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Administration officials such as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack are now fanning out to rural areas to explain the benefits. Local Democrats are campaigning in districts like this corner of southwest Wisconsin along the Mississippi River that once swung for Barack Obama and has been trending redder and redder ever since.

But as local voters who are overwhelmingly white, blue-collar workers increasingly disagree with Democrats on cultural issues, GOP arguments against government spending are resonating, making it difficult for the White House's messaging to stick.

Money for roads, broadband, thats a big deal, said Gary Weber, a dairy farmer who voted for Biden. But people around here think its a bunch of wasteful welfare. Theyve got to convince people this is for the average person and not big companies.

Gary Weber, a dairy farmer outside Rockland, Wis., voted for Joe Biden in 2020. | Kris Litscher Lee

White House officials, who as recently as this summer argued Biden could go anywhere and engage voters, even in rural communities, privately acknowledge his policies have yet to move the needle with rural voters as Republicans hammer the administration over rising inflation.

Hes got a big job on his hands because people hate him for no reason, Weber said of Biden.

Biden narrowly won Wisconsin in 2020. While he performed slightly better than Hillary Clinton did with rural voters in 2016, Biden lost almost every rural county in the state. Democrats cant afford to fall further behind in rural areas like these, where small margins could determine critical races across the country next year including Wisconsins 3rd Congressional District and the Senate race.

Millions in federal aid from Democrats' pandemic relief law have already reached small communities in southwest Wisconsin. The money has helped local governments keep schools open and respond to Covid-19. Nearly $30 million is helping to keep rural health care facilities running.

And families with two children under the age of 17, for instance, have likely received federal stimulus checks and monthly child tax credit payments this year totaling around $12,000.

The White House criticized efforts to detract from those gains.

The latest climate and social spending bill, which aims to extend the child tax credit, is an economic growth plan that will cut the biggest costs rural families face, said White House deputy press secretary Chris Meagher. By opposing [the plans], the GOP is voting to raise families biggest costs, hike taxes on the middle class, and worsen inflation all to protect tax breaks for the wealthy.

Democrats in Congress, who fought for the funding and argue its helping families address rising costs, acknowledge that many people dont know its something Democrats championed.

No one really connects it, even though they're getting the checks, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said in an interview. As in Wisconsin, Browns state has pockets of small communities that once voted Democratic but have since turned deep red.

Former President Donald Trumps lingering influence is hard to miss across this county of rolling farmland and small villages in southwest Wisconsin. Trump won flags are still everywhere.

The districts longtime Rep. Ron Kind, one of the remaining farm-district centrist Democrats in Congress, barely survived reelection last year. Kind has since announced hes not seeking another term.

Rep. Ron Kind appears at a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. | AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Republican leaders in the area are railing against Bidens Covid-19 public health mandates while embracing ongoing investigations into false election fraud claims in the 2020 election.

Democrats who will face off in a primary next August to replace Kind have been trying to navigate how they talk to voters about their party's plans, despite Bidens claims that his climate and social spending bill is paid for in part by raising taxes on the wealthy.

There is recognition in this district for the need for broadband, for child care, for job training programs, for transportation. That is all that's very real, said Brad Pfaff, a Democratic state senator who grew up on a farm in the area and is running in the primary for the open seat. And you know, people have shared that, but they also recognize the fact that money is not unlimited.

Local Democratic organizers are not convinced that the investments, while historic, will be able to slow the shifting electorate.

What we do with messaging and policy making and all that, of course, influences people, said Wayde Lawler, chair of the Democratic Party in Vernon County, the districts most competitive rural county. But its by no means the only determining factor.

Many voters in the area, like Sharon Stroh who voted enthusiastically for Obama in 2008, are full-time Trump supporters now. Stroh doesnt doesnt ever plan to vote for a Democrat again no matter how much money they invest in her village of Wilton, population 500, which is slated to receive more than $400,000 in pandemic relief funding.

Millions more are on the way from the infrastructure law to maintain roads, replace lead pipes and provide high-speed, rural broadband internet, all of which Biden and Democrats have touted as game changers for rural communities.

We don't need to print any more money, Stroh said. Obama talked about being shovel ready and all that. That was a bunch of crap.

Stroh acknowledged money for new roads in her area would be nice, and even create some jobs, but shes more concerned about her granddaughter learning what she described as too much about gender identity and race in her school in the Madison area, the states capital and a Democratic stronghold.

She plans to vote for Derrick Van Orden, the Trump-backed Republican who narrowly lost to Kind last year. Van Orden, who has been campaigning across the district's small communities for months, traveled to the Stop the Steal rally in Washington on Jan. 6, before the Capitol attack occurred.

Democrats have called for Van Ordens disqualification following reports that he entered Capitol grounds during the riot. Van Orden denies that. But some voters, like Stroh, say they would support him either way.

As local Democrats try to push back, theyre simply overwhelmed.

Like many Democrats on the ground in rural areas, Mary Von Ruden, chair of the local party in Monroe County, said national Democrats havent dedicated the necessary resources to these areas for years. That makes it even harder to address voters' genuine concerns about the spending while pushing back against misinformation, Von Ruden said.

They dont understand that if they come out here, theyre going to make a difference, said Von Ruden, who at 70 years old, often knocks doors by herself across miles of farmland and small towns. Its a monumental task, she said of the challenges facing Democrats in her area.

Democrats' last hope for holding the district and their remaining footholds in rural America is a small sliver of rural voters whom they still might be able to persuade.

I don't think anybody expects the rural areas to go Democratic, said Brian Rude, a former Republican state legislator whose small village of Coon Valley voted for both Biden and Kind in 2020. But there's enough voters on the edge perhaps some undecideds, some moderate Republicans, independents, some old-fashioned Democrats who can on occasion be brought back.

Meanwhile in Washington, Democratic lawmakers are anxious to pass their social spending and climate bill as quickly as possible so they can hit the road themselves to explain the plans and push back on the GOP ahead of next years midterms.

Republicans face a real challenge in rural Wisconsin explaining to people why they oppose delivering results that make a real difference in peoples lives, said Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsins Democratic senator.

Just to the south from Kinds district, Rep. Cheri Bustos, former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is also retiring from her swing seat in rural Illinois as Democrats continue to lose rural incumbents. Bustos acknowledged cultural issues remain a challenge for the party and said she hopes the investments will demonstrate Democrats commitment to helping people in rural America and every part of the country.

At the very least, Bustos said, I hope this will help regain some trust.

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Bidens rural investments run up against the culture wars in Wisconsin - POLITICO

Although now-President Joe Biden enjoyed a decisive victory over former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Democrats had their share of disappointments in down-ballot races last year including centrist Democrat Steve Bullock's loss to Republican incumbent Sen. Steve Daines' inMontana's U.S. Senate race. Bullock, reflecting on the 2020 and 2021 elections, has awarning for fellow Democratsin an op-ed published by the New York Times this week: the Democratic Party has a problem with rural voters, and it isn't getting any better.

Bullock has a track record in Montana politics. Despite being a Democrat in a deep red state, he served as Montana attorney general before serving two terms as governor. But when he tried to unseat Daines in 2020, he lost by 11%.

"The Democrats are in trouble in Rural America," Bullock warns, "and their struggles there could doom the party in 2022. The warning signs were already there in 2020 when Democrats fell short in congressional and state races despite electing Joe Biden president. I know because I was on the ballot for U.S. Senate and lost."

The November 2021 election, Bullock adds, brought Democrats some more disappointments.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

"In this year's governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey," Bullock notes, "we saw the Democratic vote in rural areas plummet, costing the party one seat and nearly losing us the other. It was even worse for Democrats down ballot, as Democrats lost state legislative, county, and municipal seats."

Bullock stresses that Democrats have a major image problem in rural areas of the United States.

"It's never easy for Democrats to get elected in Montana, because Democrats here are running against not only the opponent on the ballot, but also, against conservative media's and at times, our own typecast of the national Democratic brand: coastal, overly educated, elitist, judgmental, socialist, a bundle of identity groups and interests lacking any shared principles," Bullock laments. "The problem isn't the candidates we nominate. It's the perception of the party we belong to."

RELATED:America's embittered rural-urban divide breaks down when it comes to diseases of despair

Bullock doesn't believe that Rural America is a lost cause for Democrats, but he argues that they need to do a better job with their rural outreach.

He explained:

We need to frame our policies, not in terms of grand ideological narratives, but around the material concerns of voters. Despite our differences and no matter where we live, we generally all want the same things: a decent job, a safe place to call home, good schools, clean air and water, and the promise of a better life for our kids and grandkids.

For me, that meant talking about Obamacare not as an entitlement, but as a way to save rural hospitals and keep local communities and small businesses afloat. It meant talking about expanding apprenticeships, not just lowering the costs of college. It meant framing public lands as a great equalizer and as a driver for small business. It meant talking about universal pre-K not as an abstract policy goal, but being essential for our children and for keeping parents in the work force. It meant talking about climate change not just as a crisis, but as an opportunity to create good jobs, preserve our outdoor heritage, and as a promise not to leave communities behind.

"It's time for Democrats to get uncomfortable and go beyond friendly urban and suburban settings to hear directly from folks in small towns who are trying to run a business, pay the bills, and maintain access to health care," Bullock advises. "They have stories to tell and ideas to share, and we should listen."

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Montana Democrat sounds the alarm on his party's "doom" in rural America but has an idea to fix it - Salon

Long ago, in a United States that now seems far, far away, the coming-to-America story of Saule Omarova would be hailed as a stirring endorsement of our nation as a beacon for democracy seekers. Born in 1966 under the Communist dictatorship of the USSR, and raised under her Kazakh grandmother whod lost the rest of her family to Stalinist purges, she grew up with a passion for Pink Floyd and political dissent that caused her to stay here in the U.S. after the Soviet regime collapsed while she was a grad student in Wisconsin.

Not surprisingly, Omarovas work as an American academic hasnt focused on overthrowing capitalism but making it work better for everyday citizens. Inspired by the 2008 economic meltdown, shes most recently proposed a scheme that would allow the Federal Reserve to take on the big banks monopoly on private deposits that caused a credit crunch in the Great Recession. Her research and resum she even worked for a time in the administration of George W. Bush made Omarova seemingly an inspiring pick for President Biden, who tapped her to become the first woman and first nonwhite to oversee banking as comptroller of the currency.

But Omarovas feel-good saga was lost in translation when she hit the Senate for her confirmation process. Instead, the hearing became a public demonstration of everything thats wrong with American politics in 2021 beginning with Republicans who hid their unbridled support for the monopolistic power for Big Banking behind completely twisting Omarovas life story in the worst display of Red-baiting on Capitol Hill since Joe McCarthys liver failed. It started with Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey Wall Streets man in the Senate demanding a paper on Marxism required by her Moscow State University professors in the original Russian language, to kick off efforts to portray Omarova as some kind of Manchurian candidate for the job. It devolved into Louisiana GOP Sen. John Kennedy telling the nominee, I dont know whether to call you professor or comrade a no-sense-of-decency moment even for todays Republicans, at long last.

But what happened next is much more revealing about whats broken with American politics, and arguably matters a lot more as the nation backslides into 2022 midterms that could shake democracy to its core. Because if you think that Senate Democrats rose up to this shameful display of modern McCarthyism by rallying around President Bidens nominee or her ideas that banking should work for the middle class, then you dont know the soul of todays Democratic Party.

Instead, a so-called cadre of centrist Democrats really extremists in defense of their wealthy donors on Wall Street, Silicon Valley and elsewhere sneaked up from behind to put the dagger in Omarovas political fortunes. In a scenario where all 50 Democratic votes were needed, five of these so-called moderates including Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a flashpoint in the downsizing of Bidens progressive ambitions have reportedly told the White House they cant support Omarova, which will kill her nomination. One of the five Democrats, Montana Sen. Jon Tester, had grilled Omarova on a prior comment that seemed critical of Big Oil and Gas.

The torpedoing of Omarova by her own party is hardly an aberration. Instead, it felt like the exclamation point on a recurring theme in Year One of the Biden administration a new presidents determination to turn around the battleship of American politics to help the struggling middle class either slow-walked or increasingly blocked by an entrenched sliver of pro-Wall Street and pro-donor-class Democrats.

Weve watched this process writ large as the centerpiece of the Biden agenda the formerly $3.5 trillion social welfare and climate change package with the unfortunate name of Build Back Better has been stripped of popular items like free community college and seen other key features like paid family leave and lowered prescription drug costs sharply whittled down. The cuts happened not because of Republicans a hopeless bunch whose votes thankfully arent needed to pass this so-called reconciliation bill but because of conservative Democrats like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the Chamber of Commerce lackey who with his family literally owns a coal company, or New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer whose $450,000 in donations from private-equity firms last cycle is more than any House member, including any pro-business Republican. Even at a much lower $1.5 trillion price tag, its not even clear these divided Democrats can pass Build Back Better.

At the end of the day, it wasnt Republicans but much of this same cadre of ConservaDems including Sinema, whose sharp moves to the right on health-care issues have coincided with $750,000 in campaign contributions from Big Pharma and medical firms that nearly killed the provision aimed at lowering drug costs (which had reemerged in a much downsized form). And its been these same Democrats particularly Northeasterners like New Jerseys Gottheimer whove benefited as Democrats become the party of college-educated white suburbanites whove pared back politically popular new taxes on corporations and the wealthy but are bringing back a tax break for high-income homeowners, allowing Republicans to bash the partys seeming hypocrisy.

The gross irony here is that the pundit class especially the centrists who fantasized about replacing Trump with a somehow popular but essentially do-nothing version of Biden is now blaming the Squad of the furthest left Democrats and excessive wokeness for the sagging poll numbers of the Democrats and their president. But lets get real. On the wokeness front, gridlock in Washington hasnt happened because lawmakers are insisting on using the right pronouns or using the word Latinx.

But much more importantly, its been the left wing in Congress especially the House Progressive Caucus led by Washington state Rep. Pramila Jayapal that has worked most closely with Biden on formulating an actual social welfare policy for the middle class, and which has been willing to compromise again and again and again in order to get something, no matter how diminished and thus deflating, done for its voters. The representatives who dare to brand themselves as moderates have actually been the jihadists whove threatened to blow up the Biden presidency unless their demands to protect Big Banks, Big Pharma and the owners of big McMansions who attend their fund-raisers are met, time after time.

READ MORE: From college to climate, Democrats are sealing their doom by selling out young voters | Will Bunch

Theres two big problems here. The obstructionism of centrist Democrats has mostly squandered what could have been a brief two-year window given the dysfunctional cycle of American politics to take meaningful action on climate change and enact the kind of policies around higher education or paid family leave that are routine in every other developed nation. Thats bad news both for the future of both a civil U.S. society and the health of the planet.

But the schizophrenia of todays Democrats watching Biden and his new progressive allies run full-speed at the football of change, only to watch the Democrat-in-name-only Lucys like Gottheimer and Sinema yank it away again and again has also left the average, not-on-Twitter, not-politics-obsessed voter utterly confused what the party really stands for. I dont blame them. Many days I wonder myself.

The irony is that while the Josh Gottheimers of the world think they are saving themselves by bringing back a big tax break for their rich but socially liberal college-educated districts, they are in reality trashing the Democratic brand, and the ensuing tsunami is going to swamp them as well. In calling their billionaire donors and bragging how that blocked Biden from becoming the new FDR, theyre too money-besotted to see they are creating a Jimmy Carter scenario for Democrats that could end with their party again in the wilderness for decades. In driving away young voters and the nonwhite working class, these political geniuses dont seem to understand that 37 the percentage of voters with a college degree is lower than 50.

Now, in failing to defend Saule Omarova against the brutal McCarthyism of her Republican critics, the Democrats centrist wing is hitting a moral low to coincide with their lack of political foresight as the party melts down and an opposing party that no longer believes in democracy is advancing on the capital, again. In the smoldering ruins of the near future, maybe the right question for these Quislings whod rather save JP Morgan Chase and Merck than the American Experiment is this: Are you now, or have you ever been, a centrist Democrat?

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The dangerous extremism thats killing the Democrats is extreme centrism | Will Bunch - The Philadelphia Inquirer

A new wave of Republican legislation to reshape the nations electoral system is coming in 2022, as the G.O.P. puts forward proposals ranging from a requirement that ballots be hand-counted in New Hampshire to the creation of a law enforcement unit in Florida to investigate allegations of voting fraud.

The Republican drive, motivated in part by a widespread denial of former President Donald J. Trumps defeat last year, includes both voting restrictions and measures that could sow public confusion or undermine confidence in fair elections, and will significantly raise the stakes of the 2022 midterms.

After passing 33 laws of voting limits in 19 states this year, Republicans in at least five states Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, Oklahoma and New Hampshire have filed bills before the next legislative sessions have even started that seek to restrict voting in some way, including by limiting mail voting. In over 20 states, more than 245 similar bills put forward this year could be carried into 2022, according to Voting Rights Lab, a group that works to expand access to the ballot.

In many places, Democrats will be largely powerless to push back at the state level, where they remain overmatched in Republican-controlled legislatures. G.O.P. state lawmakers across the country have enacted wide-ranging cutbacks to voting access this year and have used aggressive gerrymandering to lock in the partys statehouse power for the next decade.

Both parties are preparing to use the issue of voting to energize their bases. Democratic leaders, especially Stacey Abrams, the newly announced candidate for governor of Georgia and a voting rights champion for her party, promise to put the issue front and center.

But the left remains short of options, leaving many candidates, voters and activists worried about the potential effects in 2022 and beyond, and increasingly frustrated with Democrats inability to pass federal voting protections in Washington.

What we are facing now is a very real and acute case of democratic subversion, Ms. Abrams said in an interview, adding that the country needed a Senate willing to protect our democracy regardless of the partisanship of those who would oppose it.

Democrats and voting rights groups say some of the Republican measures will suppress voting, especially by people of color. They warn that other bills will increase the influence of politicians and other partisans in what had been relatively routine election administration. Some measures, they argue, raise the prospect of elections being thrown into chaos or even overturned.

Republicans say the bills are needed to preserve what they call election integrity, though electoral fraud remains exceedingly rare in American elections.

This is going to be one of the big political issues for at least the next year, said Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project, a conservative group that has helped craft voting legislation. He said the group wanted lawmakers to stop thinking of election-related policies as something that only comes up once in a blue moon, adding that it should instead be something that comes up in every legislative session that you take what you just learned from the last election.

G.O.P. lawmakers in at least five states have put forward legislation to review the 2020 election and institute new procedures for investigating the results of future elections.

Many of the other bills are similar to those passed this year, which aim to limit access to mail-in voting; reduce the use of drop boxes; enact harsher penalties for election officials who are found to have broken rules; expand the authority of partisan poll watchers; and shift oversight of elections from independent officials and commissions to state legislatures.

It remains unclear how new voting bills might affect turnout, and some election experts say that any measures designed to suppress voting carry the potential to backfire by energizing voters of the opposing party.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, is pushing for changes to election laws that build on the major bill his party passed this year, including a special force to investigate voting crimes. In New Hampshire, Republicans are proposing to require that all ballots be counted by hand and may try to tighten residency requirements. In Georgia, G.O.P. lawmakers are trying to restructure the Democratic-led government of the states most diverse county.

The biggest potential changes to voting could come in Florida, which had just one prosecuted case of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Mr. DeSantis, who had been facing pressure from conservatives to greenlight a review of the 2020 election results in the state, has urged state lawmakers to send new election measures to his desk. One proposal would increase the penalty for the collection of more than two ballots by a third party from a misdemeanor to a third-degree felony. Another calls for more routine maintenance of voter rolls, which voting rights advocates say would lead to more purges of eligible voters.

The governor said last month that the prospective election law enforcement unit would have the ability to investigate any crimes involving the election and would include sworn law enforcement officers, investigators and a statewide prosecutor. Critics argued that such a unit could intimidate voters and be prone to abuse by politicians.

In New Hampshire, where Senator Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, faces a potentially challenging re-election bid, Republicans have proposed to scrap the ballot-scanning machines that the state has used for decades in favor of hand-counting.

That bill introduced by Mark Alliegro, a Republican state representative who declined to comment about it has drawn opposition from Democrats, who say that a lengthy delay between Election Day and the results would create an opening for those who want to challenge the elections legitimacy.

Republicans are trying to sow distrust and discord in the process, said Matt Wilhelm, a Democratic state representative. If theyve got an additional window of time of hours, days, weeks when Granite Staters dont know the results of the election that they just participated in, thats going to cast doubt on our democratic institutions.

A separate G.O.P. bill in New Hampshire introduced in the legislatures prefiling portal contained a brief description: Provide that only residents of the state may vote in elections.

Republicans have long tried to tighten residency requirements in New Hampshire, whose small population means that the elimination of even relatively small numbers of college students from the voter rolls could help give the G.O.P. an edge in close elections. This year, the states Supreme Court unanimously rejected a 2017 state law requiring proof of residence to vote.

A spokeswoman for Regina Birdsell, the Republican state senator who introduced the bill, said that it was currently in draft form and that Ms. Birdsell would not comment until the language had been finalized.

In Georgia, a plan by Republicans in the state legislature to restructure the government of Gwinnett County would effectively undercut the voting power of people of color in an increasingly Democratic area.

Gwinnett, which includes northeastern suburbs of Atlanta, has swung from full Republican control to full Democratic control over four years, culminating last year with the selection of the first Black woman to oversee the county commission. President Biden carried the county by 18 percentage points last year.

But last month, Clint Dixon, a Republican state senator, filed two bills that would allow the G.O.P.-led legislature to roughly double the size of the countys Democratic-led board of commissioners and redraw new districts for the school board moves that Democrats and civil rights leaders said would essentially go over the heads of voters who elected those officials.

The changes would keep the county in Democratic control, but would most likely guarantee multiple safe Republican districts, including some that would be predominantly white despite the countys diversity.

After an outcry on the left, Republicans pushed the bills to the January session.

Nicole Hendrickson, the Democratic chairwoman of the countys board of commissioners, said the proposal removes our voice as a board of commissioners and disenfranchises our citizens who did not have a say in any of this.

Mr. Dixon defended the bills, asserting that with more commissioners, voters would have more representation and elected leaders would be more accountable.

I dont see any kind of swing back to a Republican majority; it has nothing to do with a power grab, he said in an interview. I think at that local level, local governance is intended at lower populations.

Investigating the 2020 election also remains a focus of many Republican state lawmakers.

At least five states are pursuing partisan reviews of the 2020 election, and Republicans in states including Oklahoma, Tennessee and Florida have introduced bills to begin new ones next year.

There was suspiciously high voter turnout that broke all projections, said Nathan Dahm, a Republican state senator in Oklahoma who sponsored a bill to review the results. That alone is not enough to say that there absolutely was fraud, but it was suspicious enough to say that maybe there are some questions there.

Lawmakers will be aided in writing new voting bills by conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, which helped craft some of the 2020 legislation. A spokeswoman for the group said it would continue to push for measures including more maintenance of voting rolls; increased authority for poll watchers; reductions in the use of absentee ballots; more power for state legislatures in the election process; and additional voter identification regulations.

Republicans around the country have highlighted polling that shows broad bipartisan support for some voter identification requirements.

Jay Ashcroft, the Republican secretary of state of Missouri, has called for the states legislature to pass a bill that would require a state or federal photo ID to vote.

The idea that the voters of my state are too stupid to follow a simple photo ID requirement like this is ridiculous and ludicrous, he said in an interview.

Mr. Ashcroft noted that the Missouri bill would not ban people without IDs from voting; they would be allowed to vote provisionally and their ballots would be validated through signature matching.

Voting rights leaders like Ms. Abrams, meanwhile, have sought to frame the issue as one that should transcend politics.

This isnt simply about who wins or loses an election, she said. It is about what type of nation we intend to be. And are there consequences for undermining and breaking our system of government?

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Voting Battles of 2022 Take Shape as G.O.P. Crafts New Election Bills - The New York Times

Democrats are grappling with a very 2021 problemhaving to play whack-a-mole with unhinged Republicans. Strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, up pops Paul Gosar with a murder fantasy about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Discipline him, here comes Lauren Boebert with an unhealthy and profoundly bigoted fixation on Ilhan Omar. Because House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has long ago made clear that there is no limit to the abhorrent conduct hell tolerate, it has become incumbent on Democrats to hold GOP lawmakers accountable for their bad behavior. Unfortunately, there are a lot of Republicans behaving badly.

Indeed, acting so recklessly and outlandishly that the Democratic majority is compelled to do something is becoming something of a badge of honor in the GOPa way of distinguishing between those in the party loyal to Donald Trump and those who are really, really loyal to Donald Trump. That presents a vexing issue for the Democrats: How do you reprimand someone who actually likes the punishment? This is hard because these people are doing it for the publicity, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this week. Theres a judgment that has to be made about how we contribute to their fundraising and their publicity on how obnoxious and disgusting they can be.

When taking questions Friday from reporters, McCarthy acknowledged controversies involving Gosar, Boebert, and Taylor Greene are things that Republicans would not want to deal with ahead of the midterms, but pivoted back to talking about inflation and gas prices.

A growing chorus of Democrats are demanding Boebert be relieved of her committee assignments over relentless attacks on Omar, a House progressive that Trump and other right-wingers have frequently targeted with conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim bile. The most recent episode began last month, as the House voted to remove Gosar from his committees for having posted an anime video of him killing Ocasio-Cortez. Speaking in defense of her fellow wingnut, Boebert called Omar a member of the Jihad Squad and suggested the Minnesota congresswoman had married her brother. A few days later, at a Colorado event, Boebert said her xenophobic dig at Omar on the House floor was not my first Jihad Squad moment, and launched into a story implying that the Democrat is a terrorist. I was getting into an elevator with one of my staffers and he and I were leaving the Capitol...and I see a Capitol Police officer running hurriedly to the elevator. I see fret all over his face, Boebert said. I look to my left and there she is, Ilhan Omar, and I said, Well, she doesnt have a backpack we should be fine.

Omar said the anecdote was made up and condemned Boebert for her bigoted remarks. Boebert on Twitter apologized, calling the controversy her comments triggered a distraction, and said she had reached out to Omars office. But the remarks were part of a pattern; soon after video of the November 20 event, another video emerged of Boebert making the same Islamophobic backpack joke to a crowd in September. Boebert called Omar on Monday; according to Omar, Boebert refused to apologize and instead doubled down on her rhetoric. The Minnesota representative has since received anti-Muslim death threats, one of which she played during a press conference Tuesday calling for Boebert to be punished.

McCarthy, of course, has been utterly useless on thisappearing far more concerned with appeasing the MAGA rightand the few Republicans who have spoken out against Boebert have faced nasty attacks from her allies. When asked Friday about Boeberts Islamophobic comments and why he has such a hard time condemning something that is so clearly wrong, McCarthy suggested the Republican Party is for anyone and everyone who craves freedom and supports religious liberty; later indicated he wouldnt remove Boebert from her committee assignments, citing her apology to Omar.

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Kevin McCarthy Is Leaving It to Democrats to Keep Lauren Boebert In Line - Vanity Fair