<WASHINGTON – Donald Trump's supporters give him credit for lots of things, but a Michigan member of Congress went way beyond reality in falsely claiming that Trump "caught" Osama bin Laden.

"Caught Osama bin Laden and Soleimani, al-Baghdadi," said Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., during a Trump rally Saturday in Washington Township, Mich., in a speech in which she attacked President Joe Biden's foreign policy.

Trump was a private citizen in 2011, when President Barack Obama authorized the mission that killed bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader and architect of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Biden was vice president at the time, and opposed the raid during internal deliberations because of uncertainty over whether bin Laden would be at the location of the raid.

During his presidency, Trump authorized military operations that led to the deaths of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Iranian military commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, and accused terrorist Hamza bin Laden – the son of bin Laden.>

<Florida governor Ron DeSantis has pitched himself to the Republican elite as the candidate of “competent Trumpism” — a form of authoritarian populism for conservatives who worried that Donald Trump was squandering his power not abusing it. A picture of what that would look like in operation can be seen in DeSantis’s thuggish effort to bully Disney into supporting, or at least refraining from opposing, his “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Last week, DeSantis declared at a press conference that Disney “crossed the line” by saying it would support the repeal of DeSantis’s cherished anti-gay legislation. “We’re going to make sure we’re fighting back when people are threatening our parents and threatening our kids,” he warned.

“Fighting back” turns out not to mean refuting or organizing against Disney’s opposition to the law. It means DeSantis using his legislative majority to punish Disney on unrelated legal issues. On Friday, he claimed he was “shocked” to discover Disney has been granted sweeping autonomy to operate in his state:

“I was shocked to see some of the stuff that’s in there. They can do their own nuclear power plant. Is there any other private company in the state that can just build a nuclear power plant on their own? They’re able to do certain things that nobody else is able to do. So I think they’re right to be looking at this and reevaluating and having an even playing field for everybody, I think is much better than basically to allow one company to be a law onto itself.”

Given that this legal status has been widely known for many decades in the state where DeSantis grew up and now serves as chief executive, the governor was no doubt shocked — the same way Captain Louis Renault was shocked to discover gambling in Casablanca.

One obvious tell that DeSantis doesn’t actually care about Disney’s legal status is that his pretext for punishing the firm has changed. On Friday, he cited Disney’s special legal autonomy. The day before, the “special treatment” was a bill regulating social media that exempted theme-park operators.

Another tell is that the latter bill was signed into law by DeSantis with specific input from his staff, as the Tampa Bay Times reports. If Disney’s legislative clout is leading to outrageous favoritism, voters should be furious with DeSantis.

DeSantis is barely making any effort to hide his intentions. As he tells Fox News, “Six months ago, it would have been unthinkable” that Florida Republican legislators “would be willing to reevaluate those special privileges.” It’s almost as if the special privileges have nothing to do with the reason Republicans are looking to punish Disney! Perhaps there is something Disney can put in DeSantis’s hand that would make the thing in his other hand go away.

What’s relevant to this threat is neither the merits of DeSantis’s school regulations nor of Disney’s status in Florida. Even if you think DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is wonderful and Disney’s legal status is awful, the governor’s thuggish linkage of the two ought to terrify you.

DeSantis is trying to establish an understanding that major corporations can expect favorable treatment from the government as long as they play along with the ruling party’s political agenda. They are allowed — nay, encouraged — to get involved in politics on the condition that they take the correct position. But should they take the wrong position, they will find themselves under legal scrutiny. Suddenly, the regulatory noose will tighten.

This is the method Donald Trump used to intimidate firms with employees who gave him a hard time. Amazon lost a lucrative Pentagon contract in retribution for Jeff Bezos’s ownership of the Washington Post, and Trump attempted to block a merger by CNN’s parent company to finish the network.

This is also a method that Trump’s favorite dictators — like Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin — use to control the political debate in their countries. DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw has fired off more than a dozen tweets celebrating Orbán’s victory in Hungary and ridiculing the idea that his regime is repressive or dangerous in any way. When American conservatives tell us Orbán’s version of competitive authoritarianism is the form of government they aspire to, then show us what it would look like in practice, we’d best believe them.>

<....Trump responded by insisting he is “innocent.”

“This is just a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time, by a failed Attorney General, who continues to use her office for political gain,” he said in a statement Thursday.....

....James’ office has been investigating whether to file a civil suit against the Trump Organization over allegations that it inflated financial statements for over two years. In court filings, her office alleged that it has “uncovered substantial evidence establishing numerous misrepresentations in Mr. Trump’s financial statements provided to banks, insurers, and the Internal Revenue Service.”....>

<Vladimir Putin has embarked on the path he always wanted: restoration of the Soviet Union. He said the collapse of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical mistake of the 20th century.

Since becoming president, he has inherited imperial power of every Russian and Soviet dictator expansion, violence and suppression. An adviser to the czar said: "If Russia does not expand, it will rot.” Stalin built on that, freely exterminating peoples wherever he felt it necessary, and the Ukrainians bore the brunt of this, as was nearly 7 million Ukrainians were killed in collectivization and starvation in the 1930s. Stalin became the world’s first “nation-killers,” as the sovereignty of states, international affairs governed by rules and diplomacy, and humanitarian aims were swept aside.

We are witnessing a replay of this as Putin is content to have Russian troops fire on women and children under the Red Cross. Ukrainians have no choice but to resist, and the West cannot tolerate genocide. From the darkest corners of the continent came the phrase “never again.”

....With nuclear reactors now at play (whose radiation will spread through the West), it is not clear this holds for nuclear weapons. The slaughter of innocents — Putin is showing us he revels in it. Moreover, Europe over the past two centuries shows that great powers come and go, meaning the balance of power is purely a temporary resting point in international politics — something the Soviet Union/Russia has exploited. If this behavior is not resisted and the cause removed, everything that has been achieved will be lost.

Another problem, which Stalin’s understood: a country's power is more than a combination of military and economy as it carries its ideology wherever it goes. It’s what gave the Cold War its sharp edge: If we lose, the essence of our freedom and the ability to choose our path disappear. Against this, stood Marxism-Leninism espoused by the USSR. Now, however, Russia has no ideology to offer the world — it traffics solely in violence and brute force, attacking our very credo....

....A complicating factor has been the West’s belief that the Russians were masters of strategy. But that covers over huge mistakes every decade or so in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union/Russia. Think back to the last czar who in 1914 thought he could declare a “partial mobilization” against Austria-Hungary, even though no such thing exists. The result was the First World War. In 1948 Stalin cut West Berlin off from any access to the West, not expecting a U.S. response. But Truman did respond, and we witnessed one of the frightful events of the Cold War as the two powers stood face to face for over a year before the Soviet dictator relented.

In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev attempted to place missiles on the island of Cuba, and we were once again facing nuclear war. In 1979 Leonid Brezhnev attempted to capitalize on the collapse of U.S. presence in Iran by invading Afghanistan. After 10 years of war, the Soviets withdrew as insurgents in armed United States Stingers defeated them. Even Mikhail Gorbachev, who thought a little political openness and economic perestroika could be restricted to the party soon found Soviet society engulfed in a desire for change, just in time for Chernobyl to blow up....

....Putin’s goals have always been the same: reduce the presence of the United States and Europe and split those powers on the continent into a collection of squabbling states. This has been greatly helped by his ability to insert the divisiveness within states, undermining unity. Under President Donald Trump, this seems almost within reach as we had an American president give up on NATO and Western intelligence and stake everything on Putin. But as the fighting goes on in Ukraine, frightening claims are put forward: Putin is claiming that “Ukraine does not exist” using the language of the Nazis. Language like that has not been heard in Europe since the time Adolf Hitler spoke them.....

....We cannot sit still as history is opening a grisly opportunity to move toward freer, just, and more peaceful world. The last time this happened, we did not act, and Lenin took over the reins of history. The world has paid for it ever since. Our choice now has nothing to do with a balance of power; it is between a return to a brutal past or step into a better future.>

<WASHINGTON — While power and ego are typically enough to drive most would-be presidents, Donald Trump could soon have a far more compelling motive to want his old job back: staying out of prison.

With a grand jury in Atlanta convening next month to focus on Trump’s attempted coercion of Georgia officials and federal prosecutors in Washington appearing to build a conspiracy case around the attempt to block the election certification on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump may have more reason than ever to seek the protection against prosecution enjoyed by an incumbent president....

....Which means that a man who made history by openly soliciting and accepting help from a foreign adversary to win power, then a second time by trying to overthrow the American republic in order retain that power, could do so yet again by running for the presidency while under an active criminal prosecution...

....Actually being in prison prior to Election Day 2024, of course, is not likely even in the improbable scenario that Trump is indicted in the immediate future. Defendants who can afford substantial legal fees, even those not as notoriously litigious as Trump, are typically able to drag out prosecutions for years if they choose.

....Indeed, in a related civil case, a federal judge in California ruled that Trump and John Eastman, one of Trump’s outside advisers pushing the plan to overthrow the election, “dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021,” and called the scheme “a coup in search of a legal theory.”...

Trump has made clear since his final days in office that he feared prosecution based on his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6. He was reportedly considering pardoning himself and his family before deciding against it, and was actually planning to be in Scotland at the moment of Joe Biden’s inauguration, at one of his golf courses there, until the first minister of that country announced that he would not be welcome.

More recently, Trump told a rally audience: “They want to put me in jail,” before telling his followers that they should prepare to hold “the biggest protests we have ever had” in Atlanta, Washington and elsewhere.

The approach repeats Trump’s pattern of attempting to delegitimize all investigations and investigators looking into his activities as corrupt and politically motivated. During his years in office, he called both the special counsel probe into the assistance his campaign received from Russia as well as the impeachment for his attempt to extort Ukraine “a hoax,” and got most Republicans to go along with it....

....Thus far, only two potential Trump rivals in 2024 have been willing to criticize his behavior up to and on Jan. 6 as they make their pre-campaign visits: former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and only Christie has been consistently vocal about it....

....One former top Trump White House official, though, said there was a difference between Jan. 6 coming up as a campaign issue and Trump personally facing an actual prosecution, and that the latter could wind up actually helping him.

“I don’t think a constant reminder of the events of Jan. 6 are beneficial to him,” the former official, who remains active in Republican politics, said on condition of anonymity. “But an actual indictment, that could end up making him look like more of a victim.”

Eisen said he hopes the general election electorate, should Trump make it that far, sends a clear message. “The campaign would become a referendum on his criminality,” he said. “Most Americans would view it with repugnance.”

Trump, despite losing to Biden by 7 million votes nationally and 306-232 in the Electoral College, became the first president in more than two centuries of elections to refuse to hand over power peacefully. His incitement of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — his last-ditch attempt to remain in office ― led to five deaths, including that of one police officer, injured another 140 officers and led to four police suicides....>

<Great news, everyone. Former president and somehow-not-disgraced Florida man Donald Trump is dialing down the rhetoric and isn’t likely to cause problems for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections!

At least that’s what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell suggested to USA TODAY while, I assume, not under the influence of any hallucinogenic substances.

Commenting on Trump’s routine, lie-filled endorsements of GOP candidates, McConnell said: “So far this cycle, he's been rather restrained in his nominations. So I don’t see it as a problem.”

Cool, Mitch. It’s reassuring to know the modern Republican Party isn’t sweating a conspiratorial cocktail-lounge act masquerading as a former president traipsing around the country demanding everyone – EVERYONE, I TELL YOU! – acknowledge the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, which, I’ll remind everyone for the 3,457th time, it most definitely was not.

Nothing to see here, please disperse

McConnell continued to speak optimistically about the midterms: “It depends on not doing and saying foolish things that disqualify you.”

Has he met Trump? Has he met a terrifyingly large swath of his own party?

Enough already: Ginni Thomas' texts show the Big Lie has metastasized into a Big Delusion.

Saying foolish things, for MAGA-aligned Republican lawmakers and candidates, seems mandatory. We witness what appears to be a daily competition among them to see who can out-outrageous the other.

But Trump remains the crown king of the unhinged. The same day USA TODAY published the interview with McConnell, Trump released an anti-endorsement of Republican Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate William McSwain, a former U.S. attorney who committed the unforgivable act of not looking into ginned-up voter fraud allegations.

In his statement, Trump said: “It was there for the taking and he failed so badly.”

Nothing says “not a problem” quite like a former president accused of trying to overturn a free and fair election writing out and sharing a sentence that clearly states he wanted to overturn a free and fair election.

It was there for the taking! If only our system of government hadn’t survived!

Trump lies and lies and lies and lies

At his rally last weekend in North Carolina, the mountebank of Mar-a-Lago flatly said: “The presidential election was rigged and stolen.”

It was not. At all. In any way, shape or form. That’s a lie. An enormous lie. A lie that, every time it’s spoken, erodes faith in our democracy.

“The truth is,” Trump said, “I ran twice. I won twice.”

That’s not truth. It’s hokum. He knows it. The candidates he endorses know it. And McConnell absolutely knows it.

In December 2020, McConnell said: “Our country has officially a president-elect and a vice president-elect. The Electoral College has spoken. So today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”

So I’m not quite sure how McConnell doesn’t see Trump “as a problem.”

I voted for Trump twice. He shouldn't run again.

It’s like if everybody in town is talking about how your grandfather keeps running around the streets buck naked screaming about ghosts in the sewer pipes, and you respond by saying, “The family’s doing fine! Everything’s totally normal.”

That’s not helping grandpa, the town or your family. It’s not helping anyone.

McConnell's appalling lack of concern
McConnell knows Republicans stand a good chance of regaining the House and possibly taking back the Senate in the midterms, with or without the officially defeated former president muscling candidates into embracing the lies that shield his fragile ego. Actual President Joe Biden’s poll numbers are bad, inflation is overshadowing positive employment numbers and midterms generally favor the party not in power.

But what should burn every truly patriotic American’s biscuits is the fact that McConnell is waltzing along knowing a huge faction of his own party has adopted a dangerous fiction in service to an utterly unworthy individual, one who only stops conning people long enough to ring for another Diet Coke.

I am the last of the Obama Republicans. But I still have hope for lasting change.

There’s nothing “restrained” about Trump. Every day, we’re learning more and more about the role he, members of his family and others in his orbit played in attempting what amounts to a coup.

If McConnell gave a damn about America, that would matter.

It clearly doesn’t.

Maybe that’s something that should concern us all.>

<What’s particularly striking about the text messages obtained by CNN sent from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) to President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after the 2020 election is how ready they were to think rampant fraud had actually occurred.

For months before Election Day, Trump and his team had been warning that such fraud was imminent, elevating quickly debunked claims about impropriety and pointing at old research on mail-in balloting as evidence that the structure undergirding the vote was shaky. Trump generated an appetite for stories about ballots being found in the garbage or burned up in mail trucks or what-have-you, and the conservative media scrambled to meet the demand. But all of it was objectively unfounded — as one might have expected a senator or a representative to understand.

That Lee didn’t is explained somewhat by the news sources he shares with Meadows as he tries to help shape the White House’s post-election strategy: an article from Breitbart, one from the Washington Examiner, a tweet from a right-wing pundit. Within that bubble, the run-up to the election was a period of rampant scheming and dishonesty aimed at stealing the election.

But then the election happened, and it very quickly became obvious that none of this had happened.

Roy and Lee each pushed for Trump and the White House to release proof of rampant fraud, in their own ways.

On the day the election was called for Joe Biden, Roy insisted to Meadows that “we need ammo. We need fraud examples. We need it this weekend.” Two days later, he demanded “a message that isn’t wild-eyed” — seemingly a tacit excoriation of Trump’s eager embrace of whatever nonsense he came across that smelled at all like fraud. And then, a few days after that, Roy inquired about where he might find a catalogue of fraud claims, something that did exist but which was filled with the sort of wild-eyed nonsense he sought to avoid.

Lee’s approach was more technical, centered on creating alternate slates of electors that — importantly — upheld the letter of state law, which Trump’s didn’t. (Lee also touted attorney Sidney Powell, an error in judgment that will haunt his dreams for decades.) But he, too, told Meadows that the White House would need “a strong evidentiary argument” to compel senators.

It’s a reminder that Trump had no such thing. That he has no such thing. That his insistences before the election that fraud would happen were simply replaced with insistences that fraud would be proved, an unending con job that continues to this day.

At the end of November 2020, three weeks after the election had been called, I wrote an article making this point as gently as possible. Trump had made a massive number of claims about fraud in speeches, in interviews and on social media and, to a one, they had been rejected upon examination. Sometimes that led to Trump simply no longer talking about them. Sometimes he ignored the reality, as with the ballots that were removed from a container in Georgia and which Trump insisted were somehow fraud despite the actual, innocent explanation being available for weeks. He raised that one in his infamous call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) — despite Raffensperger’s office having helped debunk the claim!....>

<Former President Trump blasted Democrats in Easter messages on Sunday morning, including one aimed at “radical left maniacs” and another calling New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) a “failed gubernatorial candidate.”

Trump Easter messages skewer Democrats

“Happy Easter to failed gubernatorial candidate and racist Attorney General Letitia James,” Trump said in a message sent via his Save America PAC. “May she remain healthy despite the fact that she will continue to drive business out of New York while at the same time keeping crime, death, and destruction in New York!”

Trump and the state official have recently clashed as James has tried to have Trump and his adult children sit for depositions. James and the Manhattan district attorney’s office are investigating whether Trump lowered property values on his tax forms but raised them in paperwork for lenders.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the investigation spearheaded by James and labeled it as a politically motivated witch hunt. He has filed a federal lawsuit asking for an injunction against the probe.

In another message on Sunday directed at Democrats, the former president said “Radical Left Maniacs” are “doing everything possible to destroy our Country.”

“May they not succeed, but let them, nevertheless, be happy, healthy, wealthy, and well!” he added.

The GOP field has in the recent months competed intensely for Trump’s endorsement in the upcoming midterm races, and Trump, who is also weighing another bid for the White House in 2024, has stepped up his travel schedule in recent weeks.

His statements come as the Labor Department said last week that the consumer price index, which tracks inflation, increased by 1.2 percent in March and 8.5 percent over the past 12 months and as President Biden’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest point in the latest CBS News and YouGov poll.>

<Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to appear in court tomorrow, after a suit claiming she violated the Constitution’s 14th amendment was allowed to move forward. And Greene is appearing to have a bit of a meltdown leading up to her appearance.

The complaint comes from a group called Free Speech for People, which is alleging Greene violated the Constitution’s “disqualification clause,” which says lawmakers cannot “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after taking their congressional oaths. If found in violation, they would be barred from ever running for office in the future. (A similar suit was recently brought against North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn.) The clause was originally written to keep former Confederates from holding office after the Civil War but it definitely seems like it should apply to any and everyone who played a role in the January 6 insurrection.

Greene requested a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order to delay the case, which was denied by Georgia District Judge Amy Totenberg. That means Greene is required to show up tomorrow to testify under oath regarding her role in and leading up to the Capitol attack.

As Rolling Stone writes:

Greene seems a little worried, perhaps because she’s built her entire career on pushing lies and unfounded conspiracy theories — from Jewish-funded space lasers starting the California wildfires to the 2020 election being stolen — and has little experience telling the truth, which she’ll now have to do lest she open herself up to perjury charges.

In recent interviews and videos posted to Twitter, Greene has railed against the non-partisan, non-profit political advocacy group behind the suit, calling them “dark money” “leftists” who hate the people of Georgia. But her biggest foe, as she sees it, is the media, whose expected presence in the courtroom clearly terrifies her.

“I really hope you guys get a camera in that courtroom,” she told the extreme right-wing network One America News this week. “You know what the Democrats and the media are going to do: They’re going to click and cut and paste so they can sell a lie on their networks every night.”

She repeated that prediction on the Jenna Ellis Show, hosted by Trump’s former lawyer. “It’s absurd what they are claiming and lying about,” Greene said. “They’re going to allow the press in the courtroom. They’re going to allow the whole thing to be videoed live, out in anywhere in the world they want to. You know what that’s going to look like. The Democrats and the nasty mainstream media—you know, the ones that lie about me constantly anyways—are going to be able to twist and turn and clip out any little piece they want.”

Greene’s concern over the media’s presence in court is strange, considering all the most incriminating things she’s said and done have been done so publicly—like how she’s repeatedly called violent, convicted and/or indicted insurrectionists patriots and “political prisoners” and defended their actions as an attack on “tyrants.”

Honestly, the only reason any media outlet would have to “clip out any little piece” of Greene’s testimony tomorrow is likely because there will just be such an overwhelming amount of incriminating material to choose from.>

<Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to appear in court tomorrow, after a suit claiming she violated the Constitution’s 14th amendment was allowed to move forward. And Greene is appearing to have a bit of a meltdown leading up to her appearance.

The complaint comes from a group called Free Speech for People, which is alleging Greene violated the Constitution’s “disqualification clause,” which says lawmakers cannot “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after taking their congressional oaths. If found in violation, they would be barred from ever running for office in the future. (A similar suit was recently brought against North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn.) The clause was originally written to keep former Confederates from holding office after the Civil War but it definitely seems like it should apply to any and everyone who played a role in the January 6 insurrection.

Greene requested a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order to delay the case, which was denied by Georgia District Judge Amy Totenberg. That means Greene is required to show up tomorrow to testify under oath regarding her role in and leading up to the Capitol attack.

As Rolling Stone writes:

Greene seems a little worried, perhaps because she’s built her entire career on pushing lies and unfounded conspiracy theories — from Jewish-funded space lasers starting the California wildfires to the 2020 election being stolen — and has little experience telling the truth, which she’ll now have to do lest she open herself up to perjury charges.

In recent interviews and videos posted to Twitter, Greene has railed against the non-partisan, non-profit political advocacy group behind the suit, calling them “dark money” “leftists” who hate the people of Georgia. But her biggest foe, as she sees it, is the media, whose expected presence in the courtroom clearly terrifies her.

“I really hope you guys get a camera in that courtroom,” she told the extreme right-wing network One America News this week. “You know what the Democrats and the media are going to do: They’re going to click and cut and paste so they can sell a lie on their networks every night.”

She repeated that prediction on the Jenna Ellis Show, hosted by Trump’s former lawyer. “It’s absurd what they are claiming and lying about,” Greene said. “They’re going to allow the press in the courtroom. They’re going to allow the whole thing to be videoed live, out in anywhere in the world they want to. You know what that’s going to look like. The Democrats and the nasty mainstream media—you know, the ones that lie about me constantly anyways—are going to be able to twist and turn and clip out any little piece they want.”

Greene’s concern over the media’s presence in court is strange, considering all the most incriminating things she’s said and done have been done so publicly—like how she’s repeatedly called violent, convicted and/or indicted insurrectionists patriots and “political prisoners” and defended their actions as an attack on “tyrants.”

Honestly, the only reason any media outlet would have to “clip out any little piece” of Greene’s testimony tomorrow is likely because there will just be such an overwhelming amount of incriminating material to choose from.>

<Former President Donald Trump made governors flatter him personally for federal aid after natural disasters, a new book says.

The revelations are made in an upcoming book, "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future," by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, according to The Independent.

In the book, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, said Trump told governors who wanted aid: "You have to call and ask me nicely."

Hogan claimed that Trump had a policy in which only Texas and Florida, two states with governors Trump considered close allies, would be given federal aid when needed without question.

Governor Ned Lamont of Connecticut, a Democrat, recounted a similar experience, The Independent reported.

Lamont said he asked the White House for assistance in obtaining federal disaster aid after a storm in August 2020 left parts of Connecticut without electrical power.

He was surprised when he received a call from then-President Trump himself hours later, who said: "There's something you want me to ask about FEMA?"

When Lamont replied that he wanted to ask about FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) aid, Trump reportedly said: "Well, ask me nicely."

The governor told the book authors that he felt like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the infamous 2019 call in which Trump pressured him to investigate Joe Biden while withholding vital military aid.

Lamont said he decided to play along and flatter Trump into agreeing, telling him "it would mean a lot to the people" if Trump "could bring it upon himself" to authorize the aid, The Independent reported.

The flattery worked, and Trump reportedly replied: "You got it."

Trump has long had a reputation for demanding and rewarding devotion to him.

As president, he publicly demanded that governors show deference to the administration during the COVID-19 crisis, saying, "I want them to be appreciative."

He also implied that he told his Vice President Mike Pence not to take calls from state executives that "don't treat you right.">

<Insurrections aren’t everyday, casual affairs. That should go without saying, but somehow, perhaps as a symptom of our current political dysfunction, anti-democratic developments feel almost normal. Or perhaps we’re just numb. But either way, there are a number of candidates running for office in the 2022 midterms who, like Georgia’s Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, were engaged in peddling Trump’s big lie that voter fraud, not the will of the voters, was responsible for his loss in 2020. The resulting effort to prevent the Senate from confirming Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, of course, culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Somehow, perhaps as a symptom of our current political dysfunction, anti-democratic developments feel almost normalized. Or perhaps we’re just numb.

Some of Greene’s constituents don’t believes she deserves a spot on the ballot this year. In a hearing the stretched on for hours on Friday, lawyers for a coalition suing Greene, called Free Speech for the People, pointed out that the Constitution doesn’t normalize insurrection. In fact, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, enacted following the Civil War, explicitly prohibits people who engage in an insurrection, after taking an oath to support the Constitution, from holding office in the future:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress … who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

Reading this text, it might seem like Greene should have been drummed out of the Republican Party for her brazen conduct. Instead, she has become one of the many faces of a party controlled by Trump. And while some of her constituents are appalled by her behavior, it’s unlikely that this challenge to her candidacy will have any teeth.

Not that the hearing wasn’t illuminating. Greene smirked her way through hours of examination, dodging questions with claims of memory lapses. When lawyers for Free Speech for the People asked whether she’d advocated for imposing martial law on the country in conversations at the White House, she responded that she couldn’t recall. It was a strikingly casual response for a hypothetical conversation most living, breathing human beings would presumably remember for the rest of their lives.

Nevertheless, attorneys for the voters seemed to fall short of establishing — their burden in this proceeding according to the administrative law judge’s order — Greene’s participation in a violent insurrection. It was far from a clean bill of health for the first term Georgia congresswoman. But there’s plenty of “play in the joints” for a decision-maker who is looking to avoid throwing Greene off the ballot. Without getting too deep in the legal weeds, Georgia Republicans eager to avoid intra-party conflict should be able to argue her challengers failed to meet their evidentiary burden.

The judge promised to have a ruling out by next week. After that, a final decision will be made by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (who Trump infamously pressured to reverse his state’s election results). It’s hard to imagine that Raffensperger, who is running for re-election without Trump’s endorsement in the primary, wants to draw more ire by ending the candidacy of one of the former president’s favorite lawmakers. Even if he goes out on a limb and removes Greene, Raffensperger’s decision can be appealed up through Georgia’s state courts. With the primary slated for May 24, it’s hard to see how a decision against Greene could be final in time....>

Da rest ta follow....

<....Georgia’s Republican officials might be happier without Greene and the unseemly controversies she promotes in their conference. But, having lacked the courage to separate themselves from Trump at the height of his excesses, it’s unlikely they’ll deal with Greene themselves. They’re far more likely to leave the political fate of Trump’s local stand in to the voters. Those voters, who reside in Greene’s northwest Georgia district along the Alabama border, haven’t been bothered by her behavior, including her support for baseless QAnon conspiracy theories, in the past. She won with 74.6 percent of the vote in 2020.

Greene has remained popular despite stunts like calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a traitor: a statement she first denied (under oath) on the witness stand on Friday, only to quickly back peddle once it became clear the lawyer had her exact statement to that effect in front of him. It would have been a funny sound bite if it wasn’t so wildly dishonest. As her questioner was easily able to prove, Greene had indeed said in 2019 that Pelosi was guilty of treason, additionally suggesting that the crime of treason was punishable by death. Not the least of the entire sad affair was the utter shamelessness of a woman who occupies a position of trust on Capitol Hill.

Do we really need the courts to tell us people who participate in insurrections against the government don’t belong in office? Is that the sad state of our politics in 2022? The answer to those questions highlights the real challenge presented at Marjorie Taylor Greene’s hearing. Because Greene’s conduct isn’t really in question — no matter how many times she rolls her eyes and tries to will her own words away. Her testimony presented a stark picture of someone who seems intent on turning democracy into cosplay, engaging in a mockery of what public service is supposed to be about.

Using this particular Civil War-era constitutional amendment to hold Greene accountable is fraught. Even if it happens, there will be lengthy delays as issues of first impression are litigated in the courts. Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest the states lack the ability to enforce Section 3 without congressional action. Ultimately, lawsuits like this may not be enough to keep people who sought to undo one of the most sacred traditions of our government, the peaceful transfer of power, out of positions where they can do still more damage to democracy.

Do we really need the courts to tell us people who participate in insurrections against the government don’t belong in office?

There is (some) good news. Democratic institutions that were stress tested by the four years of the Trump presidency can’t come all the way back overnight. But increasingly, we’re seeing the tools of government being used, from congressional investigations that promote civic education and uncover the truth to prosecutions that build accountability.

<....“How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?” Gaetz wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning.>

In like fashion to his first cousin <kudzu antonin>, the not so honourable member of Congress makes himself look a fool without really trying.

<When Politico first published a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade on Monday night, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri was the first US senator to publicly weigh in, focusing on the extraordinary breach in court norms.

"The left continues its assault on the Supreme Court with an unprecedented breach of confidentiality, clearly meant to intimidate," he tweeted at 9:05 pm, within an hour of the story's publication. "The Justices mustn't give in to this attempt to corrupt the process. Stay strong."

He followed up shortly thereafter with praise for Associate Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion, which he called "voluminously researched, tightly argued, and morally powerful."

By the next day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was echoing Hawley's assumption, arguing in a statement that "by every indication" the nearly unprecedented leak constituted "yet another escalation in the radical left's ongoing campaign to bully and intimidate federal judges and substitute mob rule for the rule of law."

And by Wednesday, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas had confidently declared that "there was one woke little left-wing twit" at the high court who had decided to "sneak it out in order to put political pressure on justices."

But no concrete evidence has emerged in the public domain that points towards the left — or the right, for that matter — as the source of the leak.

"I never said I know who the leaker is," Hawley said on Thursday when Insider pressed him for evidence to support his claims.

Still, a slew of prominent Republican lawmakers in Washington have raged at the political left over the leak, in some cases insisting that the leak itself is more important than the possible revocation of a constitutional right....

....Asked by Insider for evidence behind his theory on Wednesday, Cruz said it was "common sense" that the leak came from the left, given Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's declaration in 2020 that justices would "pay the price" for voting to overturn abortion rights, as well as calls from progressives to add more justices to the court.

When presented with the possibility that it came from a conservative clerk, Cruz dismissed it as a "left-wing talking point" while pointing to the fact that the leak was immediately met with praise from Brian Fallon, the executive director of the pro-court expansion group Demand Justice.

"I think the odds are overwhelming, it is a law clerk for one of the three liberal justices. That's a universe of 12 people," said Cruz. "The urgency with which those on the left, including in the media, have tried to say no, no, no, this is really a conservative — I think it's cute, but I think the odds are vanishingly small."

Hawley, on the other hand, denied that he ever blamed the left for the leak at all.

"Well I don't know where it came from," he told Insider. "But I can see how the left is using it, which is to threaten the justices, to go after them and their families, and try to influence the deliberations of the court."

In addition to several tweets insinuating that the leak was part of a "coordinated" effort by both the White House and Democratic senators, Hawley argued in a Fox News op-ed on Wednesday that the leak "looks like an effort to derail" Alito's opinion — which is "everything a constitutionalist could hope for" — from becoming final.

"Listen, this could easily be solved," Hawley told reporters on Tuesday. "All of the Supreme Court justices should talk to all of their clerks and staff, and they should all issue statements today saying whether or not they leaked it."

On Thursday, Hawley was adamant that he hadn't assigned any blame for the leak, despite his initial insinuation. "Asked and answered," he quipped as he boarded an elevator....>

<President Vladimir Putin takes Russian anniversaries seriously. It was no coincidence that his invasion of Ukraine came a day after Defender of the Fatherland Day, a celebration of Russia's military achievements. It was on that same occasion in 2014 that Putin took the first step in annexing Crimea from Ukraine, through orchestrated pro-Russian protests on the peninsula.

The leader had clearly hoped to have more to celebrate by this Victory Day on Monday, the country's most patriotic of dates, marking the Soviet Union's role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II. It was on May 8, 1945, (May 9 in Moscow's time zone) that Germany signed its Instrument of Surrender in Berlin, ending the fighting in Europe. The USSR suffered the biggest losses of any nation -- around 27 million soldiers and civilians died.

Russia's justification for war in Ukraine suggested a deadline for success by Victory Day. Putin and his government have repeatedly said the aim of their so-called "special operation" is to "denazify" Ukraine, and that freeing the country of Nazis is a matter of Russian survival. It's an argument that has no real weight; a blatant cover for Russian revanchism.

Even though the Kremlin's well-oiled propaganda machine has been going at full steam since the February invasion, it will be difficult for Putin to twist Russia's losses into true victory on Monday.

If anything, the operation in Ukraine has been an embarrassment for him -- at least on the international stage....>

<Inside a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, a white man with a history of antisemitic internet posts gunned down 11 worshipers, blaming Jews for allowing immigrant “invaders” into the United States.

The next year, another white man, angry over what he called “the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” opened fire on shoppers at an El Paso Walmart leaving 23 people dead, and later telling the police he had sought to kill Mexicans.

And in yet another deadly mass shooting, unfolding in Buffalo on Saturday, a heavily armed white man is accused of killing 10 people after targeting a supermarket on the city’s predominantly Black east side, writing in a lengthy screed posted online that the shoppers there came from a culture that sought to “ethnically replace my own people.”

Three shootings, three different targets — but all linked by one sprawling, ever-mutating belief now commonly known as replacement theory. At the extremes of American life, replacement theory — the notion that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to “replace” and disempower white Americans — has become an engine of racist terror, helping inspire a wave of mass shootings in recent years and fueling the 2017 right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Va., that erupted in violence.

But replacement theory, once confined to the digital fever swamps of Reddit message boards and semi-obscure white nationalist sites, has gone mainstream. In sometimes more muted forms, the fear it crystallizes — of a future America in which white people are no longer the numerical majority — has become a potent force in conservative media and politics, where the theory has been borrowed and remixed to attract audiences, retweets and small-dollar donations.

Replacement theory is a central theme on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox....

....No public figure has promoted replacement theory more loudly or relentlessly than the Fox host Tucker Carlson, who has made elite-led demographic change a central theme of his show since joining Fox’s prime-time lineup in 2016. A Times investigation published this month showed that in more than 400 episodes of his show, Mr. Carlson has amplified the notion that Democratic politicians and other assorted elites want to force demographic change through immigration, and his producers sometimes scoured his show’s raw material from the same dark corners of the internet that the Buffalo suspect did....

....In just the past year, Republican luminaries like Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and Georgia congressman, and Elise Stefanik, the center-right New York congresswoman turned Trump acolyte (and third-ranking House Republican), have echoed replacement theory. Appearing on Fox, Mr. Gingrich declared that leftists were attempting to “drown” out “classic Americans.”

In September, Ms. Stefanik released a campaign ad on Facebook claiming that Democrats were plotting “a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION” by granting “amnesty” to illegal immigrants, which her ad said would “overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.” That same month, after the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights group, called on Fox to fire Mr. Carlson, Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, stood up both for the TV host and for replacement theory itself.

“@TuckerCarlson is CORRECT about Replacement Theory as he explains what is happening to America,” Mr. Gaetz wrote on Twitter. In a statement after the Buffalo shooting, Mr. Gaetz said that he had “never spoken of replacement theory in terms of race.”....

....Throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump filled his public speeches and Twitter feed with often inflammatory, sometimes false rhetoric about immigrants, and he employed the term “invaders” in arguing for a border wall. Such language has been more broadly adopted by his most ardent supporters, such as Wendy Rogers, an Arizona state senator, who last summer said on Twitter, “We are being replaced and invaded” by illegal immigrants.

Efforts to reach Ms. Rogers on Sunday were unsuccessful. Reached by email, Mr. Gingrich declared replacement theory “insane,” adding that he was opposed to all anti-Semitism as well as “the white racist violence in Buffalo.”

Responding to criticism of Ms. Stefanik’s ad in the wake of the Buffalo shooting, a senior adviser for the congresswoman sent two responses: a sorrowful statement from Ms. Stefanik about the killing in Buffalo, and a fiery rejoinder from the adviser that “despite sickening and false reporting,” the congresswoman “has never advocated for any racist position or made a racist statement.”....>

<According to a report from the Daily Beast, a frantic Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) clashed with FBI investigators who were assisting the Florida Republican's father who was being blackmailed \-- and then ran to Fox News and lied about it to make the FBI look bad as news broke that he was also under investigation.

As the Beast's Roger Sollenberger wrote, an FBI report details agents' interactions with the younger Gaetz on the day that it was being reported that he had allegedly been sending money to an associate who in turn was reportedly passing along the cash to young women for sexual favors -- raising questions about sex trafficking.

According to the FBI report, investigators were meeting with the lawmaker's father, Don Gaetz, a former president of the Florida Senate, who was being victimized by blackmailers who claimed they had dirt on his lawmaker son, when the younger Gaetz burst in on their meeting.

As Sollenberger wrote, as the elder Gaetz was handing a recording device back to the investigators while asking them to collect more evidence when his son Matt lashed out at the agents.

"That evening—around 7:45 p.m., according to the FBI report—two special agents rang the doorbell at the Gaetz family residence. They had come for their recording device. The sting was off, but the records don’t explain why, and they don’t mention the Times story," writes the Daily Beast, which then quoted an FBI report stating that "M. GAETZ yelled, ‘He has a lawyer!’ multiple times.”

Sollenberger's report continued, “M. GAETZ yelled, ‘Do you have a warrant to be here?’ and asked his father if they took anything from him. The agents did not respond, the report says. Don Gaetz answered his son: no, they only took the recording device they had previously given him."

Following the altercation, Gaetz appeared on Fox News with host Tucker Carlson in what the controversial Carlson later called "one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted."

"Minutes later, Matt Gaetz was on national television delivering a broadside against the men he still alleges extorted his family, while at the same time describing a series of events that FBI records show wasn’t accurate," The Beast reports.

Asked for comment about the discrepancy between what Gaetz told Fox viewers and what the FBI report detailed, a spokesperson for the lawmaker issued a statement that read, "Rep. Matt Gaetz stands by every word he has said about this fiasco. Time has only vindicated his claims and resulted in the guilty plea of one of the people involved in a shakedown of his family,” the spokesperson said. “Due to ongoing investigations of other people involved in this shakedown, we will not have further comment.”

Gaetz is still reportedly still under investigation by federal and Florida state officials.>

<Although Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is expected to waltz to a Republican primary win in Georgia next week, voters in her district are becoming increasingly unhappy and unsettled by her constant self-promoting antics that she performs in lieu of actually doing anything for her constituents in her solidly red district.

According to a report from the Washington Examiner, the controversial freshman lawmaker is facing a slew of challengers who see cracks in her support back home.

As the Examiner's Barnini Chakraborty wrote, "For all of her theatrics, Greene has no real power: She was stripped of her committee assignments for racist remarks she made before she was sworn in. Her in-your-face tactics made her a national name but haven't done much to endear her to constituents who say they've had enough."

One of the five candidates opposing Taylor Greene, Jennifer Strahan, explained that people in the district need someone in Washington D.C. who is actually interested in doing the job they were sent there for.

"I think we have a lot of serious issues going on today, and I think we need a serious representative who wants to actually drive positive change and not just celebrity," she explained.

One local voter who asked not be named, said of their current House representative, "She's an embarrassment," before adding, "She seems nice enough, but you get her in front of a microphone, and she goes bonkers!"

Another challenger for the GOP nod, James Haygood, admitted he was frustrated by her lack of accomplishments, telling the Examiner, "You are supposed to go to Washington to work, but the people of the 14th District elected you to represent them and their needs, and for 15 months, we've had no representation. She's on no committees, and she cries about, 'Oh, everybody's picking on me,' but it's always somebody else's fault."

Democratic strategist David McLaughlin suggested voters in 2020 may have not known who or what they were voting in her first primary and then they were stuck with her in the deeply conservative district that saw the Democratic nominee abruptly drop out two months before the general election.

"At that point, voters had no chance of stopping her unless they voted for her Democratic opponent, who really didn't even make it all the way to Election Day," he explained.>

<Marjorie Taylor Greene was joined on the campaign trail by local CBS affiliate reporter Rick Folbaum this week who pushed the controversial representative on some of her past statements.

“Greene clearly enjoys a challenge and never misses a chance to burnish her image as a fighter as we learned when we asked her about a new report from the Anti-Defamation League documenting a 133% rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Georgia, including in Greene’s 14th District,” Folbaum says in his report.

He notes “we wanted to know if she was worried that some of her past statements, considered offensive by many Jewish people, could inadvertently be contributing to the problem.”

“No, I am not contributing. You’re lying about me,” Greene shot back when asked the question. “You don’t even know what my words were.”

“This was your post, under your name and you’re talking about the Rothschild family, which has been at the center of antisemitic conspiracies since the 19th century,” Folbaum then said to Greene, showing her some of her own words.

“I did not know that. I have no idea,” she responded, playing coy about the intent behind her post.

“That was what? 20-what,” she asked.

It's worse that the outcome is different.

“2018,” he responded, noting in his report that she shrugged it off as it was a remark made before she entered politics.

“We don’t care,” one of Greene’s constituents told Folbaum when asked about her past comments.

Folbaum then reported that some people in Greene’s district do care, however.

“Ronald Reagan is spinning in his grave to know there are people that claim to be Republican and are sympathizing with Vladimir Putin. It is despicable,” said one constituent who confronted Greene while on the campaign trail.

You have said disparaging things against the Jewish community, you suggested a space laser, you are disrespecting the United States Congress and you are a shame,” the man says to Greene in a clip.>

Hahahahaha!

<On Monday, thanks to a case brought by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), the Supreme Court struck down another aspect of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). At issue in this case was a limit on how much a candidate could loan themselves and have donors repay them after an election. The limit had been a generous $250,000. Following yesterday’s ruling, even that fig leaf is gone, leaving elected officials free to ask donors for money that will go right into their own pockets.

The case is FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate. Senator Ted Cruz loaned $260,000 to his campaign committee and then sought reimbursement from political donors to make himself whole. This was $10,000 over the then-legal limit, suggesting the violation was ginned up as a test case to challenge another aspect of BCRA. (It also undermines any everyman image Cruz might be trying to portray — how many of us could loan anyone, including a political campaign, over $250k?)

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) was the brain child of Republican Senator John McCain (AZ) and Democratic Senator Russ Feingold (WI), and it was passed in part as reaction to the implosion of Enron. The Rehnquist Court in 2003 upheld nearly every aspect of the BCRA as constitutional against a facial challenge in McConnell v. FEC.

The Act is now only 20 years old, but it has had a hell of a time before the Roberts Supreme Court. As I wrote about here, the Roberts Supreme Court has been deregulating corruption since its very first term by kicking big holes in campaign finance laws and by making white collar crime harder to prosecute as it lets shady politicians — from Bob McDonnell to Bridget Anne Kelly — off the hook for corrupt acts.....>

<.....The Roberts Supreme Court took its first chunk out of BCRA in Davis v. FEC — striking down a law called the millionaire’s amendment which had allowed candidates running against super rich self-financed candidates to raise more money. The Court, in Davis, came perilously close to ruling that it was unconstitutional to discriminate against the rich. As Justice Alito wrote in his majority opinion:

“Different candidates have different strengths. Some are wealthy; others have wealthy supporters who are willing to make large contributions. … Leveling electoral opportunities means making and implementing judgments about which strengths should be permitted to contribute to the outcome of an election. …it is a dangerous business for Congress to use the election laws to influence the voters’ choices.”

Later, in 2007’s FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, the Roberts Court limited what ads could be regulated under BCRA.

Then, in 2010’s Citizens United v. FEC, the Roberts Court really took a hatchet to BCRA, finding that the law’s ban on corporate-funded political ads was unconstitutional. This opinion caught the attention of lots of Americans, from the President to average citizens who decried this turn of events as worthy of amending the Constitution. President Obama called out the Supreme Court in his first State of the Union declaring, “[w]ith all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.” In the audience, Justice Alito (now famous for his leaked opinion overturning Roe v. Wade) shook his head and mouthed the words “not true.” History has shown Obama was right as “corporations gave $301 million to super PACs and hybrid PACs from the 2012 to 2018 cycles, 87 percent of which went to conservative groups” and there was an additional $100 million in corporate spending in the 2020 election.

In the new case authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, there is enormous sympathy shown for Senator Cruz in passages like “Cruz, of course, suffers a $10,000 pocketbook harm.” Roberts also continues his longstanding hostility to campaign finance reform stating “we have denied attempts to reduce the amount of money in politics, to level electoral opportunities by equalizing candidate resources, and to limit the general influence a contributor may have over an elected official.” In the end Roberts concludes: “the Government has not shown that Section 304 [of BCRA] furthers a permissible anticorruption goal, rather than the impermissible objective of simply limiting the amount of money in politics… We also conclude that this provision burdens core political speech without proper justification.”

In her dissent in Cruz, Justice Elena Kagan had several choice words for the majority including in the opening paragraph, where she described an elected politician getting made whole after a huge loan to his campaign is repaid by political donors: “The politician is happy; the donors are happy. The only loser is the public. It inevitably suffers from government corruption.”

<Oklahoma state Rep. Mickey Dollens proposed mandatory vasectomies for boys once they hit puberty.

Dollens, speaking before a floor of legislators on Thursday, asked GOP lawmakers to consider his proposal.

Dollens made his remarks as the Oklahoma legislature debated a law that bans abortion from conception.

An Oklahoma state rep proposed an idea for legislation that would make vasectomies mandatory for young men in the state.

Speaking before a floor of legislators, state Rep. Mickey Dollens said on Thursday that he is thinking about introducing the legislation next year.

"I would invite you to co-author a bill that I'm considering next year that would mandate that each male, when they reach puberty, get a mandatory vasectomy that's only reversible when they reach the point of financial and emotional stability," he told GOP lawmakers.

"If you think that's crazy then I think that maybe you understand how 50 percent of Oklahomans feel, as well," the Democrat said.

Dollens' remarks were made as the Oklahoma legislature debated HB 4327, a restrictive law that effectively bans abortion from the moment of "fertilization." The legislature on Thursday passed the bill, and Gov. Kevin Stitt is expected to sign it into law.

If enforced, Oklahoma's law would be one of the strictest abortion restrictions in the country.

The legislation comes as the Supreme Court weighs overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark case that legalized abortion in the United States. Politico earlier this month published a draft Supreme Court opinion signaling a reversal of Roe v. Wade. In the draft, Associate Justice Samuel Alito characterized abortion as "egregiously wrong from the start."

Abortion will remain legal in the United States until the court hands down a final verdict, which could come as early as June. But the leaked draft opinion was enough to put reproductive rights activists and doctors who perform abortions on high alert.>