In Trump’s America, voters often struggle with the fact that their GOP lawmakers refuse to respond to them when they want to discuss the issues. But in the town of Moscow, Idaho, one constituent of Republican state Sen. Dan Foreman was faced with precisely the opposite problem. Foreman is a retired police officer and first-term […]

Texas Republican Ted Cruz is quite possibly the least popular member of the Senate. Ever. His fellow Republican Lindsey Graham famously joked during the 2016 presidential primaries that “if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you.” Cruz, whose Republican colleagues in […]

In this year’s Virginia gubernatorial race, Republican candidate and former RNC chair Ed Gillespie is often portrayed as a gentlemanly, clean alternative to the ugliness of Donald Trump. But Gillespie, who veered hard right after his narrow primary victory over neo-Confederate Corey Stewart, has all of Trump’s racist instincts, as laid bare in a disgusting […]

Highlighting the extraordinary lengths one of Louisiana’s Republican senators is willing to go to act against his state’s self-interests, Louisiana’s top health care official eviscerated Sen. Bill Cassidy for championing a bill that the GOP is trying to jam through Congress before the end of the month. “The legislation you’ve introduced this past week gravely […]

America is still reeling from the terror attack in Charlottesville, where one woman died and many others were injured when a man rammed his car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters in the midst of a Nazi-fueled white supremacist riot. It was a horrifying spectacle, one by which the vast majority of observers were thoroughly and […]

Bryce Marlatt, a Republican state senator from Oklahoma, has been charged with sexual battery of an Uber driver, and has resigned from the legislature as a result. Marlatt is the third Republican in that state’s governing body to resign this year after coming under criminal investigation. A fourth Republican, who worked an aide to the […]

As his state prepares for the onslaught on Hurricane Irma, Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz offered a stunningly heartless reason for voting against the relief package for victims of Hurricane Harvey. He claimed such aid is “generational theft.” Gaetz coldly lashed out at the very notion of government funding for relief efforts, stating that Congress […]

Republicans have long branded themselves the party of upstanding moral character. And they still attempt to characterize themselves as such, despite electing a president who openly brags about sexually assaulting women. But Trump is not an aberration. Republicans have elected reprehensible, hateful, and violent people all the way down to the local level. This is […]

A Republican state senator who is a huge advocate for the conservative agenda and an early supporter of Donald Trump is now facing charges of child pornography, on top of charges he already faces for child prostitution. Oklahoma’s Ralph Shortey now faces four federal counts for transporting child pornography, producing child pornography, and child sex […]

For decades, modern-day robber barons Charles and David Koch have been some of the most visible villains of the free-for-all that is post-Citizens United campaign finance. They have spent billions influencing GOP politicians, spreading right-wing public policy disinformation through a shadowy network of fake nonprofit groups, and even buying judges. Their perversion of American democracy, however, […]

After speaking out against racism and white supremacy at the MTV Video Music Awards, Rev. Robert Lee IV, descendant of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee, is out of a job. The 24-year-old former pastor of the Bethany United Church of Christ in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, took to the airwaves to announce that “as a […]

Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott has been struggling to keep his state running as Hurricane Harvey devastated coastal communities and flooded the city of Houston. In the process, Abbott has made some questionable decisions, like contradicting the mayor of Houston to urge an early evacuation, despite the fact that Houston tried this in 2005 during […]

Ever since the deadly neo-Nazi riot in Charlottesville, which centered on a condemned statue of Robert E. Lee, efforts to remove Confederate monuments have intensified. But the statues, many of which were erected by white supremacist groups explicitly to protest Black civil rights, still have defenders. Several Republicans, including Donald Trump and Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ed […]

Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, is running for governor of Virginia. But he has made it clear that he doesn’t consider the lives and concerns of all Virginians to be worthy of equal respect. And he’s trying to fundraise off that callous stance. Gillespie has aligned himself and his campaign […]

After the horrendous display of hate in Charlottesville, Virginia, Donald Trump repeatedly equivocated between neo-Nazis and and those who oppose their hateful ideology. While many white supremacists publicly cheered and supported Trump’s remarks, the majority of Americans recoiled in horror. Could it be that difficult to take a firm stand against people carrying Nazi flags and chanting racist and […]

The Virginia Republican Party seems pointedly dedicated to unleashing obscene, race-based smears on Democrats in the state. Fresh off a repugnant attack on former Democratic congressman Tom Perriello, in which the organization labeled the practicing Catholic a “Christian-hating bigot” for opposing white supremacy, the Virginia GOP has now jumped back into the racist Twitter fray. […]

Much as they have tried over decades to make it seem so, the Republican Party does not have a monopoly on faith. But the Virginia GOP sure appears to think they do, unleashing a crude — not to mention ahistorical — attack on a Democrat who spoke out, from a Christian perspective, against white supremacy. […]

Hoping to capitalize on their headline-making hate rally in Virginia, and to further spread their message of bigotry and intimidation, white supremacists were poised to stage a high-profile event at Texas A&M University on Sept. 11. The organizers were clear about their repugnant focus for the 9/11 rally: To “protest the liberal anti-white agenda which includes […]

The violent white supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia — where neo-Nazis attacked peaceful anti-racism protestors, and one of them rammed his car into the crowd, killing one and injuring 19 others — has been met with horror and revulsion across the country. And Virginia Republican Rep. Tom Garrett, whose district contains Charlottesville, claimed to be appalled […]

When he finally got around to making an actual statement on the hate-driven and still ongoing turmoil in Charlottesville, Virginia, Donald Trump did so in typical Trump fashion. He showed no signs of accepting a shred of even indirect responsibility for the outburst of violence, even while his own administration harbors white supremacists and Nazi […]

The GOP strategy of trying to a reignite cultural war under the banner of attacking transgender people isn’t working out the way some Republicans hoped. Fueled by right-wing evangelicals who have launched a bullying, bigoted crusade to turn public bathrooms into a lightning rod for a larger cultural shoving match, the so-called bathroom bill movement […]

For years, Republicans have maintained a massive edge in the House of Representatives and a majority of state legislatures, due in part to their redistricting scheming. After the 2010 census, GOP state legislators redrew voting maps to give themselves an advantage, with Democrats jammed into small districts and Republicans spread out over several larger ones. […]

Politically, how far has the radical right gone, even in deeply red states like Texas? So far that the Lone Star state’s Republican speaker of the House recently warned that the movement, and its obsession with waging cultural wars, stands poised to do lasting damage to the state. The current flashpoint in Texas is the […]

Donald Trump has singlehandedly been working to set back U.S. climate policy 50 years. He outraged the world by exiting the Paris climate agreement. He fired scientists from government advisory positions. He signed a bill to let coal mines dump waste into streams. He is trying to undo the Clean Power Plan, fuel economy standards for […]

“I am America’s hope, and the president’s nightmare.” That’s how Ilhan Omar described herself during a recent appearance on The Daily Show. The Muslim Somali-American female state legislator from Minnesota was elected the same night as Donald Trump — but the two could not be more different. Speaking to host Trevor Noah, Omar said, “This […]

Donald Trump spent June like he spent every other month in the White House: alienating a segment of the American population. Throughout June, the White House was deafeningly silent and Reagan-esque in ignoring the LGBTQ community and Pride Month, despite marches and parades across the country. The silence is not that surprising, given Trump’s embrace of the […]

In a rare bout of bipartisan resistance, almost every secretary of state in America has now informed the Trump administration that their states won’t be fully cooperating with its demand for voter record. The request came from a newly formed commission set up to essentially spread misinformation about the supposedly rampant crime of millions of […]

In a heartening turn of events, 41 states are refusing to go along with the White House’s intrusive and dangerous demands for extensive personal data on each state’s voters. Donald Trump’s so-called “Election Integrity Commission” — led by Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — is struggling to launch its privacy-invading effort, […]

New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie didn’t let a little thing like a government shutdown stop him from enjoying a beach vacation. More to the point, he lay bare the arrogance so common to the Republican Party, when he petulantly responded to his critics by saying, “The governor’s allowed to go to his residences, and I’m […]

Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds received a special delivery from an unexpected source on Friday. In the wake of funding cuts signed by former Gov. Terry Branstad and fast-tracked by Reynolds, four Planned Parenthood clinics in that state were forced to close, leaving 14,600 Iowans without access to quality, affordable, compassionate health care. 77 percent […]