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North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper

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Shortly after Roy Cooper, a Democrat, won the North Carolina governorship, the GOP-dominated General Assembly launched an all-out assault on his office. Legislative Republicans, bolstered by an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, stripped the governor of various powersmost critically, his ability to restore voting rights and appoint certain judges. Cooper sued to block the new laws, and the state judiciary has mostly sided with him, striking down a slew of measures that restricted his ability to govern the state.

Mark Joseph Stern is a writer for Slate. He covers the law and LGBTQ issues.

Now, the state GOP believes it has devised a solution: stop Cooper from filing suit against unconstitutional laws in the first place. This week, the General Assemblys Republican leaders released their final budget, which includes a brazen plan to thwart the governor in several ways. First, the budget prevents Cooper from using the governors office attorneys without the General Assemblys permission. Second, the budget prevents Cooper from using lapsed salary savingsmoney saved when the state pays an employee less than it had budgetedto hire outside counsel. These provisions effectively prevent Cooper from suing the legislature to halt unconstitutional laws. In order for him to do so, the General Assembly would have to give its permission to be sued, or Cooper would have to pay private lawyers out of pocket.

The budget also takes aim at another office of the executive branch, the attorney general. Currently, Democrat Josh Stein serves as AG, which has caused problems for the GOP. After a federal court struck down the states draconian voter ID law, Republicans wanted to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. But Stein refused to defend the law, prompting a confusing legal maelstrom that ultimately spurred the justices to reject the appeal altogether. The budget aims to avoid this problem by forcing the attorney general to defend the legislature any time it is sued. (If the AG recuses himself, he must select another lawyer at the state Justice Department to replace him.) This unusual requirement deprives the attorney general of his traditional discretion and raises grave constitutional concerns about legislative interference in executive affairs.

Republicans also added a provision to the budget mandating that the legislature participate in any suit challenging a North Carolina law. That means the General Assembly can always step into a lawsuit against the state and defend the challenged statute, even though the governor cannotunless the General Assembly allows him to, and permits him to use his attorneys. Finally, just for good measure, Republicans slashed funding for the Department of Justice by nearly 40 percent, kneecapping Steins entire agency.

On Wednesday, I asked Coopers office what the governor made of the proposals.

Since gaining a legislative majority, North Carolina Republicans have had more than a dozen unconstitutional laws overturned by the courts, Ford Porter, a Cooper spokesman, told me. In response, they appear intent on dismantling checks and balances in state government. In addition to a legislative assault on the courts, Republicans are now attempting to rig the system by limiting the Executive Branchs ability to challenge unconstitutional laws.

If the General Assembly passes the budget in its current form, Cooper will likely veto it. The legislature will then promptly override his veto, at which point Cooper will probably sue before the new provisions take effect. He will have a strong case: North Carolina courts have already found that the legislatures intrusions into executive affairs violates the states constitutional command of separation of powers. But if Cooper loses, he may never be able to sue the General Assembly again.

The legislatures chicanery here is especially galling given its recent losses in court. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that the states legislative districts were unlawfully gerrymandered along racial lines. This gerrymander gave Republicans their current supermajoritiesmeaning their power is ill-gotten and, arguably, illegitimate. Yet the GOP has not hesitated to use this power to incapacitate the executive in probable contravention of the constitution. The Republican-led breakdown of democracy in North Carolina continues apace.

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North Carolina Republicans Are Trying to Strip the Governor of His Power to Challenge Laws - Slate Magazine (blog)

'Stop the violent left' supporting Karen Handel's congressional bid in a special election for Georgia's sixth congressional district aims to tie Democrats to the shooting at a congressional baseball practice on June 14. The Washington Post has chosen to blur a portion of this ad. (Principled PAC)

The culture war is alive and well even where you might not expect it. Thats one of the most overlooked lessons of yesterdays special election in Georgia. While a lot of was made of the absurd amounts of money spent on the race, the question of Donald Trumps effect down-ballot or which voters would turn out, Republicans won by going back to a playbook theyve used a thousand times before, one based on fear and contempt of culturally alien liberals.

In many ways, this race was unique its not as though in 2018 there will be a national spotlight and $50 million poured into all 435 House districts. But if you werent watching closely, you may have missed the scorched-earth culture war campaign that Republicans ran against Democrat Jon Ossoff. They barely attempted to make a case for Karen Handel; instead, their argument was that Ossoff is basically a Hollywood San Francisco radical hippie anarchist lunatic controlled by cover the childrens ears Nancy Pelosi.

That was the running theme of the television ads and direct mailers that flooded the district, convincing Republican voters that whatever misgivings they had about the Trump administration and however much Ossoff portrayed himself as a mainstream technocrat whose biggest priority was bringing high-tech jobs to metro Atlanta, nothing mattered more than their tribal hatred of liberals. You might think Karen Handels brand of extreme social conservatism (among other things she would outlaw not only same-sex marriage but also gay couples adopting children) would be a liability in a highly educated district like the Georgia 6th, but it wasnt.

As Nate Cohn pointed out a few days ago, 13 of the 15 congressional districts with the highest levels of education in the country are safe Democratic districts; only Georgias 6th and a suburban Virginia district are in Republican hands. Thats why Democrats saw an opening in this election. They hoped that with this electorate, which was far more comfortable with Mitt Romney than with Donald Trump (Trump won the district by 2 points, while Romney won it by 23), a mainstream, non-threatening Democrat could win.

But he couldnt. Which isnt to say Ossoff wasnt a candidate without plenty of weaknesses, but if Republicans can win on the culture war in Georgias 6th, they can do it almost anywhere.

Thats partly because they have so much practice. For half a century, theyve been telling voters that Democrats are alien radicals who indulge criminal minorities and bring chaos and violence wherever they go. Richard Nixon rode that message to the White House in 1968 (just check out this ad), and Republicans have been doing it ever since. So Ossoff, Republicans said, was not one of us, the ultimate distillation of the culture war attack. As one ad from the National Republican Congressional Committee said over pictures of anarchists smashing windows and Kathy Griffin holding up Trumps severed head, D.C. liberals, Hollywood elites, this is who supports Jon Ossoff. Because Jon Ossoff is one of them. Childish. Radical. Theyve targeted Georgia, but we can stop them.

In the wake of yesterdays result, a lot of people have advised the Democrats that the solution to this problem is for Nancy Pelosi to resign, which would supposedly prevent Republicans from demonizing her. Some of that advice is coming from people who obviously dont have the Democrats best interests at heart, but a lot of it is sincere. Unfortunately, it misreads not just that attack but also the way the GOP does business. While there may be legitimate reasons to ask whether Pelosi should remain the leader of House Democrats we probably should debate whether the current Democratic leadership is making good strategic and investment decisions thats a separate topic from whether she has become a liability as a cultural symbol.

Its certainly true that Pelosi is a villain for rank-and-file voters. Is that because of her politics? Of course not her positions on issues are basically those of the entire Democratic Party. Is it because shes from San Francisco? Of course Republicans have been using San Francisco as a symbol for conservative baby boomers resentments for decades, a representation of all the drug-taking and free love and fun that the hippies had while the buzzcut squares seethed with jealousy and contempt. Is it because Pelosi is an older woman? Oh, you bet it is. Just like Hillary Clinton, she has been the target of a nakedly misogynistic campaign of vilification for years, one that is now baked deep into Republican politics.

And if youre not a regular consumer of conservative media, you might not realize just how relentless that campaign has been, how often Pelosi is held up by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and the rest of the talk radio/Fox News nexus as everything that good honest Americans should hate. Which is why nothing Pelosi does actually matters. She barely appears on TV, but shes as potent a symbol for Republicans as ever. She could retire tomorrow, and I promise you, Republicans would still run a thousand ads with her face in them in 2018.

That wouldnt last forever, but by the time it faded, the conservative propaganda machine would have replaced her with a different villain. Weve seen again and again how effective that machine can be: One Democratic politician after another has begun with a profile as an inoffensive, hardworking, substantive public servant (think Dukakis, Gore, Kerry), then quickly turned into a monster who threatened everything Republican voters hold dear.

What that means is that the one mistake Democrats cant make again the one theyve made so many times before is to say, If we find the right person, Republicans wont be able to attack him. They will, no matter who that person is. Democrats need to take that culture war attack as a given and find more potent attacks in response the way they did with Mitt Romney, but didnt with Donald Trump. Or with Karen Handel.

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The culture war is alive and well. And Republicans will keep fighting it. - Washington Post (blog)

The Democrat in the Georgia race, Jon Ossoff, was unsuccessful in flipping a traditionally Republican district in the Atlanta suburbs previously represented by Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. Had the 30-year-old first-time political candidate pulled off an upset, it would have dealt a major blow to the Republican Party's already complicated efforts to gut Obamacare.

Democrats were prepared to cast the results of the closely watched special election as a referendum on President Donald Trump and the GOP's legislative priorities -- chief among them the quest to repeal former President Barack Obama's landmark health care law.

Former Republican Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Handel's win provides the party with "huge relief and somewhat of a political sedative" heading into 2018, when Democrats are eager to try to win back control of the House.

"It kind of calms the waters in terms of people looking for predictors or harbingers and what it means for 2018," Pawlenty told CNN. "It says: Perhaps the approach that's being taken in Congress and by the President are more acceptable to a swing district or swing-voting parts of the country than people are predicting."

The controversial proposal, which Handel said she would have voted for, would "gut the protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions -- hundreds of thousands of them," Ossoff argued at a debate earlier this month.

Handel pushed back forcefully, pointing out that her sister was born without an esophagus -- a pre-existing condition.

"For you to suggest that I would do anything to negatively effect her is absolutely outrageous and unacceptable," Handel said.

With health care so much of the focus in the Georgia special election, Democrats were ready to liken an Ossoff victory to that of former GOP Sen. Scott Brown in the 2010 special election in Massachusetts.

At the time, Brown's unlikely triumph over Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley was viewed as voters' sharp rejection of Obamacare, which Democratic lawmakers were in the middle of crafting. When Brown decisively won the office long occupied by the late-Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, Democrats were forced to act quickly to pass Obamacare, despite deep reservations and divisions across the party about the legislation.

Now, with Handel keeping Price's old seat in GOP hands, Democratic strategists insist that health care will still be powerful ammunition against Republicans in next year's congressional elections.

"I don't think that very many Republicans will take much comfort on the health care issue even if Handel does win," said veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin in advance of Tuesday's result. "I think Republicans will continue to recognize that taking away coverage from millions of Americans and raising costs for millions more is a politically unpopular and dangerous enterprise."

A draft of Republicans' plans in the Senate is expected to be released this Thursday, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who wants to put health care in the rear-view mirror before lawmakers leave Washington ahead of the July 4 recess.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer reiterated that sentiment in the briefing room Tuesday.

"The President clearly wants a bill that has heart in it," Spicer said. "He believes that health care is something that is near and dear to so many families and individuals."

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Georgia race: Republicans jittery about health care breathe sigh of relief - CNN

Republican Karen Handel won a nationally watched congressional election Tuesday in Georgia, and she thanked President Donald Trump after she avoided an upset that would have rocked Washington ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

Returns showed Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state, winning about 52 percent of the vote over Democrat Jon Ossoff, who won nearly 48 percent in Georgia's 6th Congressional District.

"A special thanks to the president of the United States of America," she said late Tuesday night as her supporters chanted, "Trump! Trump! Trump!"

It was Handel's most public embrace of the man whose tenuous standing in this well-educated, suburban enclave made a previously safe Republican district close to begin with.

Handel's margin allows Republicans a sigh of relief after what's being recognized as the most expensive House race in U.S history, with a price tag that may exceed $50 million.

Yet the result in a historically conservative district still offers Republicans a warning that Trump, for better or worse, will dominate the looming campaign cycle. Georgia's outcome follows similar results in Montana, Kansas and South Carolina, where Republicans won special House races by much narrower margins than they managed as recently as November.

Republicans immediately crowed over winning a seat that Democrats spent $30 million trying to flip. "Democrats from coast to coast threw everything they had at this race, and Karen would not be defeated," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement.

Democrats still must defend their current districts and win 24 GOP-held seats to regain a House majority next November. Party leaders profess encouragement from the trends, but the latest losses mean they will have to rally donors and volunteers after a tough stretch of special elections.

Handel, 55, will become the first Republican woman to represent Georgia in the U.S. House, according to state party officials.

Her win comes after losing bids for governor in 2010 and the Senate in 2014, and it builds on a business and political career she built after leaving an abusive home as a teen.

"It's that fighting spirit, that perseverance and tenacity that I will take to Washington," she said Tuesday night.

Handel is the latest in a line of Republicans who have represented the district since 1979, beginning with Newt Gingrich, who would become House speaker. Most recently, Tom Price resigned in February to join Trump's administration. The president himself struggled here, though, edging Democrat Hillary Clinton but falling short of a majority among an affluent, well-educated electorate that typically has given Republican nominees better than 60 percent of the vote.

Handel emphasized that Republican pedigree often in her campaign and again in her victory speech.

She also noted throughout the campaign that she has lived in the district for 25 years, unlike Ossoff, who grew up in the district but lives in Atlanta, a few miles south of the 6th District's southern border.

In victory, she commended Ossoff and pledged to work for his supporters. She noted last week's shooting of Republican Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and said politics has become too embittered.

"My pledge is to be part of the solution, to focus on governing," she said.

Ossoff, taking the stage at his own party after conceding the race, told his supporters his campaign "is the beginning of something much bigger than us," adding, "The fight goes on."

Party organizations, independent political action committees and donors from Los Angeles to Boston sent a cascade of money into a race, filling metro Atlanta's airwaves with ads and its 6th District neighborhoods with hordes of paid canvassers.

Contrary to the chants at Handel's victory party, she insisted for months that voters' choice had little to do with Trump. She rarely mentioned him, despite holding a closed-door fundraiser with him earlier this spring. She pointed voters instead to her "proven conservative record" as a state and local elected official.

Her protestations aside, Handel often embraced the national tenor of the race, joining a GOP chorus that lambasted Ossoff as a "dangerous liberal" who was "hand-picked" by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California. She also welcomed a parade of national GOP figures to Atlanta to help her raise money, with Ryan and Vice President Mike Pence holding fundraisers following Trump's April visit.

It was enough to help Handel raise more than $5 million, not a paltry sum in a congressional race, but barely a fifth of Ossoff's fundraising haul. The Republican campaign establishment, however, helped make up the difference. A super PAC backed by Ryan spent $7 million alone.

On policy, she mostly echoes party leaders. She said she'd have voted for the House Republican health care bill, though she sometimes misrepresented its provisions in debates with Ossoff. She touts traditional supply side economics, going so far as to say during one debate that she does "not support a living wage" her way of explaining her opposition to a minimum-wage increase.

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Republican Karen Handel wins Georgia special election for hotly contested House seat - Chicago Tribune

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders stole a line from President Trump on Wednesday to celebrate Republicans' winning their fourth and fifth special election less than a day earlier.

"Frankly, I think Republicans are going to get tired of winning at some point if the Democrats don't ever get an agenda," Sanders told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" Wednesday.

Sanders said conservatives were able to pull out wins in Georgia's 6th Congressional District and South Carolina's 5th Congressional District on Tuesday because Republicans have campaigned on an agenda, while Democrats have not touted a plan for leading.

"The American people put him and other Republicans in place for a reason they have an agenda, they want a healthcare system that works, they want an environment where we're creating jobs and growing the economy," Sanders said. "That's what this president is focused on. That's why he was elected in the first place, and that's why he continues to keep winning."

Trump's line about winning became famous during a speech he gave while visiting the Iowa State Fair during the presidential campaign. He continued to use it throughout the campaign and it became a signature phrase.

Excerpt from:
Sarah Sanders: 'Republicans are going to get tired of winning' - Washington Examiner