#ConnieWillis on #trump #Elon, #Tesla and the whole #uspol mess. #liberated from FB

Social Security, the Smithsonian, and Saturday Night Live's Cold Open
March 30, 2025
By Connie Willis
There were over 300 Tesla Takedown rallies all over the world yesterday:
-- People have been posting pictures from San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, Ohio, Watertown, Massachusetts, Chicago, Illinois, Seattle, Washington, Miami, Florida, San Jose, California, and Austin and Southlake, Texas. And from London, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Ireland.
--They had hoped for protests at all 277 Tesla dealerships in the country, and they came close to achieving that goal. (For some it’s not practical. The Tesla dealership in Greeley is tucked away on a back road which nobody ever travels, and any protest couldn’t be seen from the highway, but there were protests in Denver, Colorado Springs, Littleton, Broomfield, Boulder, Westminster, and the Eagle County Airport.)
--Mokurai: "All the protest organizations around the country are getting the idea of protesting EVERYWHERE, notably on every college and university campus, not just in the biggest cities. Indivisible, 50501, Tesla Takedowns, you name it."
Some people have asked, what’s the point of protesting? It doesn’t accomplish anything. But I disagree. I think protesting--including town halls and rallies and rallies--accomplish a lot:
--They make news. People complain that the mainstream media doesn’t cover them, but they do if the rallies and protests are big enough, and besides, there are lots of other forms of media, from Facebook to Bluesky and Twitter and TikTok. People are sharing their protest pictures like crazy and posting videos of the town halls.
--They send a message to our representatives in Congress. This goes especially for town halls, which the GOP is scared to death of. The national party sent out a memo telling them to stop having them because they just produced bad video clips and soundbites the Dems could use. (Which proves they’re getting news coverage.)
--They send a message to Wall Street and the stock market, who actually both pay attention to what’s going on. Tesla sales are tanking and Target sales are way down.
--They send a message to the rest of the world, who are definitely watching us and wondering whether we’re all going along with this or are just as upset as they are about what’s happening.
--They put you in touch with other groups and activities. At the rallies and protests, there are places for people to sign up for Indivisible and ActBlue and their local Democratic Party so you can get even more involved.
--They raise your own morale. People who’ve participated in the protests and rallies talk about being energized and happy to meet other people and realize they’re not alone, that lots of other people are as upset as they are.
--They play an important part in fighting the Trump regime. Resistance movements require two things--tinder and a spark. You’re providing the tinder.
In SignalGate News:
--Saturday Night Live’s cold open was about--you guessed it--the Signal chat. It was dead-on. My favorite moment was when they listed Pete Hegseth’s emojis. He texted a fist, a flag, and a flame. They read it as "Fist, Flag, Tesla." But you MUST see the whole thing:

--Ben Dreyfuss: "It’s very serious, obviously, but I do think it’s very funny imagining how they all felt when they saw the ‘Jeffrey Goldberg has left the chat’ notification."
--There’s been another security leak. Two Trump administration spreadsheets with highly sensitive information on programs funded by the State Department and USAID were sent to Congress and leaked online, endangering workers working under repressive regimes. The groups had pressed the Trump administration to keep sensitive information in the spreadsheets private and were assured that it would.
--An International non-profit executive said, "In all our years of securing grants, we have never seen the safety of government partners treated with such reckless abandon. People will lose their liberty, and possibly even more, because of this."
--Trump announced he’s not firing anybody over the Signal chat. He said: "I have no idea what Signal is. I don’t care what Signal is. All I can tell you is it’s just a witch hunt, and it’s the only thing the press wants to talk about because you have nothing else to talk about. Because it’s been the greatest 100-day Presidency in the history of our country."
--Mike Waltz told Trump he never met Jeffrey Goldberg. Now a photo has surfaced showing them standing right next to each other at a public function.
--I told you yesterday that Pete Hegseth kept bringing his wife to work. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the reason is to keep others from asking him about his alleged sexual misconduct.
--Trump’s people have all gone into hiding. Not a single one of them was on the Sunday shows. (They know just how deadly this is for them.)
TrumpsTaxes: "My hope is that when career prosecutors at Defense, NSA, CIA, State, and other agencies absorb the sheer hypocrisy of their bosses getting away with sharing classified information, with zero punishment, they will anonymously leak every sordid story, rumor, and detail about their bosses to the press."
--First Dog on the Moon cartoon: "What fun things did we learn from the super secret chat? 1. These might be some of the most powerful people in the world, but they are a long way from being the smartest. 2. There are no longer any consequences for anything ever. 3. European freeloading is PATHETIC. 4. Emojis are good again? 5. Be right back, just playing Candy Crush."
In deportation news:
--A University of Minnesota student was detained. Nothing else is known, not even the student’s name, which ICE agents refuse to reveal.
--ICE agents went to an elementary school in Washington, D.C. to grab a contract employee, but they left without making an arrest after school officials required ID and a warrant. (Translation: What they’re doing is totally illegal and they know it.)
--Bill Kristol: "MAGA Congresswoman in America: ‘You violated the law, you don’t get due process.’ Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland: ‘Sentence first, verdict afterward.’"
--Judge Patricia Millett: "Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here."
--Immigration lawyer: "The administration is looking for numbers. Without actually reviewing if it was legal, if it was right, if it was morally correct to do what they’ve done. They don’t care about that."
--Adam Serwer: "Trump and his advisers simply hope the public is foolish or shortsighted enough to believe that if they are not criminals or deviants or terrorists or foreigners or traitors, then they have no reason to worry. Eventually no one will have any rights that the state need respect, because the public will have sacrificed them in the name of punishing people it was told did not deserve them."
Trump’s now going after the Smithsonian and the National Zoo:
--He signed an executive order yesterday saying that he was taking them over to root out "improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology."
--He particularly targeted the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Women’s History Museum, and the American Art Museum. He said the National Museum of African American History and Culture "espouses a corrosive ideology."
--The Smithsonian was created by an Act of Congress. It has funding from private endowments, but it gets 2/3 of its budget from the federal government.
--The employees now face the same terrible dilemma other agencies have faced, whether to stay and try to protect as much as you can or quit. "If they stay in their jobs, they’re in effect working for an authoritarian takeover of what they do." But if they go, they’ll be risking leaving it in the hands of people who’ve had no compunction about deleting websites. Will they also try to destroy paintings, pottery, historical artifacts and documents?
--The Zoo thing apparently involves the Chinese pandas--and evolution.
--The executive order also demands that all Confederate statues and monuments be put back up and a statue of an anti-slavery Supreme Court justice.
--Lauren Wolfe: "This is unabashed fascism."
--Jeff Stein: "Trump goes full-on Soviet with intent to scrub the Smithsonian, museums, etc., of ‘improper ideology.’"
--David Blight of the Organization of American Historians: "It’s a declaration of war. It’s arrogant and appalling for them to claim they have the power and the right to say what history actually is and how it should be exhibited, written, and taught. "
In Social Security news:
--Trump has told Musk and DOGE he wants the Social Security cuts speeded up.
--People all over the country are reporting long waits, waves of calls, and website crashes. In many cases Social Security administrators are telling people who call that the wait time is over 2 hours long and then hanging up on them.
--Social Security says they’ve delayed plans to cut phone services by 2 weeks and ditched a proposal that would have forced the disabled and elderly to visit a physical office to deal with problems with their benefits or apply for benefits.
--Musk and DOGE’s plan at Social Security has been leaked. It is to completely redo the Social Security Administration’s code in a matter of months. Experts say the payments are currently made using 40-year-old COBOL code, which has had 40 years of additions and corrections, and that safely converting COBOL and rewriting code takes years, including months of analysis, years of coding, and rigorous testing for functionality and performance. The attempt to do this in mere months is likely to break the entire thing.
--Social Security employees say they will be doing their beta testing on vulnerable seniors.
--Musk is now claiming that "As a result of the work of DOGE, legitimate recipients of Social Security will receive more money, not less money."
--Paul Krugman, talking about the elimination of Social Security: "On this as on other issues, above all rule of law and the survival of democracy, the ‘alarmists’ whose warnings were dismissed by the supposedly savvy have been completely vindicated."
In cowardly, sniveling capitulation news:
--The White House Correspondents Association (the group that hosts the Correspondents Dinner, you know, the one where Obama OBLITERATED Trump and so did Stephen Colbert) has fired the comedian they hired for this year, Amber Ruffin, because Trump officials complained about her.
--A federal prosecutor in Los Angeles was fired at the behest of the White House, after lawyers for a fast-food executive he was prosecuting pushed Trump officials to drop all charges against him.
--Johns Hopkins told their faculty not to intervene in ICE detainments on campus.
In non-cowardly, Standing Up to the Bastards news:
--At the opening performance of the season for the Buffalo Philharmonic, a woman from M and T Bank (who sponsors the concerts) came out before the performance started and spoke about the orchestra’s support for IDEA--Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access. She got a two-minute standing ovation.
In other news:
--As of this point, ALL USAID employees have been fired. The last ones got an e-mail Friday night.
--Trump has now sicced the FCC against Disney for "promoting diversity."
--Musk just sold Twitter to Twitter AI in a $33 billion stock deal. He owns both companies. (No idea what he’s up to.)
--Florida passed a child labor law so that little kids can take the place of the immigrants who’ve been deported in the fields and the orange orchards. (What does that remind me of? Oh, wait, I know. Oliver Twist, anyone?)
In good news:
--A new treatment involving amyloid removal delays the progress of Alzheimer’s Disease.
--The Yankees hit 9 home runs in their first game!
--I had a crown put on after a root canal last week and was expecting the usual awful procedure, where they put that goop in your mouth that makes you gag so they can make an impression, then you get a temporary crown that you have to be really careful of for two weeks before you get the crown. Not any more! They took a picture of the tooth with a 3-D laser, 3-d printed out the new crown, and had it on within an hour. So, see, 3-D printers ARE good for something besides making ghost guns!
In historical news: Today is Charles Lightoller’s birthday. He’s one of my heroes. He was the lieutenant on the Titanic who saved more lives than anybody else, insisting on loading the boats to capacity before they were launched. He stayed on board trying to get one of the collapsible boats untied until a wave swept him and the collapsible into the water. (At the American hearing, an idiot Senator asked him snidely, "When did you live the boat, Lieutenant Lightoller?" and he replied, "I didn’t leave the boat, the boat left me.") The collapsible was upside down, and he clambered aboard, then helped dozens of others to climb up and stood there, keeping the boat balanced, till the Carpathia got there. He was the last person to board the Carpathia, insisting on waiting till everyone else had been picked up. Then, nearly 30 years later and retired, he took a boat over to Dunkirk and brought back 127 stranded soldiers. I have always said that if I’m in a maritime disaster, my survival plan is to keep as close to Lightoller as possible.
It’s also Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday. I love Van Gogh, partly because he was so humble. He took an art class on color because, he explained, "I have never been very good at color." Oh, my God! In honor of his birthday, you need to go look at "Starry Night" and Almond Blossoms" and ":Irises" and "Sunflowers." And you definitely need to watch the Dr. Who episode where the Doctor takes Van Gogh to the Musee de Beaux Arts in Paris to see his legacy. It will bring you to tears:

Best line of the day, from MattZ: "Are we allowed to listen to Cassandra yet?"

#ConnieWillis on #trump #JDVance and the whole #uspol mess. #liberated from FB

Cheeseheads and Tariffs and Third Terms, Oh, My!

March 31, 2025
By Connie Willis

I was talking to a friend this weekend and predicted that SignalGate would continue to be the main subject of political talk till Wednesday, when Trump’s tariffs will be imposed, and the stock market and it would drop to second as the effects of Trump’s tariffs would become the main topic. It seems I was off by two days:
--The stock market swung wildly today over worries about the tariffs. Foreign markets were all down, and the American market ended the worst quarter in two and a half years.
--Goldman Sachs raised their forecast for inflation and lowered it for US economic growth. They are predicting that the tariffs will result in higher prices and lower incomes. They raised the possibility of a recession from 20% to 35%.
--J.P. Morgan called it "the fastest momentum reversal in forty years."
--The CBO forecasts DOGE and AI will be massive failures; sees US debt exploding as production collapses. Reuters: "The CBO sees US deficits rising over 30 years, economic growth slowing."
--New York Times: "US faces significant risks from debt, analyst says, as Trump pursues tax agenda."
--Everyone is upset about this. One Republican mayor said, "It’s impossible to prepare." This is partly because Trump keeps announcing tariffs with no warning. With the automobile tariffs, nobody at the White House, in Congress, or in the auto industry knew it was coming. Politico is reporting that White House officials are "apoplectic" about the tariffs.
--On Fox, Larry Kudlow was saying, "Markets crash, bad inflation report, tariff confusion." Meanwhile, Sandra Smith tried to downplay the drop in the stock market. Smith: "Since Inauguration Day it’s only down 5.5%." Economic expert: "That’s a lot." Smith: "5.5% is a lot?" Expert: "Yes."
--The conservative English paper, the Telegraph: "Trump is levying the biggest tax rise in global history."
--According to the Wall Street Journal, this weekend Trump warned US automakers not to raise prices in response to tariffs. (Even though their expenses are going to go up.) Then yesterday he said, "I could care less if auto makers raise prices." (Really inspires confidence, doesn’t it?)
--Trump says he wants the tariffs to completely replace the income tax. To do that, they would have to be 100% or more. The Telegraph said, "It will crush the American economy."
--When Trump was asked if the tariffs would be permanent, Trump declared, "Absolutely, they’re permanent, sure. The world has been ripping off the United States for the last 40 years and more. And all we’re doing is being fair, and frankly, I’m being very generous." (Every word in that statement is a lie, including "and" and "the.")
--Trump was also asked if he was worried about stagflation, and he said, "I haven’t heard that term in years. I don’t know anything about it...this country is going to boom. We’re going to have boomtown. We’re going to boom."
--Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the tariffs are "to force other nations to show Trump respect."
--GOP Senator James Lankford: "It’s like a kitchen remodel or a bathroom remodel. There’s a bit of a mess at the beginning. It’s going to be noisy for a little while."
--Peter Navarro: "Trust in Trump."
--US allies South Korea and Japan have united with China to fight the tariffs.
--Trump is doing deals with Vietnam for new hotels and golf courses in exchange for waiving tariffs. (Can you say CORRUPTION?)
In SignalGate news:
--We keep finding out new stuff. According to the Wall Street Journal, two officials say Mike Waltz "has created and hosted multiple other national security conversations on Signal with cabinet members." (And no doubt told Signal to erase the record of the chats.)
--Top GOP leaders are reportedly angry at JD Vance because during the chat he tried to block an order of the President’s and showed concerns about Trump’s decision. (Blind obedience, JD, blind obedience.)
--Jeffrey Goldberg said he thinks JD Vance’s comments showed that he believes Trump doesn’t even know what he’s doing.
--The Signal chat occurred when Hegseth and Waltz were meeting at the Palm Steakhouse, a ritzy restaurant in D.C.
--Jeffrey Goldberg, in response to Waltz’s "sucked in" explanation: "This isn’t the Matrix. Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into the phones. I don’t know what he’s talking about there. My phone number was in his phone because my phone number was in his phone. He’s telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me. That’s simply not true."
--Karoline Leavitt told the press corps that the Signal chat is now "case closed." She said that they had conducted an investigation, determined what had happened, and fixed the problem so it would not happen again, but gave absolutely no details--or proof.
--There’s a theory that Jeffrey Goldberg’s name being on the Signal chat was an inside job and that it happened as the result of resistance activity inside the Pentagon, and they’re basing it partly on the leak a week before of Musk’s meeting to view war plans against China. They said the meeting was revealed at the moment when it would do the worst damage--when Musk was already there and so were the reporters and they couldn’t just quietly call it off. Ditto having the worst (in their eyes) journalist on the Signal chat. They say Hegseth is absolutely hated at the Pentagon and career military (or civilians) are trying to get rid of him.
Trump is talking again about running for a third term:
--Trump said there are "methods" that will allow him to run for a third term. A lot of people want me to do it...I’m not joking."
--Lincoln Project: "He’s not joking about the thrid term."
--Also Trump: "I have had more people ask me to have a third term which in a way is a fourth term because the other election was totally rigged."
--Ryan Wiggins: "Trump is trying to change the conversation from tariffs, the economy, and the Hegseth scandal. Any conversation about him running for a 3rd term is still 2 years away. He is trying to distract and get the media off of the headlines currently
--Steve Schmidt, standing outside Elvis Presley’s birthplace in Tupelo: "There’s only one King in America and this is his castle."
In deportation news:
--Trump lied to El Salvador. He told them he was sending them only men and then sent women.
--The ACLU filed the sworn affidavit from a Venezuelan woman on the migrant flight to El Salvador who says she heard ICE officials on the plane talking about the court order to turn the plane around. (This proves the DOJ lied in court when they claimed they had no knowledge of the order.)
--One of the men deported to El Salvador was Neri Albarado, a baker. His tattoo was an autism awareness tattoo. (Like the yellow ribbon ones only in rainbow colors.)
--Another of the men sent to that hellhole of an El Salvador prison was Andry, a gay makeup artist. The only reason the government is giving (according to official records) for deporting him is that he had a tattoo of a crown with the word "Mom" below.
--The tattoos are apparently the only evidence ICE has against any of these guys that they’re in a gang. People online are pointing out by that standard, Pete Hegseth should be immediately sent to El Salvador. He has white-supremacist and Crusader tattoos all over his body. (Interesting side note--the only mention of tattoos in the Bible is the one that says anyone who has tattoos should be put to death.)
--The prison is a nightmare. Prisoners spend 23 and a half hours a day in cells with 70 other people. They eat, bathe, and go to the bathroom in front of everyone else. They sleep on bunks 4 levels high with no sheets, no mattresses, and no pillows.
--When immigration czar Tom Homan was asked about the prison conditions, he proudly said, "We got a lot of tools in the toolbox. The El Salvador prison is one, we got Gitmo, we got other countries. I wake up every day like a kid in a candy shop getting ready to go to work." (I dare you to find a worse statement by ANY of the Nazis.)
--But even worse was the hosts on Fox discussing how undocumented immigrants should be stripped of due process: Lawrence Jones: So you have a constitutional right that is actually, they are afforded to illegals in this country? We should revisit that." Brian Kilmeade: "It’s not practical to think that we can do due process on 8 million people." Rachel Campos-Duffy: "That’s right." They also said of due process, "They don’t deserve it." (Note: the right to due process is not just enshrined in the Constitution. It is enshrined in the Magna Carta. They’re talking about getting rid of rights that people have had since 1215!)
--In good news, a federal judge ruled that a Columbia student who took part in protests against Israel’s treatment of Gaza cannot be detained as she fights orders for deportation. Yay!
--Stephen Miller, justifying the horrible treatment of immigrants: "We were invaded and occupied. Entire neighborhoods were conquered. Entire towns were subjugated. Our treasury was in the plundered (sic.) Our democracy was torn apart piece by piece."
--Mrs. Betty Bowers, who is usually hilarious--but not today: "I learned this week that you can put our troops’ lives in danger, compromise our national security, and violate the Espionage Act and the government will do nothing. But if you write an editorial for your school newspaper that Trump doesn’t like, you will be abducted on the street and disappeared."
--Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel: "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."
In Grand Vizier news:
--Musk is campaigning in Wisconsin and chose to wear the cheesehead hat people wear at football games at one campaign event. He said in his campaign speech, "I feel like it is one of those things that may not seem like it will affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will. It will decide the future of American and Western civilization." (Not sure the cheesehead hat was the right thing to wear while saying that.)
--In another appearance in Wisconsin, Musk appeared standing in front of a gigantic American flag, just like that scene in the movie PATTON. (Delusions of grandeur much?)
--The first of his million-dollar checks that he said were going to anybody who signed a paper promising to vote (which is illegal) went to, oddly enough, the head of the College Republicans. (That kind of thing happened during the presidential election, too. When are the MAGAs going to wake up and realize this is a scam and he has no intention of giving them anything?
--They are completely defunding NPR, PBS, and Sesame Street.
--They have shut down the measurement lab that’s critical for manufacturing advanced chips and medical devices. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Sheldon Glashow: "I cannot believe that the government would be stupid enough to slash this kind of work."
--They cancelled tens of billions in HHS grants on infectious diseases, vaccines, and mental health issues. The offices got the stop-work notices Monday night. THEY CUT THE ENTIRE HHS STAFF IN LUBBOCK, TEXAS, GROUND ZERO FOR THE MEASLES EPIDEMIC.
--DOGE teenaged senior adviser "Big Balls" Coristine provided support to a cybercrime gang which trafficked in stolen data and cyberstalked an FBI agent.
--There was an article today saying that Elon drawing fire and working as a "heat shield" for Trump is no longer working and that Trump’s approval ratings are starting to suffer from what Musk and DOGE are doing.
--Vicki M: "We are getting to the point in this debacle where Trump and those around him are losing control of the narrative, which means they have no clue on how this will all play out. That is why they are jamming this scheme down our throats, because they think they are running out of time."
In Greenland news:
--The most telling thing JD Vance said in his reasons for why we have to have Greenland was "We cannot just ignore the President’s desires." markdtooley: "Citizens of a republic don’t concern themselves with the ‘desires’ of the current elected chief...he should be more concerned with ours."
--Eric Swalwell: "What the hell is JD Vance doing in Greenland? They don’t want him there. We don’t need him there. Why didn’t he go to Greensboro or Green Bay to see how much Trump’s tariff tax talk is costing people?"
--Jesse Watters on Fox, about taking Greenland: "We don’t need friends. If we have to burn a few bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, we’re big boys. We dropped A-bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally." (So now we’re dropping A-bombs on Greenland????)
--from the Borowitz Report: "The government of Greenland revealed on Monday that it had arrested JD Vance last week after he attempted to abscond with all the island’s rare earth minerals hidden inside his parka. As he walked up the stairs to Air Force 2, metric tons of lithium, niobium, hafnium, and zircon came tumbling from his bulky outer garment...Elon Musk said that instead of replacing Vance, he would eliminate his position."
--Anthony Scaramucci says that JD Vance is being systematically sidelined because everything he does fails.
In RFK, Jr. news:
--RFK, Jr. pushed out the top vaccine scientist, Peter Marks. He was told to resign or be fired.
--RFK, Jr. has completely dismantled the department working to eliminate opioid addiction, including prevention, treatment, and recovery services, and the distribution of Nalaxone to keep people from OD’ing.
--He is laying off all workers from the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/Aids Policy.
--There are now 483 cases of measles. The CDC buried a report stressing the importance of vaccinations.
--RFK, Jr. told the press that he has sent huge shipments of Vitamin A to Texas to help with the measles outbreak, but doctors in Texas said that they had refused shipment of the vitamins because they didn’t want them.
--The Wall Street Journal: "Our worst fears about Mr. Kennedy are coming true."
In other news:
--Mike Lee has submitted a proposal to the US Senate to get rid of the Fed.
--In Israel, two of Netanyahu’s aides were arrested as part of an investigation into Netanyahu’s involvement with Qatar. According to the Washington Post, there are increasing allegations that Netanyahu’s inner circle was involved in the transfer of money from Qatar, a key backer of Hamas.
--Trump and Lindsey Graham allegedly won another golf tournament at one of Trump’s golf courses. (They were partners.) 9-time Wimbledon winner Martina Navratilova: "Playing golf again? Donnie doesn’t play tennis because 1) he is not very good, and 2) it’s much harder to cheat in tennis than in golf."
In good news:
--2 million people demonstrated against Orban in Turkey.
--Protests are planned for all over the country--and Canada and Europe--for Saturday, April 5.
--Alex Jones is getting a divorce. (Not only will that take more of his money away from him, but embittered spouses often reveal all kinds of stuff.)
--Marine LePen was convicted of embezzling and therefore cannot run for office ever again in France. Yay!
Best rally chant of the day: "We don’t want your Nazi cars. Let’s send Elon Musk to Mars."
Best advice of the day, from Hillary Clinton on Kristi Noem: "Don’t vote for anyone you wouldn’t trust with your dog."
Best line of the day, from m. correll: "Too hard, too fast, too extreme, too illegal...this regime will not last much longer and neither will Trump. He’s fading fast and JD Vance is pissing off some of the GOP."