Just A Short Post…

This morning reading the news two things stuck out. The first is about nursing homes.

Texas AG sues Biden administration over nursing home staffing rule

Reuters

By Brendan Pierson

August 14, 2024

Texas's Republican top prosecutor on Wednesday sued the Biden administration in an effort to block a new federal rule on minimum staffing for nursing homes, saying it would force rural nursing homes out of business.

So let me try to understand this… they are worried about businesses going under but not by the fact that nursing homes are under staffed and patients dying.

And in another Reuters’ article that I saw while looking for the first one.

How Trump’s intimidation tactics have reshaped the Republican Party

As Trump enters the final stretch of the presidential campaign, he’s purged his Republican Party of lawmakers and officials deemed as disloyal. But his obsession with loyalty may cost him critical voters in a tight race.

By PETER EISLER and NED PARKER

August 16, 2024

When U.S. congressman Tom Rice voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol in January 2021, it was the beginning of the end of his political career.

Angry calls and emails – including three death threats – flooded the South Carolina Republican’s office. The next year, as Rice ran for a sixth term, a sheriff’s deputy often guarded him at public events. Trump backed Rice’s foe in the party’s primary election. At a rally, the ex-president warned voters that the congressman “partnered with the Democrats to stab the Republican Party and, frankly, to stab our country in the back.”

Rice got crushed in the primary. Today, the one-time conservative darling, a small-government fiscal hawk, is shunned by former allies and some old friends, he told Reuters. He feels betrayed by fellow Republicans who, “rather than upholding their oath and defending the Constitution, decided their position and their power was worth more.”

[…]

Trump’s ultimate weapon is his coveted endorsement, often wielded to drive the disloyal from office. Since the start of 2022, he has endorsed Republican challengers against at least 13 members of his own party in Congress who he’s accused of betrayal, a Reuters review of his endorsements shows. All but three of the 13 lost their seats or quit the race.

So he rebuilt the new Republican party around lies. His candidates put the party before the Constitution. Puts the party before the country. Puts the party before the voters.