Go Fund Them

Republicans who supported the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law were called traitors for giving President Joe Biden a win, and some received death threats. The temperature inevitably will rise under Trump, given his personnel choices and his explicit promise to perpetually aggrieved conservatives last year that “I will be your retribution.” That’s especially true now that he’s announced he’ll fire FBI Director Christopher Wray and replace him with wannabe hatchet-man Kash Patel.

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When Trump and MAGA take offense, people get death threats. Their spouses and families get death threats. They get fired and they get primaried. They sue or get sued. Paul Pelosi was beaten and nearly killed by a disturbed person trying to find his wife (then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi), interrogate her about the FBI investigation Trump calls “Russiagate,” and maybe “break her knees.”

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Standing up to Trump is risky and expensive. A critical mass of Republican senators managed to convince Trump to back away from Matt Gaetz for attorney general after an action-packed eight days in which Trump announced the choice, Gaetz resigned from Congress, sex-and-drug investigation details started leaking, Trump “instructed Gaetz to jump” (as Bill Kristol put it), and Gaetz jumped.

But there are frightening Trump picks still in play, and ten GOP senators—maybe closer to a dozen—are potential defectors. Those who run for re-election in 2026 after defying Trump have been assured they’ll have MAGA primary challengers. Those who retire will have to worry about their personal safety until they leave office in January 2027.

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“The mandate and the order from the American people is: Whoever he nominates and appoints, you better pass them through the Senate,” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said on a podcast last month. “That is your job. You say ‘Yes sir!’ and you get it done.”

An unnamed senior adviser gave the same warning to ABC’s Jonathan Karl in even more raw language. “If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary. That is all. And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it,” the adviser said, adding: “The president gets to decide his cabinet. No one else. That’s just the way it is.”

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Republican senators who vote against his nominees are “signing their political death warrants,” Steve Bannon told Semafor on Friday.

  The Bulwark

Hopefully only their political death.

Most Trump-MAGA targets, even members of Congress, don’t have the kind of money to hire bodyguards or lawyers. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the only Republican senator who voted to convict Trump in both his impeachment trials, said a year ago that he had been spending $5,000 a day on private security to protect his family since the January 6th Capitol riot. He also said other senators did not vote to convict Trump because they feared for their families’ safety and could not afford protection.

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Pitching in to protect standing up to Trump would strengthen freedom of speech, thought, and conscience among elected officials, and help protect the civil servants we count on without even realizing it.

This is essentially what I've been proposing since the election. I'm waiting for someone to officially set up the funding bank so that there aren't numbers of inefficient small ones. Let me know if you see it, and I'll do the same.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 03:06 pm: