But while Trump’s hysterical whining about Smith reflects the Republican’s apparent fear and anxiety, it’s par for the course. What was arguably more important was something Trump wrote to his social media platform late Friday night. Newsweek reported:

Donald Trump has called for Special Counsel Jack Smith to be arrested after the prosecutor’s team said some evidence in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case are no longer in their “original, intact” form.

Specifically, the former president wrote, “ARREST DERANGED JACK SMITH. HE IS A CRIMINAL!”

He’s been gradually moving in this direction for a while. Early last year, for example, for reasons unknown, Trump published a lengthy online tantrum that said Smith “may very well turn out to be a criminal.”

Evidently, 16 months later, Trump has made up his mind — and he now wants authorities to “arrest” the special counsel.....

We can say with some certainty that Trump wanted to prosecute his perceived political foes during his first term, in part because his former White House chief of staff has said as much on the record. Even former Attorney General Bill Barr said he expects Trump to "weaponize" the Justice Department if he returns to the White House for a second term.

With this in mind, I don’t much care whether he calls Smith foolish names, but I do care that the former president wants to see the special counsel arrested.

A few weeks ago, House Republicans announced plans to put aside real legislative work and instead focus on a series of bills related to home appliances. By any fair measure, they weren’t real measures: GOP leaders had set up a series of messaging votes that related to the party’s opposition to energy efficiency standards.

Those efforts, which generated no small amount of mockery, were ultimately delayed. As E&E News reported, they’re apparently back.

The House will hold floor votes this week on bills that would roll back the Biden administration’s energy efficiency agenda on home appliances. ... Lawmakers will debate Arizona Republican Rep. Debbie Lesko’s “Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act,” H.R. 6192, to prohibit the Department of Energy from implementing or enforcing efficiency standards on a wide variety of home appliances if they are not “technically feasible or economically justified” and if they do not result in “significant conservation of energy.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise has confirmed that members will take up the bill this week — the Louisiana Republican’s new schedule for the week boasted, "Republicans are protecting your home appliances” — and the GOP-led House Rules Committee has listed the “Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act” as its first order of business today.......

A recent PunchBowl News report helped summarize matters: “These are all part of the Republican culture war clash over energy efficiency and climate change. It’s similar to the gas stove hysteria or Trump’s war on low-flush toilets and light bulbs.“

Quite right. GOP lawmakers know that these home-appliance-related bills aren’t going anywhere in the Democratic-led Senate, but by all appearances, party leaders don’t much care. They want to be able to tell the far-right Republican base that they’re on Capitol Hill, fighting tooth and nail in support of pointless messaging bills that combat energy conservation and efficiency standards.

As a result, the “Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act” will no doubt make for delightful fundraising letters and several Fox News segments, even as real priorities in need of Republicans’ attention go overlooked.

What’s more, during a presidential primary debate last summer, the senator said then-Vice President Mike Pence “absolutely” did the right thing on Jan. 6. In case this isn’t obvious, that’s not Trump’s position.

With this in mind, what, pray tell, is the South Carolinian prepared to do about his partisan “problem”? As NBC News noted, Scott appears to have settled on the most unfortunate fix possible.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina on Sunday did not directly answer multiple questions about whether he’d accept the results of the 2024 presidential election, regardless of who wins. “At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump,” Scott, a Republican, said the first time he was directly asked whether he would commit to accepting the election results on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

Over and over again, host Kristen Welker pressed the Republican to simply say, “yes or no,” whether he was prepared to accept the results of the 2024 presidential election. He wouldn’t say — though Scott was willing to question the integrity of NBC News’ journalism for reasons unknown.
https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1787156391443968012

.....But in 2024, as the radicalization of Republican politics intensifies, Scott wasn’t just asked, he also refused to answer — no doubt because the senator knew that if he answered in such a way that expressed support for democracy, this would’ve caused fury at Mar-a-Lago.

In other words, Scott believes the key to addressing his Team Trump “problem” is to appear more openly hostile toward the American political system, which in turn might boost his national ambitions.

As the GOP’s race to the bottom unfolds, I continue to believe that no one should want to be vice president this badly.

Almost immediately after Donald Trump’s handpicked team took the reins at the Republican National Committee — team that includes his daughter-in-law — the party’s new leaders got to work making significant staffing changes. In fact, in mid-March, the RNC hired two new lawyers to oversee the party’s election-year legal efforts......

The other attorney was longtime Republican lawyer Charlie Spies, who was hired to serve as the RNC’s chief counsel. At least, that was the idea two months ago. NBC News reported over the weekend:

Republican National Committee chief counsel Charlie Spies is parting ways with the party apparatus just months after stepping into the role. He was “pushed out,” according to a source familiar with the move.

After the news was made official, Trump turned to his social media platform to celebrate the developments. “Great news for the Republican Party. RINO lawyer Charlie Spies is out as Chief Counsel of the RNC,” the former president wrote, denouncing the experienced Republican lawyer who’d been hired by his own RNC team.....

Indeed, a Washington Post report over the weekend noted that the lawyer’s RNC career was cut short, at least in part, because Trump “grew angry about his criticism of the former president’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.”

When the former president recently sat down with Time magazine, he said he’d have a problem hiring someone who rejected his ridiculous election lies. Evidently, this attitude extends to the RNC, too.

All was not well at the RNC before its new leadership team took over. Recent developments suggest the party's troubles persist.

It was about a month ago when Axios reported that in a prospective second term for Donald Trump, his team intends to “dramatically change the government’s interpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of color.” Asked for comment, the Republican’s campaign didn’t exactly deny its interest in rolling back policies designed to address systemic racism.

The former president, his spokesperson said, “is committed to weeding out discriminatory programs and racist ideology across the federal government.”.....

But as part of the same exchange, the former president went on to say, “I think there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country and that can’t be allowed either.” Asked how he’d address this from the White House, Trump added:

I don’t think it would be a very tough thing to address, frankly. But I think the laws are very unfair right now. And education is being very unfair, and it’s being stifled. But I don’t think it’s going to be a big problem at all. But if you look right now, there’s absolutely a bias against white and that’s a problem.”

Or put another way, Trump isn’t entirely sure what he'd do, but he’s nevertheless certain there’s a “problem” related to the “bias against white.”....

Let’s say for the sake of conversation that recent polling is right and a meaningful number of Black voters really are prepared to overlook Trump’s many failures and lengthy record of overt racism.

If that’s the case, shouldn’t the Republican at least try to keep these voters on board? Why in the world would Trump tell Black communities in an election year that he’s deeply concerned about the “problem” related to the “bias against white,” as his team prepares to shift the federal government’s focus to protecting white people from discrimination?

It became a point of real pride for the White House — as evidenced by Biden bragging about the policy in his State of the Union address. What’s more, in the same remarks, the president said he was “directing my cabinet to review the federal classification of marijuana.”

Evidently, Biden meant it. NBC News reported this week:

The Biden administration will take a historic step toward easing federal restrictions on cannabis, with plans to announce an interim rule soon reclassifying the drug for the first time since the Controlled Substances Act was enacted more than 50 years ago, four sources with knowledge of the decision said.

It was Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services that concluded, after a year and a half of bureaucratic review, that marijuana should be reclassified from the strictest Schedule I, covering drugs such as heroin and methamphetamines, to Schedule III, which includes things like Tylenol with codeine and testosterone.

Now, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department are endorsing the move, marking the first time that federal officials have acknowledged potential medical benefits to marijuana and opening the door to therapeutic research.

It is, as an Associated Press report noted, the biggest policy change from federal officials on the issue “in more than 50 years.”.....

It’s extraordinary to see how much the landscape has changed in recent years. A decade ago, the total number of states allowing recreational marijuana use was zero, and at the national level, elected officials wanted nothing to do with reform proposals.

Now, 24 states have legalized cannabis for adult use; 37 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical marijuana; and the Biden administration is moving forward with reclassification plans with minimal pushback from its GOP detractors.

For decades, the United States’ “war on drugs” only moved in one punitive direction. As the latest developments help prove, it’s a new day.

HOLLAND, MICHIGAN (The Borowitz Report)—Weighing in on the unrest roiling the nation’s campuses, on Monday Betsy DeVos called for all colleges and universities in the U.S. to be shut down forever.

“At institutions of so-called higher learning, students are exposed to books, ideas, and thinking,” the former Secretary of Education said. “That will never end well.”

DeVos said that during her tenure in the Trump administration she had tried to eliminate the nation’s colleges and universities, but “sadly, I didn’t get it done.”

She held out hope, however, for a future in which America’s youth lived “free from the tyranny of education.”

"The four years students waste in college would be better spent inheriting family wealth," she said.

The North Carolina Republican Party on Saturday came under fire for a Star Wars-themed post meant to celebrate the "May the Fourth" internet holiday and promote Donald Trump.

The official account of the North Carolina Republican Party on X, formerly known as Twitter, posted an image showing Trump holding a lightsaber. The text says, "May the Fourth Be With You," which is a play on the Star Wars line, "May the force be with you."

The problem, as social media users were quick to point out, is that the ex-president was shown with a red lightsaber. According to Vox, "Sith usually use red-hued" lightsabers, such as the one Darth Vader wields.

National security attorney Bradley Moss wondered if the state GOP outpost was ignorant.

"You gave him... a red lightsaber? Do you know anything?" he asked Saturday.

Democrat Harry Sisson said, "You know the dudes who have the red lightsabers are the bad guys, right? Didn’t watch the movie I guess?"

@Venti__Poet chimed in in response to the post, "At least you know he is on the dark side."

@cj_bria said, "So, he’s a Sith Lord? Sounds about right!"