Politics

Welcome to Thunderdome, where this week we have the first named vice presidential candidate from a 2024 challenger — Nicole Shanahan, whom I know little about outside of this glossy profile in People magazine. Forget the child of immigrants rags to riches story or any of that stuff. On paper she seems like an extremely wealthy progressive California attorney with all the various interests of such a type — yoga, natural living, meeting your third spouse at Burning Man and so on. But none of that matters, and none of it will matter — which is why this choice strikes me as potentially ingenious on the part of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Understand this: no one, absolutely no one, votes for a president based on his or her vice presidential candidate.

A studio apartment at the upscale Illume apartments in DC’s Navy Yard neighborhood currently rents for $1,747 a month. The complex boasts rooftop pools, “luxe quartz countertops with modern tile backsplashes” and the chance to “pamper your pup at Luna’s pet spa.” Not mentioned on its sleekly designed website: “escaping gunmen running through the courtyard.”“We have been informed by the police that there is an armed suspect in the area,” the building emailed residents Tuesday afternoon. “We strongly advise all residents to stay inside their home with the door locked until further notice.”A statement from the Capitol Police said, “Our patrol officers spotted a vehicle that was connected to a previous shooting that occurred in MPD’s 2nd District.

NBC’s decision to hire former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor has made lots of folks angry. The backlash was so strong, in fact, that days after its parent company brought in McDaniel as a political analyst, MSNBC’s president, Rashida Jones, announced that the former chairwoman won’t be contributing on air to the cable network. McDaniel appeared for her first hit as a contributor on NBC’s long-running Sunday show Meet the Press and was interviewed by anchor Kristen Welker.

There are probably better ways to start your fifteen-hour work shift than to hear the words: “Fire at the Renton Avenue gas station. Pump still leaking fuel. Possible injuries. Attend scene immediately.”  That was the stark dispatch that came over the radio of the King County Sheriff’s car driven by thirty-two-year-old Deputy Cy Brame, one of 720 law enforcement officers who serve the needs of half a million people living in the sprawling unincorporated areas around Seattle. I recently joined him on a characteristically drizzly early March afternoon on his beat behind the wheel of a black Ford Interceptor SUV. “You’re lucky,” said Deputy Brame, with a thin smile. “The last ride-along I had was here all day without an emergency.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene finally followed through on repeated threats to oust Speaker Mike Johnson over the passage of a $1.2 trillion spending bill. Congress now will vote on her measure, likely following a two-week recess, giving her colleagues no shortage of headaches as they head into November’s elections. MTG had been a close ally of then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy as Republican rebels led by Matt Gaetz ousted him, but her relationship with Johnson has been far more tenuous.

Welcome to Thunderdome. The Republican Party has new leadership, with North Carolina GOP chairman Michael Whatley and daughter-in-law of the former president Lara Trump taking over an organization that will, in reality, be run by Chris LaCivita. They’ve already made one controversial but wise decision in demurring on the hiring of Scott Presler, a ballot harvester popular with the MAGA crowd. But they now confront the harsh reality of the RNC’s fundraising woes: they’re well behind the Joe Biden campaign and the DNC. The Democratic president’s campaign account officially reported taking in $21 million in February, according to its report filed with the Federal Election Commission late Wednesday, ending the month with $71 million cash on hand.

Last night’s elections saw several narrow wins for candidates endorsed by Donald Trump, along with deep divisions in the Democratic Party over a race to helm one of the highest-profile state’s attorneys offices in the nation.One of the weirdest races of the cycle came to an end fairly quickly last night, with Bernie Moreno, the preferred choice of Donald Trump and much of MAGA world, carrying every county to win just above 50 percent in the Ohio Senate primary. The final days of the election were marred by a bizarre allegation from the Associated Press that Moreno had a male-seeking account on AdultFriendFinder, a website used mostly for casual hookups. Moreno is married to a woman and has children.

The most effective ad ever made for a presidential election featured a violent, career-criminal, Willie Horton, walking out of a Massachusetts prison on a weekend pass. On one of those passes, he went on another vicious crime spree. George H. W. Bush used those crimes — and the lax policies that let Horton roam the country — to destroy his Democratic opponent, Massachusetts governor Mike Dukakis. The past is prologue. Once again, voters are worried about their safety and angry about the open-border policies that have degraded it. Donald Trump knows that, so he will be using ads like the one Bush used against Dukakis. They will have the same devastating impact. A little background is helpful.

Political commentators and mainstream journalists are apoplectic over remarks former president Donald Trump made at a rally in Ohio over the weekend. Speaking to supporters on behalf of Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, Trump warned that if President Joe Biden is reelected in November the auto industry would face a “bloodbath.’”“We’re gonna put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not gonna be able to sell those guys, if I get elected! Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it,” he said. “It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.

I want to talk about two things in this column: bills of attainder and kangaroo courts. The two often go together. What is a “bill of attainder?” We get the term from English law. A person or persons whom the people in charge don’t like is “attainted.” Forget about due process, presumption of innocence, or any such quaint ideas. Bills of attainder worked through the untrammeled deployment of state power. To be accused was tantamount to being found guilty; common penalties included the abrogation of the right to own property, and, not infrequently, the right to life itself.

Haiti is battling an insurgency, with gangs terrorizing the citizenry and international actors fearing the beginning of a refugee crisis. You could already label the situation a low-scale civil war, but things are set to get worse, as the leading gang leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier continues to mobilize for regime change. The conflict has gotten so out of control that Haitian prime minister Ariel Henry, who the Biden administration energetically backed following the assassination of former prime minister Jovenel Moïse in 2021, announced early Tuesday that he would resign following the creation of a transitional presidential council.

Attacking special counsels is fine now, apparently. At least, that’s according to the “Forrest Gump of political failure,” Ian Sams.Former special counsel Robert Hur testified to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that his report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, contrary to claims from the White House and Democrats — did not “exonerate” or “clear” Biden — and that there was evidence he willfully retained classified documents, that he shared them with others and that his ghostwriter obstructed the investigation. Sams, however, who is the White House’s spokesman on investigative matters, told CNN that Hur was “misleading” in his testimony.