Chris Christie Launches 2024 Run in Bridge to Nowhere

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on Tuesday formally filed paperwork for his presidential run, hoping that he can bridge the gaping political divide in the United States.

Unfortunately, we’ve been here before, and it’s unlikely that Americans are going to want to go any further down this bridge to nowhere.

Christie ran for president in 2016 but flamed out spectacularly in the New Hampshire primary. He had taken multiple attacks from Donald Trump up until that point, but apparently it was all water under the bridge, as Christie threw whatever clout he had behind Trump.

Christie worked fairly closely with Trump throughout his presidency and on his failed 2020 reelection campaign. He finally broke with Trump when the former president refused to accept the election results, which was apparently a bridge too far. Christie has since been vocal in opposing Trump and may make that criticism a central tenet of his campaign, though it remains to be seen.

During his two terms as New Jersey governor, Christie seemed to take nothing but political beatings. The trouble began in 2012, when fellow Republicans accused him of getting too close to then-President Barack Obama during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

The following year, two of the three lanes of the George Washington Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey were shut down for several days. Christie was accused of ordering the lane closure, which came to be known as Bridgegate, to create traffic jams and punish a local Democratic mayor who didn’t support him.

All of these scandals took a real toll on Christie’s popularity. By 2016, he had the lowest approval rating of any Garden State governor in 20 years. That wasn’t helped when, the following year, New Jersey suffered a government shutdown. State parks and beaches were closed as a result of the shutdown, but Christie took his family to the beach for July 4, an outing that came to be known as Beachgate.

And of course, there is Christie’s bizarre and unrequited fanboy love for Bruce Springsteen, who called out Christie for his financial policies and for Bridgegate, and reportedly said Christie was not allowed to use any Springsteen songs on his campaigns.

Christie is, to his credit, one of the few Republican lawmakers actually willing to call Trump out for his actions. But it’s unclear whether Christie actually has enough political pull to do some damage during the race. You could say let’s cross that bridge when we get there, but a Monmouth University poll published at the end of May found that only 21 percent of voters have a favorable view of him, while 47 percent view him negatively.

Two weeks ago, Representative Virginia Foxx demanded Representative Maxwell Frost’s comments on student debt be removed from the record. And now, this week, the North Carolina Republican is at it again, interrupting Representative Jamaal Bowman and forcing him to suspend his comments on racism in House proceedings.

In a meeting for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Tuesday, representatives were debating House Resolution 461, which condemns “the use of elementary and secondary school facilities to provide shelter for aliens who are not admitted to the United States.” The resolution, introduced by Republican Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Brandon Williams, comes in response to lawmakers in New York and Maine merely exploring options to consider unoccupied student housing buildings as temporary options for migrants, certainly nothing that would impede students’ safety or education.

Republican Representative Bob Good, however, went further, offering an amendment to the bill to strip federal funding from public schools that shelter undocumented people.

The suggestion prompted Bowman to speak in opposition, detailing how essential federal funding is for New York City schools (especially given the federal government’s history of racist redlining policies that left many schools underfunded). He argued that Good’s amendment “seeks to double down on prior racist policy by implementing present-day racist policies.” Bowman also took issue with the suggestion that migrants are part of an “invasion,” noting its white supremacist origins and associations with the racist great replacement theory.

“Now I know none of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will admit to being racist—and I don’t think they are,” Bowman said. “But when you look at the rhetoric, and you hear the talking points, and look at the legislation that’s put forward, what are we to say?”

In the middle of Bowman’s comment, Foxx slammed the gavel nine times, demanding Bowman suspend his remarks, saying he cannot “engage in personality characterizations.”

“Thank you Madam Chair, it’s just very frustrating because it seems like the legislation itself engages in personalities, when it refers to a group of people that is derogatory,” Bowman countered. “So if the legislation is doing it, and we’re using words on the other side of the aisle like ‘invasion,’ as if it’s an army coming to our country, is that not personalities? Thank you, and I yield back.”

Foxx’s reaction to Bowman’s comments echoed her interruption of Frost’s comments two weeks ago, which also referenced racist policies. The Florida representative argued against the conservative logic surrounding student debt, “that because there was an injustice, we can’t fix it because it’s unfair to those who never had it fixed, means we would never progress on any issue in this country.”

“If we legislated using the logic that you bring to this issue today, women and Black folks wouldn’t have the right to vote because it would be unfair to those who never got to vote before them… Why do you bring that bigoted logic to this issue as it relates to students, but not any other issue?” Frost asked.

The “bigoted logic” remarks prompted Foxx to “demand his words be taken down.” Frost, like Bowman, generously heeded Foxx’s outrage towards his coolly reasoned argument, before proceeding.

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan has demanded the Justice Department hand over internal documents showing the extent of the investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Special counsel Jack Smith is investigating the former president for keeping classified material and for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. Jordan, a staunch Trump ally who has tried to interfere in other Trump investigations, has decided that he needs to step into the fray.

Jordan sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting “an unredacted copy of the memorandum outlining the scope of Mr. Smith’s probes regarding President Trump and any supporting documentation related to his appointment as special counsel,” NBC reported Tuesday. He gave Garland until June 20 to submit the papers.

The letter comes a day after Trump’s legal team met with the Justice Department to argue that the former president should not be charged for keeping classified material after leaving office. They gave no indication of how the meeting went, but Trump melted down on Truth Social shortly after, demanding to know “HOW CAN DOJ POSSIBLY CHARGE ME, WHO DID NOTHING WRONG.”

Smith has been circling ever closer to Trump, and many experts speculate that he will issue criminal charges soon.

This isn’t the first time Jordan has attempted to intervene in one (of many) investigations into Trump. It isn’t even the first time he’s gotten involved in this one. Last week, Jordan asked for details on the FBI employees involved in Smith’s investigation.

Jordan complained about the “institutional rot that pervades the FBI,” a favorite bugbear of his, and demanded to know which FBI personnel were working on the investigation and whether any had previously investigated Trump. (Trump is reportedly looking to purge all employees involved in investigating him.)

In March, after Trump was criminally indicted for his role in paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels, Jordan also attacked the Manhattan district attorney for that investigation. Jordan, House Administration Chair Bryan Steil, and House Oversight Chair James Comer alleged Alvin Bragg had a political agenda and demanded he testify in Congress about the investigation.

Bragg hit back, calling the attacks “baseless and inflammatory” and accused them of “acting more like criminal defense counsel trying to gather evidence for a client than a legislative body seeking to achieve a legitimate legislative objective.”

It’s been more than two years since hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And Republicans are still busy trying to downplay the outcome of their own conspiratorial, inciteful rhetoric. On Monday, for instance, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said the whole ordeal just consisted of mere “pockets of rioting.”

“We’ve seen people staying within the rope lines, we’ve seen the Shaman, we’ve seen video of him calling for you know, everybody staying peaceful,” Johnson said. “So, we just don’t hear that in the mainstream media, though. They want to paint a picture of just a mass riot all over the place—there were definitely pockets of rioting, but by and large, the vast majority of people there in Washington were just there to exercise their First Amendment rights to peacefully assemble, and that’s what most of them did.”

Yes, it was the mainstream media that “painted” this picture:

Last year, Johnson insisted the riot was not an “armed insurrection.”

In March 2021, Johnson told a radio host that the rioters who attacked the nation’s Capitol in an attempt to overturn an election “were people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law.” Nearly 150 officers were injured from the riots, but Johnson said that he would only have been concerned if they were Black Lives Matter or anti-fascist protesters.

Johnson’s desperate revisionism isn’t surprising. 

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attacks revealed that Johnson tried to personally give then–Vice President Mike Pence “alternate” electors for Michigan and Wisconsin (two states Joe Biden won). Such electors were indeed found to have been fraudulent; Pence’s team rejected them.

Last year, Johnson hired Pam Travis, one of 10 Wisconsin Republicans who signed fraudulent paperwork claiming to be a Donald Trump elector, to work on his reelection campaign.

Johnson was also one of 45 Senate Republicans who voted to declare Trump’s second impeachment trial unconstitutional, and one of 35 who voted against creating a commission to investigate the Capitol riots at all.

A Florida judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a law banning gender-affirming care for minors, ruling there was “no rational basis” for the measure.

In addition to banning care for children, the law, which Governor Ron DeSantis signed last month, also makes it significantly harder for trans adults to access care. Medical facilities could lose their license if they offered health care to trans or nonbinary children.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction against the law on Tuesday, meaning it is blocked while lawsuits against it play out in court. Hinkle cited multiple doctors who testified against the law that “denial of this treatment will cause needless suffering for a substantial number of patients and will increase anxiety, depression, and the risk of suicide.”

“There is no rational basis for a state to categorically ban these treatments,” he wrote.

This detail gets at the heart of the main Republican argument for blocking gender-affirming care. They argue they are protecting children, but these laws actually put LGBTQ people of all ages at risk of more harm, both physical and mental.

While the injunction only applies to the three immediate plaintiffs in the suit, legal principle would prevent the law from being applied to other people, legal expert Alejandra Caraballo explained. The injunction should also ensure adults can access care, although Florida may argue otherwise because the plaintiffs are all minors.

Hinkle’s injunction does not block the most horrifying part of the law, though. The measure allows the state to take custody of a child if they are being “subjected to or threatened with” gender-affirming care, which was categorized as a form of “physical harm.” Caraballo explained to The New Republic that technically, a state cannot be sued, so state officers in charge of enforcement are sued, instead.

Since there is no state officer in charge of enforcing custody, that particular provision cannot be addressed in this lawsuit. It can only be blocked once it is challenged directly during the legal process.

Tuesday’s ruling “would provide a lot of persuasive basis for challenging it if it comes up in actual family court,” said Caraballo, but people might not have the means or resources to use this as a defense.

“It creates a chilling effect” that could scare people away from seeking their still-legal care, she added.

In his 44-page ruling, Hinkle systematically dismantled all arguments that had been made in favor of the law, starting with the fact that “gender identity is real” and trans people do not choose to identify a certain way. That is who they are.

Hinkle’s decision also called out a Florida Republican legislator who called trans people “demons,” as proof of the bigotry the community faces. 

Hinkle pointed out that the state could not overrule parental rights in deciding what medical care was appropriate for their child, nor could they remove an adult patient’s right to make their own decision about treatment, especially since Florida had not proved that gender-affirming care is dangerous. “There are well-established standards of care for treatment of gender dysphoria,” he wrote. “Not a single reputable medical association has taken a contrary position.”

Florida had provided “nonexistent” evidence to the contrary and argued that the medical professionals who testified against the bill were acting out of “good politics, not good medicine.”

“If ever a pot called a kettle black, it is here,” Hinkle wrote. “The statute and rules were an exercise in politics, not good medicine.”

This post has been updated.