Trump making advances with women

Donald Trump is making strides in all the right places, it seems. Polls indicate he’s making moves among black and Jewish voters in New York State as well as with female voters, while also gaining support in crucial battleground states.

According to the New York Post:

Surveys from Emerson College and the Hill show the 45th president edging out Biden in Arizona (47 percent — 43 percent), Georgia (45 — 41 percent), Michigan (46 — 45 percent), Nevada (46 — 43 percent), Pennsylvania (47 — 45 percent) and Wisconsin (47 — 44 percent).

In all six states, Trump’s lead has either remained the same or grown from the outlet’s polls taken last month, before he was convicted by a Manhattan jury on thirty-four business fraud charges.

These gains are in addition to a report from the New York Times that says, “Biden’s Lead With Women Is Smaller Than Trump’s With Men, a Warning for Democrats,” and a new Siena College poll that found, per the Post:

…Trump is supported by 29 percent of black New Yorkers and 26 percent of Latino residents ahead of his November 5 rematch against eighty-one-year-old Biden.

It also appears Trump could boost himself further with a strategic pick for vice president. “Former president Donald Trump’s interest in selecting Senator Marco Rubio as his vice president is setting off alarm bells for Democrats,” reports the Washington Examiner, as “Rubio’s rapport with Latino voters could drive Trump to victory.” 

-Teresa Mull

On our radar

TAKING A RAIN CHECK Maryland Senate president Bill Ferguson took a job with a solar power company which has multiple contracts with the state. Ferguson will serve as general counsel at CI Renewables and has rejected the idea he will have to excuse himself on legislative debates related to green energy proposals. 

DEAD TO RIGHTS The Supreme Court upheld a ban on individuals subject to protective orders for domestic abuse from owning firearms. Justice Clarence Thomas was the single dissenting vote, arguing that alleged domestic abusers should only lose their right to bear arms after a criminal conviction. 

LIB, COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE The 2024 Democratic National Convention, to be held in Chicago this August, will credential social media influencers for the first time. The online content creators will receive the same level of access as traditional media outlets. 

Mayorkas’s border blooper 

The Biden administration’s immigration schizophrenia continued apace this week, with the president announcing plans to expedite work visas for DREAMers and issue new protections for illegal alien spouses of American citizens just days after announcing a proclamation designed to make him look somewhat tough on the border.

But Biden’s secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, stepped on a rake amid the battle between the Latinos and the Latinx this week. Following reports that a violent criminal illegal alien had raped and murdered Rachel Morin, a Maryland mother of five, Mayorkas first referred her to simply as an “individual” and denied any responsibility for her death. 

“First and foremost, of course our hearts break for the children, the family, the loved ones, the friends of the individual who was murdered, the woman, the mother,” Mayorkas said on CNN.

Morin’s family blasted the controversial cabinet secretary. Morin’s mother, Patty Morin, told Fox News that Mayorkas’s remarks “totally depersonalizes her and makes her an object.”

Representative Andy Harris, who represents the district where Morin was murdered, told The Spectator that the policies of Biden and Mayorkas played a small part in her murder. “Rachel Morin’s life ended because of lawless, wide-open border policies of Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas and their refusal to say her name shows their disrespect to her family and to all the families the Biden border crisis has destroyed,” he said.

Mayorkas’s gaffe follows Biden’s high-profile apology for referring to the illegal immigrant accused of murdering Laken Riley in Georgia as an “illegal.”

–Matthew Foldi

Is Washington’s war on Zyn ‘election interference’? 

Elsewhere in government overreach: in response to a subpoena from DC’s Attorney General Brian Schwalb, tobacco giant Philip Morris International said Monday they would suspend national online sales on zyn.com. For the uninitiated, Cockburn’s nieces explain that Zyn is a form of nicotine pouch, similar to Swedish portion snus, except zyns don’t contain any tobacco, just varying levels of nicotine. On the Zyn website, pouches come in flavors including cool mint, peppermint, wintergreen, spearmint, cinnamon, coffee and citrus.

Philip Morris bought Swedish Match, the company behind Zyn, two years ago, hoping to expand their products beyond cigarettes amid strict regulations.  The subpoena likely arose from the DC City Council prohibiting the sale of all flavored tobacco — including flavored synthetic nicotine products — in 2022. Philip Morris’s preliminary investigation “indicates that there have been sales of flavored nicotine pouch products in DC, predominantly related to certain online sales platforms and some independent retailers.”

Many, including Democratic senator Chuck Schumer, are concerned about the seductive grip nicotine products have on kids. On the other hand, results from the 2023 National Youth Tobacco Survey showed just 1.5 percent of youth used a nicotine pouch at least once in the past thirty days — and many Zyn fans use it as way to quit smoking.

Zyn is immensely popular with young American men at the moment, Cockburn’s nieces attest, particularly those who lean right. “The Schumer-Schwalb regime’s crackdown on Zyn is their latest attempt to hamstring Republican staffers in the run-up to November,” one House GOP staffer told Cockburn. “This is textbook election interference — and puts our democracy and freedoms at risk.” Let he who is without Zyn cast the first stone…

–Cockburn