Donald Trump still hasn't decided whether he'll run again in 2024, but if he does, one conservative believes the ex-president could face a primary challenge from two allies.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been all but anointed as Trump's successor, but The Daily Beast's Matt Lewis says it's too early to count out former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as a strong challenger to the twice-impeached one-term president's dominance over the Republican Party.
"If Trump freezes the field, that allows Christie to either (a) get a head start when Trump finally decides not to run, or (b) get a clean shot at a one-on-one race against Trump, with the hope that many Republicans who grudgingly supported Trump might prefer the former guy to stay former," Lewis writes. "This is a high-risk, high-reward strategy. Christie could get destroyed and humiliated by Trump who — let's be honest — is the clear frontrunner for the nomination."
Christie seems to understand the risks, and possible rewards, in that strategy.
"I'm also not going to be one of these people who's going to say, 'Well, I'll wait to see what President Trump's going to do,'" Christie told a podcast last month. "I'm not going to defer to anyone if I decide that's what I want to do and that I think I'm the best option for the party and for the country. I think if you say you're deferring to someone, that's a sign of both weakness and indecision, and we've already got that in the White House."
DeSantis has insisted he won't challenge Trump, despite narrowly beating him in one recent straw poll, but Lewis argues the time could be ripe for a certain type of Republican to challenge a former president who was never popular outside the GOP.
"A post-Trump GOP headed by DeSantis or Christie wouldn't be my first choice, but would it at least be tolerable? Perhaps," Lewis writes. "Like pornography, we'll know it when we see it. Regardless, I'm betting the party's next presidential nominee will be either Trump or a slightly less chaotic and maybe more competent version of Trump."
A conservative minister who seemed to be a darling of far-right politicians in the state has admitted that he fabricated a story about a transgender Native American lobbyist allegedly berating a state senator so badly that he sought the protection of the Montana Senate’s sergeant-at-arms.
In a libel case that has raged on for more than a year and involved threats of mounting an attorney’s head on the wall of the Pastor Jordan “JD” Hall’s study, a rocket launcher and statewide speaking tour, the conservative Sidney-based minister has admitted that he fabricated the story and apologized to Adrian Jawort, a lobbyist who testified on many issues related to Native Americans.
The settlement and a potential $250,000 claim was reached as Hall is going through the bankruptcy process, seeking protection from a libel case, as well as discharging attorney’s fees he racked up during the libel fight. Two weeks ago, Hall was arrested on charges of driving under the influence and illegally carrying a concealed weapon, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
The case began when Hall used a story in his online newspaper, The Montana Daily Gazette, to promote the now-discredited story about Jawort attacking Sen. Butch Gillespie, a Republican. Hall, writing under an anonymous byline, called Jawort, a lobbyist, a “transvestite Goth” who roamed the halls of the Capitol. In a story about Jawort, Hall said that she had attacked Gillespie during a hearing on a controversial bill regarding transgender athletes.
Hall now admits the incident never happened.
On the website of the Montana Daily Gazette, a publication Hall runs through a group he leads called Gideon Knox, he issued the retraction and apology:
“Adrian Jawort filed suit against Jordan Hall in response to a claim published in the Montana Daily Gazette that Jawort harassed Senator Butch Gillespie in the State Capitol. This information was false. Hall has agreed to retract the false information in the original article and publicly acknowledge that Jawort had no involvement in any such incident. Hall has issued the following apology:
“I apologize to Adrian Jawort. The information I published about Adrian was false. Adrian did not threaten or harass Senator Butch Gillespie. I regret the error and sincerely apologize to Adrian for publishing it.”
— Jordan Hall, Publisher Montana Daily Gazette
As part of the settlement, the statement will be on the website of the Montana Daily Gazette for seven days in a “prominent” place, and cannot be deleted from the site after that.
Hall’s attorney, Bret Allred of Billings, declined to comment. Hall was unavailable for comment.
As part of the settlement, Jawort will ask the state court to dismiss the charges of libel against Hall, but will be able to claim a $250,000 judgment against Hall’s estate in bankruptcy court. That case is still pending and it’s unclear whether Jawort will actually see any money from the proceeds.
“I am grateful that after a tumultuous year, Pastor Jordan Hall was final able to admit committing libel and bearing false witness against me. In this day and age when trans people like myself are targeted with political bullseyes on our backs, it was especially dangerous of him to falsely accuse me of bullying and harassing an elderly state Senator I’d never met to the point where the sergeant at arms had to pull me away,” Jawort said. “There are people out there who’d physically hurt me if they thought that was true and then saw me to take revenge.”
Gillespie, a Republican from Tooele County, recounted a confrontation in an affidavit filed with the court by Hall’s former lawyer. Gillespie said he was yelled at by a person he didn’t recognize. While Gillespie never named Jawort, he never withdrew or modified his statement.
“As I neared the main doors leading to the Senate floor, the person who had previously expressed his opposition to HB112 became very passionate,” Gillespie said in an affidavit signed on Sept. 30, 2021. “The person began yelling about HB 112 being unfair and against humanity.”
Jawort told the Daily Montanan watching Hall tour the state, fundraising, in part, on the lawsuit was a surreal experience.
“He mocked me and played victim by lying to crowds that I’d filed a lawsuit for anti-free speech reasons,” Jawort said. “I’ve even had someone from Great Falls wanting to confront me. This person also bizarrely claims I engaged in some Q-Anon type child porn cover-up theory. While I am glad he never found me, Hall must realize as a pastor people will take his word as literal gospel and act on it.”
Jawort told the Daily Montanan that a person showed up to a Billings business where he thought she worked to confront her.
Jawort’s legal tact in the lawsuit focused on the now-discredited incident in which Hall had alleged falsely that she had attacked Gillespie. Jawort told the Daily Montanan she never testified on the bill and wasn’t even in Helena when the incident happened. She said Hall published the story on May 4, 2021, asking her sometime during the morning if she would consent to an interview. Jawort told the Daily Montanan she was familiar with Hall’s work at discrediting the LGBTQ community and declined the interview unless Hall used the correct pronouns.
“Being trans in Montana, you build up a high tolerance for getting attacked by trolls,” she said. “You’re constantly in fear and you don’t want to give them more ammo.”
Within several hours, Hall had posted the story, “Who’s the Gothic Transvestite Haunting the Halls of the Montana Capitol?”
Jawort said that while the story contained many stereotypical characterizations of the transgender community, the incident with Gillespie stood out to her. She said that the thought of attacking an older, conservative politician could set her up for violence and ruin her reputation as a lobbyist.
Court records show that Jawort reached out within hours and asked for a retraction or correction for that portion of the story, letting other incendiary comments about her attire or even accusations of a five-o’clock shadow pass.
“You’re not going to mistake me,” Jawort said. “I am a six-foot tall trans woman decked out with heels and dressed fancy. You are not going to mistake me for anyone else.”
When Hall refused, Jawort said she had no other choice.
“I knew that this rhetoric is only going to get worse and they’re going to get worse,” Jawort said, who noted she was already being attacked as a pedophile or as someone grooming children.
Jawort says she still doesn’t know if the event with Gillespie happened and was a case of mistaken identity, or if it was concocted to silence the LGBTQ community.
For now, Jawort said she hopes to return to lobby at the Capitol for Native American issues, and that the case shows how extreme politics has gotten in Montana. She pointed to her record as a journalist for more than 20 years, and said she’s not against free speech, even the kind that mischaracterized her.
“Ignore the trolls. Ignore the trolls, but then you see lawmakers like Braxton Mitchell, Derek Skees and Theresa Manzella talking with JD Hall on his radio show. It’s not that those people would vote for things that I am promoting, but conservatives have been too afraid to disavow them. They’re cowardly and don’t want to upset them because those same people bully anyone who shows empathy toward people like me,” Jawort said.
However, Jawort, who is Native American, said that Montana has had transgendered people since time immemorial and that indigenous cultures have always accepted them under a “live and let live” doctrine.
“This case has showed who folks like JD Hall are – with their masks off and how they feel,” Jawort said. “And if folks disagree with them, then maybe they should distance themselves from it.”
Jawort points out that the settlement doesn’t necessarily bar Hall from exercising free speech, even if that’s against her. She’s used to the name-calling and the derogatory remarks, which include Hall’s church characterizing LGBTQ existence as “disease-ridden” and “child-molesting.”
However, Hall is barred from repeatedly insisting that she attacked Gillespie.
“The older members of the legislature seemed fascinated by me because I realize I am the first transgender person they’ve seen,” she said. “They found me kind of exciting and then they’d vote against my bills.”
She said she anticipates other forms of discrimination to emerge in the 2023 Legislature, including a version of the Florida “Don’t Say Gay” bill. And Jawort hopes she’s in Helena to provide a counternarrative.
“(The lawmakers) won’t be able to say they haven’t seen any anti-LGBTQ action in the state, because I’ll be there,” Jawort said. “Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: Is this the person they want to stand by, a person who bears false witness?”
Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com. Follow Daily Montanan on Facebook and Twitter.
Donald Trump fell short in his campaigns to wreak vengeance on Republicans who refused to help him overturn his 2020 election loss, but the winners are still helping to restrict voting rights.
The former president's Senate pick Herschel Walker won his GOP primary, and Trump-backed candidates have won elsewhere in campaigns based on his 2020 election lies, but Georgia Republicans rejected his endorsements for governor and secretary of state.
"I think the reality is, an overwhelming majority of Georgians are going to vote against the Trump-endorsed candidate, and it shouldn't be surprising, right?" GOP Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan told Axios. "I mean, we've got hundreds of years' worth of history that shows us the former president loses their influence every day they're out of office, and Donald Trump — although he wishes it wasn't the case — is no different."
However, the winning candidates aren't exactly at odds with the MAGA message, and they've helped restrict voting rights since Trump's election loss using more euphemistic language than Trump to suggest voting fraud was a widespread problem.
"Standing for you, standing for the rule of law and election integrity, standing for the truth and not buckling under the pressure is what people want," Raffensperger said after his win.
WASHINGTON — Another grueling summer disaster season is arriving, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is under intense pressure even as its portfolio balloons, it pleads for more money from Congress and criticism comes on several fronts.
The agency manages more than 300 disaster declarations a year, a dramatic increase from the average of 108 disasters it responded to just a decade ago. For 2022, the disaster outlook is daunting.
Wildfires are expected to burn through millions of acres as Western states struggle with another spring drought, with so-called prescribed burns by the U.S. Forest Service slammed after they were blamed for devastating New Mexico fires this spring. A busy Atlantic hurricane season is on track to wreak havoc well into the autumn.
Tornadoes are forecast to continue destroying homes and businesses throughout the Central Plains as COVID-19 numbers, once again, tick up, adding another complicated layer to disaster response.
“That is the world we’re living in now. The storms are more frequent. The storms are more intense. And we need to be ready,” FEMA Deputy Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery David Bibo told States Newsroom in a late April interview.
Hurricane season
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual Atlantic hurricane forecast, released Tuesday, predicts another above normal season.
NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad noted while discussing the forecast that the United States has “just experienced two extremely active hurricane seasons, marking the first time on record that two consecutive hurricane seasons exhausted the list of 21 storm names.”
This year’s Atlantic hurricane season, he said, would likely bring at least 14 named storms with a minimum of six of those turning into hurricanes and at least three of those hurricanes turning into major storms that reach Category 3 or above.
FEMA pays close attention to NOAA’s forecast when predicting hurricanes’ effects.
The agency prepositions supplies like food, water and generators that communities typically need immediately following a natural disaster. But Bibo noted that people should have emergency supplies of their own and know what natural disasters are most likely to hit them, so they can have a plan in place.
Americans should know how they’ll get information about evacuation orders, where they’ll evacuate to and how they’ll reach loved ones in an emergency, he said.
“It only takes one hurricane or one wildfire in your community to really have a dramatic effect on people’s lives,” Bibo said.
Wildfire recovery
Helping Americans recover after a wildfire is a significant part of the FEMA mission, though combating wildfires on federal lands falls to the U.S. Forest Service, which is part of the Department of Agriculture, and Interior Department.
Randy Moore, chief of the Forest Service, told members of Congress in late April the agency was “preparing for another long and arduous fire year made worse by continuing severe drought across the West.”
“Last year we had 29,000 firefighters fighting fires, primarily in the West, and it still wasn’t enough,” he said. “We have to be really aggressive and forthright in trying to reduce the conditions that are a root cause of these fires out there.”
The U.S. Forest Service is using a new 10-year strategy to try to address what it calls a “full-blown wildfire and forest health crisis.”
The proposal suggests a “paradigm shift” for the agency, moving towards logging and prescribed burns to deal with the build-up of forest density that has contributed to worsening wildfires.
“We need to thin Western forests and return low-intensity fire to Western landscapes in the form of both prescribed and natural fire, working to ensure that forest lands and communities are resilient in the face of the wildland fire that fire-adapted landscapes need,” the report said.
Moore cautioned the Forest Service, responsible for 193 million acres of forests and grasslands, needs at least $20 billion more in the years ahead to hire sufficient firefighters, pay them well enough to ensure wildland firefighting as a career and to address a maintenance backlog that can exacerbate wildfires.
The bipartisan infrastructure law from last year provided about $3 billion for wildfires, but Moore said that’s just a “down payment” on the work that needs to be done.
“This is just not nearly enough to really get at the problem,” Moore said.
But Ohio Republican Rep. David Joyce, the ranking member on the House panel in charge of funding the Forest Service, said he had “serious concerns about the scale of increase.”
“As the nation faces record inflation, we must be extremely cognizant of the financial decisions we are making, as to not saddle our future generations with unnecessary economic burdens and debt,” Joyce said. “Like all Americans, the federal government must live within its means and doing so will require us to make difficult choices and discern wants from actual needs.”
Prescribed burns
The Forest Service’s use of prescribed burns has also come under scrutiny in recent months.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said the agency was remiss when it ignited a prescribed burn in her state on April 6 that later turned into the Hermits Peak fire.
“For me, it’s negligent to consider a prescribed burn in a windy season, in a state that’s under an extreme drought warning statewide,” she said. “So I think that it is likely that Congress and most of our federal partners accept that there is significant federal liability.”
Federal officials have opened a review of the prescribed burn, but have so far declined to publicly release the plan that’s supposed to be put together before intentionally lighting a wildfire.
Lujan Grisham said there wouldn’t be any more prescribed burns in New Mexico while the wildfires continue to burn.
Financial strain
FEMA is also asking Congress for more money in the coming years to address the ever-increasing number of disasters it responds to annually.
U.S. lawmakers provided the agency with $23.9 billion for the current fiscal year, a $2.19 billion boost from the prior year.
But still more is needed, officials say, leading FEMA to request Congress increase its funding during the next fiscal year, slated to begin in October, to $25.1 billion in discretionary spending.
FEMA officials have yet to testify on Capitol Hill about the request, though some lawmakers are questioning the way the agency responds to natural disasters and how it revised the National Flood Insurance Program.
A handful of Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation they say would address “systemic inequities” in who receives FEMA support.
“For decades, we have seen low-income communities and communities of color left behind after a disaster strikes,” said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat. “It’s past time that the federal government — and particularly the Federal Emergency Management Agency — makes disaster assistance equity a real priority to reduce barriers to recovery.”
FEMA has taken some steps under the Biden administration to address how it distributes federal disaster relief. That includes broadening the types of documents individuals could use to prove they owned or rented a house ahead of a disaster.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told U.S. House lawmakers in April that policy changes made last year when FEMA was heading into hurricane season led to “42,000 homeowners being eligible for disaster assistance from us that we would have previously denied.”
“I think making these simple policy changes that we did last year made a tremendous difference,” Criswell said, adding FEMA is looking at making other long-term changes to continue building equity into disaster response.
The new policy allows homeowners or renters to use state motor vehicle registration forms and utility bills to prove where they lived ahead of a natural disaster.
Thompson, chair of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, said that while he’s glad the Biden administration has made “many positive changes,” he wants to see the new programs made permanent and for FEMA to expand on its efforts.
The bill would require the FEMA Administrator to work with the Housing and Urban Development secretary and Small Business Administration administrator to create and implement “a process to ensure equity” throughout all programs.
Flood risk
FEMA has also tried to improve equity by overhauling how the National Flood Insurance Program determines a home’s flooding risk and what it charges homeowners for a policy.
The program, known as Risk Rating 2.0, is the most significant update to flood insurance premiums since the NFIP began in 1968.
The updated pricing, which took effect April 1, calculates a homeowner’s flood insurance premium by their property’s specific risk, not the flood zone they’re in.
Under the former system, FEMA said “policyholders with lower-valued homes [were] paying more than their share of the risk while policyholders with higher-valued homes [were] paying less than their share of the risk.”
“Because Risk Rating 2.0 considers rebuilding costs, FEMA can equitably distribute premiums across all policyholders based on home value and a property’s unique flood risk,” the agency said.
The change led to an increase in monthly costs for 77% of people with flood insurance with 7% of people paying between $10 – $20 more a month and 4% paying more than $20 more per month, according to FEMA.
But the new system has infuriated some U.S. lawmakers, including Louisiana Republican Rep. Garret Graves.
During a hearing with the FEMA administrator last month, Graves said he believed the agency was discriminating against people in several states due to the “huge surge in flood insurance rates.”
He noted some of his constituents had their annual flood insurance costs go from around $600 to $7,000, $8,000 or $9,000 per year.
“I’m having a lot of trouble understanding how you can be talking about equity and addressing marginalized or underserved communities, when FEMA is administratively thrusting these types of actions on our constituents,” Graves said.
FEMA Administrator Criswell said that the new flood insurance premiums ensure that “individuals that have homes that are in lower risk areas are not subsidizing homes that are in higher risk areas.”
What’s more important than that, Criswell said, is that now “homeowners truly understand what their risk is, which means that they have a better idea of how they can plan to protect their family.”
Weather and climate disasters
Last year the United States dealt with 20 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters that led to 688 direct or indirect deaths, according to a report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
The storms caused about $145 billion in damages, with Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana in August, contributing to $75 billion, the mid-February winter storm and cold accounting for $24 billion and the Western wildfires causing $10.9 billion.
The frequency and severity of extreme weather events during 2021 was “concerning because it hints that the extremely high activity of recent years is becoming the new normal.”
Three broad factors are leading to the increase in weather and climate disasters, including more assets at risk, vulnerability and “the fact that climate change is increasing the frequency of some types of extremes that lead to billion-dollar disasters,” the report said.
The report, published in January, notes that climate change is “supercharging the increasing frequency and intensity of certain types of extreme weather that lead to billion-dollar disasters — most notably the rise in vulnerability to drought, lengthening wildfire seasons in the Western states, and the potential for extremely heavy rainfall becoming more common in the eastern states.”
Rising sea levels are also exacerbating storm surge flooding from hurricanes.
Wisconsin Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on Facebook and Twitter.
