House Republicans Launch Idiotic Hail Mary to Stop Kamala

Republicans are so desperate to attack Vice President Kamala Harris following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race that they’ve come up with a new flimsy plan: impeach her.

On Tuesday, Representative Andy Ogles formally introduced articles of impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors” over Harris allegedly mishandling the southern U.S. border.

In general, at least six bills were submitted in the House of Representatives Tuesday, either calling to “impeach” or “condemn” Harris or calling on Harris to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution and remove Biden from office with a Cabinet vote.

As Scott MacFarlane pointed out, none of these bills stand a chance of going anywhere, so their main purpose appears to be performative efforts to stir up the Republican base and make Harris look weaker. Harris’s popularity has skyrocketed in the last two days, netting a record fundraising haul for Democrats and causing Republicans to panic. Republicans have come up with weak talking points, as Trump is trying to weasel out of debating her and argue that Harris was part of a conspiracy to kill him.

In other words, Republicans are making wild attempts to find an attack that sticks to Harris and shifts the momentum back to Trump. The latest attempt (aside from unserious impeachment bills) appears to be an old GOP standby: an appeal to racism by attacking Harris’s record on crime as a prosecutor. Will it work?

As the legendary Walter Shapiro wrote for The New Republic in 2022, “It has become a Republican cliché: When the polls look ominous, the party often conjures the image of a menacing Black man.” But the 2024 electorate has lived through President Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter, and the protests of 2020. It remains to be seen if the racist attacks on Harris can top the groundswell of enthusiasm from young Americans. 

Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be meeting later this week at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump announced on Truth Social Tuesday that the two would be meeting on Friday, moved from Thursday at Netanyahu’s request. In his post, Trump spoke about “Peace and Stability in the Region” during his first term, claiming that “millions are dying, and Kamala Harris is in no way capable of stopping it.”

Presumably, the two will talk about Israel’s brutal war in Gaza and Trump will make grandiose promises to Netanyahu on providing weapons and whatever else the Israeli prime minister wants. Trump might also seek advice about dodging corruption charges, as Netanyahu has been keeping them at bay for years. Netanyahu might ask Trump about how to take over the courts, as the former president and convicted felon has appointed a Supreme Court that has basically given him immunity.

In his visit to the U.S., Netanyahu is receiving a warm welcome from Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans Wednesday, but that’s about it. A scheduled meeting between President Joe Biden and Netanyahu was initially up in the air before being moved to Thursday, and Vice President Kamala Harris will be meeting with the Israeli prime minister privately instead of presiding over his congressional address.

It’s no secret that Netanyahu prefers Trump and would like to see him return to the White House in November. It’s also no secret that Israel’s brutal war has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 15,000 children. Netanyahu has ignored calls for a cease-fire, helping contribute to Biden’s drop in popularity among young people and communities of color. U.S. support for the war has even caused a backlash among labor unions, who on Tuesday joined forces to demand an end to weapons aid to Israel.

The Israeli prime minister is probably hoping for his U.S. visit to shore up support for the war and make sure November’s election doesn’t change the blank check Israel is receiving. What should happen is that American politicians find some courage, listen to unions, and end weapons shipments to Israel.

Tom Cotton says Republicans didn’t do a coup, the other guys did!

On Sunday, Cotton tweeted that “Joe Biden succumbed to a coup by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hollywood donors, ignoring millions of Democratic primary votes.” In an interview Tuesday, the GOP senator from Arkansas was called out by CNN’s John Berman over his hypocritical language.

“You used the language ‘coup,’” Berman told Cotton. “You’ve never said that for January 6. And as far as I know, no cops were beaten up, no one defecated in the Capitol, there was no criminal trespass in terms of changing the Democratic candidates, were there?”

Cotton answered with a blank stare and dodged the question. “No, but what you get with Kamala Harris is a failed prosecutor who wouldn’t seek the death penalty for cop killers.”

For the record, Cotton is right that San Francisco police hated Harris for years, but he’s wrong on everything else. And the CNN interview made it clear he has no good explanation on how exactly Biden dropping out is a coup.

The Republican senator is one of many right-wingers using the coup line without any hint of irony, including J.D. Vance, Trump, Trump’s campaign adviser, House Speaker Mike Johnson (who tried to avoid using that exact word), Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Representative Paul Gosar.

Republicans claim that the Democratic Party has been “lying to us” about Biden. “[Harris] was not just part of the conspiracy of silence about Joe Biden’s decline, she was the leader of it,” said Cotton. “The American people deserve to know: What did Kamala Harris know, and when did she know it?”

Seven major labor unions sent a letter to Joe Biden Tuesday calling on the president to “immediately halt all military aid to Israel.” This comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to address a joint session of Congress and speak privately with Biden, Kamala Harris, and other politicians.

The unions that signed on to the letter, which represent six million people, include the Association of Flight Attendants, or AFA, American Postal Workers Union, or APWU, International Union of Painters, National Education Association, or NEA, Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, United Auto Workers, or UAW, and United Electrical Workers.

The labor movement is concerned that a cease-fire plan is not being put into action as Palestine faces one of the bloodiest weeks since October 7.

“The time to act decisively to end this war is now. Stopping US military aid to Israel is the quickest and most sure way to do so, it is what U.S. law demands, and it will show your commitment to securing a lasting peace in the region,” wrote the signatories.

“Recent reports only underscore the urgency of our demands. Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, continue to be killed, reportedly often with US-manufactured bombs,” reads the letter. “We have spoken directly to leaders of Palestinian trade unions who told us heart-wrenching stories of the conditions faced by working people in Gaza.”

The unions and allied groups plan to protest Netantyahu’s visit to Washington, D.C., and have a plan to symbolically issue a warrant of arrest for the prime minister.

“Our unions are hearing the cries of humanity as this vicious war continues,” said Mark Dimondstein of the APWU in a statement released alongside the letter. “Working people and our unions are horrified that our tax dollars are financing this ongoing tragedy. We need a cease-fire now, and the best way to secure that is to shut off U.S. military aid to Israel.”

The letter comes as many other unions, including the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the SEIU, and more quickly endorsed Kamala Harris for president this week, who plans to meet privately with Netanyahu during his visit.

Some labor unions have held off, however, perhaps looking to leverage their endorsements. Those include the NEA, UAW, and AFA, who are part of the coalition, as well as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, led by Sean O’Brien.

Labor unions have been calling for a cease-fire for months. Earlier this year, U.S. labor unions launched the National Labor Network for Ceasefire, which included several of the signatories of Tuesday’s letter, as well as National Nurses United and smaller local unions. The new organization demanded an immediate and permanent cease-fire, release of the hostages, and unimpeded full access for humanitarian aid.

UAW President Shawn Fain appeared on MSNBC Monday night to say his union was “not going to rush” their Harris endorsement without the approval of the union members. In December, the UAW was one of the first major unions to call for a cease-fire after the APWU.

Donald Trump’s team is mounting a new angle of attack on Vice President Kamala Harris, and while their plan is very much connected to the campaign’s already racist rhetoric, its bigoted legacy goes back even further to the presidential election of 1988.

In the days since President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Kamala Harris, Trump’s team has scrambled to adapt their attacks to the new presumptive nominee. Even before Biden’s decision was officially announced, Trump had started to try out a couple lame nicknames, such as “Laughing Kamala,” and most recently “‘Dumb as a Rock’ Kamala.” But, not surprisingly, none of these have really stuck.

It’s time to get serious with their mode of attack, and so Republicans are planning to take aim at Harris’s record as a district attorney in San Francisco, which she has already started to weaponize against convicted felon Trump.

One Trump adviser said the Harris cases included “several Willie Hortons,” The Bulwark reported Tuesday, referring to the racist attack ad launched against Senator Michael Dukakis during the 1988 election. The ad featured a Massachusetts inmate named Willie Horton who had stabbed a man and raped a woman while on a weekend furlough—a policy and crime for which then–Republican candidate George H.W. Bush inexplicably blamed Dukakis.

As the late, great Walter Shapiro wrote for The New Republic in 2022, “It has become a Republican cliché: When the polls look ominous, the party often conjures the image of a menacing Black man.”

The infamous Horton ads encouraged race-based politics by playing into racial stereotypes linking Black men with crime to fearmonger about a lawless Democratic presidency. Trump has been able to exploit and exacerbate this trend within the Republican Party with his own lies about immigrant crime rates. Now it seems the Republicans are plotting to launch a similar attack against Harris.

For some Republicans, it seems the racist Willie Hortonesque smack talk has already begun. During an interview on CNN Tuesday, Senator Tom Cotton called Harris a “failed San Francisco liberal that’s wrong for America,” and said there were many cases in which she had been “weak on crime” and let “thousands” of criminals walk free.

Cotton also referred to one specific Harris case, which is likely to start appearing in Republican talking points. In 2004, Harris declined to seek the death penalty for the killer of police officer Isaac Espinoza, despite a pressure campaign from several California Democrats.

Renata Espinoza, the police officer’s widow, said Harris hadn’t called her before announcing the decision. Harris had “just taken justice from us. From Isaac,” Espinoza told CNN in 2019. “She was only thinking of herself.”

The prosecution worked to paint David Hill, who was convicted of fatally shooting Espinoza and sentenced to life without parole, as a hardened gangster and even cited his own rap lyrics in their case against him.

CNN’s John Berman had reminded Cotton that when Trump ran for president in 2020, his team had attacked Harris for just the opposite: being too tough on criminals.

In August 2020, former Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson claimed Harris “fought to keep inmates locked up in overcrowded prisons so they could be used for cheap labor, she championed laws that put parents in jail for truancy and prosecuted the mentally ill.”

Now Trump’s team has decided Harris’s record is part of their “bucket of paint to define her at a time of our choosing,” Trump’s campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita told The Bulwark.