Post Politics Now Pence appears in Ga. to campaign against Trump-backed gubernatorial hopeful

Former president Donald Trump — in a tele-rally held on the eve of the GOP gubernatorial primary between Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and former senator David Perdue — said Kemp is likely to lose in a general election against voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams, who is running unopposed on the Democrats’ side.

“Stacey Abrams totally dominates Brian Kemp,” Trump said.

The former president supported Kemp when he first ran for Georgia governor. But the Republican lost Trump’s support when he refused to endorse his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

On Monday, Trump complained several times that Kemp had turned his back on him, and said that’s why Georgians should vote for Perdue.

“We have a governor that’s done the worst job of any governor in probably decades on election integrity,” Trump said of Kemp. “David is the only candidate who can beat Stacey Abrams, because I don’t believe Kemp can do it.”

Trump called Kemp a RINO — “Republican In Name Only” — and falsely accused him of allowing “the Georgia election to be rigged and to be stolen.” Kemp moving onto the general election would cause “too many people in the Republican Party [to] refuse to vote.”

Kemp, meanwhile, campaigned Monday with Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence. Establishment Republicans, including former president George W. Bush, have rallied around Kemp.

Before hanging up Monday, Trump turned against Abrams, citing out-of-context comments she made on Saturday during a fundraiser in which she said Georgia was not the best state to live in. Abrams made the comments in reference to the state’s poor rates in maternal health care, incarceration and mental health, saying the state would do better under Democratic leadership. Trump didn’t mention that.

Perdue, despite having Trump’s endorsement, is trailing Kemp in the polls. On Monday, ahead of the tele-rally, he accused Abrams of “demeaning her race,” a racist comment made in reference to a statement Abrams made during her first gubernatorial race in 2018, when she told voters that she planned to create new jobs “because people shouldn’t have to go into agriculture or hospitality in Georgia to make a living.”

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney ruffled some feathers last week when he announced he would run against Rep. Mondaire Jones, a fellow New York Democrat, instead of staying in the congressional district he represents, because Jones’s seat is safer.

Maloney’s decision led Jones, a Black congressman, to move districts. He announced a campaign for an open seat in another corner of New York City — the newly created 10th District, which stretches from Manhattan to Brooklyn — choosing to run there instead of having to face Maloney, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in New York’s 17th District, or his fellow liberal Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman in a neighboring district.

The 17th District covers Westchester and the lower Hudson Valley, communities to which Jones has deep connections. You can read more about this Democratic breakdown from Marianna Sotomayor and Colby Itkowitz here.

Maloney’s move angered fellow Democrats, including state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, a liberal Democrat who on Monday announced she’ll challenge Maloney for the 17th District.

Biaggi appeared to confirm news of her campaign by sharing a New York Times story about it.

According to the Times, Biaggi will officially announce her campaign on Tuesday. The primary election is scheduled for Aug. 23.

Biaggi was already running for the House, campaigning for New York’s 3rd District on a platform based on policies like securing voter rights, fighting climate change, and ensuring single-payer health care.

But she changed districts following the announcement that the congressional map drawn by Jonathan R. Cervas, a mapmaker appointed by a state court would be official after the state’s high court struck down the congressional lines drawn by Democrats.

Former senator David Perdue (R), who is running for Georgia governor, attacked Stacey Abrams, the Democrat running unopposed in her primary, by claiming she’s “demeaning her own race.”

During a campaign stop in Dunwoody, Ga., Perdue asked the crowd if they’d seen “what Stacey said this weekend.”

“She said that Georgia is the worst place in the country to live,” Perdue said. “Hey, she ain’t from here. Let her go back where she came from if she doesn’t like it here.”

Abrams, who served in the Georgia House of Representatives for a decade, moved to Georgia in high school and has lived there for most of her life.

Perdue was referring to statements Abrams made Saturday during a fundraising dinner, in which she referred to the state’s poor ranking in multiple issues, including incarceration, mental health and maternal mortality rates.

“I am tired of hearing about being the best state in the country to do business when we are the worst state in the country to live,” Abrams said, per NBC News. “When you’re number 48 for mental health, when you’re number one for maternal mortality, when you have an incarceration rate that’s on the rise and wages that are on the decline, then you are not the number one place to live in the United States.”

“But we can get there,” Abrams added. “You see, Georgia is capable of greatness. We just need greatness to be in our governor’s office.”

She was pushing against Gov. Brian Kemp’s (R) claims that Georgia is ranked best in the nation for business. Kemp and Perdue are running against each other for the GOP nomination.

Perdue, however, offered none of this context when attacking her Monday.

“The only thing she wants is to be president,” Perdue said, adding that Abrams, during the 2018 gubernatorial race, said “Black farmers, ‘you don’t need to be on the farm.’”

“She is demeaning her own race when it comes to that,” Perdue said. “She should never be considered material for governor.”

Perdue was likely referring to comments Abrams made in 2018, when, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she told voters she wanted to “create lots of different jobs. … Because people shouldn’t have to go into agriculture or hospitality in Georgia to make a living. Why not create renewable energy jobs?”

Perdue — who has been polling behind Kemp — has been endorsed by former president Donald Trump, and Perdue’s comments Monday echoed some of Trump’s own racist statements. In 2019, for instance, the former president remarked that four minority, liberal congresswomen should “go back” to their countries — a statement that prompted broad condemnation.

When Rep. Mo Brooks (R) was disowned by former president Donald Trump in March, many thought his campaign for the GOP nomination in the Alabama Senate race was over.

But he may be catching a second wind.

Brooks is running to replace retiring Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R) and, in doing so, is rallying the support of Republicans who are delicately working to stake competing claims to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement without antagonizing the former president himself, writes Isaac Arnsdorf.

The Republican lawmaker is promoting himself as a top backer of Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 election and has built his campaign out of his promise to primary voters that he’s the most pro-Trump candidate in the three-way race — even though the president dropped his support for him when Brooks suggested stopping the spread of Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Brooks was languishing in third place against Katie Britt, a former top Shelby aide, and military veteran Mike Durant. That meant both campaigns went dark against him while they attacked each other. Until a few days ago, there were no TV ads highlighting Trump’s rejection of Brooks.

In fact, internal research for the campaign found that barely half the electorate was ever aware that Trump endorsed Brooks — so it’s probable voters don’t know he lost his endorsement.

But now, those Republicans trying to carve out a place for themselves in Trump’s party and the base is showing up for Brooks. As Isaac explains:

The big-spending national conservative group the Club for Growth, which has increasingly taken positions contrary to Trump’s endorsements this year, pumped more than $4 million into Brooks’s race, according to Federal Election Commission reports. On Monday, the campaign is holding events with Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), a likely challenger to Trump for the GOP nomination in 2024, and Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

If Brooks emerges victorious Tuesday, it is likely to be a sign for these Republicans that there is a future for them in the party, even if they’re not willing to fully espouse Trump’s views.

Former senator David Perdue (R-Ga.) said that if he loses in the Republican primary to Gov. Brian Kemp, he won’t necessarily accept the results.

Asked by a reporter Monday, Perdue replied, “Depends on if there’s fraud or not.”

Perdue has the endorsement of Donald Trump and has, throughout his campaign, echoed the former president’s false allegations of widespread voter fraud. Kemp was the focus of Trump’s ire in Georgia after he refused to help Trump overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the battleground state. A vengeful Trump has pumped money into Perdue’s campaign while calling Kemp a “turncoat” and a “coward.”

Perdue, after making the comment on fraud, told reporters he’d support the Republican nominee for governor because his end goal is “making sure” Stacey Abrams, the likely Democratic nominee for governor, isn’t elected.

There is no evidence that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Ironically, in 2018, Democrats accused Kemp of thinly veiled attempts to suppress the votes of minorities after he narrowly won that year’s gubernatorial election after purging more than a million voters from the rolls as Georgia’s secretary of state. Kemp claimed that he did so to lower the odds of voter fraud. He beat Abrams in that election.

During his time as secretary of state, Kemp made voter fraud his top issue, launching a Stop Voter Fraud website and hotline shortly after assuming office in January 2010 and quickly emerging as a major proponent of voter ID bills.

Can justices be removed from the Supreme Court? I understand that impeachment is an option — writes our reader Larry from Colorado.

Indeed, Supreme Court justices can be impeached.

It’s happened before — in 1805, the House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment against Associate Justice Samuel Chase, arguing that he “tend[ed] to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested.”

Basically, they argued that he was letting his partisan leanings affect his court decisions.

Chase, however, was acquitted by the Senate. He remained on the bench until his death in 1811.

Other than that, however, the House has not been eager to impeach a Supreme Court Justice.

To do so, the House must act as a grand jury and bring charges against a justice if they are suspected of “Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” It’s the same procedure the House would adopt if they were trying to impeach, say, a president. Impeachment managers are appointed, the House votes on the charges and a case is brought before the Senate.

The Senate then holds a trial, and two-thirds majorities are needed to convict an individual on each article of impeachment.

In a contemporary, hypothetical scenario, it would probably be virtually impossible to dismiss a current Supreme Court justice on the argument that they’ve “tend[ed] to prostitute” the nation’s highest court by allowing their partisan leanings to affect their work. This assessment is based solely on the fact that the Senate is equally divided, and it would be difficult to muster 67 votes out of 100.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been playing defense within his party for the past few years as he attempts to gently distance himself from Donald Trump.

Nowhere has been this more evident than in this year’s primary season, specifically in races where Trump’s chosen Senate candidates have prioritized their loyalty to the president rather than the Senate GOP leader.

Thus, it makes sense for McConnell to be on a bit of a victory tour lately, touting the overwhelming bipartisan vote in Congress to approve $40 billion in Ukraine aid and feeling buoyed by what he views as a victory over the MAGA king, writes Dave Clarke in Monday’s Daily 202.

McConnell’s message? The isolationists aligned with Trump lost, and the old Republican guard on foreign policy that he counts himself a part of won.

Per Dave:

He hasn’t been shy about taking credit for the relative ease with which the bill made it through the Senate despite Trump’s opposition. In interviews, McConnell pointed to his trip to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as consequential. And did you know he spoke to President Biden ahead of the vote to convince him to drop the idea of tying pandemic funds to the Ukraine money? Well, he made sure the reporters he talked to did.

“I am interested in diminishing the number of my members who believe that America somehow can exist alone in the world,” McConnell told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Friday.

But was the vote a resurgence within his party of the foreign policy worldview he prefers or something like its last gasp?

McConnell, in his glee, ignores this: His role was made much easier by being the minority, not the majority, leader.

Read more on McConnell’s intraparty struggle here.