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The chair of the Libertarian Party of Texas claims Republicans started targeting them once their brand started growing and more voters began recognizing the party.

DALLAS After several Republicans tried to kick several Libertarians off the November ballot, there is no hiding the bad blood between the two parties.

The chair of the Libertarian Party of Texas claims Republicans started targeting them once their brand started growing and more voters began recognizing the party.

So, once that happened, the Republicans specifically started trying to figure out how to eliminate us in whatever way they can, Whitney Bilyeu said on Yall-itics.

Back in August, Republican officials and even some elected candidates, including Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and eight members of Congress, asked the Texas Supreme Court to remove nearly two dozen Libertarian candidates from the ballot.

The Republicans argued that the Libertarians didnt meet eligibility requirements, specifically failing to pay filing fees.

The chair of the Libertarian Party of Texas, however, says Republicans are just scared.

This time they went after 23 candidates. Looking at the list right now, the vast majority, if not all of them, are in two way races, which means if we were to be kicked off in that particular race, the Republican would be running against no-one, which has happened for far too long in far too many races in Texas, Bilyeu told us.

Listen to the full episode of this week's Y'all-itics here:

The Texas Supreme Court refused to remove the Libertarian candidates, ruling that the Republicans waited too long to challenge in the first place.

This isnt the first time the Texas GOP tried to remove Libertarians from the ballot. They did the same, and lost, in 2020, when the Texas Supreme Court ruled they waited until after the deadline to challenge a candidates eligibility. The thinking is that Libertarians steal votes from Republicans. Democrats feel the same way about Green Party candidates.

As for those filing fees, the Libertarian Party is challenging them in federal court. The party argues the fees are a deliberate GOP roadblock for third-party candidates. State law requires the fees and the amount depends on the office.

Libertarian candidate Kevin Hale, whos running for the 5th Congressional District in Texas, says he paid the fee, but with a catch.

I wanted to make sure that I was a thorn in the side of my incumbent, so I paid the filing fee, but I paid it in one dollar bills, Hale told us. I delivered $3,125 in one-dollar bills to the Secretary of State.

Hale says it took them an hour and 10 minutes to count the bills.

To hear our entire conversation with Hale and Bilyeu, including why these Libertarians are happy to accept protest votes and why theyd be happy if their presence helps a Democrat win, listen to our latest episode of Yall-itics.

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How the Texas GOP tried to get Libertarian candidates removed from your November ballot - WFAA.com

Days before the 2016 election, candidate Donald Trump stood before a throng of ecstatic followers and said, "I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election if I win." Indeed he did pull out a narrow electoral victory, even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million. There was plenty of carping. There were street protests. But nobody stormed the U.S. Capitol or enlisted Democratic officials in various states to sign fraudulent elector statements in the hopes of getting Congress to overturn the result in defiance of the Constitution. Clinton conceded the next day, although no one's pretending she was happy about it. Democrats grumbled about the antiquated system that elected the last two Republican presidents with a minority of the popular vote, but everyone moved on.

There's no need to recapitulate what happened in 2020. We are all too aware of it, mostly because Trump and his allies won't let anyone forget it. He made it clear from the beginning that it was simply not possible for him to lose and now we can see that he's convinced a large number of candidates for office, as well as their voters, that it holds true for them too. The Big Lie is alive and well.

According to FiveThirtyEight, 60% of American voters have an election denier on the ballot where they live. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported over the weekend about election deniers running for office around the country who have refused to say whether they will accept the results oftheirown upcoming elections. The Post surveyed 19 important statewide races, and only seven Republican candidates said they would accept the results while 18 of the 19 Democrats said they would. (The other Democrat didn't respond.) The Times noted that a few of those GOP candidates seem to be posturing in order to appeal to Trump voters who've bought into the big lie, quoting an aide who said on background that their candidate would certainly accept the results but just couldn't say so in public. That's what passes for integrity in Republican politics these days.

Amusingly, a number of defeated Republicans in this year'sprimary electionshave claimed that the votes were rigged, proving just how deep this conspiracy goes.Axios reportsthat losing GOP candidates in Michigan, Colorado, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Florida have all claimed their elections were tainted. Even some winners complained. Arizona's GOP nominee for secretary of state, state Rep. Mark Finchem, a hardcore 2020 election denier, claimed that "people all over the state [are] saying, 'I've gotten ballots that I didn't ask for.'" Presumably he doesn't believe his own primary win was dubious, but these people are so far down the rabbit hole that you never know.

Political number-crunchers keep warning that Democratic momentum could be a mirage. Are there still "shy" GOP voters out there who don't have MAGA flags on their pickup but feel deeply wounded by Joe Biden?

There has also been a recent spate of articles from various political number-crunchers warning that Democrats should be wary of getting it into their heads that they can win this midterm election. The momentum certainly seems to be moving their way, but these observers suggest that's a mirage: Polling in both 2016 and 2020 failed to capture Republican voters, who showed up in greater numbers than expected. (In the 2018 midterms the polls were pretty accurate. But because historically the party in power loses seats in midterm elections, somehow that doesn't count.)

Data analysts don't know what's going on with these invisible or "shy" Republican voters, but at least one pollster who is generally considered right-leaning says it's because GOP voters are sensitive to what strangers who call them on the phone might think of them:

He claims that Joe Biden's comments have created an "army" of these hidden voters who are impossible to poll, "even for us." These shy voters aren't like the MAGA fans who put Trump flags on their pickup trucks, but according to this theory they are so traumatized on behalf of the good folks who wear "Fuck your feelings" T-shirts in public and worship a man who calls Democrats, "disgusting," "depraved," "treasonous" andevery other gross insult known to manthat they won't even admit to a pollster who they are going to vote for.

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This pollster's data may be valid, but his analysis is just an personal opinion. Inmyopinion, it's highly doubtful that GOP voters aren't responding to pollsters because their feelings got hurt. Trump voters don't strike me as shrinking violets. I would guess they don't respond because Trump has told them that you can't trust anyone but him and his designated associates. Since he says any poll that shows he isn't winning by a landslide is in the tank, and all polls, even the right-leaning ones, do show that from time to time, his followers are required to discount and distrust all polling. They have swallowed Trump's belief that the only way Democrats can win is by cheating and that any polls which show Republicans losing are by definition rigged. Why participate in a rigged game?

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight threw some cold water on this whole thing anyway, noting that none of this is quite as predictable as one might think:

People's concerns about the polls stem mostly from a sample of exactly two elections, 2020 and 2016. You can point out that polls also had a Democratic bias in 2014. But, of course, they had a Republican bias in 2012, were largely unbiased in 2018, and have either tended to be unbiased or had a Republican bias in recent special elections.

True, in 2020 and 2016, polls were off the mark in a large number of races and states. But the whole notion of a systematic polling error is that it's, well, systematic: It affects nearly all races, or at least the large majority of them. There just isn't a meaningful sample size to work with here, or anything close to it.

The consequences of this belief that the polls are definitely wrong, however, could be profound. It feeds into the idea that if Democrats do manage to hold onto one or both houses of Congress even Silver's site forecasts that it's fairly likely they will win the Senate it cannot be legitimate. It will give all those election deniers still more fodder for the belief that they're being cheated, and we'll see yet more lies by cynical GOP politicians who see an upside to losing: It's a chance to delegitimize a Democratic majority and nurse the grievance and delusions of their Trump-crazed base. OK, it's not quite as good as winning, but it pays the bills and our already fragile democracy frays just a little bit more.

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about the choices facing America

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Toxic effects of the Big Lie: Will any Republican, anywhere, ever concede defeat? - Salon

In another political era, a Republican presence at a major gathering on world problems might be unremarkable. But it stands out in a time of deep political division, when addressing the climate crisis in the United States has been largely left to Democrats. Baker and the mayor of Oklahoma City were the only Republican politicians invited to speak. And Bakers attendance, along with liberal leaders like Governor Gavin Newsom of California, comes as moderate Republicans, now on the fringes of their party, are quietly being enlisted in or inserting themselves into the climate fight.

Bob Inglis, a former Republican US Representative from South Carolina who now tries to sell conservatives around the country on climate action, noted the rarity of this kind of creature the Republican who leads on climate change. Surely Governor Baker was one of the first to step out into the open field, he said.

Clinton, in his opening statement, noted the urgency of the moment, and the need to get past the political barriers slowing action on climate.

Ive always wanted to go beyond the harsh, polarizing name-calling that characterizes the political debate today, Clinton said. When all is said and done, if we cant answer the How question, the rest doesnt amount to much.

As Baker enters the final stretch of his final term in office, some say the list of his achievements on climate change rivals that of even states considered leaders, like New York and California. Hes signed major bills jump-starting the offshore wind industry, committing to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and, most recently, boosting the clean energy industry in the state while carrying out an ambitious program to help communities address their climate vulnerabilities.

His track-record is not without critics. Some say he delayed implementing programs to achieve the net-zero emissions mandate he signed in 2021 or that he only approved climate bills after watering them down. Critics have noted that the footprint of natural gas has only grown during his tenure, adding that Massachusetts progress happened despite Bakers leadership, not because of it.

On Monday, as he sat onstage beside fellow panelists, the achievements he touted and the case he made for addressing the climate crisis primarily, jobs and the economy spoke to traditional conservative values. It hearkened back to the Republican party that established the Environmental Protection Agency under President Nixon not the one that has more recently sought to limit the agencys reach.

Im really proud of the fact that we are, for all intents and purposes, the only state I know of that really went hard at the resiliency piece at the same time that we went hard at some of the issues around alternative energy solutions, Baker said.

During his time in office, Baker has transitioned from a candidate who, in 2010, questioned the science of climate change to a governor who, a year from now, may count his accomplishments on the issue as a cornerstone of his legacy.

Over the clatter of a plant-based lunch on Monday a small but simple action we can take to support sustainability, according to a sign Baker said that in Massachusetts, environmental issues arent partisan like they are in the rest of the country.

But, when it comes to political leadership nationally, thats not true. The federal Inflation Reduction Act, for instance the major federal climate bill that was signed earlier this year passed without a single Republican signature. Last month, 22 of the 30 Republican governors in the country panned it as a reckless tax and spending spree.

On his panel Monday, Baker called the bill an enormous incentive opportunity for all of us.

Even so, Baker and others see an opening to appeal to some ordinary conservatives, through the jobs and economic possibilities of the seismic energy transition that addressing the climate crisis will demand.

Several companies Unilever and General Motors among them spoke Monday about their sustainability commitments and the role of business and finance in helping facilitate the clean energy transition. Gary Gensler, chair of the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, joined by video conference to discuss the pending rule that would require companies to disclose their climate risks.

Hundreds of companies are making disclosures on climate risks, some of it about strategy, some of it about greenhouse gas emissions, said Gensler. The rule the SEC is considering is to ensure that theyre truthful, what in the law is called Fair Dealing.

Baker said hes hopeful that step will start a landslide of climate action that starts with business and then goes beyond. I think that has huge implications for politics, and for the urgency with respect to climate issues and I do think that will bleed pretty heavily into the Republican party in a good way.

Sabrina Shankman can be reached at sabrina.shankman@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @shankman.

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At Clinton Foundation summit, Governor Baker is a rare Republican voice on climate - The Boston Globe

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) Republican candidate for governor Tudor Dixon says that it elected, she would focus on making sure Michigan students are meeting reading goals.

All of the kids should be at the appropriate reading level and it shouldnt be too much to ask, Dixon told News 8. So our focus is going to be on reading level. Thatll be probably first and foremost where we are zoning in on education.

She also said parents should have education freedom to move their students to a school that fits them, referencing a model in Florida that put more emphasis on private and charter schools.

So if parents feel that that school is not performing for their child or that their child isnt performing well in that school, they should have the option to go someplace else, she said. And I think that once we have those children in the appropriate schools, we will see our kids, our students across the state, thrive.

She said she agrees with former President Donald Trumps Secretary of Education Betsy DeVoss longstanding support of charter and private schools and efforts to direct additional state dollars their way.

The goal is not go after one style (of schools). Its to make sure that every child can achieve an education through whatever style is best for them, Dixon said. We want to make sure that we are leaving no wrong path for any child in education.

Dixon has been rolling out the priorities she would pursue if elected. Last week in Grand Rapids and Pontiac, she talked about law enforcement and justice for crime victims. In Alto on Monday, she talked about her support for agriculture.

Join To The Point Sunday at 10 a.m. for more about Dixons platform.

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Republican governor candidate Tudor Dixon on education - WOODTV.com

The intensifying Republican-led efforts to protest President Biden's policies along the southern border by transporting migrants to Democratic-controlled jurisdictions like Martha's Vineyard and Washington, D.C., have reignited a decades-old, divisive debate over U.S. immigration policy.

The Biden administration, Democrats and advocates have called the transportation tactic a dehumanizing political stunt, accusing Republican-led states of using desperate asylum-seekers as props. Republican governors in Texas, Florida and Arizona have argued their efforts force Democratic cities to share the burden of accommodating migrants, which they say has fallen mostly on communities in their states.

Beyond the political back-and-forth, the busing and flying of migrants to locations selected by Republican officials has also raised questions about current border policies, who the people being transported are, what their legal status is, why they're in the U.S., what their futures hold and whether the states' actions are legal.

Here are the facts about the scheme by Republican-led states to bus and fly migrants to certain destinations.

In April, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, started busing migrants released from federal immigration custody in his state to D.C., saying he was "going to take the border" to the Biden administration, which he has accused of lax immigration enforcement.

Abbott expanded Texas' busing operation earlier this summer to include New York City and again earlier this month to include Chicago. On Sept. 15, Texas started off-loading migrants near Vice President Kamala Harris' official residence in D.C. Abbott has not ruled out including other cities or locations.

In May, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, launched his own busing effort to transport migrants from his state to D.C. Arizona's operation has been smaller in scale than Texas' and limited to the capital. A spokesman for Ducey said there were no plans to transport migrants to other cities.

On Sept. 14, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another Republican, took credit for the transportation of several dozen migrants to Martha's Vineyard, an island vacation destination off the Massachusetts coast. DeSantis said Florida will continue transporting migrants under a $12 million state program, but has not announced other destinations.

The Republican governors in Texas, Arizona and Florida have said their operation to transport migrants to so-called "sanctuary" jurisdictions is designed to pressure Democratic politicians and the Biden administration to enact tougher border measures to deter illegal crossings.

They've also argued that Democratic-controlled states and cities that have adopted "sanctuary" policies, which limit cooperation with federal immigration officials, should help border communities receive migrants amid the record levels of border arrests reported over the past year.

Federal authorities are expected to record more than 2 million migrant apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, a figure that will set an all-time high, according to Customs and Border Protection data. The statistic includes a significant number of repeat border crossings, as well as nearly 1 million rapid expulsions of migrants who were not allowed to stay in the U.S., the data show.

Collectively, Texas and Arizona have transported roughly 13,000 migrants to Democratic-led cities on more than 300 buses in the past several months, according to data provided by state representatives.

As of Sept. 19, Texas had transported more than 8,100 migrants to D.C.; 2,600 to New York; and 675 to Chicago, state data show. Arizona, meanwhile, had bused more than 1,800 migrants to D.C., a spokesman for the governor said. The plane that landed in Martha's Vineyard on Sept. 14 transported roughly 50 migrants.

According to Texas' division of emergency management, the state's migrant busing operation has cost over $12 million. Arizona's busing effort, meanwhile, has cost over $4 million, the state spokesman said.

The migrants transported by Texas, Arizona and Florida were processed by federal border officials after entering the U.S. unlawfully and then released to continue their immigration cases inside the country.

Unlike other recent border-crossers, these migrants, for different reasons, were not expelled from the U.S. under a public health law known as Title 42, which border authorities have used to quickly turn away migrants over 2 million times since March 2020 without allowing them to request asylum.

Decisions to not expel migrants are based on different policy, logistical and diplomatic reasons. For example, as a policy matter, the Biden administration has not been expelling unaccompanied minors, who are instead transferred to shelters. Mexico also generally only accepts expulsions of its citizens and Central Americans.

Moreover, the federal government cannot expel migrants to Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua because the authoritarian regimes there don't accept U.S. deportations. Because of this, migrants from these countries are generally released by border officials after some short-term processing.

While Texas, Arizona and Florida have transported migrants from several countries, many of them hail from Venezuela and Cuba, which have seen a record number of their citizens flee to the U.S. in recent months.

Under U.S. law, migrants who are not processed under Title 42 have a legal right to seek asylum, which the government can grant to foreigners who demonstrate they could be persecuted in their home country because of their nationality, race, religion, political views or membership in a social group.

Just because a migrant is not expelled under Title 42 does not mean they have been granted permanent legal status in the U.S. or that they will not ultimately face deportation. But those released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have been granted permission to continue their immigration cases inside the U.S.

Migrants who are released after crossing the border illegally are still placed in deportation proceedings before the immigration court system, where they can seek asylum or other forms of humanitarian refuge. They need to attend court hearings to try to halt their deportations, and could be ordered deported if they miss them.

Those who are granted asylum can stay in the U.S. permanently and those who lose their case can be ordered deported, but the adjudication process typically takes years to complete because of the mounting backlog of claims before the immigration courts, which are overseeing nearly 2 million unresolved cases.

Some migrants who are released by DHS are enrolled in "alternatives to detention" supervision programs that can include ankle monitors, other tracking devices and requirements to periodically check in with officials at local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices.

Migrants processed by U.S. border officials, including at official ports of entry, are sometimes granted humanitarian parole, a temporary legal classification that shields them from deportation. While it does not provide migrants permanent legal status, parole makes their presence in the U.S. lawful.

When migrants are released by federal officials, they are allowed to travel to a U.S. destination of their choosing. And they can get there through various means, including the buses and planes that some Republican governors are offering them.

It's not illegal for states to transport migrants if it's voluntary. While critics have accused states of human trafficking and kidnapping, no proof has emerged that migrants have been forced on buses or planes. If the transportation involves coercion or false information, however, civil or criminal liability is possible, lawyers said.

Representatives for Texas and Arizona said their migrant busing operations to D.C., New York and Chicago are voluntary, noting they ask migrants to sign consent waivers. Representatives for Florida's governor did not say whether migrants transported by the state are informed the transportation is voluntary.

But lawyers representing more than two dozen migrants flown to Martha's Vineyard by Florida said their clients were misled by the people who transported them. According to the attorneys, the migrants said they were originally told they were going to Boston and a place with jobs and refugee services.

"It seems like there were clear elements of deception in this particular case. It seems like there was fraud in terms of their transport and what was represented to them," said Julie Dahlstrom, the director of the Immigrants' Rights and Human Trafficking Program at Boston University School of Law.

But Dahlstrom said federal and state officials would still need to determine whether there's sufficient evidence to prove that laws were violated, calling it a "difficult legal question."

Lawyers for Civil Rights, the group representing migrants flown to Martha's Vineyard, asked federal prosecutors and the Massachusetts attorney general to launch criminal investigations into their claims. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has also urged the Justice Department to investigate the states' transportation efforts, including the question of whether migrants have been targeted because of their national origin, in violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.

To defend the actions of Texas, Arizona and Florida, Republican lawmakers have said the Biden administration also transports migrants to different states. But it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

The federal government does transport certain migrants who cross the border unlawfully to locations across the country, but not to make a political statement and the practice has been in place for decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which is legally required to care for migrant children who cross the border without their parents, transports these unaccompanied minors, including on charter flights, to different locations to place them in a shelter or release them to relatives or other sponsors in the U.S.

ICE also transports some migrants arrested along the U.S. southern border to detention centers or to other regions of the border to alleviate overcrowding at holding facilities. Federal immigration officials sometimes fly migrants to different areas of the southern border where Mexico accepts their expulsion.

Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the immigration reporter at CBS News. Based in Washington, he covers immigration policy and politics.

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The facts behind the Republican effort to send migrants to Democratic-led cities - CBS News