Trump and LaPierre

Dear Commons Community,

Wayne LaPierre, the longtime head of the National Rifle Association, misspent millions of dollars of the organization’s money, using the funds to pay for an extravagant lifestyle that included exotic getaways and trips on private planes and superyachts.

Yesterday, a jury found that he, must repay almost $4.4 million to the gun rights group that he led for three decades, while the NRA’s retired finance chief, Wilson Phillips, owes $2 million. Jurors also found that the NRA failed to properly manage its assets, omitted or misrepresented information in its tax filings and violated whistleblower protections under New York law.

LaPierre, who announced his resignation from the NRA on the eve of the trial, sat stone-faced in the front row of the courtroom as the verdict was read aloud, and did not speak to reporters on the way out.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who campaigned on investigating the NRA’s not-for-profit status, declared the verdict a “major victory.”  As reported The Associated Press.

“In New York, you cannot get away with corruption and greed, no matter how powerful or influential you think you may be,” James said in a post on X. “Everyone, even the NRA and Wayne LaPierre, must play by the same rules.”

The group, which has in recent years has been beset by financial troubles and dwindling membership, was portrayed in the case both as a defendant that lacked internal controls to prevent misspending and as a victim of that same misconduct.

The jury found NRA general counsel John Frazer had violated his duties, but not that he owed any money or that there was cause to remove him from the organization.

In a statement, the NRA highlighted that part of the verdict in casting the outcome as proof it was “victimized by certain former vendors and ‘insiders’ who abused the trust placed in them.”

The jury did find that the NRA violated state laws protecting whistleblowers who raised concerns about the organization, a cohort that included the group’s former president, Oliver North.

“To the extent there were control violations, they were acted upon immediately by the NRA Board beginning in summer 2018,” NRA President Charles Cotton said in the statement.

The jury actually found LaPierre liable for $5.4 million, but determined he’d already paid back a little over $1 million.

Another former NRA executive turned whistleblower, Joshua Powell, settled with the state last month, agreeing to testify at the trial, pay the NRA $100,000 and forgo further involvement with nonprofits.

James’ office said Friday it wants an independent monitor to be appointed to oversee the NRA’s administration of charitable assets. It is also seeking to ban LaPierre and Phillips from serving in leadership positions at any charitable organizations that conduct business in New York, and wants the NRA and Frazer barred from collecting funds on behalf of any charitable organization operating in the state.

A judge will decide those questions during the next phase of the state Supreme Court trial.

James sued the NRA and its executives in 2020 under her authority to investigate not-for-profits registered in the state.

She originally sought to have the entire organization dissolved, but Manhattan Judge Joel M. Cohen ruled in 2022 that the allegations did not warrant a “corporate death penalty.”

The trial, which began last month, cast a spotlight on the leadership, organizational culture and finances of the powerful lobbying group, which was founded more than 150 years ago in New York City to promote rifle skills and grew into a political juggernaut that influenced federal law and presidential elections.

Before he stepped down, LaPierre had led the NRA’s day-to-day operations since 1991, acting as its face and becoming one of the country’s most influential figures in shaping gun policy.

During the trial, state lawyers argued that he dodged financial disclosure requirements while treating the NRA as his personal piggy bank, liberally dipping into its coffers for African safaris and other questionable expenditures.

His lawyer cast the trial as a political witch hunt by James.

LaPierre billed the NRA more than $11 million for private jet flights and spent more than $500,000 on eight trips to the Bahamas over a three-year span, state lawyers said.

He also authorized $135 million in NRA contracts for a vendor whose owners showered him with free trips to the Bahamas, Greece, Dubai and India, as well as access to a 108-foot (33-meter) yacht.

On the stand, LaPierre claimed he hadn’t realized the travel tickets, hotel stays, meals, yacht access and other luxury perks counted as gifts, and that the private jet flights were necessary for his safety.

But he conceded that he had wrongly expensed private flights for his family and accepted vacations from vendors doing business with the NRA without disclosing them.

Among those who testified at the trial was North, a one-time NRA president and former National Security Council military aide best known for his central role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s. North, who resigned from the NRA in 2019, said he was pushed out after raising allegations of financial irregularities.

After reporting a $36 million deficit in 2018 fueled largely by misspending, the NRA cut back on longstanding programs that had been core to its mission, including training and education, recreational shooting and law enforcement initiatives. In 2021, it filed for bankruptcy and sought to incorporate in Texas instead of New York, but a judge rejected the move, saying it was an attempt to duck James’ lawsuit.

LaPierre is a dedicated Trump supporter and a leech who took advantage of gullible donors.

$4 million does not seem like enough.

Tony

This image provided by Intuitive Machines shows its Odysseus lunar lander with the Earth in the background on Feb. 16, 2024. The image was captured shortly after separation from SpaceX’s second stage on Intuitive Machines’ first journey to the moon. (Intuitive Machines via AP)

Dear Commons Community,

Odysseus, a U.S. lunar lander, last night made the first U.S. touchdown on the moon in more than 50 years.  During a nail-biting two hours, when one of the landing systems failed, the lander finally touched down at about 6:23 pm (EST).

During a live telecast carried by CNN and other news media, Intuitive Machines, the company that built and managed the craft, confirmed that it had landed upright. But it did not provide additional details, including whether the lander had reached its intended destination near the moon’s south pole. The company ended its live webcast soon after identifying a lone, weak signal from the lander.  As reported by The Associated Press.

“What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the moon,” mission director Tim Crain reported as tension built in the company’s Houston control center.

Added Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus: “I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface and we are transmitting. Welcome to the moon.”

Data was finally starting to stream in, according to a company announcement two hours after touchdown.

The landing put the U.S. back on the surface for the first time since NASA’s famed Apollo moonwalkers.

Intuitive Machines “aced the landing of a lifetime,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson tweeted.

The final few hours before touchdown were loaded with extra stress when the lander’s laser navigation system failed. The company’s flight control team had to press an experimental NASA laser system into action, with the lander taking an extra lap around the moon to allow time for the last-minute switch.

With this change finally in place, Odysseus descended from a moon-skimming orbit and guided itself toward the surface, aiming for a relatively flat spot among all the cliffs and craters near the south pole.

As the designated touchdown time came and went, controllers at the company’s command center anxiously awaited a signal from the spacecraft some 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away. After close to 15 minutes, the company announced it had received a weak signal from the lander.

Launched last week, the six-footed carbon fiber and titanium lander — towering 14 feet (4.3 meters) — carried six experiments for NASA. The space agency gave the company $118 million to build and fly the lander, part of its effort to commercialize lunar deliveries ahead of the planned return of astronauts in a few years.

Intuitive Machines’ entry is the latest in a series of landing attempts by countries and private outfits looking to explore the moon and, if possible, capitalize on it. Japan scored a lunar landing last month, joining earlier triumphs by Russia, U.S., China and India.

The U.S. bowed out of the lunar landscape in 1972 after NASA’s Apollo program put 12 astronauts on the surface. Astrobotic of Pittsburgh gave it a shot last month, but was derailed by a fuel leak that resulted in the lander plunging back through Earth’s atmosphere and burning up.

Intuitive Machines’ target was 186 miles (300 kilometers) shy of the south pole, around 80 degrees latitude and closer to the pole than any other spacecraft has come. The site is relatively flat, but surrounded by boulders, hills, cliffs and craters that could hold frozen water, a big part of the allure. The lander was programmed to pick, in real time, the safest spot near the so-called Malapert A crater.

The solar-powered lander was intended to operate for a week, until the long lunar night.

I watched the drama of the landing on CNN last night that carried live coverage without commercial interruption.  It reminded me of July, 1969, when my brothers and I watched Neil Armstrong become the first man to walk on the moon.

Congratulations to all involved!

Tony

President Joe Biden offers condolences to the widow of Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya. (@POTUS/X)

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden met with the widow of Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, and his daughter, Dasha, yesterday during the president’s trip to California.

Navalny, the longtime Russian opposition politician and critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in prison last week at 47 years old. After her husband’s death, Yulia Navalnaya accused Putin of being involved in his death and has vowed to continue his work.  As reported by ABC News.

“The President expressed his admiration for Aleksey Navalny’s extraordinary courage and his legacy of fighting against corruption and for a free and democratic Russia in which the rule of law applies equally to everyone,” the White House said in a statement. “The President emphasized that Aleksey’s legacy will carry on through people across Russia and around the world mourning his loss and fighting for freedom, democracy, and human rights.”

Images of the San Francisco meeting posted on the president’s X show him speaking with the two women and hugging Yulia Navalnaya.

Aleksey’s legacy of courage will live on in Yulia and Dasha, and the countless people across Russia fighting for democracy and human rights. pic.twitter.com/aiCcgTrws3

The White House said it is set to announce “major new sanctions” against Russia on Friday in response to Navalny’s death as well as its “repression and aggression, and its brutal and illegal war in Ukraine.”

Earlier this week, White House national security spokesman John Kirby did not go into detail about what the new sanctions package would include.

Navalny’s cause of death has been listed as “natural” on his medical report, according to Navalny’s spokesperson Kira Yarmysh, who was relayed the information on the death certificate by Navalny’s mother. His mother also said the Russian government is blackmailing her and trying to force her to have a secret funeral for her son.

Kirby hammered Russia on the reporting that they were making demands of Navalny’s mother in order for her to receive his body.

Kirby said he could not confirm that she was being “blackmailed,” but “nevertheless, this is the man’s mother. It’s not enough that she gets to see the body of her son. She should be able to collect the body of her son so that she can properly memorialize her son and her son’s bravery and courage and service and do all the things that any mother would want to do for a son lost in such a tragic way.”

“The Russians need to give her back her son and they need to answer for … specifically what befell Mr. Navalny and … acknowledge that they in fact, are responsible for his demise,” Kirby said.

What a tragedy for Russia to have a vicious, heartless autocrat like Putin running the country.

Tony

Meghan McCain and Kari Lake (The Gazette)

Dear Commons Community,

Meghan McCain had a succinct reply after Kari Lake reached out to try to reconcile their feud over Lake’s comments on McCain’s father, late Arizona Sen. John McCain.  As reported by The Huffington Post.

“I value you,” Lake, a GOP Senate candidate in Arizona, wrote on X on yesterday morning. “I value your family and I value the passion you have for our state. I’d love nothing more than to buy you a beer, a coffee or lunch and pick your brain about how we can work together to strengthen our state. My team is sending you my contact info — if you’re willing to meet, it would mean a lot to me.”

Meghan McCain shot back, writing, “NO PEACE, BITCH!”

“Kari Lake is trying to walk back her continued attacks on my Dad (& family) and all of his loyal supporters after telling them to ‘get the hell out,’” Meghan McCain wrote on X the day prior. “Guess she realized she can’t become a Senator without us. No peace, bitch. We see you for who you are – and are repulsed by it.”

In 2022, when Lake was running for Arizona governor, she called late Arizona Sen. John McCain a “loser” and asked the crowd if there were any McCain Republicans in attendance, saying that if there were, to “get the hell out.”

At a conference in Texas in 2022, Lake again took a jab at John McCain after winning the Republican gubernatorial nomination, saying she “drove a stake through the McCain Machine.”

Lake did not immediately return a request for comment.

Don’t hold back, Meghan!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times columnist, Tom Friedman, had a piece yesterday blasting the Republican Party and especially its leaders who have become enablers of Donald Trump by supporting his lies and self-serving recklessness. Entitled,  Trump’s G.O.P. Is a Confederacy of Fakers, Friedman calls out Lindsay Graham and others for kowtowing to Trump.  Here is an excerpt.

“Trump’s G.O.P. manifests an infinite willingness to engage in any form of crow eating, bootlicking, backtracking and backstabbing to stay in his good graces, no matter how crackpot, selfish or un-American his demand. Trump decides to just dump Ukraine? Bye-bye, Zelensky. Trump decides to toss aside months of bipartisan work to forge a grand bargain on immigration reform? Gone — no questions asked!

I’ve never seen so many people in one party behave with so little respect for themselves or the nation’s interests at one time.

Let’s take a look at Ukraine. I’m not for an endless war in Ukraine. We should always be probing for the possibility of a negotiated settlement between Kyiv and Moscow. This year has shown America and Europe two things: The West cannot and will not just keep pouring money into Ukraine to fund a stalemate, and an outright victory by Ukraine or Russia seems more remote than ever.

…

I am afraid of what this future holds…because Trump is a fake, Lindsey Graham is a fake and the G.O.P. has become a cult with no coherent platform other than what side of the bed Trump woke up on, meaning it’s a fake. None of them will fight for anything any longer — other than staying in Trump’s good graces by saying whatever he tells them to say.

They are all trapped in a performative doom loop that has nothing to do with acting on our real interests. It’s only about performing for Trump and for his base to get more clicks, to get more donations, to get more votes, to get elected and then perform again for more clicks. Rinse and repeat — the actual world be damned.

It is all fake. Only our enemies are not fake.”

Read the entire piece!

Tony

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported yesterday that Amy Gutmann received almost $23 million in total compensation before stepping down in 2022. About 89 percent of that amount came from deferred compensation, set aside over the course of her 18-year tenure as president. In its Form 990, filed with the Internal Revenue Service, the university states that the compensation was “in recognition of Dr. Gutmann’s outstanding service as Penn’s president, as well as for retention purposes.” In 2020, Gutmann also received a $3.7-million loan from the university, on which she has not made any payments, according to the university tax forms.

Gutmann’s base pay in 2021 was $1,564,547, which was the fifth-highest that year and a 1.5-percent increase from her 2020 base pay. Gutmann has been among the 10 highest-paid presidents in The Chronicle’s analysis since 2012, and her base pay increased by 45 percent from 2012 to 2021. Among 2021’s highest-paid presidents, only Columbia University’s Lee C. Bollinger has appeared in the top 10 with the same consistency.

The average total compensation for all 312 presidents in The Chronicle’s analysis 2021 is $952,159, compared with the $907,625 average for 306 presidents in 2020.

The 2021 fiscal year is the most recent year for which 990s are available. For more about 2021’s top-paid private-college presidents, and the biggest earners over time, see the chart above.

Good work if you can get it!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) denounced former President Trump on Monday for his response to the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, calling Trump’s comments “’beneath the dignity of a human being.”

Navalny died Friday in a Russian penal colony, the country’s government announced, in what has been widely denounced as a likely political assassination. Trump first addressed the death on Monday after being called out by Democrats for ignoring the issue.  As reported by The Hill.

Trump compared Navalny’s death to his own legal circumstances, and did not blame it on Russian President Vladimir Putin, as President Biden and U.S. allies have.

“You wonder, what does Putin have on Donald Trump that he always has to be beholden to him, his buddy in vileness?” Pelosi said in an MSNBC “Inside with Jen Psaki” interview.

She said Trump’s statement was “beneath the dignity of a human being.”

“It is so horrible you think, ‘No, somebody must have made this up. Not even Donald Trump could go this far,’” she said. “This statement should disqualify him from running for anything, much less President of the United States.”

President Biden first commented on Navalny’s death after the news broke Friday, quickly pinning it on Putin and using the opportunity to call for military aid for Ukraine.

“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death. Putin is responsible,” Biden said. “What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality. No one should be fooled.”

“We have to provide the funding so Ukraine can keep defending itself against Putin’s vicious onslaughts and war crimes,” he continued, adding that he is “contemplating” whether further sanctions on Russia are possible.

Ukraine aid is stuck in the House, after a bipartisan coalition of Senators passed a foreign spending bill earlier this month. House Republican leaders said there is no chance the body passed Ukraine aid without action on the Southern border, after the House killed a bipartisan border security bill.

“History is watching the House of Representatives,” Biden said Friday. “The failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten.”

Pelosi also went after the House GOP leadership for delaying Ukraine aid, calling it a “disgrace” that the U.S. is yet to fund additional support against Russian invasion.

“We will get this done in the house,” she said. “It’s a disgrace that we haven’t done it yet. People will die every day that we are not supplying the weapons with the distance, with the speed, with the strength that is needed to defeat the Russians.”

“And people there know that if anything were to happen in Ukraine — which we must make sure it doesn’t in terms of Russia winning — that other countries are next,” she added.

Pelosi is one of the best in describing Trump and his odorous behavior.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A new ranking of presidents by a group of presidential history scholars determined that Abraham Lincoln was America’s greatest president, while Donald Trump ranks last.

Lincoln topped the list of presidents in the 2024 Presidential Greatness Project expert survey for the third time, following his top spot in the rankings in the 2015 and 2018 versions of the survey.  As reported by Fox News.

According to a release from the Presidential Greatness Project, which touts itself as the “foremost organization of social science experts in presidential politics,” the 154 respondents to the survey included “current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association…as well as scholars who have recently published peer-reviewed academic research in key related scholarly journals or academic presses.”

The respondents were asked to rank presidents on a scale of 0-100, with 0 being a failure, 50 being average and 100 being great. Rounding out the top five in the rankings were Franklin Delano Roosevelt at number two, George Washington at three, Theodore Roosevelt at four, and Thomas Jefferson at five.

Trump was ranked in last place in the survey, being ranked worse than James Buchanan at 44, Andrew Johnson at 43, Franklin Peirce at 42, and William Henry Harrison at 41.

Respondents were also tracked by their political affiliation and ideology, which the release argues did not “tend to make a major difference overall” in the rankings, though there were some outliers, mainly with recent presidents. 

Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump were more likely to be ranked higher by conservatives or Republicans, with Reagan being ranked an average of 5th by Republicans respondents, Bush 19th and Trump 41st. Among Democrat respondents, Reagan was rated an average of 18th, Bush 33rd and Trump 45th.

A similar partisan divide was noticeable for Barack Obama and President Biden, who ranked an average of 6th and 13th, respectively, among Democrat respondents, and 15th and 30th by Republicans. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was ranked higher by Republican respondents (10th) than he was by Democrats (12th).

The divide resulted in an overall ranking of 7th for Obama, 12th for Clinton, 14th for Biden, 16th for Reagan and 32nd for Bush.

This ranking is sure to make Trump and his supporters go crazy!

Tony

Peter Zay/Anadolu/Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Nikki Haley is vowing not to give up and to go the distance against Trump.  Jazmine Ulloa, politics reporter for The New York Times, had an article yesterday in which she laid out the candidate’s plan. 

Below is the entire article.

We wish Haley well and hope she can pull it off!

Tony

————————————————————————————————-

The New York Times

Haley Says She Is Going the Distance Against Trump. Here’s Her Plan.

By Jazmine Ulloa

Feb. 18, 2024

One week before the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, where polls suggest she trails by an insurmountable margin, Nikki Haley was in Texas, promising to go national, as most primary candidates, even in the most dire circumstances, usually do.

Despite big losses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, and the steep odds facing her in South Carolina, her home state, Ms. Haley is showing no signs of relenting. She is still raking in donations and building out her national footprint, as she pledges to move her party past former President Donald J. Trump.

“He said he’s going to spend more time in a courtroom than he is going to be on the campaign trail,” she said of Mr. Trump on Friday in San Antonio, referring to the hours he spent in New York last week facing criminal and civil cases. “But let me tell you what we are going to be doing. We are going to be on the campaign trail.”

Ms. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and a United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, is projecting confidence even as her path to victory looks stark. In many South Carolina polls, she trails Mr. Trump by roughly 30 points — and the picture beyond next week’s contest does not look much brighter.

If Ms. Haley continues with her plans to stay in the race beyond South Carolina, as she has pledged, here is a look at how she intends to take her long-shot bid national.

The Map

The Haley campaign has announced teams of elected officials, business leaders and prominent community members to help lead their efforts in Alaska, California, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Utah and Washington. Her “National Women for Nikki Coalition,” which counts chapters in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, has kicked into full gear, with a mission to court suburban women turned off by Mr. Trump.

On the day after the South Carolina primary, regardless of the outcome, Ms. Haley has said she will head to Michigan, which holds its own contest Feb. 27. From there, she has plans to crisscross the country ahead of Super Tuesday, the largest single day of the primary season, and the last real chance she will have to prove she can change the course of the nomination. The expected stops include Colorado, Minnesota, Utah and Virginia.

Ms. Haley is betting her candidacy on courting independents and new Republicans in Michigan and in 11 Super Tuesday states where Republican primaries are not limited to voters affiliated with her own party. But that strategy did not succeed in New Hampshire, and she has shown weaknesses with her own base: She received support from only 29 percent of college-educated Republicans nationally, according to a CNN poll, while Mr. Trump had 55 percent of the same demographic. Another Morning Consult tracking poll showed Ms. Haley trailing Mr. Trump by big margins in every Super Tuesday state.

Ms. Haley held campaign events in Dallas and San Antonio this week and has said she would travel to Super Tuesday states in the coming weeks.

Mr. Trump has undertaken his own push in Super Tuesday states, announcing nearly 80 endorsements from state party and elected officials in 14 states. And his team has left little to chance: He and his allies have engaged in a backroom campaign to twist delegate rules in his favor, and he has said Ms. Haley’s donors would be “permanently barred from the MAGA camp.”

The Message

Ms. Haley and her allies have kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism on Mr. Trump in national media appearances and in television and digital ads. Her message has largely remained consistent: that it is time for a new generational leader who can move her party beyond the “chaos” that is Mr. Trump. But her attack lines to underscore that most recently have become sharper-edged and more numerous. She has criticized him for disparaging her husband, Maj. Michael Haley; for suggesting he would encourage Russian aggression against U.S. allies in Europe; for skewing the delegate count; and for tightening his grip over party institutions, including the Republican National Committee.

She has continued to blast Mr. Trump for spending time and campaign donations on his legal troubles. She has sought to brand him and President Biden as “grumpy, old men.”

But as of last week, Ms. Haley had not spent any money on television ads beyond Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Her allied super PAC, Stand for America Inc., had invested only about $144,900 in other states, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. The Trump campaign, by comparison, had spent nearly six times as much, or about $855,200, nationwide.

Pointing to Ms. Haley’s losses, Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump’s national press secretary, contended he would not only “crush” her in own backyard and “demolish her on Super Tuesday.” “Only a birdbrain would stay in this race,” she said in a statement, using Mr. Trump’s insulting nickname for Ms. Haley.

The Funding

Mr. Trump’s war chest dwarfs Ms. Haley’s campaign funds. He had more than $33 million cash on hand at the end of December, while Ms. Haley had $14.6 million.

But as it has been from the start of her campaign, one bright spot for Ms. Haley is her ability to raise money. She pulled in $16.5 million in January, her highest monthly total so far. She has the backing of a number of wealthy donors. Her campaign turned Mr. Trump’s ultimatum against her donors into an opportunity to sell about 20,000 T-shirts that read “Barred. Permanently.” This month, she brought in at least $2.7 million at fund-raisers in Texas and California, according to her campaign, and $1 million more in the 48 hours after Mr. Trump disparaged Ms. Haley’s husband at a rally.

The Rationale

In interviews, some of Ms. Haley’s high-dollar donors in Texas and California echoed her focus on Mr. Trump’s and President Biden’s advanced ages, and cited Mr. Trump’s legal cases as signs that anything remains possible in the race. Mr. Trump spent Thursday in a Manhattan courtroom on criminal charges stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star in 2016. A New York judge on Friday ordered him to pay a penalty of nearly $355 million plus interest after finding him liable for conspiring to manipulate his net worth.

“A lot can happen in politics and in our legal system,” said Timothy Draper, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Haley donor. “And the American people usually come to their senses when they come to the polls.”

At Gilley’s Dallas South Side Music Hall, an upscale honky-tonk, Jack Matthews, its owner and a prominent developer, said he was having an easier time raising funds for Ms. Haley now than when he started in the early days of her campaign. “Some people are afraid of supporting her because of retribution with Trump,” he acknowledged. But plenty of others, he said, “are saying, ‘We need a change.’”

His venue, where Ms. Haley spoke on Thursday night before more than 1,000 people, one year to the date of starting her presidential bid, has some campaign-trail history. There, in 2020, President Biden held a rally where his onetime Democratic rivals for the nomination endorsed him over an insurgent Bernie Sanders in a show of force for the moderate wing of their party.

Now, Ms. Haley is running a Biden-like strategy but finding herself in Mr. Sanders’s position. Nevertheless, she continued to plead her case.

“Everything he touches, we lose,” Ms. Haley said, painting Mr. Trump as an agent of “chaos” for Congress, the country and Republicans’ down-ballot prospects in November.

Copyright: ©Tomasz Zajda – stock.adobe.com

Dear Commons Community,

Today we honor and remember our presidents especially George Washington and Abraham Lincoln who led our country during perilous times.

We should hope that our election this year will also result in a worthy president!

Tony