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A day ahead of a high-profile special election in Georgia, President Donald Trump inserted himself in the race with a sharp attack on the top Democratic candidate.

On Twitter Monday, Trump criticized Jon Ossoff, who is leading a crowded field of candidates in the race to replace former Rep. Tom Price, who stepped down to become the president's Secretary of Health and Human Services.

"The super Liberal Democrat in the Georgia Congressioal [sic] race tomorrow wants to protect criminals, allow illegal immigration and raise taxes!" Trump tweeted.

Ossoff responded with a statement, "While I'm glad the President is interested in the race, he is misinformed. I'm focused on bringing fresh leadership, accountability, and bipartisan problem solving to Washington to cut wasteful spending and grow metro Atlanta's economy into the Silicon Valley of the South."

Ossoff is hoping to break 50 percent in Tuesday's unusual all-party primary. If he falls short of that threshold but still comes in first, the Democrat will face off against the second-place finisher, who most likely will be a Republican, in a June runoff. If there's a runoff, Ossoff would be seen as the underdog in the conservative district.

Recent polls show Ossoff running several percentage points below the 50% threshold.

Trump's unpopularity made this race competitive and he's loomed over it since picking Price to join his Cabinet late last year. Many are watching the race closely as a early indicator of potential anti-Trump Democratic wave in next year's midterm elections.

Related: Trump's shadow looms over the special election

Georgia's 6th Congressional District, a stretch of wealthy and highly educated suburbs North of Atlanta, is a traditional Republican stronghold. But Trump only narrowly won the district in November after Mitt Romney had carried by over 20 percentage points in 2012. It's not hard to find local Republican voters displeased with Trump's presidency so far.

That's caused most of the 11 Republican candidates in the race to steer clear of Trump, keenly aware of his low approval ratings.

Ossoff too has mostly stopped talking about Trump, to whom he owes so much of his success.

The 30-year-old first-time-candidate kicked off his campaign with a fundraising plea to "Make Trump Furious" and went on to raise a record-shattering $8.3 million in the first three months of the year. Over 90% of that came from outside district as liberals across the country contributed to his campaign as a way to fight Trump.

But the anti-Trump message got Ossoff only so far, so he has switched to a nonpartisan message of pragmatism that he hopes will make conservative-leaning independents and soft Republicans feel comfortable voting for a Democrat.

National Republicans have responded by trying to portray Ossoff as Nancy Pelosi "yes man" and left-wing radical to prevent those same voters from switching sides.

In that sense, Trump's tweet is on-message and may be cheered by even Trump-skeptical Republicans for using his large megaphone to inject that message into the bloodstream the day before the critical vote.

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Trump Rips Top Democrat Jon Ossoff in Georgia Special Election - NBCNews.com

Sacramento Bee

Assembly Democrat stripped of committee chairmanship after voting ... Sacramento Bee Nearly two weeks after breaking with fellow Democrats to vote against a bill raising California fuel taxes, Assemblyman Rudy Salas of Bakersfield has lost the ... The Latest: California Democrat removed from committee postWichita Eagle all 6 news articles »

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Assembly Democrat stripped of committee chairmanship after voting ... - Sacramento Bee

Over the weekend tens of thousands of Americans once more took to the streets to protest Donald Trump. In major cities and small towns across the country, citizens demanded that their president do what every president for the past 40 years has done: release his tax returns. Trumps response was to petulantly tweet that he did the impossible for a Republican by winning the Electoral College vote (the opposite is true; just ask George W. Bush) and suggesting that someone look into who paid the protesters because the election is over.

Evidently he thought that winning the election meant everyone would march in lockstep singing We love you, President Trump! like they do in North Korea. Hed better get used to protests because they arent going to stop. (The March for Sciencenext weekend should really make him mad.)

The anti-Trump resistance is very much a grassroots effort, but there are leaders emerging. One of the most vocal is Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat who represents Los Angeles. Appearing at the Washington Tax Day march lastSaturday, Waters put it bluntly: I dont respect this president, she said.I dont trust this president. Hes not working in the best interests of the American people. I will fight every day until he is impeached! Then she led the crowd in a chant of Impeach 45! It doesnt get any more resistant than that.

Waters has always been a tough and forceful politician, unafraid to take a position and speak her mind. She first came to national attention after the violence following the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King when she went on TV and explained to America through gritted teeth that the African-American community in L.A. hadnt just exploded out of nowhere. It was a message a lot of people didnt want to hear, but she made sure they receivedit anyway. Shehas been a thorn in the side of conservatives ever since then, once inspiring Ann Coulter to venomously spewthat without affirmative action Waters wouldnt have a job that didnt involve wearing a paper hat. Right-wingers often lose their composure when confronted with such a strong, unapologetic African-American woman who is unafraid of getting right up in their faces.

Waters has been appearing on TV again lately, and she has plenty to say about all the various Trump scandals. Her message is very simple: Trump must be impeached. Obviously Republicans are outraged (as usual), insisting that such talk is downright seditious. Very few Democrats are ready to join her at this point either. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi believes such talk is premature at best; she hassaidthat Trump is incoherent, incompetent and reckless, but has insisted those arent grounds for impeachment.According to Clare Malone at FiveThirtyEight, Waters understands that Pelosi has an obligation to stay above the fray buthas said, I dont have the same responsibility. She sees herself in a completely different role.

It may seem that Waters just has a pugilistic personality and is out front because its her political style to mix it up. But there is a strategy at work in this. After all, it wasnt that long ago that a president was impeached for only the second time in history and this was over a crime that seems laughably insubstantial compared to the possibilities that Donald Trump could face. Just for starters, Trumps presidential campaign is being investigated in a counterintelligence probe, andthe list of his conflicts of interest are so wide-ranging and so deep that almost anything could implicate him in a corruption scandal. Impeachment is really not a far-fetched proposition.

Back in the 1990s, President Bill Clintons administration was under siege from almost the moment he took office. There was one small-bore, semi-fictitious scandal after another, from Filegate to Travelgateand Haircutgate to Vince Fosters suicide and, of course, the ancient Arkansas land deal known as Whitewater, from years before Clinton ran for president. The media lapped them up, reporting each new development with breathless excitement, piling them on top of one another until it seemed as though there wasnt anything else happening in the world.

Some of the motivation for all this was simple partisan payback. Republican Richard Nixon was a crook whohad been run out of Washington and the GOP-ers wereyearning to return the favor. Their defeat of the Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980 was nice but it wasnt enough. Republicanswanted to rub the Democrats smug, self-righteous faces in the dirt and what the political establishment considered to be the Southern Gothic fever swamp that accompanied Clinton to Washington offered an excellent opportunity. But in spite of the Republicans deep desire to get Clinton, their primary game plan was merely to force his resignation (as had happened with Nixon). There was very little discussion of impeachment through all those years of endless scandalmongering.

Only one man, Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga.,kept bringing it updespite strong pushback from then House Speaker Newt Gingrich and every other member of the GOP leadership. House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said at the time, I dont think we have the kind of evidentiary basis to be talking about impeachment at this time. I dont really think you should, when its such an important matter and its frankly still in the abstract.

Barr kept at it. Before anyone had heard of the name Monica Lewinsky or read the salacious report ultimately produced by independent counsel Ken Starr, Barr had introducedHouse Resolution 304, directing the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether grounds existed to impeach the president. When the Lewinsky scandal broke, unanticipated by anyone (including Barr), the groundwork had been laid.

Waters is following the Barr model. Impeachment is the nuclear option of nuclear options, when it comes to Congress confronting the president. Its the only means by which a president can be removed from office for cause and it isnt easy to do, especially when the presidents party holds the majority. (Only two presidents have ever been impeached by the House Clinton and Andrew Johnson and neither was convicted in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required.) But if one of Trumps many scandals should end up implicating him in a crime, its important that the Democrats and the American people be ready for it. Waters is getting the I-word out there into the atmosphere and priming Trumps political opposition. Its a job that takes guts and foresight and shes good at it.

If the Democrats can pull off a wave election in 2018 and take back the House, they will be ready to follow an impeachment investigation wherever it leads. That will largely be thanks to Maxine Waters.

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Maxine Waters, Donald Trump and impeachment: One Democrat is ... - Salon

U.S. President Donald Trump renewed his attacks Monday on two frequent targets opposition Democrats and the news media.

In one of several comments on his Twitter account, Trump said, "The first 90 days of my presidency has exposed the total failure of the last eight years of foreign policy!" under former President Barack Obama. "So true."

Trump did not cite any specific successes, but in the last two weeks launched a missile attack on Syria in response to its use of chemical weapons, something Obama never did, and praised the U.S. military for its use of the biggest non-nuclear bomb ever against Islamic State bunkers in Afghanistan.

Trump, a business mogul turned Republican politician, also offered a literary review, praising "a great book for your reading enjoyment." The joke book, "Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide," consists of more than 260 blank pages.

In a congressional election set for Tuesday, Trump contended that "the super Liberal Democrat ...wants to protect criminals, allow illegal immigration and raise taxes!"

In another tweet, Trump, who often has assailed news coverage of the first three months of his presidency, said, "The Fake Media (not Real Media) has gotten even worse since the election. Every story is badly slanted. We have to hold them to the truth!"

The president did not cite any specific story that had drawn his ire, but on Sunday said the news media had downplayed the election last week of a new Republican congressman from the Midwestern state of Kansas in a heavily Republican district after a Democrat lost the contest.

U.S. President Donald Trump blows a whistle to start the White House Easter Egg Roll alongside first lady Melania Trump and his son Barron, right, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, April 17, 2017.

Trump spent the Easter weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, returning to Washington for Monday's annual Easter Egg Roll for children and their families on the White House lawn.

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Trump Renews Attacks on Democrats and News Media - Voice of America

One senator is standing out above all the rest with the highest approval rating. Veuer's Nick Cardona (@nickcardona93) tells us who that is. Buzz60

James Mackler(Photo: Submitted)

James Mackler, a Nashville attorney and Iraq War veteran,will on Monday become the first Tennessee Democratto announceplans to run in2018 for the state's U.S. Senate seat held by U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee.

Mackler highlighted his military background repeatedly in a news release provided to The USA Today Network - Tennessee ahead of the formal announcement, saying he's"running to restore respect, honesty, and most importantly, integrity in Washington."

Our country has become so divided that our leaders refuse to work together to solve our most important problems," Mackler said in a statement."As a veteran, I know first hand the strength of teamwork, cooperation, and the benefits of diversity to accomplish even the most difficult mission."

Mackler, 44, recently practiced law atFrost Brown Todd LLC and Bone McAllester Norton, PLLC, bothin Nashville. He's worked in criminal law and more recently has specialized in legal issues involving unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, by providing businesses legal advice on their use.

Before those stints,Mackler spent three years as a Blackhawk helicopter pilot with the 101st Airborne Division, according to a news release from his campaign, after he had putaside his legal work for the Army in 2001 followingthe attacks on 9/11. His military service included a deployment to Iraq.

Mackler, who continues serving in the Tennessee Air National Guard, earned his Parachutist Badge, Combat Action Badge and an Air Medal for "bold and audacious piloting." After his service in Iraq, Mackler transferred to the Judge Advocate General Corps, where he was a military prosecutor.

Mackler wouldbe a major underdog in the November general electionif he prevails in next year'sDemocratic primary for the seat. In politically red Tennessee, Democrats haven't fielded a competitive Senate candidatesince 2006, when U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. lost to Corker.

Read more:

Bob Corker's rise from Chattanooga mayor

Bob Corker gives Donald Trump 'honest assessments' on foreign policy

Corker, Tennessee's junior U.S. senator,defeated Democrat Mark Clayton, a political unknown, in 2012 for his first reelection. It wasan embarrassing race for the Tennessee Democratic Party, whichdisavowed Clayton's candidacy because ofhis association with an anti-gay hate group and for an uneven record of voting in Democratic primaries.

Mackler declined to discussCorker in an interview, saying he's "far more focused on correcting things in Congress and what I bring to in this race than I'm looking to criticize Bob Corker at this point." He also declined to talk about specific issues he'll seek to push. He said therewill be plenty of time to talk about details of his platform.

Despite Republican dominance in Tennessee, Mackler said he's "undaunted" by the political landscape and contended thata Democrat can win a statewide electionin Tennessee.

"People are going to respond because Washington is a mess," he said, adding: '"I'llraise enough money to run a competitive race, and I trust the people of Tennessee to look at individuals qualifications and people as people because they know that the country needs help."

Corker, who chairs the powerful U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, hasn't formally announced intentions to run for a third-term in his seat, but most observers expect him to do so. Some have speculated Corker could decide to run for governor of Tennessee next year a scenario that's considered an outside possibility but one that Corker still hasn't rejected.

Macklersaid true leadership comes from a sense of duty and"an obligation to protect and work for the benefit of others." He said best results are accomplished when people recognize the value and contributions ofeach other.

"True leaders hold themselves and others accountable," Mackler said. "These are values that I learned serving my country and will continue to carry as Tennessees next U.S. Senator.

Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.

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Nashville attorney, Iraq War vet announces Democratic run for Corker's Senate seat - The Tennessean