Haley forward of DeSantis? A brand new ballot of Republican county chairs finds that extra of them are flocking to former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, over present Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. “Among Republican chairs committed to a candidate, Trump has 37 percent, Haley has 16 percent and DeSantis has 9 percent,” experiences Seth Masket for Politico. “The candidate who chairs are most vehemently against? Chris Christie.”
Why care about county chairs? Masket explains that they “play a key role in shaping the race” since they’re “highly attentive to the party’s internal dynamics and are influential in local GOP circles; they offer the kind of endorsements that candidates are eager to collect.”
On the similar time, “they’re also still close to the rank-and-file grassroots, and their shifts are likely to signal where the rest of the party is going,” provides Masket.
That is regardless of a few of Haley’s latest gaffes and, uh, bolder proposals. “I had black friends growing up,” she mentioned in a CNN city corridor final night time after being requested about her latest feedback on the marketing campaign path in New Hampshire, throughout which she didn’t establish slavery as one of many causes of the Civil Conflict. “Of course the Civil War was about slavery,” she mentioned later. And final night time: “I was thinking past slavery, and talking about the lesson that we would learn going forward. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have said slavery. But, in my mind, that’s a given. Everybody associates the Civil War with slavery.”
Worry not, now Haley is making waves with a daring new proposal for a federal jobs program:
We have now to safe our faculties the identical manner we safe our airports.
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) January 5, 2024
Islamic State takes credit score: Yesterday, I reported that two bombs exploded in Iran at a memorial for prime army official Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike 4 years in the past. The explosion yesterday killed greater than 100 folks. Now, the Islamic State has taken credit score for the “dual martyrdom operation” during which two suicide bombers “detonated explosive belts strapped to their bodies,” per The New York Occasions.
Floridians attempt to get abortion up till 24 weeks: Voters within the Sunshine State try to undo abortion restrictions by placing a constitutional proper to an abortion on the 2024 poll.
Florida at the moment bans abortion after 15 weeks, and Governor Ron DeSantis has additionally signed into regulation a ban on abortions after six weeks, which has not but taken impact.
That is apparently not ok for a lot of impassioned Floridians. The deadline for getting this concern on the poll is February 1; the activist group Floridians Defending Freedom has gathered 863,876 licensed signatures, simply shy of the 891,876 they want, however with just a few extra weeks to go, they are saying it is extraordinarily seemingly they’ll get the problem added to the poll, which might then require 60 % voter approval to develop into regulation. Related methods proved profitable this previous 12 months in Ohio, and the 12 months earlier than in Kansas.
Allowing abortion up till 24 weeks would make Florida way more progressive on this concern than just about each European nation, which are likely to disallow abortion past the primary trimester, or 12-13 weeks. Although most mainstream publications do not point out it, infants are the scale of an ear of corn round 24 weeks. They will hear sounds exterior the mom’s physique, they’ve tastebuds, they usually can suck their thumbs.
My pro-life bias could also be displaying, admittedly, and plenty of pro-choicers rebut that only a few abortions occur after the primary trimester (solely 7 to 10 % of abortions nationwide, although Guttmacher and Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention knowledge differ of their estimates, which might conservatively complete round 60,000, which…does not appear negligible to me), however my level is that this: the U.S. pro-choice motion is an outlier in making an attempt to make abortion broadly permissive this late in being pregnant.
It stays to be seen whether or not Florida voters will probably be persuaded by the activists’ efforts.
Scenes from New York: The “Fearless Girl” statue, by Kristen Visbal, was placed on Wall Road in 2017 to advertise feminine empowerment and gender variety in company management. It certain is an attention-grabbing goal for pro-Palestine protesters as Hamas is just not precisely recognized for advocating for the rights of girls.
Wall Road’s ‘Fearless Lady’ dressed up in pro-Palestinian garb by Hamas supporter https://t.co/Ds2M4NdoH1 pic.twitter.com/I6VxiSfGrP
— New York Put up (@nypost) January 4, 2024
QUICK HITS
- Kate Manne’s new e book, Unshrinking, on fats positivity, “martials grievances on behalf of the fat-bodied in a world that refuses to make space for them, both literally and figuratively,” writes Kat Rosenfield for UnHerd, so “the reader is invited to marinate in an absolute sense of victimhood, safe in the knowledge that her misery is the job of the world to remedy.”
- Unacceptable stealth-editing from the Related Press:
Lotta stealth enhancing happening in that AP article. Listed below are the highest two grafs within the previous versus new variations. No editor’s be aware or something. pic.twitter.com/NskGzvlCFo
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) January 3, 2024
- Victimhood narrative merely doesn’t apply right here, as a lot as former Harvard President Claudine Homosexual pretends in any other case:
“Harm”? Homosexual stays a tenured school member on the world’s most prestigious college and can proceed to take pleasure in a $900K wage, per experiences. Justice Jackson has a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court docket. NHJ has earned hundreds of thousands of {dollars} as a public mental… https://t.co/q0ScsWV3Dm
— Rafael A. Mangual (@Rafa_Mangual) January 4, 2024
- “Are cities for tourists or residents?” asks Tyler Cowen.
- A must-read from The Free Press: “My Father Is an Imam in Gaza. Hamas Kidnapped Him for Refusing to Be Their Puppet.”
- “In a brave new world where every major must prove its worth to its debt-saddled ‘student-customers,’ the humanities have a hard time mounting a credible case that their disciplines catapult graduates into six-figure salaries. What humanities departments can offer their young charges—who grow more progressive by the year—is the promise that their majors can help them understand power and fight for equality,” writes Tyler Austin Harper for The Atlantic.
- “What they classify as a hate crime is itself a political judgment,” says presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy in a highly contentious NBC News interview. (Props to Ramaswamy, this can be a level Motive has been hitting for a few years.)
- New episode of Simply Asking Questions dropped yesterday. Why aren’t folks having extra youngsters?
