Year: 2023
House GOP to Target 37 Dem Seats in 2024
37
“The National Republican Congressional Committee is plotting a sprawling battlefield in 2024, naming 37 Democrat-held House districts to its initial list of targets,” Axios reports. “It’s an ambitious strategy in a presidential year, when House results are often closely correlated with top-of-the-ticket margins. The last three presidential elections — all close by historical standards — saw flips of six to 14 seats in the House.”
Tennessee’s Anti-Drag Hysteria Started in a Rural Town 90 Miles West of Memphis
Tennessee Lookout: “In fall of 2022, nearly a dozen political and religious leaders met with Pride festival organizers in a back room of Jackson City Hall in West Tennessee. The shared goal? Hash out a deal over a drag show.
“Jackson’s third annual LGBTQ Pride festival was scheduled for the following month, and unlike the previous years, the event had grown beyond the usual music and games. Organizers had put together enough money for a 10-person drag performance.
“Jackson is a town of 70,000 in Madison County, Tennessee, located about halfway between Nashville and Memphis on Interstate 40. The county reliably leans Republican, while the city is more split, going 50/50 in the 2020 Presidential election.
“The city hall meeting was a dramatic affair, with Pride organizers storming out after a conservative pastor likened men dressing up in women’s clothing to blackface, but negotiations continued. Afterward, state lawmaker Chris Todd sued the city to stop the event. When that was only partially successful, he spearheaded the effort to create one of the nation’s first restrictions on drag performances.”
U.S. Hate Crimes on the Rise
11.6%
Hate crimes in the US surged 11.6% in 2021, with the largest number motivated by bias against Black people, followed by crimes targeting victims for ethnicity, sexuality and religion, the FBI said in a report. The FBI reported hate crime incidents rose to 9,065 in 2021 from 8,120 in 2020.
MAGA Billionaire Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund Withdrew Its Deposits from Silicon Valley Bank Before It Shut Down
Business Insider: “Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund had no cash left in Silicon Valley Bank by Thursday as it began to unravel, Bloomberg reported.
“A source told Bloomberg the PayPal cofounder’s fund had moved to close its exposure to the failing bank after running into problems using SVB’s services.
“The venture capital group had been engaging in a ‘capital call’ — where it asked investment partners to send funds to invest in a company — by transferring funds to its Silicon Valley Bank account. However, the funds didn’t immediately go through as expected.
“Following the withdrawals, the fund no longer had any exposure to SVB as of Thursday morning, the unnamed source told Bloomberg. It wasn’t clear whether the transfers happened on that day, or earlier.”
