James.galbraith

If American voters decide to turn the House, Senate, or both chambers of Congress over to Republican control on Nov. 8, Republicans have helpfully begun to outline how they intend to reward those voters. The “rewards” are impactful: by raising the Social Security full eligibility age from 67 to 70, reducing Social Security benefits, and drastically increasing the cost of obtaining medical care through the Medicare program, while imposing “means-testing” to determine who will receive Medicare benefits at all. They intend to circumvent the near-certainty of President Biden vetoing these measures by tying such cuts directly to the debt ceiling, in effect holding the country’s creditworthiness (and the economy itself) hostage to forced cuts in these programs.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Republicans have threatened such cuts. In fact, their intent has been made clear for decades, to the point where warnings from Democrats about the GOP’s plans to cut Social Security and Medicare may have begun to seem like a constant refrain, casually dismissed as recurrent background noise by some voters because such drastic cuts have never actually come to pass.

But this time Republicans are providing specifics—not because their own constituents would approve (they don’t, by huge margins)—but because they believe that they can sufficiently distract and misinform their own voters from their intentions by incessantly demonizing Democrats and focusing entirely on “hot button” grievances through their now almost wholly insular (and perpetually funded) media organs and social media. Those media organs—most visibly Fox News but now virtually all right-wing outlets—have effectively created a hermetically sealed bubble of reflexive, automatic distrust and dismissal of anything Democrats do or say, while simultaneously portraying Republican elected officials as blameless for any of the country’s problems.

In short, Republicans are out to prove that there are no more “third rails” in politics, when your electoral base is, for all intents and purposes, conditioned into believing whatever you tell them to believe.

As reported by Jim Tankersly, writing for The New York Times:

Congressional Republicans, eyeing a midterm election victory that could hand them control of the House and the Senate, have embraced plans to reduce federal spending on Social Security and Medicare, including cutting benefits for some retirees and raising the retirement age for both safety net programs.

Republican senators have been a bit more coy about their plans, since control of the Senate is still very much in play, although, as Tankersly reports, “Their ideas include raising the age for collecting Social Security benefits to 70 from 67 and requiring many older Americans to pay higher premiums for their health coverage.” House Republicans, on the other hand, who stand a much better chance of achieving control after the November midterms, have been more forthcoming. As reported by Jack Fitzpatrick writing for Bloomberg, those Republicans who expect to join the Budget and Appropriations Committee have outlined their plan more fully:

The Republican Study Committee, the largest group of House Republicans, released a budget plan in June that called on lawmakers to gradually raise the Medicare age of eligibility to 67 and the Social Security eligibility to 70 before indexing both to life expectancy. It backed withholding payments to those who retired early and had earnings over a certain limit. And it endorsed the consideration of options to reduce payroll taxes that fund Social Security and redirect them to private alternatives. It also urged lawmakers to “phase-in an increase in means testing” for Medicare.

As pointed out by Paul Krugman, writing for The New York Times:

A more interesting question is why Republicans think they can get away with touching the traditional third rails of fiscal policy. Social Security remains as popular as ever; Republicans themselves campaigned against Obamacare by claiming, misleadingly, that it would cut Medicare. Why imagine that proposals to deny benefits to many Americans by raising the eligibility age won’t provoke a backlash?

At least part of the answer is surely the expectation that the right-wing disinformation machine can obscure what the G.O.P. is up to. The Republican Study Committee has released a 153-page report calling, among other things, for denying full Social Security benefits to Americans under 70; that didn’t stop Sean Hannity from declaring the other day that “not a single Republican has ever said they want to take away your Social Security.”

To understand the GOP’s harsh antipathy toward Social Security and Medicare, it is necessary to understand their donor base. Because their primary goal of cutting taxes on the wealthy is not politically palatable, Republican politicians rely disproportionately not on political donations from ordinary citizens but on huge corporate interests, most notably in the fossil fuel industry but also from corporate conglomerate “dark money” conduits such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, trade associations such as the American Petroleum Institute and the Pharmaceutical Research Association of America, and the enormous, sprawling Koch network.

The sheer enormity of the funds expended on maintaining Social Security and Medicare benefits for ordinary Americans provides an irresistible target for the people and organizations controlling these groups, who consider these funds wasted on those they consider undeserving. Cuts in such programs, they reason, could provide the rationale for further corporate tax cuts and justify such largesse afforded to them instead. Ultimately the thinking, from their perspective, is that by eliminating such “entitlements” the nation can afford to cut their taxes even further than those cut by Republicans in their massive tax giveaway to corporate America and the nation’s wealthiest (including themselves), passed in 2017. In the case of Wall Street donors such as banks and hedge funds, the interest is even more acute; privatization of Social Security, for example, would provide an unheard-of windfall to their profits.

These groups, which collectively fund the ambitions of nearly every Republican elected to federal and state legislatures, are keenly aware of the potency and effectiveness of Trump’s Big Lie of “election fraud” in motivating their base. They’ve seen firsthand how easily the voters essential to their schemes can be reduced to a rabid, conspiracy-spewing horde if the right buttons are pushed. They now understand that if a potential voter can be brainwashed into believing something as preposterous as the Big Lie simply by stoking racism and grievance, they can be conned into believing that any claims by Democrats are false, even if that belief is contradicted by what’s happening right in front of their noses.

This is why House Republicans have assured Americans that upon attaining power they plan to conduct nonstop frivolous investigations and political show trials: not because they consider such undertakings valid or legitimate, but because they serve to occupy and transfix the attention of their base. It is why the entire focus of Fox News for decades has been to demonize Democrats, and why House Republicans sole focus during this election cycle has been to cultivate the same type of mindless, reactionary hatred. It’s why the GOP’s uniform, collective response to violence perpetrated by the right toward Democrats—such as the recent, vicious assault on Paul Pelosi—has been flat-out dismissal, “whataboutism,” or ridicule. As Greg Sargent, writing for The Washington Post, observes, “the whole point of all the lying is to assert the power to manufacture an alternate story in the face of easily demonstrable facts and outraged condemnation—and, importantly, to assert that power unabashedly and defiantly.”

A docile, distracted, and thoroughly propagandized voter base that will eagerly swallow outright lies is essential for these GOP donor groups to actualize their primary goal of gutting Social Security, Medicare, and any other so-called “entitlements.” Donald Trump has showed Republicans and the groups that fund them just how powerful a lie can be, and what can be achieved by repeating that lie incessantly. In the coming months, assuming they achieve control of one or both houses of Congress, that will be their strategy, bolstered enormously through social media and Fox News: deny, distract, and above all, demonize Democrats, while quietly doing their dirty work in opaque committees.

They’re counting on their own deluded voters to respond accordingly, even if it amounts to  marching their own lives and futures right off a cliff. And if Americans are short-sighted enough to return them to power, recent history suggests they may succeed.

It’s on the ballot in Nevada, and it may be coming soon to a state near you.

Can much of America’s current political dysfunction be traced back to one feature of our system: the partisan primary? And if so, what should be done about that?

Nevada voters will be tasked with assessing those questions when they go to the polls Tuesday, to vote on “Question 3” — a proposed overhaul of the state’s election system that would effectively kill the partisan primary (the elections in which Democratic and Republican voters choose their party nominees).

Instead, Nevada would have a nonpartisan primary, from which the top five candidates of any party would emerge to the general election. The general election would then be conducted under ranked-choice voting (which lets people vote for multiple candidates for each office, ranked in order of their preference).

This is not just about election wonkery. The proposal’s backers say it could help fix American politics by weakening the forces of partisanship, polarization, and extremity. The two parties, they believe, have become captured by their bases’ most extreme elements, who can discipline anyone breaking from the party line through a primary challenge.

Indeed, when assessing how the Republican Party has moved into the hands of Donald Trump, it’s impossible to miss the importance of the primary. Some Trump critics have retired rather than face the primary electorate again: “The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I’m not willing to take,” then-Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) said in 2017. Others have taken on Trump anyway and, with a few exceptions, have faced defeat. The most common strategy employed by GOP incumbents, though, was to become a strong Trump supporter to preemptively prevent losing renomination.

But while Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who has defied Trump on several high-profile issues, did draw a right-wing challenger this year, she did not have to worry about getting primaried. In 2020, Alaska voters approved a similar reform to the one on the ballot in Nevada. That effectively guaranteed Murkowski would make it to the general election, rather than being taken down beforehand. Her case — and her GOP challenger Kelly Tshibaka’s — will go before the full Alaska electorate next week.

And yet progressives worried about the future of American democracy aren’t so enthusiastic about these reforms — in part because they’d likely weaken the left wing of the Democratic Party as well. Progressives have had their own success at taking down incumbents in primaries that elevated rising stars like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to Congress. They hope to punish Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) for opposing much of President Joe Biden’s agenda this year with a primary challenge in 2024. There is even speculation that fear of a primary challenge has made Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer focus hard on pleasing the left during Biden’s term.

If approved, these reforms probably wouldn’t live up to all their supporters’ ambitions — few reforms do. But they would present a clear path by which politicians of both parties disfavored by the party bases could make it to the general election. And for those who believe the rise of the Trump right presents a clear threat to US democracy, reforms that could weaken that movement’s power are probably worth at least some thought.

How voting would work in Nevada if Question 3 is approved

The Question 3 proposal would make two major changes. First, it would blow up the system in which the two parties hold separate primaries to choose their nominees — substituting instead one nonpartisan primary in which any registered voter can vote, and from which the top five vote-getters move on to the general election.

Many politicians now live under the fear of “getting primaried” — annoying their party’s base voters, losing a low-turnout election those voters dominate, and never even making it to the general election ballot. For instance, any potential GOP critic of Donald Trump must reckon with a looming primary dominated by strong Trump supporters and assess whether to fall in line, fight a likely losing battle, or simply retire. It’s a powerful incentive.

This reform would essentially ensure any incumbent, as well as any significant primary vote-getter, would get to make their case on Election Day. That could mean just one Democrat and Republican move on, or multiple candidates from one or both parties advance. Five candidates going forward also means more options than California and Washington’s nonpartisan top two primaries provide.

Now, if you have multiple candidates in a typical general election, there’s a possible problem — someone could win with merely a small plurality in a split field. So the second big change in this proposal is to conduct the general election with ranked-choice voting. This system lets voters rank several candidates for each office in order of their preference, rather than voting for just one. When votes are tallied, the low-performing candidates are gradually eliminated, and each vote for them is reallocated to the voter’s next-ranked candidate. This reform, supporters hope, will help the candidate truly preferred by a majority of the electorate win. (I wrote a detailed explainer last year on how ranked-choice voting works.)

The measure is funded mainly by a collection of bipartisan or nonpartisan businesspeople, many from outside the state. Yet most organized political interests in the state hate the proposal — the opposition includes leading Democratic and Republican politicians, progressive and conservative activists, and even minor parties.

Tuesday’s vote won’t settle the issue in Nevada — the state’s constitutional amendment process requires voters to approve the measure twice before it goes into effect, so if voters approve it now, there would be another big battle over it in 2024. And while the reform would apply to elections for congressional, legislative, and top state offices, it wouldn’t apply to the state’s presidential nominating and general election contests.

Regardless of Tuesday’s outcome, the proposal’s backers aren’t going away. They’ve already succeeded in getting a similar reform implemented in Alaska, and they hope for ballot initiative campaigns in as many as eight other states in 2024. Their idea could be coming to a ballot near you very soon.

The “rational centrist” behind final five voting

Nonpartisan primaries and ranked-choice voting are not new ideas. California and Washington both use a nonpartisan top two primary, while Maine, New York City, and other cities use ranked-choice voting for some elections.

But the combination of a top five primary and ranked-choice voting for the general election is the brainchild of Chicago business leader Katherine Gehl, who branded it as “final five” voting and provided the organization and much of the fundraising (her own and others’ money) behind it.

Her father had built the family company, Gehl Foods, into a dairy-based food product manufacturer with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, and Katherine took over as CEO in 2011 before arranging its sale to an investment firm in 2015. Gehl grew up as a Republican, but was impressed by Barack Obama and became a bundler for him. Obama appointed her to be a board member of a government entity investing in developing countries. Disillusioned with gridlock in Obama’s second term, she turned her attention to the political system.

“I would call myself a rational centrist,” Gehl told me in an interview. “What I saw after Obama went to the White House is that candidates can’t deliver in this system. And it was just clear it all traced back to the primary.”

Indeed, most members of Congress are in safely Democratic or Republican districts and are therefore effectively immune to general election pressures. Their primary election — often a low-turnout affair dominated by strong partisans or ideologues — is their only real election. And even those in swing districts still have to survive their primary before making it to the general election.

“The root cause of our political dysfunction is that November elections in this country are for the most part meaningless,” Gehl said. “Most November voters are wasting their time, which is not only profoundly undemocratic and unrepresentative, it’s the reason we can’t solve our complex problems and make necessary trade-offs.” She continued: “In the existing system where most people are elected and answer to only 8 percent of their side, they are forbidden to do the work of having those policy discussions and innovating across the aisle, of negotiating and making a deal.”

This dysfunctional system is propped up, Gehl believes, by the two-party duopoly and the large arrangement of entities supporting them, from donors to campaign professionals to ideological or partisan media to activists and organized interest groups. She began writing about this alongside Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, and they began pitching final five voting as their solution. An election reform group, FairVote, had previously written about the possibility of linking a top four primary and ranked-choice voting, which Gehl and Porter cited in a 2017 report.

Now, Gehl’s organization, the Institute for Political Innovation, is working with local groups to seed the idea in various states — starting in Alaska and Nevada — and she’s helped win over other deep-pocketed tech and business donors to contribute, including major Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, major Republican donor Ken Griffin, and Rupert Murdoch’s liberal daughter-in-law Kathryn Murdoch.

“Everyone says there is no silver bullet. I think this is as close to a silver bullet as you can get,” said Gehl, arguing that final five voting’s implementation would mean politicians become “freed from the tyranny of the party primary” and newly able to work as problem-solvers and consensus builders. Her goal is that five states will be using the system by 2025, and said initiative campaigns in California, Ohio, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming are possible in 2024.

What are the criticisms of final five voting?

Not everyone is sold on the idea. The critics are legion, and they include most politicians and political groups in Nevada. We can think of these criticisms as falling into a few categories.

Defending parties or primaries: Before even getting into the nitty-gritty policy details, lots of people simply don’t want to weaken the parties, defang primary challenges, or allow purported centrist problem-solvers an easier path to victory.

The party establishments want to be able to run a coherent general election campaign with one nominee for each office, rather than the multiple Democrats or Republicans per contest this system could advance to Election Day. “That’s a basic function of political parties, essentially determining who gets to compete for office,” said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, if you’re a progressive who believes enacting policies on the left is very important, and that elected Democrats are often too centrist, then you’d view the primary challenge as an important and valuable tool — as would conservatives in the GOP. And you wouldn’t be too enthused about proposals to elect more centrists. The system seems most likely to help candidates who could have trouble winning traditional primaries like, say, Kyrsten Sinema, Liz Cheney, Jeff Flake, Mike Bloomberg, Lisa Murkowski, Joe Lieberman, or Andrew Yang.

Part of this is about values. It’s a “fantasy,” Will Pregman of the progressive group Battle Born Progress told me, that “quote-unquote ‘moderate’ candidates are more desirable and accurately reflect the population that votes.” But it’s also partly about leverage. Activists really like the current primary system because turnout is low and it’s easier for them to influence the outcome, according to Damore.

Worrying about its effects on voters: The well-funded TV ad campaign promoting the proposal has focused overwhelmingly on the issue of letting independents vote in the primary, and avoided the more wonky territory of ranked-choice voting. But that reform has long had its critics, as I wrote last year.

For one, many fear that less privileged voters — voters who don’t speak English, who are lower-income, or who are less educated — will have more difficulty with the new system, if they haven’t been sufficiently informed about how to use it. Perhaps they may be more likely to have their ballots thrown out due to improper rankings. Or perhaps they may be less likely to use all their ranking slots, making their ballots disproportionately likely to be discarded in a later round. Or perhaps they’ll be deterred from turning out at all (though in places where it has been adopted, it hasn’t resulted in consistently lower turnout).

“In our voting rights coalition, we have over 25 organizations that work in faith communities, AAPI communities, Latinx communities, Indigenous communities, and none of those organizations were brought to the table and asked, ‘What is the impact this is going to have on your community?’” Emily Persaud-Zamora, the executive director of Silver State Voices, a civic engagement group that coordinates with Nevada progressive organizations, said after citing the above concerns. “That in itself is unacceptable.”

Another issue is that ranked-choice ballots in the US tend to take a long time to count. Election administrators need to determine the order of candidates so they can eliminate them one by one and reallocate their ballots accordingly. They also have to decide whether to release a preliminary reallocation tally well before every ballot is counted (as New York City did last year). With the threat of election denial from the right, a protracted count could lead to lower confidence in the results.

Critiquing the specific design: Separately, there have been some questions from voting systems experts about whether this system is properly designed, as Edward Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University, recently wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.

The issue is that ranked-choice eliminations can often eliminate the voters’ true consensus choice, if that person starts off with fewer first-choice votes. That appears to be what just happened when this system was used in Alaska’s House special election. Voters overall preferred the moderate Republican Nick Begich over both conservative Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Mary Peltola in head-to-head matchups, but he was eliminated before either of them. This has happened elsewhere, too. Foley suggests a technical fix — tweaking the rules so that the order of elimination is based on a candidate’s total votes, not just first-choice votes.

This reform could have a real impact but likely won’t totally transform the system

Political scientists I interviewed were skeptical about the grander claims that final five voting would be able to solve so many of America’s political ills.

For one, few believed the primary system is really the main cause of polarization and dysfunction. “Primaries existed for a long time without producing MAGA winners,” said Drexel University political scientist Jack Santucci. The forces pushing the parties apart are much broader — journalist Ezra Klein has argued they trace back to a fundamental polarization of politics around voters’ core identities — and primaries are merely one arena in which they play out.

Even if partisan primaries went away, pressure from party leaders, donors, ideological media outlets, activists, and politicians’ social circles will remain. “When I look at the things that make party elites powerful, this doesn’t do a whole lot to change them,” said Florida State University political scientist Hans Hassell. “What I suspect will happen is you end up seeing parties and party elites adapt to it.”

Would-be politicians inclined to defy all this rather than just falling in line with one party or the other would need to find a support base somewhere. Yet voters less inclined to feel strongly toward one side or the other also tend to be less engaged with the political system in general. And it’s not clear their preferences really do incline toward a centrist, “problem-solving” business type. “The existence of this voter that is going to produce moderation itself is in question,” Santucci said.

Still, it seems indisputable that final five voting would achieve one key thing: It would let incumbents who run afoul of their party base get past the primary and make it to the general election (since you’d have to be a pretty incompetent incumbent to fall to sixth place in a primary). It does not necessarily ensure that those candidates will be more likely to win the general, but it lets them get there and present their case to voters.

It’s no accident that Alaska is the first state where a version of this was put in place. Murkowski, the incumbent moderate Republican senator, has long had a tense relationship with GOP primary voters. She actually lost her primary in 2010 but then subsequently ran as a write-in candidate and won the general election, keeping her seat. Yet after Trump became president, Murkowski defied him on several high-profile issues, so trouble appeared to loom ahead for her in the 2022 primary.

Scott Kendall was Murkowski’s lawyer during her write-in campaign, and believed the closed primary system was “broken,” he said. So in 2019, he began researching potential alternatives, and eventually found a report by Gehl and Porter proposing what was, at the time, final four voting. (They changed the number to five later.) Kendall told me he was already thinking along these lines, but the report “sorted what I was trying to do and was more eloquent than the actual thoughts in my head.” He put together a ballot measure on the topic, and eventually Gehl donated to the cause and was “one of the thought leaders I talked to during the journey,” he said.

Voters approved Alaska’s top four primary and ranked-choice general election in 2020, giving Murkowski an all-but-guaranteed ticket to the general election, and relieving primary pressure on her from the right. Three months later, Murkowski voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial.

So for Democrats and progressives who think preserving democracy is important, and that the GOP is being increasingly captured by extremists, these reforms deserve serious consideration. The reason Trump was stopped from stealing the 2020 election was largely because enough Republican elites defied his pressures. Yet open Trump critics have increasingly retired or been purged from the party. Election deniers have won GOP nominations in hundreds of contests across the country. The trends aren’t encouraging, and a future crisis could lie ahead.

Yes, final five voting would also weaken the power of the institutional Democratic Party. Yes, it would take away leverage progressives currently have over centrist Democrats. But if that comes along with helping the GOP become less of a pro-Trump personality cult — might that be worth the trade-off?

Update, November 7, 1:30 pm: This story was originally published on November 4 and has been updated to note the role of the group FairVote in linking a top four primary with ranked-choice general election voting.

Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski is the single greatest threat to America’s social safety net since Paul Ryan.

On Tuesday, as millions of Americans cast their ballots in the 2022 midterms, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in what could be one of the most consequential health care cases in its history. The defendants in Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski are asking the justices to fundamentally rework the Medicaid program, which provides health care to over 76 million low-income Americans.

Should the defendants prevail, these tens of millions of patients could effectively be stripped of legal safeguards intended to guarantee them a certain quality of care. In some cases, individual patients may lose their health coverage altogether due to Talevski.

Medicaid is a “conditional grant” program. The federal government offers a truly enormous amount of money to each state — in 2020, total federal Medicaid spending was more than $670 billion — but only if the state agrees to use this money to provide health care to eligible recipients, and to comply with certain other conditions.

These conditions range from broad requirements that state Medicaid programs must cover certain individuals, such as low-income pregnant patients and children, to granular rules governing how Medicaid-funded facilities must operate. The plaintiffs in Talevski, for example, accuse the defendants (an Indiana health system operated by local government officials, and a private company that manages nursing homes) of violating several provisions of federal law governing nursing homes, including one that prohibits those facilities from using psychotropic drugs “for purposes of discipline or convenience and not required to treat the resident’s medical symptoms.”

Currently, at least some of these legal requirements can be enforced through private lawsuits — meaning that a patient who believes their rights under federal Medicaid law have been violated can sue the alleged violator. Rather than litigating whether they did or didn’t violate the laws protecting nursing home patients, the defendant is asking the Supreme Court to strip Medicaid patients of their ability to bring such lawsuits entirely.

As a practical matter, that could render much of federal Medicaid law almost entirely unenforceable — including, potentially, the legal requirement that certain patients must receive coverage.

If private Medicaid suits are forbidden, the federal government would still technically have some tools at its disposal that it could use to discipline noncompliant states and providers, but these tools are unlikely to be effective. For one thing, the federal government has limited resources to investigate Medicaid violations.

Even when it discovers a violation, the primary remedy the federal government may use against a noncompliant state is to cut off some or all of its Medicaid funds. That means that if a state refuses to meet its legal obligation to low-income patients, the consequence will be that the state will receive less money to provide health care to those very same individuals — essentially punishing the patients for the state’s misconduct.

And that’s assuming that the federal government even wants to enforce Medicaid laws. In a post-Talevski world, a Republican administration could potentially stop enforcing Medicaid law and there would be no recourse.

The defendants’ legal arguments are weak, and would require the Court to overrule a half-century of precedents. But the Court’s Republican-appointed majority often decides cases in ways that are out of step with existing law and longstanding legal principles, so there is at least some possibility that the defendants’ most aggressive claims will prevail.

And if they do prevail, by next summer, tens of millions of the most vulnerable Americans could be essentially powerless against abuse from health providers or their state’s health officials.

The Talevski defendants’ legal arguments are very bad

Arguably the most important civil rights law in American history is a statute lawyers refer to as “Section 1983.” This is the law that permits state officials — and, in certain circumstances, private individuals implementing state programs — to be sued in federal court if they deprive someone of “any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws.”

The Supreme Court has long held that Section 1983 permits private lawsuits seeking to enforce Medicaid law. As the Court said in Edelman v. Jordan (1974), “suits in federal court under § 1983 are proper to secure compliance with the provisions of the Social Security Act on the part of participating States.” (Nearly a decade earlier, the Social Security Amendments of 1965 had expanded the Social Security Act to include two federal health care programs: Medicare and Medicaid.)

The argument that Section 1983 permits private lawsuits to enforce Medicaid law is extraordinarily straightforward. Section 1983 permits lawsuits against certain individuals who violate rights “secured by the Constitution and laws.” Medicaid laws are laws, even if they only apply to people who take federal Medicaid funding.

As the Supreme Court held in Maine v. Thiboutot (1980), “given that Congress attached no modifiers to the phrase [“and laws”], the plain language of the statute undoubtedly embraces respondents’ claim that petitioners violated the Social Security Act.”

Nevertheless, the Talevski defendants claim that they have uncovered a secret history of Section 1983 that the Court somehow ignored in a long line of precedents stretching back to before Edelman. And they ask the justices to rewrite the bargain Congress established in 1965 when it created the Medicaid program.

Much of these defendants’ arguments rests on a single line in the Supreme Court’s opinion in Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman (1981), which described conditional grant programs as “much in the nature of a contract” because states agree to comply with certain conditions in return for federal money.

The Talevski defendants argue that, at the time Section 1983 was enacted — it was originally part of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a Reconstruction-era law that, as the name implies, was intended to halt vigilantism and other attacks on civil rights — contract law strictly limited who was allowed to sue in order to enforce a contract. Specifically, they claim that 19th-century contract law did not allow third parties who were not signatories to the original contract to bring such a lawsuit.

In support of this argument, they cite a hodgepodge of 19th-century legal sources, including an 1881 speech by future Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a list of contract cases decided by state courts in the 1800s, and an 1880 book by Harvard Law School dean Christopher Columbus Langdell, which says that “a person for whose benefit a promise was made, if not related to the promisee, could not sue upon the promise.”

In response to this historical evidence, both the Talevski plaintiffs and the Justice Department cite their own list of sources indicating that third parties were, in fact, allowed to sue to enforce contracts around the time when Section 1983 became law. They quote their own mix of 19th-century legal treatises. And they argue that many of the historical quotes that the defendants rely upon were taken out of context.

The plaintiffs and the Justice Department also cite one particularly devastating piece of evidence: an 1876 Supreme Court decision that disagrees with the defendants’ historical claims. In Hendrick v. Lindsay (1876), the Supreme Court said that “the right of a party to maintain assumpsit,” an antiquated term for breach of contract lawsuits, “on a promise not under seal, made to another for his benefit, although much controverted, is now the prevailing rule in this country.“

At most, in other words, the historical record shows that some 19th-century legal authorities believed that third-party suits were not allowed, while other authorities — including the Supreme Court of the United States — believed that permitting third-party suits was the “prevailing rule in this country.” That sort of record hardly justifies overruling a half-century of precedent and rendering federal Medicaid law largely unenforceable.

There are numerous other problems with the Talevski defendants’ arguments — so many that it would be tedious to list them all here.

But suffice it to say the Talevski defendants’ legal arguments are a mess. They mangle the text of Section 1983. They rely on dubious historical evidence that the plaintiffs and the Justice Department easily rebut. They place a simply astounding amount of weight on a metaphorical statement in Pennhurst, demanding that the Court read that metaphor hyperliterally. They insist that the Court must overrule a long line of precedents stretching back to shortly after Medicaid was enacted. And they seek an outcome that could destroy much of Medicaid’s ability to function.

No reasonable judge could possibly take these arguments seriously.

Some members of the Supreme Court have already endorsed the Talevski defendants’ arguments

The one Supreme Court opinion that should keep every Medicaid beneficiary up at night is the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s concurring opinion in Blessing v. Freestone (1997). There, Scalia suggested that Section 1983 cannot be used to enforce conditions imposed on federal grants because “until relatively recent times, the third-party beneficiary was generally regarded as a stranger to the contract, and could not sue upon it.” He based this argument largely on a citation to one of the 19th-century treatises that the Talevski plaintiffs rely upon.

Ominously, this opinion was joined by now-retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, a relatively moderate conservative who is well to the left of every single one of the current Supreme Court’s six Republican appointees.

Even more alarmingly for Medicaid beneficiaries, three current justices — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — joined Scalia’s opinion in Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center (2015), which argued that “the modern jurisprudence permitting [Medicaid] beneficiaries to sue does not generally apply to contracts between a private party and the government.”

There are reasons to believe, after reading the well-argued briefs filed by the Talevski plaintiffs and the Justice Department, that at least some members of the Court’s conservative bloc will have second thoughts about dropping a bomb on Medicaid. Scalia’s Blessing opinion is only three paragraphs long, and it is possible he reached the conclusion he did because he was unaware of the historical evidence that rebuts his argument. Armstrong, meanwhile, was not a Section 1983 case. So it’s unclear if the justices who joined Scalia’s opinion in Armstrong intended to cut off suits filed under the Reconstruction-era law.

Should five justices ultimately embrace Scalia’s approach in Blessing, however, the result would be catastrophic for Medicaid and for millions of Americans who depend on the program.

Here’s an example of how bad things could get: Imagine that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announces that Florida’s Medicaid program will no longer provide coverage to transgender people, and that any Medicaid beneficiary who openly identifies as transgender will immediately lose their health benefits. Such a policy would violate federal law, which mandates that state Medicaid programs must cover a long list of groups who qualify based on their income, age, disability, or family circumstances.

But if no one who loses benefits because of DeSantis’s new policy can sue to reinstate their benefits, then it is far from clear that they will have any recourse. As a group of former high-level federal health officials explain in an amicus brief, the federal government “lacks the statutory authority to pursue tailored judicial remedies.” To the contrary, its authority “is largely limited ... to ‘wield[ing] only the blunt and politically dangerous club of withholding federal funding.’”

Of course, the Biden administration could threaten to cut off some or all Medicaid funding to Florida, but that approach is likely to make the situation even worse. If Florida has less Medicaid funding, it will most likely have to kick even more people off of its Medicaid rolls or diminish the services it provides to beneficiaries. And if President Joe Biden is succeeded by a Republican, the new administration could simply announce that it will do nothing to sanction Florida for its actions.

It’s worth noting that there is an off-ramp that the Supreme Court could take that would effectively shut down this particular lawsuit, but without doing extensive violence to Medicaid as a whole.

The plaintiffs allege that Gorgi Talevski, a dementia patient, was abused by a nursing home in violation of Medicaid law. This includes allegations that his caregivers unlawfully kept him docile using psychotropic drugs. The Justice Department’s brief argues, however, that federal Medicaid law sets up an alternative dispute resolution process — including a process for filing grievances and a process for filing complaints with their state government— that nursing home patients must rely on in lieu of a Section 1983 suit.

If the Justice Department’s argument prevails, that would result in a narrow loss for the Talevski plaintiffs, but it would also allow the Court to stay away from the broader questions of whether Section 1983 suits may ever be filed to enforce Medicaid law.

For the sake of everyone who depends on Medicaid, here’s hoping the Court’s current majority, which has shown little interest in judicial restraint, chooses to exercise some here.

The party’s closing argument is exploiting voters’ fears.

BUCKS COUNTY, Pennsylvania — Two years ago, Mary, 55, a resident of New Britain Township, voted for President Joe Biden because she couldn’t stomach the alternative.

“I could not vote Trump because he’s so despicable,” Mary told Vox. (She declined to share her last name in order to protect her privacy.)

This year, however, she’s supporting Mehmet Oz, the Republican running for Senate, because she’s worried that Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is too far to the left. “I have an issue with how risky he is,” she said, citing the “release of criminals” as a key point of concern.

Mary’s worries about crime come as Republicans hammer the subject in the Pennsylvania Senate race — and many other races across the country — as it’s proven to be an effective message for swaying suburban swing voters fearful of upticks in violence during the pandemic.

For Pennsylvanian Republicans, this has meant weaponizing Fetterman’s positions on criminal justice reform, including his advocacy for pardons and sentence commutations, to falsely suggest he wants to free dangerous criminals. Republican ads have claimed that he’d make the state “less safe,” a charge that Fetterman has rebutted by pointing to his record combating shootings as mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania.

Republicans’ attacks seek to tap renewed voter fears, which follow a recent increase in murders nationwide. While violent crime has been trending downward for decades, Philadelphia was among the places that saw a significant jump in homicides — 57 percent — between 2019 to 2021, an increase that has many people here on edge. Other places including Chicago and Oklahoma City have seen similar trends as murders increased 30 percent between 2019 and 2020 at the national level.

“The surge in messaging is because of a surge in violence that’s taken place. The salience of political messaging about crime goes up when crime goes up,” says Rutgers professor Lisa Miller, who’s studied how criminal justice issues can mobilize voters.

Republicans’ ads have capitalized on these anxieties by misleadingly blaming Democrats for this uptick and exploiting racist assumptions voters may hold about who’s responsible for these crimes. Recent polls and dozens of conversations with voters here make it evident that they’re finding a receptive audience, and moving the political needle. After Republicans spent millions on crime ads in Pennsylvania throughout September, polls between Fetterman and Oz tightened considerably and the Democrat’s favorability numbers took a hit.

Republicans’ spending, too, appears to reflect just how effective they see this line of attack being. All told, Republicans have spent $157 million on crime-related ads at the national level, compared to $105 million on the economy and inflation, according to data from the ad analysis firm AdImpact. And the breakdown is even starker in the Pennsylvania Senate race, where Republicans have spent nearly $12 million on crime ads, compared to $2.5 million on the economy and inflation.

Political scientists note that Republicans have long leveraged attacks on crime — and the racial biases they evoke — but they are resonating more this cycle because of the public’s heightened fears about crime and ongoing backlash toward “defund the police” rhetoric that the GOP has tied to Democrats. “Crime is a pretty potent opportunity right now because it’s been dramatically in the news for the last few years,” says Miller. “It’s a visceral issue.”

Messaging on crime is having an impact in Pennsylvania

A trio of billboards right outside Philadelphia quite literally spell out Republicans’ efforts to frame Democrats as “soft on crime.” Against the backdrop of what looks like a boarded-up building, the signs bear a comically simple and menacing message: “Fetterman = poverty and crime.” It’s a statement that’s clearly false, but it illustrates just how explicit Republicans are being in their message to voters on the subject.

Li Zhou/Vox

Republicans have focused these attacks on places where they see the topic being more relevant to voters: In both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, for example, there have been significant increases in homicides in major cities like Milwaukee and Philadelphia over the past three years, which have added to local worries in the surrounding suburbs.

Additionally, there have been high-profile news events that have made the issue more salient. The Pennsylvania legislature, controlled by Republicans, has been conducting a controversial impeachment push against progressive Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, whom they accuse of contributing to higher crime rates, another development that’s renewed focus on the topic.

Fetterman’s record has also left him particularly vulnerable to crime attacks. He’s offered more progressive stances on a host of criminal justice issues, including sentencing reforms for second-degree murder charges and a more expansive approach to clemency — stances Republicans have been all too happy to seize on as they try to stoke anxieties of voters in the suburbs.

Multiple Oz supporters whom I spoke with in Bucks County, one of the suburban “collar counties” around Philadelphia that could be decisive in this election, expressed fears that the crime taking place in the city would come for the suburbs next. These counties — which include Bucks, Chester, Montgomery, and Delaware — make up a crucial and populous purple region that helped sway the 2020 election for Biden and the 2016 Senate election for Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

“I can’t say what’s going on with Philadelphia with increased crime is directly linked to Fetterman, but there might be some overlap there and I don’t think that’s the road that we should go down,” said Brett Duffey, 20, a college student and registered Republican.

Duffey was among the voters who cited recent robberies of Wawa convenience stores in the area as an example of the crime uptick feeling like it was hitting closer to home. As of late October, seven Bucks County Wawa outposts had cut their evening hours because of two armed robberies that took place, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

“It’s coming this way,” says Bob Donnelly, 69, a Republican and Bucks County resident. “I used to go to South Street in Philly. Now I can’t, because of what’s on the news.”

According to state statistics, crime rates in Bucks County have stayed relatively flat in recent years, a trend that matched data Brian Munroe, the region’s clerk of courts and a Democratic candidate for state legislature, shared with Vox. Multiple voters noted, too, that they couldn’t point to specific incidents but mentioned a general sense that “lawlessness” was increasing in the area.

While voters’ perceptions of crime don’t always align with what the data shows, that hasn’t prevented the issue from becoming an especially relevant one this cycle. In a set of October Gallup polls, 71 percent of US respondents said crime was important to their vote for Congress, while 56 percent said they believed that there was more crime in their area compared to a year ago.

Republicans, Democrats argue, are exploiting these fears.

“They are trying to scare people, especially the elderly,” said Charles Bodner, 36, a Bucks County resident and Fetterman supporter. “At the end of the day fear is a great motivator and fear is very easy to stoke.”

In fact, Republican messaging hasn’t focused much on how GOP lawmakers would address genuine concerns that voters may hold on the issue of crime. Instead, it’s centered on distorting Fetterman’s pardon board record and arguing that he’d empty the state’s prisons if elected, with Oz’s campaign going so far as to call him “pro-murderer.” Oz recently released a plan spelling out criminal justice reforms he’d pursue, though his past positions muddle some of these policies: He says he’d support penalties that get illegal guns off the street, for example, but has yet to stake out a clear position on a recently passed bipartisan gun control bill, which would make it harder for people to obtain a gun via illegitimate channels.

Fetterman’s record on the pardon board, which has included working to free those who were wrongly convicted and people convicted of murder who’ve served decades in jail and been deemed low safety risks by corrections officials, is also far more nuanced than Republicans have portrayed. None of the people who’ve been freed from prison during Fetterman’s time overseeing the pardon board have reoffended, according to his campaign.

“Dr. Oz lies about my record on crime,” Fetterman has said. “Two of the things that I was most proud of in my career — stopping the gun violence as a mayor and fighting for the innocent and other individuals for a second chance — that is my record on crime.”

Republican attacks on crime are a nationwide strategy

Republican investments in crime messaging extend far beyond Pennsylvania as well.

In Wisconsin, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and a host of outside groups have also spent heavily on the issue as they try to retain control of the state’s hotly contested Senate seat. Many of these ads use racist imagery and language, and are clear attempts at stoking fears about Johnson’s Black opponent, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, in a state that’s overwhelmingly white. One such ad describes Barnes as “dangerous” and “different” while emphasizing his support for ending cash bail and juxtaposing his image against women of color who are members of “the Squad.”

“We are experiencing right now one of the most racist campaigns that I’ve seen in a long time,” said University of Wisconsin Milwaukee political scientist Kathleen Dolan. “It’s full of scare tactics about violent crime, despite the fact that a lieutenant governor does not have a whole lot of control about crime. It’s very clear they are trying to remind people that this guy is Black.”

Like Fetterman, Barnes has suggested progressive solutions to criminal justice reform, including a plan to reduce the state’s prison population — a history the ads distort. “Look, we knew the other side would make up lies about me to scare you,” Barnes has said in an ad pushing back against Republican claims that he wants to “defund the police.”

The onslaught appears to have moved a segment of swing voters in Wisconsin, however, with Barnes’s support among independents going down in the wake of huge television spending in August and September. Johnson was trailing Barnes earlier this summer but now holds a 4-point lead in polls, though many surveys are still within the margin of error.

That lead came in part from a major investment: Republicans spent nearly $10 million on crime-related ads in Wisconsin compared to $7 million on economic issues, according to AdImpact. In Wisconsin, 70 percent of digital ads in the Senate race have focused on crime, while just 15 percent have focused on inflation, according to NPR.

Other contests have also seen major spending on the issue, according to AdImpact, like the New York, Illinois, and Nevada gubernatorial races, as well as Senate races in Arizona and Florida.

In New York, Republican candidate Lee Zeldin has sought to use the issue as a cudgel against sitting Gov. Kathy Hochul, pointing to the rise of crime in New York City and arguing that her support for policies like bail reform is responsible — a claim researchers are continuing to study. In Oregon, Republicans have similarly tried to use an uptick of violence in Portland, and damage that resulted from the 2020 racial justice protests, against Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tina Kotek. And in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp has aimed to tie his Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams to the “defund the police” movement, even though they have both opposed it.

Democrats have been on the defensive on this issue as Republicans flooded the airwaves in August and September, prompting critiques that the party didn’t have a ready-made counter to these attacks. “Democrats really need to approach this head-on and no longer run from it. Voters are receiving fear-based messaging because Democrats haven’t defined our stance,” Ashley Aylward, a research manager at HIT Strategies, previously told Vox’s Nicole Narea.

Fetterman’s campaign argues that it’s been addressing the issue of public safety for months, and anticipated Republican attacks on this front, an approach that other candidates haven’t necessarily taken.

Increasingly, too, Democrats are now going on the offense and trying to call out Republicans when it comes to the January 6 insurrection and the GOP’s unwillingness to confront gun violence.

“When we talk about respect for law enforcement, let’s talk about the 140 officers [Johnson] left behind because of an insurrection he supported,” Barnes said during the Wisconsin debate in early October. Fetterman recently used this tactic at a gathering in Chester County, Pennsylvania, as well. “I’m not sure how you can be considered very pro-police if you don’t support getting as many guns off the street as you can that don’t belong on there,” he said, while calling out Oz’s position on gun control.

In many states, Democrats — Fetterman and Johnson among them — also have law enforcement officials vouching for their positions supporting the police.

Additionally, House Democrats passed bills in September hoping candidates could use them to demonstrate that the party backs funding for law enforcement: These bills would provide more resources to local police departments that could be used for deescalation training and data collection, as well as money to address unsolved violent crimes. The Senate didn’t take up the measures, however.

It’s not yet clear if these responses will be sufficient to neutralize GOP attacks given both their timing and the volume at which Republicans have pushed their messages on crime. As CBS News reported, 70 percent of Republican ads airing in Wisconsin have focused on crime since August 30, and 53 percent of Republican ads in Pennsylvania have done the same.

Why messaging on crime is so potent

A big reason that Republicans have invested so much on the issue of crime is that it works as an emotional appeal, and can activate racist views that people may hold.

“It’s one of the things that’s more emotional even than the economy. Crime is simply an emotional thing,” said Nolan. And while crime has not risen to the same degree across the board, broader trends have helped make Republicans’ midterms messaging more potent.

Nationally, murder rates in large cities appear to have declined slightly this year relative to last year, according to a New York Times report, though they’re still higher than pre-pandemic levels. Other types of crime, like thefts and robberies, however, have been increasing in major cities relative to last year.

“Whereas in previous elections it was relatively easy for Democrats to parry this issue by pointing out that crime rates have declined tremendously, the resurgence of crime during the pandemic has given new life to this issue,” said Columbia University political scientist Don Green.

Republicans’ messaging on crime is also building on a longstanding history of the GOP describing itself as the party of “law and order,” branding that’s led voters to trust them more on the issue. In an October Ipsos survey, 37 percent of registered voters said they trusted Republicans more when it comes to handling crime, compared to 22 percent of registered voters who said the same about Democrats.

Many past campaigns have leveraged — and reinforced — this dynamic, including when President Richard Nixon famously ran as the “law and order” candidate in the 1960s, with claims that he’d push back on protests and unrest related to the civil rights and antiwar movements, to assuage white voters’ fears about these demonstrations. Roughly two decades later, Republicans employed this strategy to help President George H.W. Bush win his presidential election as well, using the notorious Willie Horton attack ad to paint his opponent Michael Dukakis as “soft on crime” and amplify racist stereotypes about Black Americans.

As the Bush — and now Johnson — ads show clearly, the attacks on crime are implicitly and explicitly about race, another reason they’re so effective.

“It’s not even a dog whistle, it’s a megaphone. People hear race, people hear ‘the other,’ people hear Black,” says Cliff Albright, a co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund. “When all else fails, we can use the specter of crime because it speaks to people’s fears and it serves so clearly as a proxy for race.” As Ed Kilgore previously explained for New York magazine, even the origins of “law and order” as an idea stem from keeping systems in place to maintain white supremacy and segregation.

In the 1960s, Nixon’s focus on crime was aimed at reassuring suburban voters that he’d protect them from the violence that had accompanied civil rights demonstrations in places like Los Angeles and Chicago. This year, Republicans are aiming to once again capitalize on suburban voters’ fears of the crime taking place in cities, and how it could affect them.

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Today's News:

Starting on Nov. 1, employers in New York City are required to list salary ranges in job ads. It’s another move toward equal pay, as well as helping job applicants know that they’re not wasting their time applying for a job that won’t pay enough to live on. But employers are already skirting the law in a really brazen manner.

According to the law, “employers advertising jobs in New York City must include a good faith salary range for every job, promotion, and transfer opportunity advertised,” where “good faith” means what the employer “honestly believes at the time they are listing the job advertisement that they are willing to pay the successful applicant(s).” The law applies to all businesses with four or more employees, and to job categories, including full- or part-time employees, interns, domestic workers, independent contractors, and more. It also applies to ads for remote workers if those workers might be in New York City, though it doesn’t apply to New York-based businesses applying for workers located outside the city.

RELATED STORY: Young women out-earn young men in a few cities. Time will tell if it's a sign of progress

Some companies got ahead of the curve and started listing their pay ranges in job ads before the law went into effect. Others, not so much. Check out this thread:

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Does that look like “good faith”?

These companies are counting on little to no enforcement, and taking advantage of the fact that there’s no penalty for a first violation of the law, as long as it’s fixed within 30 days. The maximum penalty is $250,000, but it’s unlikely that anyone will pay that.

Colorado already has a similar law, and a range of pay transparency laws are being enacted in other states, including California, Washington, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Nevada. In response to the Colorado law, some companies started saying they wouldn't accept applicants from Colorado for remote work.

At companies where people in similar roles had been hired at significantly different salaries, the Colorado law forced some changes, talent acquisition consultant Tim Meurer told The New York Times: “H.R. was extremely busy for probably six months where they had to explain exactly why each individual person was paid what they were paid.” That was a good thing, though, because companies ultimately had “to really hold people accountable and have documented processes as to why they’re paying people, why they’re moving people’s compensation, why people are titled the way they were titled,” he said.

Along with laws that prevent employers from asking applicants what they have been paid in previous jobs, which have been enacted in many states, making salary ranges transparent at the time of application or promotion can help reduce gender and racial pay gaps. One study of the effect of such a policy on Canadian universities found that it “reduced the gender pay gap between men and women by approximately 20-40 percent.” Another study, though, found that transparency policies lowered wages overall—mostly for men. Which would also reduce the gender gap, albeit in the wrong way, and underscores how companies are willing to cut individual deals to unfairly boost the pay of some favored workers, but resist across-the-board fairness. Leveling the playing field for women and people of color is an important move—but if employers use it as an excuse to make things worse, that’s another reminder that workers need still more leverage. Say, the kind they could get from joining together in a union.

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Concerns about her ability to serve have percolated within her party.

House progressives on Tuesday retracted a letter calling on President Joe Biden to engage in direct diplomacy with Russia, less than 24 hours after it sparked intense backlash from other Democrats.

The about-face comes as some Democratic lawmakers vent their fury that the letter backing talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin — originally drafted and signed in June — wasn’t recirculated before its public release on Monday. That release made it appear that the 30 House Democrats who signed on, all lawmakers in the roughly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, were urging the Biden administration to push for diplomacy immediately despite Russia's engagement in war crimes and indications of a military escalation against Ukraine.

Making the timing of the letter even more politically perilous: Ukraine is not ready for negotiations at this point, especially because its months-long counteroffensive has been successful to date, and there’s no indication Putin is ready to deal either.

“The Congressional Progressive Caucus hereby withdraws its recent letter to the White House regarding Ukraine,” the caucus’ chair, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), said in a statement after POLITICO first reported that the retraction was imminent. “The letter was drafted several months ago, but unfortunately was released by staff without vetting.”

Jayapal said she accepts “responsibility” for the embarrassing flub, adding that the timing of the letter caused a “distraction” and was “conflated” with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s recent suggestion that Republicans might pull back on Ukraine funding if they win control of the House.

“The proximity of these statements created the unfortunate appearance that Democrats, who have strongly and unanimously supported and voted for every package of military, strategic, and economic assistance to the Ukrainian people, are somehow aligned with Republicans who seek to pull the plug on American support for President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian forces,” Jayapal added.

A source familiar with the situation told POLITICO that Jayapal personally approved the letter's release on Monday. Spokespeople for the Progressive Caucus and Jayapal's personal office, asked for comment, referred back to the group's statement without denying Jayapal's direct involvement.

The letter to Biden was released without the knowledge of many Democratic lawmakers who put their name on it, several people told POLITICO, speaking candidly on condition of anonymity. While it was partially updated with new information about Russia's war on Ukraine and sent to other lawmakers to reach a threshold of 30 signees, POLITICO has learned, the letter got released mostly in its original form.

The original release date for the letter was August 1, a congressional aide said, adding that it was never made clear why there was a delay. Its text was circulating on the Hill during August's weeks-long legislative recess.

“Once you sign on to a letter, it’s up to the original drafters and unfortunately not all of them will keep folks updated,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the Progressive Caucus whip and a signatory of the pro-Russia-diplomacy letter, tweeted Tuesday. “That’s why some of us don’t sign on to letters without direct insight into when or how it will be released.”

Other signatories and congressional aides blamed the Progressive Caucus’ office for releasing it as questions swirl over whether Republicans would continue funding Ukraine’s defense if they win the House majority in two weeks, as is expected.

“Amateur hour on part of the CPC not to have anticipated that,” said one lawmaker who signed on and, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A Hill staffer put it even more bluntly: “It’s just a disaster. The CPC just needs to clean house.”

The letter called on Biden to consider a diplomatic path to end Russia's war on Ukraine if the opportunity arises. Acknowledging the difficulty of direct talks with Putin, the lawmakers encouraged consideration of a negotiated settlement as the risk of nuclear war rises. Ukraine opposes such a diplomatic path because that would likely require surrendering some of its territory to Moscow. And the Biden administration has pledged that the U.S. wouldn’t do anything without Kyiv’s backing.

Outside progressive and anti-war groups supported the letter's content, agreeing it was time to pursue a diplomatic path when the time was right. But the organizations split on the rollout, exposing a rift in the progressive foreign policy community. Just Foreign Policy's Erik Sperling, one of the lead advocates of the letter, told POLITICO "the issue here is simply that, as happened during the Iraq War and other wars, those who oppose diplomacy want to use bad faith attacks to intimidate people out of having substantive debates about U.S. policy."

A leader for another group that endorsed the initiative said, on condition of anonymity: "We signed the text of the letter, not the editorialized roll out that isn’t consistent with the progressive position on Ukraine."

Amid the pushback on Monday, Jayapal — who's mulling a bid for House Democratic leadership next year — released a statement to clarify her support for Ukraine and insist that the letter wasn’t suggesting a break from Biden’s policy.

Her explanation didn't stop the ire within the Democratic caucus, where several lawmakers bashed the letter in public in a remarkable display of intraparty rejection. One of the signatories even said she wouldn’t have signed it today.

“Timing in diplomacy is everything. I signed this letter on June 30, but a lot has changed since then. I wouldn't sign it today,” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) said.

Many Democrats took particular issue with the letter’s suggestions that sanctions relief could be on the table in order to incentivize Russia to end its assault on Ukraine.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) called it “an olive branch to a war criminal who’s losing his war.” Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) told POLITICO she was “dismayed that some of my [Democratic] colleagues think that we can negotiate with Putin.” Neither lawmaker signed the letter or belong to the Progressive Caucus.

Other signatories of the letter quickly clarified their own positions, and more are expected to speak out as soon as Tuesday. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who also chairs the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, released a statement Monday declaring continued support for Ukrainian self-determination: “Only Ukrainians have a right to determine the terms by which this war ends.” Another signatory, Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.), said in a statement the “letter should not have been sent” because of its outdated information, though he still believed in the letter’s “underlying message” of the need for diplomacy while supporting Ukraine’s defense.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), however, said he didn't support withdrawing the letter, calling it "common sense" in a CNN interview.

“All the letter said is that we, at the same time that we stand with Ukraine, need to make sure that we’re reducing the risk for nuclear war, that we’re engaging in talks with the Russians to make sure that the conflict doesn’t escalate," he said.

The saga could have implications beyond the Ukraine funding efforts, given Jayapal's leadership ambitions. And Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who also signed the letter, is vying for the party's top post on the powerful House Oversight committee.

Raskin said in a statement Tuesday that he was "glad" the letter was withdrawn due to its "unfortunate timing and other flaws." He also pointed out he has "passionately supported every package of military, strategic and economic assistance to the Ukrainian people."

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who is running against Raskin for that job and serves as president of NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly, released a statement Tuesday blasting “magical thinking regarding the nature of the Russian threat" — though without mentioning the letter or Raskin.

Sarah Ferris and Burgess Everett contributed to this report.

The right is wielding disinformation about the assault as a display of power.

Young voters under 30 showed up in historic numbers in 2018 and 2020, helping to shift the outcome of those elections toward major Democratic victories in both cycles.

This cycle, under-30 voters once again hold the fate of the nation in their hands amid a midterm election so closely contested that no one is capable of forecasting the outcomes given the uncertainty surrounding turnout.

A CBS News battleground tracker illustrated the potential Gen Z effect most profoundly, noting that, if under-30 voters turned out in strong numbers, Democrats might manage to keep the lower chamber by a hair.

In 2018, some 36% of eligible voters under 30 cast a ballot, according to an examination by the Census. That was a historic rate of participation compared to previous midterm cycles, and as director of polling for the Harvard Youth Poll, John Della Volpe, noted, it helped generate the massive blue wave that swept across the country.

The annual Harvard Youth Poll released last week found that 40% of 18-to-29-year-olds said they would "definitely" vote in November, which would position young voters to exceed their record turnout in the 2018 midterm. That type of youth turnout would be an incredible boon to Democrats, since voters under 30 preferred Democratic control of Congress by 57% to 31% in the poll.

Della Volpe anticipates youth turnout will fall several points shy of 40%.

“I expect it to be a few points less — but that will likely double youth vote in 2014 and most of last 30 years,” he tweeted over the weekend.

One way or the other, young voters will likely be the difference between Democrats having a very good night next Tuesday, a decent night, and a bad night.

A recent GOP poll in Pennsylvania demonstrated just what a critical role the youth vote will play in outcomes. It showed GOP Senate nominee Mehmet Oz besting Democratic nominee John Fetterman by 3 points. But the poll also significantly undercounted youth, according to TargetSmart CEO and data analyst Tom Bonier.

"Oz couldn't close the gap in PA," Bonier tweeted. "But after [last week’s] debate, a GOP poll showed him up 3. That poll had the youth vote at literally half of what it has been in previous elections. But many media outlets reported that Oz had surged into the lead." 

Whether Bonier was talking about a poll from InsiderAdvantage or co/efficient wasn’t clear, but both polls are included in FiveThirtyEight’s aggregate.

The early vote numbers in Pennsylvania also suggest that youth voters could bolster the Democratic effort there.

"Voters under the age of 30 returning ballots thus far are +69.2% D," Bonier noted Monday, calling the stat "astounding." "At this point in '20, that same age group was +51.9D," he added.

Voters under 30 are likely to have a bigger impact in battleground states like the Keystone State, according to the Harvard Youth Poll.

"Young Americans under 30 who live in battleground states (45%) are more likely to vote than those from traditional red (33%) or blue states (40%)," states the Youth Poll.

Della Volpe fully expects voters under 30 to be decisive this cycle.

“Battleground state polling is far from settled, I’m not sure if we will see a Red Wave or Blue Wave on November 8 — but we will see a Gen Z Wave,” Della Volpe said in a statement released with the Harvard poll. “Youth today vote at levels that far exceed millennials, Gen X, and baby boomers when they were under 30. Inspired by the Parkland students in 2018, sparked by fear about their future, the future of our country, and planet, Gen Z is ushering in a new era of sustained political engagement.”

If that proves true, Democrats will fare much better next week than most models are predicting.

While Texas attorney general Ken Paxton is undisputedly one of the most corrupt elected politicians of our day, his state’s governor is no stranger to shady dealings. Texas Observer reports that “a longtime venture capitalist” who has received hundreds of millions of dollars in border and pandemic contracts donated a total of $250,000 to the Republican’s campaign this past summer and fall. 

Matthew Michelsen’s disaster logistics firm Gothams LLC was contracted by Texas to set up mobile infusion sites as part of the state’s pandemic response, as well as holding sites as part of Abbott’s multibillion-dollar, taxpayer-funded Operation Lone Star border scheme. It’s apparently a company that can do it all! The report said that the state contracts won by Gothams totaled more than $560 million.

RELATED STORY: Abbott admits he lied during debate, acknowledges mayor's office did contact him about busing

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Texas Observer notes that while Michelsen’s total $250,000 donation to Abbott’s campaign in August, September, and October “is a relatively small drop in the bucket of a campaign that now regularly receives $1 million checks, it’s a sign that Abbott is willing to cash in on those who’ve profited from his constant states of disaster, which give the governor and state agencies expansive authority to direct emergency responses with few restraints.”

Because Abbott’s emergency orders related to the border and pandemic are still in effect (even though he actively worked to aid the pandemic!), he’s been able to skip out those pesky competitive bidding and oversight stuff. Texas Observer reports that state Rep. Mary Gonzalez told the Houston Chronicle that Abbott was “just abusing emergency powers at this point.”

Abusing emergency powers to aid his political campaign, as well. ProPublica and Marshall Project’s joint investigation this past April revealed that Abbott and Rick Perry (remember him?) cumulatively spent billions in taxpayer funds on supposed border initiatives that just happened to coincide with gubernatorial bids, or when Democrats controlled parts of the federal government.

Operation Lone Star has been a racist stunt targeting Black and brown migrants, and it’s also punished the soldiers deployed to the operation. Because of an error by state officials, Texas National Guard troops may owe “hundreds or even thousands of dollars in unexpected federal taxes,” The Texas Tribune and Military Times said in a joint report. Florida has also had a reciprocal relationship with GOP megadonors. Daily Kos’ Walter Einenkel noted this past fall that Vertol Systems Company Inc., the company that was paid big bucks to transport vulnerable migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, is also very friendly with Republicans.

Abbott has also spent taxpayer money busing migrants from Texas to areas including Illinois, New York, and Washington, D.C., as some sort of sick punishment against his perceived political enemies. Abbott admitted he lied about the busing during last month’s gubernatorial debate against Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke. Abbott had claimed New York City Mayor Eric Adams “never called my office, never talked to anybody in my administration,” about trying to coordinate migrant arrivals. But his office had.

“This hateful rhetoric, this treating human beings as political pawns, talking about invasions and Texans defending themselves—that's how people get killed at the Walmart in El Paso,” O’Rourke said during the debate. Abbott’s Operation Lone Star scheme is reportedly under investigation by the Justice Department. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department watchdog has confirmed its probing whether Abbott misused federal pandemic funds as part of his border scheme.

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Trans rights continue to be under attack across the nation with the proliferation of discriminatory bills centered on sports, health care, books, and even bathroom access. As we near the midterm elections in November, we know conservatives are trying their hardest to distract from their failures to lead and serve constituents, so they’re trying to stir up manufactured outrage to get people to vote—even though they don’t do a thing to actually help residents. And they’re churning terror, hate, and misinformation against a vulnerable population. It's abhorrent, and sadly, it’s what we expect at this point.

Though certainly not the only state where anti-LGBTQ+ measures are taking hold, Florida is definitely one to watch. For example, on Friday, the Florida Board of Medicine held a joint workshop in Orlando on rules and guidelines around providing safe, age-appropriate, life-saving gender-affirming care to minors in the state. The purpose of the discussion, which included public comment as well as from medical “experts,” is to help develop rules and guidelines for state access to trans health care for youth in the state. 

To say it was a disaster is an understatement. 

RELATED: Libertarian dad sues school district over Pride flags in classroom, thanks to Don't Say Gay law

On Friday, Oct. 28, members of both the Florida Board of Medicine and the Board of Osteopathic Medicine Joint Rules/Legislative Committee participate in the session held at the Hyatt Regency Orlando International Airport. It was an hours-long confusing nightmare that ultimately resulted in the joint committee voting in favor of the proposed rule banning gender-affirming care for youth in the state, including things like puberty blockers and hormonal therapies.

“It’s just plain wrong,” said openly trans woman Amy Rachel when speaking to Click Orlando, adding that people’s lives are literally at stake. “Some are deliberately spreading misinformation about the transgender community,” she added. “And about the kinds of treatments that are available and given.”

She’s exactly right, of course. Republicans have made it a priority to push inflammatory misinformation when it comes to trans folks and especially when it comes to gender-affirming health care. In the big picture, conservatives are using the old “queer people are predatory” and “queer sexuality is obscene and inappropriate” tropes to stifle LGBTQ+ people, media, and histories. And when it comes to trans people, they’re hoping to legislate them out of (open) existence. Again: It’s evil.

Conservatives insist on describing gender-affirming care as “permanent” and “irreversible,” which is not only a gross oversimplification but also simply not true as a blanket statement. They also use buzzwords like “mutilation” and talk about genital surgeries when they’re not even an available option the vast majority of the time. 

In speaking to WUSF in an interview, pediatric endocrinologist Kristin Dayton of the University of Florida, who was scheduled to speak at Friday’s meeting, clarified that though they work in a pediatric gender clinic, they don’t offer “any sort of genital surgeries, anything that would alter the genitalia of anyone who is a child. Dayton said explicitly: "No one under the age of 18 is getting a surgical procedure like that."

This is basically the same as many, many providers and clinicians have said when they’ve faced attacks from far-right conservatives accusing them of deforming children. Thanks to extremists online, like the infamous Libs of TikTok, for example, we’ve seen blatant lies spread about what kind of care trans-inclusive hospitals and clinics are providing… And we’ve also seen providers be barraged with threats, hate, and harassment. 

During Friday’s meeting, according to LGBTQ+ outlet them, Dayton was one of three pro-trans rights experts allowed to speak, and she stressed that in her experience, patients with gender dysphoria symptoms did indeed have lower suicidal ideation and better quality of life thanks to gender-affirming health care, which varies from patient to patient.

Makes sense.

Curious about who else was scheduled to speak at the meeting? Well, as reported by Media Matters, one “expert” who was slated to speak in favor of the state’s anti-trans guidelines but dropped from the session was Dr. James Cantor, a psychologist who allegedly has a history of public advocacy for pedophiles. This includes advocating for pedophilia to be included in the LGBTQ+ umbrella and participation in the Prostasia Foundation, which works to destigmatize pedophiles. According to Media Matters, Cantor was removed from the witness list several days before the meeting took place, perhaps because Cantor’s views began recirculating online.

Whew. So what actually went on during the meeting?

According to Alejandra Caraballo, the board discussed the concept of a registry for trans people in the state, which is disturbing for obvious reasons. (Caraballo clarified in a follow-up tweet that this was not officially proposed or put into place, but the discussion itself is still mind-blowing.)

One speaker cited incorrect information about gender-affirming care and suicidality, saying that childhood gender dysphoria tends to go away.

“There’s no support for medical intervention for gender-confused minors,” he states. “Medical procedures do not reduce youth suicide. Childhood gender dysphoria usually dissipates by adulthood. And the dramatic increase in gender dysphoria of the recent past is likely driven by social factors. My recommendation to the rules committee is that cross-sex medical and surgical treatment should not be supported by organized medicine, the Board of Medicine, or insurance companies.”

People in the crowd started yelling out, “Lies!” Because, well, they’re right. 

As Daily Kos has continued to cover, gender-affirming care is life-saving care. Gender-affirming care is backed by all major medical associations, including The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Medical Association, the American Counseling Association, the American Public Health Association, and many, many more. There’s even an extremely recent study on just how many people who receive gender-affirming care, like puberty blockers and hormonal therapies, as teens stop that treatment as adults.

A whopping 2% of study participants stopped the treatment. Another way of putting this: 98% continued. And we don’t know why those folks stopped—if it was an access issue, a financial burden, individual health complications, or something else entirely.

Erin Reed tweeted that the hearing was cut early, and activists were told to “email them.”

Here’s that clip where you can hear people’s disappointment and confusion at the news.

“You’ll be the last speaker for the day,” a person on the committee said, which immediately resulted in outbursts from the audience.

“Don’t shout,” he continued. “You’re not going to win.” He added that people would be provided with an email for the state of Florida and that whatever information people send in would be on the record.

“There’s blood on your hands,” one person chanted while people clapped in support.

“That’s okay,” he said. “Let’s have some decency and decorum here.”

Decency and decorum, while stripping people of their basic rights and dignities, hmm. OK.

Per Axios health care reporter Oriana González, the committee ultimately voted in favor of banning gender-affirming care for trans youth in Florida, and the full board will vote on the rule next Friday, which is also when they would decide the date this would go into effect, per Caraballo.

According to them, committee chair Dr. Zachariah P. Zachariah announced the motion to craft the rule passed but did not give a specific vote tally.

Per NBC News reporter Jo Yurcaba, there are exceptions for people who are intersex as well as people involved in certain clinical trials. There are also exceptions for people who want or need these treatments for reasons that don’t have to do with gender. 

And to loop all of this into the bigger picture, the Florida Board of Medicine has until December to complete the guidelines for the Florida Department of Health; the Board started the process in August in order to form guidelines that align with the state’s health department.

So, if you’re thinking all of this goes back to DeSantis and his anti-queer brigade, you’re absolutely right. 

You can watch a brief clip of coverage and interviews below.

Footage and audio reveals new details about the attack, which is the culmination of Republicans’ years-long efforts to make Nancy Pelosi out to be a public enemy.

A court on Friday released footage of the October attack on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi. The incident was overtly political, and the logical endpoint of the decades of deeply personal villainization the former Democratic House speaker has weathered from her political opponents.

Capitol Police security footage shows the assailant, David DePape, breaking a window to enter the Pelosis’ San Francisco home. Police body cam footage also shows DePape and Paul Pelosi struggling over a hammer for a few seconds after police arrived at the front door. The video shows DePape bludgeoning Pelosi with it, knocking him to the ground and leaving him with a skull fracture from which he is still recovering months later.

Additionally, the court released audio from Paul Pelosi’s 911 call that led police to perform a wellness check, as well as from a police interview with DePape in which he espoused false conspiracy theories about a Democratic “crime spree” involving Nancy Pelosi.

In the audio, DePape admits that he had intended to take Nancy Pelosi hostage and “break her kneecaps” if she failed to answer his questions in a way that he thought was truthful. He explains that he did not flee after Paul Pelosi called the police because he did not want to surrender, comparing himself to the founders fighting British tyranny.

“He thinks that I’ll just surrender, and it’s like, I didn’t come there to surrender,” DePape said. “And I told him that I would go through him.”

DePape has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him, which include federal attempted murder, attempted kidnapping, and assault.

For months, Republicans have dismissed any connection between their words and the attack, despite having made Nancy Pelosi the target of harsh rhetoric for years. Instead, they’ve blamed Democratic policies on crime and suggested that growing political violence may be the result of general anxiety around election legitimacy. In the aftermath of the attack, Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO who was cheered by Republicans when he bought Twitter, advanced a right-wing anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory around the circumstances of the attack. Though he deleted his post, it remained on Twitter long enough to be amplified and repeated by many on the right.

After the video of the attack was posted online Friday, Republicans were largely silent on the subject. Ronna McDaniel, the newly reelected chair of the Republican National Committee, touted the party’s gains in midterms at the organization’s annual meeting, which she said was in Southern California just to “rub Nancy Pelosi’s face in it one more time.”

Even before Pelosi became speaker, Republicans in the party and those adjacent to it have demonized her regularly, featuring her in attack ads and lambasting her on Fox News. At least one of her colleagues in the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), has directly indicated support for violence against her. And members of right-wing militia groups such as the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters have sought her assassination.

Based on his statements in the audio released Friday, it’s now even clearer that DePape has been influenced by that rhetoric that made Pelosi a familiar target of the right — and not just on the political fringes.

The long history of Republicans demonizing Nancy Pelosi

Pelosi has been villainized by Republicans since she first ascended to Democratic leadership.

In 2003, within days of her election as House minority leader, she quickly faced gendered attacks from Republicans who were, as Mark Z. Barabak wrote for the Los Angeles Times at the time, “eager to attack Pelosi as a loopy San Francisco liberal and exploit her city’s reputation as the odd-sock drawer of America. Within days, her face — garish and twisted — showed up in an attack ad slamming the Democrat in a Louisiana House race. (He won anyway.) She surfaced as Miss America, complete with tiara, in a spoof on Rush Limbaugh’s Web site.”

Such attacks continued throughout her tenure as minority leader, including during the 2006 election when Republicans ran a swath of attack ads featuring unflattering photos of Pelosi often looking angry, bug-eyed, or startled. And they increased in 2010, after she had become speaker. Republicans made her the face of their attacks on Democrats’ Affordable Care Act and launched a “Fire Pelosi” campaign, which involved a bus tour and images of Pelosi engulfed in flames.

Under the Trump era and in the years since, the attacks have only escalated in tenor. Former President Donald Trump, who has remained silent about the attack on Paul Pelosi, shared doctored videos of the speaker designed to call into question her mental fitness, retweeted accusations that she was “drinking booze on the job,” and had a litany of derogatory nicknames for her, among them “Crazy Nancy,” “Nervous Nancy,” and “Nancy Antoinette.”

Many of Trump’s followers echoed his rhetoric, online and in conservative media such as Fox News. In 2021, Fox News host Mark Levin called her “a nasty old bag — that’s what she is, a nasty, vicious, unhinged fool” who “has the hots for Trump” and “can’t get Trump out of her head.”

Rhetoric involving Pelosi has often taken violent turns as well. In 2018 and 2019, Taylor Greene repeatedly seemed to suggest support for Pelosi’s execution, among that of other prominent Democrats, liking a Facebook post that said “a bullet to the head” would be the most expedient way to end Pelosi’s speakership. Taylor Greene also claimed in a Facebook video that Pelosi was guilty of treason, noting “a crime punishable by death is what treason is.”

One candidate in the GOP primary for Senate in Arizona this year aired a Super Bowl ad that featured him dressed as sheriff shooting down an actor playing Pelosi, identified as “Crazy Face Pelosi,” after he says, “The good people of Arizona have had enough of you.” In the period since Labor Day, Republicans have reportedly since spent nearly $40 million on ads that mention Pelosi.

Last week, National Republican Congressional Committee chair Tom Emmer (R-MN) posted a video of himself firing a gun with the hashtag #FirePelosi. And even on Friday, just hours after the attack, Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin linked the attack on Pelosi’s husband to the November elections, drawing condemnation from Democrats who called the comments insensitive.

“There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re going to send [Pelosi] back to be with him in California,” Youngkin said at a campaign rally in Stafford for GOP congressional candidate Yesli Vega.

Fox News anchors have also tried to tie the attack to Republicans’ message on crime in the midterms. “This can happen anywhere. Crime is random and that’s why it’s such a significant part of this election story,” Fox anchor Bill Hemmer said on air Friday. Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel echoed that talking point on Fox News Sunday, saying, “If this weren’t Paul Pelosi, this criminal would probably be out on the street tomorrow ... This is what Democrat policies are bringing.”

Other Republicans — including Florida Sen. Rick Scott, chair of the GOP’s Senate campaign arm — denounced the attack but argued against Republicans having a key role in fomenting the conspiracy theories of the attacker. Scott seemed to suggest the attack was rooted in a general lack of public confidence in elections.

“I think what we have to do is, one, we have to condemn the violence, and then we have to do everything we can to get people — make sure people feel comfortable about these elections,” he said Sunday on CNN.

The vilification of Pelosi has taken an even uglier form in ultra-right-wing circles online. Conspiracy theories like the one shared by Musk abound, and even Republican members of Congress are spreading misinformation:

Some on Trump’s social media platform Truth Social have also been openly celebrating the attack, with the hashtag #PelosiCrimeFamily trending in the days following the attack.

Arguably, the venom aimed at Pelosi wouldn’t exist without the decades of Republican vitriol against her. President Joe Biden made that connection explicit at a fundraising dinner in Philadelphia in October, saying that political violence is the natural outcome of the kind of rhetoric that Republicans have enabled. “What makes us think that it’s not going to corrode the political climate?” he asked.

Misogyny, anti-elitism, and anti-democratic ideas feature heavily in attacks on Pelosi

As the first female speaker of the House, and one serving at a time of increasing political polarization and anti-democratic violence, Pelosi faced uniquely intense attacks that have channeled right-wing anger about her gender, wealth, and pro-democratic rhetoric.

Even when she first ran for Congress, Republicans sought to portray her as unserious, a “liberal dilettante” and “airhead” — insults that ring of sexism.

In 2007, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh mocked her election to the speakership: “This is a triumph of feminism and estrogen. ... And ladies, the long 200-year national nightmare without a woman at the top is now over.” In 2009, Democrats accused Republicans of advancing antiquated attitudes toward women when they ran an ad suggesting that Pelosi should be put “in her place” on the issue of Afghanistan. And in 2014, a Republican member suggested that she “might want to try” doing her research on the border, comments that her Democratic colleagues took to be patronizing and sexist.

Pelosi doesn’t talk about her gender much, but on occasion she has pointed out the disparate treatment and unique attacks she’s faced as a woman in congressional leadership. For instance, amid questions in 2014 about her age and whether she should hand the mantle to a successor, she retorted that then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is just two years younger than her, should be fielding similar questions. And in 2018, after being demonized by Trump and the GOP and still winning the speakership, she told CNBC, “I don’t want women to think if you get attacked, you run away.”

The attacks against Pelosi over the years have also focused on her wealth. On the right, there have long been harsh critiques of “elites,” often stoked by Fox News; increasingly, as my colleague Andrew Prokop recently explained, influential members of the right argue an “elite left ‘ruling class’ has captured and is ruining America, and that drastic measures are necessary to fight back against them.”

For many — including one January 6 rioter and recruiter for the Three Percenters, an anti-government movement — Pelosi is the face of that “evil” ruling class. And she’s often been attacked as one of that class’s most hypocritical members. She’s faced criticism for initially dismissing the idea that members of Congress and their family members shouldn’t be allowed to trade stocks, despite the fact that they have access to confidential intelligence.

It’s a critique that was particularly intense given she is one of the richest members of Congress, with an estimated net worth of at least $46 million, and that fortune has grown in part thanks to lucrative trades by Paul Pelosi, a venture capitalist. She later endorsed legislation that would make it harder for members of Congress to use information they receive on the job for their own financial gain, but it currently seems unlikely to pass.

Ironically, Trump attacked Pelosi for her wealth and elite status a number of times; perhaps most notably, he sought to use her wealth to portray her as out of touch in a 2020 campaign ad ridiculing her expensive fridge filled with ice cream while Americans were going hungry during the Covid-related economic downturn.

Both the sexist and anti-elite lines of attack have directly fed into the anti-democratic attacks that have recently overshadowed the rest. She was a top target during the January 6 insurrection, when the mob tore apart her office, calling out her name and searching for her. Rioters, emboldened by Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, left no doubt as to what they would have done to her: “We did our part. We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the frickin’ brain. But we didn’t find her,” one woman said in a selfie video.

After the insurrection was put down, Pelosi declared that “democracy won.” But it’s clear that pro-Trump extremists like DePape aren’t willing to give up the fight.

Update, January 27, 6:45 pm ET: This story, originally published on October 29, 2022, has been updated to reflect the court-ordered release of footage of the attack and audio from that night.

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Judging just by the sensation of concern, my brain regularly assigns greater than 25% probability to thousands of literally impossible dangers.

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The tech giant warned that businesses are cutting spending and customers are tightening their belts.

Amazon’s stock price fell as much as 20 percent on Thursday afternoon after the tech giant provided a weak forecast for the holiday quarter. The company’s chief financial officer said Amazon is attempting to cut costs as it sees signs that both business and consumer customers are watching their spending.

“We are taking actions to tighten our belt,” Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, said in a call with reporters on Thursday.

Amazon said in its earnings release that it expected to generate $140 billion to $148 billion in revenue during the final quarter of 2022, disappointing Wall Street stock analysts who had expected revenue projections of around $155 billion. Sales growth of Amazon’s highly profitable Amazon Web Services cloud computing unit slowed in the third quarter as business customers looked to cut spending — “I think every company is trying to save money,” Olsavsky said — and Amazon’s core retail business softened as consumers began spending less, most notably in Europe.

“Europe has been weaker than North America, although we see the impact of consumers tightening their belts a bit globally,” Olsavsky said. He referenced entering a period of “uncharted waters,” with tightening budgets, inflation still high, and high energy costs.

Words of caution from a top executive at one of the world’s most valuable companies and largest US employers, coupled with the weaker-than-expected holiday forecast, could be a sign that the worst days of the current economic slowdown are still ahead of us. And that should be worrying to anyone, whether they’re a fan of Amazon or a critic who doesn’t want the company to succeed.

And it’s not just Amazon. Other tech companies provided similarly ominous signals recently. Google and Microsoft both told investors this week that they would slow hiring, and Amazon said earlier this month that it would freeze hiring in its core retail business, which is its maturest business unit but also its slowest-growing and least profitable.

Similar to Amazon, Microsoft reported to Wall Street this week that business customers of its Azure cloud computing business were looking to cut spending, signaling broader belt-tightening in the corporate world. And if mid-sized and large companies with large workforces are preparing for the economic climate to worsen, that could be a sign that more people are in jeopardy of losing their jobs and that smaller businesses on less stable footing could have a rocky road ahead.

Silicon Valley is also facing trouble in the advertising business, which is a massive source of revenue at the top technology companies. Amazon, Google, and Facebook — the three largest advertising sales companies in the US — also revealed slowdowns in their ad businesses. Some of that is due to changes in privacy controls Apple started offering iPhone users last year, which can make it harder for marketers using advertising tools from the tech giants to target these users with ads.

But that’s not the whole story. Amazon’s ad business is largely insulated from Apple’s privacy changes, but the company’s CFO said the division is still seeing softening demand from consumer brands and merchants looking to market their goods to Amazon customers, with these advertisers spending less per digital ad impression. Amazon’s ad revenue still grew 30 percent in the third quarter, but that’s down from 52 percent in the same period in 2021.

“We are preparing for what could be a slower growth period, like most companies,” Olsavsky said.

And if tech giants like Amazon, that once seemed invincible amid record sales and profits spurred by the early days of the pandemic, are preparing for the economy to get worse, the rest of us probably should too.

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The animated series "Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi" premiered this week on Disney+, witih all six 15-minute episodes released on Wednesday. CNN calls it a slick and well-produced "kind of super-service for the Star Wars faithful, rekindling old flames, and comfortably submerging them in the past." But they also add that animation "has also become a vehicle for greater experimentation, as witnessed in the Star Wars: Visions anime shorts that premiered last year." It's hardly a surprise that this latest addition to the mythology comes courtesy of producer Dave Filoni, who oversaw such series as The Clone Wars and Rebels before throwing his fertile mind for all things Star Wars into The Mandalorian and other live-action fare. Filoni wrote five of the six shorts, which are split between Ahsoka Tano (again voiced by Ashley Eckstein), soon to be featured in her own live-action spinoff; and Count Dooku (played in the movies by Christopher Lee, and voiced by Corey Burton). Beyond a glimpse of a baby Ahsoka (just in time for holiday gift-giving, kids), in an episode that illustrates her home planet and its warrior streak, the episodes leap around in time. That includes additional insights into Dooku and his abandonment of the Jedi order to embrace the dark side and Darth Sidious (Ian McDiarmid). The anthology format creates the opportunity to drop in at different inflection points scattered across the "Star Wars" timeline. "Fans will likely be particularly intrigued by some of the gradations surrounding Ahsoka, her relationship to Anakin Skywalker and the aftermath of the Clone Wars," the article teases...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China plans to break its own record for the world's largest wind farm by constructing a new one before 2025 that could power more than 13 million homes. Interesting Engineering reports: The 14th five-year plan for Chaozhou, China's Guangdong province, was released last week, outlining the city's ambitious plans for a 43.3 gigawatt (GW) project in the Taiwan Strait. Work on the project will begin "before 2025." It will surpass the largest wind farm in the world once it is finished, according to Guangdong province officials. The 10-kilometer-long farm, which will have thousands of strong wind turbines, will operate between 75 and 185 kilometers (47 and 115 miles) offshore. And because of the region's distinctive topographical features and windy location, these turbines will be able to run between 43 percent to 49 percent of the time, meaning 3,800 to 4,300 hours each year. A gigawatt is one billion watts, and 3 million solar panels are required to produce one gigawatt of power. 100 million LEDs or 300,000 typical European homes may each be powered by one gigawatt. The facility's 43.3 GW of power-generating capacity could supply electricity to 13 million households, which is equal to 4.3 billion LED lights, as per Euronews. The Jiuquan Wind Power base in China, a huge facility with a 20 gigawatt capacity, presently holds the distinction of being the world's largest wind farm.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A joint-committee of the state’s two medical boards on Friday took another step toward banning gender-affirming care for transgender kids in Florida.

Members from the Florida Board of Medicine and the state Board of Osteopathic Medicine approved rulemaking language that would ban children from taking hormones or undergoing surgery to treat gender dysphoria.

Both boards are scheduled to meet on Nov. 4, where they will vote to finalize the rule.

The proposed language, which aims to establish the state’s standard of care for gender dysphoria treatment, also includes an exemption for children who are enrolled in clinical studies associated with the treatment. There's also a provision that would exempt children already undergoing treatment when the rule takes effect.

Gender dysphoria refers to the feelings of discomfort or distress some transgender people experience when their bodies don’t align with their gender.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association support gender-affirming care for adults and adolescents. Medical experts also have said gender-affirming care for children rarely, if ever, includes surgery. Instead, doctors are more likely to recommend counseling, social transitioning and hormone replacement therapy.

The boards on Friday decided on the rulemaking language after a five-hour meeting in Orlando, which included testimony from six experts on gender-affirming care. The joint-panel also heard from more than a dozen public speakers, mostly from people who supported the ban.

Board of Medicine member Patrick Hunter said during the meeting that he could not find evidence of any sufficient studies on children who undergo gender-affirming treatments such as puberty-blocking drugs and surgery.

“Those studies don’t exist,” Hunter said. “We don’t have high quality evidence based on that.”

Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry, however, in March cited several studies that detail how gender affirming care improves the overall health and well-being of transgender children.

Hunter also brought up new guidance released on Oct. 20 by National Health Service England, the publicly-funded health care system in England, about treating kids for gender dysphoria that limited the agency to only cover the costs of puberty blockers for patients who are enrolled in clinical trials. The guidance, which serves one of the largest single-payer health care systems in the world, places a much heavier emphasis on psychological treatments.

Both boards had each agreed in August to begin the rulemaking process after the release of guidance from the Florida Department of Health. The guidance claimed there is not enough research and evidence to prove that the care is safe.

The rulemaking is the latest step taken by the DeSantis administration to tighten regulatory controls over gender-affirming care. Florida’s Medicaid regulator approved rules in August that block state-subsidized health care from paying for treatments of transgender people.

That rule led a coalition of transgender-rights groups to file a lawsuit, which is gearing up for a trial later this year.

Rachel Foster was one of several people who told the committee they regretted taking puberty blockers and going through surgeries when they were teens. Foster began to have renal failure by age 26.

“No one child or adult should go through the constant health battles that I’ve had to go through,” Foster said. “I’ve dealt with pain, trauma and the same mental issues I faced before.”

Which party tries everything it can think of to help rural Americans? The Democrats.

A man broke into the San Francisco home of Nancy Pelosi sometime around 2 AM on Friday morning, with the apparent intent of of assassinating the speaker of the House and second in line to the presidency. In this effort, the man assaulted Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer, causing serious injury. Paul Pelosi has been hospitalized and is reportedly undergoing brain surgery related to the injuries incurred in the attack.

The attacker, 42-year-old David Depape, has now been identified as a racist, transphobic conspiracy theorist who seems to have expressed his belief in all things “Q.” According to CNN, Depape had links on his Facebook page (which has now been taken down) with “multiple videos produced by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell falsely alleging that the 2020 election was stolen.” Depape also used his Facebook account to support former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, the murderer of George Floyd; to post multiple transphobic images and memes; and to push ideas about the “Great Reset” conspiracy theory in which “elites” were supposedly using COVID-19 in a plot to gain more power.

All the evidence shows that Depape is highly prone to believing in conspiracies. And he found a one-stop shop for all the conspiracies he could handle: the Republican Party and right-wing media. That’s why his page was filled with very familiar lies about the 2020 election, COVID-19 vaccines, and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

It’s not surprising that some of the things packed into Depape’s online accounts are videos from conspiracy pusher Mike Lindell. Claims about fraud in the 2020 election were reportedly thick on Depape’s Facebook page before it was taken down. So were claims that the Jan. 6 attack was a ‘false flag’ operation. Through many of these conspiracy theories, antisemitism is a running thread. 

But Depape didn’t just have a Facebook page: He also had his own blog. And on that blog he was very open about what he was all about—like every conspiracy theory ever. From alien human hybrids to Atlantis, he was there for every one of them. But mostly he was heavily into the idea that “big brother and the global elite” were censoring right-thinking people and covering up for the “Satanic Hollywood pedophiles.”

He was not just openly antisemitic, he was openly and violently racist against Black people. The N-word is repeatedly and frequently used to attack Black people who, according to Depape, are steeped in “communist ideology.” Just as frequently (and often in the same sentence), Depape flings insults at LGBTQ people, and against trans people in particular.

Running down the page of Depape’s blog is like taking a stroll through the mind of anyone who takes Tucker Carlson’s evening performances seriously. There are claims that Black people get special privileges denied to whites, insults against every letter of the LGBTQ community, claims that both Hollywood and libraries are filled with pedophiles, complaints that men aren’t allowed to criticize women, and an overall theme about how the global elites want everyone indoctrinated into their “satanic pedophile communist cult.”

There’s no doubt that Depape is at the very least highly suggestible, if not outright delusional. He’s also weirdly obsessed with taking kids’ movies and dubbing in beeps, followed up with claims that the movies have been “censored.” 

But Depape’s violent anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-Black, antisemitic tendencies were inflated to extremes precisely because he found Republicans at all levels willing to feed him the conspiracy that he wanted—one that said a white male who hated Blacks, women, immigrants, trans people, and Jews was right, and it was just that “cancel culture” of Hollywood elites keeping him down.

Depape isn’t so much a conspiracy theorist as a conspiracy addict. And the Republican Party is his pusher.

It didn’t take long for the racist trolls to return to the platform most had been long banned from. In fact, within what seemed like a few hours after Elon Musk closed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter and his firing of several executives, the flood of racist, antisemitic bigots returned in droves.

Just before midnight Thursday, Musk tweeted, “the bird is free,” and with that, all hell broke lose—or at least a little bit of fresh hell.

One Twitter user responded with, “Currently belong celebrated by thousands of Musk supporters shouting the N-word all over the platform.” And a simple search of the word proves this, not to mention the responses to this tweet alone.

RELATED STORY: Texas couple stunned during their morning walk by ‘Great Sale of Negroes’ flyer posted on tree

CNN reports that Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has been transparent about plans to change the platform’s current rules to a more “free speech” approach, and he has said he may allow former President Donald Trump back in. In a conference in May, Musk said, “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump; I think that was a mistake.”

Covering his bases for advertisers, we imagine, Musk recently wrote that he doesn’t want Twitter to become a “free-for-all-hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences.”

“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” he said.

Well, that train seemed to leave the station last night as the N-word, as well as a slew of other slurs, were omnipresent in tweet after tweet.

The following tweets contain racial slurs and other language, imagery, and misinformation formerly banned under Twitter’s guidelines. 

Although the statement allegedly from former President Donald Trump was a fake, it appeared to thrill his MAGA followers.  The Daily Beast reports that Truth Social CEO and former Rep. Devin Nunes called it out as “fake news.” 

Musk is beloved by his fans.

Twitter’s more lenient rules on free speech aren’t flying outside of the U.S. BBC reports that Thierry Breton, the EU commissioner for the internal market, tweeted Thursday, "In Europe, the bird will fly by our EU rules.”  

But so far, Musk, the world’s richest person at a net worth of about $221.2 billion, hasn’t cracked down on the garbage pit that the platform is at this moment, and Republicans aren’t breaking a stride in embracing him.

Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Gov. Ron DeSantis, tweeted a whole boatload of bogus election bullshit, including this rant, which is divorced from reality on a number of points:

“Since Twitter is allowing free speech now, I’ll say it: The @AP is not a news organization. It is a propaganda factory. American Pravda should not be allowed to “call” elections. That should be up to the Department of State in each state, in a timely & transparent manner.

Former GOP governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, tweeted, “Thank you @elonmusk for cleaning out the totalitarian rats & roaches who hated free speech. The world sings the great @Skynyrd anthem "FREEBIRD!"

Matt Schlapp, the Kansas chair of CPAC, tweeted, “We need you on that wall.” 

One of the more terrifying Musk Twitter happenings is that several handles are reporting that they’re losing followers. One comes from the Auschwitz Memorial, which tweeted, “We are observing a strange decrease of number of followers. Almost 2,5k from yesterday evening. Weird things happen here on @Twitter. Help @AuschwitzMuseum & encourage others to follow.”

According to Ross Gerber, a shareholder in both Twitter and Tesla, Musk’s other company, reports about company-wide layoffs at Twitter were “inaccurate.”

"There are a lot of talented people at Twitter, especially on the engineering side, and they want to retain as much of that talent as possible," Gerber told the BBC.

Aljazeera, among several outlets, reports that so far, Musk has fired CEO Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal, policy, and trust.

By Friday morning, some of the banned Twitter users began flooding back in.

Kanye “Ye” West was among them.

On The Brief podcast, we speak with Way To Win’s co-founder and vice president, Jenifer Fernandez Ancona. Ancona comes in to discuss how grassroots progressive groups are spending money in the hopes of getting as many voters as possible out for the midterm elections. She also talks about which campaign advertisements are effective and which are not. One thing is for sure, though: We are living in historic times, and what that means for these midterms cannot be easily predicted—so Get Out The Vote!

Democrats can build a blue wave if we get out every voter. Click here to find out all the ways you can help in the last days before Election Day.

Republicans have accelerated their attacks on our democracy in advance of the 2022 election. Help defend democracy by chipping in $5 to progressive grassroots orgs in battleground states.

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Everywhere you go, gas prices show up on big boards, like a proxy measurement for the times.

When gas prices are really low, something exciting is happening, and in my case when I was a teen, your mom tells you to drive across town to line up for the gas that dropped under a dollar. When gas prices are high, like they are these days, something must be up.

Emily Badger and Eve Washington, for The New York Times, show how that feeling is tied to consumer confidence:

Philip Bump, for The Washington Post, used connected scatterplots to show how gas prices are tied to approval ratings:

Connected scatterplots are kind of a tricky read at first, but approval and prices appear to go up and down at the same time. Look at it like a regular scatterplot at first, and then follow the line for time.

I wonder what this looks like if you go farther back. I’m guessing similar. What else is tied to gas prices? Will electricity prices eventually replace the familiar gas prices? Is it reasonable to tie our hopes and dreams to the price of a gallon? Is sentiment flipped for people who primarily ride bikes to get places? I have so many questions.

Tags: approval, economy, gas, New York Times, spending, Washington Post

By Matthew Chapman On Wednesday, ABC 15 reported that Arizona Republicans, including Rep. Debbie Lesko, are standing by their endorsement of a state legislative candidate who was exposed for having dressed in blackface — and one associate defended her by claiming that blackface isn’t really any worse than drag performances. “Political allies are defending Mary Ann Mendoza, a Republican Arizona House candidate from Mesa, after photos of her in blackface and brownface surfaced on social media,” reported Melissa Blasius. Mendoza, who gained prominence as one of former President Donald Trump’s “An…

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By Brandon Gage United States Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) declared on Wednesday night that the Republican Party cannot possibly be credibly accused of having a racism problem because it nominated Herschel Walker of Georgia for Senate. “They’re beating all our guys up. But what is it about this guy? He changes the entire narrative of the left. We’re a party of racists, Sean. Me and you are racist. The Republican Party is racist. Well what happens when the Republican Party elects and nominates Herschel Walker, an African-American, Black, Heisman Trophy winner, right, Olympian,” Gra…

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WELLINGTON, Colo. — In the farthest Denver suburbs, just off Interstate 25 stands a gas station called Kum & Go that doesn’t look like a battle zone. But it is.

One clue is in plain sight as you look around during the boring few minutes it takes to top off your tank. Plopped in the corner of the lot like an afterthought are four vertical red slabs.

They’re electric vehicle charging stations, capable of reviving an EV and its battery in about half an hour. It is no exaggeration to say they could be the most disruptive thing ever to confront that century-old fixture of the American roadside: the gas station. As more Americans drive their shiny new electric vehicles onto the highway and wonder where to go when the battery nears empty, charging stations are the agents of a revolutionary fill-up — not of gallons but kilowatts, not five-minute “stops” but half-hour “experiences” that could completely transform the tenor of the road trip.

These pumps and plugs facing each other across the asphalt are also totems of an unseen battle. Two titans of the energy sector — electric companies and gas stations — have peacefully coexisted for a century but now find themselves vying for the right to serve electric vehicle owners. In just the last nine months, automakers have sold over 576,000 EVs, a 70-percent jump over the same period last year, according to auto-research firm Kelley Blue Book. A burst of investment in both vehicles and chargers from automakers and the feds suggest that’s just the beginning. Ford and General Motors, America’s two biggest automakers, and the Biden administration have coalesced around a goal of electrifying half of new cars by 2030.

Crucial to that future is a nationwide network of charging stations. Who controls those stations and the fuel coursing through them is the flash point of a fight between the electric utility and the convenience store. The outcome will impact where Americans charge their EVs and how much they pay.

As both gas stations and power companies hang their future on the electric vehicle, the fight has gotten ugly. In fact, heads have already rolled. One electric utility, Southern California Edison, forced the resignation of a key lobbyist in order to kneecap the gas station industry as Congress considered President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, which included $7.5 billion for electric-vehicle charging stations. The spigot of federal dollars only increased with the passage in August of the big federal climate-energy bill, stuffed with incentives to restructure the auto industry around EVs.

This collision between electricity and gasoline is in sharp relief at Kum & Go, a chain of almost 400 filling stations and convenience marts in 11 states that has invited the electric vehicle to disrupt its business model. Wellington is the final settlement of metro Denver before the plains spread north toward Wyoming. Alongside the grind of I-25, next to a McDonald's, stands the Kum & Go with its sign advertising the latest price for unleaded. It’s one of six Kum & Go stations in the state that have embraced electric vehicle charging. Other gas station chains sometimes host charging stations owned by someone else, often Tesla. But Kum & Go has branded these stations in its red-and-white color scheme.

In 2018, Kum & Go set the goal of “being known as the place that has EV charging,” said Jacob Maass, the company’s commercial fuel manager. This year, as electric vehicles have begun to seem inevitable and the Biden administration spends big to construct a network of 500,000 fast-charging stations, some of the country’s biggest fueling chains have joined the parade, including Pilot Co. and 7-Eleven.

But success hinges on resolving fundamental disputes over who has the right to sell electricity, and for how much.

The supply chain that underpins the gas station — starting in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia or Texas and flowing through intermediaries to that big price on the sign — becomes something else entirely in the EV age. What replaces it is a system of stupefying complexity. The price a station host pays for the new fuel is determined by which of America’s 3,000 electric utilities the plugs happen to be connected to. This pricing system is invisible to the driver but presents an existential dilemma for gas station owners. They find themselves at the mercy of an opaque, highly regulated and monopolistic electricity system that is the exact opposite of the one they have thrived on for decades.

EV charging involves “an electricity market structure that was not designed for — and is, not surprisingly, incompatible with — the retail fuel market,” said A.J. Siccardi, a fueling executive, in testimony to Congress last summer that caused sparks between the two camps.

It is possible that gas stations and electric companies will sort through their thicket of disagreements so that gas stations can make money filling batteries, while also (strangely enough) becoming a cool place to hang out. Or it’s possible that the fueling station as we know it will cease to exist, supplanted by battery refills in home garages, at workplace parking lots or at Starbucks, while the driver nurses a venti latte.

In other words, these electric cubes on the Colorado roadside are either the dominoes that trigger the gas station’s revolution, or the headstones that mark its grave.

America’s 20th-century economic growth was powered by the electric grid and the gas station. But as businesses, they couldn’t be more different.

The gas station arrived in the early 1900s, soon after the car itself, and quickly became a cutthroat game. Because the fuels they sold were nearly identical, sellers could differentiate themselves only by lowering prices. The only way to survive on those rock-bottom prices was to sell more gas. These imperatives drew fuelers to high-traffic intersections, where they broadcasted their prices from huge billboards. Today, America’s 120,000 gas stations are one of the most transparent, hyper-competitive markets in America.

Unlike gasoline, electricity was not a street-corner hustle. People wanted it everywhere. Competing for business didn’t make sense because the wiring was so expensive. The grid wasn’t a business, really, but an essential public service — a utility. A social compact emerged where the electric utility would bear the cost of building and maintaining the grid, and in exchange would enjoy a territorial monopoly. To prevent abuse, each state created a public utility commission to oversee the utility’s complicated pricing schedules. The electric company became one of the most complex, obscure and uncompetitive markets in America.

And then came the electric vehicle.

It short-circuited what had been a symbiotic relationship. After all, gas stations and power companies are each other’s customers. The station illuminates its sign with electricity, and the utility fills its repair trucks with gasoline. Financially, the two are now nearly at parity: The convenience-store industry made $428 billion last year selling fuel, while corporate utilities earned $424 billion selling electricity. But the electric vehicle will inexorably tilt the playing field in the utility’s favor. That’s because with the onset of the EV, the dominant fuel will become electricity — and the utility controls it all.

The utility monopoly is so basic to modern life that it goes unnoticed. But it explains why there’s never a usage fee for plugging in your laptop at the coffee shop, or for running the hotel hairdryer until your hairdo is crisp. Charging for electricity is illegal unless you’re the electric company.

As electric vehicles started taking hold, it occurred to many entrepreneurs that fueling them could be a moneymaker. But they faced an odd financial barrier. The fueler pays the utility for the electricity, but can’t ask the driver to share the cost. So, companies found workarounds. Some providers charged for the time spent plugged in. Others assessed a session fee. (Until two years ago, Tesla Inc., the EV market leader, let many of its drivers refuel at its Supercharger stations for free.) No strategy reflected the actual cost, but they were a start. Business needed a change to the law — an exemption that would, for the first time, allow someone other than a power company to sell electricity.

Delia Meier, a senior vice president at Iowa 80, a chain of truck stops, took a leading position in Iowa to open the market to ‘charge for charging,’ as it’s sometimes called. “There’s a lot of red tape, a lot of things that probably don’t make any sense,” she said. The Iowa Utilities Board rarely met and moved slow. Meier’s regional utility, Alliant Energy, would request additional hearings, and submit objections at the last minute. To Meier, it seemed the utility was conducting a passive, faceless resistance, using its unmatched savvy before the utility board to wear down any who would challenge its monopoly status.

“The whole time it seemed like people were agreeing with us,” Meier said. “Then (the board) would have a hearing and decide not to do anything about it. It went on and on and on.”

In a statement to POLITICO’s E&E News, Alliant said, “We are excited to be on the leading edge of electrification efforts and work hard to understand and meet our customers’ needs.”

In 2019, after a three-year process, Iowa relaxed its rules so stations like Iowa 80 can charge its customers any price for electric fuel, just like gasoline. Most states have done the same. The main lobbyists who forced the issue weren’t gas stations, but new companies whose bread and butter were charging stations — EVgo Inc., ChargePoint Holdings Inc. and, of course, Tesla. Alongside them were environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, which argued that a transition to electric vehicles — necessary to head off the climate crisis — couldn’t happen without a financial incentive to sell electric fuel to drivers. Today, only seven states still regulate EV charging as the exclusive domain of the electric company.

But even with the freedom to charge customers what they want, gas station owners still think that the utility has stacked the deck against them.

One reason is that some utilities also own and operate charging stations. They do so with their ratepayers’ money, in plans approved by regulators. Generally, this happens sparingly and in areas shunned by private industry. But convenience store owners fear the utility as a competitor because the utility has a state-allotted profit built into each of its investments. They worry this padding could lead the utility to set a new floor for fuel prices that the gas station can’t match.

Angela Holland, president of the Georgia Association of Convenience Stores, explained it this way to Georgia lawmakers last year. Her 6,500 members “have to use the electricity from only one utility. If that same electricity provider is allowed to provide electric fueling stations … taking zero capital risk like the private sector will, they will create and maintain a monopoly in this market.”

Gas station owners say their resistance to the electric company is not an effort to slow the transition away from their marquee product. “We have no more commitment to fossil fuels than we do to Snickers bars,” said Brian Young, the owner of a chain of gas stations in eastern Alabama. Rather, it’s that the prospect of installing a charging station is intimidatingly expensive.

Convenience stores make tiny profits on gasoline and diesel. “Whether we sell at one dollar or four dollars,” Young said, “we still make 14 cents.” In this low-margin world, a fast charger is a monster investment. The hardware can cost $150,000 or more, according to a 2019 study by think tank RMI. It is a bracing risk, especially since no one knows exactly where future EV drivers will want to fuel.

“Honestly, I’m dreading it, but maybe there’s a silver lining,” said Bob Bajwa, the owner of a gas station in Ritzville, Wash., on the prospect of transitioning to EVs. He’s being somewhat optimistic given his personal experience. Bajwa already has one charging station — installed on his property in 2015 by charging provider EVgo — that gets only the occasional customer and produces almost no revenue.

The convenience stores know they are overmatched. It’s hard to imagine a future without an electric grid, but one without gas stations can be pretty easily conjured. The fuelers can’t unseat the utility as the kingpin. But a crucial question remains: What will the fuel cost?

Out of sight, utilities and EV station hosts are locked in a furious pricing battle. It threatens to create an uneven charging network where stations are eagerly built in some areas and shunned in others.

It comes down to an obscure set of maps. They demarcate the lines between utility service territories. Kum & Go’s decision to put its charging station in Wellington was not an accident. It has a lot to do with the fact that Wellington sits in the territory of Xcel Energy Inc., the state’s largest utility. The consequences would be different if the station was built five blocks to the north, where the territory of a different utility, Poudre Valley REA, begins. The same is true six miles to the south, where power service transfers to yet another provider, the city of Fort Collins.

One reason Kum & Go chose to put its station in Xcel’s territory, and not in Fort Collins or Poudre Valley, is the electricity bill. In particular, it comes down to one line item, a fee that homeowners know nothing about, but some businesses know only too well.

It’s called a demand charge. It is a base fee that gets multiplied. The multiplier is the kilowatt, the basic measurement of electrons. The fee is assessed on the few minutes of the monthly billing cycle when the customer is using the most kilowatts. Power companies have always charged this kind of fee as a means to recover the substantial cost of providing service to the customers who need a lot of electrical infrastructure. But the rationale goes haywire when applied to electric vehicles.

That’s because an electric vehicle fast charger sucks energy like a black hole.

“The draw is incredible,” said Meier of the Iowa 80 truck stop. She installed a couple of fast chargers last year. This type, technically known as a direct-current fast charger, is the natural choice for fueling-on-the-go because it fills a battery in anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour, depending on the charger and the car model, compared to the slower systems that EV owners put in the home garage that can take all night. If two electric cars arrive and plug in at the same time, the electricity flow becomes a flood. The two fast chargers at Meier’s truck stop can use as much juice in their peak moments as the center’s six restaurants, 56,000 square-foot store, gas pumps and back offices combined.

This sudden slurp of electricity can vault a gas station from the power stature of, say, a warehouse into the tier of heavy-duty power users such as an aluminum factory or a large farm with lots of irrigation pumps. But there’s a crucial difference: The factory or farm can plan its electricity use to avoid the sting of high demand charges. The host of a charging station cannot. At some moment beyond the gas station’s control, a flock of EVs will descend simultaneously, and the bill goes stratospheric.

Those demand charges become an enormous burden. Electrify America, a leading charging provider, says that demand charges are up to 80 percent of the cost of operating a charging station.

A look at these power companies’ rates reveals why Kum & Go was motivated to put its EV chargers in Wellington. If four electric vehicles plug into Kum & Go’s four chargers at the same moment, they require the utility to summon 250 kilowatts. In Wellington, in the realm of power company Xcel, that kilowattage yields a monthly demand charge of $750. If the station moved south to Fort Collins, the charge rises to $2,672. If Kum & Go plugged in to the north, in Poudre Valley, it would rise to $4,750. That’s six times the cost in Wellington.

Finding utility territories with lower demand charges has become “a checkpoint for us before we approve a site,” said Maass. As for the territories with higher demand charges, he said: “We’re trying to avoid it the best we can.”

Heading north on I-25, a Denver driver glides across five utility territories without even noticing. But for the gas-station operator, they are a hazardous game of hopscotch. These random power fiefs are not just a Denver thing, either: Each of the country’s 3,000 electric utilities has its own demand-charge regime, none having a logical relationship to their neighbors.

“Literally they can put it on the other side of the freeway and it will be much cheaper,” said John Phelan, an energy services manager of Fort Collins’ utility.

Profit isn’t yet an option. With expensive equipment and few users, the convenience store’s best outcome is to break even. “We’re trying to cover the cost of the electricity bill,” said Meier of Iowa 80, “and I think that’s all that anyone can expect at this point.”

Kum & Go knows the pain of this math. Ken Kleemeier, its vice president of fuels, gives the example of a 150-kilowatt charging session with a $6 demand charge. Six dollars times 150 kilowatts means the electricity bill is $900. But “we charge the customer $10,” Kleemeier said. “That’s a $900 loss. That’s where the demand charges are painful. There’s no feasible way to pass that along.”

The utilities believe the demand-charge burden is temporary. As electric vehicles become more common, a charging station’s “utilization rate” — the number of hours per day the station is in use — will increase. The demand charge will be absorbed by more and more users, and eventually turn the charging station from money pit into profit center.

Furthermore, utilities are starting to offer “demand charge holidays.” These are a period of years where the utility voids or lowers the fee to ease the transition. Gas stations are skeptical. “When the holiday expires, you’re back to demand charges and you’re left with an investment you can’t make money off of,” said David Fialkov, head of government affairs at NATSO, a trade group for truck-stop operators.

This multi-headed conflict has created lots of reasons for gas stations and utilities to confront each other. But no conflict has been as vicious as what happened in Washington, D.C., when billions of dollars were on the line.

In the spring of 2021, as Congress was laying the foundations for President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, lobbyists for both utilities and convenience stores were working overtime, framing issues this way and not that, nudging lawmakers down policy paths that could become etched in law.

Utilities wanted at least part of the billions of dollars that Congress was mulling for EV infrastructure to go toward their strong suit: installing new power lines and equipment to feed charging stations. They argued they were a crucial link to the EV future. The gas station lobby wanted money, too, to offset the expense of building charging stations. But even more than money, they wanted leverage. They saw an opportunity to have Congress put them, not utilities, at the center of EV fueling.

And despite their relatively small size as a lobbying force, the gas stations were scoring some wins.

“Our advocacy on all of those fronts, I think, began to get more attention,” said Doug Kantor. At the time, Kantor was a partner at the firm Steptoe, a leading law and lobbying firm with 300 lawyers in its Washington office. For years, Kantor had led a team at Steptoe that lobbied on behalf of several trade groups that represent gas stations and convenience stores.

In May, an ally of Kantor’s secured a spot to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. A.J. Siccardi, the president of Metroplex Energy, the parent company of RaceTrac, one of the country’s biggest fueling chains, laid out a detailed agenda that would, at every turn, benefit gas stations at the expense of utilities.

Demand charges? Abolish them, Siccardi argued, and instead make electricity available at wholesale prices, like gasoline. Subsidies for charging stations? Bar utilities from getting them if they also tapped their ratepayers’ money. A “double dip,” he called it. He also called on Congress to force all states to make gas stations legal sellers of electricity.

Despite its financial heft, no one from the utility industry was on the panel to refute him.

But they quickly got wind of the proposals. Louis Finkel, the head of government relations at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, said he was galled by the gas station lobby’s request to abolish demand charges, a pillar of how the utilities pay for expensive projects. “If someone said they have to rip out and move their fuel tanks a half a mile,” Finkel asked, “who would have to pay for it?”

In June, Kantor and the gas station lobby scored another win. A group of 17 legislators sent a letter to the committee heads responsible for the EV-charging portions of the bill. Led by Rep. Lou Correa, a Democrat from California’s Orange County, it echoed gas stations’ talking points. “Fuel retailers are best positioned to own and operate EV charging stations and provide transportation energy to consumers,” the letter said.

The way the letter put gas stations at the center of electric fueling, while limiting the electric company’s role, made some in the utility industry furious. One person was particularly put out: Pedro Pizarro, the CEO of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison, one of the state’s biggest utilities. Correa, the letter’s author, said he received a heated call from Pizarro. “I think he didn’t like the tone of the letter,” Correa said in an interview, adding that he said he apologized to Pizarro.

In a statement to POLITICO’s E&E News, Southern California Edison said, “the company reached out to numerous lawmakers on provisions of the infrastructure bill,” adding that Pizarro “spoke with Congressman Correa on the important role that electric utilities, with the support and approval of state regulatory commissions, must play in ensuring the deployment of EV charging infrastructure.”

But Edison didn’t stop there.

In May, Kantor said, some of his partners at Steptoe reached out with uncomfortable news. It involved a request from Edison and other utility clients of Steptoe who weren’t named. Kantor said he was told that Edison had informed Steptoe that if it didn’t sever its relationship with the fueling industry, the electric utility would take its business elsewhere. Kantor described the utility’s thinking as: “Hey, strategically it would be a good thing if we sidelined Steptoe, so they couldn’t continue this advocacy,” he said. “And that was exactly what they did.” Edison declined to comment on Kantor’s story, calling it “an internal matter that is best addressed by Steptoe & Johnson,” the firm’s former name.

No one forced Kantor to leave, but he thought it was the best thing. (“I did not think as an adviser to my clients that I should tell them they should continue to use me when one of the most important issues to the future of the industry was something that I couldn’t work on,” he said.)

Those shoved out of Steptoe by the utilities now hold key positions in the gas-station industry. Kantor took a new job as general counsel at the National Association of Convenience Stores, a leading gas station trade group, while two people who left with him, Jessica Frend and LeeAnn Goheen, are in top policy jobs at NATSO. Steptoe declined to comment on the specifics of Kantor’s departure but said in a statement, “We continue to work with Doug in his role at NACS. We count him as a good personal friend as well as a former colleague.”

In the end, despite its early tactical victories, the gas station lobby got little of what it wanted in the final infrastructure bill, which Biden signed in November. The bill did not overrule “charge for charging” regulations in individual states, nor block utilities from getting infrastructure funds. It asked state electricity regulators to consider the burden of demand charges, but that request has no teeth. By virtue of its incumbency and power, the utility industry had prevailed over the gas stations. It didn’t have to win; it just had to prevent change.

“The c-stores and truck stops say sometimes that they’re uncomfortable” with the utilities’ regulated-monopoly model, said Phil Jones, a former utility regulator who heads a utility-heavy trade group, the Alliance for Transportation Electrification. “But we’ve told them that model is not going to change.”

The gas station of the future might not have a single pump or even a whiff of gasoline. That’s because it might not be a gas station, but a Walgreens.

In February, the drugstore chain said it would install fast chargers at more than 500 locations. The hardware comes from Volta Inc., a station provider whose stations double as advertising kiosks, and that also owns the financial transaction between car and charger. In June, Volta signed up the grocer Kroger Co. at locations in Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Michigan. Chris Wendel, the co-founder of Volta, thinks electric vehicles shatter the gas station’s very premise.

“People won’t go to get fuel,” he said. “You will get it from your home or working place, or in the context of the other things you are doing.”

Those other things could be buying groceries or picking up prescriptions — activities that neatly fit the 20 to 40 minutes it takes to fill a battery. Wendel intends for the retailer to capture any purchases now done at the convenience store “that has wallets attached,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kum & Go is betting on a totally different scenario — one that it hopes will preserve the stature of the filling station in the roadside landscape.

Driving, for example, on Denver’s I-25, you see your battery is low and check an app for nearby charging prices. Kum & Go gets your business because its kilowatt-hour rate is two cents cheaper than the Loaf ’N Jug across the street.

You pull in and plug into a hybrid charging plaza, alongside the gas pumps. The car says the refill will take 20 to 40 minutes. Hungry, you head toward the little mart that sits beside most every gas station in America. But that mart has transformed. It is no longer a sterile and slightly desperate place designed to satisfy your craving for candy or a lottery ticket, with a scary bathroom and the smell of old hot dogs. Instead, you find comfortable chairs. Tables. Wi-Fi. Under soft lighting, you explore the beer cave, or pick up a made-to-order sandwich on fresh-baked bread.

Kum & Go has brought the food and comfort part of that experience to more than 100 locations already in nine states between Colorado and Michigan. The plan is to have many overlap with electric vehicle charging, Maass said.

So it is possible that someday you will nip out to the gas station for a burrito bowl. Or maybe you won’t because the fueling station itself will have wandered off to Taco Bell, which just announced a new chain of charging stations in California. Or to Starbucks, which, as it happens, is creating a chain of its own between Seattle and Denver.

Beset as they are by new competitors, gas stations believe that drivers’ deep-seated habits give them an advantage, along with their perch at busy intersections. One type of station finds itself with particularly strong leverage: the highway stop in the middle of nowhere.

Far from the Walgreens and Starbucks, an infusion of federal money is coming. The Biden administration knows drivers won’t buy EVs without the confidence that they can charge up on road trips. As a result, the very first EV spending from the bipartisan infrastructure bill — $1 billion — is dedicated to building charging stations every 50 miles on high-use corridors. These chargers must be no more than one mile from the highway — in other words, exactly where truck stops and highway gas stations are now.

“The gravitational force of our position will require people to realize that without us, it won’t work,” said Fialkov of NATSO, the truck stop trade group.

The millions of new electric vehicles that soon will arrive on America’s roads have gas stations hunting for new solutions.

Kum & Go, for example, next year will try deploying a battery next to a charging station. Its stored energy could be poured into cars at peak charging times and give the fueler a measure of independence from the utility, perhaps even allowing it to wring a small profit like it does with gas. Others foresee a slog of negotiations, utility by utility. Pilot, a truck-stop operator that wants to offer chargers at 500 locations, will ask power companies to standardize their rates in order to make the financials of charging more coherent. “We have some time to spend with the utilities, and a hill to climb,” said Shameek Konar, Pilot’s CEO.

And gas stations haven’t given up on fighting utilities just because they lost out on the infrastructure bill. Early this year, the gas station lobby formed a new trade group called the Charge Ahead Partnership, made up mostly of gas-pump owners but aspiring to widen its utility pressure campaign to other charging-curious retailers, like grocers and shopping malls. “Public utilities currently have an unfair advantage over this new marketplace,” the group said in a statement last month.

As they trade blows over who controls the electricity and how much it costs, both utilities and convenience stores are mindful that tomorrow’s charging network will be shaped by the preferences of people like Jennifer Sirani.

In June, Sirani ran into trouble in Wyoming. She was braving a trip from Idaho to Nebraska for her sister’s wedding in her new electric Kia Niro. Between Rock Springs and Laramie, a 200-mile charging desert, Sirani realized her battery was dying. Salvation took the form of truck stop. There she got a tow truck that pulled her 20 miles to a charging station down the line.

The following day, as she refilled yet again at Kum & Go’s charging station in Wellington, she cast an eye at the gas pumps and the little convenience mart. One day that shop could satisfy her long wait with a healthy protein bowl, but today it’s just potato chips and Gatorade.

“Here is OK,” she concluded. “At the Walmart, there’s a little more to do.”