I’m going to pull a bit of a Rachel Maddow on you today, delving into some amazing history from not all that long ago that some of us may have forgotten, and all of them are in deep denial over. If you do remember all of this, just repeat after various of us, “Repetition is good. Repetition is good.” And so are MAGA tears.
I have a substantial collection of these on Pinterest, and some in the DK Image Library
Michigan is what many of us hope to see the entire MAGA/Republican Party come to soon. Here in Good News Roundups, we regularly celebrate Republicans in Disarray, and this is it. We have a good review of how they got here to start with, and some even more recent developments to follow up.
Even Donald Trump Doesn’t Know What He Created in the MAGA Swamps of Michigan
The people assembled in this particular conference room were delegates from Michigan’s 9th Congressional District. They were among those who had come to Grand Rapids this past March for a statewide meeting to help nominate a Republican presidential candidate. And despite all of them believing that the nominee in question should be “Donald J. Trump”—as they insisted on saying his name, for some reason—they had already been there for four hours.
Motion to vacate the chair!
This scene was a small expression of the absurd dysfunction that has characterized the operations of the Michigan GOP for nearly a year. It is also a window into the problems of the current Republican Party writ large—one of many intraparty conflicts at the state and local level that are exploding across the country.
Pro Publica: Scenes From a MAGA Meltdown: Inside the “America First” Movement’s War Over Democracy by Andy Kroll
(Featured on Deadline White House)
Across the country, the Republican Party’s rank-and-file have turned on the GOP establishment. In Michigan, this schism broke the party — and maybe democracy itself.
Oh, I don’t fear for democracy, nor do I fear for the GQP.
Not long ago, this setting was friendly terrain for [Peter] Meijer. For decades, voters here rewarded sensible [sic…Sorry, I mean sick], pro-business, avowedly conservative politicians. Meijer fit the archetype of a West Michigan Republican when he first ran for Congress in 2020. He was also basically Michigan royalty as an heir to the Meijer grocery store fortune. In one of the state’s most competitive districts, he won his debut congressional race by a comfortable 6-point margin.
He voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump. In response, he faced a far-right primary challenger who had served in the Trump administration and said Biden’s 2020 victory was “simply mathematically impossible.” Meijer narrowly lost. Now, as a Senate candidate, he was trying to make amends, even pledging to vote for Trump — whom he had once called “unfit for office” — if the former president won the Republican nomination. But to some, he was still a traitor.
That’s an anecdote. But we have statewide data.
What divides the Republican Party of 2024 is not any one policy or ideology. It is not whether to support Donald Trump. The most important fault line in the party now is democracy itself. Today’s Republican insurgents believe democracy has been stolen, and they don’t trust the ability of democratic processes to restore it.
See the lunatic Project 2025.
It’s perhaps the starkest in Michigan, a place long associated with political pragmatism and a business-friendly GOP, embodied by governors George Romney, John Engler and, most recently, Rick Snyder. It was a son of Michigan, former President Gerald Ford, who once said, “I have never mistaken moderation for weakness, nor civility for surrender.”
Michigan’s dynastic families — the DeVoses [Amway] and Meijers and Van Andels [Amway] on the west side, the Romneys and Fords on the east — poured money and manpower into the Michigan Republican Party, building it into one of the most vaunted political operations in the country. They transformed Michigan from a bastion of organized labor that leaned Democratic into a toss-up state that, until recently, had a right-to-work law.
Yes, that was then, when Republicans could still pretend to have principles. Like
The Devil take the hindmost.
or Amway getting Federal law rewritten to say that they are not neither a pyramid scheme, so there!
Then,
Several years ago, however, my home state stopped making sense to me. I watched as thousands of political newcomers, whose sole qualification appeared to be fervor of belief, declared war on the Republican establishment that had been so dominant. Calling themselves the “America First” movement, these unknowns treated the DeVoses and other party leaders as the enemy.
Actually, fervor of existential dread of losing age-old privilege, and no longer being able to keep Those People in their Divinely Ordained place. (This means you.)
“We can’t keep going through election after election like this where a large plurality of the country just does not accept the outcome of the majority and refuses to abide by it,” said Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party who now works with the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “That’s when the system falls apart.”
We also have the latest series of blowups.
A solution arrived in the form of the “precinct strategy.” It was a plan promoted by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to ensure that the political establishment in both parties didn’t “steal” future elections.
The precinct strategy proved successful. In Michigan, thousands of new activists, many recruited by “America First” groups, became precinct delegates in 2022.
The first test for the new “America First” delegates came in late August 2022. In Michigan, the voters select most nominees for elected office in a normal primary election. But for two key positions with oversight of elections — attorney general and secretary of state — the precinct delegates decide the party’s nominees at a statewide convention. These conventions were often sleepy affairs, the outcome predetermined. But this time, when the party’s chair, a wealthy donor and former U.S. ambassador named Ron Weiser, took the stage, the cavernous ballroom filled with boos and jeers.
Oops.
Over the opposition of Weiser and other longtime party operatives, the “America First” contingent nominated two election deniers for attorney general and secretary of state. Matthew DePerno, a combative lawyer who had promoted a viral yet baseless theory about voting fraud in tiny Antrim County, Michigan, vowed to use the power of the attorney general’s office to investigate election crimes. Kristina Karamo, a tall, commanding woman in her late 30s with a breathless speaking style, was the “America First” pick for secretary of state. A community college instructor and live-trivia host, Karamo had come to prominence after she testified before the Michigan Legislature about irregularities involving ballot counting and voting machines she said she’d witnessed as a poll challenger in Detroit in 2020.
Cue the disaster.
As a show of political force, nominating DePerno and Karamo was impressive. As an electoral strategy, it was disastrous. Both candidates were trounced in November, and Michigan Democrats won control of all three branches of government for the first time in more than 30 years.
Now you’re talking.
Several months later, she and DePerno ran against each other to be the next chair of the Michigan Republican Party. DePerno won endorsements from Trump and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and a funder of the election-fraud movement. But the delegates rallied behind Karamo and delivered her the victory.
Cue the next disaster.
No sooner had Karamo won than paranoia set in. Standing on the convention floor just before her victory, a well-connected precinct delegate approached Beyer to deliver a message. “He says, ‘Leadership is going to let you guys have this one,’” Beyer recalled. Karamo would be chair, in other words, because party leaders let it happen. Why’d they do that, Beyer asked. “Because they believe that they can make her fail quicker than they can Matt DePerno.”
I will pass over Karamo’s incompetence, and her move to put in a new party Constitution, among other shenanigans that I encourage you to read about elsewhere.
On Jan. 6, 2024, a group of anti-Karamo delegates on the Republican state committee invoked party bylaws and voted to remove Karamo as chair. Two weeks later, the same faction elected former U.S. representative Pete Hoekstra to replace her.
Karamo refused to leave office, saying the vote to oust her was “illegitimate.” An unsigned statement issued by the state GOP called it a “political lynching.” Her critics filed a lawsuit in state court to enforce the removal vote, and Karamo said only a judge’s order could make her leave. [It did.] In the meantime, she urged her followers to travel to Detroit on March 2 for a special convention. There, they would vote on her controversial plan to rewrite the Michigan GOP’s constitution.
At his mid-February rally, Trump waded into the chaotic mess that was the Michigan Republican Party despite his supporters urging him not to. He described Hoekstra as “your new Michigan Republican Party chairman,” a line that was greeted with a mix of cheers and boos. The boos continued as Trump said he’d recommended Hoekstra for the job. “I said, ‘Do you think you could ever get this guy Hoekstra? He’s unbelievable,’” Trump said.
Karamo’s convention was called off, but another in support of her was immediately planned.
The Party under Hoekstra
Michigan GOP expects it will have to 'clarify and correct' fundraising reports
Michigan GOP Chairman Pete Hoekstra said in a letter to the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday that his administration has launched a "comprehensive audit" of the state party's finances and expects it will have to remedy problems with past fundraising disclosures.
Among the reasons critics of Karamo moved to oust her were her struggles to raise money for the party, which had about $35,000 in its bank accounts in August, according to internal records reviewed by The Detroit News.
Pete Hoekstra: ‘There’s lots of folks investing in the MI GOP’
Hoekstra suggests his party is working in Southeast Michigan to rally new members to the state GOP, but also plans to target union members.
“These are folks who are getting hammered by inflation. These are individuals that are in fear of their jobs, because of this almost religious passion that Joe Biden and Gretchen Whitmer have for electric vehicles,” Hoekstra claimed. “It really threatens the jobs of a lot of automobile industry workers in the state of Michigan.”
As if.
The Successful UAW Strike Portends a Successful EV Transition
Automakers can invest in their workers and the electric vehicles needed to cut emissions at the same time.
Fantasy, Cognitive Dissonance votes vs. Real MoneyTM—No contest.
But wait—There’s more!
Trump ‘warrior’ Mike Rogers takes flak in Michigan GOP primary for U.S. Senate
Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, endorsed by Donald Trump, is frontrunner among Republican U.S. Senate field. Challenges from Justin Amash, Sandy Pensler and physician Sherry O’Donnell could make for ‘nasty’ primary, observers say. Analysts suggest Michigan is competitive, but still a tossup race without stronger fundraising numbers.
GOP rival Sandy Pensler is running television ads attempting to link Rogers to Democrat Hillary Clinton, and fellow Senate candidate Justin Amash has repeatedly blasted Rogers as a “deep state … establishment stooge.”
Rogers, who has emerged as the frontrunner for the GOP nomination in the high-stakes race to replace retiring Democrat Debbie Stabenow, is enjoying the Trump adulation and appears unfazed by the barbs.
Among general election voters, Rogers is polling only slightly behind U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the early frontrunner in a three-candidate Democratic primary, per an April Glengariff Group poll commissioned by the Detroit Regional Chamber.
That’s now. Wait until the Rs have a candidate and a party with no money, and no way to raise enough, while Slotkin rakes it in.
Big bucks for Michigan Dems: Slotkin, Tlaib, Whitmer, Benson report hauls
The Indiana Version
Indiana GOP files brief against Rust in primary challenge
The Indiana Republican State Committee filed an amicus brief last week supporting a law that limits who can run under major party banners in Indiana.
U.S. Senate candidate John Rust is challenging the statute because it prevents him from filing as a Republican against party favorite Jim Banks, a U.S. Representative.
The 2021 law bars primary ballot access unless a candidate’s two most recent primary votes match the party they wish to represent — a measure that Marion County Superior Judge Patrick J. Dietrick ruled was unconstitutional in December.
The ruling and injunction was a win for Rust, who wouldn’t qualify for the ballot because of the two-primary rule. Banks and Rust are seeking to succeed U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, also a Republican, who is pursuing the governor’s office in the 2024 cycle.
How Indiana’s GOP gubernatorial primary became a ‘campaign about nothing’
The GOP gubernatorial primary in the heavily Republican, traditionally congenial state of Indiana has become so divisive that Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, who is running in a crowded field to succeed Gov. Eric Holcomb, says that she has only spoken to him once in the last six months.
The governor doesn’t see Crouch as his natural successor, and his own installed GOP state party chair accused her of creating a “toxic” dynamic in the party. She and five other candidates have altogether sunk a record-breaking $40 million into the contest.
But what may be most surprising is not the money or the vitriol, but the focus of the campaign itself. The run-up to the Tuesday primary has been litigated almost entirely on national issues — Sen. Mike Braun’s now-recanted support for Black Lives Matter, where the candidates stand on China, and immigration — a stark example of the nationalization of politics at every level in the era of Donald Trump.
Jim Banks, IU and other tragic authoritarian folly
Trust certain kinds of politicians to find ways to make bad situations worse.
U.S. Rep. Jim Banks, R-Indiana—also a candidate for the U.S. Senate—is but the latest example.
Banks just published an op-ed piece in The Indianapolis Star urging support for embattled Indiana University President Pamela Whitten and calling for a crackdown on student and faculty protesters at IU.
It was a foolish piece.
Banks—whose desire to appeal to the know-nothing, ignorance-is-bliss MAGA crowd apparently is without bounds—published his commentary just before the ACLU of Indiana filed suit against IU. (Disclosure: Twenty years ago, I was executive director of what is now the ACLU of Indiana.)
John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com
Feel free to tell us about GQP toxicity in your state.
Science! Lifeforms! Weirdness!
Also, you will need a serious telescope to see Uranus and Neptune. I recommend skywatching parties, which is where I have seen them.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
This image is incorrect. This order of planets will be on the 5th, not 3rd June. In addition on 5th the Moon will also be visible along the line. Misinformation. Highlighted here, but use any "planetarium night sky app" like Stellarium to see the correct order.x.com/mars_stu/statu…heavens-above.com/skychart2.aspx…
The End of Polio Is in Sight. What Have We Learned?
Sen. Chris Coons
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is a consortium of major players in the fight — the Gates Foundation, Rotary International, the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The group has the ambitious aim to end transmission of the virus that causes the disease, wild poliovirus, by the end of the year in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the two countries where it is still actively infecting humans. If the initiative succeeds, it will be the culmination of a campaign that has reduced the incidence of paralytic wild poliovirus from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to just 12 known cases last year.
The intensity of the national programs — with about 400,000 workers [mostly women] in Pakistan and 86,000 in Afghanistan — has recently reduced 12 genetic clusters of the wild poliovirus in the region to just two, and one of the two hasn’t been seen since November. “From a medical perspective, the virus is gasping in these last corridors,” says Dr. Ananda Bandyopadhyay of the Gates Foundation.
It’s a race between eradicating wild polio and Guinea worm, both with a dozen cases last year, both kept alive for years mostly by stupid civil wars.
Battery company Theion announces breakthrough anode chemistry that could transform electrified mobility
Unlocking the challenge of a durable lightweight anode is one of the key enablers for lithium-sulphur batteries, offering triple the energy density of today’s conventional lithium-Ion batteries, at just one-third of the cost while requiring significantly less energy to produce.
Funny or Fuggedaboudit
Yes, even Chick-fil-A. However, a scurrilous rumor has been going around since last year.
Snopes: Is This a Real Chick-fil-A Logo With a Pride Flag?
The fast-food restaurant chain has donated to anti-LGBTQ groups in the past.
Claim:
Chick-fil-A has placed its own “Chicken-C” logo in front of a Pride flag in honor of Pride Month in June 2023.
P. D. Q. Bach
P.D.Q. Bach - Fanfare for the Common Cold (S. 98.7)
Nothing whatsoever is known about this piece. Most musicians will probably agree that it is very rare to see the indication in music "sneezando".