Comment on National digest: Dec. 22, 2014

LOS ANGELES — Vince Fong, a California State Assembly member backed by former President Donald Trump, won a special election Tuesday to complete the remainder of the term of deposed former U. S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, which runs through January. A McCarthy protege who also had the former speaker’s endorsement, Fong defeated fellow Republican and Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux in the 20th Congressional District, in the state’s Central Valley farm belt. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Because of Trump’s involvement, the race will be watched as a possible proxy vote on the former president’s clout as he heads toward an all-but-certain matchup against President Joe Biden in November. “With the campaign over, the real work now begins,” Fong said in a statement, adding that he will focus on border security, supporting small business and investing in water storage critical to the region’s agriculture. It wasn’t immediately clear when Fong will be sworn in — that decision falls to current House Speaker Mike Johnson. Turnout appeared to be light for the unusual May election, for which mail-in voting began last month. Trump endorsed Fong in February, calling him “a true Republican.” Boudreaux’s supporters include Richard Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence in the Trump administration, and Republican state Sen.

So Trump now claims he does not support a ban on birth control, despite his responses in a television interview earlier yesterday that said he was open to states restricting access to contraceptives. I'm sure his campaign staff was trying to salvage Via the Washington Post: “I HAVE NEVER, AND WILL NEVER ADVOCATE IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS ON BIRTH CONTROL, or other contraceptives,” Trump wrote on his social media platform. His post was a reversal of comments he made in an interview with KDKA News in Pittsburgh when he was asked whether he supported any restrictions on a person’s right to contraception. “We’re looking at that, and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly, and I think it’s something that you’ll find interesting,” Trump said.

Smartmatic accuses Newsmax of destroying evidence in the voting machine company's lawsuit against the "news" channel over their claims that Smartmatic helped “rig" the 2020 election, according to new court documents. Via NBC News: Lawyers for Florida-based Smartmatic allege that Newsmax engaged in a “cover-up” by destroying texts and emails of key executives that would demonstrate the network’s knowledge that voting fraud claims being pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies were untrue.

Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked about the report last week that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had flown a “Stop the Steal” solidarity flag at his house during the period in which the court was considering 2020 election cases. Let’s be clear: Alito was not flying a pro-Trump flag but an anti-democracy, pro-insurrection flag.

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I PROMISE you that you're rarely--if ever--seen anything as funny in politics as what Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Jamie Raskin do to known purveyor or Russian propaganda, James "Gomer Pyle. In classic GOP fashion, Comer held a hearing on a ridiculous, waste-of-time poltical stunt, holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt (I might do it myself, tbh, for the fact insurrectionists like MTG and Jim Jordan still sit in hearings participating, un-indictedbut I digress).