Bonus Tweet of the Day

Tweet of the Day

Notice how Tulsi reserves her harshest attacks for Kamala?

Is it because Kamala is the lone black woman on the stage?

OH-04: Ex-GOP farmer who voted for Trump to challenge Ohio's Jim Jordan

A farmer from rural Ohio who voted for President Trump but has condemned his agricultural policy and since resigned from the Republican Party is testing a bid to challenge one of the President’s biggest defenders in Congress.

Chris Gibbs, a 61-year-old grain and cattle farmer in Shelby County, is launching an exploratory committee to weigh a campaign to unseat Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Urbana), his campaign plans to announce Wednesday.

Mr. Gibbs, who is considering mounting a bid as an independent, has been interviewed on CNN and CNBC about how Mr. Trump’s agricultural tariffs have harmed his business, which he says has lost 20 percent of its value in soybeans. Other farmers in the area who continue to support Mr. Trump are facing similar setbacks, he said.

“Tariffs for agriculture have been devastating,” Mr. Gibbs said. “In northwest Ohio, [farmers] have had a heck of a time.”

A farmer from rural Ohio who voted for President Trump but has condemned his agricultural policy and since resigned from the Republican Party is testing a bid to challenge one of the President’s biggest defenders in Congress.

Chris Gibbs, a 61-year-old grain and cattle farmer in Shelby County, is launching an exploratory committee to weigh a campaign to unseat Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Urbana), his campaign plans to announce Wednesday.

Mr. Gibbs, who is considering mounting a bid as an independent, has been interviewed on CNN and CNBC about how Mr. Trump’s agricultural tariffs have harmed his business, which he says has lost 20 percent of its value in soybeans. Other farmers in the area who continue to support Mr. Trump are facing similar setbacks, he said.

“Tariffs for agriculture have been devastating,” Mr. Gibbs said. “In northwest Ohio, [farmers] have had a heck of a time.”



https://www.toledoblade.com/local/politics/2019/11/19/chris-gibbs-farmer-trump-voter-to-challenge-gop-jim-jordan-election/stories/20191118169/

White House uses federal Twitter account to attack a member of the military.

Tweet of the Day

Disarming the NRA: How Guns Flipped Virginia Blue

Nearly four months later, Virginia’s Republican majority in the Senate and House was swept out in an off-year election. Now, for the first time in more than 25 years, Democrats have full control of the state government. Several pieces of progressive legislation that Republicans had blocked—workplace and housing protections for LGBTQ residents, a minimum wage hike, the Equal Rights Amendment—could soon pass. But for gun control activists, this blue wave signifies something bigger: Republicans’ allegiance to the gun lobby is eroding their appeal with suburban voters they can’t afford to lose.

After the Virginia Beach shooting, gun groups went all in on Virginia. Everytown and Moms Demand Action say they spent at least $2.5 million to elect Democrats. Giffords, the group co-founded by former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, spent $300,000 on ads. Meanwhile, the NRA—currently hobbled by political scandals and depleted finances—barely contributed $350,000 to GOP candidates. And it didn’t take defeat well. The day after the election, the NRA tweeted a photo of Bloomberg with Harvey Weinstein and a message to Watts: “Your freedom-hating group has one thing only: Bloomberg’s billions…This election was not because of you or your organization. It was because of ONE billionaire’s wallet.”

Many people were watching this election as a bellwether for 2020. “What you saw in Virginia was really a trend that had been visible in 2017 and 2018,” said Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. “President Trump is really unpopular in the suburbs, and that motivates a lot of Democrats to turn out.” But beyond Trump’s unpopularity, the shift on guns has helped flip the state’s once solidly red suburbs. Polls found that gun violence was the number one issue for Virginia voters, who showed bipartisan support for passing universal background checks and removing guns from people deemed to present a safety risk. “It used to be that Democrats wouldn’t talk about gun control outside of the most blue urban districts,” Farnsworth said, but no longer.

Case in point: the 40th District—right next door to NRA headquarters—whose longtime state Rep. Tim Hugo was the last Republican lawmaker in the Northern Virginia suburbs. Everytown and Giffords identified the district as flippable and supported Dan Helmer, an Army veteran who made gun reform the center of his campaign. Helmer told me that even before Virginia Beach, the issue of gun control was “overwhelmingly” the top concern among voters he talked with. “More Virginians die of gun violence each year than die in car accidents, which, if you think of the number of firearms and then the number of cars, is mad,” he said. He won by over six points.




https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/11/disarming-the-nra-how-guns-flipped-virginia-blue/

With Bonnen sidelined, House Republicans spearhead new PAC to protect majority

A group of Texas House Republicans is making a multimillion-dollar effort to defend the party's majority in 2020 with the speaker sidelined and Democrats pushing to flip the chamber.

Earlier this month, the group quietly filed paperwork with the Texas Ethics Commission to create Leading Texas Forward PAC, with famed Republican strategist Karl Rove listed as the treasurer.

One of the House Republicans involved in the political action committee, Rep. Charlie Geren of Fort Worth, told The Texas Tribune on Tuesday the goal is to raise about $5 million this cycle, mainly to protect GOP incumbents in the general election. But he said the group could also get involved in primaries to boost incumbents as well as open-seat races.

Democrats are effectively nine seats away from the majority, and the group's formation comes as House Republicans regroup after the scandal that caused Speaker Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, to announce last month he will not seek reelection. Bonnen had set up a PAC to protect the majority seeded with $3 million of his own campaign funds — money whose fate remains unknown.

Geren said Tuesday he has not spoken to Bonnen about what he will do with the $3 million.

The TEC paperwork for the PAC lists five House Republicans as "contribution decision makers" and "expenditure decision makers": Geren, as well as Reps. Drew Darby of San Angelo, Lyle Larson of San Antonio, Four Price of Amarillo and Chris Paddie of Marshall. Noting the form only allowed five names, Geren said several more House Republicans are involved, including Reps. Giovanni Capriglione of Southlake, Craig Goldman of Fort Worth, Kyle Kacal of College Station, John Kuempel of Seguin and Greg Bonnen of Friendswood, the speaker's brother.



https://www.texastribune.org/2019/11/19/dennis-bonnen-sidelined-house-republicans-spearhead-new-pac-protect-ma/

Embattled Illinois prosecutor announces bid for reelection

CHICAGO (AP) — A prosecutor who came under harsh criticism when her office suddenly dropped charges against actor Jussie Smollett and is now the subject of a court-ordered investigation announced Tuesday she is running for reelection.

In her news release saying she’s seeking the position again, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx addressed the Smollett case and the furor over the handling of it. The actor was accused of staging a racist and homophobic attack against himself earlier this year in Chicago while in the city filming the television series “Empire.”

“Truth is, I didn’t handle it well. I own that. I’m making changes in my office to make sure we do better,” Foxx said, without elaborating.

She is the first black woman to lead the office that prosecutes cases in the county, which includes Chicago. She was elected in 2016 after promising to make criminal justice reform a priority.





https://apnews.com/4f11fbe810014a8fbd056aada8d61901

GA-07: Atlanta may have its own AOC

WASHINGTON — For a woman who grew up in the Gwinnett County suburbs northeast of Atlanta as the daughter of South Asian immigrants, Nabilah Islam isn't that unusual.

Her parents came to the country from Bangladesh and worked hard — her father as a file clerk for the IRS and her mother flipping burgers and toiling at a warehouse until she literally broke her back — so their children didn't face the political and economic hardships they left behind.

And like many of her first- and second-generation American neighbors, Islam is struggling to make ends meet: At 29, she has put the remaining $27,849.63 on her student loans into forbearance and just decided to cancel a health insurance plan she described as "bogus."

What makes her stand out from most of the other residents of Georgia's hypercompetitive 7th Congressional District is that she's running to represent them in the House. And, with Democrats from all over the country landing in Atlanta this week for Wednesday's presidential debate, she should get a chance to connect with a wider group of potential donors and validators.

"I don’t have a unique story," she said in a recent telephone interview with NBC News. "It’s very common. But people like me don’t run for Congress. People have been inspired by the fact that I am running for Congress and giving this district a voice and taking on the risks I have in order to do so."

It's also a story that's now becoming more familiar in Washington, as young progressive women without traditional political pedigrees or deep pockets — like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. — have not only won election to the House but become prominent political forces.

But from the standpoint of national political trends, there is one huge difference.

If Islam wins a double-long-shot bid to capture the Democratic nomination and the general election, she'll have done so in an area that — unlike those represented by "AOC" and Omar — is a true swing district rather than a haven of liberalism.



https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/atlanta-may-have-its-own-aoc-n1075366?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma