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Speaker Kevin McCarthy faces a momentous challenge to his leadership after one of his most outspoken Republican critics repeated a threat on Monday to try to remove him as retribution for working with Democrats to avert a government shutdown.

Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, said he planned to move ahead with a resolution to oust Mr. McCarthy, which would prompt a snap vote on whether to remove him as speaker. In an appeal from the House floor, Mr. Gaetz accused the speaker of partnering with President Biden to advance Democratic policies.

“It is becoming increasingly clear who the speaker of the House already works for, and it’s not the Republican conference,” Mr. Gaetz said. He added later that Mr. McCarthy had allowed Mr. Biden to take his “lunch money in every negotiation.”

Mr. Gaetz cited Mr. McCarthy’s reliance on Democratic votes to push through the funding bill — a move that was necessary to avert a shutdown because Mr. Gaetz and 20 of his colleagues had opposed a temporary spending bill that was written by Republicans.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced on Sunday night that he has chosen Laphonza Butler, the president of Emily’s List and a former labor leader, to fill the vacancy left in the Senate by the death of Dianne Feinstein.

Ms. Butler, 44, has been a fixture in California politics for nearly 15 years as a former leader of the state’s largest labor union and an adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris. In 2021, she became the first Black woman to take the helm at Emily’s List, the fund-raising powerhouse dedicated to electing female candidates and supporters of reproductive rights.

Senator Feinstein died at 90 on Thursday in Washington, D.C., and her body was flown over the weekend back to San Francisco, where a memorial service has been scheduled for this Thursday.

“As we mourn the enormous loss of Senator Feinstein, the very freedoms she fought for — reproductive freedom, equal protection and safety from gun violence — have never been under greater assault,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “Laphonza will carry the baton left by Senator Feinstein, continue to break glass ceilings and fight for all Californians in Washington, D.C.”

“All you have to do is look at his track record,” Fain said. “His track record speaks for itself. In 2008, during the Great Recession, he blamed UAW members, he blamed our contracts for everything that was wrong with these companies — that’s a complete lie.”

Fain pointed to Trump’s discussion during his 2016 presidential campaign to move jobs in the Midwest to the South, which he said would “make people beg for their jobs back at lower wages.”
“And the ultimate show of…how much he cares about our workers was in 2019 when he was the president of the United States,” Fain said. ‘Where was he then? Our workers at GM [General Motors] were on strike for 60 days, for two months. They were out there on the picket lines, I didn’t see him hold a rally. I didn’t see him stand up at the picket line.”

Meanwhile, President Biden joined the picket line with union autoworkers on Tuesday, becoming the first sitting president to do so. The move was seen by some as a likely offense against Trump, who is likely to be his 2024 presidential opponent.

The president spoke to a group at a General Motors facility in Belleville, Mich., alongside Fain, who has yet to endorse Biden’s reelection bid, citing concerns over the Biden administration’s push for electric vehicles (EVs), which put autoworkers’ jobs at risk.

If you care about labor rights, you are voting for Biden and the Democratic Party next year. Anything less is surrendering our country to the billionaire class.

Dysfunctional state parties is a symptom of not enough people being involved and a reason for people to get involved.

This is great news! For anyone reading, but especially those in Alabama, make sure to join one of your city/county’s Democratic club/caucus to help organize change at the local level and better influence the direction the Democratic Party takes locally and nationally!

A GOP trifecta would clear the way for Youngkin to move swiftly on what he calls his “commonsense” conservative priorities — boosting pay and funding for law enforcement, protecting parental rights in education, overhauling the mental health system, and enacting additional tax cuts and greater restrictions on abortion.

While he has notched some successes on taxes and education through bipartisan support during his first two legislative sessions, many of his priorities have been blocked — with great fanfare — by the Democratic majority in the Senate, which prides itself on being a “brick wall” against Republicans’ agenda.

Democrats, who held news conferences around the state this week, warned that total Republican control would lead to the repeal of legislation enacted in 2020 and 2021 while they ran the state government, including measures that mandated a transition to cleaner cars and electric generation, greatly expanded voting access, and added restrictions to firearms purchases and ownership.

Many Democratic candidates are also making abortion rights a top campaign issue, arguing that Youngkin’s proposed ban on abortion after 15 weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother, would endanger women’s health and infringe on their bodily autonomy. Virginia is the only state in the South that has not enacted new restrictions since Roe v. Wade fell.

Virginians, make sure to vote Democratic today if you haven’t already and join your city/county’s Democratic club/caucus to stay organized both during this election and afterwards.

Donald Trump went over the edge over the weekend and began calling for his detractors to be prosecuted or even put to death.

“They are almost all dishonest and corrupt, but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC, often and correctly referred to as MSDNC (Democrat National Committee!), should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason,’” he wrote on Truth Social Sunday night.

“I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States … the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events,” he said. “They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!”

Trump’s threat to the news media was actually his second attempt to menace detractors this past weekend alone. On Friday, he slammed Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggesting that perhaps he also committed treason.

“This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States,” Trump said on Truth Social. “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

Donald Trump is a danger to society. If you haven’t already, join your city/county’s Democratic club/caucus and organize locally to elect Democrats up and down the ballot in 2024.

Last year, Democrats flipped one or more chambers in several states, including Michigan and Minnesota, and they have acted quickly, passing measures to tighten gun laws, set limits on carbon emissions, increase education funding and protect abortion access.

The States Project has had a central role. The group, founded six years ago by Adam Pritzker, a businessman and major Democratic donor, and Daniel Squadron, a former New York legislator, has sought to focus its ample resources and attention exclusively on state legislators, trying to fill the void on the left.

“Going back to 1972, the right had seen the extent to which state legislatures were a place that they could impose their worldview,” Mr. Squadron said, noting that Heritage and ALEC were both founded the next year. “The fact that there’s no glamour, and you’re not going to get a presidential candidate sitting on your living room couch by doing this work, the fact that you’re not going to be the top rung of the Beltway, didn’t matter to them structurally, because the return was just too good.”

More than a million Florida voters want to see a recreational marijuana legalization initiative appear on the ballot for the 2024 general election, according to data from the state Division of Elections.

In June, state officials revealed that the adult-use cannabis legalization proposal from Smart & Safe Florida had received enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. With the current count at more than 1 million verified signatures, the proposed initiative has more than 120,000 signatures beyond the approximately 891,000 needed. But before the proposal is approved for the ballot, it must first pass muster with the Florida Supreme Court, which is tasked with verifying that the measure is limited to a single issue and is not likely to confuse voters. In 2021, the Florida Supreme Court invalidated marijuana legalization bids on two separate occasions.

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Late last month, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a challenge to the proposed ballot measure with the state Supreme Court, arguing that Smart & Safe Florida’s marijuana legalization initiative should not appear before voters in next year’s general election. Kylie Mason, the communications director for Moody’s office, said that the ballot measure is likely to confuse voters.

“When voters decide whether to amend the Florida Constitution, it is essential that they know what they are voting for,” Mason in a statement. “It is the duty of our office to address the validity of an initiative petition before it appears on a ballot. It is incumbent upon us to inform the Court when a ballot summary misleads voters about the effects of the proposed constitutional change.”

For those in Florida, make sure to join a local Florida club/caucus. You can find a list of them here.

A statewide committee is looking at doing something that hasn’t been done in Florida in more than 50 years — redrawing the boundaries of the state’s 20 circuit court districts, a project some call long overdue and others call unnecessary, or even an attempted power grab.

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Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this week suspended Democratic State Attorney Monique Worrell, whose Ninth Circuit covers Orange and Osceola counties. A year before that, he removed Tampa’s State Attorney, Andrew Warren, also a Democrat. Combining their circuits with other nearby, more rural counties could make it easier for Republicans to compete for those jobs, said Aaron Wayt, a Tallahassee lawyer who serves as legislative chair of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

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“It’s a power grab,” said state Rep. Michael Gottlieb, a Democrat who represents central Broward County. “Through consolidation, they could conceivably gerrymander the lines to give us all GOP districts, with no elected Democratic state attorneys. I don’t think that’s outside the realm of possibility.”