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Senate majority leader speaks after Tommy Tuberville of Alabama appeared to defend white nationalists in US military

The Democratic US Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, condemned as utterly revolting remarks in which the Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville appeared to defend white nationalists in the US military.

In an interview with the Alabama station WBHM, published on Monday, Tuberville was asked: Do you believe they should allow white nationalists in the military?

He answered: Well, they call them that. I call them Americans.

The Senate armed forces committee member added: We are losing in the military so fast. And why? I can tell you why. Because the Democrats are attacking our military, saying we need to get out the white extremists, the white nationalists, people that dont believe in our agenda, as Joe Bidens agenda.

Tuberville is currently attempting to impose his own agenda on the US military, by blocking promotions and appointments in protest of Pentagon rules about abortion access.

On Thursday, Schumer said: Does Senator Tuberville honestly believe that our military is stronger with white nationalists in its ranks? I cannot believe this needs to be said, but white nationalism has no place in our armed forces and no place in any corner of American society, period, full stop, end of story.

Previously, Sherrilyn Ifill, a former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal defense fund, said: I hope we are not getting so numb that we refrain from demanding that Mr Tubervilles colleagues in the Senate condemn his remarks.

Schumer added: I urge Senator Tuberville to think about the destructive spectacle he is creating in the Senate. His actions are dangerous.

On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Tuberville said he was being skeptical of the notion that there are white nationalists in the military, not that he believes they should be in the military.

A Tuberville spokesperson told the Washington Post the senator resents the implication that the people in our military are anything but patriots and heroes.

The same spokesperson told NBC Tuberville has kind of a sarcastic sense of humor and was expressing doubt about this being a problem in the military.

Reports have shown the US military has a problem with white nationalism and white supremacy, despite the Pentagon having prohibited active participation in extremist groups since 1996.

In October 2020, a Pentagon report warning of a problem with white supremacists in the military was sent to Congress. It was released in 2021.

In February 2022, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremism, co-published documents showing one in five applicants to one white supremacist group claimed ties to the US military.

On Thursday, Adam Hodge, spokesperson for the White House national security council, said it was abhorrent that Senator Tuberville would argue that white nationalists should be allowed to serve in the military, while he also threatens our national security by holding all pending DoD military and civilian nominations.

Extremist behavior has no place in our military. None.

Fact-checking Tuberville, WBHM, an NPR station, noted Pentagon efforts to keep extremists, particularly fascists, out of the military.

The station also fact-checked a remark about what [Joe Bidens] done to our military with the woke ideas, with the [critical race theory] that were teaching in our military.

Critical race theory is an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society. Republicans have turned it into an electoral wedge issue.

WBHM said: The US military is not requiring that CRT be taught and there is little evidence that its being discussed much at all in the ranks. According to Military Times, the one instance in which it is being used in an educational setting is at the US Military Academy at West Point.

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Schumer decries Republican senators revolting remarks on white nationalists - The Guardian US

At the beginning of the year, Ron DeSantis looked as if he might be the answer to all of the Republican Partys problems.

For the first time in decades, a conservative politician rose to national prominence on issues that unified the partys populist base with its beleaguered establishment and without triggering a Resistance from Florida Democrats. He seemed to offer Republicans a path beyond the divisions and defeats of the last 15 years.

Mr. DeSantis does not seem like the answer anymore. His poll numbers are cratering. His strength as a general election candidate is being questioned. This is partly because hes fallen flat on the national stage, but its also because hes slowly devolved into an older kind of Republican the kind without answers to the partys problems.

Hes been bogged down in the very issues that divided and hurt Republicans in the past, like abortion, entitlements, Russia and the conduct of Donald J. Trump. Against Mr. Trump and without Democrats as a foil, his instinct to take the most conservative stance has pushed him far to the right. Hes devolved into another Ted Cruz.

Mr. DeSantis will probably never be an entertainer like Mr. Trump, an orator like Ronald Reagan, or someone to get a beer with like George W. Bush. But to compete for the nomination, he will at least need to be who he appeared to be a few months ago: a new kind of conservative, who can appeal to the establishment and the base by focusing on the new set of issues that got him here: the fight for freedom and against woke.

Mr. DeSantiss varying campaigns against everything from coronavirus restrictions to gender studies curriculums werent extraordinarily popular, at least not in terms of national polling, but it was a type of political gold nonetheless. It let him channel the passions of the Republican base and get on Fox News without offending bourgeoiseconservative sensibilities on race, immigration and gender. In fact, many elite conservatives disliked woke and coronavirus restrictions just like the rank-and-file. Even some Democrats sympathized with his positions. As a result, he won re-election in Florida in a landslide. Democratic turnout was abysmal.

This combination of base and elite appeal made him a natural candidate to lead an anti-Trump coalition. In the last presidential primary, in 2016, Mr. Trump held the center of the Republican electorate and left his opposition split on either side. To his right, there was Mr. Cruz and the orthodox conservatives. To his left, there was Marco Rubio, John Kasich and the relatively moderate, business-friendly establishment. None of thesefactional figures stood a chance of unifying those two disparate groups, but for a fleeting moment after the midterms last year, Mr. DeSantis seemed to assemble all of the various not-necessarily-Trump factions under his banner.

Since then, Mr. DeSantiss coalition has unraveled. His superficial struggles on the campaign trail might be evident to most, but what is more easily overlooked is an overarching struggle to balance the competing needs of an ideologically diverse coalition in a Republican primary.

His challenge has two halves. First, his instinct to move to the right has been more fraught in a Republican primary than it was when woke liberals were his foil. After all, theres plenty of room to line up to the right of woke without alienating anyone on the right. Trying to be to the right of Mr. Trump, on the other hand, involves greater risk regarding both the general electorate and his relatively moderate supporters.

Perhaps surprisingly, Mr. DeSantis actually fares best among moderate voters in Republican primary polling. This probably says more about which Republicans are most skeptical about Mr. Trump than it does about Mr. DeSantis, but it nonetheless means that his conservative instincts routinely put him at odds with his own base.

In some cases, the tension between Mr. DeSantis and his base is unavoidable and his moderate supporters will sometimes lose. A politician cant always please every constituency. Abortion, for instance, poses a legitimate problem for Mr. DeSantis and every Republican nowadays.

But Mr. DeSantis has not always seemed cognizant of the delicate balancing act ahead of him and has committed errors as a result. His relatively soft position on Russia regarding Ukraine, for instance, overlooked that the elite, hawkish, neoconservative right not only cares deeply about containing Russia but would also inevitably be part of any successful anti-Trump coalition. Mr. DeSantis doesnt need to be a neocon to hold this support against Mr. Trump, but it does seem he needs to support defending Ukraine.

The second half is that the fights for freedom and against woke have not been a glue thats held his fractious coalition together. So far this year, hes struggled to make the race about these issues at all. Instead, abortion, entitlements, Russia and Mr. Trump have dominated the conversation.

Of all the things that have happened to Mr. DeSantis so far this year, this might be the most troubling and telling. Tactical mistakes can be fixed, but if fighting for freedom and against woke isnt a powerful, organizing theme, then hes not especially different from any other Republican.

This might not be entirely Mr. DeSantiss fault. The coronavirus pandemic is over at least for political purposes. The peak of woke might have come and gone as well: The arc of new left culture fights seems to have bent into a reactionary phase in which debate centers as much or more on proposed Republican restrictions on books, drag shows and A.P. history curriculums as on the latest controversy about the excesses of the left. Mr. DeSantiss renewal of a year-old fight against Disney the exact origins of which I suspect would stump even many regular readers of this newsletter is a telling indicator that his campaign against woke is struggling for oxygen.

At the same time as Mr. DeSantiss new issues have faded, the old issues have come roaring back. The Supreme Court and Vladimir Putin made sure of it. So did Mr. Trump, who attacked Mr. DeSantis for old statements on cutting entitlements. And while all of these issues make Mr. DeSantis vulnerable in various ways, there are few opportunities to attack Mr. Trump as too woke.

The devolution of Mr. DeSantis, in other words, is partly due toforces beyond his control. But if freedom or woke is not enough, he will probably need a new set of issues to uniteopen-to-anyone-but-Trump voters.

See more here:
Why Ron DeSantis Is Struggling - The New York Times

Lets count off a few of them. First, theres the limits of ideological box-checking in a campaign against Trump. This is my colleague Nate Cohns main point in his assessment of DeSantiss recent struggles, and its a good one: DeSantis has spent the year to date accumulating legislative victories that match up with official right-wing orthodoxy, but we already saw in Ted Cruzs 2016 campaign the limits of ideological correctness. There are Republican primary voters who cast ballots with a matrix of conservative positions in their heads, but not enough to overcome the appeal of the Trump persona, and a campaign against him wont prosper if its main selling point is just True Conservatism 2.0.

Second, theres the mismatch between cultural conservatism and the anti-Trump donor class. Part of DeSantiss advantage now, compared with Cruzs situation in 2016, is that he has seemed more congenial to the partys bigger-money donors. But many of those donors dont really like the culture war; theyll go along with a generic anti-wokeness, but they hate the Disney battles and theyre usually pro-choice. So socially conservative moves that DeSantis cant refuse, like signing Floridas six-week abortion ban, yield instant stories about how his potential donors are thinking about closing up their checkbooks, with a palpable undercurrent of: Why cant we have Nikki Haley or even Glenn Youngkin instead?

This leads to the third dynamic that could repeat itself: The G.O.P coordination problem, a.k.a. the South Carolina pileup. Remember how smoothly all of Joe Bidens rivals suddenly exited the presidential race when it was time to stop Bernie Sanders? Remember how nothing remotely like that happened among Republicans in 2016? Well, if you have an anti-Trump donor base dissatisfied with DeSantis and willing to sustain long-shot rivals, and if two of those rivals, Haley and Senator Tim Scott, hail from the early primary state of South Carolina, its easy enough to see how they talk themselves into hanging around long enough to hand Trump exactly the sort of narrow wins that eventually gave him unstoppable momentum in 2016.

But then again, a certain cast of mind has declared Trump to have unstoppable momentum already. This reflects another tendency that helped elect him the first time, the weird fatalism of professional Republicans. In 2016 many of them passed from he cant win to he cant be stopped with barely a way station in between. A rough month for DeSantis has already surfaced the same spirit as in a piece by Politicos Jonathan Martin, which quoted one strategist saying resignedly, Were just going to have to go into the basement, ride out the tornado and come back up when its over to rebuild the neighborhood.

Influencing this perspective, again as in 2016, is the assumption that Trump cant win the general election, so if the G.O.P. just lets him lose it will finally be rid of him. Of course that assumption was completely wrong before, it could be wrong again; and even if its not, how do you know he wont be back in 2028?

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Opinion | It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like 2016 Again - The New York Times

Extreme bill would cut veterans health care, jeopardize public safety, and raise costs for familieseven as House Republicans separately push for trillions in tax cuts skewed to the wealthy and big corporations

Congressional Republicans are holding the nations full faith and credit hostage in an effort to impose devastating cuts that would hurt veterans, raise costs for hardworking families, and hinder economic growth. The Default on America Act would cut veterans health care, education, Meals on Wheels, and public safety, take away health care from millions of Americans, and send manufacturing jobs overseas.Outside economists say that if enacted, the Default on America Act would increase the likelihood of a recession and result in 780,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2024. And House Republicans are demanding these cuts while separately advancing proposals to add over $3 trillion to deficits through tax cuts and giveaways skewed to the wealthy and big corporations.

The Default on America Act stands in sharp contrast with President Bidens Budget, which invests in America, lowers costs for families, protects and strengthens Medicare and Social Security, and reduces the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over 10 years, while ensuring no one making less than $400,000 per year pays a penny more in new taxes.

Today, the White House released 51 fact sheets highlighting the devastating impacts of the Default on America Act on states and the District of Columbia. Nationally, the Default on America Act would have devastating impacts on the American people. It would:Jeopardize Transportation Safety and Infrastructure

Raise Costs for Families

Harm Seniors, Older People, and Veterans

Hurt Children and Students and Undermine Education and Job Training

State Fact Sheets:

This analysis assumes an across-the-board reduction of roughly 22% compared to currently enacted FY 2023 levels for non-defense discretionary accounts. That aligns with Congressional Republicans Default on America Act, which would return discretionary spending to FY 2022 levels on an ongoing basis while exempting defense spending.

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STATE FACT SHEETS: MAGA House Republicans' Default on ... - The White House

Local Republicans issue press release calling for District 2 Texas House Representative Bryan Slaton to resign in the wake of a report issued by the House General Investigating Committee. See previous story here: Slaton Faces Expulsion

The following Press Release was received by KSST News:

For immediate Release:

It is with much sadness that we the below, 10 members of the 11 member Hopkins County RepublicanParty Executive Committee, call on Representative Bryan Slaton to immediately resign asRepresentative of House District # 2. After reading the report of the House General Investigating Committee, in the matter of Representative Bryan L. Slaton, there is no other recommendation that we can make. While we commend Representative Slaton for much good work, we cannot condone conduct unbecoming a member of the House of Representatives as set forth by the House rules and the laws of the State of Texas. It is our hope that Representative Slaton will heed our call and let the healing process begin with his family, the victim and her family, and all other parties involved. We encourage everyone to continue in prayer and lift all involved up in prayer to God for his loving comfort and healing.Donnie W. Wisenbaker, Hopkins County Republican Chairman

James Thompson, Precinct # 1 Chair Vince Palumbo, Precinct # 2 ChairKaron Weatherman, Precinct # 2A Chair Nancy Swint, Precinct # 3 ChairJohn Allen, Precinct # 3A Chair Debbie Harris, Precinct # 4 ChairDaniel Bobay, Precinct # 16 Chair Jennifer Harrington, Precinct # 17 ChairMelonie Findley, Precinct # 36 Chair

As members of the State Republican Partys Executive Committee, that serves Hopkins County, we support the Hopkins County Republican Party Executive Committee members in their call for Representative Slatons immediate resignation. Christian Bentley, SD-1 State Republican Party Executive Committee, CommitteewomanDonnie W. Wisenbaker, SD-1 State Republican Party Executive Committee, Committeeman

More here:
Hopkins County Republicans Call for Slaton to Resign - KSST