Failed MAGA Republican Candidate Arrested in Shootings Targeting New Mexico Democrats

A failed MAGA Republican New Mexico legislative candidate, who refused to accept his election loss, was arrested for a series of shootings at the homes of local Democratic leaders.

Albuquerque police arrested Solomon Peña on Monday for conspiring with and paying four men to carry out shootings in recent weeks at the homes of two Bernalillo County commissioners and two state legislators. No one was injured in the attacks.

Police said they suspected Peña was angry that he lost his race for the state House of Representatives. Peña received a mere 26 percent of the votes to Democratic incumbent Miguel Garcia’s 76 percent, according to the New Mexico secretary of state’s office.

“He had complaints about his election he felt being rigged,” police spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos said at a press conference Monday evening. “As the mayor said, he was an election denier—he doesn’t want to accept the results of his election.”

Despite the not at all close race, Peña refused to concede, tweeting, “I dissent. I am the MAGA king,” the night of November 9. A few days later, when Donald Trump announced he was running for president again, Peña tweeted his support for the former leader and said he had not conceded his own race.

“Now researching my options,” he added ominously.

Peña embraced Trump’s election denialism, even appearing to attend the January 6, 2021, rally that turned into the insurrection, according to a photo he shared on Twitter. He repeatedly insisted that his own election was rigged. After the results were in, he approached three of the four targeted Democratic officials at their homes, claiming he had proof the election was fraudulent and arguing it should not be certified. The Bernalillo County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to certify the election results.

Over the course of 2022, Peña also made almost two dozen donations to the Lyndon Larouche PAC, which was founded by far-right political activist and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche.

Albuquerque’s Democratic Mayor Tim Keller praised Peña’s arrest, urging city residents to “push back against hate in all forms and stop political violence.”

Peña is just the latest example of politically motivated attacks, particularly around the midterm elections. Election workers have seen a massive increase in threats and harassment since Trump refused to accept the 2020 election results. States ramped up protections for poll workers ahead of the midterms in November, especially after there were reports of armed self-appointed poll watchers showing up at ballot boxes.

And just weeks before the midterms, a man broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home in San Francisco and attacked her husband with a hammer.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Congress on Friday that the nation will hit the debt ceiling on Thursday, January 19. If lawmakers don’t suspend or raise the debt ceiling, Yellen wrote, there will be “irreparable harm” to the U.S. economy as well as global financial stability.

A breach of the debt ceiling could interrupt federal spending on things like Social Security, Medicare, or even just salaries of federal employees. It would also tank America’s credit rating.

Yellen said the Treasury will go to “extraordinary measures” to avoid default, giving lawmakers until early June to come up with a deal. These measures include redeeming existing and suspending new investments of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund and suspending reinvestment in separate retirement savings funds for federal workers.

Now Republicans and Democrats have a limited time to negotiate on what happens next in order to prevent a global crisis. Unfortunately, the situation primarily offers no-win scenarios.

Kevin McCarthy promised to leverage the debt ceiling to cut spending in exchange for gaining the House speaker’s gavel. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has said there are no plans for such cuts, or negotiation at all on something that should be a bipartisan move to avoid crisis.

Worse, right-wing media is ratcheting up pressure on Republicans to leverage the debt ceiling for political demands, something that surely could push spineless Republicans to follow suit (even while it would harm their own base).

Democrats, tasked with advocating for good governance, are then stuck between holding the line and forcing Republicans’ hands to cooperate (risking potential national economic crisis if Republicans dig their heels in) and negotiating with them in order to avoid such disaster by potentially agreeing to cut essential social spending.

“What we’re creating is a showdown where Democrats are trying to show that the Republicans are being irresponsible, but the cost of proving that irresponsibility is an economic worldwide catastrophe,” Laura Blessing, senior fellow at Georgetown’s Government Affairs Institute, told The New Republic the last time this all happened.

Kevin McCarthy made countless concessions to become speaker of the House, but one of those deals could pose a major risk to security in the Capitol.

Matt Gaetz, who staunchly opposed the California Republican’s bid for the speakership, revealed Thursday evening to CNN that McCarthy had agreed to release all the security camera footage from the Capitol on the day of the January 6 insurrection. McCarthy also indicated Thursday he was open to releasing the video footage.

The Capitol Police Board says the final decision isn’t even up to McCarthy. The board, which is made up of the House and Senate sergeants at arms and the architect of the Capitol, opposes making the footage public because doing so could inadvertently help the people who overran the Capitol two years ago—as well as people who might want to do it again.

Releasing the footage could reveal strategic locations in the Capitol, such as safe rooms and security cameras. It could also help give people a better sense of the building’s layout, thus jeopardizing Capitol security.

The Justice Department and Capitol Police have previously pushed back on releasing the more than 14,000 hours of footage from January 6. USCP Chief Sean Gallagher said in a court affidavit from July that his department “continues to consider any interior footage of the U.S. Capitol to be highly sensitive information, and that access to it should be strictly limited.”

The Justice Department also argued that releasing the footage could reveal sensitive information pertaining to the cases of people arrested in connection to the insurrection. The FBI has arrested about 900 people connected to the insurrection and has the identities of hundreds more. A total of about 3,000 people could be charged over storming the Capitol, when all is said and done.

It’s not clear what Republicans think they will gain by releasing the footage. Many GOP lawmakers, including Gaetz, Andy Biggs, and Louie Gohmert have previously called for the videos to be made public in an effort to exonerate people connected to the riot. House Republicans have also formed a House Judiciary subcommittee dedicated to investigating ongoing criminal investigations, such as the ones into January 6.

There is also a chance, which Republicans do not seem to have considered, that releasing the footage will backfire spectacularly. The videos could reveal even more damaging information about the Republicans already under scrutiny for their actions before and during the attack.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul barely held onto her seat in the last election, and now she’s alienating her own party by nominating Hector LaSalle as chief judge for the state Court of Appeals.

LaSalle, an appellate court judge, is set to have a hearing next Wednesday before the state Senate Judiciary Committee, which will then vote either to advance or tank his nomination. A majority of the committee has expressed skepticism thus far. Hochul for her part has said she will do “everything” to get LaSalle through the committee, arguing the whole Senate should be the one to vote.

LaSalle has built a reputation as a generally experienced, knowledgeable judge. Proponents cite things like the New York State Bar Association deeming him “well qualified.” They also point to the history to be made upon his appointment: LaSalle would be the court’s first Latino chief judge, if confirmed.

Meanwhile, opponents—progressives, moderates, and, yes, Latinos, among others—find parts of his record contrary to the kinds of liberal ideals Hochul would presumably stand for. LaSalle’s record on issues including abortion, criminal justice, and labor would have massive implications on the already-conservative court. And Democrats are still reeling from the impacts of an antagonistic court. During the midterms, the party suffered in part due to unfavorable district maps drawn by the state’s highest court, whose conservative majority was constructed by Andrew Cuomo. So scrutiny on any appointment is warranted, especially one whose record is like LaSalle’s.

Over a decade ago, the New York state attorney general launched an investigation into potential fraudulent practices being carried out by an organization that ran so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” which pose as real health clinics but are actually run by anti-abortion activists. LaSalle voted to intervene, hindering the probe by preventing investigators from reviewing even promotional materials from the centers.

In 2014, LaSalle joined an opinion holding that a criminal defendant could not appeal his conviction of a weapons possession charge because he knowingly waived the right to appeal when he entered a guilty plea. However, when the defendant entered the guilty plea, he was told by the trial judge that he could still appeal “certain constitutional issues.” And he was indeed seeking to appeal his conviction on the basis of a constitutional issue: He claimed he was subject to an illegal police search. Nevertheless, LaSalle signed onto the majority opinion that denied the appeal.

In 2015, LaSalle voted alongside a majority opinion allowing cable television company Cablevision to sue union officials who were criticizing the company—contrary to legal precedent that protected organizing workers from such corporate lawsuits. In other words, LaSalle upended state legal precedent in favor of a company, and against workers.

The Court of Appeals—which LaSalle is now nominated to—overturned the latter two decisions that LaSalle joined.

These are just some of the troubling opinions LaSalle has joined. Others include preventing a victim of vicious domestic abuse from filing suit against the police for repeatedly ignoring her pleas for help, and that a 15-year-old who could only read at a fourth-grade level needed no special protection during interrogation.

That Hochul had many other options and still chose LaSalle shows either a lack of conviction in her purported beliefs or severe political ineptitude. At least 14 of the 42 Democrats in the state Senate have come out against LaSalle, with even more expressing uncertainty. That leaves Hochul with maybe 28 Democrats and 21 Republicans to work with; she’ll likely need Republican support to help push the nomination through. Meanwhile, a massive array of unions, reproductive rights and immigrant advocacy organizations, local and state elected officials, and political organizing groups have all similarly come out against LaSalle.

And yet Hochul has held fast—to an impressive extent.

Just this week, Ironworkers Vice President James Mahoney criticized Hochul’s nomination at a press conference, saying the nomination felt like being put “on the menu,” especially after he and other labor organizers worked so hard to elect Hochul in the first place. Afterward, Hochul allegedly revoked Mahoney’s invite to her State of the State speech the following day (a speech with prepared remarks that did not mention LaSalle or even utter the word “union”).

Hochul’s decision to nominate LaSalle at all is questionable. Her resolve in sticking by it is remarkable. As seems evident, again and again, a certain ineptitude or simple lack of conviction is almost a sufficient condition for powerful New York Democrats.

Laura Ingraham tried to use the discovery of classified documents in Joe Biden’s home as proof the president is corrupt, but she ended up calling out someone else entirely.

The Fox News host argued that Biden was more focused on his family’s “corrupt business interests” than being president.

Her Thursday night comments demonstrate both a staggering lack of self-awareness and excellent ironic timing, as they came the day before the Trump organization was sentenced for a 15-year tax fraud scheme.

Former President Donald Trump repeatedly showed more interest in protecting his business interests than actually leading the country. An analysis of his tax returns by the Joint Committee on Taxation appears to indicate that Trump used his office to steer federal business to his own companies. He and other government officials would stay at his hotels while traveling abroad. Foreign officials spent more than $750,000 at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., in an attempt to curry favor with the president. And at one point, Kellyanne Conway said on television people should “go buy Ivanka’s stuff.”

Trump’s tax returns also show that he paid little to no income tax in the past few years and may have withheld details about certain payments and sales to avoid paying tax on those funds.

When it comes to caring for the country, as Ingraham said, the record is equally clear: Trump was impeached the first time for trying to pressure Ukraine into secretly investigating Biden and his family. The January 6 investigative committee unanimously recommended criminal charges against Trump for his role in the insurrection, and he is under investigation by the FBI for taking classified documents to Mar-a-Lago.

Biden, on the other hand, has sought to pass major legislation that would massively benefit the United States, such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. When his lawyers discovered the classified documents at his former office and private residence, they immediately returned them to the National Archives and have been cooperating with the investigation. Biden is not perfect, but at least he actually seems invested in his job.