RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/04/30/the-political-earthquake-in-new-york-that-doomed-democrats-in-2022-n1594043

Last Wednesday, the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, ruled that the redistricting map Democrats had so carefully drawn that gave them three additional congressional seats as well as effectively destroying the Republican Party in the state was illegal.

Until that moment, the national Democratic Party had been patting itself on the back for stealing a march on Republicans. When the redistricting process began late in 2021, it was widely assumed that the Republicans, with their legislative control of 26 states and the addition of three seats as a result of the census in red states, would have a distinct advantage in redistricting.

But until recently, Democrats had been more than holding their own, largely because of New York’s map — a masterpiece of gerrymandering.

FiveThirtyEight:

On Wednesday, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that the congressional map New York Democrats enacted back in February was a partisan gerrymander that violated the state constitution and tossed it to the curb. The decision was a huge blow to Democrats, who until recently looked like they had gained enough seats nationally in redistricting to almost eliminate the Republican bias in the House of Representatives. But with the invalidation of New York’s map, as well as Florida’s recent passage of a congressional map that heavily favors the GOP,1 the takeaways from the 2021-22 redistricting cycle are no longer so straightforward.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/documentary-will-prove-proves-rampant-illegal-vote-trafficking-in-2020-dsouza-says_4426541.html?utm_source=News&utm_

Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza believes that evidence presented in his new documentary, “2000 Mules,” proves that large-scale, illegal vote trafficking occurred in the 2020 election.

D’Souza told The Epoch Times: “2000 Mules will settle the issue beyond a shadow of a doubt by using two powerful, independent modes of investigation. The evidence is so conclusive, so decisive, that it leaves nothing to argue about.”

The film opens in 300 theaters on May 2 and May 4.

D’Souza, who is a contributor to The Epoch Times, said an investigative team used cellphone tracking and video footage to prove that unauthorized intermediaries called “mules” collected thousands of absentee ballots from voters and deposited them in drop boxes for money, which is illegal in all 50 states.

Cellphones emit a unique and identifiable signal or “ping.” Trillions of pings were analyzed by investigators to reconstruct the movements of thousands of mules as they went about their work in the weeks prior to the 2020 presidential election, the documentary claims.

“Who would have ever thought that investigators could look back in time and discover such things?” D’Souza said.

Investigators also sifted through millions of minutes of video surveillance footage and were able to capture on tape numerous mules stuffing absentee ballot drop boxes, D’Souza said. The videos show the mules taking selfies of themselves as proof of services rendered to their employers in order to be paid, he said.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/top-new-york-court-tosses-out-redistricting-map-in-massive-defeat-for-democrats

“If the congressional maps had stayed in effect, Democrats likely would have expanded their 19-8 majority to 22-4 under the new lines, according to experts’ testimony. The state lost a seat during the most recent census.Because Wednesday’s ruling, a 4-3 decision, came from the highest court in the state, Democrats will likely not be able to appeal.”

New York’s highest court threw out the state’s redistricting maps, dealing a massive blow to Democrats for the 2022 midterm election cycle.

The New York State Court of Appeals sided with lower courts in its determination that the three maps were unconstitutionally gerrymandered and ordered the adoption of a neutral plan to be crafted by a special master.

The maps were “procedurally unconstitutional, and the congressional map is also substantively unconstitutional as drawn with impermissible partisan purpose,” the court said. “We are confident that, in consultation with the Board of Elections, Supreme Court can swiftly develop a schedule to facilitate an August primary election, allowing time for the adoption of new constitutional maps.”

The Democratic-controlled legislature’s decision to draw its own maps when the New York State Independent Redistricting Commission failed to reach a consensus was unconstitutional, petitioners successfully argued.

“Petitioners first asserted that, in light of the lack of compliance by the IRC and the legislature with the procedures set forth in the Constitution, the legislature’s enactment of the 2022 redistricting maps contravened the Constitution,” the Wednesday ruling said. “To conclude otherwise, petitioners contend, would be to render the 2014 amendments — touted as an important reform of the redistricting process — functionally meaningless. We agree.”

Last week, the state’s maps for U.S. House seats and state legislative seats were stricken by a five-judge panel, which found that “evidence of the largely one-party process used to enact the 2022 congressional map, a comparison of the 2022 congressional map to the 2012 congressional map, and the expert opinion and supporting analysis of Sean P. Trende, met petitioners’ burden of establishing that the 2022 congressional map was drawn to discourage competition and favor Democrats.”

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/can-desantis-get-past-the-donald/

Last week, Florida governor Ron DeSantis took two big steps to solidify his popularity with the Republican base, not only in his home state but across the nation.

First, he won the hearts and minds of conservative voters and many independent parents by passing a law that prevents teachers from discussing sensitive topics of gender and sexual orientation with young students (grades three and under). Second, he confronted and defeated one of Florida’s largest and most influential employers, Disney World, on a vital issue. He stripped Disney of its special privilege to govern the vast territory it owns near Orlando.

Both moves are popular in their own right — the first with parents, the second with Republican voters and perhaps others. That popularity is important, but commentators have missed the subtext, why those battles matter so much for DeSantis’s political prospects. What his legislative victories demonstrate is that DeSantis is willing to fight hard against formidable opposition on high-profile issues, including cultural issues. That is exactly what Republican voters want today.

The key word here is fight. The go-along-to-get-along days of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush are dead and buried. The undertaker was Donald Trump. His eagerness to take on those fights has been central to his success. DeSantis is showing he is just as willing. In fact, he’s trying to show that, like Trump, he is not just willing but eager. He relishes the battles with Hollywood leftists, teachers’ unions, woke corporations, and federal bureaucrats. And he wants to show he can win those fights.

DeSantis’s victories put him at the forefront of his party on a theme that really matters to Republican voters, and to many independents as well. They don’t think K Street lobbyists, unions, Hollywood celebrities, federal bureaucrats, and big corporations are on their side. And, except for the lobbyists (who go wherever the money is), they know these groups are all firmly attached to the Democratic Party. Republican voters want a leader who will confront these entrenched groups — not reluctantly but eagerly — and beat them. That’s exactly what DeSantis showed them last week.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dem-pollster-issues-frantic-warning-on-midterms/

Perfect storm incoming! Not only are the American people angry with how the Democrats are running things, they’re angry in a whole lot of different ways at the same time. Democratic pundits are already whining that the media are to blame for not telling citizens about all the good news — everyone has a job and the economy is growing — but the media are unable to mollify people who have half a dozen reasons to want to thrash the Dems.

Mark Penn, a Bill Clinton pollster, in today’s New York Times:

These economic blows are just one element in a cascading set of problems all hitting at the same time. It combines the nuclear anxieties of the 1950s and ’60s with the inflation threat of the ’70s, the crime wave of the ’80s and ’90s and the tensions over illegal immigration in the 2000s and beyond. This electorate is not experiencing a malaise, as President Jimmy Carter was once apocryphally said to have proclaimed, but has instead formed into a deep national fissure ready to blow like a geyser in the next election if leadership does not move to relieve the pressure.

Americans think the economy is weak, inflation is effectively giving them a major pay cut, the border is being overrun, criminals are roaming unchecked, Covid policy is a mess, Vladimir Putin is more dangerous than ever before, and political correctness amounts to a national gag order. Any one of these things could be enough to cost Democrats the House; in the fall of 2014, you may recall, America was in a state of anxiety about mass illegal immigration and a threat from Ebola that turned out to recede quickly, and harshly punished the party in power. Republicans gained an astonishing nine Senate seats, and 13 in the House.

America today is facing real, undeniable problems, and most of them are strongly associated with the Democratic Party. The rout is coming, and Democrats are doing almost nothing to avoid absorbing painful punishment in November.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/25/who-do-dems-want-in-2024-right-now-anybody-but-biden-ii-tipp-poll/

Yes, it’s very early. But if given the choice right now, which Democrats do Americans want to see run for president in 2024? The perhaps not-so-surprising answer emerging from the latest I&I/TIPP Poll seems to be: “Anyone but Joe Biden.”

In our April opinion poll, we asked Americans of all political affiliations across the demographic spectrum “Who do you want to see run for president on the Democratic ticket in 2024?”

Just 19% of those responding answered “Joe Biden, 46th president of the United States.” The rest of the choices were spread among 18 candidates, along with “other” (6%) and “not sure” (28%). Put another way, 81% of Americans don’t want Biden to run again.

Specifically, other names on the list included (in declining order of preference) Vice President Kamala Harris (7%), Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (6%), former First Lady Michelle Obama (6%), former Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton (4%), former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (3%), and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (3%).

Trailing in the preference race is a long list at 2%, including losing 2018 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy.

A third tier of candidates includes California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Luhan Grisham, all at 1% preference.

The data come from the April I&I/TIPP Poll of 981 registered voters.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/21/senate-democrats-midterm-election-biden-00026781

Democrats’ path to saving their narrow Senate majority comes down to defending four states this fall. And in all of them, President Joe Biden is underwater in the polls.

Biden’s drag on swing-state incumbents is emerging as a pivotal factor in the midterm Senate elections, where the loss of just one Democratic-held seat in November could put Republicans in control.

Acutely aware of the need to get distance from the president, the four most endangered Democratic incumbents — Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan — are increasingly taking steps to highlight their independence from the president and underscore their differences.

Their public pushback against Biden’s plan to lift the Trump-era border restriction known as Title 42 is the most visible expression of the effort to get distance from the president. But the four Democrats are also finding other ways of signaling to voters. They’ve visited the border wall and blocked his nominees. A month before a Trump-appointed judge struck down Biden’s mask mandate on mass transit, three of the four voted in favor of a Republican bill to do just that

On social media, where they shy away from praise of the president and instead focus on their efforts to prod the White House to action, it’s hard to tell they’ve voted in line with Biden no less than 96 percent of the time.

“In these four states, these are senators just doing the work, keeping their head down, getting things done for their states while the Republicans are obviously tearing each other apart in these primaries,” said Martha McKenna, a Democratic ad maker who previously worked for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/04/20/two-respected-political-sites-make-massive-house-predictions-shift-toward-gop-n1591357

Two of the most respected political prognostication sites — Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball and The Cook Political Report — announced massive shifts in their partisan ratings for House races.

Sabato’s latest estimate shifted an astonishing 11 races toward the GOP. Five of those races shifted from “Safe Democratic” to “Likely Democratic.” It should be noted that in 2010 a dozen or more Democratic races that started in the “Safe” column ended up with a GOP victory. This is another clear indication of an increased chance for a “wave” election where 50 or more seats switch parties.

The Cook Political Report is behind a paywall, but the Hill has a summary of the eight changes made by that site.

The changes include moving three previously “likely” Democratic districts — Indiana’s 1st, New York’s 19th and North Carolina’s 1st — into “lean” Democratic territory. Meanwhile, three districts that previously leaned toward Democrats — Nevada’s 3rd and 4th, as well as Virginia’s 7th district — are now toss-ups, according to the election handicapper.