What happens to the Republican Party now? (2 Viewers)

[MT15]

This election nonsense by Trump may end up splitting up the Republican Party. I just don’t see how the one third (?) who are principled conservatives can stay in the same party with Trump sycophants who are willing to sign onto the TX Supreme Court case.

We also saw the alt right types chanting “destroy the GOP” in Washington today because they didn’t keep Trump in power. I think the Q types will also hold the same ill will toward the traditional Republican Party. In fact its quite possible that all the voters who are really in a Trump personality cult will also blame the GOP for his loss. It’s only a matter of time IMO before Trump himself gets around to blaming the GOP.

There is some discussion of this on Twitter. What do you all think?

 

[Optimus Prime]

Last month, the White House issued a proposed budget to Congress that completely eliminated funding for Head Start, the six-decade-old early childhood education program for low-income families that serves as a source of childcare for large swaths of the American working class.

The funding was restored in the proposed budget after an outcry, but large numbers of employees who oversee the program at the office of Head Start were laid off in a budget-slashing measure under Robert F Kennedy Jr, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services.

On Thursday, Kennedy said funding for the programwould not be axed, but more cuts to childcare funding are likely coming: some Republicans have pushed to repeal a five-decade-old tax credit for daycare.

The White House is entertaining proposals on how to incentivize and structurally coerce American women into bearing more children, but it seems to be determined to make doing so as costly to those women’s careers as possible.

That’s because the Republicans’ childcare policy, like their pro-natalist policy, is based on one goal: undoing the historic gains in women’s rights and status, and pushing American women out of the workforce, out of public life, out of full participation in society – and into a narrow domestic role of confinement, dependence and isolation.

The New York Times reported this week that the White House is now not only looking for ways to make more women have children, but to encourage “parents” to stay home to raise them.

“Parents” here is a euphemism. Roughly 80% of stay-at-home parents are mothers: cultural traditions that encourage women, and not men, to sacrifice their careers for caregiving, along with persistent wage inequalities that make women, on the whole, lower earners than their male partners, both incentivize women, and not men, to drop out of the workforce and stay home when they have children.

This state of affairs has been worsened by the dramatic rise in the cost of childcare, which is prohibitively expensive for many parents. The average cost of childcare per child per year in the US is now well north of $11,000, according to Child Care Aware of America, an industry advocacy group.

In major cities such as New York, that price is significantly higher: from $16,000 to $19,000 per year. Existing tax credits need to be expanded, not eliminated, to reduce this burden on mothers and their families and to enable women to join the workforce at rates comparable to men and commensurate with their dignity and capacities.

Currently, 26% of mothers do not engage in paid work, a figure that has barely budged in 40 years. Largely because of the unequally distributed burdens of childcare, men participate in the paid labor force at a rate that is more than 10% higher than women.

One might think that the solution would be to invest more in high-quality childcare, so that providers could open more slots, children could access more resources, and women could go to work and expend their talents in productive ways that earn them money, make use of their gifts and provide more dignity for women and more stability for families.

This is not what the American right is proposing: Brad Wilcox, a sociologist who promotes traditional family and gender relations, has called such policy initiatives “work-ist”. Conservatives are proposing, instead, that women go back to the kitchen.

The Trump administration, and the American right more broadly, wants the rate of women’s employment to be even lower, because it is advancing a lie that women are naturally, inevitably, uniformly and innately inclined to caregiving, child rearing and homemaking – and not to the positions of intellectual achievement, responsibility, leadership, ingenuity or independence that women may aspire to in the public world.

“We cannot get away from the fact that a child is hardwired to bond with Mom,” saysJanet Erickson, a fellow at the rightwing Institute for Family Studies, who once co-authored an op-ed with JD Vance calling on “parents” to drop out of the workforce to raise children. “I just think, why should we deny that?”

This kind of vague, evidence-free gesturing toward evolutionary psychology – the notion that babies are “hardwired” to prefer mothers who are not employed – is a common conservative tick: a recourse to dishonest and debunked science to lend empiricism to bigotry.

There is in fact no evolutionary reason, and no biological reason, for mothers, and not fathers, to abandon independence, ambition or life outside the home for the sake of a child. The only reason is a sexist one.……….

Republicans are attacking childcare funding. Their goal? To push women out of the workforce | Moira Donegan

The right wants American women to bear more children and withdraw from full participation in society

www.theguardian.com

 

[MT15]

The GOP Senators will vote to overturn waivers for the California law phasing out gasoline powered vehicles, ignoring the Senate Parliamentarian’s decision that they cannot vote on that. This might be foreshadowing a way they will get around the filibuster in the future without repealing it. The Senate Parliamentarian decides what can go in the budget bill, which isn’t subject to filibuster, and what has to be voted on separately from the reconciliation bill, which opens those items up for a filibuster. If they can ignore her decisions, they can put any sort of policy they want into the reconciliation bill and enact it with 51 votes rather than the 60 needed to override a filibuster.

Senate Republicans Say They Will Overrule the Parliamentarian to Overturn EPA Policy

Republicans are planning to break decades of precedent to prevent California from phasing out gas cars.

www.notus.org

“Republicans are planning to break decades of precedent and overrule the Senate parliamentarian to undo a Biden-era environmental policy.

Majority Leader John Thune announced Tuesday morning that the Senate will take up the vote to overturn waivers the Environmental Protection Agency granted to California that allowed the state to phase out gas-powered cars. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that the Congressional Review Act — the legislative vehicle Republicans plan to use to overturn the policy — does not apply to waivers.”

 

[superchuck500]

When (EDIT 40%) of your constituency is literally stupid enough to believe that the Covid vaccine definitely or probably killed more people than the virus, what hope is there for the Republican party? How can they ever change when their constituency is completely and dangerously unhinged from reality?

 

[MT15]

When (EDIT 40%) of your constituency is literally stupid enough to believe that the Covid vaccine definitely or probably killed more people than the virus, what hope is there for the Republican party? How can they ever change when their constituency is completely and dangerously unhinged from reality?

They have elevated a dangerous liar in RFK, Jr and demonized a great scientist like Fauci. The GOP itself is doing these things. They are letting the lunatics lead. They need to go.

 

[coldseat]

Volume Up!

 

[DaveXA]

Volume Up!

Lol.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Donald Trump Jr says the ‘calling is there’ for him to run for president

President’s eldest son remains a popular figure within MAGA movement and an influential voice in his father’s ear despite playing no direct role in administration

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Optimus Prime]

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A longtime state lawmaker announced Friday that she is switching parties, joining Republican supermajorities in the latest setback for Democrats trying to rebuild support across rural Kentucky.

State Sen. Robin Webb, who represents a four-county swath of northeastern Kentucky, revealed she will join the ranks of GOP lawmakers who control the flow of legislation in the state. Webb was one of the last rural Democrats in Kentucky's legislature, and her defection leaves her ex-party more tethered to urban and suburban districts in a state with large stretches of rural territory controlled by the GOP.

Webb said in a news release that she felt increasingly disconnected from the Democratic Party as it continued to “lurch to the left."

“It has become untenable and counterproductive to the best interests of my constituents for me to remain a Democrat,” Webb said. “I will continue to be a fearless advocate for rural Kentucky and for the residents of eastern Kentucky who have been so good to me and my family."

Kentucky Democratic Party Chair Colmon Elridge said in a release that Webb chose to align with a political party attempting to fund tax breaks for the wealthy “off the backs of vulnerable” people.

It was a barbed reference to the multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package passed recently by U.S. House Republicans. To make up for some of the lost tax revenue, Republicans focused on changes to Medicaid and the food stamps program. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates 8.6 million fewer people would have health care coverage and 3 million less people a month would have SNAP food stamps benefits with the proposed changes.

"If those are her priorities, then we agree: she isn’t a Democrat,” Elridge said.

Webb stressed that her core values have not changed.

"The only difference today is the letter next to my name,” she said.

Webb has compiled a personal and professional resume deeply ingrained in Kentucky culture. She's a hunter, a horse enthusiast and a former coal miner who changed career paths to become an attorney.

Webb first joined the Kentucky House in 1999, when Democrats controlled the chamber. She spent a decade as a state representative before joining the GOP-led Senate in 2009. Republicans seized total control of the legislature in the 2016 election, when they rode Donald Trump's coattails to win the Kentucky House. Republicans padded their legislative numbers in subsequent elections, giving them their overwhelming majorities.

Republicans attained that dominance by winning in rural districts previously held by Democrats, but Webb's district had remained a blue dot on the map until Friday.

Her party switch leaves Democrats mostly devoid of a rural presence in the legislature. One exception is Democratic state Rep. Ashley Tackett Laferty, who represents an Appalachian district.

The state's two-term governor, Democrat Andy Beshear, won a number of rural counties and shrank GOP margins in others in his 2023 reelection. His popularity was built on the state's robust economic growth during his tenure and his handling of disasters, from tornadoes and floods to the COVID-19 pandemic..............

Rural Kentucky lawmaker announces switch to the GOP in the latest setback for Democrats

A longtime state lawmaker in Kentucky has announced that she is switching parties. State Sen. Robin Webb said Friday that she is joining the Republican supermajorities who control the flow of bills in Kentucky's Legislature.

apnews.com

 

[bird]

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A longtime state lawmaker announced Friday that she is switching parties, joining Republican supermajorities in the latest setback for Democrats trying to rebuild support across rural Kentucky.

State Sen. Robin Webb, who represents a four-county swath of northeastern Kentucky, revealed she will join the ranks of GOP lawmakers who control the flow of legislation in the state. Webb was one of the last rural Democrats in Kentucky's legislature, and her defection leaves her ex-party more tethered to urban and suburban districts in a state with large stretches of rural territory controlled by the GOP.

Webb said in a news release that she felt increasingly disconnected from the Democratic Party as it continued to “lurch to the left."

“It has become untenable and counterproductive to the best interests of my constituents for me to remain a Democrat,” Webb said. “I will continue to be a fearless advocate for rural Kentucky and for the residents of eastern Kentucky who have been so good to me and my family."

Kentucky Democratic Party Chair Colmon Elridge said in a release that Webb chose to align with a political party attempting to fund tax breaks for the wealthy “off the backs of vulnerable” people.

It was a barbed reference to the multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package passed recently by U.S. House Republicans. To make up for some of the lost tax revenue, Republicans focused on changes to Medicaid and the food stamps program. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates 8.6 million fewer people would have health care coverage and 3 million less people a month would have SNAP food stamps benefits with the proposed changes.

"If those are her priorities, then we agree: she isn’t a Democrat,” Elridge said.

Webb stressed that her core values have not changed.

"The only difference today is the letter next to my name,” she said.

Webb has compiled a personal and professional resume deeply ingrained in Kentucky culture. She's a hunter, a horse enthusiast and a former coal miner who changed career paths to become an attorney.

Webb first joined the Kentucky House in 1999, when Democrats controlled the chamber. She spent a decade as a state representative before joining the GOP-led Senate in 2009. Republicans seized total control of the legislature in the 2016 election, when they rode Donald Trump's coattails to win the Kentucky House. Republicans padded their legislative numbers in subsequent elections, giving them their overwhelming majorities.

Republicans attained that dominance by winning in rural districts previously held by Democrats, but Webb's district had remained a blue dot on the map until Friday.

Her party switch leaves Democrats mostly devoid of a rural presence in the legislature. One exception is Democratic state Rep. Ashley Tackett Laferty, who represents an Appalachian district.

The state's two-term governor, Democrat Andy Beshear, won a number of rural counties and shrank GOP margins in others in his 2023 reelection. His popularity was built on the state's robust economic growth during his tenure and his handling of disasters, from tornadoes and floods to the COVID-19 pandemic..............

Rural Kentucky lawmaker announces switch to the GOP in the latest setback for Democrats

A longtime state lawmaker in Kentucky has announced that she is switching parties. State Sen. Robin Webb said Friday that she is joining the Republican supermajorities who control the flow of bills in Kentucky's Legislature.

apnews.com

Right. Republicans represent rural areas because their so-called values align. Values like schlitzing on their constituents by giving breaks to the wealthy while cutting programs that actually help rural areas. Fork her.

 

[longtime lurker]

https://www.axios.com/2025/06/07/elon-musk-doge-virginia-governor-election-republicans

 

[DaveXA]

https://www.axios.com/2025/06/07/elon-musk-doge-virginia-governor-election-republicans

Virginia had better step up and vote the idiots out.

 

[Optimus Prime]

I’m writing this not as a Democrat or an Independent, but as someone who, for most of her life, was a proud Republican.

I voted for Ronald Reagan and admired his belief that “character counts”. I believed in personal responsibility, faith and country – and the Republican party seemed to reflect those values.

I even rooted for George W Bush during the chaotic “hanging chads” recount in 2000, not because I thought he was perfect, but because I believed he would lead with decency and conviction.

And for years, I found deep comfort in witnessing moments of unity between former and current presidents – particularly the warm, genuine respect between George W Bush and the Obamas.

Different parties. Different ideologies. But a shared belief in democracy. In service. In “we the people”.

That spirit is gone now.

My allegiance to the Republican party ended when a conman made it into office – and worse, when the party I once revered stood by and let it happen.

I watched in disbelief as Republican leaders abandoned principle for power, traded integrity for influence and embraced a man who incites violence, mocks the rule of law and behaves as if he’s above the constitution.

Where is the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln? The one that once held the union together and stood for truth, duty and honor?

I am the daughter of immigrants who fled Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime – a dictator who rose to power by promising to “make Italy great again”, silencing dissent, spreading propaganda and weaponizing fear.

My family knew firsthand how democracies fall – not in an instant, but in small, complicit steps. What I’m witnessing in the US today is hauntingly familiar.

I now live in Los Angeles, watching more terror being wielded by a king wannabe – a man who labels disagreement “fake”, who calls critics “un-American”, and who seeks not to govern, but to dominate. And far too many continue to enable him.

How far will they go to hold onto control?
How many oaths will they break?
How many facts will they deny?
How many felons will they pardon?

Meanwhile, vital programs that support working families, veterans and children are being gutted – all while billionaires pocket tax breaks and corporations secure secret government contracts.

These aren’t just policy disputes. They’re part of a coordinated effort to destabilize and divide.

And as a Christian, I must name another betrayal: the blasphemous misuse of faith. Cruelty wrapped in scripture.

The name of Jesus – who taught compassion, humility and care for the least among us – being used to justify greed, vengeance and lies.

That’s not Christianity. That’s not moral. And that’s not the America I believe in.

It is not brave to stay silent.

It is not patriotic to enable abuse of power.

And it is not conservative to abandon the constitution – or our collective conscience – in favor of cult-like loyalty.

I didn’t leave the Republican party lightly. I left because it left me. It left behind the values I once believed in.

It became unrecognizable – not because of changing platforms, but because of a complete collapse of principle.…….

I was a Republican – the party I believed in no longer exists | Paolina Milana

I didn’t leave the Republican party lightly. I left because it left me

www.theguardian.com

 

[DaveXA]

I’m writing this not as a Democrat or an Independent, but as someone who, for most of her life, was a proud Republican.

I voted for Ronald Reagan and admired his belief that “character counts”. I believed in personal responsibility, faith and country – and the Republican party seemed to reflect those values.

I even rooted for George W Bush during the chaotic “hanging chads” recount in 2000, not because I thought he was perfect, but because I believed he would lead with decency and conviction.

And for years, I found deep comfort in witnessing moments of unity between former and current presidents – particularly the warm, genuine respect between George W Bush and the Obamas.

Different parties. Different ideologies. But a shared belief in democracy. In service. In “we the people”.

That spirit is gone now.

My allegiance to the Republican party ended when a conman made it into office – and worse, when the party I once revered stood by and let it happen.

I watched in disbelief as Republican leaders abandoned principle for power, traded integrity for influence and embraced a man who incites violence, mocks the rule of law and behaves as if he’s above the constitution.

Where is the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln? The one that once held the union together and stood for truth, duty and honor?

I am the daughter of immigrants who fled Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime – a dictator who rose to power by promising to “make Italy great again”, silencing dissent, spreading propaganda and weaponizing fear.

My family knew firsthand how democracies fall – not in an instant, but in small, complicit steps. What I’m witnessing in the US today is hauntingly familiar.

I now live in Los Angeles, watching more terror being wielded by a king wannabe – a man who labels disagreement “fake”, who calls critics “un-American”, and who seeks not to govern, but to dominate. And far too many continue to enable him.

How far will they go to hold onto control?
How many oaths will they break?
How many facts will they deny?
How many felons will they pardon?

Meanwhile, vital programs that support working families, veterans and children are being gutted – all while billionaires pocket tax breaks and corporations secure secret government contracts.

These aren’t just policy disputes. They’re part of a coordinated effort to destabilize and divide.

And as a Christian, I must name another betrayal: the blasphemous misuse of faith. Cruelty wrapped in scripture.

The name of Jesus – who taught compassion, humility and care for the least among us – being used to justify greed, vengeance and lies.

That’s not Christianity. That’s not moral. And that’s not the America I believe in.

It is not brave to stay silent.
It is not patriotic to enable abuse of power.
And it is not conservative to abandon the constitution – or our collective conscience – in favor of cult-like loyalty.

I didn’t leave the Republican party lightly. I left because it left me. It left behind the values I once believed in. It became unrecognizable – not because of changing platforms, but because of a complete collapse of principle.…….

I was a Republican – the party I believed in no longer exists | Paolina Milana

I didn’t leave the Republican party lightly. I left because it left me

www.theguardian.com

This is me! Not really, but it might as well have been.

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

IDK, maybe this thread should just be merged with the RWNJ thread:

I hope she saved up some vitriol for her fellow S. Carolinian, GOP State Rep R.J. May!

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

Somebody will be issuing an apology to his highness real soon!

 

[Optimus Prime]

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., is introducing legislation Thursday that would shield artificial intelligence developers from an array of civil liability lawsuits provided they meet certain disclosure requirements.

Lummis’ bill, the Responsible Innovation and Safe Expertise Act, seeks to clarify that doctors, lawyers, financial advisers, engineers and other professionals who use AI programs in their decision-making retain legal liability for any errors they make — so long as AI developers publicly disclose how their systems work…….

New GOP bill would protect AI companies from lawsuits if they offer transparency

First to NBC News: Sen. Cynthia Lummis' legislation seeks to address the legal gray area of exactly who is liable when AI is used in sensitive medical, legal or financial situations.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

Didn't know that monarchy was a race. What the frack is a Marxist Race War anyway?

 

[MT15]

Didn't know that monarchy was a race. What the frack is a Marxist Race War anyway?

These are the stupidest people.