Source: Tampa Bay Times

WASHINGTON – Alan Grayson will announce Tuesday he'll challenge Congressman Darren Soto of Orlando, taking on a fellow Democrat he faults for not joining in a push to impeach President Donald Trump.

"The people who are appalled by the Trump presidency are demanding it," Grayson told the Tampa Bay Times prior to filing candidate papers. Soto has not joined liberals in voting to proceed with impeachment.

"The district is, if anything, more anti-Trump than the country by a significant margin," Grayson said. "These are critical times. I mean, the president is trying to dismantle democracy."

Party leaders have worked to quiet impeachment talk — Republicans are fashioning it into a rallying cry – but grassroots activists want to see it happen. "I think there are a lot of Democrats who are in fact concerned that there is not enough leadership and spine in the party to stand up to the bullying president."

Read more: http://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2018/05/01/alan-grayson-to-take-on-fellow-democrat-darren-soto/

Source: NBC News

MSNBC host Joy Reid said on Saturday that she has no proof her now-defunct blog was hacked to include homophobic posts recently surfaced by an anonymous Twitter user, and she again apologized for views she'd expressed in the past.

"I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me," Reid said in an on-air monologue on her show "AM Joy" on Saturday. "But I can definitely understand based on things I have tweeted and have written in the past why some people don]t believe me. I have not been exempt from being dumb or cruel or hurtful to the very people I want to advocate for. I own that. I get it."

Earlier this month, Twitter user @Jamie_Maz, whose identity is not publicly known, published several screenshots purported to have been acquired through the Internet Archive of Reid's one-time blog, Reid Report. Reid apologized in December for "insensitive" blog posts from roughly a decade prior.



Read more: www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna869771

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If you screw up, just apologize and move on. This would have been a one day story if she had just done that.

Someone made it look like she posted a transphobic tweet:

https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/38412066960179200?s=09

Source: The Columbus Dispatch

After initially not including details in his financial-disclosure forms about the payments he had received for speeches, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dennis Kucinich revealed Tuesday that he was paid $20,000 for traveling to England last year for a speech to a group sympathetic to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Paul Nick, executive director of the Ohio Ethics Commission, which handles the disclosure forms, wrote Kucinich on Friday, asking him to correct last week's "incomplete" filing by identifying the person or entity paying him for what he had listed only as "paid speeches."

Kucinich, a U.S. House member from 1997 to 2013 and a former Cleveland mayor, responded Tuesday by listing three speaking fees totaling $33,000, including $20,000 from the Association for Investment in Popular Action Committees, of El Cerrito, California.

The group is listed in federal records as holding the trademark to the Syria Solidarity Movement, which opposes "imperial interests" intervening in the Syrian civil war. As both a congressman, and again last year, Kucinich visited Syria to meet with its president, attracting criticism in some circles. Kucinich says he supports efforts to bring peace to the war-torn nation.

Read more: https://www.google.com/amp/www.dispatch.com/news/20180417/kucinich-discloses-20000-speaking-fee-from-pro-syrian-group%3ftemplate=ampart

Source: USA Today

After days of speculation, California decided Wednesday that it will comply with federal requests to deploy National Guard personnel to the border California shares with Mexico.

The California National Guard will accept federal money to beef up border security, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown said in a statement published Wednesday morning.

But he attached a disclaimer and made it clear that his acceptance of money didn't indicate he agreed with the federal government's agenda on immigration and borders.

"Let's be crystal clear on the scope of the mission," he wrote. "This will not be a mission to build a new wall. It will not be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life. And the California National Guard will not be enforcing federal immigration laws."

Read more: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/508277002

Source: Sun-Sentinel

A defiant Tim Canova said Monday he’s changing tactics in his quest to defeat U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

He’s leaving the Democratic Party and abandoning his primary challenge of Wasserman Schultz. He hopes to appear on the November ballot as a no party affiliation candidate against her.

Canova made his announcement during a lengthy and wide-ranging speech outside the Broward County Governmental Center during which he railed against Wasserman Schultz, describing her as a “corporate, robot politician;” blasted Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes, claiming she did a poor job running the 2016 primary he lost to Wasserman Schultz; complained that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the true interests of voters; and declared he’d soon start campaigning around the state.

Several times during his remarks, Canova used the term “bull----,” explaining that he wouldn’t hesitate to forcefully condemn something that he and his supporters didn’t like. Among his targets: “The leadership of the Broward Democratic Party has its head up its ass.”

Read more: https://www.google.com/amp/www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-sb-tim-canova-leaves-democrats-wasserman-schultz-20180402-story,amp.html

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Good riddance. Now that he isn't running for the Democratic nomination, he will have more time to go on Fox News pushing the Seth Rich conspiracy theory.