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Sarah Palin (remember her?) is adjusting nicely to her new role as a full-time Internet troll.

After a very brief stint as a campaign surrogate for Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Palin spends most of her time now on social media posting inflammatory memes and lengthy commentaries on whatever happens to be in the news cycle.

And like a good troll, she is sloppy and lazy.

"Don't be Fooled! The Paris Climate Accord is a SCAM," read a cheap-looking meme posted to her Facebook wall this week. "They pretend it's about fixing our environment but it's really about stealing Billions from the American people and giving it to foreign companies, countries and lobbyists!"

The post included a photo of several well-dressed men cheering in what appeared to be a legislative chamber.

Palin's post came in reference to the president's announcement last week that he would pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, a major accord aimed at curbing climate change.

One glaring problem with Palin's anti-Paris Agreement note was that the included picture didn't feature climate change lobbyists. It featured several current Republican members of the Florida House of Representatives, according to Politico's Marc Caputo.

Though Palin deleted the Facebook post shortly after Politico pointed out her mistake, it wasn't before Florida Republicans noticed. And, boy, did they have something to say about it.

"I'm appalled," Republican State Rep. Scott Plakon, who was featured in the now-deleted Facebook post, said as a joke.

He then added, "As the owner of a publishing company, I find it appalling that she would use a low-res picture like this when a high-res picture is readily available."

"I was almost in tears with laughter," he added. "I'm not sure what she's saying. Are we cheering for Paris or against it? I think she's saying we're celebrating Paris."

Former Republican State Rep. J.C. Planas wrote on Palin's Facebook wall prior to the photo's deletion, "That is a picture of REPUBLICAN Florida Legislators. Hahahahahahaha!!!! You are such an idiot!!!"

Former State Rep. Seth McKeel told Politico that he "assumed it was some idiot who found a random pic."

"Are they really suggesting Will and I took some vote on the Paris Climate Accord?" he asked.

Remember: It wasn't too long ago that Palin's endorsement meant the difference between winning and losing an election. Now current and former lawmakers are going on the record mocking her.

How things change.

You don't hear about Palin much these days. When you do, it's rarely, if ever, for something flattering.

She was able to cling to relevance after her vice presidential bid thanks to reality TV and a contributorship on Fox News. Both deals eventually ran dry, leaving her to rely on the right-wing public speaking circuit as her primary platform. That has also dried up for her.

The last time Palin enjoyed any sort of influence was in 2016 when she endorsed Trump in the GOP presidential primaries. She even appeared onstage with the Queens businessman at rallies. However, that brief burst of relevance was also short-lived, as she quickly disappeared entirely from Trump's rotation of preferred campaign surrogates. A spot in his administration was out of the question.

It has been a long road for Palin. From governor, to vice presidential candidate, to GOP kingmaker, to reality TV star, to right-wing Internet troll. She has come a long way.

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Sarah Palin, what did the Florida Republican Party ever do to you? - Washington Examiner

A team of veteran Republican operatives is taking its talent for under-the-radar political muckraking to an unlikely place: The liberal-leaning, Democratic-donating, Donald Trump-hating tech epicenter of Silicon Valley.

The newest startup setting up shop in the Bay Area is Definers Public Affairs, a Washington, D.C.-based outfit that seeks to apply the dark science of political opposition research to the business world. Their mission: To arm companies with ammunition to attack their corporate rivals, sway their government overseers and shape the publics opinion on controversial issues.

To the GOP-led political venture, Silicon Valley is a natural target for their so-called oppo efforts. The tech industry is characteristically hyper-competitive, with boardroom squabbles, takeover attempts, and legal wars over employees and patents and regulations. Definers hopes to supply some of its future tech clients with the gossip, dirt and intel to win those fights.

But the firms new Oakland-based operative Tim Miller, who previously served as communications director to GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush plans to do it with a decidedly Republican bent.

The regions tech heavyweights have long struggled to form relationships with GOP candidates and causes, so Miller and crew are pitching a way for those companies to leverage the power or outrage of the countrys most influential, vocal conservative groups to defeat their political or corporate enemies.

Given the spotlight that is on their industry, Miller told Recode in an interview, the Valleys biggest brands should invest more to ensure you have positive content pushed out about your company and negative content thats being pushed out about your competitor, or regulator, or activist groups or activist investors, that are challenging you.

There might be some companies that are more willing to engage in that, Miller said, but increasingly, as [Silicon Valley] companies mature, I think they may recognize the need to do that.

Definers launched in 2016 as the brainchild of some of the Republican Partys most seasoned campaign hands: Matt Rhoades, the former campaign manager for Mitt Romneys presidential bid, and Joe Pounder, who led research for the Republican National Committee. Already, the firm has aided the likes of Anthem and Cigna, two health insurance behemoths, as they worked quietly to discredit a government official investigating their proposed mega-merger last year.

If that sounds like the stuff of traditional Washington backbiting, thats because it is: The firm itself is an outgrowth of America Rising, the powerful, official research and attack arm of the Republican Party.

And Miller, for his part, is a veteran of political rabble-rousing, too. A founder of America Rising, he had been one of the chief architects of a push before the 2016 Republican convention to scuttle Trumps nomination as president.

For now, Definers wont reveal any of its tech clients, citing the fact it has signed nondisclosure agreements with them. The firm doesnt officially lobby government officials, Miller said, but its pitch is to help connect [tech] with the Republican and conservative ecosystem and [help] them with messaging about how to talk to red-state voters.

That network of right-leaning groups like the Heritage Foundation, for example, or the American Conservative Union, which produces the annual CPAC conference historically has been supremely influential among Republican policymakers. The organizations have the power to boost or kill bills in Congress and nominees for key government posts, and when whipped up, they can rally droves of conservative-leaning voters to make noise or take action online and off.

Of course, tech companies long have tapped their well-stocked public-relations shops to declare war on their rivals think Microsofts legendary battle with Google as the search giant fended off an antitrust probe by the U.S. government.

But Millers new post in the Bay Area with Definers could pave the way for a dramatic escalation from those efforts as the hardscrabble stuff of national politics invades a tech industry that has angled to avoid such tactics.

In the eyes of other Republicans, at least, Silicon Valley certainly could use all the help it can get.

Theres a cultural disconnect between Silicon Valley and red America, said Alex Conant, a former aide to presidential candidate Marco Rubio who now works as a partner at a GOP-leaning firm, Firehouse Strategies. They speak different languages, have different values and generally have a different worldview.

For all their attempts to support Democrats and Republicans in equal measure, the tech industrys leading players are associated most closely with Democrats. Top executives like Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Googles parent, Alphabet; and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer at Facebook have donated frequently and generously to Democratic candidates. And they and others had been staunch allies of former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, then channeled their support to Hillary Clinton four years later.

At times, though, those close Democratic ties have stoked conservatives worst suspicions. Deep-rooted doubts about the political intentions of Facebook, for example, bubbled to the surface last year following accusations that the social giant had stifled right-leaning news sites from appearing in its trending news feed. The arrival of Trump in the White House certainly hasnt helped the Valley win new Republican allies, either. Instead, the likes of Apple and Facebook have publicly challenged the presidents approach to issues like immigration and climate change.

Even in Trumps Washington, however, the tech industry retains a robust political agenda. They want or need infrastructure or tax reforms, and they must fend off scrutiny from tech-focused agencies in the still-forming Trump administration.

Enter Miller and his firm Definers, as they try to offer Silicon Valley an edge with conservatives and reap a business opportunity in the process.

From an opposition research standpoint, this tension between the companies business interest and the employees ideology is something that can be exploited by rival companies or people in other industries, he said, in order to create a chilling effect any time a tech company wants to more aggressively advocate a more conservative posture.

That sort of behind-the-scenes political grunt work sound a little foreign in a place like the Bay Area, which long has snubbed such political activities as cynical. Miller, however, sees it as long overdue.

Tech companies are surprisingly unsophisticated at using the communications tools they created in order to advance their public affairs and communications interests, he said.

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Republican political operatives want to sell the dark arts of opposition research to tech companies - Recode

By Lawrence Hurley | WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON Republican officials from 16 U.S. states led by Texas said on Tuesday they have come to the defense of President Donald Trump's ban on travelers from six Muslim-majority nations, telling the Supreme Court the order did not unconstitutionally single out Muslims and was needed to protect national security.

The officials filed a legal brief with the Supreme Court as it mulls whether to take up the Trump administration's appeal of lower court rulings blocking the travel ban signed by the Republican president on March 6 and let it go into effect.

In the states' brief, filed on Monday, Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller wrote that the executive order does not mention religion at all and distinguishes people based only on nationality.

"The executive order therefore is emphatically not a 'Muslim ban,'" Keller wrote.

Keller added that courts should be careful when second-guessing a president's national security determinations, an argument that echoes the administration's view that the judiciary should defer to the president on such matters.

The brief said the order did not violation the Constitution's ban on the government favoring or disfavoring any particular religion or its guarantee of due process.

The filing came after the administration asked the high court last Thursday to allow the order to take effect. [nL1N1IZ03Q]

Aside from Texas, the officials were Republican state attorneys general from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and West Virginia, as well as Mississippi's Republican governor.

Three Republican attorneys general came from states with Democratic governors: Louisiana, Montana and West Virginia. Most of the states had also backed Trump earlier in the litigation.

Many Democratic state officials have opposed the ban in lower courts.

The high court is due to review legal papers filed by the ban's challengers, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, before acting. The briefs are due on Monday.

A key issue before the justices in whether Trump's comments during the 2016 president campaign, including calling for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," can be used as evidence that his order was intended to discriminate against Muslims.

The administration filed emergency applications with the justices seeking to block lower court rulings that went against Trump's order barring entry for people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the U.S. government implements stricter visa screening.

Trump's order also called for suspending all refugee admissions for 120 days.

The move comes after the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on May 25 upheld a Maryland judge's ruling blocking the order. [nL1N1IR1FY]

Potentially making it harder for his lawyers to win at the Supreme Court, Trump again commented on the case on Monday, tweeting complaints that his own administration had issued a "watered down, politically correct version" of an earlier order he signed on Jan. 27 that also was blocked by courts. [nL1N1J209L]

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday faulted North Carolina again in a racially tinged voting rights case, upholding a lower court's ruling that Republican lawmakers mapped state legislative districts in a way that diluted the clout of black voters.

WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that church-affiliated hospital systems do not have to comply with a federal law governing employee pensions, overturning lower court decisions that could have cost the hospitals billions of dollars.

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Republican officials from 16 states back Trump in travel ban fight - Reuters

Former Vice President Joe Biden will join Mitt Romney and other prominent Republicans at an annual summit in Utah this week.

Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, will interview Biden, on Friday as part of the three-day summit, the Associated Press reported .

"Biden is attending because he believes in bipartisanship and the importance of keeping good lines of communication open across the aisle," Biden spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield told the AP.

The event comes about a week after Biden launched a political action committee (PAC) called "American Possibilities," dedicated to encouraging and aiding Democratic candidates to run for office.

The invitation-only Experts and Enthusiasts (E2) Summit in Park City, Utah, will feature a number of prominent Republicans, including Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain , both vocal GOP critics of President Donald Trump , and House Speaker Paul Ryan , who was Romney's running mate in 2012.

The event will also feature former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, former CIA Director Mike Morell and Microsoft Chairman John Thompson, Politico reported.

Trump declined the invitation, according to the AP.

Biden is not the first Democrat to attend Romney's annual summit. Democratic strategist David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, participated in the discussion.

At the summit last year, Romney, then a "Never Trump" Republican, told the crowd that Trump's nomination as the Republican candidate "is breaking my heart for the party."

Biden, a longtime politician who is now 74 years old, spurred speculation in recent months that he would run for president in 2020, though he has not officially announced any intention to do so.

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Joe Biden Will Speak At Republican Summit Hosted by Mitt Romney - Fortune

One GOP politician is facing renewed scrutiny after calling for violence in the wake of last weekends deadly terror attack on London Bridge.

In a controversial Facebook post, Louisiana Republican Congressman Clay Higgins wrote on June 4, The free world all of Christendom is at war with Islamic horror.

Continued Higgins, Not one penny of American treasure should be granted to any nation who harbors these heathen animals. Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter. Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied.

Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down. Hunt them, identify them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.

Though many were critical of Higgins statement, he told the Washington Post that it was being interpreted incorrectly. Higgins maintained that he was only calling for the death of Islamic terrorists, not all Muslims.

Many Muslims are American citizens and Id give my last lifes blood for any one of them, but that doesnt mean Im not going to speak out boldly and from my heart about the threat we face as a nation and as a world, the 55-year-old told the newspaper.

Higgins also maintained to the Post that hes a compassionate, loving human being, but that he has no love for people who blow up children at a concert, referencing last months terror attack on Manchester Arena.

In a different statement to CNN, Higgins further defended his stance, asserting, We are a world at war.

FROM PEN:People at the White House: The Final Interview with The Obamas

The enemy is radicalized Islamic jihadists. The terrorists certainly take advantage of the politically correct madness that consumes the West. They revel, that many in the western world are frightened to speak freely. Ive never been accused of being politically correct. I call things the way I see them, he said.

Higgins has been mired in controversy before prior to being elected to Congress, he was the St. Landry Paris Sheriffs Offices captain and PIO in Louisiana. His intense Crime Stoppers videos related to the sheriffs office eventually lead to his resignation from the position, according to CNN.

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Louisiana Republican Rep. on Radicalized Islamic Suspects: 'Hunt Them, Identify Them, and Kill Them' - PEOPLE.com