Donald Trump at a 2020 campaign rally in Green Bay, WisconsinAlex Brandon/AP
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Two big pieces of news emerged from the world of Wisconsin politics over the past week. Together, they show how Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 presidential contest was stolen will shape the contours of the 2024 election in this key battleground state.
On Monday, Trump supporters announced that they had collected enough signatures to force a recall election of powerful Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. Vos has been the architect of the GOP’s dominance in Wisconsin—passing some of the country’s most gerrymandered maps; stripping authority from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in an unprecedented power grab; and repeatedly thwarting Evers’ policy priorities on issues like health care, education, and criminal justice reform.
Despite this record, Trump supporters now want to oust the assembly speaker because he refused to attempt to decertify the 2020 results and has not endorsed impeaching Wisconsin Elections Commission executive director Meagan Wolfe, a leading target of conspiracy theorists on the right. Never mind that lawyers for the state legislature said that decertifying the election would have been unconstitutional or that a court ruled the legislature doesn’t have the power to remove Wolfe. Or that Vos did as much as anyone to legitimize Trump’s lies, authorizing a sprawling 14-month investigation into baseless voting fraud allegations led by a prominent election denier. MAGA World now wants Vos gone.
They’re also angry that Vos didn’t follow through on his threat to impeach progressive state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz for refusing to recuse herself from a case challenging the legislature’s gerrymandered maps after she called them “rigged” during her campaign in April 2023. The court struck down those maps in December, and the legislature passed new maps last month proposed by Evers that are more advantageous for Democrats.
A few days after the recall news broke, the court—which, thanks to Protasiewicz, now has a 4-3 progressive majority—announced it would reconsider a 2022 ruling by the court’s then-conservative majority that outlawed most mail ballot drop boxes in the state. Trump supporters have pointed to that ruling to argue that the 2020 election was indeed tainted because drop boxes were used across the state during that race. The court itself did not reach that conclusion, and there was no evidence that the use of drop boxes, which had bipartisan support, led to any fraud.
The same forces who support outlawing drop boxes are trying to recall Vos. Their efforts show how the stolen election claims in the state, no matter how debunked, continue to move the center of gravity within the Republican Party—to the point that the Republican leader who has been the architect of GOP majorities in the legislature and has repeatedly courted the MAGA wing of his party could lose his job because he has not given a sufficiently full-throated endorsement of the Big Lie.
As it happens, Trump supporters have tried to oust Vos before, with a Trump-backed primary challenger, Adam Steen, coming within 260 votes of defeating him in August 2022. The state’s ethics commission recently concluded that a Trump-linked political action committee supporting Steen violated the state’s campaign finance laws by illegally routing funds through GOP county parties to skirt contribution limits. The ethics commission has recommended felony charges, including against GOP state Rep. Janel Brandtjen, a leading critic of Vos who has led the effort to impeach Wolfe.
But so far, there’s been little accountability in Wisconsin for politicians who have promoted stolen election claims, and those lies continue to be a major factor in 2024. We’ll see if the new majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court can finally change that dynamic.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
