MAGA Republicans stooped to new lows this week with their extremism, hypocrisy, chaos, and — as President Biden would call it — malarkey. In case you missed it: Florida’s extreme abortion ban will rip away access to care for women throughout the South thanks to Donald Trump; Trump continues to praise the January 6 insurrectionists, many of whom have been accused of assaulting law enforcement, as “patriots” and “hostages”; Trump was declared the “biggest loser” of Tuesday night’s primary election in Wisconsin; Trump is still fomenting political violence by promising a “bloodbath” if he’s not reelected; the RNC is promoting Trump’s racist fearmongering and fundraising off of his calls for political violence; and the RNC’s new in-house election denier Christina Bobb is already raising alarms among Republicans at their new “election integrity” unit.

On the Hill, MAGA Mike Johnson is still downplaying January 6 and promising to protect insurrectionists; Republicans continue to beat their anti-choice drum by coming after Americans’ access to IVF; and after blowing up a tough, bipartisan border security deal, House Republicans are wasting their time trying to name an airport after Trump.

Thanks to Donald Trump, Florida’s extreme abortion ban will rip away access to reproductive care throughout the South.

USA Today: “Florida Supreme Court puts abortion on the ballot – and hands Trump a serious problem” 

Trump: “For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it, and I’m proud to have done it. … Nobody else was going to get that done but me, and we did it, and we did something that was a miracle.”

Trump: “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade … Without me there would be no 6 weeks, 10 weeks, 15 weeks, or whatever is finally agreed to. Without me the pro Life movement would have just kept losing. Thank you President TRUMP!!!”

Rolling Stone: “Trump Claims Credit for All Abortion Bans”

Business Insider: “Trump boasts he’s ‘proud’ about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade, the issue that has become ballot-box poison for Republicans”

New reporting detailed the actions of January 6 insurrectionists who Trump repeatedly calls “hostages” and “patriots.”

NBC News: “Meet some of the violent Jan. 6 rioters Donald Trump keeps calling ‘hostages’”

“The way former President Donald Trump tells it, the men and women who stormed the Capitol because they believed his lies about the 2020 presidential election are ‘hostages’ and ‘unbelievable patriots’ who are being mistreated by the justice system.

“But an NBC News review of hundreds of cases against Jan. 6 defendants found that just 15 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack are currently being held pretrial at the order of federal judges. That number of pretrial detainees has decreased in recent months, as more and more Jan. 6 defendants have taken plea deals or been found guilty, and as federal judges have been hesitant to hold new arrestees in pre-trial custody more than three years after the attack.

“Though Trump said on Jan. 7, 2021, that ‘those who broke the law’ during the Capitol riot would ‘pay,’ he has made his defense of incarcerated Jan. 6 defendants a major plank of his 2024 campaign. Trump has called Jan. 6 detainees ‘hostages’ and even opens rallies by playing a recording from the ‘J6 Prison Choir.’ Trump has said he’ll pardon ‘a large portion’ of the rioters ‘very early on’ if he wins in 2024 and recently vowed to ‘free the Jan. 6 Hostages’ as one of his ‘first acts as your next President.’”

Voters continued to voice their opposition to Trump in primaries across the country, this time in the key battleground state of Wisconsin.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Donald Trump, minus 120,000 Wisconsin GOP votes, becomes Tuesday’s biggest loser”

“Tuesday should have been a very good day for the former Republican president. He got to lead a rally in Green Bay and then send his audience off to the polls to vote for him.

“But Wisconsin Republicans still aren’t completely sold on Trump. How do we know?

“Because more than 120,000 Republicans in the state went to the polls on Tuesday and voted for someone other than Trump — even though all of his GOP opponents have dropped out. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley pulled in more than 75,000 votes, or nearly 13% of the total.”

Trump doubled down on promising a “bloodbath” if he’s not reelected.

New York Times: “Trump Again Invokes ‘Blood Bath’ and Dehumanizes Migrants in Border Remarks”

“In a speech in Grand Rapids, Mich., Mr. Trump, flanked by law enforcement officers, reiterated his baseless claim that other countries were sending ‘prisoners, murderers, drug dealers, mental patients and terrorists, the worst they have’ to the United States. Immigration officials have said that most of the people crossing the border are members of vulnerable families escaping poverty and violence.

“Mr. Trump also used his speech, which lasted roughly 45 minutes, to defend his use of dehumanizing language to refer to immigrants accused of crimes. After referring to the man who the authorities say killed a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia in February, Mr. Trump said: ‘Democrats said please don’t call them ‘animals.’ I said, no, they’re not humans, they’re animals.’”

The RNC is fundraising off of Trump’s dangerous threats of political violence as they promote his racist fearmongering. 

Axios: “RNC launches ‘Biden bloodbath’ website”

“Trump has used the term ‘bloodbath’ on the campaign trail, creating frenzy around the term.

“At a campaign rally in Ohio last month, Trump said: ‘Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath.’”

The Hill: “Prior to Trump’s rally in Michigan, the Republican National Committee (RNC) announced the creation of a website, BidenBloodbath.com, to highlight the situation at the border and how the surge in migrants has affected battleground states including Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”

The RNC’s newly tapped fervent election denier Christina Bobb is raising alarms as she begins to run their new “election integrity” unit.

The Guardian: “As Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has cemented its hold on the Republican National Committee (RNC), alarms are being raised about the organisation’s tapping of the fervent election denialist Christina Bobb to run an ‘election integrity’ unit.”

“‘By designating Bobb to the RNC post, they’re beginning to promulgate the same false narrative of widespread election fraud that we saw in 2020 and 2021 but way earlier,’ said John Jones, a former federal judge in Pennsylvania and now president of Dickinson College.

“The former Republican congressman Charlie Dent said the RNC’s hiring of Bobb ‘is a further indication of how the RNC has not only become an arm of the Trump campaign, but an outlet for the most extreme elements of the election denial movement.’ Likewise, the ex-Republican congressman Dave Trott predicted: ‘Bobb will be leading the charge and saying the election was rigged if Trump loses.’

“Still, some lawyers and election veterans are troubled by the RNC’s hiring of Bobb given her history of election denialism and Trump’s obsession with debunked claims of fraud in 2020. ‘I don’t think it’s a good thing when a major party hires fringe characters who don’t understand how elections work,’ said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.”

Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson is once again following Trump’s lead by downplaying the January 6 attack on the Capitol and protecting insurrectionists.

Louisiana Illuminator: “Johnson, who is close to Trump, did not acknowledge that the people who attacked the Capitol were the president’s supporters. He told a reporter that he thought there was a possibly a ‘big mix of people involved in this.’

“‘I don’t think President Trump is any more responsible for what happened at the Capitol today than the congressmen of Portland are responsible for what happened there,’ said Johnson, referring to some violence that erupted in Oregon over the summer. ‘What caused [the Capitol riot] is the same thing that has caused all the unrest over the last many months.’”

2021: “Johnson voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the January 6 attack.”

NBC News: “Speaker Mike Johnson says he’s blurring Jan. 6 footage so rioters don’t get charged”

Washington Post: “Johnson played one of the most significant roles of any member of Congress in the effort to overturn the election.”

MAGA Republicans are still pushing their extreme, anti-choice playbook – and this time they’re coming for Americans’ access to IVF treatments.

Politico: “Republicans are rushing to defend IVF. The anti-abortion movement hopes to change their minds.”

“Anti-abortion advocates worked for five decades to topple Roe v. Wade. They’re now laying the groundwork for a yearslong fight to curb in vitro fertilization.

“Since the Alabama Supreme Court ruled last month that frozen embryos are children, the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups have been strategizing how to convince not just GOP officials but evangelicals broadly that they should have serious moral concerns about fertility treatments like IVF and that access to them should be curtailed.

“In short, they want to re-run the Roe playbook.

“They plan to appeal to evangelical denominations and their leaders to take a firm stance that IVF as practiced in the U.S. destroys human life. That, they hope, will reshape how conservative Christians — and in turn, the officials they elect — view the issue, just as it did on abortion. Ultimately, it could lead to laws that create a patchwork of IVF access in the United States, where the procedure is more accessible in liberal states and more limited in conservative ones.”

In an ironic tribute, House Republicans are wasting their time and energy trying to rename Dulles International Airport – which received infrastructure funding from a bill some of them voted against – after Trump.

Washington Post: “House Republicans seek to rename Dulles Airport after Trump” 

“The bill to name the Virginia airport after the polarizing 2024 presidential candidate faces tough odds. The House has a slim GOP majority and is consumed with pressing matters, including a national security funding package that would support Ukraine, Israel and other allies. Even if the measure did pass the House, it would have to make it through the Democratic-controlled Senate and get the signature of President Biden.

“The measure would change the name of the airport, about 25 miles west of D.C., to Donald J. Trump International Airport. Any reference to the airport on maps, documents, papers or other government records to the airport ‘shall be considered to be a reference to the Donald J. Trump International Airport,’ according to the two-page bill text.”