Quo Vadis GOP?

[Jacob]

Is Maus considered a left wing book in Texas?

[Valmy]

Is Maus considered a left wing book in Texas?

Well the initial alarms went up because books by Malthus' Auntand some trans person showed up on a reading list from there the stupid train took off.

[Syt]

How the hell do they even begin to square this with their wailing about cancel culture.

One is about protecting the malleable minds of innocent children from being indoctrinated by communist sinners, fornicators and deviants and therefore justified, while "canceling" is when those miscreants are trying to shut down those efforts to protect the children. It's not a problem if you think your goals are just and good, and the other side's goals are evil and corrupted.

[Syt]

Also, National Butterfly Center (which is very much what it says in the name, it seems), closes over right-wing nutters linking them to illegal border crossings.

https://www.expressnews.com/news/legislature/article/National-Butterfly-Center-closes-for-weekend-16814973.php

National Butterfly Center closes for weekend after scrape with GOP candidate hunting for border chaos

The National Butterfly Center on the Rio Grande in Mission, long a target of far-right conspiracy theories, is closing this weekend after receiving "credible threats" against staff.

Marianna Wright, the center's executive director, made the decision after a confrontation last week with a Republican congressional candidate from Virginia. Wright told police that Kimberly Lowe visited the center and demanded to see "illegals crossing on rafts," echoing baseless conspiracy theories linking the butterfly sanctuary to sex trafficking.

Wright said she fears more of the same would occur if she were to keep the center open during this weekend's "We Stand America" rally in neighboring McAllen. The event will "focus on border law enforcement and the direct connection to election integrity from a biblical worldview," with featured speakers including former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was convicted of lying to the FBI.

"The playbook is to incite violence," Wright said Friday. "We simply can't risk our lives or those of our members and visitors, knowing that this hate speech, domestic terrorist organization is planning their national midterm kickoff rally in McAllen."

Wright has fended off conspiracy theorists for years, after the center filed suit against the Homeland Security Department in 2017 over former President Donald Trump's plans to build a border wall through the 100-acre nature preserve.

On any given day, hundreds of species of butterflies flit through the nonprofit sanctuary, which is part of the North American Butterfly Association. Birders from across the country visit the refuge to observe and photograph birds unique to the Rio Grande Valley, and thousands of local schoolchildren take field trips to the center each year.

Meanwhile, since 2019, right-wing social media trolls have falsely claimed there were dead bodies and "rampant sex trade" at the center. Some have threatened Wright.

Doctored images of the center's dock, suggesting it was used to transport migrants, were spread by Brian Kolfage, the head of the "We Build the Wall" fundraising campaign backed by former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. (Both were indicted on charges of fraudulent activity related to the wall funding; Bannon was later pardoned by Trump.)

When Lowe and a friend showed up at the butterfly center Jan. 21, Wright said she believed immediately that they had arrived to "echo and reiterate" the lies. (Lowe said she had never heard the conspiracy theories and was told about the center by a Border Patrol officer.)

Wright was on a conference call when her son, Nicholas, interrupted her to say two women had arrived, refused to pay an entrance fee and demanded to enter the back 70 acres of the property and see the "illegals crossing on rafts." Wright asked for their names and looked up Lowe's Facebook page, where she saw that the candidate had just posted a video of herself driving near the sanctuary and parking in front of a gate with a "no trespassing" sign on it.

Wright recorded herself confronting them: "You are here to promote your agenda, and your agenda is not welcome here."

"So you're not for helping all these poor people in the humanitarian crisis?" Lowe replied. "You're OK with children being sex trafficked and raped and murdered."

Scuffle breaks out

As they prepared to leave, Lowe's friend said a Border Patrol agent told the women that they could access the river through the center's property. She added: "I'm federal, I work for Secret Service, so nothing is off-limits for me."

Wright laughed at the claim. She then noticed that Lowe was using her phone to video record her, narrating: "We're here with a woman who's not a very nice person, who's OK with children —"

Lowe stopped as Wright swiped at her phone. "You did not take my (expletive) phone!" Lowe yelled.

In an affidavit obtained by Hearst Newspapers, Wright said she "panicked" when she saw the phone and grabbed it. Lowe then threw her to the ground, her son told police.

He called 911 and briefly joined the scuffle, as Lowe's friend grabbed Wright's phone.

Lowe ran to her vehicle and started a since-deleted Facebook live video, in which she screamed for the other woman to join her in the car. After giving the phone back to Wright, the friend jumped in the vehicle and Lowe hit the gas.

Nicholas was closing the gates, later explaining that he suspected the women were trying to take off with the phone before police arrived. In an affidavit, he said he had to dive out of the way to avoid being run over.

The women drove off.

Wright said police showed up about an hour later. She would like to press charges, though she said she doubts the police will take action.

'Canceled' by GOP allies

In an email, Lowe denied any wrongdoing, instead saying that Wright "verbally and physically assaulted us, stole my phone, kidnapped us, and tried to keep us from leaving, and filed a false police report, which the police have already found to be untrue."

She added that she did not try to run over Wright's son, saying he "ran to the gate to lock us in and blocked the exit with his arms out."

Lowe said the police looked through footage of the altercation and "cleared me." The Mission Police Department said Friday that it could not confirm any details about the incident, as its public information officer was out for the day.

But Wright said she has audio and video evidence to back her story: "There really is no disputing what went down."

Still, she fears that quarrel won't be the last. The two-day "We Stand America" event is scheduled to culminate Sunday with a rally and a trip to the border.

Wright said she has spent the past week investing in new security measures and coordinating with local authorities — none of which "involves our core mission or routine activities, which are all about environmental conservation and education."

After more than two years of harassment, Wright wonders: "When is this going to stop?"

But for Lowe, the fallout has been swift. As news reports publicize her encounter with Wright, Lowe said organizers for "We Stand America" banned her from attending the weekend's events.

Lowe said she had spent $2,500 on a "diamond VIP" ticket that would have included a private border tour with Flynn and Tom Homan, a former director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"I got canceled by the Republicans because they believe the hit pieces that went out on me," Lowe said, calling from the road as she started the drive back to Virginia. "I can't believe that the people who are supposed to be on my side of the aisle canceled me."

[Berkut]

<boggle>

[The Brain]

Republicans are scum.

[crazy canuck]

Have they started burning books in public bonfires yet?

He would, but paper is a renewable resource so their against using it as fuel.

[The Larch]

More reasons to be concerned about the integrity of future elections?

Campaigning to Oversee Elections, While Denying the Last One
Brazenly partisan candidates who insist that Donald Trump won the 2020 election are transforming races for the once-obscure office of secretary of state.

PHOENIX — Nearly two dozen Republicans who have publicly questioned or disputed the results of the 2020 election are running for secretary of state across the country, in some cases after being directly encouraged by allies of former President Donald J. Trump.

Their candidacies are alarming watchdog groups, Democrats and some fellow Republicans, who worry that these Trump supporters, if elected to posts that exist largely to safeguard and administer the democratic process, would weaponize those offices to undermine it — whether by subverting an election outright or by sowing doubts about any local, state or federal elections their party loses.

For decades, secretaries of state worked in relative anonymity, setting regulations and enforcing rules for how elections were administered by local counties and boards. Some held their jobs for many years and viewed themselves not as politicians but as bureaucrats in chief, tending to such arcane responsibilities as keeping the state seal or maintaining custody of state archives.

The aftermath of the 2020 presidential election changed all that.

In the two months between Election Day and Congress's certification of President Biden's victory, Mr. Trump and his allies pressured Republican secretaries of state, election board members and other officials in battleground states to overturn his defeat. In a phone call that is now the subject of an Atlanta grand jury investigation into Mr. Trump's actions in Georgia, the former president urged Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to "find 11,780 votes" — the margin by which Mr. Trump lost the state to Mr. Biden.

That intense focus on a once-obscure state-level office has dramatically transformed its place in American politics — and the pool of candidates it attracts. Campaigns for secretaries of state this year are attracting more money, more attention and more brazenly partisan candidates than ever before.

All told, some 21 candidates who dispute Mr. Biden's victory are running for secretary of state in 18 states, according to States United Action, a nonpartisan group tracking races for secretary of state throughout the country.

"It's like putting arsonists in charge of the Fire Department," said Joanna Lydgate, the group's chief executive. "When we think about the anti-democracy playbook, you change the rules and you change the players so you can change the outcome."

Many of the election deniers are running in solidly red states where it is less likely that their actions could tilt a presidential election. But several others, who have formed a coalition calling itself the America First slate, are running in states won by Mr. Biden in 2020, including in the crucial battleground states of Michigan, Arizona and Nevada.

The coalition's members are coordinating talking points and sharing staff members and fund-raising efforts — an unusual degree of cooperation for down-ballot candidates from different states. They are in strong position to win Republican primaries in those battleground states, as well as in somewhat-bluer Colorado and heavily Democratic California.

Their chances in November, should they succeed in the primaries, could rest heavily on how well Republicans fare in the midterm elections, given voters' tendency to vote for down-ballot candidates such as secretary of state from the same party as their choices for governor or senator.

While local election officials typically oversee the counting of individual ballots, and state legislatures sign off on slates for the Electoral College, secretaries of state often certify elections and set the tone of how elections are run. Their election-management duties generally include distributing voter registration cards, allocating voting machines, educating voters, auditing election results and ordering recounts.

Had secretaries of state taken their cues from Mr. Trump in the last election, they could have put their thumbs on the scales of fair elections by forcing the closure of polling places, removing ballot drop boxes or withholding other resources that could make voting easier in heavily Democratic precincts. Worse, critics say, they could have raised doubts about, or even refused to certify, Mr. Biden's victories.

The powers of secretaries of state to subvert elections vary from state to state and are largely untested in court. Mr. Trump's phone call to Mr. Raffensperger in Georgia raised the specter of out-and-out fraud in the tabulation of a presidential vote. Short of that, in states where secretaries of state have the power to certify elections, the refusal to do so could be a vital step in overturning one. In a presidential election, state legislators and the governor hold the power to approve an alternative set of presidential electors, and refusing to certify could boost such an effort.

In contests for governor or for House or Senate seats, the refusal to certify the result of an election could send states into uncharted legal waters.

Those who say they are alarmed at the possibilities include many current Democratic secretaries of state — and a few Republican ones.

"The narrative that is being promoted by people who are ill-informed and simply trying to promote a political narrative to benefit themselves in a particular candidacy is very dangerous," said John Merrill, the Republican secretary of state in Alabama who is term-limited.

The significance of the America First coalition's parallel efforts can be seen clearly in Arizona, where the slate's candidate is Mark Finchem, a former firefighter and real estate agent who has served in the state House since 2015 and has become the leading Republican contender for secretary of state. He has raised some $663,000 for his campaign, according to state filings, more than the two leading Democratic candidates combined.

Mr. Finchem, who declined to comment for this article, was in Washington on Jan. 6 and attended the Stop the Steal rally that led to the storming of the Capitol. He has publicly acknowledged his affiliation with the Oath Keepers, the far-right militia group whose leader and other members were charged with seditious conspiracy for their roles in the Capitol riot. He championed the Republican-ordered review of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County — though he never endorsed its conclusion that Mr. Biden won — and received a prime speaking spot in Mr. Trump's Jan. 15 rally outside Phoenix.

There, Mr. Finchem told the crowd that the 2020 election had prompted him to run for secretary of state, said he was part of a "nationwide populist movement to regain control over our government" and called for the State Legislature to decertify the presidential result in Arizona, which Mr. Biden carried by nearly 11,000 votes.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we know it and they know it — Donald Trump won," Mr. Finchem said.

The coalition's other candidates include Jim Marchant in Nevada, a former state legislator; Rachel Hamm in California, who contends that Mr. Trump actually won that deep-blue state; and Kristina Karamo in Michigan, who developed a high profile in conservative media after she made uncorroborated claims that she had seen fraudulent ballots being counted in Detroit during the 2020 election, allegations that have been disproved by both local election officials and courts.

Major donors to the coalition include such promoters of election conspiracies as Mike Lindell, the chief executive of My Pillow, and Patrick Byrne, a former executive at Overstock.com, both of whom have also helped fund several election-denial campaigns and lawsuits. Mr. Byrne said he gave the group $15,000.

"​​We would like as many like-minded secretary of state candidates to come forward as we can," Mr. Marchant said at a Las Vegas conference that featured members of the coalition along with speakers who are well-known to followers of QAnon conspiracy theories. "I've got a few that have contacted me. We're working to bring them into the coalition."

In an interview, Mr. Marchant said the group had presented its theories about the 2020 election at three "summits" in different states recently and planned others in Wisconsin, Texas, Colorado and Nevada.

He brushed off concerns about undermining confidence in elections and instead assailed sitting state and local officials for resisting further audits of the 2020 vote. "If they're so confident, wouldn't they gloat and say, 'See, we told you so?'" he said. "They won't. They can't afford to do that."

Tony Daunt, a longtime Michigan Republican official who was appointed last year to the panel that certifies the state's election results, said Ms. Karamo, who has falsely claimed that Mr. Trump won Michigan, was unqualified to be secretary of state because of the "nonsense regarding the stolen election."

But Mr. Daunt and Mr. Merrill, of Alabama, are among very few Republican election officials who have publicly criticized the spreading of lies about the 2020 election. Instead, pro-Trump Republicans are enthusiastic about those candidates, and both the candidates and their supporters say the changes they are pushing for will make it more difficult to commit election fraud, which they portray as a pressing threat.

Mr. Finchem is sponsoring a bill in Arizona that would treat all voters' ballots as public records and make them searchable online. Another of his bills would require all ballots to be counted by hand, although studies show that hand counting introduces more errors. And he has repeatedly called for "currency grade" paper as a countermeasure against fake ballots, though there is no evidence that fake ballots have posed a threat to fair elections.

Nothing and no one has catalyzed Republican enthusiasm for secretary of state contests more than Mr. Trump himself, who has offered three endorsements for Mr. Finchem, Ms. Karamo and United States Representative Jody Hice, who is challenging Mr. Raffensperger in Georgia's Republican primary. Mr. Hice reported more than $575,000 in donations for his secretary of state candidacy in June, twice Mr. Raffensperger's total.

And Mr. Marchant, in Nevada, said he entered the race after being encouraged by allies of Mr. Trump.

While the money being spent on races for secretary of state as yet does not approach the fund-raising by candidates for governor or Senate, they are no longer the low-budget affairs they once were. In Georgia, Michigan and Minnesota, fund-raising is more than double what it was at this point during the 2018 midterms, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Despite their fund-raising struggles in the Arizona contest, Democrats are having some success creating a national support structure for secretary of state candidates.

Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan who is facing a likely re-election battle against Ms. Karamo, has raised $1.2 million this campaign cycle, more than six times what her Republican predecessor raised by this point in 2014. Nationally, Democratic candidates for secretary of state raised six times as much money in 2021 — and from five times as many donors — as they did in 2017, according to ActBlue, the Democratic donation platform.

Jena Griswold, the secretary of state in Colorado and the chairwoman of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said she had hired full-time staff for the first time in the association's history. She said the group had set a fund-raising goal of $15 million for this cycle, far surpassing the $1.8 million it raised in 2019 and 2020, and had raised $4.5 million toward that goal so far.

"The stature of the office is different, and the stature of what officeholders are doing is also different," Ms. Griswold said.

[Oexmelin]

More reasons to be concerned about the integrity of future elections?

Of course. It's been the issue since Trump made it known that he wouldn't concede to Hilary, back in 2016. Since then, the Republican fascist machine has rightly identified control of certifying boards, election surveillance, state rules and regulations governing voting rights as prime target for attack, control, and in many places, intimidate.

Trump had also floated the idea he would pardon all those convicted related to the January 6th putsch attempt.

[Syt]

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma:

https://legiscan.com/OK/text/SB1470/id/2484266

SECTION 2. NEW LAW A new section of law to be codified
in the Oklahoma Statutes as Section 24-159 of Title 70, unless there is created a duplication in numbering, reads as follows:

A. No public school of this state, as defined pursuant to
Section 1-106 of Title 70 of the Oklahoma Statutes, shall employ or contract with a person that promotes positions in the classroom or at any function of the public school that is in opposition to closely held religious beliefs of students.

B. Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, a parent or parents may bring an action as guardian, guardian ad litem, or next friend on behalf of a child against a public school of this state in a court of competent jurisdiction for occurrences when a public school promotes positions in opposition to closely held religious beliefs of the student.

https://www.mic.com/impact/rob-standridge-teachers-religion-oklahoma

GOP SENATOR WANTS TO PUNISH TEACHERS WHOSE LESSONS DON'T LINE UP WITH STUDENTS' RELIGIONS

The punishment? Up to a $10,000 fine and losing your job.

Even amidst the current surge of conservative driven pro-censorship efforts in school districts across the country, Oklahoma GOP State Sen. Rob Standridge stands apart. Just over a month after introducing a bill to ban books having pretty much anything to do with sex, gender, and identity from public school libraries, Sandridge is back with a new measure to penalize teachers who have the unmitigated gall to teach something that might be slightly divergent from their students' "closely held religious beliefs."

SB 1470, the "Students' Religious Belief Protection Act," is set to be officially introduced into the Education Committee next week. If passed, it will allow parents and guardians to file complaints against individual teachers who "promotes positions in the classroom or at any function of the public school that is in opposition to closely held religious beliefs of students." Standridge, whose campaign website describes him as having been "raised with strong Christian values" doesn't elaborate on which religious beliefs he had in mind while authoring the bill, so I leave it to you, reader, to speculate wildly for yourself.

Crucially, the bill's language is appropriately vague enough as to leave wide open what being "in opposition" actually constitutes. Could, for instance, a Jewish family be able to complain if a teacher were to wish their class "Merry Christmas"? Would a polytheist, or atheist, have grounds to complain at the "one nation under god" line while reciting the pledge of allegiance — which Standridge himself pushed to require in Oklahoma public schools? Is simply raising the fact that abortions exist and are legal (for now anyway) enough to legitimize a complaint by an evangelical christian student? And let's not forget what this means for biology teachers who include lessons on evolution, as outlined in Oklahoma's official Academic Standards for Science.

You start to see the problem...

According to the bill, school employees found guilty of violating Standridge's standards of religious sanctity face a fine of $10,000, and risk losing their job entirely.

Given the seemingly inevitable problems with creating a punitive safe space for anyone worried their religious sensibilities might someday be exposed to teachings "in opposition" thereof, it's worth pointing out too that last year Standridge introduced legislation that would allow Oklahomans to sue social media companies who delete or censor "a user's political speech or religious speech; or uses an algorithm to suppress political speech or religious speech."

Under that bill, a private company that deletes a social media message saying "Jews should be punished for their role in killing Jesus Christ" could be sued by the post's far right-wing Christian extremist author. And under his latest bill, Standridge would theoretically allow that same extremist to sue their local public school if a teacher pushed back on that classic antisemitic canard.

Ultimately, who knows whether Standridge's bill will actually make it into law. But given the deluge of censorious efforts by conservative lawmakers across the country, the fact that it was introduced at all is terrifying enough.

[The Brain]

With the centenary of the Scopes Monkey Trial coming up it will be nice to laugh at how silly and weird people were 100 years ago.

[The Larch]

G.O.P. Declares Jan. 6 Attack 'Legitimate Political Discourse'
The Republican National Committee voted to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating in the inquiry into the deadly riot at the Capitol.

The Republican Party on Friday officially declared the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and events that led to it "legitimate political discourse," and rebuked two lawmakers in the party who have been most outspoken in condemning the deadly riot and the role of Donald J. Trump in spreading the election lies that fueled it.

The Republican National Committee's voice vote to censure Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City culminated more than a year of vacillation, which started with party leaders condemning the Capitol attack and Mr. Trump's conduct, then shifted to downplaying and denying it.

On Friday, the party went further in a resolution slamming Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger for taking part in the House investigation of the assault, saying they were participating in "persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse."

After the vote, party leaders rushed to clarify that language, saying it was never meant to apply to rioters who violently stormed the Capitol in Mr. Trump's name.

"Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line," Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, said in a statement. "They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol."

But the censure, which was carefully negotiated in private among party members, made no such distinction. It was the latest and most forceful effort by the Republican Party to minimize what happened and the broader attempt by Mr. Trump and his allies to invalidate the results of the 2020 election. In approving it and opting to punish two of its own, Republicans seemed to embrace a position that many of them have only hinted at: that the assault and the actions that preceded it were acceptable. 

It came days after Mr. Trump suggested that, if re-elected in 2024, he would consider pardons for those convicted in the Jan. 6 attack and for the first time described his goal as aiming to "overturn" the election results.

The day's events, which were supposed to be about unity, only served to divide Republicans as their leaders try to focus attention on what they call the failings of the Biden administration.

Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, wrote on Twitter, "Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost." He did not mention that the party chairwoman who presided over the meeting and orchestrated the censure resolution, Ms. McDaniel, is his niece.

Republican National Committee members defended the measure on Friday, describing people who have received subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee as victims in a broader Democratic effort to keep focus on the attack at the Capitol.

"The nominal Republicans on the committee provide a pastiche of bipartisanship, but no genuine protection or due process for the ordinary people who did not riot being targeted and terrorized by the committee," said Richard Porter, a committee member from Illinois. "The investigation is a de facto Democrat-only investigation increasingly unmoored from congressional norms."

The party's far-right flank has been agitating to boot Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger out of the House Republican Conference for months, a push that Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, has tried to brush aside. And the formal censure, approved by the state party chairs and committee members who make up the Republican National Committee, is sure to stir up those efforts again.

"We need to move on from that whole discussion and, frankly, move forward and get the House back in 2022," said Representative Mike Garcia, a California Republican facing a difficult re-election campaign in a newly configured district.

Most House Republicans tried to ignore the actions of the party on Friday, refusing to answer questions or saying they had not read the censure resolution. Representative Dan Crenshaw, Republican of Texas, called it "dumb stuff," while Representative Mark Green, Republican of Tennessee, lamented the distraction from "this abysmal administration's record."

Democrats, however, were incensed, especially at the censure resolution's description of the Capitol attack as "ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse," and the ongoing legal investigations of Mr. Trump in New York and Georgia as "Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power."

"The Republican Party is so off the deep end now that they are describing an attempted coup and a deadly insurrection as political expression," said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and a member of the special House committee investigating the Capitol attack. "It is a scandal that historians will be aghast at, to think that a major political party would be denouncing Liz Cheney for standing up for the Constitution and not saying anything about Donald Trump's involvement in the insurrection."

In his own defense, Mr. Kinzinger said, "I have no regrets about my decision to uphold my oath of office and defend the Constitution. I will continue to focus my efforts on standing for truth and working to fight the political matrix that's led us to where we find ourselves today."

The resolution speaks repeatedly of party unity as the goal of censuring the lawmakers, saying the party's ability to focus on the Biden administration was being "sabotaged" by the "actions and words" of Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger which indicate "they support Democrat efforts to destroy President Trump more than they support winning back a Republican majority in 2022."

But some Republicans said the measure reflected a grim transformation of the party they once knew.

"It's a sad day for my party — and the country — when you're punished just for expressing your beliefs, standing on principle, and refusing to tell blatant lies," Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a harsh critic of Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

The resolution will make it easier for the Republican apparatus to abandon Ms. Cheney and throw its weight and money behind her main primary challenger, Harriet Hageman.

It declares that the party "shall immediately cease any and all support of" both lawmakers "as members of the Republican Party for their behavior which has been destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic, and is inconsistent with the position of the conference."

Mr. Kinzinger has already announced he won't seek re-election, as have several other House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the attack on the Capitol. Ms. Cheney, however, has vowed to stand for re-election.

Earlier this week, the Wyoming delegation to the Republican National Committee submitted a so-called "Rule 11" letter, formalizing party support for Ms. Hageman. The existence of the letter was reported by The Washington Post.

The letter allows the Republican National Committee to send resources to the Wyoming branch of the party to spend on Ms. Hageman's behalf — essentially designating her as the party's presumptive nominee. The designations are common in Republican politics, but typically are used to support incumbents who may be facing token primary challengers.

Ms. Cheney, who faces an uphill battle in her re-election bid against a Republican Party aligned with Mr. Trump, said party leaders "have made themselves willing hostages" to Mr. Trump.

"I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump," she said. "History will be their judge. I will never stop fighting for our constitutional republic. No matter what."

Ms. Cheney has a commanding financial advantage over Ms. Hageman, according to federal campaign finance reports released earlier this week. Ms. Cheney entered 2022 with nearly $5 million in campaign cash, while Ms. Hageman reported just $380,000.

The censure resolution was watered down from an initial version that called directly for the House Republican Conference to "expel" Ms. Cheney and Mr. Kinzinger "without delay." That demand was dropped. However, the language condemning the attack on "legitimate political discourse" was then added.

William J. Palatucci, a Republican National Committee member from New Jersey, said those changes were made "behind closed doors." The final language was officially circulated to committee members early Friday morning. He called it "cancel culture at its worst."

[crazy canuck]

I was going to post that to.  Are there enough Americans left who are horrified by this to make a difference during the next Presidential election?

[Zoupa]

No.

[Oexmelin]

I am afraid not either.