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  • Opinion: The deal McCarthy struck was an inexplicable act of self destruction | CNN

    Opinion: The deal McCarthy struck was an inexplicable act of self destruction | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Charlie Dent is a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who was chair of the House Ethics Committee from 2015 until 2017 and chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies from 2015 until 2018. He is a CNN political commentator. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    The drawn-out spectacle that was the House speaker election laid bare the fracture and dysfunction within the House Republican conference. Mercifully, it ended after four days and 15 ballots.

    But it’s worth noting that the House Speaker vote is the first – and typically the easiest – order of business. Judging by how difficult it was for Kevin McCarthy to secure the necessary votes to become speaker, there are plenty of bitter and protracted fights to come.

    After McCarthy flipped a number of his original holdouts, his fate finally came down to Rep. Matt Gaetz, who found himself on the receiving end of ire from his GOP colleagues, including an understandably frustrated Rep. Mike Rogers, who angrily confronted the Florida congressman during the closing moments of the 14th ballot.

    While congratulations are in order to Speaker McCarthy, the role has been considerably weakened due to the reported concessions he made during this unseemly political shakedown. Clearly, the hardliners exacted more than a pound of flesh from McCarthy and most of the House GOP conference that will make governing exceedingly difficult.

    It begs the question: Is surrendering your way to victory really winning? And when will this appeasement ever end, considering it only makes this extremist faction more powerful?

    First, a bit of recent history is in order to explain the dynamics of the House Republican conference.

    Anyone surprised by the dysfunction this week should not have been; the House GOP conference has been growing increasingly dysfunctional over the past 13 years. The chaotic machinations witnessed by the world this week are simply a continuation of the dysfunction that began after the Tea Party swept the House in 2010.

    Former Speaker John Boehner and Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and later Speaker Paul Ryan, were all tormented by a rejectionist wing of their own party on simple matters of governance. Funding the government, preventing default on the full faith and credit of the United States, providing emergency relief to states and communities ravaged by natural disasters, and reauthorizing essential programs all became dramatic, high stakes fights.

    McCarthy was in leadership throughout this period and knew the dangers in dealing with this fringe group bent on sowing chaos in Congress. In fact, some of the same characters behind the chaos this week were among the group that fragged McCarthy in 2015 when he last tried to become speaker (and failed). Torturing the House Republican leadership and holding the GOP agenda hostage has become an ignoble strategy for these rabble rousers.

    So here we are in 2023. The malcontents are still digging in – the only difference now is that there is a smaller governing majority. Actually, there really is no GOP governing majority at all, and the world will learn that soon enough.

    A paradigm shift is long overdue. Pragmatic and rational Republican members, who bristled at the concessions McCarthy handed to Gaetz and his ilk, must force a course correction and change the dynamics.

    In this case, retribution is a dish best served piping hot. It’s time for rational House Republicans to push back and use their leverage – starting with the rules package. They should give the chaos caucus a taste of their own medicine and say no until their reasonable demands are met.

    They’ll be doing themselves – and McCarthy – a favor by clawing back some of the rules the speaker agreed to in his misguided deal. Giving in to the hardliners by allowing a single member to call for a vote to oust the speaker is a nonstarter; same for placing more members of the Freedom Caucus on the House Rules Committee.

    The hardliners also secured a promise that a McCarthy-aligned super PAC would not intervene in open, safe seat GOP primaries. Why empower fringe elements even further in a way that will only produce more members of Congress who are disinterested in governing? These are inexplicable acts of self-destruction.

    It’s time to stop feeding the crocodiles. Rational Republicans must stand, fight and resist. Two can play this game. If the diabolical demands and tactics of the chaos caucus didn’t upset them enough, consider this quote from Gaetz: “I ran out of things I could even imagine to ask for.”

    Rational House Republicans need to protect themselves from the deal McCarthy agreed to in his own quest for the coveted gavel. Big legislative battles are looming, and Republicans will need all the procedural tools at their disposal to keep the country on track and out of the proverbial ditch, or worse. Tanking the worst of the proposed rules changes is in order.

    And if there aren’t enough GOP votes for a more reasonable rules package, then it’s time to try something novel – bipartisanship. In this case, rational Republicans should reach across the aisle and work with Democrats to secure enough votes for a rules package that rolls back some of the hardliners’ demands.

    The House’s ability to function is at stake. America’s authoritarian adversaries around the world point to democracy as outdated and unable to meet the needs of its people. It’s time to prove them wrong by stamping out the extremist elements within our midst who deny the results of free and fair elections and wish to wreak havoc on America’s hallowed temple of democracy.

    This is the moment for rational House Republicans to make their stand.

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  • It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a Superman comic under the Constitution for this congressman | CNN Politics

    It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a Superman comic under the Constitution for this congressman | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    California’s Robert Garcia will be sworn into office with the Constitution – and a priceless vintage Superman comic.

    The comic is one of several sentimental items that will be underneath the Constitution when Garcia takes his ceremonial oath. The copy of “Superman” #1 will be joined by a photo of Garcia’s parents, who died of Covid-19, and his citizenship certificate, according to a Thursday tweet from Garcia.

    “I’m looking forward to being sworn-in on the U.S. Constitution,” the Democrat wrote. “Underneath the Constitution will be 3 items that mean a lot to me personally. A photo of my parents who passed due to covid, my citizenship certificate & a Superman #1 from the @librarycongress.”

    Garcia was officially sworn into office early Saturday morning alongside other House members. It is presently unclear when the ceremonial swearing in, at which Garcia will use the comic, will take place.

    In a statement emailed to CNN, Garcia explained that comics are especially significant to him because they helped him learn English after coming to the US from Peru.

    “I came to America at the age of 5 as a Spanish-speaker,” said the politician via email. “As a kid, I would pick up comics at old thrift shops and pharmacies and that’s how I learned to read and write in English.”

    Additionally, Superman is a poignant symbol for Garcia’s values. The superhero represents “truth and justice, an immigrant that was different, was raised by good people that welcomed them,” he added in his statement. “If you look at Superman values, and caucus values, it’s about justice, it’s about honesty, it’s doing the right thing, standing up for people that need support.”

    The exceptionally rare comic, released in 1939, belongs to the Library of Congress.

    “Members of Congress are able to borrow many of our materials, but due to the value and rarity of the Superman 1 comic, it is among the materials that we do not lend to anyone,” said the library in a statement emailed to CNN. “We are pleased, however, to have been able to offer to bring it to Congressman-elect Robert Garcia in a protective Mylar covering, and give it to him to hold underneath a copy of the U.S. Constitution during his ceremonial swearing in.”

    After Garcia is ceremonially sworn in, he’ll hand the Mylar-protected comic back to a library employee, who will return it to the facility with a Capitol Police escort, according to the library.

    The Library of Congress added that they usually provide a variety of Bibles and other religious texts for lawmakers to use when being sworn into office. In the past, special requests have included President Barack Obama’s request to use President Abraham Lincoln’s Bible and Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s request to use the Biblia Hebraica, the first complete Hebrew Bible published in America. Politicians have also used the US Constitution and state constitutions to take their oaths.

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  • Marcy Kaptur breaks new record in Congress with a familiar warning for the Democratic Party | CNN Politics

    Marcy Kaptur breaks new record in Congress with a familiar warning for the Democratic Party | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Rep. Marcy Kaptur becomes the longest-serving woman in Congress this week after winning her first competitive race in decades. But she sees her work in Washington as far from over.

    “I operate in a different way than many of my colleagues simply because of what I have lived,” said the Ohio Democrat, who was the first in her family to graduate from college and represents the kind of Rust Belt community slipping away from her party.

    “So why do I stay? It isn’t just to get a title that she stayed the longest. But to use every ounce of strength I have to try to hammer this message: You’re leaving us out. You’re not seeing us.”

    First elected in 1982, Kaptur became the longest-serving woman in the US House of Representatives in 2018. But now she’s breaking the record of former Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a fellow Democrat who retired at the end of 2016 after 40 years in Congress. Throughout that time, Kaptur has urged her party – especially leadership, which has often been dominated by lawmakers from the coasts – to wake up to the plight of “industrial and agricultural America,” not only for the survival of the party, but also for democracy.

    In an interview with CNN late last year, Kaptur recalled approaching a “very high-ranking member of the House” and warning that the federal government needed to invest in the middle of the country. “We are going to have political unrest. I even used a stronger word. I said even perhaps fascism,” she said.

    That was before the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    Kaptur won a 21st term in November in a district that was redrawn from heavily Democrat to more Republican, defeating an election denier who was at the Capitol on January 6.

    J.R. Majewski has said he went to protest peacefully and left when “it got ugly,” but the House GOP’s campaign arm eventually cut off spending for him in the district after revelations about him misrepresenting his military record. Kaptur, although she faced criticism from some constituents that she’d been in Washington too long, won by 13 points.

    “I view myself like the Statue of Freedom on top of the Capitol. It is a woman and she looks east to the rising sun,” said Kaptur, who counts among her proudest achievements the 17-year struggle for the construction of the World War II memorial. It was one of her constituents, a letter carrier from the village of Berkey, who pushed her to introduce legislation for it.

    Kaptur left a doctorate program at MIT to run for Congress, having already worked for President Jimmy Carter as a domestic policy adviser. She was one of just 24 women in Congress when she arrived. Today there are 149.

    “So that is really consequential progress – in one generation,” Kaptur said of the record number of women serving this year. She wrote a book in 1996 about women in Congress in the 20th century, joking that she’s been too busy to update it.

    But having more women in Congress is less important to Kaptur than where the women are from and the kinds of communities they represent.

    “As a woman, let me just say, if you come from the part of America where I do – and I don’t just mean geographically, but I mean economically – we still don’t have a majority.”

    “What’s the difference between a very rich woman and man in Congress?” asked Kaptur, who lives in the same Toledo house she grew up in. “People like us, we’re there. We’re there. We are radishes in a salad. … But we’re important voices because what we have experienced enlightens the dialogue.”

    She fought for years to get a spot on the House Appropriations Committee – eventually going up against Nancy Pelosi. “I was so offended,” Kaptur said, casting it as the “fight of a hardscrabble working-class person” against a former head of the Democratic Party of California.

    Kaptur has occasionally been at odds with Pelosi in leadership races – even briefly challenging her for party leader in 2002 – although the two women have recently praised and supported each other. Kaptur’s voting record on abortion has also evolved to be more in line with the national party.

    When the Ohio Democrat got to the Appropriations Committee in the early 1990s, she was one of only three women. Democratic then-Rep. Lindy Boggs of Louisiana had to tell her to stand up when addressing the panel.

    She’s unsuccessfully sought to lead the committee – losing out to women from more coastal states. But in 2019, she became the first woman to chair the subcommittee on energy and water development and her bill to create the Great Lakes Authority – a federal regional commission to address environmental and economic issues – recently passed as part of the omnibus spending package.

    Still, she said, it can be hard to be heard.

    This Capitol Hill duo has worked on family issues for nearly 30 years

    “When you’re not in leadership, you don’t have a seat at the table – maybe you have your subcommittee or your committee, something like that – but it almost is impenetrable,” she said of the institution. “And the American people know it. They feel it and that’s why they’re becoming radical in their political expressions.”

    But she credits President Joe Biden for visiting Lorain, a city in Northeast Ohio, last year. “That is unheard of. Joe Biden is trying. He’s in a party that can’t see places like Lorain and Cleveland and Toledo.”

    She laments the defeat of Democrat Tim Ryan, whom she backed in last year’s Ohio Senate race, and blames the national party for long ignoring disaffected voters who ultimately backed the Republican nominee.

    “So my struggle is unending. And I hope God gives me the years, maybe I can pound some of this sense into the institution, but I don’t know,” Kaptur said.

    And then, with a laugh, later added, “I gotta stay as long as Mitch McConnell.”

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  • How an American hero ‘lit his legacy on fire’ | CNN Politics

    How an American hero ‘lit his legacy on fire’ | CNN Politics

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    Watch “Giuliani: What Happened to America’s Mayor?” on CNN at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Sunday, January 8.



    CNN
     — 

    The evolution of Rudy Giuliani is an epic tale. A celebrated crime fighter who brought down mafia bosses and put Wall Street crooks behind bars, he traded on trust and integrity to prove Republicans could still get elected as mayors of big cities.

    His empathy and leadership on 9/11 in New York City made him a global figure and a bona fide hero.

    How that man, who used to get standing ovations whenever he entered a room, morphed into former President Donald Trump’s conspiracy theory lackey peddling lies about the 2020 election is the subject of the new CNN Original Series, “Giuliani: What Happened to America’s Mayor?”

    The images of Giuliani’s early success paired with his later disgrace are striking and sad.

    I reached out to one key voice in the series, CNN political analyst John Avlon, who was Giuliani’s chief speech writer during his second term as mayor, including on 9/11, and later worked for Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

    Excerpts of our conversation about Avlon’s perceptions of the series and what happened to his old boss are below.

    WOLF: The Giuliani of today is at the fulcrum of so many of Trump’s problems. Giuliani’s dirt digging in Ukraine contributed to the first Trump impeachment. Giuliani helped enable the election denialism that led to the second Trump impeachment. How would you describe his place in Trump’s political history?

    AVLON: I think that among some hard-core Trump true believers, Rudy will be scapegoated as the source of Trump’s multiple problems. I think that’s an attempt to evade Trump’s responsibility for the chaos he himself caused.

    But you have got to hand it to him – Rudy is the first presidential lawyer whose actions contributed to not one, but two impeachments. That’s a special place in American history. And unfortunately, I think this tragic last chapter in his life will overwhelm the very positive, constructive role he played in different chapters of his life.

    I don’t think it’ll ultimately eclipse 9/11 and his leadership on that day. But he lit his legacy on fire in service of Donald Trump and got nothing in return except disgrace, ignominy, (possible) disbarment and a gutting of his personal fortune.

    WOLF: I think a lot of people will be surprised to learn about those earlier chapters. He’s this prosecutor who brought down mafia families and insider traders. He’s the mayor who cleaned up the city. How does that guy become the conspiracy theory pusher?

    AVLON: That’s, to a large extent, what the documentary is about. I think it is important for people to remember he was a leading lawyer of his generation, with an objective record of success in terms of dismantling the mob and taking on Wall Street.

    That alone would have made him a major figure in contemporary American politics. But then what he did as mayor was absolutely remarkable. George Will called it America’s most successful case of conservative governance.

    I worked for him in City Hall in his second term as chief speechwriter, and if you just look at the data of what he did, it’s remarkable:

    He cut murders by 68%, crime by 56%.

    He turned a $2 billion deficit into a multibillion-dollar surplus.

    He cut taxes for New Yorkers.

    He improved the quality of life.

    I think his policies ushered in an era of resurgence for urban America. In New York City, I think 20 years of Rudy and (Michael) Bloomberg together really helped turn around the city in fundamental ways.

    The tragedy – and I use the term advisedly because it’s self-inflicted, but it is tragic – is that the guy who believed that the law is a search for the truth ended up trying to defend his client in the court of public opinion using the law in pursuit of a lie.

    I think that he got caught in a right-wing echo chamber ecosystem, where he was totally invested in an alternate reality that was fundamentally hyperpartisan and therefore they couldn’t even conceive of losing fairly.

    And so at the end of the day, they tried to overturn an election, overturn our democracy on the basis of a pretty self-evident lie with no evidence.

    I’m not going to try to diagnose how he’s changed. But the filter in the judgment of the man I knew and was proud to work for is fundamentally off.

    WOLF: The perception is that he has changed as a person, but there are these interesting moments in the documentary that presage the Rudy of today. We see a riot of police officers at City Hall in 1992 that is compared with the riot at the Capitol. In ’89, he suggested but did not pursue the idea that there had been fraudulent voting. Has he actually changed, or has he just been uncovered?

    AVLON: Robert Caro has a great line about how power doesn’t corrupt, power reveals. I’m always more inclined to believe the adage that as people grow older, they get more so. There are moments, and the documentary makes a lot of them, to draw a narrative connection between the police riot and January 6th. The person I knew and worked for – those incidents did not define him on a day-to-day basis.

    Character counts. One of the things for good or for ill about Rudy, and something that I learned on 9/11, is you don’t have to be perfect to be a hero. Rudy was not one of these politicians who pretended to be perfect.

    He understood that he was a flawed human being and was actively interested in figuring out his flaws and what motivated him in certain low times. He was someone who thought philosophically about politics.

    If you talked to him about his position on abortion, for example, he would, in an unpretentious way, start talking about St. Thomas Aquinas, the debate about when life begins.

    He was also the kind of human who thought about becoming a priest and ended up becoming a prosecutor. But I think there has been a change in his judgment.

    The Trump orbit tends to attract people who are not at their best in terms of stability. Rudy found attention and relevance at the expense of his legacy and reputation.

    WOLF: It was instructive for me to revisit just how much of a national hero he was after 9/11. How do you think that specifically affected him? You saw it happen.

    AVLON: First of all, there is a misperception that’s partly partisan nature that Rudy was deeply unpopular before 9/11. That is statistically not true.

    That’s not to say he wasn’t controversial and divisive at times. What he would say is that when you’re turning around a ship at sea, you’ve got to throw your shoulder to the wheel.

    9/11 was a classic case of the man meeting the moment. The New York Observer, which was often critical of Rudy, said that he distinguished himself almost overnight as New York’s greatest mayor.

    He became seen as sort of a modern-day Churchill and that was because of his instinctive response to an unprecedented massive attack.

    And it was also because of his empathy and his honesty. He was able to channel grief in a constructive direction. He was resolute. He said the number of people who died was more than any of us can bear, and he was an inspiration to a fundamentally shaken and horrified world.

    And it was extraordinary. For months and years afterward, he would be greeted with standing ovations when he walked in the room.

    I think it’s a little too simple to say that creates a presumption of that kind of reception wherever you go. But I think what it does is highlight how tragic the fall has been.

    And if he had kept his credibility as sort of a centrist Republican senior statesman who was tough on the issues that a lot of people care about – law and order, fiscal discipline, etc., including on social issues – he could have played a major stabilizing force within the Republican Party.

    He could have been somebody who parks and statues and streets would have been named after across the nation, because of his example of leadership on that day, which was the apotheosis of his career. That was a reflection of the true mettle and character.

    WOLF: You talked about him being a Republican in a Democratic city. He wasn’t the only big city Republican mayor. Los Angeles had one at the time. Republicans put up John McCain for president in 2008. Mitt Romney tried to be severely conservative, but these days he’s just about as moderate as Republicans get. Do you think Republicans are interested in moving back into that middle ground and governing a big city as opposed to just using it as a foil for their national ambitions?

    AVLON: It’s a great and important question. If you take the biggest possible step back at America’s historical political divisions, you’ll see that much bigger than Democrat / Republican or liberal / conservative is urban vs. rural.

    We need urban Republicans and rural Democrats to help bridge divides. When there were progressive Republicans back in the day, particularly in the Northeast, and conservative Democrats, there were a ton of problems. But you could always find governing majorities within divided government. You could cobble together coalition.

    The decline of urban Republicans and rural Democrats is enormously disruptive for the country in terms of further inflaming hyperpartisanship and polarization and the kind of distrust that already exists culturally kind of in our America.

    Republicans should care about playing in urban areas, and Democrats should care a hell of a lot more about playing in rural areas in red states.

    WOLF: We tend to think that it was proximity to Trump that radicalized Rudy, but there’s a riff in the documentary about Giuliani’s visceral reaction to the Barack Obama presidency, similar to how Trump reacted to Obama’s presidency, actually. I wondered how you felt about seeing that portion.

    AVLON: After his presidential campaign, he becomes more and more sort of isolated in that bubble. That right-wing ecosystem. It’s a form of acculturation where the hyperpartisan environment becomes kind of assumed.

    It’s the places you’re giving speeches. It’s the television networks you watch. You spend all your time with partisans. It isolates you from the act of responsibility of governing and uniting a very diverse city – even certainly he had challenges with that.

    I think that his animus toward Hillary Clinton and the Clintons was one of the things that drove him to embrace Donald Trump late in the (2016) campaign.

    By the way, he never endorsed (former New Jersey Gov.) Chris Christie or (former Florida Gov.) Jeb Bush, but he really was inclined to support either of them first, because they’re the kind of Republicans that he was.

    After he made that comment about Obama, I believe it was a fundraiser for (then-Wisconsin Gov.) Scott Walker, he actually called me at home to explain himself. (Read CNN’s report from 2015, when Giuliani said he didn’t think Obama “loves America.”)

    It was strange, because I think we just had our first son, and Margaret and I met working on his presidential campaign. (Avlon is married to the CNN political commentator and host of PBS’ “Firing Line,” Margaret Hoover). And he called me to, like, explain what he meant.

    I thought it was revealing of the right-wing media he had been ingesting, and also that somewhere there was a degree of guilt that he felt the need to explain himself to me, who worked for him before, a long time ago.

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  • Michigan attorney general re-opens criminal probe into fake electors for Trump | CNN Politics

    Michigan attorney general re-opens criminal probe into fake electors for Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has re-opened her criminal investigation into fake electors who signed a certificate claiming former President Donald Trump won the state in the 2020 election when he did not, she said on Friday.

    Nessel, a Democrat who previously referred the matter to federal prosecutors, told reporters that she is “a little worried” that more than a year has passed since she referred cases related to the false slates of electors to the Justice Department and believes there is “clear evidence” to support charges against the fake electors from Michigan.

    “What we have seen from the January 6 committee is an overwhelming amount of evidence. I thought that there was already a substantial amount of evidence in that case. But now, there is just clear evidence to support charges against those 16 false electors, at least in our state,” Nessel said.

    “Quite candidly, yes, we are re-opening our investigation because I don’t know what the federal government plans to do,” she added.

    CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

    Nessel said last January that her office had been evaluating charges related to the effort to put forward a slate of fake electors from Michigan. At the time, Nessel said publicly she was “confident we have enough evidence to charge” people under state law for “forgery of a public record,” and other crimes. But ultimately, she decided to ask the Justice Department to investigate.

    On Friday, the second anniversary of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol in Washington, DC, Nessel confirmed the state investigation has been re-opened, noting it’s unclear how the Justice Department probe is proceeding.

    Witness emails, text messages and testimony from the House January 6 committee – all of which are now in the possession of DOJ prosecutors working under special counsel Jack Smith, show Trump’s role in pushing alternate slates of electors, pressing battleground state officials to overturn the election results, attempting to replace the acting attorney general with someone who would embrace election fraud claims, and laying the early groundwork to call his followers to the US Capitol.

    The committee’s investigation has given a fuller and more nuanced picture of the interconnected plots that the DOJ has been investigating, including the scheme to put forward slates of illegitimate Trump electors from battleground states that Joe Biden won to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence and Congress to halt the certification of the results.

    That includes the Trump team’s efforts in Michigan, as newly released testimony from state officials revealed new details about the involvement of the former president’s campaign and legal team.

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  • America capped off an extraordinary year for job growth, adding 223,000 positions in December | CNN Business

    America capped off an extraordinary year for job growth, adding 223,000 positions in December | CNN Business

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    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    The US economy added 223,000 jobs in December, according to the monthly employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, capping a year of extraordinary job growth and marking the second-best year for the labor market in records that go back to 1939.

    The unemployment rate fell back to a record low of 3.5% from a revised 3.6% in November.

    Economists were expecting 200,000 job gains for the last month of the year, according to Refinitiv. December’s job total is lower than the downwardly revised 256,000 jobs added in November.

    Including last month’s gains, which are subject to revision, the economy added about 4.5 million jobs in 2022. That’s the second-highest-ever total, after the 6.7 million jobs added in 2021 — a boomerang from 2020’s 9.3 million job losses.

    The labor market slowed in 2022, compared to the previous year’s tear. December’s jobs total represents the lowest monthly gains in two years.

    Those latest gains come following months of jumbo interest rate increases from the Federal Reserve in its attempt to cool off the economy after inflation last year hit its highest level since the 1980s. Those efforts have, so far, remained mostly elusive.

    That means the Fed is entering 2023 looking for a considerably softer and looser labor market — notably, increased labor participation, a better alignment of job seekers to open positions, and lower levels of wage growth.

    “This is about the best report one could hope for, given a still very hot US labor market,” said Joe Brusuelas, principal and chief economist for RSM US.

    Wall Street responded positively to Friday’s jobs data, with the Dow rising by almost 500 points by mid-morning — mostly a reaction to the slower pace of wage growth. Average hourly earnings increased 0.3% over the previous month and 4.6% annually. That’s compared to 0.4% month-on-month growth in November and 4.8% annual growth.

    The December report showed that the labor force participation rate, an estimation of the active workforce and people looking for work, ticked up to 62.3% from 62.2%.

    Labor force participation rates have been on a decline — largely due to demographic changes and aging Baby Boomers — since hitting a high of 67.3% in early 2000, and had fallen to 63.3% in the month before the onset of the pandemic. The participation rate has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, vexing economists and the Fed, while also contributing to an imbalance of worker supply and demand.

    “The labor market is moving in the right direction for the Federal Reserve, according to the December employment report, but is not there yet,” Gus Faucher, senior economist for PNC Financial services said in a statement. “Job growth is slowing to a more sustainable pace, and wage growth is softening as demand in the job market slackens somewhat.”

    However, with job growth well above pre-pandemic levels, when job gains averaged 164,000 in 2019, and the unemployment rate returning to a 50-year low, there is little indication that there will be enough of a boost in the labor force to help cool off the job market, he said.

    Some of the largest monthly gains were in industries such as leisure and hospitality, health care, and accommodation and food services, which all were hit hard during the pandemic. There were also notable monthly job losses in technology and interest-rate-sensitive sectors that surged during the pandemic and are now rebalancing as consumers shift spending toward services.

    Industries such as information, finance and professional and business services, shed jobs between November and December.

    The losses seen in areas such as professional and business services are likely an effect of the waves of mass layoffs hitting the tech industry, said Ken Kim, a senior economist at KPMG.

    “We are seeing a little bit of spread to other areas,” he said.

    In addition to Friday’s strong jobs numbers, several other pieces of jobs data released this week continue to reflect a healthy labor market. Wednesday’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report showed that the number of available jobs remained steady at 10.5 million in November. It also showed that quits, layoffs and hires didn’t really show any major signs of cooling that month.

    ADP’s private-sector employment report on Thursday also showed a robust labor market, with 235,000 jobs added in the private sector during December, well exceeding expectations of 150,000.

    And Thursday’s weekly jobless claims fell by 21,000 to 204,000 for the week ending November 26, while continuing claims decreased to 1.69 million from 1.72 million to 1.61 million.

    —CNN’s Matt Egan contributed to this report.

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  • Stabenow’s retirement gives Republicans an opening in Michigan. But will they take it? | CNN Politics

    Stabenow’s retirement gives Republicans an opening in Michigan. But will they take it? | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Longtime Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow is calling it quits and will not stand for reelection in 2024.

    At a minimum, her decision makes Democrats’ already difficult job of retaining Senate control in 2024 even harder. Senators caucusing with the party hold 23 of the 34 seats expected to be up for reelection. Seven of them represent states Trump won at least once. This includes Michigan.

    Sen. Gary Peters – the last Democrat not named Stabenow to run for Senate in Michigan – won reelection by less than 2 points in 2020.

    Stabenow likely would have made Democrats’ job easier had she opted to run again. After narrowly unseating Republican Sen. Spencer Abraham in 2000, she has won reelection by at least 5 points in three subsequent contests.

    But Democrats now have a battle on the horizon in another state that flipped from Donald Trump in 2016 to Joe Biden four years later. Beyond Michigan, Democrats face a messy situation in Arizona with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema becoming an independent.

    With 51 senators now caucusing with Democrats, losses in Arizona and Michigan alone could be enough to flip the chamber to Republicans.

    Yet, Republicans’ ability to flip Michigan will be highly dependent on two important questions.

    First, what type of party do GOP primary voters want?

    And second, will Republicans in key Great Lakes battleground states continue to outperform national results if Trump isn’t on the ballot?

    In 2022, we saw GOP primary voters across the map select nominees who ended up being rejected by the general election electorate. Republicans underperformed the partisan fundamentals in a number of key Senate races, allowing Democrats to maintain control of the chamber while narrowly losing the House.

    There were several examples of this in Michigan last year. While there was no Senate race, the state held elections for key statewide offices, including governor, attorney general and secretary of state. The Republican candidates for these positions promoted false claims that Biden had not won the 2020 election legitimately.

    The result was that none of them came close to winning any of these races. This was most evident in the gubernatorial contest, where Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer turned what should have been a close race against Republican Tudor Dixon into a double-digit blowout.

    If Republicans are going to want to compete in Michigan in 2024 – or any swing-state Senate races in two years – primary voters will likely need to choose more mainstream candidates than they did in 2022.

    Of course, it won’t just be about individual candidates. It will be about regional trends as well.

    One of the biggest electoral changes in the past decade has been the Republican breakthrough in Great Lakes states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They went from voting to the left of the nation in the 2012 presidential election to voting to the nation’s right in 2016 and 2020. This was in large part because of Trump’s appeal to White voters without a college degree.

    But Trump may not be on the ballot in 2024, and it’s unclear whether the pro-Republican trend in these Great Lakes states will continue without him.

    Look at what happened last year. Michigan voted to the left of the nation in US House races. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin voted basically in line with the nation, once you account for uncontested races.

    Indeed, it would not be surprising to see a shift in how states vote relative to the nation if Trump is out of the picture. This has happened every eight years in recent cycles (e.g., 1976, 1984, 1992, 2000, 2008 and 2016).

    And that would make Democrats less vulnerable in Michigan than you might think, even without Stabenow as their nominee. Keep in mind that Democrats haven’t lost a Senate race in the Wolverine State since 1994.

    A return to the pre-Trump era in Michigan and other key Great Lakes states may also mean that the advantage Republicans have held in the Electoral College relative to the popular vote in the two most recent presidential elections may not materialize in 2024.

    That’s something Democrats would certainly welcome going into 2024 after one of the closest midterm cycles of the past century.

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  • Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow won’t seek reelection in 2024 | CNN Politics

    Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow won’t seek reelection in 2024 | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Sen. Debbie Stabenow will not seek reelection in 2024, the longtime Michigan Democrat said Thursday, opening up a Senate seat in a key swing state.

    “Inspired by a new generation of leaders, I have decided to pass the torch in the U.S. Senate. I am announcing today that I will not seek re-election and will leave the U.S. Senate at the end of my term on January 3, 2025,” Stabenow, 72, said in a statement.

    Stabenow’s decision comes just months after Democrats held on to control of the Senate in the midterm elections. Senate Democrats were already facing a tough map in 2024, but Stabenow’s decision to retire puts another seat in a crucial swing state in play.

    Stabenow, who previously served in the Michigan state House and state Senate, first won election to Congress in 1996, winning a swing seat in Central Michigan. After two terms in the House, she won election to the Senate in 2000, unseating Republican incumbent Spencer Abraham. In the Senate, she rose to become the current No. 3 Democrat in the chamber as chair of her caucus’s Policy and Communications Committee. She also currently chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee.

    “No one embodies the true Michigan spirit more than Debbie Stabenow,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement. “From the state legislature to the House of Representatives, and for the last two decades in the United States Senate, Debbie has made a difference for Michiganders every step along the way.”

    Democrats are defending 23 of the 34 Senate seats up for reelection next year, including three seats in states that backed former President Donald Trump by at least 8 points in 2020: West Virginia, Montana and Ohio.

    Besides Michigan, the party is also defending seats in other battleground states such as Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

    In the wake of Stabenow’s announcement, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin is closely looking at running for Senate, a source close to the congresswoman’s team told CNN.

    Other potential candidates for the seat include Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga and Rep.-elect John James and Democratic Reps. Dan Kildee and Debbie Dingell and Democratic state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who drew national attention last year in a floor speech pushing back against anti-LGBTQ attacks from a Republican colleague. James lost a closer-than-expected race to Stabenow in 2018 and then narrowly lost a bid for the state’s other Senate seat in 2020, before winning election to the House in November from a swing seat north of Detroit.

    Two high-profile Democrats took their names out of contention Thursday for Stabenow’s seat.

    A spokesman for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was reelected to a second term in November, confirmed that the Democrat will not run for Senate in 2024.

    Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement to CNN that he is “fully focused” on his current role and “not seeking any other job.”

    The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, moved last year to Michigan, where the parents of his husband, Chasten, live.

    A spokesperson for Senate Democrats’ campaign arm expressed confidence Thursday in holding Stabenow’s seat.

    “In 2022, Michigan Democrats won resounding statewide victories, and we are confident Democrats will hold this Senate seat in 2024,” David Bergstein of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said in a statement.

    Mike Berg, communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that the committee is going to “aggressively target this seat in 2024.”

    “Senate Democrats don’t even have a campaign chair yet and they are already dealing with a major retirement,” he said in a statement.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Jair Bolsonaro Fast Facts | CNN

    Jair Bolsonaro Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at the life of Jair Bolsonaro, former president of Brazil.

    Birth date: March 21, 1955

    Birth place: Campinas, Brazil

    Birth name: Jair Messias Bolsonaro

    Father: Percy Geraldo Bolsonaro, dentist

    Mother: Olinda Bonturi Bolsonaro

    Marriage: Michelle Bolsonaro; Ana Cristina Valle (divorced); Rogéria Bolsonaro (divorced)

    Children: with Michelle Bolsonaro: Laura; with Ana Cristina Valle: Jair Renan; with Rogéria Bolsonaro: Flavio, Carlos and Eduardo

    Education: Agulhas Negras Military Academy, 1977

    Military: Army, Captain

    Religion: Roman Catholic

    A conservative provocateur, Bolsonaro has a predilection for making inflammatory statements. His rhetorical targets include women and the LGBTQ community. In 2003, he told a congresswoman that she was not worthy of being raped. During a 2011 interview with Playboy magazine, Bolsonaro said he would be incapable of loving a gay son. He has expressed a sense of nostalgia for Brazil’s past as a military dictatorship.

    Bolsonaro served seven terms as a congressman in the Chamber of Deputies. While in congress, his priorities included protecting the rights of citizens to own firearms, promoting Christian values and getting tough on crime. In 2017, he said, “A policeman who doesn’t kill isn’t a policeman.”

    Bolsonaro changed his party affiliation numerous times, ultimately campaigning for president as a member of the Social Liberal Party.

    When Bolsonaro took office, Brazil was suffering through a prolonged period of economic malaise and rising insecurity. His ascent was preceded by a corruption scandal that rocked political and financial institutions. During his inaugural address, Bolsonaro vowed to transform Brazil into a “strong and booming country.”

    1986 – Bolsonaro writes an opinion column for the magazine Veja that criticizes the Brazilian Army’s pay system. He is subsequently disciplined for insubordination.

    1989-1991 – Councilman for Rio de Janeiro.

    1991-2018 – Congressman representing Rio de Janeiro in the Chamber of Deputies.

    July 22, 2018 – Bolsonaro announces he is running for president.

    August 15, 2018 – Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former president of Brazil, announces he has submitted the necessary paperwork to register as the Workers’ Party candidate to run against Bolsonaro. Lula da Silva campaigns from prison, where he is serving a 12-year sentence for corruption.

    September 1, 2018 – Brazil’s top electoral court bars Lula da Silva from running for reelection while incarcerated. Ultimately, a former mayor of São Paulo named Fernando Haddad steps in as the Workers’ Party candidate.

    September 6, 2018 – Bolsonaro is stabbed in the stomach during a campaign rally. He spends more than three weeks in the hospital recovering.

    October 7, 2018 – Voters cast ballots in the first round of elections. Although Bolsonaro wins more votes than Haddad, he doesn’t surpass the 50% threshold. A runoff is set for later in the month.

    October 28, 2018 – Bolsonaro wins the runoff. The final tally shows Bolsonaro with 55.13% and Haddad with 44.87%.

    January 1, 2019 – Bolsonaro is sworn into office. On the same day, he issues a series of executive orders. One order could potentially strip away many LGBTQ civil rights protections by eliminating LGBTQ issues from the list of matters handled by the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights. Another order gives the Agriculture Ministry the authority to designate indigenous lands, paving the way for agricultural development in areas that were previously off limits.

    January 15, 2019 – Signs an executive order temporarily eliminating a regulation that limits firearms purchases only to individuals who provide a justification for owning a gun. The regulation gave police discretion to approve or deny gun sales.

    January 28, 2019 – Officials say Bolsonaro has undergone successful surgery to remove a colostomy bag he was fitted with after being stabbed four months ago.

    February 28, 2019 – Bolsonaro meets with Venezuelan opposition leader and self-proclaimed interim president, Juan Guaidó in Brasilia. During a joint news conference, Bolsonaro pledges Brazil’s support to help ensure “democracy is re-established in Venezuela.”

    May 3, 2019 – A spokesman for Bolsonaro announces that the president has canceled a trip to New York, where he was set to be honored with a Person of the Year award from the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce. The trip was scrapped amid a political backlash. The event’s original host venue, the American Museum of Natural History canceled and some corporate sponsors dropped out. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio had called Bolsonaro “a dangerous man.”

    May 7, 2019 – Bolsonaro signs an executive order relaxing gun control restrictions. The executive order makes it easier for guns to be imported and boosts the amount of ammunition an individual can purchase annually.

    July 11, 2019 – During a news conference, Bolsonaro says that he wants his son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, to serve as ambassador to the United States. He says that Eduardo is friendly with the children of US President Donald Trump.

    August 23, 2019 – Bolsonaro announces a plan to send army troops to fight wildfires sweeping through the Amazon rainforest.

    August 26, 2019 – At the G7 summit in France, French President Emmanuel Macron announces a $20 million emergency fund to help Brazil with the fires. Bolsonaro responds that he cannot accept Macron’s “intentions behind the idea of an ‘alliance’ of the G7 countries to ‘save’ the Amazon, as if we were a colony or no man’s land.” The dispute devolves after a Facebook user posts a meme ridiculing the appearance of Macron’s wife on Bolsonaro’s page and the president jokes, “Don’t humiliate the guy…haha.”

    September 8, 2019 – Bolsonaro undergoes a hernia operation to treat complications from prior surgeries conducted as he recovered from a stab wound.

    December 24, 2019 – Tells the Band TV network that he was hospitalized overnight after falling in the presidential palace December 23. He says he had brief memory loss, but that he has recovered.

    April 19, 2020 – Bolsonaro joins a rally in the country’s capital, where protesters called for an end to coronavirus quarantine measures and some urged military intervention to shut down Congress and the Supreme Court. He later defends his participation, saying that he was not calling for military action against the country’s other branches of government.

    June 23, 2020 – Bolsonaro is ordered by a federal judge in Brasilia to wear a face mask in public or face a fine. The decision extends to all government employees in the Federal District, where the capital Brasilia is located.

    July 7, 2020 – Bolsonaro announces he has tested positive for Covid-19, following months of downplaying the virus.

    March 16, 2021 – A Brazilian court orders Bolsonaro to pay damages to a journalist after he made remarks that questioned her credibility.

    April 27, 2021 – Brazil’s Senate launches an inquiry Tuesday into the federal government’s response to Covid-19.

    July 14, 2021 – Bolsonaro is admitted to the hospital to investigate the cause of persistent hiccups that are leading to abdominal pains, according to Brazil’s Special Secretariat for Social Communication.

    December 3, 2021 – Brazil’s Supreme Court orders an investigation into Bolsonaro’s false claim that people who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 may have a higher risk of contracting AIDS. The inquiry is launched in response to a request by the country’s parliamentary commission which has been investigating Bolsonaro’s government’s response to the pandemic.

    January 3, 2022 – Bolsonaro is admitted to a hospital with a blockage in his intestine, the latest medical issue linked to his 2018 stabbing.

    June 29, 2022 – A Brazilian court rules that Bolsonaro must pay “moral damages” of 35,000 reais (approximately $6,700) to a Brazilian journalist after making remarks with sexual innuendo about her in 2020.

    October 2, 2022 – In the presidential election, Bolsonaro finishes with 43.2% versus Lula da Silva’s 48.4%. Either candidate needed to surpass 50% to be elected in the first round of voting, so the two will face each other in a runoff on October 30.

    October 30, 2022 – Bolsonaro loses his bid for a second term, after receiving 49.1% of the vote against Lula da Silva, who wins with 50.9%.

    November 22, 2022 – Bolsonaro files a petition with Brazil election authorities formally contesting the results of the presidential vote, alleging that some voting machines had malfunctioned and any votes cast through them should be annulled. The petition is rejected the following day.

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  • Chaos in Congress sends an ominous signal to Wall Street | CNN Business

    Chaos in Congress sends an ominous signal to Wall Street | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Many on Wall Street cheered last fall when the midterm elections ushered in a return of divided government in Washington.

    The old mantra is that gridlock is good because it means neither political party can mess things up.

    But the historic dysfunction playing out in Congress this week is a reminder that you should be careful what you wish for. While gridlock might be good for markets and the economy, complete paralysis is bad because, every so often, government needs to get stuff done.

    House Republicans’ inability to pick a speaker on the first ballot (or second or third) for the first time in a century raises an ominous question: If lawmakers can’t pick a speaker, how can they tackle truly thorny issues like raising the debt ceiling or responding to a potential recession?

    “We’re watching a slow-moving trainwreck collide with a dumpster fire,” Isaac Boltansky, director of policy research at BTIG, told CNN in a phone interview. “This is a clear indication we will have dysfunction for the entirety of this Congress, which heightens the risk around must-act deadlines such as the debt ceiling.”

    One New York Stock Exchange trader, a self-described conservative, told CNN on Tuesday the situation in the House is “disturbing” because it suggests lawmakers will struggle to get even more important things done.

    “This is a joke. The party can’t get its [stuff] together. It’s a disgrace,” said the trader, who requested anonymity to discuss the situation candidly.

    Even if Republicans eventually coalesce around Rep. Kevin McCarthy or a consensus candidate for speaker, the past few days have made plain to investors, economists and the public just how ungovernable the GOP majority in the House appears to be.

    “This is not gridlock so much as a rudderless ship without a captain,” Chris Krueger of Cowen Washington Research Group wrote in a note titled, “Burning down the House: Speaker vote opening act for 2 years of tail risk.”

    Krueger said the 4,000-page spending bill passed by Congress last month removed “a lot of the sharp objects” that could harm the economy.

    But lawmakers did not agree to tackle the debt ceiling, the borrowing limit that must be raised to avoid a calamitous US debt default.

    It’s not hard to imagine the ungovernable GOP majority clashing with Democrats and the White House this summer and fall over the debt ceiling — with the entire world economy hanging in the balance.

    Even before the House speaker stalemate, Goldman Sachs warned late last year that 2023 could bring the scariest debt ceiling fight since that infamous 2011 episode that cost America its perfect AAA credit score.

    In the past, brinksmanship over the debt ceiling eventually gave way to a compromise, though often not until significant pressure was applied by business leaders, financial markets — or both.

    It’s not clear how a debate over the debt ceiling will play out this time though, given the narrowly divided Congress and skepticism from Republicans about corporate America.

    “Our concern is that an increasingly populist GOP is less tied to big business influence, while a narrow majority amplifies their influence,” Benjamin Salisbury, director of research at Height Capital Markets, wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.

    Of course, the “House of Cards”-style drama playing out in Congress is not the most pressing issue facing the economy and investors right now.

    The biggest questions concern whether the US economy is about to stumble into a recession (or a “slowcession,” if you ask Moody’s) and how long the Federal Reserve will keep up its fight against inflation.

    Later this week, on Friday, investors will be laser-focused not on McCarthy’s fate but on the monthly jobs report and what it says about efforts to cool down the labor market.

    Andrew Frankel, co-president of Stuart Frankel, dismissed the House speaker race as a “big, fat nothing-burger” for the market and said it was “just noise.”

    “It’s all about the Fed,” Frankel said.

    And yet the stalemate in the House underscores how hard it will be for lawmakers to aggressively respond to a potential recession or another crisis in the next two years.

    Although there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about a soft landing, former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan warns a recession is still the most likely outcome.

    Greenspan, senior economic adviser at Advisors Capital Management, said in a discussion posted online that inflation will not cool enough to avoid “at least a mild recession” induced by the Fed.

    “We may have a brief period of calm on the inflation front, but I think it will be too little too late,” Greenspan said.

    If there is a recession, the chaos in Washington suggests the economy may not be able to count on a timely rescue from Congress this time around.

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  • McCarthy takes desperation for speakership to new level | CNN Politics

    McCarthy takes desperation for speakership to new level | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Kevin McCarthy is so desperate to be speaker, he’s ready to gut his own power just to get the job.

    The California Republican unveiled major concessions on Wednesday evening after he was stung by right-wing radicals who blocked his bid for power in six humiliating votes – a farcical debut for the new GOP-led House.

    The moves – just proposals for now that have not been agreed upon – could not only enshrine the chaotic instability of the tiny new Republican majority, they could also make him a permanent hostage of his party’s most extreme voices. And a neutered speaker unable to force his members into hard votes could have grave implications with Congress facing critical decisions later this year, including a need to raise the government’s borrowing limit – a duty that if not fulfilled could pitch the US and global economies into crisis.

    CNN’s Manu Raju and Melanie Zanona reported late Wednesday that McCarthy had agreed to a rule change that would allow a single member to call for a vote to oust a sitting speaker, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The top Republican also agreed to more power for the far-right Freedom Caucus, which would help shape how and when bills get to the floor. The concessions are likely to concern many more moderate members of the incoming majority, who fear their electorates in swing seats will be turned off by more extremism.

    The proposals surfaced after the new House majority finally agreed on something Wednesday: following another day of feuding and insults, they narrowly voted to adjourn their futile search for a speaker until Thursday.

    Cheers that erupted from Republican benches when the vote closed reflected the risible state of the House’s new GOP management, which is unable to perform the only task it currently has – choosing a leader – and is holding up the functioning of the chamber.

    The idea that a fresh new majority is riding into town to do the American peoples’ business is in tatters. The mess in the new House on Tuesday and Wednesday suggested that every tough vote, and even easy ones, in the new House could be gummed up by the reality of a dysfunctional majority when small groups of members could shut the chamber down.

    On one side is McCarthy, who is refusing to cede his personal aspirations for power despite growing evidence he may never win the votes he needs in his own party. Even if he does squeak through after caving repeatedly to his critics, he will be a fatally weakened speaker.

    “The country or Kevin McCarthy. Which should have more weight?” said recently retired GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who is now a CNN political analyst.

    On the other side is a band of right-wing zealots, holding their party, the House and the country hostage – some with no clear objective other than to destroy the idea of governance itself. For them, chaos is the point.

    “He’s a desperate guy whose vote share is dropping with every subsequent vote and I’m ready to vote all night, all week, all month, and never for that person,” Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman leading the “Never Kevin” caucus, said.

    But as humiliation piled on humiliation for the California lawmaker, there was the merest hint of a lifeline as a divide inside the anti-McCarthy block began to open.

    Several lawmakers who want far-reaching changes to the way the House works reported genuine progress in talks with McCarthy. One of their number, Texas Rep. Chip Roy, predicted he could bring over 10 votes if the talks pan out.

    Still the math looks tough for McCarthy since the Gaetz bloc is holding firm and McCarthy can only afford to lose four GOP votes and still win the speakership.

    Even as he nurses hopes that intense talks with rebels could still provide a narrow path to victory, pressure is building inexorably on McCarthy.

    The question is whether another day of pointless voting on Thursday will prompt members to begin to consider whether he should step aside for a more universally trusted colleague – perhaps Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, for instance. Many Republicans are complaining that their hopes for quickly wielding power and throttling the Biden administration have been dashed.

    While another Groundhog Day in the House didn’t produce a new speaker, it did offer hints on how an endgame in the battle for the speaker’s gavel may develop. It also provided insight into the new balance of power in Washington and how Congress will work (or won’t) in the months ahead.

    If the Republican leader cannot demonstrate progress when the House meets for yet another vote on the speaker on Thursday, he will be in deep trouble. After just staving off what would have been a humiliating roll call vote on Wednesday evening, it emerged that McCarthy had made yet more concessions.

    McCarthy also met Roy, a holdout who has been demanding changes to the procedures that govern House business, and freshman members among the 20 or so Republicans who have been voting against him. GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who is supporting McCarthy, said that the 20 lawmakers who opposed the would-be speaker were split into two groups – those who want substantive rules changes and those who just don’t like the longtime GOP leader.

    “If it’s the latter, it’s not as constructive because it shouldn’t be about the personality, it should be about the process, but I don’t know. I have no sense of how many are in either camp,” he told CNN.

    But sources also admitted that the new proposals, even if accepted, would not win over all the holdouts McCarthy needs. And the continuing brouhaha raises a deeper question of why the GOP leader, who has had weeks to get his majority solidified, still cannot get it done. Any incoming speaker who has proven so incapable of getting his coalition in line will be perennially at risk of being swept out of office.

    In impassioned floor speeches and interviews, Roy has argued that the House is finally having consequential debates. Under recent Democratic and Republican speakers, normal order and the sequencing of new laws through the committee process and debates on the House floor have been curtailed as severe partisanship and gridlock causes leaders to enforce ruthless party-line discipline.

    Often, multiple funding bills on everything from farming to defense and transportation to space are lumped together in massive end-of-year omnibus bills like the mammoth $1.7 trillion spending package that Congress finally passed in December. Multiple Republican members appeared on CNN on Wednesday making reasoned arguments about the need to mend a broken institution, to open the House’s business to the public and to conduct a proper appropriations process through committees with time for full debates, budget assessments and amendments.

    “I really think this is democracy in action,” North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “If you are not satisfied with Washington as it is, then you can’t just be satisfied doing the same thing.”

    The problem, however, is that Congress has resorted to omnibus bills in recent years for a reason – it has been so polarized and dysfunctional that the only way to get any bill to the president’s desk is to cram all the spending in together.

    So while well intentioned, the aspirations for reform could just cause more dysfunction.

    The other block of anti-McCarthy votes looks a lot harder to sway. The likes of Gaetz, Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Bob Good of Virginia and Ralph Norman of South Carolina appear no closer to voting to make him speaker.

    “I’m not going to support Kevin,” another holdout, Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, said on Wednesday, reinforcing his hard no position.

    Apart from securing a concession from McCarthy that would make him almost a toothless speaker – with the return of a rule that would allow any member to call for a vote to unseat him – it’s not often clear what these members want. Or if there’s anything that McCarthy could give them that would change their minds.

    Some Republicans accuse their colleagues of grandstanding and of using the spotlight to raise campaign cash and to drum up appearances on conservative media. If there’s a philosophical grounding to the opposition, it’s as the latest expression of the longtime anti-establishment wing of the GOP that seeks to neutralize government itself.

    This politics of destruction was sent into overdrive by ex-President Donald Trump, with his vows to drain the Washington “swamp.” And it was expressed most eloquently by Steve Bannon at the start of the Trump administration as “the deconstruction of the administrative state.” The problem for McCarthy – who has cozied up to Trump and often appeased the zealots – is how to negotiate with someone whose main aspiration is chaos.

    The elephant wasn’t in the room.

    Early on Wednesday, Trump delivered the kind of full-throated endorsement of McCarthy that the Californian must believe he was owed after his obsequious support of the ex-president following the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

    “VOTE FOR KEVIN, CLOSE THE DEAL, TAKE THE VICTORY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “REPUBLICANS, DO NOT TURN A GREAT TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT.”

    It was the kind of social media blast that once would have had Republican members leaping into line. But no longer. It didn’t appear to change a single vote.

    Norman, for instance, rebuffed the ex-president’s call.

    “I disagree with Trump. This is our fight. This isn’t Trump’s – and I support Trump. I disagree with it. Kevin is the one who’s going to censor him,” Norman said. In another sign that Trump’s spell may have broken, Boebert said that her “favorite president” had called rebels opposing McCarthy and told them to knock it off.

    “I think this needs to be reversed, the president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, ‘Sir you do not have the votes and it’s time to withdraw.’”

    Her rebuke was the latest sign that after two years in political exile, a disastrous intervention in the midterms and a low energy 2024 campaign launch, Trump’s juice isn’t what it once was in GOP ranks in the House. While the ex-president’s rapport with the Republican base surely remains intact, this kind of insubordination is unlikely to have gone down well in Mar-a-Lago.

    The spectacle in the House on Wednesday had more in common with the chaos and recrimination that unfolds in parliaments in Europe or Israel, where it can sometimes take weeks or months to arrive at a leader or governing majority, than in the US House, where the vote for speaker is normally a formality.

    And this is just not some internecine struggle. The speaker is, after all, second in the line of presidential succession behind the vice president.

    “It’s embarrassing for the country,” President Joe Biden said on Wednesday, as he capitalized on the chaos in an event in Kentucky highlighting bipartisan political leadership over his massive infrastructure package, appearing with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

    “I’m not making a partisan (point), that’s the reality – that to be able to have a Congress that can’t function is just embarrassing.”

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  • House adjourns for second day without electing a speaker with McCarthy’s bid in peril | CNN Politics

    House adjourns for second day without electing a speaker with McCarthy’s bid in peril | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Kevin McCarthy suffered yet another stinging defeat on Wednesday as he lost in the sixth round of voting to elect a speaker – a major blow that increasingly imperils his bid and heightens uncertainty over whether he can still secure the gavel or if a viable candidate will emerge as an alternative.

    The House voted Wednesday evening to adjourn until 12 p.m. ET on Thursday as Republicans scramble to find a path forward.

    The House GOP majority has been stuck at a contentious stalemate amid opposition to McCarthy from a group of conservatives. The fight, which began on the first day of the 118th Congress, has thrown the new House GOP majority into chaos and undercut the party’s agenda.

    The House will continue to be paralyzed until this standoff is resolved. The situation has grown dire for McCarthy’s political future as Republican allies are beginning to fear that the House GOP leader may not be able to pull off his gamble for speaker if the fight goes much longer.

    It’s not at all clear whether McCarthy and his allies will be able to lock down the votes – and the longer the fight drags on, the more imperiled his speakership bid has become. But there were signs Wednesday that negotiations are progressing.

    In a major concession, first reported by CNN, McCarthy has agreed to propose a rules change that would allow just one member to call for a vote to oust a sitting speaker, according to two sources familiar with the matter. McCarthy had initially proposed a five-member threshold, down from current conference rules that require half of the GOP to call for such a vote. Many members had been concerned about giving in to the far-right on this matter since it could weaken the speakership and cause chaos in the ranks.

    In two more concessions, he’s also agreed to allow for more members of the Freedom Caucus to serve on the powerful House Rules Committee, which dictates how and whether bills come to the floor, and to vote on a handful of bills that are priorities for the holdouts, including proposing term limits on members and a border security plan.

    Nothing is final, however, since the negotiations are ongoing.

    Republican sources say that even if McCarthy’s offer is accepted, it would still not get him the 218 votes he needs to be speaker. While these concessions could attract some new support, other opponents have raised different concerns that have yet to be fully addressed.

    After a series of failed speaker votes earlier in the day, the House adjourned for several hours as Republicans continued talks.

    Texas Rep. Chip Roy, one of the conservatives who has voted against McCarthy’s speakership bid, told GOP leaders that he thinks he can get 10 holdouts to come along if these ongoing negotiations pan out, according to GOP sources familiar with the internal discussions, and that there are additional detractors who may be willing to vote “present.”

    Sources said the talks Wednesday between McCarthy allies and holdouts have been the most productive and serious ones to date. And in one sign of a breakthrough, a McCarthy-aligned super PAC agreed to not play in open Republican primaries in safe seats – one of the big demands that conservatives had asked for but that McCarthy had resisted until this point.

    “We’ve had more discussions in the last two days as a body sitting there, than we’ve done in frickin’ four years,” Roy said when leaving the Capitol Wednesday night.

    Still, even if these negotiations prove successful and 10 lawmakers do flip to McCarthy’s column – which is far from certain – that doesn’t get McCarthy to the 218 votes to win the speakership, so he would still have more work to do.

    Incoming House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said Wednesday evening that the negotiations over the next speaker have been “very, very constructive.”

    “There were a whole bunch of members that were involved in this and there are some folks now that are sitting down and talking about that discussion to see where they want to go with it next,” the Minnesota Republican said.

    House Republicans hold 222 seats in the new Congress, so for McCarthy to reach 218, he can only afford to lose four GOP votes. His obstacle is that he faces a small but determined contingent of hardline conservatives who have so far been successful in denying him the votes to secure the gavel.

    The group has used the leverage they have in the razor-thin Republican majority to extract concessions. McCarthy has already given in to a number of their demands, including making it increasingly easier to topple the sitting speaker, but so far his efforts have not been enough.

    The House convened on Wednesday to continue voting after three rounds of votes on Tuesday. McCarthy has come up short each time, failing to hit the majority threshold needed to secure the speakership.

    As the votes stretched on Tuesday, the situation appeared to become even more dire for McCarthy, as the vote count in opposition to his speaker bid grew.

    The tally for the first ballot in the speaker vote was 203 for McCarthy, with 19 Republicans voting for other candidates. The tally for the second ballot was 203 votes for McCarthy with 19 votes for GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. In the third round of voting, there were 202 votes for McCarthy and 20 votes for Jordan, with Rep. Byron Donalds joining the 19 GOP lawmakers who had voted against McCarthy in the first two rounds.

    It was the first time an election for speaker went to multiple ballots since 1923.

    “My vote yesterday was basically to break a deadlock, because we were deadlocked, and we were not getting anywhere,” Donalds, a Florida Republican, said Wednesday on “CNN This Morning.” “Right now, (McCarthy) doesn’t have a pathway to get there. If that reemerges, yeah, I can be there, that’s fine, but what’s necessary now is that Republicans come together and find a way to elect a speaker.”

    In the fourth round of voting, 20 Republicans voting together for Donalds as the group switched their collective support from Jordan to Donalds. Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana voted present, lowering McCarthy’s threshold to 217.

    Spartz told CNN she did so because she wanted to allow for more negotiations within the conference to address the concerns of the 20 members.

    The final tally for the fifth vote was again 201 votes for McCarthy, 20 for Donalds and one present vote.

    The final tally for the sixth vote was the same: 201 for McCarthy, 20 for Donalds and one present vote.

    Trump is watching closely as the dynamic plays out on Capitol Hill and his public support has been a key focus of McCarthy’s efforts.

    Two GOP sources familiar with the matter said McCarthy’s allies were panicking on Tuesday after the former president gave a tepid response to NBC News when asked about his support for McCarthy. The former president also declined to issue a statement Monday reiterating his endorsement of McCarthy despite a behind-the-scenes effort from several McCarthy allies to get Trump to do so, two sources said.

    One close McCarthy ally then began working behind the scenes to do clean-up duty and started pressing for Trump to put out a statement clarifying his support. McCarthy and Trump then connected by phone, where McCarthy said Trump expressed he was still committed to backing him. Trump put out a strong endorsement on Truth Social Wednesday morning, imploring Republicans not to “TURN A GREAT TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT” and urging them to vote for McCarthy.

    Although Trump’s statement might not move the needle among the fiercest McCarthy foes, one of the sources said McCarthy world was worried about looking “weak” and like he was bleeding support, so they felt it was important to reverse the narrative.

    Gaetz, one of the House Republicans opposing McCarthy’s bid for speaker, dismissed Trump’s latest effort to help the California Republican as “sad.”

    “This changes neither my view of McCarthy nor Trump nor my vote,” Gaetz said in a statement to Fox News Digital on Wednesday, shortly after Trump came to McCarthy’s defense in the Truth Social post.

    Long a staunch Trump ally, Gaetz’s refusal to bow to Trump’s desire for a McCarthy speakership raises new questions about the former president’s dwindling influence over Republicans in the midst of his third presidential campaign.

    “If Matt Gaetz is ignoring you, that’s not a good sign,” said one Trump ally who is involved with his 2024 campaign.

    Trump has been making calls on McCarthy’s behalf over the last 24 hours in an attempt to break the conservative blockade against him, this person said, but his efforts have so far been fruitless.

    One lawmaker who spoke with Trump late Tuesday suggested the former president should run for speaker himself, according to a person briefed on the call. Trump demurred and continued to push this person to support McCarthy, claiming that he would be a solid “America First” supporter.

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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  • Biden and McConnell show off their bipartisan bonafides in Kentucky | CNN Politics

    Biden and McConnell show off their bipartisan bonafides in Kentucky | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A rare scene unfolded Wednesday in Covington, Kentucky: President Joe Biden stood alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as the two men promoted a major bipartisan legislative accomplishment they achieved together.

    The president’s visit to McConnell’s home state to herald the implementation of the massive $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that McConnell and 18 other Senate Republicans voted for, and that Biden signed into law in 2021, marked his first domestic trip of the new year. The trip was aimed at sending an unmistakable message as Biden kicks off the second half of his first term: Even in a newly divided Congress, the Biden White House still sees room for bipartisanship.

    Biden thanked McConnell for working across the aisle on the law.

    “It wouldn’t have happened without your hand. It just wouldn’t have gotten done and I want to thank you for that,” Biden said to McConnell during his remarks.

    He added that while he and McConnell don’t agree on a lot, the Kentucky Republican is someone you can trust.

    “He’s a man of his word. When he gives you his word, you can take it to the bank, you can count on it, and he’s willing to find common ground to get things done for the country. So thank you, Mitch. Thank you,” Biden said.

    The scene was a stark message of bipartisanship and pragmatism sent by Biden and McConnell as the two old Senate colleagues came together at the same time that House Republicans found themselves falling further into divisive chaos over Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become speaker. As Biden spoke in Covington, McCarthy suffered a fourth defeat in his push to lead the House of Representatives.

    The backdrop for Biden’s visit was the Brent Spence Bridge that connects Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Kentucky, and is known to be one of the busiest freight routes in the country. Officials say the structure carries far more traffic than it is meant to support.

    It’s also a bridge that Biden once promised he would overhaul: “We’re going to fix that damn bridge of yours going into Kentucky,” Biden said during a CNN town hall in Cincinnati in the summer of 2021, as the infrastructure bill appeared to be on the cusp of passage.

    On Wednesday, the White House announced more than $2 billion from the infrastructure law would go towards upgrading the Brent Spence bridge and other “economically significant bridges” around the country.

    Biden’s trip to the Ohio-Kentucky border on Wednesday will also feature Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and former Republican Sen. Rob Portman, as well as Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

    White House officials say that the show of bipartisanship is aimed at sending a clear signal that as Republicans take control of the House, Biden remains convinced that there will still be opportunities for bipartisan legislative wins.

    The White House made it clear on Wednesday that they had no intention of getting involved in the drama playing out in the House. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters traveling with the president that the Biden administration is “going to let the process play out.”

    “It’s not my problem. I think it’s embarrassing the way it’s taking so long,” the president told reporters as he departed the White House Wednesday.

    McConnell’s decision to appear with Biden on Wednesday also signals the GOP leader’s willingness to work alongside the president, even as many of his Republican colleagues in the House take a hardline stance against compromising with Democrats.

    While White House officials regularly invite all congressional members to attend events Biden holds in their home states, Republicans frequently turn down the opportunity – making McConnell’s decision to join the president this week all the more notable.

    Biden himself sought to downplay the importance of the pairing on Monday.

    “We’ve been friends a long time. Everybody is talking about how significant it is. It has nothing to do about our relationship,” he said as he returned to the White House from his winter vacation in St. Croix. “It’s a giant bridge, man. It’s a lot of money. It’s important.”

    McConnell, during his remarks ahead of the president, noted how the infrastructure law is an example of government working to solve problems for everyday Americans.

    “If you look at the political alignment of everyone involved, it’s the government is working together to solve a major problem at a time when the country needs to see examples like this, of coming together and getting an outcome,” McConnell said.

    A number of Cabinet officials also plan to travel later this week to promote the infrastructure law. Vice President Kamala Harris will stop in Chicago, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will visit New London, Connecticut, on Wednesday where they will each “discuss how the president’s economic plan is rebuilding our infrastructure, creating good-paying jobs – jobs that don’t require a four-year degree – and revitalizing communities left behind,” a White House official said.

    Over the coming weeks, Biden is expected to reiterate his bipartisan achievements in stops around the country as the Republican majority in the House begins its work, culminating in his yearly State of the Union address. Biden’s aides have begun work on that speech and have made bipartisanship a central theme.

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  • What happens in the House when there is no speaker? Not a lot | CNN Politics

    What happens in the House when there is no speaker? Not a lot | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Republicans’ failure to elect a speaker on Tuesday after multiple rounds of voting isn’t just denying the GOP a leader – it’s holding up much of the functioning of the chamber.

    The position is traditionally filled on the first day of a new Congress, followed by the swearing in of new members, but with the floor fight spilling into Wednesday, members-elect have yet to take the oath of office.

    Incoming lawmakers arrived on the floor on Tuesday with their families in tow, expecting to pose for a photo and get started with their first day as lawmakers, but were instead greeted with a several-hour-wait as the speaker election went to multiple rounds of balloting – the first time that’s happened in 100 years.

    Every new Congress must pass a new set of House rules, so without a speaker to oversee adoption of those rules, none will technically exist.

    Without an approved House Rules package by the end of business on January 13, committees won’t be able to pay staff, according to a letter sent last week by the committee in charge of administrative matters, which was first reported by Politico and obtained by CNN.

    The same memo warned that student loan payments for committee staff wouldn’t be disbursed if a rules package isn’t adopted by mid-January.

    It’s just one of the many ways a battle over the next speaker could paralyze the House and the Republican majority from operating efficiently in their opening days with some of the harshest penalties falling on rank-and-file staffers.

    For committees whose chairs aren’t known, they will be headed up in the interim by the committee’s senior-most Republican who also served on the panel in the last Congress, according to the letter sent last week.

    But without fully functioning committees, to amend and approve bills before they make their way to the floor for a vote, there will be little legislating. That means Republicans may also have to wait before tackling some of their most pressing priorities, including investigations into President Joe Biden’s administration and family.

    Outside of the speaker’s role effectively running the House, they are also in the line of succession for president – raising questions about what happens if there’s no one in the position that’s second in line for the presidency after the vice president.

    The Senate president pro tempore is third in line. Sen. Patty Murray was elected to that role Tuesday, making the Democrat from Washington the first woman to hold the position.

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  • House adjourns after chaotic day without electing a speaker as McCarthy fails to lock down votes | CNN Politics

    House adjourns after chaotic day without electing a speaker as McCarthy fails to lock down votes | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The new House GOP majority is locked in a chaotic once-in-a-century fight to determine who will serve as the next speaker after Republican Kevin McCarthy failed to secure the necessary support to win in three rounds of voting on Tuesday. The House is now adjourned until Wednesday at noon as Republicans scramble to find a path forward.

    McCarthy faces a small but determined contingent of hardline conservatives who are intent on denying him the votes to secure the gavel. The top House Republican has defiantly vowed to stay in the race as he continues his increasingly imperiled bid for speaker. But the longer the fight drags on, the more uncertainty there is over whether he can win. The last time an election for speaker went to multiple ballots was in 1923.

    The contentious, drawn out fight threatens to deepen divides among House Republicans with McCarthy’s political career on the line. And the deal-making McCarthy has engaged in to try to win over critics may mean he has a weaker hand to play in his position of authority if he does become speaker.

    For now, McCarthy remains adamant he will not give up, with people close to him summing up his mentality as this: “We’re going to war,” a senior GOP source tells CNN. “Never backing down.”

    The conservatives opposing McCarthy are using the leverage they have in the razor-thin Republican majority to extract concessions as they threaten to deny the GOP leader critical votes. McCarthy has already given in to a number of their demands, including making it easier to topple the sitting speaker, but it is unclear whether his efforts will be enough.

    To be elected speaker, a candidate needs to win a majority of members who vote for a specific person on the House floor. That amounts to 218 votes if no member skips the vote or votes “present.”

    House Republicans hold 222 seats in the new Congress – so for McCarthy to reach 218, he would only be able to afford to lose four GOP votes.

    The tally for the first ballot in the speaker vote was 203 for McCarthy, with 19 Republicans voting for other candidates.

    The tally for the second ballot was 203 votes for McCarthy with 19 votes for GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. Jordan, to show that he is not vying for the job, nominated McCarthy ahead of the vote on the second ballot. That move did not deter McCarthy critics from voting for Jordan, however.

    In the third round of voting, there were 202 votes for McCarthy and 20 votes for Jordan with Rep. Byron Donalds joining the 19 GOP lawmakers who had voted against McCarthy in the first two rounds.

    A closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Capitol Hill grew tense and heated Tuesday morning as uncertainty grew over McCarthy’s fate.

    McCarthy raised his voice and was animated as he teed off against his opponents and detailed concessions he has made, according to two sources. “I’ve earned this job,” he said.

    After the far-right House Freedom Caucus denied his ascension to the speakership in 2015, McCarthy spent years courting the conservative wing of his party and worked hard to stay in former President Donald Trump’s good graces.

    McCarthy has gotten some key backup from Trump, who publicly endorsed his speaker bid and encouraged others to support McCarthy. His congressional allies have also banded together in effort to act as a counterweight to his critics.

    But when a red wave never materialized in the November midterms, the razor-thin majority that resulted for Republicans empowered a small band of conservatives – long distrustful of McCarthy – to make demands.

    What has unfolded over the last two months is an all-out scramble for the speakership, which has taken the form of strategy sessions with close allies on and off Capitol Hill, intense negotiations over rules changes and non-stop phone calls with members.

    McCarthy has been in deal-making mode, but if he does win the gavel, some of the concessions he has made may make it more difficult for him to stave off future challenge to his speakership.

    In one change that could weaken his hand in the future, McCarthy has told lawmakers – as first reported by CNN – that he would support a threshold as low as five Republicans to trigger a vote on deposing the speaker, known as the “motion to vacate” the speaker’s chair, a major concession for him and one that moderates worry will be used as a constant cudgel over his head.

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments Tuesday.

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  • Supreme Court asked to step in on New York concealed carry firearm law | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court asked to step in on New York concealed carry firearm law | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    New York Attorney General Letitia James asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to allow a new state law that places restrictions on carrying a concealed firearm to stay in effect while legal challenges play out.

    The dispute is the first time the court has been asked on an emergency basis to consider a significant Second Amendment case since last summer’s ruling that expanded gun rights nationwide.

    In that case, New York State Rifle v. Bruen, the court struck down New York’s prior concealed carry gun law. A 6-3 majority said the law prevented law-abiding citizens with “ordinary self-defense needs” from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.

    Just days after the opinion, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, convened a special legislative session to pass a new law called the “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” on July 1. But the new law came under immediate attack as gun owners said that it was in direct “defiance” of the Supreme Court decision and continued to make it too difficult for ordinary citizens to obtain concealed carry permits.

    Last fall, a district court blocked key provisions of the new law, related to requirements that an applicant demonstrate “good moral character,” provide a list of all former and current social media accounts from the past three years and “sensitive place” restrictions that include health care settings, churches and parks.

    In December, however, a federal appeals court put that decision on hold and ordered expedited consideration of the matter with opening briefs due on January 9. Now, gun owners want the Supreme Court to step in.

    In an emergency application filed on December 21, a lawyer for the gun owners asked the justices to step in and he defended the district court opinion. He said it was “carefully designed to limit New York’s enforcement of a sweeping gun control statute, enacted in retaliation against New York gun owners” for having prevailed in the Bruen case.

    The lawyer, Stephen D. Stamboulieh, said that the 184 page opinion was “meticulously tailored” to “uphold the right of New Yorkers to keep and bear arms.”

    The justices are not considering the merits of the case, only whether to lift the appeal court order pending appeal.

    “Although it comes in an emergency -application posture, the request represents the first chance for the justices to weigh in on how lower courts are applying the Bruen decision and its new doctrinal framework for Second Amendment cases,” said Andrew Willinger of the Duke University School of Law.

    In Tuesday’s filing, James said the district court’s opinion was “riddled with errors” and urged the justices to stay out of the dispute and let the appeals court ruling stand. She stressed that the appeals court had expedited consideration of the new law and that “further percolation of the relevant issues in the lower court is needed to inform” the Supreme Court’s review.

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  • Big questions on student loan forgiveness loom in 2023 | CNN Politics

    Big questions on student loan forgiveness loom in 2023 | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Student loan borrowers are starting 2023 with a lot of uncertainty.

    The fate of President Joe Biden’s major student loan forgiveness program lies with the US Supreme Court, and it could be as late as summer before the justices rule on whether the policy can take effect.

    The pandemic-related pause on student loan payments remains in place. But a restart date is up in the air, dependent on when the Supreme Court rules on the forgiveness program.

    Meanwhile, significant changes are coming in July to the existing Public Service Loan Forgiveness program that aids government and nonprofit workers. And a new income-driven repayment plan that could lower payments for some federal student loan borrowers is in the works.

    The mired rollout of Biden’s forgiveness program has created confusion for borrowers. Here are some of the big questions surrounding student loans this year:

    In late February, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in two cases concerning Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, which could deliver up to $20,000 of debt relief for millions of low- and middle-income borrowers.

    A decision on whether the program is legal and can move forward is expected by June. Until then, it is on hold and no debt will be discharged under the program.

    Biden’s student loan forgiveness program has faced several legal challenges since the president announced the program in August. The Department of Education received about 26 million applications for debt relief by the time a federal district court judge struck down the program on November 10.

    Lawyers for the Biden administration say that Congress gave the secretary of education “expansive authority to alleviate the hardship that federal student loan recipients may suffer as a result of national emergencies,” like the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a memo from the Department of Justice.

    But litigants argue the Biden administration has overstepped its authority, and other recent Supreme Court decisions have ruled against aggressive executive agency actions. The justices curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to set certain climate change regulations last year, for example, as well as limited the federal government’s power to implement a pandemic-related eviction moratorium in 2021 and mandate Covid-19 vaccinations in 2022.

    For the third consecutive time, federal student loan borrowers begin a new year without having to make payments on their loans thanks to a pandemic-related pause.

    Payments were set to resume in January, but the Biden administration extended the pause after its student loan forgiveness program was halted by federal courts. Officials had told borrowers debt relief would be granted before payments restarted.

    The payment pause will now last until 60 days after litigation over Biden’s student loan forgiveness program is resolved. If the program has not been implemented and the litigation has not been resolved by June 30, payments will resume 60 days after that.

    Borrower balances have effectively been frozen since March 2020, with no payments required on most federal student loans. During this time, interest has stopped adding up and collections on defaulted debt have also been on hold.

    For some borrowers, the pause on payments delivers an even bigger benefit than Biden’s forgiveness program ever could.

    The yearslong pause cost the government $155 billion through the end of 2022, according to an estimate from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

    The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program allows certain government and nonprofit employees to seek federal student loan forgiveness after making 10 years of qualifying payments – but it has been plagued with implementation problems for years.

    A yearlong waiver that expanded eligibility for the PSLF program expired on October 31, but some of those temporary changes will be made permanent starting in July.

    Under the new rules, borrowers will be able to receive credit toward PSLF on payments that are made late, in installments or in a lump sum. Prior rules only counted a payment as eligible if it was made in full within 15 days of its due date.

    Also, time spent in certain periods of deferment or forbearance will count toward PSLF. These periods include deferments for cancer treatment, military service, economic hardship and time served in AmeriCorps and the National Guard.

    Starting in July, borrowers will receive some credit for past payments when they consolidate older loans into federal Direct Loans in order to qualify for the program. Borrowers previously lost all progress toward forgiveness when they consolidated. After July, they will receive a weighted average of existing qualifying payments toward PSLF.

    The new rules will also simplify the criteria to meet the requirement that a borrower be a full-time employee in a public sector job. The new standard will consider full-time employment at 30 hours a week. In particular, the change will help adjunct faculty at public colleges qualify for the program.

    The Biden administration has proposed a new income-driven repayment plan that is intended to make payments more manageable for borrowers, though it’s unclear when it could take effect.

    Several income-driven repayment plans already exist for federal student loan borrowers, but the new proposal could offer more favorable terms.

    The new rule is expected to cap payments at 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income, down from 10% that is offered in most current income-driven plans, as well as reduce the amount of income that is considered discretionary. It would also forgive remaining balances after 10 years of repayment, instead of 20 or 25 years, as well as cover the borrower’s unpaid monthly interest.

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  • Major storm leaves trail of destruction as it barrels across Central US with powerful tornadoes, flooding and heavy snow | CNN

    Major storm leaves trail of destruction as it barrels across Central US with powerful tornadoes, flooding and heavy snow | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A major, multi-hazard storm is leaving a trail of destruction as it barrels across the country on Tuesday and continues to bring the risk of strong tornadoes and flooding to the South, and ice and snow to the Plains and Upper Midwest.

    The storm, which triggered deadly floods in California over the weekend, has tracked east and is pulling moisture from the Gulf of Mexico into the South, where above-normal temperatures have set the stage for severe thunderstorms.

    Nearly 30 million people are under some sort of severe weather threat in the South, with the highest risk near the Gulf Coast. Southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi and Alabama were under a level 3 out of 5 “enhanced” risk of severe weather. Places like Baton Rouge, Montgomery and Gulfport could all see strong storms. A level 2 out of 5 “slight” risk of severe weather covered Nashville, New Orleans and Atlanta.

    The National Weather Service began issuing tornado watches Tuesday morning for millions of people from Louisiana to Tennessee as temperatures warmed and conditions became more favorable for violent storms. Multiple waves of severe weather are possible in this region through the day, the Storm Prediction Center warned, “with the risk expected to persist well into the night across much of the area.”

    Track the storm: Radar, weather alerts, travel delays and more

    Strong tornadoes, large hail and wind gusts topping 70 mph are possible in the most extreme thunderstorms.

    “Severe convection with all three modes (tornadoes, hail and damaging winds) is likely,” the National Weather Service office in Mobile warned.

    Heavy rainfall associated with these thunderstorms could also trigger significant flash flooding across the South. Southeastern Alabama and Southwest Georgia are under a level 3 out of 4 “moderate” risk of excessive rainfall. Portions of Southeast Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia are also under a level 2 out of 4 “slight” risk of excessive rainfall.

    Rainfall totals could reach 2 to 4 inches across the South through Wednesday, while some areas could see up to 6 inches.

    Since Monday night there have already been several tornado reports. One of the tornadoes that was reported was in Jonesboro, Louisiana, where large trees were knocked downed and damaged. The other was reported in Haywood, Tennessee.

    Damage was also reported after a possible tornado in Jessieville, Arkansas, according to Garland County officials.

    “Damage was sustained to areas of (a) school due to trees, and power lines. The school was currently in session at the time, however all students have been accounted for and reports of no injury,” the Garland County Sheriff’s Office said in a release.

    Ashley Shaver says she's never seen flooding like this at her house in Fountain Hill, Arkansas. This area received around 3 inches of rain over the course of 12 hours, according to the National Weather Service.

    In Jackson Parish, Louisiana, residents were told to stay off the roads as the severe weather toppled trees and covered roadways with water. Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Department said tarps will be given out to those whose homes are damaged.

    “We are trying to work to get to houses that are damaged and clear roads,” the Sheriff’s Department said.

    As the risk persists, forecasters have been concerned about tornadoes forming at night, according to Brad Bryant of the National Weather Service office in Shreveport, Louisiana.

    “You can’t see them coming. A lot of the time, people are asleep and not paying attention to the weather,” Bryant said. “Many areas around here don’t have good cell phone coverage and storm alerts are not as effective in those areas, especially once people are asleep.”

    Anyone in areas at risk of tornadoes should seek safe shelter immediately, Bryant said.

    “If you wait around for a warning to be issued, it is too late,” Bryant said Monday. “You need to have a safe shelter plan in place in advance of these storms.”

    Damage reports were also coming from across northern Louisiana, including several transmission highline towers being damaged in the Haile community in Marion. One of the towers was knocked over and several others are damaged, according to the National Weather Service in Shreveport.

    A wind gust of 81 mph was reported in Adair, Oklahoma – a gust equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane.

    As the South braces for floods and tornadoes, the storm continues to bring heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain across the Plains and Upper Midwest on Tuesday, significantly impacting travel.

    Over 15 million people are under winter weather alerts from the Plains to the Great Lakes.

    Residents in parts of Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota are likely to see intense snow rates of 1 to 3 inches per hour.

    01 weather snow US

    National Weather Service Sioux Falls SD/Twitter

    Blowing and drifting snow on Tuesday may result in snow-covered roads and make it “hazardous, if not impossible” to travel, the weather service warned.

    Road conditions were already deteriorating Monday night in northwestern Iowa, northern Nebraska and eastern South Dakota, according to the weather service in Omaha. Portions of northern Nebraska have already reported nearly a foot of snow and could get an additional 12 to 18 inches on Tuesday, according to the weather service.

    Roughly 200 miles of eastbound Interstate 80 in Wyoming, from Evanston to Rawlins, are closed due to the ongoing impacts of the storm, according to the Wyoming Department of Transportation. The department said westbound traffic is further blocked from the Rawlins section of I-80 to the Interstate-25 junction in Cheyenne, which covers more than 120 miles.

    “Snow (and) blowing snow to impact Wyoming roads into tonight,” an agency Facebook post read. “A high wind event will then create blowing (and) drifting snow, poor visibility and possible whiteout conditions Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday afternoon for sections of I-80, I-25, South Pass and various secondary roads!”

    “If you can, please stay home. If you must travel, ensure you have an emergency kit in your car,” the weather service in Sioux Falls told residents, saying travel will become difficult to impossible by Tuesday morning.

    A vehicle winter emergency kit includes snacks and water, a battery-powered weather radio, flashlights and batteries, a first aid kit, a shovel and ice scraper, a jumper cable and other items.

    Significant ice accumulations from freezing rain are expected, possibly over a quarter inch, from northeastern Nebraska through northwestern Iowa into southern Minnesota.

    The freezing rain poses a significant hazard to those on foot. Even a light glaze can make for slippery sidewalks and driveways. Accumulations more than 0.25 inches can cause scattered power outages and break tree limbs, the weather service says.

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  • Global markets struggle to put last year’s misery behind them | CNN Business

    Global markets struggle to put last year’s misery behind them | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    European and Asian stocks pushed higher on the first major trading day of 2023 as investors try to look beyond a gloomy outlook for the world economy, China’s worst Covid outbreak and stubbornly high inflation in Europe.

    But after a positive start, Wall Street succumbed to fear again. The S&P 500 gained 0.4% in early trading Tuesday, while the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.8%. By midday, however, both indexes were trading weaker, down 0.3% and 1.2% respectively.

    Shares of Tesla

    (TSLA)     plunged more than 13% after the electric car giant reported weaker than expected global sales for the fourth quarter. Apple sank 3.8%, bringing its market cap to $2 trillion. An impressive number, for sure, but about $1 trillion less than its valuation at this time last year.

    Europe’s Stoxx 600 index rose 1.2% by 12.10 p.m. ET, off earlier highs but extending strong gains posted Monday when Chinese and US markets were closed. Germany’s DAX rose 0.8%, while France’s CAC gained 0.4%.

    US markets are waiting for the first major economic news of the year, due later this week. A key report on manufacturing, new data on labor market openings and the minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting are due out Wednesday. The jobs report for December will be released Friday.

    Investors in Europe were buoyed by survey data, released Monday, showing that supply chain and inflation pressures were easing slightly for manufacturers in the economies that use the euro currency.

    Shortages of parts in Germany, the biggest economy in Europe, have also abated, according to data released by the Institute for Economic Research (Ifo) on Tuesday. Inflation in the country continues to trend downwards. Data published Tuesday by the German Federal Statistics Office showed that consumer prices rose 8.6% in December, compared with 10% the previous month, and 10.4% in October.

    London’s FTSE 100 index clocked up gains of 2.3% in morning trading, before easing slightly to stand 1.4% higher.

    Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg bank, struck a cautiously optimistic note about the year ahead.

    “Unless a major new geopolitical shock intervenes, the new year could be far less unsettled than 2022. Especially for Europe, the outlook continues to become substantially less negative,” he wrote in note Tuesday.

    In Asia, markets ended the day firmly in positive territory, recovering from early losses.

    Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropped by as much as 2% after a closely watched private survey showed China’s economy ended last year with a slump in factory activity. But the index soon reversed course to gain 1.8% by the close, as hopes for the reopening of the city’s border with mainland China on January 8 boosted stocks.

    Stocks in mainland China also had a choppy first-day trading. The Shanghai Composite opened lower, but then clawed back losses to close 0.9% higher.

    Tuesday’s market gains provide cheery news for investors after a rollercoaster 2022 that saw $33 trillion wiped off global equity markets.

    Many suffered deep losses in 2022 as central banks hiked interest rates at an unprecedented clip in a bid to control surging inflation.

    The S&P 500 lost 19.4% over the past 12 months — its worst year since 2008 — despite hitting an all-time high last January. Europe’s Stoxx 600 index fell 12.9%, its steepest annual loss since 2018. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 15.5%, its weakest performance since 2011.

    Predicting the state of markets is notoriously tricky — and often downright wrong — but it looks likely that many of last year’s economic headwinds will stick around, and some could get even worse.

    Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary Fund, warned in an interview with CBS that aired on Sunday that 2023 will be tougher on the global economy than 2022 was.

    Georgieva said that the world’s three biggest economies, the United States, the European Union and China, are all “slowing down simultaneously,” and the IMF expected “one third of the world economy to be in recession” this year.

    “Almost everyone is going into 2023 with a healthy dose of trepidation,” Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda, said in a Tuesday note.

    “The outlook is understandably gloomy and will remain so unless something significant changes, either on the war in Ukraine or inflation,” he added.

    Investors can expect the world’s central banks to continue hiking interest rates to tame historic levels of inflation, despite signs that price rises globally have started to cool, in part due to a drop in energy prices.

    Both the European Central Bank and US Federal Reserve have said they plan to continue to raise the cost of borrowing in the near term, a move that typically hurts companies’ profits — and their investors.

    China is also unpredictable. While investors are broadly happy that the country ditched its strict zero-Covid policy last month — promising to lift demand across the world’s second-biggest economy — rocketing numbers of cases and a potential contraction in the early part of 2023 could limit gains.

    — Paul LaMonica, Julia Horowitz and Laura He contributed reporting.

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  • Meet the history-makers of the 118th Congress | CNN Politics

    Meet the history-makers of the 118th Congress | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The 118th Congress, being sworn in Tuesday, will eclipse several records set by the outgoing Congress.

    It features a record-setting number of women, 149 – expanding female representation by just two members above the record set by the 117th Congress. Overall, women of color will also break a record for their representation this year, with 58 serving, and within the House alone, there will be a record number of both Latinas and Black women.

    The new Congress also boasts the House’s first Gen-Z lawmaker and the longest-serving woman in congressional history.

    Some newcomers, Republicans and Democrats alike, also achieved historic firsts in their own states, ushering a diverse group into a politically split Washington.

    Here’s a look at the lawmakers, some new and some returning, who are making history in each chamber during this session of Congress.

    Alabama: Republican Katie Britt is the first woman elected to the Senate from Alabama, winning an open seat vacated by her onetime boss, GOP Sen. Richard Shelby, who held the seat for nearly four decades.

    Alabama’s two previous female senators both were appointed to fill vacancies.

    California: Democrat Alex Padilla will be the first elected Latino senator from California, winning a special election for the remainder of Vice President Kamala Harris’ term as well as an election for a full six-year term. Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrant parents, was appointed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to the seat Harris vacated when she became vice president.

    Oklahoma: Republican Markwayne Mullin will be the first Native American senator from Oklahoma in almost 100 years, winning the special election to succeed GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe, who is resigning. Mullin, a member of the Cherokee Nation, represented the state’s 2nd Congressional District in the last Congress. Democrat Robert Owen, also a member of the Cherokee Nation, represented Oklahoma in the Senate from 1907 to 1925.

    AZ-06: Juan Ciscomani will be the first Latino Republican elected to Congress from Arizona. Ciscomani, who was born in Mexico and immigrated to the US with his family as a child, previously worked at the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and was a senior adviser to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

    CA-42: Democrat Robert Garcia will be the first out LGBTQ immigrant elected to Congress. Garcia, who immigrated from Lima, Peru, in the early 1980s at the age of 5, has been the mayor of Long Beach.

    CO-08: Democrat Yadira Caraveo will be the first Latina elected to Congress from Colorado. Caraveo, a state representative and the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents, defeated Republican state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer to win the seat located north of Denver.

    FL-10: Democrat Maxwell Frost will be the first Gen-Z member of Congress after winning the open seat for Florida’s 10th Congressional District.

    The 25-year-old representative-elect told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on November 9 that when President Joe Biden called to congratulate him, the president recalled being too young to be sworn in as a senator when he was first elected at age 29.

    “He asked me if it was the same situation. I said, ‘No, Mr. President, you had me beat on that. I’m already old enough to be sworn in on January 3.’ So, it was great to talk with him. You know, he was elected at a very young age, too, so he understands that experience,” Frost said on “CNN This Morning.”

    IL-03: Democrat Delia Ramirez will be the first Latina elected to Congress from Illinois. Ramirez, who served as a Chicago-area state representative and is the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, was also the first Guatemalan American to serve in the Illinois General Assembly.

    IL-17: Democrat Eric Sorensen will be the first out gay person elected to Congress from Illinois. Sorensen, a former Rockford and Quad Cities meteorologist, defeated Republican Esther Joy King in the race to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos.

    MI-10: Republican John James of Michigan will be the first Black Republican elected to Congress from Michigan, winning the open-seat race for the redrawn 10th Congressional District in the Detroit suburbs.

    MI-13: Democrat Shri Thanedar will be the first Indian American elected to Congress from Michigan. Thaneder, who immigrated to the US from India, was elected to the Michigan House in 2020 and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 2018.

    NY-03: Republican George Santos won the first House election between two out gay candidates – in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. Santos, the son of Brazilian immigrants, defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman for the Long Island-based seat.

    Santos is entering the House under intense scrutiny after admitting to lying about key pieces of his background while state and federal prosecutors look into his finances and fellow lawmakers voice their outrage over his resume fabrications.

    OH-09: Democrat Marcy Kaptur will become the longest-serving woman in Congress when she’s sworn in to represent the state’s 9th Congressional District for her 21st term. Kaptur, who was first elected in 1982 and is currently the longest-serving woman in House history, will break the record set by Barbara Mikulski, who represented Maryland in the House and Senate for a combined 40 years.

    OR-5 and 6: Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Democrat Andrea Salinas will be the first two Latinos elected to Congress from Oregon.

    Chavez-DeRemer, who is Mexican American, will represent the 5th Congressional District, succeeding Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader.

    Salinas, whose father immigrated to the US from Mexico, won the state’s newly created 6th Congressional District.

    PA-12: Democrat Summer Lee will be the first Black woman elected to Congress from Pennsylvania. Lee, who had been a Pittsburgh-area state representative, will succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle.

    VT: Democrat Becca Balint will be the first woman and first openly LGBTQ person elected to Congress from Vermont. She will succeed Rep. Peter Welch, who was elected to represent the state in the Senate.

    WA-03: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez will be the first Latino Democrat elected to Congress from Washington state. Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto repair shop owner whose father immigrated to the US from Mexico, defeated Republican Joe Kent to succeed GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who finished third in the August top-two primary. Herrera Beutler was herself the first Hispanic member of Congress from Washington state.

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