Suddenly, Marsha Blackburn Is Really, Really Afraid of Taylor Swift

Senator Marsha Blackburn on Wednesday became the latest Republican to run scared from Taylor Swift.

Swift has not yet weighed in on the 2024 elections, nor has she given any indication that she intends to. Yet in recent days, Republicans have increasingly accused Swift of being a Democratic operative, including insisting that she will rig the NFL Super Bowl to get more attention ahead of endorsing President Joe Biden (as if one of the biggest musical performers in the world needs to attract more attention).

While Swift rarely weighs in on politics, instead tending to encourage her fans to act without telling them how to do so, she did endorse Biden in 2020. And in the past, she has taken particular aim at Blackburn, who represents Swift’s home state of Tennessee and is up for reelection this November.

When asked Wednesday morning if she thought Swift’s endorsement could affect the upcoming election, Blackburn quickly became tongue-tied. She started by complimenting Swift, in an obvious effort to not alienate the singer’s millions of fans, and then stumbled her way to complaining about the “border, the open border, the Biden border policy.”

Blackburn is one of many Republican senators resisting a bipartisan deal on the border. The GOP has actually spent months working to tank the deal because Donald Trump, Biden’s likely 2024 opponent, has said that any compromise with Democrats will be too lenient on immigrants. He also doesn’t want a bill that could potentially benefit Biden to pass.

Swift broke her long-running apolitical approach to publicity in 2018, when she endorsed Blackburn’s Democratic opponents in the midterm elections. Swift said in a statement that Blackburn’s voting record “appalls and terrifies me.”

Swift’s 2020 documentary Miss Americana shows the singer crying as she explains to her father why she needs to speak out against Blackburn, over the latter’s opposition to LGBTQ rights and the Violence Against Women Act. Swift criticizes Blackburn’s policies and calls her “Trump in a wig.”

Blackburn isn’t the only one getting worked up over Swift. Trump himself is frustrated by all the attention on the singer, and has privately insisted that he is “more popular” than she and has more loyal fans, Rolling Stone reported Tuesday. Trump also said it “obviously” made no sense that Swift was named Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year instead of him.

Trump’s anti-Swift ire has some of his more powerful supporters plotting a “holy war” on the pop star, according to Rolling Stone.

The real danger that Swift poses to Republicans isn’t her politics, specifically. Instead, as Edith Olmstead wrote for The New Republic in September, “it’s because of her vast influence over a younger demographic that conservatives have famously struggled to attract or exert an influence upon themselves.”

Mike Johnson’s ties to Christian nationalism are well documented, but a new report reveals his long-standing connection to a particularly extremist strain of Christianity—and the House speaker’s refusal to disavow it should be a source of major concern.

An investigation published Wednesday by The Daily Beast reveals Johnson has particularly close relationships with leaders of Christian dominionism, a radical sect of Christian fundamentalism that supports establishing an entirely Christian nation, opposes LGBTQ rights, and even defends slavery.

The Beast asked Johnson’s office whether the speaker “thought biblically sanctioned violence conflicted with his duties as an officer of the constitution, whether he denounced the teachings of hardline fundamentalists who have endorsed biblical slavery and rejected constitutional provisions like liberty and justice, and whether he personally believed the Bible permitted slavery.” A spokesperson declined to explicitly disavow any of those beliefs.

“None of these actions or comments you are referencing were made by Speaker Johnson. The Speaker is not going to apologize to the Daily Beast for his Christian faith or judge the beliefs or statements of others,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

While Johnson has been open about his fervent faith, he has previously evaded other questions about just how deeply he believes in Christian fundamentalism. Keri Ladner, a religious studies scholar and author, told the Beast that Johnson is “too smart” to openly state he backs widely decried Christian sects.

But “when you dig into the people around Johnson, that’s what you find when you peel back the layers,” Ladner said. “It’s absolutely in that orbit.”

One of those people is David Barton, a Christian nationalist author and activist. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that Barton has repeatedly “demonized LGBTQ persons and communities, arguing that HIV and AIDS are god-given consequences for living out one’s LGBTQ life.” Barton has also argued against aspects of the Thirteenth Amendment, insisting there is a biblical defense for slavery.

Johnson has known Barton for at least a quarter-century, and said at a Christian lawmakers’ event two years ago that Barton has had “a profound influence on me, and my work, and my life, and everything I do.”

After Johnson was elected speaker, Barton said on a podcast in October that he and his organization had been advising the Louisiana Republican on who to hire for his staff. In another, more recent podcast, Barton said Johnson becoming speaker gave him and his group “some tools at our disposal” that “we haven’t had in a long time.”

Johnson has also touted close relationships with Tony Perkins, a vocal Christian nationalist, and Mat Staver, who has called for the criminalization of same-sex relationships.

It’s no secret that Johnson holds extreme beliefs. He blames the collapse of the Roman Empire on LGBTQ people and opposes abortion access. He compared himself to Moses, decried the separation of church and state, and has a Christian nationalist flag hanging outside his office. The growing evidence of the people and causes he allows to influence him are further proof that he will try to push Congress to the right.

At least one Republican has reached a breaking point over Donald Trump’s border security chicanery.

On Tuesday, North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer had swing voters at the front of his mind, lobbing his own mud at Trump for describing the bipartisan deal as a “betrayal.”

“Here’s what I worry about. If we don’t try to do something when we have the moment to do something, all of those swing voters in swing states for whom the border is the number one priority have every right to look at us and go: ‘You blew your opportunity. We were ready to give you a shot, and you blew it,’” Cramer told CNN’s Manu Raju.

“I don’t see that coming back as a reward to us,” Cramer added. “If we don’t try, then shame on us.”

Republicans have spent months tanking a potential border deal in an increasingly transparent attempt to help Trump get reelected to the White House.

“As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible open borders betrayal of America,” Trump told a crowd of supporters at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday. “I’ll fight it all the way. A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say, that’s OK. Please blame it on me. Please.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are on the offensive, claiming that Republicans—who have a measly two-seat majority in the House—chickened out of a “tough deal.”

“It’s clear that when it comes to border security, Democrats are for the fix, and Republicans are for the fiction,” Representative Eric Swalwell told CNN.

And President Joe Biden took a more aggressive stance on the issue over the weekend, following a Supreme Court decision that launched a standoff between Texas state officials and federal border patrol agents.

“Give me the power, I asked them the very day I got into office,” Biden said. “Give me the Border Patrol, give me the people, give me the judges, give me the people who can stop this and make it work,” he added.

During a campaign stop in South Carolina, Biden supported the emerging deal, and said that he would shut down the border if given the authority by Congress.

“It would also give me as president the emergency authority to shut down the border until it could get back under control. If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly,” he added.

Republican Representative Troy Nehls went on a rant loaded with racist dog whistles about his Democratic counterpart Cori Bush after she confirmed the Justice Department is investigating her campaign spending.

Bush, a Missouri progressive, said Tuesday that the Department of Justice is investigating her use of campaign funds for security services. Bush said she used the money to retain personal security, including her husband, due to “relentless threats to my physical safety and life.”

Congressional ethics rules for representatives allow them to use campaign funds to pay family members for “bona fide services,” as long as those payments do not exceed fair market value. Bush said she hired her husband as part of her security team because he was able to provide protection at or below market rate.

Nehls went off on Bush Tuesday evening. “The idea to pay her thug money to try to help protect her this and that, for what?” the Texas Republican demanded. “Maybe if she wouldn’t be so loud all the time, maybe she wouldn’t be getting threats.”

When asked by CNN’s Melanie Zanona if he felt Bush deserved the threats, Nehls said, “No, what I’m saying is, is that when you’re out there talking the way she does.… She’s pretty radical. And maybe she should tone it down a little bit.”

While Nehls did not explicitly mention Bush’s race, he did use multiple anti-Black tropes such as “thug” and “loud” Black woman. Bush noted as much when she responded to Nehls on X (formerly Twitter), demanding he apologize.

Bush also noted the veiled threat in Nehls’s comments that she should “tone it down” or face threats. Republicans have increasingly used language both veiled and overt that appears to call for political violence—and people are only too willing to listen.

A man House Republicans had previously claimed was a whistleblower on Joe Biden’s corruption categorically debunked all of the GOP’s accusations in a closed-door hearing on Tuesday.

Eric Schwerin, a longtime business partner of Hunter Biden, testified in front of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees in a closed-door interview. Schwerin also worked as a financial adviser for Joe Biden from 2009 until 2017, during which time he was able to see transactions in and out of the then vice president’s bank accounts.

“Based on that insight, I am not aware of any financial transactions or compensation that Vice President Biden received related to business conducted by any of his family members or their associates nor any involvement by him in their businesses,” Schwerin said in a prepared opening statement obtained by The New Republic.

Republicans have repeatedly accused Biden of profiting from his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings. House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer has spearheaded the impeachment inquiry into Biden, accusing the president and first son of influence peddling and accepting bribes. He has yet to produce any evidence of Biden’s wrongdoing.

Comer had listed Schwerin as one of the many supposed whistleblowers who spoke to Oversight Committee investigators about the Biden family. In March, Comer said four whistleblowers had come forward. But when committee Democrats asked him to share the new information, they were told that there wasn’t actually any new witness information. Comer’s statements referred to just two people: Schwerin and Kathy Chung, who worked as Biden’s executive assistant when he was vice president.

But in his statement Tuesday, Schwerin said Biden had not been involved, either as a public official or a private citizen, in Hunter’s business dealings, nor had he ever been asked to take action on Hunter’s behalf. Schwerin said that in his role as Hunter’s business partner, he never asked Biden to get involved with their work. He and Hunter never suggested to or promised their clients or associates that Biden would get involved, either.

“In my discussions with the Vice President concerning his personal finances, he was always crystal clear that he wanted to take the most transparent and ethical approach consistent with both the spirit and the letter of the law,” Schwerin said. “Given my awareness of his finances and the explicit directions he gave to his financial advisers, the allegation that he would engage in any improper conduct to benefit himself or his family is preposterous to me.”

This is far from the first time that one of Republicans’ star witnesses in the Biden corruption investigation has completely debunked their claims. One such witness was Devon Archer, another of Hunter’s business partners. In his testimony, Archer said he was “not aware of any” wrongdoing by the president and said he disagreed with the allegation that Biden accepted a bribe. Republicans then refused to let Democrats introduce Archer’s testimony as evidence during a September hearing.

Donald Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba on Tuesday suddenly backed off her own claim that the presiding judge in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial had a conflict of interest, less than a day after she made the initial court filing.

Habba filed a letter to Judge Lewis Kaplan on Monday accusing him of failing to disclose the fact that he had worked at the same law firm as Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation) in the 1990s. Habba said she believed the judge had shown “preferential treatment” to Carroll’s team and would seek to have both verdicts overturned.

“As Ms. Habba well knows, these allegations are utterly baseless,” Roberta Kaplan said in a letter of her own, submitted Tuesday.

Roberta Kaplan explained in her letter that she and Judge Kaplan had worked at the same New York law firm, but they overlapped for less than two years. What’s more, Roberta Kaplan has no recollection of interacting with the now-judge whatsoever.

She also expressed concerns about the sourcing behind Habba’s accusations and the New York Post article cited in her complaint. The Post article cited one anonymous source, who claims that the Kaplans had a mentor-mentee relationship.

“While both the New York Post and Ms. Habba purport to cite the recollections of an ‘unnamed partner at Paul Weiss’ … that partner (if he even exists) clearly has a very flawed memory about events that occurred three decades ago,” Roberta Kaplan wrote.

Roberta Kaplan accused Trump and Habba of pushing “a false narrative of judicial bias” and explained that while she had wanted to respond quickly to Habba’s allegations, she might still seek sanctions against the other attorney.

Within hours, Habba submitted another letter backtracking on her accusations. “The purpose of the letter was simply to inquire as to whether there is any merit to a recently published New York Post story which reported on the alleged existence of such a relationship,” Habba said.

“Since Ms. Kaplan has now denied that there was ever a mentor-mentee relationship between herself and Your Honor, this issue has seemingly been resolved,” she wrote, although she added in a footnote that there were other issues about Judge Kaplan’s conduct, “including potential bias hostility towards defense counsel,” that she would raise in her appeal of the verdict.

Habba butted heads repeatedly with the judge throughout the trial over her disruptive behavior. Kaplan regularly admonished her for breaking the rules he established before the trial even began.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had a foot-in-mouth moment on Tuesday, absentmindedly admitting to reporters that he has courted Donald Trump’s opinion “at length” on the border deal he wants to kill.

“The former president has made it clear that he doesn’t want you guys to move forward on this, and judging by his comments, he clearly wants to campaign on this issue. Have you spoken to him about the Senate proposal, and are you simply trying to kill this to help him on the campaign?” probed CNN’s Manu Raju.

“No, Manu, that’s absurd,” Johnson retorted before ranting about the federal government’s job to “protect its citizens.”

“We have only a tiny, as you know, a razor-thin—actually, a one-vote majority right now in the House. Our majority is small, we only have it in one chamber, but we’re trying to use every ounce of leverage that we have to make sure that this issue is addressed.”

“I have talked to former President Trump about this issue at length, and he understands that. He understands that we have a responsibility to do here. The president, of course—President Trump wants to secure the country. President Trump is the one that talked about border security before anyone else did. He ran on, as you remember, building the wall. Why? Because he saw this catastrophe coming,” Johnson continued.

Republican officials have become increasingly audacious in giving away the game on the border deal. On Friday, Senator Josh Hawley explicitly tied the GOP’s border security grandstanding to a coordinated effort to hurt President Joe Biden’s reelection chances.

“There is absolutely no reason to agree to policies that would further enable Joe Biden,” Hawley told Fox News.

Donald Trump’s former national security adviser has some chilling warnings about what could happen if the former president is elected back into office.

John Bolton laid out his terrifying predictions in the foreword to a new paperback edition of his book The Room Where It Happened, which comes out Tuesday.

“A mountain of facts demonstrates that Trump is unfit to be President,” Bolton wrote. “If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse.”

“Trump really cares only about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term.”

Bolton’s biggest concern is that Trump will drill down hard on isolationism. This could include pulling the United States out of NATO, cutting support to Ukraine as it battles the Russian invasion, and emboldening China to invade Taiwan. Trump could also seek to reunite with North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un or strike some sort of deal with Iran—no matter how bad—to prove his own negotiating skills.

“It is a close contest between Putin and Xi Jinping, who would be happiest to see Trump back in office,” Bolton said.

Bolton served as Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019. Since leaving the White House, Bolton has become an outspoken Trump critic, particularly regarding Trump’s indictment for hoarding classified documents.

When the indictment was announced in June, Bolton called the case “devastating” and said it should mark the “end of Donald Trump’s political career.” A few weeks later, Bolton said that any 2024 Republican presidential candidates who say Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted for keeping classified material don’t deserve to be president.

This stance is a surprise from Bolton, an Iraq War architect, radical nationalist, and neocon who seemed all too happy to support Trump while the latter was in office. Trump’s campaign seized on this shift in position.

“For someone who professes to have such great disdain for President Trump, ‘Book Deal Bolton’ sure has found a way to grift off the relationship,” Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller told Axios.

Republicans are losing confidence in their party—and in Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel.

Days ahead of an RNC meeting, hundreds of conservatives descended upon Las Vegas for a Turning Point Action event meant to be a “wakeup call” to the Republican Party.

“We are at war,” one man shouted from a microphone at the event, reported Politico. “Where are the tools? Where are all the little things that the left is doing but we don’t?”

Most of the attendees of the Restoring National Confidence summit—which by no coincidence shares the RNC’s initials—put that blame on McDaniel’s shoulders, citing her seeming inability to earn them reelections. Some state party officials bemoaned the poor results in 2023, while others held her responsible for party failures even before Trump got her the job in 2016. Altogether, the Republican activists seemed set on going their own way—taking their chances for reelection on their own merits rather than relying on party strategy.

“My county is going to flip to blue if we can’t get control,” Maria Holiday, chair of the Republican Party in Johnson County, Kansas, told Politico. “And I don’t see any effective strategies coming out of the RNC down to the grassroots, and that’s where the people are going to vote.… We’re on our own.”

Event organizer and Turning Point Action’s founder Charlie Kirk also gave the RNC an earful, calling the upcoming, official party convention a “bunch of losers.”

“They know it. The grassroots knows it. The donors know it,” Kirk said. “They lost in ’18. They lost in ’20. They lost in 2022. We have tried to reach out to them many times, and I’m not going to put up with another culture of losing.”

The alternative event points to larger unrest within the party, as national lawmakers worry that their failure to follow through on campaign promises will doom them this election. In October, the GOP witnessed its House representatives cannibalize their own leader for the first time in U.S. history, ousting former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in a coup led by just eight members of the party.

The ensuing madness, seeded, stoked, and fueled by Trump, has amounted to a complete divide in the Republican Party, with some members disavowing the formal platform entirely.

“I used to be the establishment when I first got started in politics,” Fanchon Blythe, the RNC committeewoman from Nebraska, told Steve Bannon’s War Room. “But God awakened me.”

Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet told Breitbart News that the impetus for the alternative event was due to “overwhelming demand” from conservatives who were allegedly turning to Kirk and his co-organizer, Tyler Bowyer, for answers.

“How many hundreds of phone calls does Tyler have to take before he’s like, ‘OK, I guess we have to get the band together? I guess we have to do this thing because everyone’s telling me there’s this huge problem.’ The way we see it is people need this,” Kolvet told the far-right publication.

The RNC is meeting behind closed doors this week, after McDaniel’s plan to make Trump the party’s presumptive nominee crumbled due to Republican outrage, reported the Associated Press. Even Trump declared it was too soon to rule Nikki Haley out.

“While they have far more votes than necessary to do it, I feel, for the sake of PARTY UNITY, that they should NOT go forward with this plan,” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social.

Donald Trump’s lawyer has made another desperate bid to throw out E. Jean Carroll’s case against the former president, but legal experts say Alina Habba’s request is doomed to fail.

A jury ruled last week that Trump owes Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her in 2019 after she revealed he sexually abused her in the mid-1990s. But Habba argued in a Monday court filing that the ruling should be thrown out.

In the document, Habba cited a New York Post article that reported Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan had worked at the same firm as Judge Lewis Kaplan (no relation), who presided over both of Carroll’s trials against Trump, in the 1990s. The Post article stated the now judge had been like Kaplan’s mentor.

“The underlying defamation case tried last year, and the damages trial completed last week, were both litigations in which there were many clashes between Your Honor and defense counsel,” Habba said in her letter. “We believe, and will argue on appeal, that the Court was overtly hostile towards defense counsel and President Trump, and displayed preferential treatment towards Plaintiff’s counsel.”

Habba also said that Carroll’s other lawyer, Shawn Crowley, had served as Judge Kaplan’s law clerk, and the judge allegedly co-officiated Crowley’s wedding.

Multiple legal experts brushed off Habba’s attempt to overturn the Carroll verdict. “This is a bogus motion by the Trump team. There’s nothing here,” CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said Monday night. “Every judge in that courthouse knows, socializes with, has worked with, sometimes maybe mentored, dozens, hundreds of attorneys in this city.”

“I used to practice in that courthouse in front of judges who used to be my colleagues, my supervisors,” Honig continued, citing his career as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. “If anything, they were tougher on me as a result of it. That is not enough for a conflict of interest.”

Attorney Andrew Fleischman noted on X (formerly Twitter) that it could be argued that the judge would have had a conflict of interest if Carroll had sued Trump in 1992, “and then the lawsuit languished for 32 years, and one of the original lawyers who filed that suit was still with the firm.” But Carroll didn’t bring her first lawsuit until 2019.

Former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance pointed out that Habba has previously tried to leverage tenuous professional relationships. Habba appeared to suggest in early January that the three Supreme Court justices that Trump appointed owe him allegiance.

This isn’t the first time Trump has tried to get Carroll’s cases against him thrown out, or at least delayed. Trump unsuccessfully claimed that he was protected against the legal proceedings by presidential immunity. In June, Trump ally James H. Brady argued Carroll’s 2019 defamation suit should be thrown out because the former president was being unfairly treated because he is a “white Christian.”

Trump has also demanded a do-over of the first trial, which took place in May. The jury unanimously found Trump liable of sexual abuse and battery against Carroll and of defaming her in 2022. The jury recommended Carroll be awarded $5 million in damages.

Trump claimed that the damages should be reduced, and the second lawsuit thrown out altogether, because he only sexually abused Carroll instead of raping her. So Judge Kaplan clarified the situation, stating that the jury found that the former president did indeed “rape” Carroll based on the common definition of the word.

New York penal law has a “far narrower” definition of the word “rape” than “common modern parlance,” Kaplan said.

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”