in the past, Stefanik’s tweet is another signal of how language attacking Democrats as “pedophiles” has gone mainstream in the GOP.

Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D), who last month drew national attention for a scathing takedown of a Republican lawmaker who falsely accused her of grooming children, tweeted that Stefanik’s comments were dangerous.

“'Usual pedo grifters’ is straight-up QAnon rhetoric that led a gunman to open fire in a DC pizza place believing there were children trapped in a nonexistent basement,” McMorrow said. “Anyone claiming to legitimately care about children should stop using rhetoric that will get people killed.”

More jumped in to criticize Stefanik’s language.

“Your tweet is undignified, disgusting and dangerous,” Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) tweeted.

“As a former prosecutor, I know that pedophilia is a serious crime that harms the most vulnerable,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) tweeted. “You trivialize pedophilia and victims of pedophilia by randomly and repeatedly calling people pedophiles. You should be ashamed and you should apologize.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Friday named state Rep. Cord Byrd (R) as Florida’s new secretary of state in a statement calling the Jacksonville attorney a “staunch advocate for election security” and an “ally of freedom and democracy in the Florida legislature.”

Byrd will run the state’s elections at a time when many Republicans have tried to sow distrust about how the electoral process works following President Biden’s defeat of former president Donald Trump in 2020. Among them is Byrd’s wife, Esther Byrd, whom DeSantis appointed to the state’s Board of Education in March.

She is a staunch Trump supporter who, after the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, defended the pro-Trump mob, saying they were “peacefully protesting” the confirmation of Biden’s win.

According to Florida Politics, a site dedicated to tracking the Sunshine State’s politicians, Esther Byrd, in a Facebook post during the insurrection, warned of “coming civil wars” between “the Radical Left” and “We the People cleaning up the Republican Party.”

She also defended the Proud Boys, a far-right group with a history of violence, and made comments supporting QAnon, a collection of baseless claims that has radicalized its followers during and after the Trump administration. More than 40 members or associates of the Proud Boys have been charged in the rioting at the Capitol in the Jan. 6 attack.

While Cord Byrd has dismissed his wife’s online comments in interviews — telling News4JAX that her post about war referred to ideological division within the GOP, not an actual civil war — the two were photographed on a boat that was flying a QAnon flag, according to Florida Politics.

Biden, after making remarks on efforts to enhance public safety, explained to reporters about how the White House is making it easier for parents to purchase baby formula under a government program during a national shortage.

The president said his administration issued guidance to all states Friday on possible flexibility to the federally funded Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children — the program known as WIC that helps subsidize specific varieties of formula.

WIC guidelines, the president said, can be “very” strict, requiring the consumer to purchase only a specific amount of formula and stopping them from buying containers with larger servings.

“The problem is, the packaging issues are becoming difficult,” Biden said. “So we’ve changed this so that, [with] the WIC program, you can buy what’s on the shelf.”

With more relaxed WIC requirements, parents can use their benefits to purchase formula that is in stock even when the one they’re regularly permitted to buy is unavailable.

Biden also said the Food and Drug Administration issued a statement on importing more formula.

“We’ll be working with manufacturers to facilitate the incorporation of formulas from abroad,” Biden said, vowing that the same level of high safety standards will be maintained for imported formula.

Finally, the president said the administration has set up a new site for parents to check resources on what formulas they can purchase, and which food banks or health providers could have access to specific formulas.

Thousands of abortion rights advocates are expected to gather in cities nationwide this weekend to demand safe and legal access to abortion, and to send a message to lawmakers everywhere that the majority of Americans support upholding Roe v. Wade.

Protesters will gather in D.C. and at more than 380 events across the country, including in New York, Austin, Chicago and Los Angeles. The demonstrations have been organized in part by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

The organization’s executive director, Kelley Robinson, told The Post’s Ellie Silverman that, ever since a leaked draft from the Supreme Court came out, suggesting that the court could revoke Roe this summer, she has been hearing an “outcry” from Americans everywhere.

“Folks are feeling anger. Folks are feeling rage. Folks are feeling scared about what this means for them and for their state,” Robinson said.

In Washington, more than 15,000 people are expected to gather at noon for a rally on the northeast side of the Washington Monument. At 2 p.m., they will walk to the Supreme Court.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Biden, who has expressed concern over the future of abortion access in the nation, wouldn’t attend the protest in D.C.

The protests come at the end of a week that saw the Senate fail to advance the Women’s Health Protection Act, a measure that would’ve codified the right to an abortion into law.

I would like to know the status of the District of Columbia becoming a state — could this happen before the midterms? — asks a reader from California.

The short answer is: It’s extremely unlikely.

While the House last year passed — for the second time — a bill that would make D.C. a state, the measure remains stalled in the Senate, and it is likely to stay there.

Why? Because of the filibuster.

Though Democrats control the Senate, a bill to grant statehood to the District would require 60 votes in the chamber to advance to a final vote. It’s hard to see Democrats convincing 10 Republicans to join them in doing so. The House vote itself — held in April 2021 — was along party lines, 216 to 208.

Senate Democrats didn’t universally back the House bill. As our colleague Meagan Flynn reported last year:

Hopes of finding a way to pass the bill solely with Democratic support decreased this month, when Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) said he will resist all efforts to eliminate or weaken the filibuster.

Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), sponsor of the Senate bill, said he will nevertheless ask Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, to schedule a hearing on the legislation as soon as this spring.

Carper said he is lobbying the Democratic caucus to support the bill, with only Manchin and Sens. Angus King (I-Maine) and Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema, both of Arizona, outstanding.

So far, however, the House bill has not come up for a Senate vote.

The House will vote next week on steps to ease the baby formula shortage, including a bill that will grant emergency authority to a benefits program.

In a “Dear Colleague” letter Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told fellow Democrats the House will bring up a bill that would allow the federal government to “relax certain non-safety-related regulations” on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC.

Doing so, Pelosi said, can help parents “get nutrition into the mouths of America’s babies.”

“With this step, we maintain our laser focus on protecting the health and well-being of our babies — now and for the rest of their lives,” Pelosi said.

She also noted that Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), chair of the Appropriations Committee, will hold a hearing next week on the issue and plans to bring an emergency appropriation bill to the floor that would “immediately address the infant formula shortage.”

The following week, Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) will hold another hearing “as we continue shining a bright light on this urgent issue and explore further actions the Congress could take,” Pelosi wrote.

“We must ensure that a baby formula shortage never happens again,” Pelosi said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki gave her final briefing Friday, saying goodbye with plenty of thank-yous.

“I promised myself I was going to keep it together, and I’m not,” Psaki said, holding back tears.

Psaki, who will be replaced by Karine Jean-Pierre, is expected to take an on-air position at MSNBC after serving as press secretary for the first 15 months of the Biden administration.

In her parting remarks, Psaki thanked President Biden and first lady Jill Biden for entrusting her with the job. She also thanked the Biden family, those in the president’s circle and her press team.

“I want to thank all of you in this room,” she told reporters. “You have challenged me, you have pushed me, you have debated me, and at times we have disagreed. That is democracy in action.”

Psaki returned to the tradition of holding regular White House press briefings after the practice was curtailed by the Trump administration. Briefings were a rarity at times under that administration, and when they were held, they often were combative. At one point, the Trump White House went almost a year without giving reporters a briefing.

Psaki held briefings nearly every weekday during the first year-plus of the Biden administration.

When asked whether Jean-Pierre will continue holding daily briefings, Psaki and her successor said yes.