Politico: “As the party hardens around its fealty to former President Donald Trump, the GOP is filling up its midterm ballot with a roster of conspiracy theorists and extremists that could threaten the party’s prospects in a state that’s drifted leftward in recent elections.”

“The latest of those candidates is Ron Watkins, a celebrity in the QAnon conspiracy world suspected of being Q, who announced his plans to run for Congress last week.”

“It isn’t just that Watkins embraces the baseless claim that the November election was stolen. It’s that an entire ticket is running on that falsehood now.”

In February, Robert Gonzalez wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republic urging Republicans to not to leave the party. 

He had hoped that after the January 6 insurrection the GOP “could still be saved by decent people working from the inside… While many Republicans failed to show leadership during Trump’s presidency, it seemed that in the wake of Jan. 6, those leaders would finally stand up for truth and democracy.”

But eight months later he writes that he was wrong.

“One of the few remaining tools to influence the Republican Party is to sever ties. So I urge remaining Republicans who stand for truth and democracy to vote with their feet, and leave.”

“Infighting within the Massachusetts GOP intensified Friday after Gov. Charlie Baker (R) called on the party chairman, Jim Lyons, to resign, and Lyons sniped back that the governor should ‘reconsider his party affiliation,'” the Boston Globe reports.

“Republicans have been feuding for months in Nevada’s largest county after a pro-Donald Trump insurgency with ties to far-right activists threw the party into chaos,” Politico reports.

“Now the turmoil is spreading across the battleground state, consuming the GOP in a bonfire of lawsuits, counterclaims and resignations.”

“The meltdown — the latest iteration of the hostilities that have wracked the party nationally in the post-Trump era — could prove especially damaging if the fissures linger into next year.”

Washington Post: “Former president Donald Trump has in the past week threatened electoral defeat for Republicans who dismiss his election falsehoods, inserted himself into the Virginia governor’s race to the delight of Democrats, and promised to root out disloyal GOP officials in legislative primaries in Arizona and Michigan.”

“With more than a year to go before the midterm elections, the former president is leaving no corner of the party untouched as he moves to assert his dominance, both in public and behind the scenes. His stepped-up efforts create a conundrum for many of the party’s strategists and lawmakers, who believe they could have a banner election year in 2022 if they keep the focus on President Biden and his agenda.”

Wall Street Journal: Donald Trumps hostage politics.

McClatchy: “Vaccinated Republican voters have expressed rising levels of anger about unvaccinated Americans, faulting them in part for the country’s then-rising number of infections and deaths from Covid-19.”

“That has led Democrats to examine whether they have a chance to make inroads with voters frustrated with continued vaccine skepticism — particularly the affluent, suburban voters already drifting away from the GOP — as Republicans largely view the vaccine as a matter of personal freedom.”

A new Pew Research poll finds that 67% of Republicans would like to see Donald Trump continue as a major political figure for many years to come, including 44% who want him to run for president in 2024.

The share of Republicans who say Trump should continue to be a major national figure has grown 10 percentage points – from 57% to 67% – since a January survey.

Hillary Clinton told The Atlantic she can draw a straight line from her duels with conservative media and Republican politicians in the 1990s to the January 6 insurrection—and she fears worse is coming.

Said Clinton: “There’s always been a kind of paranoid streak in American politics. But it never was given such voice, such a platform, or had so much money behind it until we saw the rise of the right-wing radio voices like Rush Limbaugh and we saw the rise of Fox News. And then, of course, the internet just put it on steroids.”

Clinton added that not enough Americans are taking the danger of a constitutional crisis seriously: “It’s like the frog dropped into the water. It’s boiling. People are still arguing about stuff that is important, but not as fundamental as whether or not our democracy will be broken and then taken over and minority rule will be what we live under.”

Max Boot: “In the 1980s, when I became a Republican, the GOP took pride in describing itself as the ‘party of ideas.’ But under Trump’s leadership, Republicans have reclaimed their old reputation, dating back to the 1950s, as the ‘stupid party.'”

“What’s even more telling: This is not a source of shame or embarrassment for the party’s populists. They’re the stupid-and-proud-of-it party.”

The Guardian: “A leaked document has revealed the membership list of the secretive Council for National Policy, showing how it provides opportunities for elite Republicans, wealthy entrepreneurs, media proprietors and pillars of the US conservative movement to rub shoulders with anti-abortion and anti-Islamic extremists.”

“The CNP is so secretive, according to reports, that its members are instructed not to reveal their affiliation or even name the group.”

Former Colorado Republican Party chair Ryan Call will be disbarred after acknowledging he took nearly $280,000 from a super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump, CBS Denver reports.