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More than once, as president, Donald Trump mused about firing missiles at the drug labs of Mexican cartels. No one would know it was us, he declared, before being talked out of the idea. Mark Esper, the then defence secretary, recounted the incident in his memoirs published last year, astonished that bombing a neighbour could be seriously thought of.

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Now the extraordinary is becoming more commonplace as Republicans argue that greater use of military force, or the threat of it, can help control Americas southern border and curb the smuggling of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is produced illegally in Mexico.

One congressman, Michael McCaul of Texas, has introduced a bill to classify fentanyl as a chemical weapon. Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, is pushing one to designate Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organisations. Dan Crenshaw and Mike Waltz, congressmen from Texas and Florida respectively, have proposed another that would authorise all necessary and appropriate force against foreign states, organisations or people linked to trafficking fentanyl.

Republican presidential candidates, too, are talking tough. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has suggested a naval blockade of Mexico-bound shipping to halt the import of fentanyl precursor chemicals from China. Nikki Haley, a former ambassador to the UN, has proposed sending in special forces with a warning to Mexico: Either you do it or we do it. Tim Scott, the other senator from South Carolina, declared in May, I will allow the worlds greatest military to fight these terrorists.

Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News host beloved by Americas hard right, goes further, regarding Mexico as an outright foe. On July 14th, while interrogating Republican presidential hopefuls (minus Mr Trump) at the Family Leadership Summit, a gathering of religious conservatives in Iowa, he grilled Mr Scott about his support for Ukraine: No Americans killed by Russia. Hundreds of thousands killed by Mexico. But Mexico is our ally and Russia is our enemyhow does that work? Mr Scott did not demur from the idea that Mexico was an enemy, but said America could deal with Russia and Mexico simultaneously.

Many Mexicans feel they are again the piata of Americas election season, freely beaten by any politician. Earlier this year Mexicos president, Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, a left-wing populist who got on with Mr Trump, took issue with the militarist talk, saying: In addition to being irresponsible, it is an offence to the people of Mexico, a lack of respect for our sovereignty. He warned that he might urge Mexican and Hispanic voters not to cast their ballots for Republicans.

The anti-Mexican mood on Americas right is hardening, moving beyond Mr Trumps cheap shots against migrants in 2015, when he said they are bringing drugs, theyre bringing crime, theyre rapists. According to tracking polls by YouGov, Republican voters are fast turning against Mexico. Roughly as many think Mexico is now an enemy as consider it an ally, with about 45% supporting each proposition (see chart). Democrats are largely unchanged, with about 70% regarding their southern neighbour as an ally. The Republican disenchantment has grown in the past year.

At least three factors may be at play. The first is frustration over fentanyl-related deaths, which rose sharply in 2020 and 2021. The drug has become the biggest killer of Americans aged 18-45, responsible for most of the 70,000 deaths from overdoses of synthetic opioids in 2021. Second, suggests Mark Jones of Rice University, the defeat of Mr Trump unshackled Republicans, freeing them to denounce President Joe Biden for his handling of the border. There is no better issue for Republicans, he says. It mobilises their base. And it splits Democrats: whatever Joe Biden does will seem too fascist by the left and too permissive by centrists.

A third factor, adds David Frum, a writer and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, is the war in Ukraine. Given the MAGA movements hostility to Ukraine and sympathy for Russiaa position that runs against many voters viewsdenouncing Mexico allows them to cast themselves as guardians of the country.

Such policies are gaining an intellectual underpinning through a network of Trump-leaning think-tanks preparing for a future administration. A paper by the Centre for Renewing America, entitled Its time to wage war on transnational drug cartels, is reported to have caught the attention of Mr Trump, among others. Its author, Ken Cuccinelli, argues that America should be free to take military action in Mexico given that its government does not fully control its territory. Never mind that it would stir deep anti-Americanism, or that treating Mexico like a failed state might turn it into one. Mexico is not a friend. It is complicit in the drug cartels, says Mr Cuccinelli. Its time to acknowledge that the relationship has changed.

Stay on top of American politics with Checks and Balance, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter, which examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters. For more coverage of Joe Bidens presidency, visit our dedicated hub.

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How Mexico has become the enemy of America's Republicans - The Economist

Matt Gaetz, the Republican Congressman from Florida recently under investigation for allegedly having sex with a minor, is apparently not immune to Barbie mania. He and his wife Ginger Gaetz attended a special screening of Barbie at the home of the British ambassador in Washington, D.C. on Monday, and were photographed posing on the pink carpet in their Barbiecore best. But it seems the fashion was the highlight of their night, based on Gingers tweet the next day.

The 2023 Barbie movie, unfortunately, neglects to address any notion of faith or family, and tries to normalize the idea that men and women cant collaborate positively (yuck), writes Ginger, who eloped with Gaetz in 2021; they met and got engaged at Mar-a-Lago. Ginger continues that while while she liked Margot Robbies performance and the stunning costume design, she was not a fan of the unfair treatment of pregnant Barbie Midge or the disappointingly low T from Ken.

Shes not the only member of the family whos a fan of Robbie. Gaetz, responding to a tweet pondering why he would see a movie with a trans Barbie given his beliefs, singled out Robbie in a spelling-challenged comeback

Honestly, were getting some mixed messages from the Gaetz crew here. Ginger would prefer you not see it at all and wear your pink gear to Oppenheimer (a film where Republicans come off great!), while Matt thinks your choices are to buy a Barbie ticket or let the terrorists win. As with everything else in the right-wing backlash to Barbie, it probably only benefits Barbie. With Ted Cruz also out there railing against the movie for its alleged promotion of Chinese communism, and Barbie still on track to make as much as $100 million domestically in its opening weekend, it remains Barbies world. and hes just Matt Gaetz.

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Disappointingly Low T From Ken: The Republican War on Barbie ... - Vanity Fair

(Bloomberg) -- Former Vice President Mike Pences 2024 campaign is ramping up its digital outreach to Republican donors to avoid the embarrassment of missing the partys first primary debate next month.

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Pence has one month to meet the Republican National Committees fundraising thresholds in order to appear on the stage on Aug. 23 in Milwaukee. Failing to garner enough donors could be a death knell for Pences campaign, which has so far struggled to motivate donors and gain traction in the polls.

Worrying signs arose for Pences presidential bid last week when his campaign reported raising a mere $1.2 million in the second quarter, signaling a potentially embarrassing outcome for the former second-in-command who might not have the support to make it to the first Republican National Committee Debate, which stipulates each participant have 40,000 donors in order to participate.

Pence, as a former vice president with high name identification, occupies a unique position in this campaign. Pence is perhaps best known for his break with former President Donald Trump. Pence refused Trumps demands to overturn Joe Bidens White House win on Jan. 6, 2021. That led to mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol chanting hang Mike Pence.

On Wednesday, the former vice president paid for an email advertisement asking 40,000 people to donate just $1 to help him qualify. Pences campaign has declined to say how many donors they have.

In addition to the donor threshold, the RNC is also requiring candidates to register at least 1% in a series of polls. Pence is polling at 5.7%, which puts him in third place behind Trump and DeSantis, according to Real Clear Politics average of national polls. Pence is likely to meet the polling qualifications, but could struggle with the donor levels.

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Candidates likely to qualify for the debate based on current polling and second quarter Federal Election Commission donor disclosures include Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Strategists say Pence could struggle to sway more voters his way. Pence, who has made his Christian faith a central tenet of his campaign, was booed by a crowd of evangelical voters being interviewed onstage by former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson last week at the Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Iowa.

Pence said his team is working around the clock for him to make the debate stage where said he hopes he can face off against Trump.

I just announced a month ago, so give me some time, he told reporters last week.

Pence campaign advisor Devin OMalley said they plan to run a lean and nimble campaign focused on Iowa. Pence gained 200 new donors just minutes after a TV interview with Fox and Friends on Tuesday, he said. The campaign is also seeking to draw in new donors with digital and social media advertisements, and TV and radio interviews, he said.

We are seeing some momentum on the fundraising front, OMalley said. The rate of unique donors has increased week over week, so were seeing positive trends.

The Pence-allied super PAC, Committed to America, is seeking to reach traditional voters with mailed advertisements, spokesman Michael Ricci said. Reaching voters has a strong success rate but takes about a month to see the results, he said.

Gunner Ramer, the political director for the Republican Accountability PAC which is pushing for an alternative to Trump as the nominee, said voters in focus groups that his organization has conducted have little appetite for the former vice president, who he says is defined by his proximity to the party establishment.

If you look at the way Mike Pence campaigns, it looks like its a campaign out of 2012, Ramer said. This policy-driven conservative platform is not what Republican primary voters want. They want someone whos going to go out there and beat up on Joe Biden and own the libs and fight and stoke culture wars.

OMalley rejected the claim, stating that the campaign is seeing the exact opposite, adding that voters are looking for a true conservative.

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Mike Pence Scrambles to Make the 2024 Republican Debate - Yahoo News

Lee Hamilton

Now that its settled down to just a low simmer, the revolt by members of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives has mostly left the front pages.

But it would be fair to say that it hasnt been resolved merely cooled for the moment. Since it could flare up again at any time, its worth taking a step back and looking at why, in the long run, the House might be better off because of it.

First, though, lets recap. As you may recall, the whole thing began when some of the House GOP caucus most conservative members decided to use more than words to express their displeasure with the debt ceiling agreement struck between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

In essence, they took their own partys agenda hostage with 11 of them siding with Democrats on a procedural vote that halted progress on several Republican-sponsored bills. In the closely divided House, this was enough to produce a week of gridlock early in June, while McCarthy and the rebels huddled to try to come to terms.

They emerged with an agreement to allow the blocked bills and other measures to move forward and a warning from the rebels that they could grind things to a halt again if they dont see progress on a power-sharing deal with McCarthy.

We want to work on an accountability regime and a power sharing agreement, said one of the hardliners, Rep. Matt Gaetz. We want to see House conservatives in a position to be able to enforce the agreements that we all make.

Democrats, of course, watched all of this gleefully, and while some conservative commentators praised the rebels for insisting on steeper cuts to federal spending, others lamented the talking points the move handed to people who criticize the House GOP caucus for being unable to govern.

It gives the usual media suspects grist for more rounds of Republican infighting/incompetence stories, fumed the New York Post editorial board.

To me, however, what was most noticeable about the whole affair was not the politics of the moment but that it was a major detour from the long march in the House toward what detractors call the imperial speakership a handy shorthand for the decades-long trend, under both Democratic and Republican leaders, to consolidate power in the hands of just a few leaders.

There is no question this has made for more efficiency in the House by keeping debate and amendments to a minimum and wrapping multiple pieces of legislation that ought to get their own votes into a single omnibus package that most members barely get a chance to read. The tradeoff, at least in the past, has been the leadership protects members of their own party from politically touchy votes.

But the cost to American democracy has been high. The House unlike any other institution in Washington was designed by the architects of our republic to be the peoples body, the most representative of our nations diverse and ever-changing population. Over the countrys history, it developed a robust committee system, rules for floor debate and other procedures designed to give ordinary representatives a chance to do just that: Represent the American people.

The consolidation of so much power in leaders hands has circumvented all that and, arguably, made the House more prone to partisanship and more inclined toward the extremes because the majority leadership cares mostly about pleasing its own base, not forging common ground across the aisle.

There are any number of issues on which I part company with the members of the Freedom Caucus. But on this front, I have considerable sympathy as do other observers who care about a House of Representatives that can function as its creators intended and as it did for much of its history.

As former Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski argues in a recent op-ed, If the House does not change, its members will continue to fail in representing their constituents in the legislative process on most major issues. Thats an issue we all should care about, regardless of party.

Lee Hamilton is a senior adviser for the Indiana University Center on Representative Government, a distinguished scholar at the IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies and a professor of practice at the IU ONeill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years. Send comments to [emailprotected].

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Lee Hamilton: The Republican House revolt isnt all bad - Seymour Tribune

In a recent CNN interview (and on many previous occasions), Alabama U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville insisted that the phrase a white nationalist simply meant someone whos a good American.

When reporter Kaitlan Collins explained slowly that a white nationalist is someone who believes that the white race is superior to other races, Tuberville huffed, Well, thats some peoples opinion.

Some people like, say, Tommy Tuberville? Or Ron DeSantis? Moms for Liberty? The congressional Freedom Caucus? The right-wing Supreme Court majority? All those angry (yet terrified) Caucasians watching what they always assumed was their country become more brown and less Christian?

Tuberville later retreated a bit from what sounded like something Foghorn Leghorn would say at the monthly klavern barbecue, but no matter what language he and his fellow knuckle-draggers use, hes another example of how the Republican brand is no longer bigger business and smaller government.

Its white supremacy. Their platform? White supremacy. Their political and social goals? White supremacy.

The U.S. Supreme Court seems to share the Republicans obsession with making America white again. Gutting the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and striking down affirmative action in university admissions dismisses the institutional racism of centuries of oppression, favoring instead the pale and the privileged.

And speaking of pale and privileged, declaring opposition to multiculturalism and pledging to support Christian Nationalism across the country, the College Republicans the future of the party! have invited Nick Fuentes, the out and proud anti-Semite and racist who boasts hes just like Hitler, to this years national convention on July 30.

Fuentes, whose pals include neo-Confederates and Klan-adjacent types, is popular with certain congressional Republicans. Reps. Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene made an appearance at his America First shindig last year.

A few alleged grown folks in the Republican Party actually condemned Gosar and Greene, shocked! shocked! that they would associate with anti-Semites (they werent so bothered about the racism).

Surely not that nice Paul Gosar, the one who posted a cheery video about murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and employed an aide with ties to neo-Nazis?

Or the lovely and talented MTG, she of the Jewish space lasers? She said she didnt even know who Fuentes was, or if she did, well, what matters is those Pharisees trying to destroy Jesus America: Were not going to be deterred by journalists and Washington insiders who fear the name of our Lord, she proclaimed, and relentlessly attack those of us who proclaim his name.

Greene was famously shunned by the insiders of her own party for a while, but shes now at the heart of congressional power, a close ally of Kevin McCarthy in a legislative body reluctant to condemn white supremacy and paranoid about an immigrant invasion designed to destroy American culture, engineered by nefarious non-Christian, un-American, crypto-Marxists from George Soros to Hillary Clinton to the Pentagon.

Not joking: Republicans have turned on the United States military.

Members of Congress who keep forgetting to get their rabies shots have worked themselves into a froth over gay soldiers, trans soldiers, diverse soldiers, and soldiers reading critical race theory.

You may recall that time in 2021 when U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, Floridas Most Punchable person, tried to challenge the militarys diversity reading matter and Gen. Mark Milley took him down: Ive read Mao Zedong. Ive read Karl Marx. Ive read Lenin, Milley said. That doesnt make me a communist. So, what is wrong with understanding having some situational understanding about the country we are here to defend?

Now the Republican House wants the Pentagon to ban critical race theory as well as drag shows and women controlling their own reproduction. Oh, and do something about China, too, if theres time after trying to make the services whiter, maler, and straighter.

Tommy Tubervilles single-handedly holding up 265 promotions: Officers and their families have no idea where theyll be stationed or when, because ol Tommy objects to funding military womenfolk to get access to abortions.

Aint like theres any trouble brewing in Foreign Parts.

Not to be outdone, Floridas tantrum-prone governors hollering about wokeness, vowing that when hes in the White House, On Day 1, were ripping out all the Obama-Biden policies to woke-ify the military.

Thats just one component of DeSantis white supremacist agenda: Hes also trying to erase diversity as a goal in education and suppress learning about this countrys systemic racism. He wants to end birthright citizenship, too.

DeSantis conjures up images of alien hordes incentivized to get here by any means necessary so they can drop a baby on American soil and claim unearned American citizenship for that little freeloader.

He says he wants to defy the Fourteenth Amendment, which ensures that anyone born in the United States is entitled to equal protection under the law. It was passed right after the Civil War to give the formerly enslaved their rights or, at least, try to.

DeSantis prefers to think the Fourteenth Amendment doesnt actually say what it says.

Justice Clarence Thomas, his fellow irascible Ivy Leaguer, is also inclined to read the Fourteenth Amendment as somehow color-blind.

In Thomas concurring opinion in the courts dismantling of affirmative action, he argues that the amendment doesnt really have anything to do with race.

This might come as a surprise to descendants of slaves and veterans of the Civil Rights Movement.

Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that white supremacists arent always white.

They are, however, always hypocrites. Ron DeSantis is the great-great-grandchild of Luigia Colluci, a woman who landed at Ellis Island on Feb. 21, 1917, with no visa, 16 days after Congress passed an immigration act designed to keep the likes of her out.

The law was aimed in particular at Asians, southern Europeans, and other undesirables, including idiots, imbeciles, poor, beggars, criminals, polygamists, anarchists, people with physical and mental disabilities, the sick, prostitutes, etc. a population that would not help keep America a white mans country.

Luigia Colluci was illiterate technically a disqualifier and pregnant with an anchor baby.

America let her in.

The rest as we know to our sorrow is history.

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The Republican Party is dropping its Klan hood - Florida Phoenix