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      In Wisconsin Supreme Court Race, Democratic Turnout Was High

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      Democratic turnout was high in the Tuesday primary for the State Supreme Court, ahead of a costly general election that will decide the future of abortion rights and gerrymandered maps in the state.MILWAUKEE — Eight months after the nation’s highest court made abortion illegal in Wisconsin, a liberal State Supreme Court candidate who made reproductive rights the centerpiece of her campaign won more votes than her two conservative opponents combined.The Wisconsin Supreme Court primary election on Tuesday was a triumph for the state’s liberals. In addition to capturing 54 percent of the vote in the four-way, officially nonpartisan primary, they will face a conservative opponent in the general election who was last seen losing a 2020 court election by double digits. It proved to be a best-case scenario for Wisconsin Democrats, who for years have framed the April 4 general election for the State Supreme Court as their last chance to stop Republicans from solidifying their grip on the state. Republicans took control of the state government in 2011 and drew themselves legislative maps to ensure perpetual power over the state’s Legislature, despite the 50-50 nature of Wisconsin politics.“If Republicans keep their hammerlock on the State Supreme Court majority, Wisconsin remains stuck in an undemocratic doom loop,” said Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.Now, with an opportunity to retake a majority on the State Supreme Court that could undo Wisconsin’s 1849 ban on nearly all abortions and throw out the state’s gerrymandered legislative maps, Democrats have the general election matchup they wanted. Janet Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz), a liberal circuit court judge in Milwaukee County, will face off against Daniel Kelly, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice who lost a 2020 election for his seat by nearly 11 percentage points — a colossal spread in such an evenly divided state. Abortion rights demonstrators gathered in Madison, Wis., in January 2022. Judge Protasiewicz has sought to put abortion, which is now illegal in most cases in Wisconsin, at the center of the campaign. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTuesday’s results suggested that the state’s Democratic voters are more energized than Republicans. While the number of ballots cast statewide represented 29 percent of the 2020 presidential electorate, the turnout in Dane County was 40 percent of the 2020 total, a striking figure for a judicial election. In Dane County, which includes the liberal state capital of Madison, Joseph R. Biden Jr. took three out of every four votes.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Black Mayors: The Black mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston have banded together as they confront violent crime, homelessness and other similar challenges.Wisconsin Supreme Court: Democratic turnout was high in the primary for the swing seat on the court, ahead of a general election that will decide the future of abortion rights and gerrymandered maps in the state.Mississippi Court Plan: Republican lawmakers want to create a separate court system served by a state-run police force for mainly Black parts of the capital, Jackson, reviving old racial divisions.Michigan G.O.P.: Michigan Republicans picked Kristina Karamo to lead the party in the battleground state, fully embracing an election-denying Trump acolyte after her failed bid for secretary of state.Republicans will also face the financial might of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which on Wednesday transferred $2.5 million to the Protasiewicz campaign. Justice Kelly did not spend a dollar on television advertising during the primary, but he was aided by $2.8 million in spending from a super PAC funded by the conservative billionaire Richard Uihlein, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. Democrats also helped Justice Kelly by spending $2.2 million to attack his conservative opponent, Jennifer Dorow, a circuit court judge in Waukesha County. Justice Kelly has said he expects Mr. Uihlein’s PAC, Fair Courts America, to spend another $20 million on his behalf for the general election. That money will not go as far as the cash transferred directly to the Protasiewicz campaign because candidates can buy television advertising at far lower rates than PACs. Wisconsin’s conservatives, who have controlled the court since 2008, fear a rollback not just of their favorable maps but also of a host of Republican-friendly policies that were ushered in while Scott Walker was governor, including changes to the state’s labor and voting laws. “She’s going to impart her values upon Wisconsin regardless of what the law is — does that seem like democracy to you?” said Eric Toney, the district attorney for Fond du Lac County, who was the Republican nominee for attorney general last year. “This isn’t Republicans and Democrats. It’s democracy and the rule of law that is on the line.”There is also the question of how Wisconsin Republicans coalesce after their second bruising primary contest in six months. Throughout the campaign, Justice Kelly declined to say that he would back Judge Dorow in the general election, while her supporters flatly said that he would lose the general election.It was a bit of a replay of the governor’s race last year, when bitter intraparty feelings remained after Tim Michels, with former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement, defeated former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch in the primary. Ms. Kleefisch then did little to encourage her supporters to back Mr. Michels, who later lost the general election to Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.“With Michels and Kleefisch, there wasn’t that come-together-to-Jesus moment,” said Stephen L. Nass, a Republican state senator from Whitewater. “I think people realize now that was a mistake. It should have happened. And now we’ve got to do it.”Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was one vote away from overturning Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, deciding in a series of 4-to-3 decisions to reject Mr. Trump’s efforts to invalidate 200,000 votes from the state’s two largest Democratic counties.Judge Protasiewicz speaking at her primary night party on Tuesday in Milwaukee. She has openly declared her views in support of abortion rights and against Wisconsin’s gerrymandered legislative maps.Caleb Alvarado for The New York Times“What our Supreme Court did with the 2020 presidential election kind of turned people’s stomachs,” Judge Protasiewicz said in an interview on Tuesday over coffee and paczki, a Polish pastry served on Fat Tuesday. “We were one vote away from overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”Judge Protasiewicz has pioneered what may be a new style of judicial campaigning. She has openly proclaimed her views on abortion rights (she’s for them) and the state’s legislative maps (she’s against them). That has appeared to offend Justice Kelly, who devoted chunks of his Tuesday victory speech to condemning the idea that Judge Protasiewicz had predetermined opinions about subjects likely to come before the court.“If we do not resist this assault on our Constitution and our liberties, we will lose the rule of law and find ourselves saddled with the rule of Janet,” Justice Kelly told supporters in Waukesha County. But Judge Protasiewicz has considerable incentives to put her views on hot-button topics front and center for voters. (She calls them “my values” to remain within a law that prohibits judicial candidates from plainly stating how they would rule on specific cases.) Democrats learned in last year’s midterm contests just how potent and motivating abortion is for their voters. Judge Protasiewicz, in the interview, recounted how voters had come to her campaign stops wearing sweatshirts bearing the words “Fair maps now.” “The voters are demanding more,” said Rebecca Dallet, a liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, at the Protasiewicz victory party on Tuesday in Milwaukee. “People want to know more about their candidates. And I think there’s a way to communicate that without saying anything that shouldn’t be said about future cases.”Justice Kelly’s views are hardly opaque, either.Appointed to the court by Mr. Walker in 2016 before losing his re-election bid in 2020, Justice Kelly went on to work for the Republican National Committee as an “election integrity” consultant. He has the endorsement of the state’s three major anti-abortion groups.Justice Kelly speaking at a party on Tuesday night in Okauchee Lake, Wis. He said in an interview that only state legislators, not the State Supreme Court, could overturn Wisconsin’s abortion ban.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesDuring an interview on Monday night in Sheboygan, Justice Kelly said only legislators could overturn the state’s 1849 abortion ban, enacted decades before women were allowed to vote. He said that complaints about the maps amounted to a “political problem” and that they were legally sound.Yet in the same interview, conducted in the back of a bar during a meeting of the Sheboygan County Republican Party, Justice Kelly declined to say whether he supported the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling in December 2020 that rejected Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the state’s presidential election results.“If I were to say it was decided correctly, then the hullabaloo would be, ‘Justice Kelly doesn’t care about election integrity,’” he said. “If I say it was decided incorrectly, the hullabaloo would be, ‘Justice Kelly favors overthrowing in presidential elections.’ And so I don’t think there’s any way to answer that question in a way that would not get overcome by extraneous noise.”Still, he said he had “no reason to believe” Wisconsin’s 2020 election was not decided properly.Since Justice Kelly lost in 2020, he and other Republicans have taken it as an article of faith that the wide margin of his defeat could be attributed to the Democratic presidential primary, which fell on the same day. Several Republicans asserted that Wisconsin’s Democratic Party leadership had colluded with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose presidential campaign was by then a lost cause, to remain in the race to lift the chances of the liberal candidate, Jill Karofsky.“It still pains me to admit that, as it turns out, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders combined can turn out more votes than little old me,” Justice Kelly said Monday.Faiz Shakir, who was the campaign manager for the Sanders campaign, said in an interview that Mr. Sanders had indeed decided to suspend his campaign and concede to Mr. Biden days before Wisconsin’s April 2020 primary, but encouraged his supporters to vote in the primary anyway to influence the court election.One thing that is clear is that the next six weeks in Wisconsin politics will be dominated by the Protasiewicz campaign’s effort to place abortion rights at the center of the race. The issue will feature heavily in her television advertising, while Republicans will try to change the subject to crime — or anything else. “Everybody is very emotional about abortion, so that’s the tail that’s going to wag the dog,” said Aaron R. Guenther, a conservative Christian minister from Sheboygan. “It’s not what all of life is about, but it’s what the election is going to be about.”Dan Simmons contributed reporting from Okauchee Lake, Wis. More

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      Liberal Judge Is First to Advance in Major Wisconsin Supreme Court Election

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      Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal judge from Milwaukee County, will face one of two conservatives in a race that could tilt the balance of the court, with abortion rights, gerrymandered maps and more in the balance.MILWAUKEE — Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, won her race on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, and advanced to the general election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the most consequential American election on the 2023 calendar.On April 4, Judge Protasiewicz will face one of two conservatives for a 10-year term on the court: Daniel Kelly, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, or Jennifer Dorow, a Waukesha County judge known for presiding over the trial last fall of a man who killed six people by driving through a 2021 Christmas parade. Late Tuesday, The A.P. had not yet projected which candidate would advance along with Judge Protasiewicz.The winner of the officially nonpartisan race will tip the balance of the state’s seven-member Supreme Court, which has been controlled by conservatives since 2008. If Judge Protasiewicz prevails, the court will have a four-member liberal majority that would be likely to overturn the state’s 1849 law forbidding abortion in nearly all cases, redraw Wisconsin’s heavily gerrymandered legislative and congressional maps, and influence how the state’s 10 electoral votes are awarded after the 2024 presidential election.“Everything we care about is going to be determined by who wins this election,” Judge Protasiewicz told supporters in a victory speech on Tuesday night. Influential Democrats in Wisconsin coalesced long ago behind Judge Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz), who has endorsements from a range of top party officials and de facto support from many others. The other liberal candidate in the race, Everett Mitchell, a judge in Dane County, which includes Madison, lagged far behind the other three major candidates in fund-raising.More on Abortion Issues in AmericaAbortion Bills: More than 300 abortion-related bills — a majority of which seek restrictions — have been proposed around the United States. Doctors are the most vulnerable to punishment.A Missed Opportunity: Abortion rights activists say President Biden’s State of the Union speech could have done more to address what they view as a national health crisis.State Constitutions: Divergent decisions by state supreme courts in South Carolina and Idaho displayed how volatile the fight over abortion rights will be, as advocates and opponents push and pull over state constitutions.A New Lawsuit: A company that makes an abortion pill filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of West Virginia’s ban on the medication. A wave of similar cases are expected to be filed in coming months.Republicans split between Justice Kelly, who lost a 2020 election for a full term after being appointed in 2016 by Gov. Scott Walker, and Judge Dorow, whom Mr. Walker appointed to the Waukesha court.The fight for conservative votes grew increasingly bitter in the closing days before Tuesday’s primary election. Justice Kelly said in interviews on conservative talk radio and at campaign stops that he would not commit to endorsing Judge Dorow if she advanced to the general election, while Judge Dorow’s supporters argued that Justice Kelly was unelectable based on his performance in 2020, when he lost by 10 percentage points.The race is all but certain to become the most expensive judicial election in American history, topping the $15 million spent on a 2004 race for the Illinois Supreme Court. Already, more than $8.7 million has been spent on television and digital advertising in the Supreme Court race, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.Officials in both parties expect tens of millions more to be spent by each side during the six-week general election.Justice Kelly has used his deep-pocketed supporters as a reason to vote for him in the primary. He told conservatives gathered at a Republican Party dinner this month in Sawyer County that they should back him because he had the support of the billionaire Uihlein family, which has pledged to spend millions of dollars on his behalf. Justice Kelly said the Uihleins would not back Judge Dorow in the general election.“If it’s not me in the general election, I don’t think that money just moves over to Jennifer,” Justice Kelly said. “It just won’t be spent. So if I’m not the candidate in the general election, Jennifer will jump in completely unarmed when the left is going to spend up to $25 million.”The state’s Democrats and Judge Protasiewicz’s campaign believe Judge Dorow would be a stronger general election opponent. A Better Wisconsin Together, a Democratic super PAC, spent more than $2 million on television ads before the primary attacking Judge Dorow. The Uihleins’ super PAC, Fair Courts America, spent $2.7 million backing Mr. Kelly and attacking Judge Protasiewicz. More

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      What to Watch For in a Consequential Court Election in Wisconsin

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      Voters are going to the polls today in the primary election for a swing seat on the state’s Supreme Court, with abortion rights, gerrymandered maps and more at stake.BELOIT, Wis. — It is a funny thing about American politics that for one night, the nation’s most important campaign of 2023 descended on Cheezhead Brewing, a tavern where about 50 Republicans gathered to discuss the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.Standing in front of a Green Bay Packers logo made from green, gold and white bottle caps, Jennifer Dorow, a Waukesha County judge who is one of two conservatives running in Tuesday’s four-way primary, told the crowd on Sunday night that “fairness and impartiality are squarely on the ballot this election.”What fairness and impartiality mean, however, depends entirely on one’s political stripes.Democrats say Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, controlled by conservatives since 2008, has enacted unfair legislative maps that have allowed Republicans to take near-supermajority control of the State Assembly and Senate in an evenly divided state — making nearly everything the State Legislature does unfair. The leading liberal candidate in the race, Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County judge, calls the maps “rigged” and has said she would vote to throw them out.For conservatives like Judge Dorow, publicly telegraphing one’s intentions on the court and prejudging cases are violations of the judicial oath.But few in Wisconsin are fooled about the stakes of this officially nonpartisan race for an open seat on the seven-member court. If a liberal candidate wins a 10-year term, the court will tip in liberals’ favor, and the state would be likely to throw out its 1849 law banning abortion in nearly all cases and to redraw its legislative maps. If a conservative wins, abortion will remain illegal and Republicans will retain a lock on the Legislature for at least another decade.A protest for abortion rights last month in the rotunda at Wisconsin’s Capitol. The Supreme Court race could decide the fate of Wisconsin’s abortion ban.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe top two candidates from Tuesday’s primary will advance to the general election on April 4. As voters cast their ballots, here is what’s happening in the race.The G.O.P. establishment is fighting outsiders.Last fall, Wisconsin’s Republican establishment rallied behind Daniel Kelly, a former Supreme Court justice who, in 2020, lost a bid for re-election — just the second sitting justice to do so since 1958.But whispers soon emerged on the right about Justice Kelly’s ability to win. He lost that 2020 race by 10 percentage points, an enormous margin in battleground Wisconsin, where a three-point victory in a statewide race constitutes a blowout.Around the same time, Judge Dorow was presiding over the most prominent local court case in years — the murder trial of a man eventually convicted of killing six people by driving through a 2021 Christmas parade. She was on the news every night for weeks.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Michigan G.O.P.: Michigan Republicans picked Kristina Karamo to lead the party in the battleground state, fully embracing an election-denying Trump acolyte after her failed bid for secretary of state.Dianne Feinstein: The Democratic senator of California will not run for re-election in 2024, clearing the way for what is expected to be a costly and competitive race to succeed the iconic political figure.Lori Lightfoot: As the mayor of Chicago seeks a second term at City Hall, her administration is overseeing the largest experiment in guaranteed basic income in the nation.Union Support: In places like West Virginia, money from three major laws passed by Congress is pouring into the alternative energy industry and other projects. Democrats hope it will lead to increased union strength.There hasn’t been a Wisconsin Supreme Court race with multiple conservative candidates since the turn of the millennium, and Justice Kelly’s allies were determined to avoid one.“I personally called Jennifer before she entered the race and pleaded with her not to jump in,” Shelley Grogan, an appellate court judge who serves as a Kelly surrogate, told the Cheezhead Brewing audience. “It’s really hard for a conservative to win. So if there’s more than one person interested, they sit down and talk about it and decide who we can all get behind.”(In a subsequent interview, Judge Grogan said she was interested in running for the State Supreme Court in the future. A liberal justice’s term is up in 2025, and a conservative justice’s will expire in 2026.)Jennifer Dorow, a Waukesha County judge, is one of two conservatives running in Tuesday’s four-way primary.Caleb Alvarado for The New York TimesJudge Dorow told the audience she would not wait her turn.“I don’t believe in deciding candidates in a back room,” she said. “I believe it’s important that the voters in the state of Wisconsin do that.”The 2020 election still looms large — for both parties.When the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled, in a series of 4-to-3 votes, to uphold Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 2020 victory in Wisconsin, it was a conservative justice, Brian Hagedorn, who provided the key vote to reject President Donald J. Trump’s argument to invalidate 200,000 votes.Those decisions have energized Democrats, who are poised to pour tens of millions of dollars behind Judge Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz). But they have also animated Justice Kelly, who has repeatedly accused Judge Dorow of being the second coming of Justice Hagedorn — a sort of untrustworthy Trojan horse who would betray Republicans when it counts.Justice Kelly, who The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week revealed has for two years been paid by the Republican National Committee to work on “election integrity issues,” has repeatedly tied Judge Dorow to Justice Hagedorn. Along with voting against Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, Justice Hagedorn sided with several pandemic mitigation efforts by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, in 2020. Justice Hagedorn has been a reliable conservative vote on most matters, including redistricting, but many on the right have not forgiven him for defying Mr. Trump.“I’m kind of in the same place that I was with Brian Hagedorn, all I have is what she says about herself,” Justice Kelly said at a meeting of Republicans on Monday night in Sheboygan. “Jennifer may very well be a judicial conservative, she might be, I just don’t know because there’s nothing there to tell me that she is.”Justice Hagedorn, in an email, said he was “not interested in commenting at this time.”Republicans are arguing about what it means to be electable.Justice Kelly’s 2020 defeat is the animating feature of Judge Dorow’s campaign.“I’m the only conservative who can win in April,” she wrote on Twitter, linking to a radio advertisement in which one of Milwaukee’s leading conservative talk radio hosts delivered a monologue supporting her candidacy.But besides offering the basic bromides about being a conservative judge who will abide by the Constitution, Judge Dorow has said little else about her candidacy. She has declined nearly all interview requests, and in Beloit a campaign aide said she would respond only to preapproved questions. She did not linger at the bar to speak with voters after her remarks.Judge Janet Protasiewicz is the leading liberal in the officially nonpartisan race.Caleb Alvarado for The New York TimesJustice Kelly has been much more explicit about his political advantages. He has support from the billionaire Uihlein family, whose super PAC, Fair Courts America, has spent $2.7 million on ads backing him and attacking Judge Protasiewicz. Justice Kelly has said major conservative donors will abandon the race if he does not advance to the general election. A spokesman for Fair Courts America did not respond to questions.“You need to be the kind of candidate that will attract the independent expenditures to get the message out across Wisconsin,” Justice Kelly told Republicans gathered at a Lincoln Day dinner in Sawyer County this month. “If it’s not me in the general election, it’s not like that money just moves over to Jennifer. It just won’t be spent. So if I’m not the candidate in the general election, Jennifer will jump in completely unarmed when the left is going to spend upwards of $25 million.”Democrats seem to prefer to face Justice Kelly and the Uihlein money rather than Judge Dorow’s shallower record.A Better Wisconsin Together, a Democratic super PAC, has spent $2 million in TV ads attacking Judge Dorow in the primary but nothing against Justice Kelly. Democratic opposition research has been focused on damaging Judge Dorow, who is less well known but perceived as more likable and reasonable than Justice Kelly by voters in Democratic focus groups.Democrats are vowing not to replay their 2022 Senate race.Last year, Wisconsin Democrats watched as Mandela Barnes, a popular, progressive, young Black candidate coalesced support before losing the general election to Senator Ron Johnson, a better-funded, older white Republican.Determined not to repeat that recent history, the party’s top leaders and fund-raisers coalesced behind Judge Protasiewicz, a white, female career prosecutor and jurist from the suburbs who is not as vulnerable to the types of barely coded attacks that helped doom Mr. Barnes last fall.Judge Protasiewicz built a commanding fund-raising advantage and has opened a wide lead in both parties’ private polling ahead of the primary. She is widely expected to place first on Tuesday, with the other liberal candidate in the race, Everett Mitchell, a more progressive Black judge from Dane County, projected to finish fourth.The near unanimity among Democrats combined with a fractured G.O.P. has Democrats planning and Republicans fearing a mountain of attack ads beginning as soon as Wednesday against whichever conservative candidate advances to a likely matchup with Judge Protasiewicz. A reverse dynamic in August damaged Mr. Barnes, while Mr. Johnson and his allies poured tens of millions into attack ads before the Democrat could recover.“There is no world in which Janet is defined by the right in the first weeks of the race,” said Sachin Chheda, a top strategist on the Protasiewicz campaign. “We are prepared for whatever the results are on Tuesday and will be hitting the pedal to the floor on Wednesday.” More

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      In Wisconsin’s supreme court race, a super-rich beer family calls the shots

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      In Wisconsin’s supreme court race, a super-rich beer family calls the shotsMembers of the Uihlein dynasty are pouring millions into opposite sides of one of this year’s most important electionsWhen Wisconsinites vote on Tuesday in primary elections for a justice’s seat on the state’s supreme court, few will be aware that much of the big money pouring into this race hails from just one family whose fortunes flow from beer.‘Stakes are monstrous’: Wisconsin judicial race is 2023’s key electionRead moreMillions of dollars have been injected into the battle by members of the Uihlein family, a manufacturing dynasty with roots in Milwaukee. The huge sums could help determine the balance of power on the state’s top court and in turn influence critical areas of public life – from abortion to voting rights, and potentially even the 2024 presidential election.The source of the Uihleins’ fabulous wealth traces back to 1875, when Joseph Schlitz, the owner of a brewing company, died in a shipwreck off the Isles of Scilly. Control of the firm passed to four Uihlein brothers who were next in the line of inheritance and who went on to build the brand into the largest beer producer in America. Schlitz became ubiquitous under the jingle: “The beer that made Milwaukee famous.”Though its star has fallen, Schlitz beer is still popular in the midwest, and the Uihleins have gone on to become even richer and more powerful. They have also diversified their wealth and in recent years have started to wield it as a political weapon.Tuesday’s election for a Wisconsin supreme court position has been the target of huge amounts of Uihlein money – surprisingly, on both sides of the political divide. On one side stand the billionaire couple Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, owners of the Wisconsin-based shipping supplies company Uline, who are on track to pump millions of dollars into the race in support of a conservative judicial candidate, Dan Kelly.On the other side, Richard’s cousin Lynde Bradley Uihlein, a prominent funder of progressive causes, has already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the liberal-leaning judges vying for the supreme court seat.An expensive raceHow just one family rose to such pre-eminence in political spending, only to become split between opposing factions, is a very Wisconsin story. The state once prided itself on its campaign finance rules that put voters before donors, bore down on conflicts of interest and corruption, and required openness and transparency.But in 2010, the US supreme court unleashed untold amounts of corporate and individual wealth into elections through its controversial ruling Citizens United. Five years later the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature lifted the ceiling on personal donations to political parties in the state.The result was an avalanche of outside spending on elections in Wisconsin, which in recent cycles has become an increasingly key battleground state with the ability, through its 10 electoral college votes, to make or break presidential campaigns. The abundance of money has now reached even the lesser-known contests over judicial positions, as Tuesday’s primary amply illustrates.Four candidates are running in the primary: two conservatives, Kelly, a former supreme court justice, and judge Jennifer Dorow; and two liberals, the county court judges Janet Protasiewicz and Everett Mitchell. The two candidates who gain most votes in the primary will face off in the general election in April.Revealed: Trump secretly donated $1m to discredited Arizona election ‘audit’ Read moreConservatives currently command a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin supreme court, but with the retirement of one of the conservative justices there is now a chance to flip the court. That would potentially allow progressives to legalise abortion, push back extreme Republican gerrymandering in the drawing of electoral maps and resist any election-denying challenges in next year’s presidential battle.With stakes so high, vast sums are already being channeled by outside groups into political TV and radio advertising. The Brennan Center’s Buying Time 2023 database has already recorded more than $6m of political ad orders for the primary alone – a statistic that might be overshadowed once the general election gets underway.A slew of special interests have waded into the race, with an offshoot of the anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America promising to invest six figures in Kelly’s campaign. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Kelly himself has predicted that total outside donations could reach $20m – a sum that dwarfs anything Wisconsin has ever seen – bragging that he was the candidate best placed to attract the cash.The Brennan Center’s counsel Douglas Keith said that the supreme court election was on track to be the most expensive in Wisconsin history, “and could very well end up being the most expensive in the country’s history”.“It’s escalating rapidly,” said Barry Burden, a political science professor at University of Wisconsin – Madison. “If $15m, $20m, $25m is spent on this race it’s more than you see in governor’s races in some states.”A family dividedAmid the millions being flung at the election, the Uihlein family name stands out – both for the sheer scale of its spending and for the fact that family members are fighting each other across the political schism.Over the past decade, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein have joined the top five biggest Republican mega-donors in the US. They have lavished more than $230m on federal candidates alone.Among the politicians they have championed are some of the most notorious allies of Donald Trump. They include Ron Johnson, the Republican senator from Wisconsin, who ran a racially charged re-election campaign last November, and Marjorie Taylor Green, the extremist congresswoman from Georgia.The Uihleins live in a suburb of Chicago, but their heritage lies in Wisconsin. Richard’s great-grandfather was August Uihlein, one of the four brothers who inherited the Schlitz beer empire following the fateful shipwreck.According to the Brennan Center’s database of ad spending and official Wisconsin campaign finance records, Richard and Elizabeth have already given $40,000 of their own personal fortune to support Kelly, while injecting almost $2m more into the supreme court race through an outside group. Fair Courts America, a Super Pac largely bankrolled by Richard Uihlein, was created in 2020 with the aim of combatting the “woke mob” by shifting the balance of state and federal courts towards the far right.Latest figures compiled by the Brennan Center show that Fair Courts America has already placed TV and radio ad orders of $1.8m backing Kelly. “Madison liberals are trying to take over the Wisconsin supreme court,” one of the Super Pac’s ads says. “That’s why we need to elect conservative justice Dan Kelly.”Deploying her vast wealth in the opposite direction is Lynde Bradley Uihlein, another direct heir to the Schlitz brewing empire. Her grandfather, Harry Lynde Bradley, founded the Bradley Foundation, a rightwing powerhouse that has created a network of thinktanks and dark money groups that has helped transform Wisconsin over the past decade into a conservative bastion.Like her cousin Richard, Lynde Uihlein operates largely in the shadows, to the extent that it remains unclear why she would have bucked the family tradition and sided with progressive rather than conservative causes. She has given $20,000 of her own wealth – the maximum allowed under Wisconsin law – directly to the campaign coffers of the liberal-leaning judge Protasiewicz.In addition, she has donated $200,000 to Democratic groups in the past year as well as $250,000 to A Better Wisconsin Together, a political fund that funnels dark money – contributions whose origins cannot easily be traced – to progressive statewide candidates.Conservative donors pour ‘dark money’ into case that could upend US voting lawRead moreA Better Wisconsin Together has become the main financial backer of the two liberal candidates in the state supreme court race, pumping almost as much cash into the election as its conservative rival, Fair Courts America. The latest tally from the Brennan Center shows A Better Wisconsin Together ordering $1.6m of political TV and radio ads in the primary election alone.Keith of the Brennan Center said that the financial injection of rival Uihlein money in the election raised a profound question: “Do we want who sits on our state supreme courts to be decided as a result of a fight between the members of one of the wealthiest families in the state?”Matthew Rothschild, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a non-profit monitoring money and politics, said this week’s election was a “grotesque example of what happens when you get rid of campaign donation limits that restrict how much the super-rich can throw around.“We’re suffering the results: the voice of the average person is being drowned out.”TopicsWisconsinLaw (US)US politicsUS political financingfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Democrats Meddle Again in a G.O.P. Primary, This Time Down-Ballot

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      In a race for a State Senate seat in Wisconsin, Democrats are replicating their midterm strategy of elevating far-right Republicans in hopes of beating them in the general election.Last year, Democrats spent millions of dollars elevating far-right candidates in Republican primary contests for governor and Congress — betting, it turned out correctly, that more extreme opponents would lose general elections.Now Wisconsin Democrats are trying to do it again, this time with mail and TV ads before a Republican primary in a special election for a State Senate seat that carries ramifications far beyond the district in suburban Milwaukee.The Democrats are helping a far-right election denier who has become a pariah within her party in her race against a less extreme, but still election-denying, conservative. They hope that with a more vulnerable opponent, Democrats can win a seat held for decades by Republicans and deny the G.O.P. a veto-proof majority in the gerrymandered chamber.“Janel Brandtjen is as conservative as they come,” reads a postcard sent to Republican voters from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which calls her “a conservative pro-Trump Republican.”The Feb. 21 primary, and the April 4 general election to follow, will serve as the latest test of how much appetite Republican voters have for the flavor of election denialism that fueled the party’s grass roots after former President Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election loss.The twist in the Wisconsin race is that both leading Republican candidates took significant public steps to try to overturn Mr. Trump’s defeat. One of them, however, Ms. Brandtjen, a state representative from Menomonee Falls, has so alienated members of her own party that she was kicked out of the State Assembly’s Republican caucus, leaving Democrats giddy about the prospect of facing her in a special election for a battleground district.“If Janel Brandtjen makes it through the primary, it’s going to allow people in Wisconsin to have a clear choice of what it is that they’re voting for in the election in April,” said Melissa Agard, the Democratic leader in the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Senate, who said the race would be more winnable for Democrats if Ms. Brandtjen, pronounced Bran-chen, triumphed in the primary.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.Union Support: In places like West Virginia, money from three major laws passed by Congress is pouring into the alternative energy industry and other projects. Democrats hope it will lead to increased union strength.A Chaotic Majority: The defining dynamic for House Republicans, who have a slim majority, may be the push and pull between the far right and the rest of the conference. Here is a closer look at the fractious caucus.A New Kind of Welfare: In a post-Roe world, some conservative thinkers are pushing Republicans to move on from Reagan-era family policy and send cash to families. A few lawmakers are listening.Flipping the Pennsylvania House: Democrats swept three special elections in solidly blue House districts, putting the party in the majority for the first time in a dozen years by a single seat.Some Republicans agree.The Republican State Leadership Committee, the leading national organization that backs G.O.P. state legislative candidates, is broadcasting digital ads promoting State Representative Dan Knodl before the primary. And Country First, a political action committee started by former Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — who retired from Congress after voting to impeach Mr. Trump — has bought digital ads calling Ms. Brandtjen “an embarrassment.”Like Ms. Brandtjen, Mr. Knodl was among the 91 state legislators from several states who signed a letter urging Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021. He shares Ms. Brandtjen’s vehement opposition to abortion rights.Ms. Brandtjen, who said in December 2020 that there was “no doubt” Mr. Trump had won that year’s election in Wisconsin, became a favorite of the former president’s in 2021 after being appointed to lead the Wisconsin Assembly’s elections committee.From that perch, she amplified a range of false claims about the 2020 election; invited conspiracy theorists to testify before the panel; sought to initiate an Arizona-style review of Wisconsin’s ballots; and appeared at rallies aiming to pressure her Republican colleagues to withdraw the state’s 2020 electoral votes — an impossible act under the U.S. Constitution. Mr. Trump praised her in his official statements and had her speak at a rally for midterm candidates he held in Wisconsin in August 2022.But Ms. Brandtjen, a longtime figure in local conservative politics dating to her time two decades ago as a gadfly at Menomonee Falls village board meetings, did not fully draw the ire of her fellow Republicans until she endorsed the Trump-backed primary opponent of Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, who has been the state’s most powerful Republican official since 2019, when Democrats took over the governor’s office.After Mr. Vos narrowly prevailed, he removed her as the elections committee chairwoman and organized his fellow Assembly Republicans to expel Ms. Brandtjen from the party’s caucus.Asked Monday about his preference in the State Senate special election, Mr. Vos replied in a text message: “Lol. Let me quote Sarah Huckabee Sanders, ‘normal vs crazy.’ I would vote normal.”A third Republican candidate in the race, Van Mobley, the president of the village of Thiensville, was among just a handful of Wisconsin elected officials who backed Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. He is far less known in the district than Ms. Brandtjen and Mr. Knodl, a bar owner from Germantown. None of the three Republican candidates responded to messages.The Democratic candidate, Jodi Habush Sinykin, a lawyer who is unopposed in her primary, is running television ads aimed at raising Ms. Brandtjen’s profile.A parade of women in Ms. Habush Sinykin’s ads call Ms. Brandtjen “too conservative” and cite her opposition to abortion rights and her citation as “pro-life legislator of the year” from a Wisconsin organization that opposes abortion rights.In all, Ms. Habush Sinykin has spent $166,000 on advertising, while neither Ms. Brandtjen nor Mr. Knodl has bought any television or digital ads, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.Ms. Habush Sinykin declined a request to be interviewed about the campaign and her advertisements. Democratic polling of the race suggests that she could beat Ms. Brandtjen in a general election but would have a far tougher race against Mr. Knodl.“We’re continuing to highlight Janel Brandtjen and how she would be a disaster in the State Senate,” said Joe Oslund, a spokesman for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “We’re going to continue to put her extremism front and center for voters.”Wisconsin Republicans hold a 21-11 advantage in the State Senate after the state adopted new G.O.P.-drawn legislative maps ahead of the midterm elections. If a Republican wins the special election to the Senate, the party will hold a veto-proof majority and will have the votes to impeach Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, his appointees to state cabinet posts and state judges.Like many once solidly Republican suburban areas, the district, which covers parts of four counties in Milwaukee’s northern and northwestern suburbs, has trended toward Democrats in recent years. Mr. Trump won the district by 12 percentage points in 2016, but that advantage narrowed to five points in 2020. In 2018, Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, won the district by 20.5 points, but last year the G.O.P. nominee for governor, Tim Michels, carried it by just four points.The seat opened up when Alberta Darling, a 78-year-old moderate Republican who was first elected in 1992, announced her retirement in November. Mr. Evers praised her as “a diligent leader who’s always carried herself with poise, class, and grace.”Kitty Bennett More

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      ‘Stakes are monstrous’: Wisconsin judicial race is 2023’s key election

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      ‘Stakes are monstrous’: Wisconsin judicial race is 2023’s key electionControl of state supreme court could flip from conservative to liberal with big consequences for most gerrymandered US state Voting is under way in an under-the-radar race that could wind up being the most important election in America this year.At stake is control of the Wisconsin supreme court. Because control of state government in Wisconsin is split between Democrats and Republicans, the seven-member body has increasingly become the forum to get a final decision on some of the most consequential issues in the state – from voting rights to abortion.Wisconsin Republican who bragged about low turnout faces calls to resignRead moreSince Wisconsin is one of the most politically competitive states and a critical presidential battleground, these decisions have national resonance. Millions of dollars have already begun to pour into the race, which is widely expected to become the most expensive supreme court election in state history. The state primary is on 21 February and the top two finishers will advance to a general election in April.Conservatives currently have a 4-3 majority on the court. One of the conservative justices, Patience Roggensack, is retiring, giving liberals a chance to flip the court. The outcome of that race in April will determine control of the court through the 2024 presidential elections.“The stakes are monstrous,” said Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. “There’s a confluence of factors that have come together, intentionally or not to make this a terribly important race for the future of the state.”Pivotal stateFew state supreme courts across the country have played as powerful a role in shaping high-profile laws in recent years as the Wisconsin supreme court has. The court has frequently decided election disputes in the state, where contests are regularly decided by razor-thin margins. In 2020, it narrowly rejected a request from Donald Trump’s campaign to consider throwing out enough mail-in votes to overturn the election results.“Wisconsin’s been the tipping point state in the last two presidential elections,” said Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic party. He pointed out that Wisconsin “is the only state where four of the last six presidential elections came down to less than one percentage point. Which means that small shifts in the rules around voting can have a decisive effect in presidential elections.“Wisconsin’s supreme court race on April 4 is the most important election in the country before November 2024,” he added.The state supreme court has also picked maps that allowed Republicans to maintain control over the state legislature and outlawed ballot drop boxes, making it harder for voters to return their mail-in ballots.More critical decisions are on the horizon. The court is expected to rule in the near future on whether Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban will remain on the books. The ban went into effect after the US supreme court’s decision last year striking down Roe v Wade. Wisconsin’s attorney general, Josh Kaul, is challenging the ban in court, arguing that subsequent laws passed in the state have nullified it.The court has also issued important decisions limiting the appointment powers of Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, and struck down the statewide mask mandate during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.How can the court change?Four candidates are currently in the race – two liberals and two conservatives. On the liberal side, Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee county circuit court judge, and Everett Mitchell, a Dane county judge. Dan Kelly, a former supreme court justice who lost his seat in 2020 and Jennifer Dorow, a judge who oversaw a high-profile trial of a man convicted of killing six people at a Waukesha Christmas parade, are running.“If in fact a justice who is more in the progressive left tradition succeeds here, then the nature of the court will change, we’ll see different decisions than we’ve tended to see in the recent past. If a justice who is more sort of conservative originalist is elected then we won’t see a change,” said Richard Esenberg, who has argued before the court as the president and general counsel of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. “That can affect some very significant issues.”Supreme court justices are elected to 10-year terms in Wisconsin in what are technically non-partisan contests. But the races have taken a hard partisan edge as the court’s influence has grown, with some candidates signaling their views on hot-button issues without saying directly how they would vote.“It is a break from the past that it’s more open and explicit,” Burden said. “It’s really the politicization of the court and its growing prominence in policymaking that’s made everyone more comfortable.”Republicans have already seized on Protasiewicz’s blunt comments about the maps – she called them “rigged” at a forum last month – and abortion, and filed a judicial complaint against her, accusing her of weighing in on an issue that could come before the court. Protasiewicz said she had no regrets.“People in our state deserve to know our candidate’s values,” she said. “I said the maps are rigged. I think the truth is an absolute defense. I don’t think anybody can say that those maps are accurate and that they reflect the people of the state of Wisconsin. No, I absolutely stand by those comments.”Protasiewicz said in an interview she decided to run for the race to focus on “saving democracy” after seeing the state supreme court choose state legislative maps that benefited Republicans. The maps are so distorted that Republican control of the state legislature is essentially guaranteed for another decade, regardless of what voters want.If a liberal wins the race, Democrats have pledged to swiftly bring a new lawsuit challenging the maps.“You look at the legislature, which is potentially on the verge of a supermajority, you look at that makeup of 65 to 75% red and you know it doesn’t represent the people here,” Protasiewicz said. “You look at it and you know something’s wrong.”How much it costsState supreme court races, especially in years where there aren’t any federal races on the ballot, are usually low-turnout affairs. But Protasiewicz said she had encountered crowded events as she campaigns and that voters were “very tuned in”.Mitchell said he had not seen the same engagement, but had been reminding voters of how courts could affect their daily lives. “A majority of people, it’s just not on their radar,” he said. “For some people this was like number 13 on their priority list. Because they’re [dealing with] inflation, and children, and healthcare, and public health.”The biggest sign of the race’s importance may be the flood of money that’s already coming in. The contest is expected to be the most expensive supreme court in state history, and maybe the most expensive ever in the US.In 2020, candidates and outside groups spent about $10m on a race for the state supreme court that year, setting a new record. This year’s race could shatter that. Candidates and outside groups have already spent more than $5m in ads, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which is tracking the election.“It’s escalating rapidly,” Burden said. “If $15m, $20m, $25m is spent on this race, it’s more than you see in governor’s races in some states.”Protasiewicz has already reported raising just under $1m and is on the air with ads touting her support for abortion. Fair Courts America, a Super Pac linked to the GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein, has said it is willing to spend millions in support of Kelly.“It’s really expensive to get your message out right. It’s really expensive. It would be nice if we could just all fundraise our money. But you know Citizens United has pretty much taken that away from people,” Protasiewicz said in an interview.“It makes it hard for us to ever think that these races can be non-partisan if so much money can be thrown into these races,” Mitchell said.For years, Democrats faced criticism for not taking down-ballot races, like state supreme court contests, seriously enough. In 2019, when Democrats lost a key state supreme court race, Eric Holder, the former US attorney general, publicly sounded the alarm that Democrats were not paying attention. “This should be a wake-up call for us. I felt a little lonely out there in Wisconsin,” he told Mother Jones after the Democratic candidate lost.Democrats started to reverse that trend in 2020, winning a state supreme court race. This year is a chance to continue that, Wikler said.“For a long time Democrats didn’t take judicial races seriously enough and Republicans threw down in these contests,” he said. “This is the moment for Democrats across the country to demonstrate that they’ve learned the lesson of these last few years and take these races just as seriously as they take Senate and governor’s races. It really feels like it’s picking up now.”TopicsWisconsinThe fight for democracyUS justice systemUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Trump campaign promised to ‘fan the flame’ of 2020 election lie, audio reveals – as it happened

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      A senior member of Trump’s re-election campaign said that campaigners were going to “fan the flame” and spread the false claim that Democrats were “trying to steal this election” in a leaked November 2020 audio clip, the Associated Press first reported.In the obtained audio recording, Andrew Iverson discussed the communications strategy for Trump’s reelection in Wisconsin, as Democrats outflanked Republicans in the region.At the time, Iverson led reelection efforts in Wisconsin, a key battleground state which Biden eventually won by over 20,000 votes in 2020.“Here’s the deal: comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need. Just be on standby if there’s any stunts we need to pull,” said Iverson.The audio was given to the Associated Press by a former Trump operative, who withheld their name fearing political and personal retaliation. The unnamed operative was motivated as Trump prepares for a third reelection campaign for the US presidency.Iverson, who is now the midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee (RNC), has deferred questions from the Associated Press to RNC spokesperson Keith Schipper.Schipper declined to comment, saying that he has not heard the audio.That’s it for the US politics live blog! Here is a summary of what happened today:
      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris traveled to Philadelphia today and announced $500m that will be used to upgrade water pipes in the region. “Water ought to be something that’s just guaranteed,” said Biden, noting that the US is the richest country in the world.
      The Indiana Republican Victoria Spartz said today she will not run for an open Senate seat in 2024 and will also retire from her seat in the US House.
      Biden boasted about the better-than-expected latest jobs figures. “Today, I am happy to report that the state of our union and the state of our economy is strong,” said Biden, referring to the over 500,000 jobs that were created in January.
      Secretary of State Antony Blinken will postpone a scheduled trip to China after yesterday’s discovery of what is believed to be a Chinese spy balloon over the US, sailing above the US and within peering distance of a nuclear weapons installation.
      A senior member of Donald Trump’s Wisconsin 2020 election campaign said their team should “fan the flame” of denial about Trump’s key loss in Wisconsin to Biden and and spread the false claim that Democrats were “trying to steal this election”, according to a leaked November 5, 2020 audio clip.
      Thank you for reading; have a great weekend!The Democratic National Convention will vote on a committee recommendation to alter the presidential primary calendar in 2024 during their upcoming Saturday meeting, reported the Hill.Biden previously ordered Democrats to change the primary calendar to better support non-white voters.Here’s more information on Biden’s request from the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt: .css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Democrats are poised to shake up the way in which they nominate presidential candidates, after Joe Biden said the primary process should better represent the party’s non-white voters.
      Biden has reportedly told Democrats that Iowa, the state that has led off the Democratic voting calendar since 1976, should be moved down the calendar, with South Carolina instead going first.
      The move would see New Hampshire, which has technically held the nation’s first primary since 1920 (Iowa uses a slightly different system of caucuses, or in-person voting), shunted down the calendar.
      Both Iowa and New Hampshire are predominantly white states. Clamor has been growing inside and outside the Democratic party for a different state, with a population more representative of the US as a whole, to be given the first go.Read the full article here.Biden tells Democrats to revise primary calendar to boost Black voters’ voicesRead moreDuring his remarks, Biden noted the importance of ensuring that all Americans have access to clean water.“Water ought to be something that’s just guaranteed,” said Biden, noting that the US is the richest country in the world.Biden said that the problem of older pipes leading to lead exposure and poisoning is an issue across America.“It’s especially bad in older cities, in the midwest and the northeast,” said Biden.“No amount of lead in water is safe. None,” Biden added.Before beginning his remarks, Biden joked about having to support the Philadelphia Eagles before their Super Bowl appearance next Sunday as his wife, Jill Biden, is from the city.From Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Jonathan Tamari:Joe Biden in Philly:”Fly Eagles Fly. I happen to mean it, but even if I didn’t, I’d say it. Otherwise, I’d be sleeping alone” he says, referring to Jill Biden— Jonathan Tamari (@JonathanTamari) February 3, 2023
      Harris is currently speaking in Philadelphia in joint remarks with Joe Biden about infrastructure investment that will upgrade clean water systems.Harris is speaking about the importance of clean drinking water, as Harris and Biden announce $500m that Philadelphia will use to address lead pipes throughout the city.“No child in America should ever have to endure that kind of experience. No parent in America should ever have that experience,” said Harris, recalling a 2 year-old child who was hospitalized for lead poisoning after drinking water out of the tap.Just three days after disgraced New York representative George Santos withdrew from House committee assignments, House Republicans have encouraged Twitter users to follow him on social media.The House Republican tagged George Santos’ official account with the hashtag “FollowFriday”, encouraging users to follow the congressman’s account.From the House Republicans Twitter account:#FollowFriday @RepSantosNY03 from #NY03! pic.twitter.com/qWn3riPcYu— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) February 3, 2023
      The New York Republican congressman remains under investigation for several lies he listed on his résumé and current campaign finance filings.A former Manhattan prosecutor wrote in a new book that he almost pursued a racketeering charge against Donald Trump, reports the New York Times.Mark F Pomerantz resigned in protest from the Manhattan district attorney’s office last year after the office’s newly elected DA, Alvin Bragg, declined to pursue an indictment against Trump.In a forthcoming book entitled “People vs. Donald Trump”, Pomerantz says that the Manhattan district attorney’s office mapped out charges to bring against Trump under the state’s racketeering law.More from the Times:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Mr. Pomerantz and his colleagues cast a wide net, examining a host of Trump enterprises — including Trump University, his for-profit real estate education venture, and his family charitable foundation.
      “He demanded absolute loyalty and would go after anyone who crossed him. He seemed always to stay one step ahead of the law,” Mr. Pomerantz, a prominent litigator who has prosecuted and defended organized crime cases, writes of Mr. Trump. “In my career as a lawyer, I had encountered only one other person who touched all of these bases: John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organized crime family.”
      A lawyer for Mr. Trump recently sent Mr. Pomerantz a letter threatening that, “If you publish such a book and continue making defamatory statements against my clients, my office will aggressively pursue all legal remedies.”Read the full article here (paywall).Our columnist Moustafa Bayoumi has filed on the Republican move to expel Ilhan Omar from the foreign affairs committee, ostensibly over her allegedly antisemitic remarks about Israel, and what it says about the GOP’s own problems with antisemitism…Who remembers how, in 2018 and just days before the deadliest attack on Jewish people in US history, a prominent US politician tweeted: “We cannot allow Soros, Steyer, and Bloomberg to BUY this election!”?The tweet was widely – and correctly – understood as dangerously antisemitic, particularly heinous in a period of rising anti-Jewish hatred. And whose tweet was this? If you thought the answer was Minnesota’s Democratic representative Ilhan Omar then, well, you’d be wrong. The author was none other than the House majority leader at the time, Republican Kevin McCarthy.And who can forget when Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has tweeted that “Joe Biden is Hitler”, speculated that the wildfires in California were caused by a beam from “space solar generators” linked to “Rothschild, Inc.”, a clear wink to bizarre antisemitic conspiracy theories. Incidentally, Greene, who has a long record of antisemitic and anti-Muslim statements, has been recently appointed, by the same Kevin McCarthy, now speaker of the House, to the homeland security committee.Then there’s former president Donald Trump, who dines with Holocaust deniers like Nick Fuentes and antisemites like Ye. In stereotypically anti-Jewish moves, Trump has repeatedly called the loyalty of Jewish Americans into question. Just this past October, he wrote that “US Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – Before it is too late!”In case it’s not obvious, let me state it plainly. Today’s Republican party has a serious antisemitism problem. The easy acceptance and amplification of all sorts of anti-Jewish hate that party leaders engage in emboldens all the worst bigots, raving racists, and far-right extremists across the globe, all the while threatening Jewish people here and everywhere.So it is more than a little rich that House Republicans voted on Thursday to remove Omar from the foreign affairs committee, where she’s served since 2019, because, they say, of her antisemitic views.Read on:Republicans have a serious antisemitism problem. It isn’t Ilhan Omar | Moustafa BayoumiRead moreAfter less than seven minutes, Jean-Pierre’s gaggle has come to an end as the press secretary told reporters that passengers were being instructed to sit down due to turbulence.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is currently in a gaggle aboard Air Force 1, on route to Philadelphia where Harris and Biden will give remarks on the city’s upgraded water systems.Jean-Pierre answered several questions on the status of the Chinese spy balloon that was reported above the US.“The president was briefed on this on Tuesday,” adding that Biden has continued to receive updates on the spy balloon.The recommendation from US military officials was not to take “kinetic action” due to safety risks for people on the ground.Jean-Pierre did not answer questions on if the US will attempt to capture the balloon, but added that the Pentagon is “keeping a close eye on it” and will continue to monitor it.The Indiana Republican Victoria Spartz said today she will not run for an open Senate seat in 2024 and will also retire from her seat in the US House.The decision ends speculation which mounted when the 44-year-old refused to back Kevin McCarthy during last month’s 15-vote marathon for House speaker, voting “present” instead of backing any of the rightwing figures put up against McCarthy by a group of far-right rebels.She told reporters: “My concern is that … we didn’t come together yet. So, we have to go back … as a group of people, and figure it out.”Some observers, however, suggested that Spartz might be hedging her bets ahead of a Senate run.Seems not. In a statement on Friday, the Ukraine-born Spartz said: “It’s been my honor representing Hoosiers in the Indiana state senate and US Congress and I appreciate the strong support on the ground. 2024 will mark seven years of holding elected office and over a decade in Republican politics.“I won a lot of tough battles for the people and will work hard to win a few more in the next two years. However, being a working mom is tough and I need to spend more time with my two high-school girls back home, so I will not run for any office in 2024.”Jim Banks, a prominent hardliner in the US House, is the favourite to win the Republican primary to replace the retiring Mike Braun in the US Senate. Donald Trump has endorsed Banks.Texts sent by Alex Jones show the rightwing media figure repeatedly texted with members of the Proud Boys in 2020.Jones conversed with Gavin McInnes, the founder of Proud Boys, and Jason Biggs, who is on trial for seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol attack of 6 January 2021, an attempt to keep Donald Trump in office despite his election loss to Joe Biden.Some 22,000 of Jones’ texts, spanning August 2019 to 15 May 2020, were reviewed by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch reporting team.Jones also frequently texted with Roger Stone, the rightwing political fixer sentenced to 40 months in prison in 2020 over his attempts to sabotage a congressional investigation that posed a political threat to Trump. Jones was pardoned by Trump in December 2020.Hatewatch found that despite Jones using his Infowars broadcaststo rail against pornography as a plot to “end the family”, he repeatedly texted links to pornographic videos.The messages also offer a glimpse into Jones’ state of mind as he was being sued by multiple parents of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting, after he repeatedly said the shooting was a hoax.In one message, Jones told his wife “I am in hell”. A message to his father described his situation as like “a black hole”.Hatewatch obtained the messages from Mark Bankston, an attorney who represented Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of Jesse Lewis, who was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. Heslin and Lewis sued Jones for defamation, and were awarded $49m.Bankston received the messages from Jones’ lawyers, after they mistakenly sent their legal opponent 22,000 of Jones’ texts.Hello again, live blog readers, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are heading to Philadelphia this afternoon to talk about the economy and we’ll have that news for you as it happens, so do stick around.It’s been a morning of mixed politics developments, here’s where things stand so far:
      Biden and Harris are due to speak in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at 3.15pm ET, with remarks on the economy. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will “gaggle” with accompanying reporters aboard Air Force One en route to the city, available on audio via the White House Live link, expected around 1.40pm ET.
      The US president tooted his horn over the better-than-expected latest jobs figures. “Today, I am happy to report that the state of our union and the state of our economy is strong,” said Biden, referring to the over 500,000 jobs that were created in January.
      Secretary of State Antony Blinken will postpone a scheduled trip to China after yesterday’s discovery of what is believed to be a Chinese spy balloon over the US, sailing above Montana within peering distance of a nuclear weapons installation.
      A senior member of Donald Trump’s Wisconsin 2020 election campaign said their team should “fan the flame” of denial about Trump’s key loss there to Biden and and spread the false claim that Democrats were “trying to steal this election” in a leaked November 5, 2020 audio clip. The guy on tape is still a senior RNC figure.
      Indiana representative Victoria Spartz announced in a statement today that she will not be seeking reelection or running for the US Senate.“I will not run for any office in 2024,” said Spartz, who is Republican, in a statement.Rep. Victoria Spartz announces that she’s not running for Senate in 2024 — or for reelection #IN05 pic.twitter.com/V1ZQlmE1A7— Erin Covey (@ercovey) February 3, 2023
      The announcement comes as rumors circulated around a potential Senate run from Spartz given an open seat.Spartz received wide attention for voting ‘present’ during House speaker elections, where House Speaker Kevin McCarthy required 15 votes to secure the position. More

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      Trump campaign promised to ‘fan the flame’ of 2020 election lie, audio reveals – live

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      Secretary of State Antony Blinken will postpone a scheduled trip to China after yesterday’s discovery of a Chinese spy balloon over the US.Here’s more on the discovery of the spy balloon, from the Guardian’s Julian Borger:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The Pentagon has said it is tracking a Chinese spy balloon flying over the US but decided against shooting it down for safety reasons.
      Defence officials said the balloon had been watched since it entered US airspace at high altitude a couple of days ago. It has been monitored by several methods including crewed aircraft, and has most recently been tracked crossing Montana, where the US has silo-based nuclear missiles.
      As a precaution, flights from Billings Logan airport were suspended on Wednesday.
      The Chinese government has not confirmed if it owns the balloon, and state-backed media have used the incident to taunt the US.Pentagon says it is monitoring Chinese spy balloon spotted flying over USRead moreJoe Biden will be giving remarks shortly about new figures released on the January job market report.The US added 517,000 jobs in January, bringing the unemployment rate to a 53-year low of 3.4%.The latest news on the job market signified significant growth for the labor sector, even as the Federal reserve increases interest rates to address rising inflation costs.Experts had expected the unemployment rate to rise slightly last month, but the rate continued to decrease to levels seen pre-pandemic.223,000 jobs were added to the labor market in December, an overall gain but lower than the 539,000 new jobs added each month since the start of 2022.US adds 517,000 jobs in January in huge gain for labor marketRead moreIn the November 2020 clip taken two days after the 2020 election, Iverson praised Republicans’ efforts in Wisconsin while admitting that Democrats won the most votes in the state.From the Associated Press:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}At the end of the day, this operation received more votes than any other Republican in Wisconsin history…Say what you want, our operation turned out Republican or DJT supporters. Democrats have got 20,000 more than us, out of Dane County and other shenanigans in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Dane. There’s a lot that people can learn from this campaign.Despite Iverson’s private comments that Republicans had lost Wisconsin in the 2020 US presidential election, Trump allies continued to spread the false claim that the election was stolen.A senior member of Trump’s reelection campaign said that campaigners were going to “fan the flame” and spread the false claim that Democrats were “trying to steal this election” in a leaked November 2020 audio clip, the Associated Press first reported.In the obtained audio recording, Andrew Iverson discussed the communications strategy for Trump’s reelection in Wisconsin, as Democrats outflanked Republicans in the region.At the time, Iverson led reelection efforts in Wisconsin, a key battleground state which Biden eventually won by over 20,000 votes in 2020.“Here’s the deal: comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need. Just be on standby if there’s any stunts we need to pull,” said Iverson.The audio was given to the Associated Press by a former Trump operative, who withheld their name fearing political and personal retaliation. The unnamed operative was motivated as Trump prepares for a third reelection campaign for the US presidency.Iverson, who is now the midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee (RNC), has deferred questions from the Associated Press to RNC spokesperson Keith Schipper.Schipper declined to comment, saying that he has not heard the audio.Good morning, US politics live blog readers.In a newly released audio recording from November 2020, a top member of Donald Trump’s re-election campaign noted that team members were going to “fan the flame” and spread word that Democrats were “trying to steal this election”, reported the Associated Press.The recording focuses on Andrew Iverson, who led the re-election campaign in Wisconsin and is now the midwest regional director for the Republican National Committee.In the audio clip, Iverson focused on the communication strategy for Trump’s reelection campaign in Wisconsin, as Democrats were outperforming Republicans in the vital battleground state.“Here’s the deal: comms is going to continue to fan the flame and get the word out about Democrats trying to steal this election. We’ll do whatever they need. Just be on standby if there’s any stunts we need to pull,” said Iverson.Here’s what else we can expect today:
      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will travel to Philadelphia today to announced $500m that will be used to upgrade water pipes in the region. The two will also address the Democratic National Committee during its winter meeting.
      Jeff Zients is gearing up to begin his tenure as Biden’s new chief of staff, succeeding Ron Klain.
      Advocates and Black lawmakers have urged Biden to discuss police reform during his State of the Union address next week, as several high-profile police brutality incidents have occurred in recent months. More