A House proposal is expected to be introduced this week.
By Rachel Cohen | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Two GOP lawmakers are looking to memorialize late conservative activist Charlie Kirk on U.S. currency, Fox News Digital first reported Wednesday.
Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) and Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz.) are expected to introduce a proposal later this week to direct the U.S. Treasury to mint 400,000 silver dollar coins with Kirk’s image on one side, as well as the words “well done, good and faithful servant” on the other.
The coins would also feature the co-founder of Turning Point USA’s full name — Charles James Kirk — and the year 2026, according to the outlet. Kirk, 31, died on Sept. 10 after he was shot while speaking during an event at Utah Valley University.
The final design of the coins would be approved by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and President Donald Trump, who was a close ally of Kirk.
Some congressional Republicans are carefully, cautiously, equivocally mad.
Joe Perticone at The Bulwark:
Cracks in the coalition?
In the Trump era, it’s extraordinarily rare for elected Republicans to voice clear moral objections to the actions of the administration. Doing so is virtually a form of career suicide.1 But if you develop an ear for the subtleties of the Republican congressional patois, you can start to pick up an awful lot about how much disapproval is being quietly expressed within GOP circles—including when some of them have reached some kind of breaking point.
The killing of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents in Minnesota on Saturday, as well as the administration’s false, accusatory, and easily debunked account of the incident, has pushed some GOP lawmakers over the edge.
House and Senate Republicans have broken party decorum and called for investigations into the shooting and even for ICE to leave Minnesota. Committee chairmen in both chambers have demanded that agency officials swiftly report to Capitol Hill for questioning.2
“Well, right now the video looks pretty damning,” Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), who is no moderate, said in an interview. “Obviously, we have to wait to get all the videos in before we make a final conclusion.”
“A lot of these ICE officials or Border Patrol people are not prepared for this sort of thing,” Grothman added. “We have people coming from far and wide to demonstrate and disrupt things, which is just a recipe for disaster. But I think in the future, the Department of Homeland Security is going to have to do a better job of educating their people to make sure this sort of murder doesn’t result.”
Sens. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) and Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) each called for an investigation into Pretti’s killing. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), a former Homeland Security Committee chairman, said he was “troubled” by Pretti’s killing, adding, ”As an attorney and former federal prosecutor, I believe a thorough investigation is necessary—both to get to the bottom of these incidents and to maintain Americans’ confidence in our justice system.”
“We must have a transparent, independent investigation into the Minnesota shooting, and those responsible—no matter their title—must be held accountable,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said. “Officials who rush to judgment before all the facts are known undermine public trust and the law-enforcement mission.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) went so far as to call the killing a violation of the Second Amendment, an angle that remains too sharp for most of his Republican colleagues to pick up.
Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, called a hearing for DHS oversight and requested testimony from acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Border Patrol Commissioner Rodney Scott, and Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow. A hearing is set for February 10. Across the Capitol, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, demanded testimony from the same officials. Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is set to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March—still quite a ways away.
Enough GOP lawmakers have spoken up about the Pretti killing that their colleagues who have remained silent no longer have the cover normally afforded by moving with the political herd. The most notably silent Republicans are in the party’s House and Senate leadership. In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has been mostly offline since posting about meeting with Erika Kirk on Saturday; he has not posted about Pretti. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) did not weigh in on the shooting, but called Trump’s deployment of White House border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota Monday “a positive development.”
Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), the chair of the House Republican Conference, coauthored an op-ed for Newsmax with fellow Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz.) declaring victory for Trump’s approach to immigration policy in his first year. The op-ed, published yesterday, did not mention Minnesota, and McLain hasn’t posted a link to it on any of her social channels.
In recent days, the GOP’s message on ICE has been less than unified.
Close races in states where counting is still underway called in to question as claims of fraud in presidential vote quieten
Sam Levine and Alice Herman at The Guardian:
Activists are using Donald Trump’s decisive victory to further question the 2020 election results and sow doubts about close US senate races where ballots are still being counted.
While they’ve been quiet about fraud in the presidential election this year, activists pointed to the unofficial total number of votes cast, noting that 20m more ballots had been cast in 2020. Ignoring the reality that there are millions of votes still being counted in states like California, Arizona and Nevada, they suggested the incomplete number was somehow evidence there were fake ballots in 2020.
“Where did 20 million votes go between 2020 and 2024? 15 million for Biden, 5 million for Trump. Who believes Trump received 5 million fewer votes in 2024?” Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally and leader of the election denial movement, tweeted on Thursday.
Abraham Hamadeh, who won election to the US House in Arizona, made a similar claim. “20 million missing Democrat voters – where’d they go.”
The claim has been echoed by some on the left, who have falsely suggested that there were suspiciously fewer votes in 2024 than 2020 and that Harris should not have conceded the race.
The claims were false. When all votes are counted, more than 157.5m people will have voted in the presidential election, according to an estimate by the New York Times. There were 159.7m ballots counted in the 2020 election.
[...]
But instead of acknowledging the system works, activists targeted races other than the presidential contest, especially close US senate contests where ballots are still being counted.
“So many down ballot Republicans were screwed out of a victory. Trump won by a far greater margin than what was reported,” tweeted David Clements, a former professor in New Mexico who has traveled the country spreading false information about voting machines.
The delicate balance election deniers tried to find after the election was perhaps best encapsulated by Tom Fitton, a Trump ally who leads the conservative group Judicial Watch. “The steal was indeed stopped,” he tweeted on Thursday morning. A few hours later, he tweeted “what is happening right now in Maricopa county is election corruption”.
Activists focused on close Senate races in Arizona and Nevada, two states where mail-in balloting is widely used and votes are counted for several days after the election. Trump is projected to win both states.
In Nevada, Senator Jacky Rosen, a Democratic, overtook opponent Sam Brown in the vote count after initially trailing him. Experts have long warned that because of the way different methods of voting are reported, it may appear that one candidate is ahead on election night only to have them fall behind as more votes are counted.
Robert Beadles, a prominent election denier in Nevada who has spent years questioning election results, claimed there was something suspicious about the count. “They’ve flooded the system with enough illegal votes days after the election to take the lead. Will it stand….,” he wrote in a post on X Thursday morning.
In Arizona, where Democratic Ruben Gallego narrowly leads Republican Kari Lake in the US senate race, election deniers have also used Trump’s victory to question how other Republicans could lose. There were still 943,000 votes left to count on Thursday.
“You’re trying to tell me that people voted for Trump then turned around and voted for Ruben Gallego and other Democrats at the state level?” Josh Barnett, an election denier in Arizona who has supported overturning the results from the 2022 election. “There’s no fucking way that happened. I’m not buying it. I told our state legislature this is what would happen when we don’t have properly and legally run elections. They take and “steal” what they can to gain control. Almost like a trade off.”
Split ticket voting – voting for one party’s candidate at the top of the ticket and another party’s candidates for other offices – is not unusual in American presidential elections.
Right-wing election deniers are using Donald Trump’s 2024 win to sow even more doubt about the 2020 elections.
A judge on Tuesday dismissed a claim by Abe Hamadeh that his constitutional rights were violated in the 2022 race for attorney general that
A judge on Tuesday dismissed a claim by Abe Hamadeh that his constitutional rights were violated in the 2022 race for attorney general that he lost as nothing more than a too-late election challenge.
The Republican, who is now running for Congress, is zero-for-three in his efforts to overturn his loss to Democrat Kris Mayes or an least get an election do-over.
Back in the early days of my career in management accounting, I remember being in a meeting to review the monthly financial statements with my boss. He was asking about some small expenditures and I noted that they were small items, just “peanuts” as compared to the whole. To which he replied, “Peanuts make elephants.” I’ve never, in all these years since, forgotten that offhand comment and I…
