‘Hardcore Maga’ on display as Republican contenders make their pitches at CPAC

Many, many things have changed in American politics since 2016, but one thing has stayed the same – Donald Trump’s position as the most popular man in the Republican party.

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He’s been in a commanding position among Republicans ever since clinching its presidential nomination more than six years ago, and that dynamic hasn’t meaningfully changed in the years since. Case in point: the latest batch of opinion polls show him essentially blowing all the other potential contenders for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination out of the water.

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As Sebastian Gorka made clear at the start of today’s events, CPAC is very much a convention of the “hardcore Maga”. Trump speaks tomorrow, but his most powerful presumed challenger next year, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, isn’t showing up at all. Instead, CPAC attendees will today hear from Nikki Haley, who is running next year, and Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former secretary of state who is expected to launch a campaign.

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CPAC attracts conservatives from across the country. We’ll try to let you know what they think of Trump’s challengers, and whether they agree that – after all that’s happened – he remains the best man to lead the GOP.

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Good morning, US politics blog readers. We’re coming to you today from Oxon Hill, Maryland, a place not everyone has heard of but which is currently host to an event many of you have – the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Sebastian Gorka, a former White House adviser to Donald Trump who just took the stage, encapsulated its purpose well in his greeting to the audience: “this is the hardest of the hardcore Maga, right?” The king of Maga himself is not expected at the conference until tomorrow, and today’s highest profile speaker is Nikki Haley, a fellow contender for the Republican presidential nomination who is due at 12 pm. Also speaking are conservative firebrands like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump Jr and Steve Bannon.

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There is a world outside CPAC. Here’s what’s happening in it:

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  • Joe Biden is at the White House, where he’ll award the Medal of Honor to retired army colonel Paris Davis for actions during the Vietnam War, and then welcome German chancellor Olaf Scholz.

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• • Kamala Harris is heading to San Francisco for a fundraiser and roundtable with small businesses.

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• • White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefs reporters at 12.45pm.

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Nikki Haley has a tall order in overcoming the former president’s popularity among Republicans.

The latest polls have shown her support well below that of Trump’s. Here’s one from Yahoo News/YouGov, which shows Trump in the lead with 45% support, against Haley’s 4%.

Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, is surely aware of where she would end up if the Republican primary were held today. As she closed out her speech, she appealed to the audience to consider an alternative to the former president.

“We’ve lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections. Our cause is right, but we have failed to win the confidence of a majority of Americans. That ends now. If you’re tired of losing, then put your trust in a new generation. And if you want to win – not just as a party, but as a country – then stand with me,” Haley said.

Nikki Haley is now on stage at CPAC, and started her stump speech off by reiterating her call for politicians over the age of 75 to take a mental competency test.

“When I launched my campaign, I said every politician over 75 years old should be required to take a mental competency test. Have you seen DC lately? We should start with Joe Biden – and we shouldn’t stop there,” she said. The last part seemed to stir a murmur of disapproval from the audience, considering that Donald Trump is 76, and would also be subject to one of these tests.

At their retreat in Baltimore this week, House Democrats voiced enthusiasm about Joe Biden‘s likely reelection campaign, with the president expected to formally announce his 2024 bid in the next several weeks.

“I think he will win. I think he’s our strongest candidate,” congressman Pete Aguilar, the House Democratic caucus chair, said Thursday at an event with Punchbowl News. Aguilar added, “I think that he can and should run, and he’s going to have the support of the House Democratic caucus.”

Even House progressives, who have previously clashed with Biden over policy concerns, appear to be rallying behind the president. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Thursday that she hopes Biden will announce his reelection campaign sooner rather than later.

“Nobody is surprised that Biden was not my choice in the first election for the primary,” Jayapal said. “But the CPC and the President and his administration have formed an incredibly strong partnership.”

The mayor of a Maryland city has resigned after authorities arrested him on charges of possessing and distributing images of child sexual abuse, according to multiple reports.

Patrick Wojahn, 47, had been the mayor of College Park since 2015 and, before that, a member of the city council there for eight years when he was arrested Thursday. He had submitted his resignation later the previous night, as the local news outlet WBAL reported, but that did little to head off the scandal that his arrest ignited, drawing headlines nationally.

Charging documents cited by the local news station WTOP accused Wojahn of using an anonymous account to upload child abuse imagery to the mobile messaging application Kik in January. Kik officials then alerted the federal missing and exploited children center, which prompted police to subpoena internet service providers’ records that linked the uploads to Wojahn.

Local county investigators searched Wojahn’s home in February, and they seized cell phones, a tablet, a computer and a storage device before Thursday’s arrest.

Wojahn faces 40 counts of possessing child abuse imagery and 16 of distributing it.

College Park has a population of about 35,000 and is just northeast of Washington DC. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wojahn’s arrest shocked the city’s residents.

Local resident Drake Allen said he feared the scandal showed that College Park was “headed in the wrong direction”.

“I don’t know if this is going to wake anybody up. It should, but it probably won’t,” Allen said, before describing how he wishes Wojahn’s successor is “just a regular mayor who does his job.”

On stage at CPAC now is Donald Trump Jr, who came bearing gifts.

“There’s a little surprise for all of you,” he told the audience. “Check under your seats. If there happens to be a gold chocolate bar underneath there … that’s a VIP ticket to my father’s reception tomorrow at CPAC,” the former president’s son said.

Wonder what Roald Dahl would think of that.

Politico has the scoop on a policy proposal of sorts from Donald Trump, in his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

The former president, who of course made his name in real estate, wants to hold a contest to design and build “up to 10 new ‘Freedom Cities’, built from the ground up on federal land”.

He is also proposing…

… an investment in the development of vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles; the creation of ‘hives of industry’ sparked by cutting off imports from China; and a population surge sparked by ‘baby bonuses’ to encourage would-be-parents to get on with procreation.

It is all, his team says, part of a larger nationwide beautification campaign meant to inspire forward-looking visions of America’s future.

Naturally, the man whose (recycled) slogan is “Make America Great Again” heralds the futuristic policy by looking back – in part, regarding the building of the US highway system, to the 1950s, his happy place – and of course to his own four years in the White House.

He says: “Past generations of Americans pursued big dreams and daring projects that once seemed absolutely impossible. They pushed across an unsettled continent and built new cities in the wild frontier. They transformed American life with the interstate highway system – magnificent it was. And they launched a vast network of satellites into orbit all around the earth.

“But today, our country has lost its boldness. Under my leadership, we will get it back in a very big way. If you look at just three years ago, what we were doing was unthinkable, how good it was, how great it was for our country. Our objective will be a quantum leap in the American standard of living.”

There’s quite a lot more. It’s rather odd. Politico also says Trump is expected to talk about policy proposals at CPAC on Saturday.

Stepping away from CPAC for a moment, the Guardian’s Michael Sainato reports that leaked audio indicates a lax approach to faulty bearings at major freight rail companies – the very component that failed on the train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio and spilled toxic chemicals:

In leaked audio heard by the Guardian, a manager for one of the US’s largest rail companies can be heard explaining to a former carman that they should stop tagging railcars for broken bearings. The manager says doing so delays other cargo.

The disclosure comes as federal agencies investigate the derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. A wheel-bearing failure was cited as the cause of the crash in a preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board.

In late 2016, Stephanie Griffin, a former Union Pacific carman, went to her manager with concerns that she was getting pushback for tagging – or reporting for repair – railcars. Her manager told her it was OK to skip inspections.

Griffin asked if the manager could put that in writing. “That’s weird,” said the manager. “We have 56 other people who are not bad-ordering stuff out there. You’re definitely not going to get in trouble for it.”

Griffin said: “He refused to bad-order [mark for repair] cars for bad wheel bearings. My boss took issue with it because it increased our dwell time. When that happened, corporate offices would start berating management to release the cars.”

Dwell time refers to the time a train spends at a scheduled stop without moving. “It’s very obvious that management is not concerned with public safety, and only concerned with making their numbers look good,” Griffin said.

Griffin also claimed she and other workers did not receive any formal training to inspect and repair railcars, and were left to learn from an older worker and figure the rest out from American Association of Railroads and Federal Railroad Administration handbooks. Griffin suggested all major railroad carriers operate similarly.

The former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele possibly spoke for quite a few Americans on Thursday night, when he told the Republican Georgia congresswoman and far-right standard-bearer Marjorie Taylor Greene to “just shut the hell up” about a “national divorce”.

“She has no clue what the hell she’s talking about,” Steele told MSNBC. “Why do we listen to this crazy fool? Marjorie Taylor Greene, please just shut the hell up. Do us all a favor. You are an embarrassment to the Republican party and to the country as a congresswoman.”

Greene, a determined conspiracy theorist and bomb-thrower nonetheless newly powerful in the House GOP, has been advocating a “divorce” between red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) states.

“We fought that war,” Steele said, referring to the civil war between 1861 and 1865 which ended with the assassination of the president who won it, Abraham Lincoln.

“A Republican president lost his life over trying to save the union, and this fool wants to split it? So, here we go. This is the kind of crazy that requires a lot of heavy thinking, because she isn’t.”

Greene has said she is not advocating civil war, a prospect some observers fear she is nonetheless bringing uncomfortably close.

The Guardian recommends the work of one such observer, Barbara F Walter, seen here discussing how it “hurts” to be told she looks like Greene, and here discussing her recent book, How Civil Wars Start:

This is a convention of conservatives, so you shouldn’t be surprised to hear calls for smaller government.

Usually such rhetoric centers around deregulation and cutting taxes. But congressman Matt Gaetz wants to get rid of much of Washington’s law enforcement capabilities.

“Seems every time I turn around, they’re engaged in surveillance or list building or monitoring, and I don’t care if it takes every second of our time and every ounce of our energy, we either get this government back on our side, or we defund and get rid of, abolish, the FBI, CDC, ATF” and justice department, Gaetz said, to applause.

Welcome to the defund the police club, congressman.

Now on stage is Matt Gaetz, a far-right Republican congressman who you may remember because he just was cleared by the justice department of involvement in sex trafficking.

“I think vindication looks pretty good on me!” the Florida lawmaker said, as he kicked off his remarks.

Another reason to know Gaetz: he was a leader of the group of Republicans who refused to elect Kevin McCarthy speaker of the House until he made concessions, leading to the unprecedented delay in the new chamber’s GOP majority beginning its work.

Rightwing congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene just spoke at CPAC, where she railed against familiar targets of conservative ire, such as transgender people and America’s support for Ukraine.

But she also made a bit of news: she plans to reintroduce legislation to make providing gender-affirming care to minors a felony.

“Last Congress, I did something radical and extreme, and remember Marjorie Taylor Greene, she’s so extreme,” she said. The obviously sarcastic remark drew applause.

“I introduced a bill called the Protect Children’s Innocence Act … It couldn’t pass last Congress because like I said, Nancy Pelosi was the speaker of the House, and she doesn’t believe in gender at all,” Greene said, which is a little hard to believe if you have ever heard the Democratic former House speaker talk.

“But we have a new speaker in our Republican majority in the House of Representatives, and I’m going to be introducing my bill, the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, that will make it a felony to perform anything to do with gender affirming care.” The crowd erupted in applause.

Greene first introduced the legislation in the last Congress, when Democrats controlled the House and Senate, but it never went anywhere.

The incipient Republican civil war between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis heated up a little today, with news of how the former president reportedly plans to attack the Florida governor in the presidential primary.

Axios reported that Trump plans to attack “Ron DeSanctimonious, as he delights in branding the governor”, in areas including perceived disloyalty, support for changes to Social Security and Medicare and his response to the Covid pandemic.

Trump recently denied road-testing another nickname, Meatball Ron, though he conveniently repeated it in his denial.

DeSantis did not comment on the Axios report. Axios pointed out that earlier this week the governor told Fox News he saw Trump’s attacks as “background noise”.

Trump and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley are the only major declared candidates for the Republican nomination in 2024. DeSantis is among others expected to run.

Trump and DeSantis dominate polling, though Trump has recently enjoyed a boost. Polls have also shown Haley and DeSantis splitting anti-Trump support, giving Trump the win.

Axios said Trump would focus on votes DeSantis cast as a congressman to raise the eligibility aid for Medicare.

In a related attack line, Trump reportedly wants to link DeSantis to Paul Ryan, the former vice-presidential nominee and House speaker now on the board at Fox and a regular Trump target.

Covid, Axios said, “is a top Trump target, even though the governor is known for resisting mask mandates. Trump plans to attack DeSantis’ caution in the earliest days of the pandemic – and try to fight the issue to a draw”.

On a similarly muddy issue, Trump reportedly wants to portray DeSantis as “wishy-washy on the war” in Ukraine, while he himself “toes the MAGA line of cutting aid”.

Finally, Axios said Trump planned to attack DeSantis for perceived disloyalty, after Trump supported his first bid for governor in 2018, and likability.

Speaking to Fox News this week, DeSantis said Trump “used to say how great of a governor I was. And then I win a big victory [in the 2022 midterms] and all of a sudden he had different opinions. And so you could take that for what it’s worth.”

Donald Trump may be beloved at CPAC, but he’s apparently been banned by Fox News? That’s what the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington reports:

Fox News has imposed a “soft ban” on Donald Trump appearing on the channel, his inner circle is reportedly complaining, even as the broadcaster extends a warm invitation to other Republican hopefuls in next year’s presidential election.

The news startup Semafor reports that the cooling of relations between the former president and his once-beloved cable news channel has gone so far that a “soft ban” or “silent ban” is now holding Trump at arm’s length. The former US president has not made a weekday showing on Fox News since he chatted with his closest friend among the network’s star hosts, Sean Hannity, in September.

Meanwhile, Trump’s rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination are currently frequent guests on Fox. Media Matters for America, a watchdog that keeps a close eye on the network’s output, has counted seven weekday appearances by the former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley since she launched her presidential bid last month.

Even the lesser known right-wing activist and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who threw his hat into the ring last week, has appeared four times on Fox. Florida’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, who is widely expected to compete with Trump though he has yet to declare, is also repeatedly seen on the network.

Many, many things have changed in American politics since 2016, but one thing has stayed the same – Donald Trump’s position as the most popular man in the Republican party.

He’s been in a commanding position among Republicans ever since clinching its presidential nomination more than six years ago, and that dynamic hasn’t meaningfully changed in the years since. Case in point: the latest batch of opinion polls show him essentially blowing all the other potential contenders for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination out of the water.

As Sebastian Gorka made clear at the start of today’s events, CPAC is very much a convention of the “hardcore Maga”. Trump speaks tomorrow, but his most powerful presumed challenger next year, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, isn’t showing up at all. Instead, CPAC attendees will today hear from Nikki Haley, who is running next year, and Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former secretary of state who is expected to launch a campaign.

CPAC attracts conservatives from across the country. We’ll try to let you know what they think of Trump’s challengers, and whether they agree that – after all that’s happened – he remains the best man to lead the GOP.

Good morning, US politics blog readers. We’re coming to you today from Oxon Hill, Maryland, a place not everyone has heard of but which is currently host to an event many of you have – the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Sebastian Gorka, a former White House adviser to Donald Trump who just took the stage, encapsulated its purpose well in his greeting to the audience: “this is the hardest of the hardcore Maga, right?” The king of Maga himself is not expected at the conference until tomorrow, and today’s highest profile speaker is Nikki Haley, a fellow contender for the Republican presidential nomination who is due at 12 pm. Also speaking are conservative firebrands like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump Jr and Steve Bannon.

There is a world outside CPAC. Here’s what’s happening in it:

• Joe Biden is at the White House, where he’ll award the Medal of Honor to retired army colonel Paris Davis for actions during the Vietnam War, and then welcome German chancellor Olaf Scholz.
• Kamala Harris is heading to San Francisco for a fundraiser and roundtable with small businesses.
• White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefs reporters at 12.45pm.