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  • Who is Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat seeking to succeed Nancy Pelosi | CNN Politics

    Who is Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat seeking to succeed Nancy Pelosi | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries launched his bid for House Democratic leadership on Friday, a historic move in which he would succeed speaker Nancy Pelosi after two decades of leading congressional Democrats. If chosen, Jeffries, a progressive, would become the first Black lawmaker to lead a party in Congress.

    He has widespread support among Democrats, including from Pelosi as well as House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, both of whom said they will also step down from their leadership roles.

    A rising star in the Democratic Party, Jeffries was born in Brooklyn, New York, and studied political science at the State University of New York at Binghamton and received a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University. He also attended law school at New York University School of Law where he was on the law review.

    After law school, Jeffries clerked for late federal district judge Harold Baer Jr. of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, was a lawyer for Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP and was litigation counsel for CBS and Viacom Inc.

    He started his career in politics after being elected to the New York State Assembly in 2006. In 2012, he was elected to New York’s 8th congressional district, which includes parts of Brooklyn and Queens. During his time in Congress, Jeffries has pushed for policing reform, including a national ban on chokeholds following the death of Eric Garner, a Black man who died in 2014 after being held in the restraining move. He was also instrumental in the passage of the First Step Act and co-sponsored the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that passed the House but failed in the Senate.

    Jeffries also co-sponsored the Music Modernization Act, a bill that overhauled laws related to how songwriters are paid when their songs are licensed or played. It was signed into law in 2018.

    In 2019, he became chairman of the Democratic caucus, making him the youngest member serving in leadership. Jeffries was part of a select group of lawmakers who were impeachment managers during the Senate trial of then-President Donald Trump, in which he referenced lyrics by late rapper The Notorious B.I.G. when outlining the House’s case against Trump. He has also been a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Budget Committee and Congressional Black Caucus.

    In a letter announcing his leadership bid, Jeffries said he hopes to “lead an effort that centers our communication strategy around the messaging principle that values unite, issues divide.” He also praised the past leadership but said “more must be done to combat inflation, defend our democracy, secure reproductive freedom, welcome new Americans, promote equal protection under the law and improve public safety throughout this country.”

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  • What a Republican-controlled House could mean for Silicon Valley | CNN Business

    What a Republican-controlled House could mean for Silicon Valley | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    With Republicans projected to take control of the House as a result of the midterm elections, tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Meta, who’ve been in the crosshairs of Democrats in recent years, are soon set to face a very different — but no less hostile — political climate in Washington.

    Under the current Democratic-led Congress, top tech executives have been hauled before lawmakers to testify on everything from their companies’ market dominance to social media’s impact on teen mental health. Democrats have hammered away at online platforms’ handling of hate speech and white nationalism, while promoting legislation that could drastically affect the business models of big tech companies.

    In the lame duck session, Democratic lawmakers could renew their attempts at passing tech-focused antitrust legislation that the industry’s biggest players have spent millions lobbying against.

    Republicans aren’t likely to let up the pressure, policy analysts say. But a change in power in the House would likely mean renewed focus on some political priorities — primarily allegations of anti-conservative social media bias — and perhaps an increased emphasis on China and related national security risks, too.

    Here’s what the results of the midterm elections could mean for Big Tech and the push to regulate it.

    In general, tech companies may face more political noise with a Republican House but potentially less policy risk.

    “Republican gains would be good for megacap tech like Google and Apple,” said Paul Gallant, an industry analyst at Cowen Inc. “Republicans will hold hearings about content bias, but they’re not likely to pass antitrust legislation, which is the biggest threat the companies have faced in years.”

    Expect more of the uncomfortable ritual grillings that have made tech CEOs and their lieutenants a frequent sight in Washington, said one industry official who requested anonymity in order to speak more freely.

    “I think the content moderation debate will not just look at how companies make decisions on their platforms, but also how they’ve interacted with the Biden administration,” the official predicted. “The focus will be, ‘Are you too cozy with, and is your content moderation policy led by, feedback you get from the Biden administration?’”

    One company that may see a reprieve is Twitter, whose new owner, Elon Musk, has won plaudits from conservatives for suggesting he could restore former President Donald Trump’s banned Twitter account, among others, and has used his account to endorse voting for Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.

    The hearings could culminate in more sweeping proposals to roll back Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the federal law that grants tech platforms broad latitude to moderate online content as they see fit.

    In the past, Democrats have called for narrowing Section 230, thus exposing tech platforms to more lawsuits, for not removing hate speech and extremist content more aggressively. Republicans have called for expanding platform liability over allegations that social media companies unfairly remove conservative speech.

    Previous legislative proposals to scale back Section 230 have tended to run into constitutionality questions or failed to attract bipartisan support, and those hurdles still remain. But some digital rights advocates who have defended Section 230 aren’t taking anything for granted, saying that if they squint, they can still see a path forward for legislation that might curtail the law.

    “The thing I’m most worried about in the next Congress is a bad Section 230 bill that’s framed as being about ‘protecting kids’ or ‘stopping opioid sales’ or something that sounds non-controversial, but could have far-reaching negative effects” that may unintentionally result in more conservative speech being removed, not less, said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, a digital privacy group.

    Given President Joe Biden’s criticism of Section 230 — a position the White House reiterated as recently as September — he might even be willing to sign such a hypothetical bill. But that scenario is far too premature to consider right now, according to other analysts who point to the Supreme Court, not Congress, as the center of gravity on Section 230.

    There are two high-profile cases pending before the Court that could powerfully affect the law’s scope. The cases have to do with whether tech platforms can be sued in connection with federal anti-terrorism laws; if the Court finds that they can, it would effectively mean a significant narrowing of Section 230’s protections. And it could create openings for others to continue chipping away at the law.

    “Republicans in Congress certainly have their views on content moderation, but the big thing to look for is what the Supreme Court does,” said Andy Halataei, executive vice president of government affairs for the Information Technology Industry Council, a tech-backed advocacy group. “That will drive either the opportunity or the consensus for Congress to move forward.”

    Both parties have been hawkish on China, but expect Republicans to make it a pillar of their agenda. Within the first few days, Republicans could seek to establish a new select committee devoted to China and its impact on US supply chains, according to the industry official.

    The new committee would likely look at the economic leverage China may have over the United States and the national security risks that could pose, ranging from China’s dominance in the rare earth minerals market to agricultural products, the official said.

    And while Republicans would likely bring even greater scrutiny to businesses with links to China, including TikTok, they also would have a substantial impact on the semiconductor industry by exploring further ways to restrict Chinese access to US technology.

    “Republican gains wouldn’t be great for the chips and tools companies because the China hawks will gain power,” said Gallant.

    In a subsequent research note for investors, Gallant added: “For some China hawks — including likely House Foreign Affairs Chair Mike McCaul — Biden can’t go far enough,” suggesting Republicans could try to introduce even more restrictions on China exports through legislation.

    Multiple Congress-watchers told CNN that support for federal privacy legislation is still bipartisan and the area remains one of a handful where lawmakers could make progress in the next Congress.

    One proposal, known as the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, would enshrine the nation’s first-ever consumer data privacy right into US law. It was approved by a key House committee this year and policy analysts say it could see more opportunities to advance next year.

    The privacy issue is becoming more salient to consumers by the day, said Greer, as the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has made the security of location data, search histories and other personal information a critical safety matter.

    “Hot button tech policy fights like data privacy, antitrust, and content moderation have massive implications for core issues like abortion access, voting rights, racial justice, and LGBTQ+ protections,” Greer said.

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  • Fed officials crushed investors’ hopes this week | CNN Business

    Fed officials crushed investors’ hopes this week | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Investors sleuthing for clues about what the Federal Reserve will decide during its December policy meeting got quite a few this week. But those hints about the future of monetary policy point to an outcome they won’t be very happy about.

    What’s happening: Federal Reserve officials made a series of speeches this week indicating that aggressive interest rate hikes to fight inflation would continue, souring investors’ hopes for a forthcoming central bank policy shift. On Thursday, St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard said the central bank still has a lot of work to do before it brings inflation under control, sending the S&P 500 down more than 1% in early trading. It later pared losses.

    Bullard, a voting member on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), said that the moves the Fed has made so far to fight inflation haven’t been sufficient. “To attain a sufficiently restrictive level, the policy rate will need to be increased further,” he said.

    Those comments come a day after Kansas City Fed President Esther George, a voting member of the FOMC, said to The Wall Street Journal that she’s “looking at a labor market that is so tight, I don’t know how you continue to bring this level of inflation down without having some real slowing, and maybe we even have contraction in the economy to get there.”

    San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly added on Wednesday that a pause in rate hikes was “off the table.”

    A numbers game: Fed officials should increase interest rates to somewhere between 5% and 7% to tamp inflation, Bullard said Thursday. Those numbers shocked investors, as they would require a series of significant and economically painful hikes which increase the chance of a hard landing.

    The current interest rate sits between 3.75% and 4% and the median FOMC participant projected a peak funds rate of 4.5-4.75% in September. If those numbers hold steady, Fed members would only raise rates by another three-quarters of a percentage point.

    But Fed Chair Powell said at the November meeting that the projections are likely to rise in December and if Bullard is correct, that means investors can expect another one to three percentage points in rate hikes.

    Dreams of a pivot: October’s softer-than-expected CPI and producer price reading bolstered investors’ hopes that the Fed might ease its aggressive rate hikes and sent markets soaring to their best day since 2020 last week.

    But messaging from Fed officials this week has brought Wall Street back down to earth.

    That’s because market rallies help to expand the economy, said Liz Ann Sonders, Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab, which is the opposite of what the Fed is trying to do with its tightening policy. Fed officials could be attempting to do some “jawboning” via excessively hawkish speeches in order to bring markets down, she said.

    The bottom line: Investors listen closely to Bullard’s comments because he’s known for having looser lips than other Fed officials, Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer of Bleakley Financial Group, wrote in a note Thursday. But his hawkish predictions may have been “overboard,” especially since he won’t be a voting member of the FOMC next year.

    Still, Wall Street analysts are listening. Goldman Sachs raised its peak fed funds rate forecast on Thursday to 5-5.25%, up from 4.75-5%.

    A series of high-profile layoffs have rattled Big Tech this month.

    Amazon confirmed that layoffs had begun at the company and would continue into next year, just days after multiple outlets reported the e-commerce giant planned to cut around 10,000 employees. Facebook-parent Meta recently announced 11,000 job cuts, the largest in the company’s history. Twitter also announced widespread job cuts after Elon Musk bought the company for $44 billion.

    The series of high-profile layoff announcements prompted fears that the labor market was weakening and that a recession could be around the corner.

    Those fears aren’t unwarranted: The Federal Reserve is actively working to slow economic growth and tighten financial conditions to rebalance the white-hot labor market. Further layoffs in both tech and other industries are likely inevitable as the Fed continues to raise interest rates.

    But this wave of layoffs isn’t as significant as headlines might lead Americans to believe. Thursday’s weekly jobless claims actually fell by 4,000 to 222,000 in spite of the surge in tech job cuts.

    In a note on Thursday Goldman Sachs analysts outlined three reasons why the layoffs may not point to a looming recession in the US.

    First off, the tech industry accounts for a small share of aggregate employment in the US. While information technology companies account for 26% of the S&P 500 market cap, it accounts for less than 0.3% of total employment.

    Second, tech job openings remain well above their pre-pandemic level, so laid-off tech workers should have good chances of finding new jobs.

    Finally, tech worker layoffs have frequently spiked in the past without a corresponding increase in total layoffs and have not historically been a leading indicator of broader labor market deterioration, Goldman analysts found.

    “The main problem in the labor market is still that labor demand is too strong, not too weak,” they concluded.

    Mortgage rates dropped sharply last week following a series of economic reports that indicated inflation may finally be easing, reports my colleague Anna Bahney

    The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.61% in the week ending November 17, down from 7.08% the week before, according to Freddie Mac, the largest weekly drop since 1981.

    But that’s still significantly higher than a year ago when the 30-year fixed rate stood at 3.10%.

    “While the decline in mortgage rates is welcome news, there is still a long road ahead for the housing market,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “Inflation remains elevated, the Federal Reserve is likely to keep interest rates high and consumers will continue to feel the impact.”

    Affording a home remains a challenge for many home buyers. Mortgage rates are expected to remain volatile for the rest of the year. And prices remain elevated in many areas, especially where there is a very limited inventory of available homes for sale.

    Meanwhile, inflation and rising interest rates mean many would-be buyers are also facing tightened budgets.

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  • Inside the White House’s months of prep-work for a GOP investigative onslaught | CNN Politics

    Inside the White House’s months of prep-work for a GOP investigative onslaught | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    More than four months before voters handed Republicans control of the House of Representatives, top White House and Department of Homeland Security officials huddled in the Roosevelt Room to prepare for that very scenario.  

    The department and its secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, had emerged as top targets of Republican ire over the Biden administration’s border security policies – ire that is certain to fuel aggressive congressional investigations with Republicans projected to narrowly reclaim the House majority and the subpoena power that comes with it.  

    Sitting around the large conference table in the Roosevelt Room, White House lawyers probed senior DHS officials about their preparations for the wide-ranging Republican oversight they had begun to anticipate, including Republicans’ stated plans to impeach Mayorkas, two sources familiar with the meeting said.  

    Convened by Richard Sauber, a veteran white-collar attorney hired in May to oversee the administration’s response to congressional oversight, the meeting was one of several the White House has held since the summer with lawyers from across the administration – including the Defense Department, State Department and Justice Department.

    The point, people familiar with the effort said, has been to ensure agencies are ready for the coming investigative onslaught  and to coordinate an administration-wide approach. 

    While President Joe Biden and Democrats campaigned to preserve their congressional majorities, a small team of attorneys, communications strategists and legislative specialists have spent the past few months holed up in Washington preparing for the alternative, two administration officials said.  

    The preparations, largely run out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building near the White House, are among the earliest and most comprehensive by any administration ahead of a midterm election and highlight how far-reaching and aggressive Republican investigations are expected to be.

    Along with Sauber, this spring the White House hired veteran Democratic communications aide Ian Sams as spokesman for the White House counsel’s office. Top Biden adviser Anita Dunn returned to the White House in the spring, in part to oversee the administration’s preparations for a GOP-controlled Congress.

    The Justice Department is also bracing for investigations, bringing in well-known government transparency attorney Austin Evers to help respond to legislative oversight. Evers is the founder of the group American Oversight and served as its executive director until this year, and previously handled the oversight response at the State Department.

     The White House is preparing to hire additional lawyers and other staff to beef up its oversight response team in the next two months, before the new Congress convenes in January, administration officials said. The hires will bolster Sauber’s current team of about 10 lawyers, a source familiar with the matter said.

    In piecing together GOP targets and strategy, the team has paid close attention to Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and James Comer of Kentucky, the two Republicans who are likely to lead much of the investigations under a GOP-controlled House and have spent months telegraphing their intentions in TV interviews and oversight letters.   

    Jim Jordan and James Comer.

    Their opening salvo came Thursday, when Comer and Jordan hosted a joint news conference to preview the various investigations into President Joe Biden’s family.  

    “In the 118th Congress, this committee will evaluate the status of Joe Biden’s relationship with his family’s foreign partners and whether he is a president who is compromised or swayed by foreign dollars and influence” said Comer, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee. “I want to be clear: This is an investigation of Joe Biden, and that’s where the committee will focus in this next Congress.”

    Comer, flanked by Jordan and other Republicans on the Oversight Committee, said Republicans have made connections between the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and the president whom they believe requires further investigation. 

    The White House accused Comer of pursuing “long-debunked conspiracy theories.”

    Even though the Republican majority is poised to be much thinner than expected – with a likely margin of just a couple seats – all indications are that House Republicans are poised to push ahead with a wide-ranging set of investigations into all corners of the Biden administration, including the messy US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Covid-19 vaccine mandates and the Justice Department’s handling of the various investigations related to Donald Trump. 

    Republicans are also intent on investigating the president’s family, particularly his son, Hunter Biden. 

    With little chance of passing much legislation in a deadlocked Congress, investigations are shaping up to be the focal point of how a House Republican majority wields its power.  

    “You’re gonna have a bunch of chairmen who are totally on their own, doing whatever the hell they want without regard for what the national political implications are,” said Brendan Buck, a former top adviser to House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said he believes GOP leader Kevin McCarthy will have “very little leash” to rein in those investigative pursuits.  

    House Republicans have already sent over 500 letters to the administration requesting that they preserve documents, key committees have hired new legal counsels to help with investigations, and leadership has hosted classes for staffers on how to best use the oversight tools at their disposal.

    Meanwhile, McCarthy’s office has been working with likely committee chairs over the last several months to delegate who is going to be investigating what, according to a source familiar with the matter. 

    “It’s like a clearing house,” the source said. 

    But the GOP’s push for aggressive investigations could run into resistance from the moderate wing of the GOP, who want to use their newfound majority to address key legislative priorities – not just pummel Hunter Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci. While McCarthy has vowed to conduct rigorous oversight, he will have to strike a delicate balance between the demands of the competing factions in his party.

    White House officials believe Republicans are bound to overstep and that their investigative overreach will backfire with the American public. In the meantime, they are prepared to push back forcefully, believing that many proposed investigations are based on conspiracy theories and politically motivated charges.

    “President Biden is not going to let these political attacks distract him from focusing on Americans’ priorities, and we hope congressional Republicans will join us in tackling them instead of wasting time and resources on political revenge,” Sams, the spokesman for the White House counsel’s office, said in a statement to CNN. 

    The House’s expected razor-thin majority is likely to make it more difficult to take steps like impeaching members of Biden’s Cabinet – or even the president himself. But that doesn’t mean, sources told CNN, they’re not going to try, particularly when it comes to the border and Mayorkas.  

    Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas testifies before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, on Capitol Hill on May 04, 2022.

    On Tuesday, the House Homeland Security Committee provided a preview of what is to come. Over the course of a marathon four-hour hearing, Republican lawmakers grilled Mayorkas over the influx of migrants at the southern border, the number of people who evade Border Patrol capture, and encounters with people on the border who are on the terror watch list. 

    Throughout, Mayorkas stood his ground, maintaining that the border is “secure” and batting down criticism that it’s “open” as Republicans have claimed. 

    At one point, Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana foreshadowed more testimony next year, telling Mayorkas: “We look forward to seeing you in January.”  

    Mayorkas, officials said, remains undeterred by the threats of impeachment and intends to stay at the helm of the department, a point he reiterated Tuesday. Still, one person close to Mayorkas told CNN that the DHS chief is “nervous” about impending GOP investigations and the potential of being continually hauled before Congress by hostile Republican committee chairs. 

    “Don’t let the bastards win,” one US official familiar with Mayorkas’ thinking said when asked to sum up the DHS chief’s attitude toward potential GOP investigations on border issues and impeachment.   

    “We will respond to legitimate inquiries,” the official said. “We’re not going to feed into what might wind up as kabuki theater.”  

    DHS already responds to hundreds of congressional inquiries per month, according to a Homeland Security official, who added the department has been preparing for months for any potential increase in congressional activity. The department is also ready to “aggressively respond to attempts to mischaracterize the strong record” of the DHS work force, as well as “politically motivated attempts to attack the secretary,” the official said.

    DHS officials considered hiring outside legal counsel to prepare for the potential onslaught of Republican scrutiny but ultimately chose not to, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.   Ricki Seidman, a senior counselor to Mayorkas and former senior Justice Department official, has been involved in DHS’s preparation for the GOP oversight, the source added.

     Another Homeland Security official said that the Border Patrol along with Customs and Border Protection “are going to take the most heat.” 

    The most politically charged investigations next year are poised to be those into the president’s son Hunter Biden.  

    Top Republicans have largely been more than happy for Comer to take on the leading role of investigating Hunter Biden, multiple sources said.  Jordan does not plan to be intimately involved in the Hunter Biden probe but will provide public support for Comer, including appearing with him at the upcoming press conference.  

    “We’re going to lay out what we have thus far on Hunter Biden, and the crimes we believe he has committed,” Comer told CNN earlier this month just before the election. “And then we’re going to be very clear and say what we are investigating, and who we’re gonna ask to meet with us for transcribed interviews.”

    Hunter Biden has denied wrongdoing in his business activities.

    Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, attends a ceremony at the White House on Thursday, July 7, 2022.

    Behind the scenes though, Jordan and other soon-to-be powerful Republican lawmakers – including likely chairman of House Intelligence Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio – have sought to distance their committees from the Hunter Biden investigation in favor of other investigative pursuits they deem to be “more serious,” the sources said. 

    The handling of Republican investigations related to Hunter Biden will fall to Hunter Biden’s own attorneys, while Bob Bauer, the president’s personal attorney, will handle related matters related to Joe Biden’s personal capacity that do not touch on his official duties. Bauer, who is married to Dunn, and White House attorneys have already met to divvy up workflow over potential lines of inquiries to ensure there are clear lanes of responsibility between investigations that touch on Joe Biden’s official role as president and vice president and his personal life. 

    Another key point of interest is likely to be the administration’s handling of the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, which led to the death of 13 Marines and nearly 200 Afghans when a bomb exploded at the Kabul airport.  

    At the State Department, a small group of officials has already begun planning for the coming investigations into Afghanistan, officials said. While that group will work with Sauber’s team at the White House, State Department officials expect to take the lead in handling GOP inquiries into Afghanistan.     

    The department has not hired new people to work on these efforts, but certain officials who are already at the department expect to spend a lot more of their time responding to the congressional inquiries, officials said.  

    The Republican investigation into the withdrawal is likely to be led by Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs committee. McCaul and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have historically had a good relationship, which State Department officials are hoping will be an important factor.

    US soldiers stand guard behind barbed wire as Afghans sit on a roadside near the military part of the airport in Kabul on August 20, 2021

    Administration officials said they plan to take McCaul’s inquiry seriously because they expect he will demonstrate a seriousness of purpose, instead of making bombastic demands like some other Republicans. And House Republican aides said they plan to explore the administration’s willingness to work with them before issuing subpoenas.

    “If they’ll meet us in the middle by giving us some documents instead of all documents, or agreeing to turn over certain individuals but not all of the individuals for interviews, then that’s a start,” said one of the GOP aides familiar with the plans. “But if they just want to be completely obstructive and say no to every single request, then you’ll see subpoenas fairly soon.”

    The department concluded its own review of the withdrawal in March, but the findings of that report have not been shared publicly, officials said. While it was expected to be put out earlier this year, State Department officials said the White House is making that determination, and they are unsure of where that decision stands. House Republicans want to see that report.

    At the Pentagon, officials are bracing for the possibility of public grilling at televised hearings on everything from Afghanistan to views about “wokeness” in the force and the discharging of troops who refused to take the Covid-19 vaccine. 

    “We know it’s coming,” one administration official said. 

     Both Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose term expires at the end of September 2023, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who appears determined to stay until the end of the Biden administration, have faced sharp criticism from congressional Republicans and know the coming months may be a rough political ride, officials said.    

    Milley has been a particular target for Republicans for his well-known efforts to keep the final weeks of the Trump presidency from careening into a national security crisis. 

    Both Milley and Austin have pushed back forcefully on GOP accusations that the military is “woke,” a topic that’s likely to become a focal point for some Republicans in the coming months.

    “This is going to be a Congress under Republican control like no other,” said Rafi Prober, a congressional investigations specialist with the law firm Akin Gump who previously worked in the Obama administration.    

    Aaron Cutler, the head of the Washington government investigations group at law firm Hogan Lovells and a former Republican congressional leadership staffer, said the partisan investigations serve to “feed the base red meat.”

    But Cutler said he has heard from conservatives that the tepid result for Republicans in the midterm elections may translate to less “silliness in politics,” he said. “The American people are pushing back, and saying we want government to work.”   

    That is exactly the calculation the White House and congressional Democrats are making. A senior House Democratic source said that aggressive attacks on Biden’s son could backfire, adding that congressional Democrats were gearing up to defend the president by calling out “lies and hypocrisy.”

    Still, with the GOP investigations in mind, a team of White House lawyers has in recent weeks and months advised senior White House staff on how “not to be seen as influencing politically sensitive missions at (departments and agencies),” a source familiar with the matter told CNN.  

    Asked at his press conference last week about the prospect of GOP investigations, including into his son, Biden said: “I think the American people will look at all of that for what it is. It’s just almost comedy. … Look, I can’t control what they’re going to do.”

    This story has been updated with comments from Rep. Comer on Thursday.

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  • Shootout off the coast of Puerto Rico leaves one CBP agent dead and 2 others injured, agency says | CNN

    Shootout off the coast of Puerto Rico leaves one CBP agent dead and 2 others injured, agency says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    One US Customs and Border Protection agent is dead and two others injured after a shootout with suspected drug smugglers off the coast of Puerto Rico, according to agency spokesperson Jeffrey Quiñones.

    “An agent that was transported directly to a hospital in Mayagüez, we were told just a few minutes ago, they have confirmed he has passed away. We cannot provide any other details on the agent until family is notified,” Quiñones said.

    The three agents were patrolling off the coast of Puerto Rico Thursday morning when they encountered a suspected smuggling vessel, according to agency. The situation escalated when the agents received gunfire, and in the shootout, one agent was killed and two others were injured, the agency said.

    One suspected smuggler died and another was arrested, the agency said. The nationalities of the suspects were not provided by authorities at this time.

    The identities of the agents have not been made public.

    The two surviving agents are being treated in Puerto Rico for multiple gunshot wounds, according to Dr. Israel Ayala, medical director of Puerto Rico’s Medical Services Administration.

    “One of them was immediately admitted to the stabilization unit and is being treated by emergency physicians and trauma surgeons,” Ayala told CNN in a statement. “Meanwhile, the other agent is in an area that we call minor surgery and is also being evaluated and treated by the emergency room and trauma services.”

    Ayala also said that the hospitalized agents are receiving the attention they require and their progress will be observed for the next 24 hours.

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told lawmakers he was briefed on the situation Thursday morning and offered prayers for the agents and their families.

    “We pray for the family of the officer who lost his life and we pray for the swift recovery of those who have been injured,” Mayorkas said during a Senate panel on worldwide threats.

    The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations are looking into the incident.

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  • Nancy Pelosi announces she won’t run for leadership post, marking the end of an era | CNN Politics

    Nancy Pelosi announces she won’t run for leadership post, marking the end of an era | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Thursday that she will relinquish her leadership post, after leading House Democrats for two decades, building a legacy as one of the most powerful and polarizing figures in American politics.

    Pelosi, the first and only woman to serve as speaker, said that she would continue to serve in the House, giving the next generation the opportunity to lead the House Democrats, who will be in the minority next year despite a better-than-expected midterm election performance.

    “I will not seek reelection to Democratic leadership in the next Congress,” said Pelosi in the House chamber. “For me, the hour has come for a new generation to lead the Democratic caucus that I so deeply respect, and I’m grateful that so many are ready and willing to shoulder this awesome responsibility.”

    Pelosi, 82, rose to the top of the House Democratic caucus in 2002, after leading many in her party against a resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. She then guided Democrats as they rode the waves of popular opinion, seeing their power swell to a 257-seat majority after the 2008 elections, ultimately crash to a 188-seat minority, and then rise once again.

    Her political career was marked by an extraordinary ability to understand and overcome those political shifts, keeping conflicting factions of her party united in passing major legislation. She earned the Speaker’s gavel twice – after the 2006 and 2018 elections – and lost it after the 2010 elections.

    Of late, she has conducted a string of accomplishments with one of the slimmest party splits in history, passing a $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package last year and a $750 billion health care, energy and climate bill in August.

    Her legislative victories in the Biden era cemented her reputation as one of the most successful party leaders in Congress. During the Obama administration, Pelosi was instrumental to the passage of the massive economic stimulus bill and the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which provides over 35 million Americans health care coverage.

    Over the past 20 years, the California liberal has been relentlessly attacked by Republicans, who portray her as the personification of a party for the coastal elite. “We have fired Nancy Pelosi,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Fox News on Wednesday, after Republicans won back the chamber.

    In recent years, the anger directed toward her has turned menacing. During the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, pro-Trump rioters searched for her — and last month, a male assailant attacked Paul Pelosi, the speaker’s husband, with a hammer at the couple’s home in San Francisco, while she was in Washington.

    Pelosi told CNN’s Anderson Cooper this month that her decision to retire would be influenced by the politically motivated attack. Paul Pelosi was released from the hospital two weeks ago after surgery to repair a skull fracture and injuries to his arm and hands.

    After thanking her colleagues for their well-wishes for Paul, the House chamber broke out into a standing ovation.

    Pelosi’s long reign became a source of tension within her own party. She won the gavel after the 2018 elections by promising her own party that she would leave her leadership post by 2022.

    Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, who previously tried to oust Pelosi, told CNN it’s time for a new chapter.

    “She’s a historic speaker who’s accomplished an incredible amount, but I also think there are a lot of Democrats ready for a new chapter,” said Moulton.

    But some Democrats praised Pelosi and said they wished she would remain leader. Asked about her decision, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer clutched his chest and said he had pleaded with her to stay.

    “I told her when she called me and told me this and all that, I said ‘please change your mind. We need you here,’” Schumer said.

    House Democrats appear likely to choose New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, 52, to succeed Pelosi as leader, though Democrats won’t vote until November 30.

    After her speech, Pelosi wouldn’t tell reporters who’d she support. But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn announced they would also step down from their leadership posts, and endorsed Jeffries to succeed Pelosi. Hoyer said Jeffries “will make history for the institution of the House and for our country.” Clyburn added that he hoped Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark and California Rep. Pete Aguilar would join Jeffries in House Democratic leadership.

    Before Pelosi’s announcement, Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told CNN that she expects her caucus to throw their support behind Jeffries, and help him become the first Black House Democratic leader.

    “If she steps aside, I’m very clear that Hakeem Jeffries is the person that I will be voting for and leading the Congressional Black Caucus to vote for,” said Beatty.”I don’t always speak for everybody, but I’m very comfortable saying I believe that every member of the Congressional Black Caucus would vote for Hakeem Jeffries.”

    Retiring North Carolina Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a former CBC chairman, told CNN that Jeffries “is prepared for the moment” if Pelosi steps aside. Butterfield said he thought Jeffries would run.

    The longtime Democratic leader told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday that members of her caucus had asked her to “consider” running in the party’s leadership elections at the end of the month, adding: “But, again, let’s just get through the election.”

    Any decision to run again, Pelosi said, “is about family, and also my colleagues and what we want to do is go forward in a very unified way, as we go forward to prepare for the Congress at hand.”

    “Nonetheless, a great deal is at stake because we’ll be in a presidential election. So my decision will again be rooted in the wishes of my family and the wishes of my caucus,” she continued. “But none of it will be very much considered until we see what the outcome of all of this is. And there are all kinds of ways to exert influence.”

    Pelosi is a towering figure in American politics with a history-making legacy of shattering glass ceilings as the first and so far only woman to be speaker of the US House of Representatives.

    Pelosi was first elected to the House in 1987, when she won a special election to fill a seat representing California’s 5th Congressional District.

    When she was first elected speaker, Pelosi reflected on the significance of the event and what it meant for women in the United States.

    “This is an historic moment,” she said in a speech after accepting the speaker’s gavel. “It’s an historic moment for the Congress. It’s an historic moment for the women of America.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments Thursday.

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  • Taylor Swift ticket snafu caused by Ticketmaster abusing its market power, Senate antitrust chair says | CNN Business

    Taylor Swift ticket snafu caused by Ticketmaster abusing its market power, Senate antitrust chair says | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Senator Amy Klobuchar criticized Ticketmaster in an open letter to its CEO, saying she has “serious concerns” about the company’s operations following a service meltdown Tuesday that left Taylor Swift fans irate.

    In the letter to CEO Michael Rapino, the Democrat from Minnesota and chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, wrote that complaints from Swift fans unable to buy tickets for her upcoming tour, in addition to criticism about high fees, suggests that the company “continues to abuse its market positions.”

    “Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services. That can result in the types of dramatic service failures we saw this week, where consumers are the ones that pay the price,” Klobuchar wrote.

    Ticketmaster and Live Nation, the country’s largest concert promoter, merged about a decade ago. Klobuchar noted that the company at the time pledged to “develop an easy-access, one-stop platform” for ticket delivery. On Thursday, the senator told Rapino that it “appears that your confidence was misplaced.”

    “When Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation in 2010, it was subject to an antitrust consent decree that prohibited it from abusing its market position,” Klobuchar wrote. “Nonetheless, there have been numerous complaints about your company’s compliance with that decree.”

    The letter includes a list of questions for Rapino to answer by next week. Ticketmaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNN Business.

    On Tuesday, the company said “there has been historically unprecedented demand with millions showing up” to buy tickets for Swift’s tour and thanked fans for their “patience.”

    Klobuchar is the latest high-profile politician to openly criticize Ticketmaster for the ticketing disaster that left bad blood between Swift fans and the company.

    “@Ticketmaster’s excessive wait times and fees are completely unacceptable, as seen with today’s @taylorswift13 tickets, and are a symptom of a larger problem. It’s no secret that Live Nation-Ticketmaster is an unchecked monopoly,” Rep. David Cicilline, currently the chairman of the Antitrust Subcommittee, tweeted on Tuesday.

    “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to be reined in,” tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

    Complaints about the company’s monopoly power go back long, long before Tuesday’s ticket problems, when the platform appeared to crash or freeze during presale purchases for Swift’s latest tour.

    In 1994, when Taylor Swift was only four years old and ticket purchase queues were in person or on the phone, not online, the rock group Pearl Jam filed a complaint with the Justice Department’s antitrust division asserting that Ticketmaster has a “virtually absolute monopoly on the distribution of tickets to concerts.” It tried to book its tour only at venues that didn’t use Ticketmaster.

    The Justice Department and many state attorneys general have made similar complaints over the years.

    Despite those concerns, Ticketmaster continued to grow more dominant. Pearl Jam’s complaint was quietly dismissed. The Justice Department and states allowed the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger to go through despite a 2010 court filing in the case raising objections to the merger. In the filing, the Justice Department said that Ticketmaster’s share among major concert venues exceeded 80%.

    – CNN Business’ Chris Isidore contributed to this report.

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  • Divided government is more productive than you think | CNN Politics

    Divided government is more productive than you think | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Now that CNN has projected Republicans will win the House of Representatives, it’s time to consider a Washington where both parties have some control.

    Despite underperforming on Election Day, the GOP gains will have a major impact on what’s accomplished in the coming two years.

    Additional climate change policy? Don’t count on it. National abortion legislation? Not a chance. Voting rights? Not likely.

    Plus, Republicans have indicated they will use any leverage they can find – including the debt ceiling – to force spending cuts.

    While you might immediately think this is all a recipe for a stalemate in Washington, I was surprised to read the argument, backed up by research, that the US government actually overperforms during periods of divided government.

    Those periods are coming more and more frequently, by the way. While there used to be relatively long periods of a decade or more during which one party controlled all of Washington, recent presidents have lost control of the House.

    Barack Obama, Donald Trump and George W. Bush each saw their party lose the House. President Joe Biden will join that club.

    The two Republicans in the ’80s and ‘90s – Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush – both had productive presidencies and never enjoyed a sympathetic congressional majority. The last president to enjoy unified government throughout his presidency was Democrat Jimmy Carter, and voters did not look very kindly on him in the final analysis.

    What’s below are excerpts from separate phone conversations conducted before the midterm election with Frances Lee and James Curry, authors of the 2020 book, “The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era.” Lee is a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University, and Curry is a political science professor at the University of Utah. What led me to them was their 2020 argument that divided government overperforms and unified government underperforms expectations.

    What should Americans know about divided government?

    LEE: It’s the normal state of affairs in our politics in the modern era. Since 1980, something like two-thirds of the time we’ve had a divided government.

    And yet you think about all the things that government has undertaken in the years since the Second World War. The role and scope of the US government is so much greater now than it was then. And a lot of that happened in divided government. Most of that has been under divided government time. …

    Unified government usually results in disappointment for the party in power, which is just exactly what we’ve seen here in (this) Congress. Democrats were unable to deliver on their bold agenda, and that’s not different than what Republicans faced when they had unified government and couldn’t pass repeal and replace of Obamacare.

    Now hold on. Republicans passed a massive tax cut bill with unified government. Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which included spending to address climate change. Those are the major accomplishments of recent years, no?

    CURRY: I think we’re making a mistake when we say that those are the three biggest things that have happened. For instance, earlier you talked about the American Rescue Plan (another Covid relief bill passed with only Democratic support) – it is not as significant as the CARES Act, which was the first major Covid relief legislation passed by Congress. It passed in March of 2020, and it passed on an overwhelming bipartisan basis.

    A lot of what was included in the American Rescue Plan were things that were initially set out under the CARES Act. Arguably the CARES Act was the single most important legislative accomplishment that we’ve had in this country in several decades.

    And there are other examples too … things like criminal justice reform that was passed with bipartisan support in 2018, and many others things that are just as significant from a public policy standpoint, including also the bipartisan infrastructure bill that Congress passed last year.

    They don’t have as much political significance, foremost because they were passed on a single-party basis. But I don’t think you can make the case that they’re necessarily more significant in terms of policy consequences for the country.

    (In a follow-up email, Curry said that Congress often flies its bipartisanship accomplishments under the radar as part of larger bills, which means they don’t get as much attention. He pointed to big-ticket items that passed quietly in 2019 as part of larger spending bills, including raising the age to buy tobacco to 21, pushing through the first major pay raise for federal employees in years and repealing unpopular Obamacare taxes. He has similar examples for each recent year. But if they are not contentious, they get less attention, he said.)

    Your argument is counter to the current narrative of American politics – that parties enact more on their own. Is that a media problem? A partisanship problem?

    LEE: I’m still blown away by how much was done on Covid. Basically the United States government spent 75% more in 2020 than it spent in 2019. All that was Covid.

    You’re talking about New Deal levels of spending and yet people just didn’t even seem to notice it because it was done on a bipartisan basis. We basically had a universal basic income in response to Covid and all the small business aid – it’s just extraordinary – and yet, it just seemed to pass people by as though nothing important occurred.

    I don’t think it’s just a media story. The media wrote stories about the Covid aid bills, but it just didn’t capture people’s attention.

    And I think that’s because it didn’t cut in favor of or against either party. When you don’t have a story that drives a partisan narrative, most people are just not that interested in it. Most people that pay attention to politics are not that interested in it. It lacks a rooting interest.

    What about the big things that need action? Immigration reform has eluded Congress for decades and climate change is an existential threat. How can divided government be preferable if Congress can’t come together to address these problems?

    CURRY: I’m not saying divided government is preferable, which I think is important. I’m just saying it doesn’t make that big a difference on a lot of these issues.

    So we’ve seen that list of issues you just mentioned – climate change, immigration, etc. These are issues that Congress has equally struggled to take big, bold action on under divided or unified government.

    On climate change, for instance, Democrats want to do big, bold things, but they aren’t able to go as far as they want to, because not only are there disagreements between the parties on how to address climate change, there are disagreements among Democrats about the best way to address climate and environmental legislation.

    On immigration, you have clear divisions across party lines, but also divisions within each party.

    LEE: Congress can pass legislation spending money or cutting taxes. The problem is it’s difficult to do things that create backlash. It’s hard to do serious climate legislation without being prepared to accept a backlash.

    Isn’t this just a structural problem then? If there was no requirement for a filibuster supermajority, couldn’t a simple majority of lawmakers be more effective?

    LEE: On the two examples that you just put forward – on immigration and climate – the filibuster has not been the obstacle to recent efforts.

    In immigration reform that Republicans attempted to do (under Trump), they couldn’t get majorities in either the House or Senate. Democrats were way short of a Senate majority when they tried to do climate legislation under Obama. They barely got out of the House.

    (Curry and Lee’s research shows the filibuster is not the primary culprit standing in the way of four out of five of the priorities that parties have failed to enact since 1985.)

    CURRY: We found a more common reason why the parties fail on the things that can be accomplished is because they are unable to unify internally about what to do. The filibuster matters, but it is far from the most significant thing.

    But certainly the legislation that passes under divided government is different than what would have passed under a unified government. The parties must compromise more. Whether the government is unified or divided matters, right?

    CURRY: It makes a difference certainly for precisely what is in these final policy bills. It certainly makes a difference for the politics of the moment. It really makes a difference for each side of the aisle in terms of being able to say, we got this much done or that much done that matches my hopes and dreams as a Democrat or a Republican.

    But it’s just sort of an overstated story that unified government means big, bold things happen and divided government means they don’t.

    Wouldn’t Washington work better if one party was more easily able to deliver on its goals when voters gave it power?

    CURRY: Whether it would be better if we had a situation like you have in more parliamentary-style governments where a party takes control, they pass what they will and stand to voters, I think it’s just in the eye of the beholder.

    On one hand, potentially, yes, because it’s very clear and clean from a party responsibility or electoral responsibility standpoint, where parties pass things and then voters can hold them accountable or not. On the other hand, then you would see more wild swings in policy from election to election.

    Does the growing number of swings in power in Congress mean American voters consciously prefer divided government?

    CURRY: I don’t think that Americans necessarily have a preference for divided government. That’s something that people sometimes say. It sounds nice.

    But the reality is that roughly since the 1980s and early 1990s, it’s been the case that electoral margins are really tight – you have relatively even numbers of Americans that prefer Democrats and Republicans. And so from election to election, based on turnout and swings back and forth, you get this constant back and forth of our electoral politics where one party is in control for two to four years and then the other party is in control.

    That’s really important because it has massive implications for our politics. If you have a political system and political dynamic like we have today, where each party thinks they can constantly win back control or lose control of the House, the Senate and the presidency, it ups the stakes for every single decision that’s going to be made.

    Everything is considered through a lens of how will this affect our partisan fortunes in the next election, and that makes things just naturally more contentious.

    Can we agree that ours is not a very effective way to govern?

    CURRY: It is certainly the case that Congress does not pass every single thing that every person wants it to. But I don’t think that is ever true of any government. Nor do I think that’s a reasonable bar to set a government against.

    The reality is Congress does a lot of stuff and does a lot more than people give it credit for, but it also fails to take action on a lot of policies. I think that’s just politics. That’s just government. It’s not just an American problem, and it’s not just a facet of our specific political system.

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  • Senate clears key procedural step on bill to protect same-sex marriage | CNN Politics

    Senate clears key procedural step on bill to protect same-sex marriage | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Senate on Wednesday cleared a key procedural hurdle toward historic passage of the bipartisan bill to protect same-sex and interracial marriage, voting 62-37 to break a filibuster.

    There could be additional votes before final passage, but Wednesday’s successful test vote signals the bill is on a glide path to succeed, a remarkable turn of events given how contentious the issue of same-sex marriage was just a few years ago.

    While the bill would not set a national requirement that all states must legalize same-sex marriage, it would require individual states to recognize another state’s legal marriage. So, in the event the Supreme Court might overturn its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage, a state could still pass a law to ban same-sex marriage, but that state would be required to recognize a same-sex marriage from another state.

    All 50 members of the Democratic caucus voted to start debate on the bill as well as 12 Republicans.

    It’s unclear when the chamber will vote on final passage. Without an agreement to speed up passage of the bill which needs consent from all 100 senators, final passage will likely occur after the Senate returns from Thanksgiving recess.

    Still, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told CNN he wants his chamber’s bill to pass by Thursday before senators leave for their Thanksgiving recess all next week.

    “We’re hoping that could happen,” he said.

    Earlier this week, Schumer expressed “hope” that after the vote Wednesday, “both sides can work quickly together to move this bill through the Senate and on to the president’s desk.”

    “It already passed the House earlier this year with significant 47 Republican votes and I’m optimistic we can achieve a significant result in this chamber,” he added.

    Once the bill passes the Senate, it will need to be passed again through the House before going to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law. Supporters of the bill hope to pass the legislation through the House before the end of the year as Republicans appear on track to take control of the chamber in the next Congress.

    Earlier this week, the bipartisan negotiators who worked on the legislation, announced they were “confident” the bill has enough votes to pass and were hoping the bill could be put to the floor for a vote.

    The bipartisan group, which includes Republican Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio, Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democratic Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, said in a statement Monday that they “look forward to this legislation coming to the floor.”

    Lawmakers had hoped to pass the bill before leaving for recess ahead of the midterm elections, but the chamber punted on a vote until after the November elections as negotiators asked for more time to lock down support. That gamble appears to have paid off for the bill’s supporters given the 12 Republican votes to break the filibuster Wednesday.

    In a sign of how much support has grown in recent years for same-sex marriage, the bill found backing from GOP senators including those in deeply red states.

    Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming told CNN’s Manu Raju that she voted to advance the Senate’s same-sex marriage bill due to “Article 1, Section 3 of the Wyoming Constitution,” which she read to reporters and includes an anti-discrimination clause.

    “That’s why we’re called the equality state,” she added.

    Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said the “bill made sense” and “provides important religious liberty protections.”

    “While I believe in traditional marriage, Obergefell is and has been the law of the land upon which LGBTQ individuals have relied,” Romney said in a statement. “This legislation provides certainty to many LGBTQ Americans, and it signals that Congress—and I—esteem and love all of our fellow Americans equally.”

    This story and headline have been updated to reflect additional developments.

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  • Trump offers a dark vision voters have already rejected as he launches his 2024 campaign | CNN Politics

    Trump offers a dark vision voters have already rejected as he launches his 2024 campaign | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    It’s American carnage, round three.

    Ex-President Donald Trump on Tuesday dragged Americans back into his dystopian worldview of a failing nation scarred by crime-ridden cities turned into “cesspools of blood,” and swamped by immigrants. He added a scary new twist at a time of global tensions, claiming the country was on the verge of tumbling into nuclear war.

    Launching his bid for a third consecutive Republican presidential nomination, Trump conversely painted his own turbulent single term, which ended in his attempt to destroy democracy and a mismanaged pandemic, as a “golden age” of prosperity and American global dominance.

    The new Trump – for the 2024 campaign – is the same as the old Trump.

    He pounded out a message of American decline, highlighted raging inflation and slammed President Joe Biden as aged, weak, and disrespected by US enemies, while highlighting his own chummy ties with global dictators, like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who seek to weaken American power.

    When the 76-year-old former property tycoon, reality star and commander in chief promised a new “quest to save our country,” he encapsulated the challenges that his new campaign poses for his own party and the rest of the United States.

    To begin with, in the gold-leafed ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump steered clear of the election denialism that helped doom multiple Republican nominees in the midterm elections and that has inspired skepticism of his viability among GOP lawmakers in Washington.

    But as usual, his self-discipline didn’t hold, as he descended further into his personal obsessions the longer he went on, portraying himself as a “victim,” raising new suspicion about the US election system and slamming ongoing criminal probes against him as politicized and deeply unfair. The speech lacked the riotous nature and energy of his campaign rallies. But Trump’s material was a familiar rhetorical cocktail of grievance certain to enthuse his base supporters.

    However, it may have come across to many of the swing voters in the states that he lost in 2020 as authoritarian demagoguery. Many of those voters deserted Republicans yet again last week, as the party failed to win back the Senate and as it still waits to confirm it will win only a slim majority in the House. Many GOP lawmakers squarely blame the lack of a red wave on Trump – for foisting extreme, election-denying candidates on the party in key states. That’s why there is increasing interest in potential alternative candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who roared to reelection last week, and has recently proved, unlike Trump, that he can build a broad coalition with Trump-style policies but without the chaos epitomized by the 45th president.

    And yet by launching his campaign so early – before the 2022 election is even finalized – the ex-president is seeking to freeze the GOP field. And there is so far no evidence that his devoted supporters will desert him.

    What could be the opening acts of a new election clash between Trump and Biden unfolded over multiple time zones. As Trump was speaking, the current president – who confounded historic expectations of a midterm election drubbing – was at another beach resort, in Bali, Indonesia.

    Biden spent the moments leading up to Trump’s speech huddled with other world leaders seeking a united response to a possibly alarming escalation in the war in Ukraine after an explosion on the territory of NATO ally Poland. There was some irony to the fact that Biden was leading the same Western alliance at a moment of peril that Trump frequently had undermined while in office. (Biden said after a day of rising global tensions that first indications were that the missile that fell onto a Polish farm, killing two people, did not originate in Russia.)

    Epitomizing the gulf between a president’s duties and the frivolity of the campaign trail, Biden, when asked if he had a comment on Trump’s launch, replied: “No, not really.”

    Trump referred briefly to the FBI search of his home at Mar-a-Lago for his hoard of highly classified documents and subpoenas sent to his family members. It was a reminder that his campaign raises the extraordinary scenario of a candidate for president running for a new term while facing multiple criminal investigations and the possibility of indictment by the Justice Department. Trump, who has not been charged with a crime, is being investigated over the classified documents, the run-up to the US Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, and in Georgia over his attempt to steal Biden’s win in the crucial swing state in 2020.

    Trump has already claimed that he is being persecuted because Biden wants to stop him from becoming president again – an accusation likely to be embraced by his millions of supporters. Thus, the clash between his campaign and various investigations into his conduct promises to inflict even more damage on political and legal institutions that he kept under continuous assault as president.

    One thing noticeably missing from Trump’s speech was acknowledgment of his unprecedented attempt to interrupt 250 years of peaceful transfers of power between presidents. But the Capitol insurrection is an indelible stain that is sure to haunt his campaign. CNN has exclusively reported that top DOJ officials have considered whether a special counsel would be needed during the Trump campaign to avoid potential political conflicts of interest.

    Trump is trying to pull off a historic feat accomplished by only one previous president – Grover Cleveland, who became the only commander in chief to serve nonconsecutive terms after he won a return to the White House in 1892.

    A Trump victory in 2024 would represent a stunning rebound given that he is the only president to have been impeached twice – once for trying to coerce Ukraine into investigating Biden, and secondly for inciting the mob attack on the Capitol, one of the most flagrant assaults ever on US democracy.

    A return to the Oval Office for Trump would stun the world. His record of disdaining US allies and coddling dictators such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un fractured decades of US foreign policy and made the United States – long a force for stability in the world – into one of its most erratic powers.

    Trump left office in disgrace in 2021, after the assault on the Capitol, not even bothering to attend the inauguration of his successor and insisting ever since that the election was corrupt – despite no evidence and against the findings of multiple courts and his own Justice Department.

    Ever since, the ex-president has made his lies about the 2020 election the centerpiece of a political movement that still has millions of followers – as was seen with the primary victories of some of his handpicked candidates in this year’s midterm elections.

    But many Trump-backed candidates failed to win competitive general elections. And Trump’s 2024 campaign will test whether there are Republicans who, while they may be drawn in by Trump’s bulldozing style and populist, nationalist instincts, will tire of the drama and chaos that surround him. It will also pose a question of whether a new generation of Republicans, who have tapped into his political base and the “America first” principles of Trumpism – like DeSantis, for example – are ready to challenge the movement’s still wildly popular founder.

    Trump was already rejected by a broad general election audience once – he lost by more than 7 million votes in 2020. The same pattern appeared to exert itself as the GOP fell short of expectations in the midterms, which ironically will give Trump-aligned lawmakers strong leverage in what’s likely to be a narrow House Republican majority.

    And even if he secures the nomination again, it’s an open question whether he’ll be able to recreate his 2016 winning coalition after alienating moderate and suburban voters or whether a combination of motivated base voters and previously disaffected Republicans returning to the fold will be able to make up the difference.

    Trump’s first term between 2017 and 2021 was one of the most tumultuous periods in American political history.

    He shattered the traditions and restraints of his office, subjecting political institutions – designed by the Founders to guard against exactly his brand of autocratic egotism – to their ultimate test.

    The 45th president’s reputation was also stained by his negligent denial and mismanagement of a once-in-100-years pandemic. He skipped over his failed leadership in the emergency during his speech on Tuesday night.

    Trump’s flouting of science and public health guidelines came back to haunt him as he contracted Covid-19 in the fall of 2020. He survived a serious bout with the help of experimental drugs before theatrically ripping off his mask in a White House photo op when he returned from the hospital.

    One important aspect of his pandemic strategy was a success, however. An early White House bet to invest big in vaccine development by private firms and scientists, under the title of Operation Warp Speed, put the US in better position than many other industrialized nations.

    The coronavirus destroyed the roaring economy Trump had hoped to ride to reelection, leaving as his most important achievement the shaping of a conservative Supreme Court majority, which has already dramatically altered American society with its overturning of Roe v. Wade and could last a generation.

    But history will most remember him for his two impeachments, both following abuses of power designed to manipulate the free and fair elections that are at the root of America’s democratic system in order to prolong his tenure in office. 

    The House select committee investigating the insurrection has uncovered damning evidence in Trump’s inner circle about his behavior in the run-up to January 6 and during the insurrection. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, for instance, testified that chief of staff Mark Meadows said Trump thought Vice President Mike Pence deserved the calls for him to be hanged by insurrectionists. There was also evidence of Trump’s vicious pressure on local officials and election workers in states such as Georgia.

    Yet there remain questions about whether the committee will be able to hold accountable a man who has always dodged responsibility in a wild and whirling life in business, reality television and politics.

    Even if the committee advises the Justice Department that prosecuting Trump is merited, it’s unknown whether the evidence it has collected would be sufficient to secure a conviction. And Attorney General Merrick Garland would be faced with a massive dilemma given the extraordinary implications of bringing criminal charges against an active presidential candidate.

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  • Federal judge blocks Title 42 rule that allowed expulsion of migrants at US-Mexico border, restoring access for some asylum seekers | CNN Politics

    Federal judge blocks Title 42 rule that allowed expulsion of migrants at US-Mexico border, restoring access for some asylum seekers | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge on Tuesday blocked Title 42 – a controversial rule that’s allowed US authorities to expel more than 1 million migrants who crossed the US-Mexico border.

    Tuesday’s court order leaves the Biden administration without one of the key tools it had deployed to address the thousands of migrants arriving at the border on a daily basis and could restore access to asylum for arriving migrants.

    In turn, the Biden administration requested a stay on the ruling for five weeks, according to a court filing.

    While the rule was drafted by the Trump administration during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Biden administration has relied heavily on it to manage the increase of migrants at the border.

    District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington, DC, found the Title 42 order to be “arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.”

    Prior to Title 42, all migrants arrested at the border were processed under immigration law. Thousands of migrants sent back to Mexico have been waiting along the border in shelters. Officials have previously raised concerns about what the end of Title 42 may portend, given limited resources and a high number of people trying to enter the country.

    Sullivan’s ruling also comes on the heels of the resignation of US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus, who had been asked to resign by Mayorkas last week. CBP Deputy Commissioner Troy Miller is now serving as the acting commissioner.

    CNN has reached out to the White House, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security for comment.

    Sullivan faulted the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued the public health order, for “its decision to ignore the harm that could be caused” by issuing the policy. He said the CDC also failed to consider alternative approaches, such as letting migrants self-quarantine in homes of US-based friends, family, or shelters. The agency, he said, should have reexamined its approach when vaccines and tests became widely available.

    “With regard to whether defendants could have ‘ramped up vaccinations, outdoor processing, and all other available public health measures,’… the court finds the CDC failed to articulate a satisfactory explanation for why such measures were not feasible,” Sullivan wrote.

    The judge also concluded that the policy did not rationally serve its purpose, given that Covid-19 was already widespread throughout the United States when the policy was rolled out.

    “Title 42 was never about public health, and this ruling finally ends the charade of using Title 42 to bar desperate asylum seekers from even getting a hearing,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who argued the case, said in a statement.

    The injunction request came from the ACLU, along with other immigrant advocacy groups, involves all demographics, including single adults and families. Unaccompanied children were already exempt from the order.

    The ACLU does not oppose the Biden administration’s request for a stay of Tuesday’s ruling through December 21, the administration noted in their filing.

    The public health authority was invoked at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and has been criticized by immigrant advocates, attorneys and health experts who argue it has no health basis and puts migrants in harm’s way.

    Sullivan had previously blocked the Biden administration from expelling migrant families with children apprehended at the US-Mexico border.

    Earlier this year, in anticipation of lifting Title 42 and under pressure from lawmakers, the Department of Homeland Security released a 20-page plan to manage a potential increase of migrants at the border. A separate federal judge struck down the administration’s intent to end Title 42 at the time.

    The CDC said at the time it’s no longer necessary given current public health conditions and the increased availability of vaccines and treatments for Covid-19.

    But in May, a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the Biden administration from ending Title 42.

    Since that court order, the administration has continued to use Title 42 and most recently, expanding it to include Venezuelan migrants who have arrived at the US southern border in large numbers.

    In October, there were more than 204,000 arrests along the US southern border and over 78,400 expulsions under Title 42, according to CBP data.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Pence: ‘I think we’ll have better choices in the future’ than Trump | CNN Politics

    Pence: ‘I think we’ll have better choices in the future’ than Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence said in a newly released interview clip that he and his family are giving “prayerful consideration” to whether he should run for president in 2024 and that the US will have “better choices in the future” than former President Donald Trump.

    Asked by ABC News’ David Muir if he believes he can defeat Trump, who is expected to announce a 2024 campaign for the White House on Tuesday, Pence replied: “Well, that would be for others to say, and it’d be for us to decide whether or not we’d want to test that.”

    And asked whether he believes his former boss should serve again as president, Pence said: “I think that’s up to the American people. But I think we’ll have better choices in the future. People in this country actually get along pretty well once you get out of politics. And I think they want to see their national leaders start to reflect that same, that same compassion and generosity of spirit. And I think, so in the days ahead, I think there will be better choices.”

    “And for me and my family, we will be reflecting about what our role is in that,” he added.

    The former vice president has been coy about his plans for 2024, but he has long been viewed as a potential aspirant for the Republican presidential nomination. Any formally declared bid, though, would almost certainly face strong opposition from Trump, whose supporters he would need in a primary fight.

    When pressed by Muir as to why Trump didn’t take action sooner to stop the violence at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Pence said he “can’t account for what the president was doing” that day, and told ABC that he never heard from Trump or the White House on January 6.

    The former vice president, who was at the Capitol on January 6 as the violence unfolded, said he “felt no fear. I was filled with indignation about what I saw.”

    Pence, echoing an excerpt of his book published last week in The Wall Street Journal, described how he disagreed with his Secret Service lead agent, who initially wanted the vice president to leave the Capitol building. As a compromise, Pence was taken to the loading dock, which he was told was more secure, but found the motorcade positioned to leave the Capitol.

    “They were walking us for the motorcade with the doors on our Suburban open on either side. And I saw that they had positioned vehicles on the ramp. And I just turned to my Secret Service lead and said, ‘I’m not getting in that car’ … I just assumed that if we got in the car and close those 200-pound doors that not my team in the loading dock, but that somebody maybe back at Secret Service headquarters would simply give the driver an order to go,” Pence recalled.

    “I just didn’t want those rioters to see the vice president’s motorcade speeding away from Capitol Hill. I didn’t want to give them that satisfaction,” he added.

    Pence is set to participate in a CNN town hall on Wednesday, the day after the release of his forthcoming autobiography “So Help Me God.” The town hall, moderated by CNN Anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper, will take place in New York City and is scheduled for 9 p.m. ET.

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  • Yet another key economic report is showing inflation pressures are easing | CNN Business

    Yet another key economic report is showing inflation pressures are easing | CNN Business

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    Minneapolis
    CNN Business
     — 

    A key measure of inflation, wholesale prices, rose by 8% in October from a year before, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    While still historically high, it was the smallest increase since July of last year and significantly better than forecasts. It’s the second inflation report this month to show signs of cooling in the rising prices that have plagued the economy.

    Economists expected the Producer Price Index, which measures prices paid for goods and services before they reach consumers, to show an annual increase of 8.3%, down from September’s revised 8.4%.

    On a monthly basis, producer prices rose 0.2%, below expectations and even with the revised 0.2% increase seen in September.

    Year-over-year, core PPI — which excludes food and energy, components whose pricing is more prone to market volatility — measured 6.7%, down from September’s revised annual increase of 7.1%.

    Month-over-month, core PPI prices were flat, the lowest monthly reading since November 2020. In September, core PPI increased by a revised 0.2% from the month before.

    Economists had expected annual and monthly core PPI to measure 7.2% and 0.3%, respectively, according to estimates on Refinitiv.

    President Joe Biden heralded October’s PPI report Tuesday calling it “more good news for our economy this morning, and more indications that we are starting to see inflation moderate.”

    “Today’s news – that prices paid by businesses moderated last month – comes a week after news that prices paid by consumers have also moderated,” Biden wrote Tuesday. “And, today’s report also showed that food inflation slowed – a welcome sign for family’s grocery bills as we head into the holidays.”

    For much of this year, the Federal Reserve has sought to tamp down decades-high inflation by tightening monetary policy, including issuing an unprecedented four consecutive rate hikes of 75 basis points, or three-quarters of a percentage point.

    The better-than-expected PPI data reflects an economy that has slowed, with supply moving more into balance, said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL Financial.

    Costs associated with transportation and warehousing, for example, declined for the fourth consecutive month, a likely result of the improved global shipping climate, he said. Producer costs for new cars fell the most since May 2017, he added.

    “Barring geopolitical or financial crises, inflation should continue its deceleration into 2023,” he said in a statement.

    Since PPI captures price changes happening further upstream, the report is considered by some to be a leading indicator for broader inflationary trends and a predictor of what consumers will eventually see at the store level.

    “The PPI read certainly adds more fuel to the fire for those who feel we may finally be on a downward inflation trend,” Mike Loewengart, Morgan Stanley’s head of model portfolio construction, said in a statement.

    Last week’s Consumer Price Index showed inflation slowed to 7.7% from 8.2% year-over-year for consumer goods, surprising investors and giving Wall Street its biggest boost since 2020.

    The CPI data was “reassuring,” Fed vice chair Lael Brainard said on Monday, signaling that the rate hikes appear to be taking hold, and if the economic data continues to show inflation on the decline, then the central bank could scale back the extent of its future rate hikes.

    “When you look at the inflation numbers, there’s some evidence that we’ve peaked, but are we coming down quickly?” Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist for Mizuho Americas told CNN Business.

    Ricchiuto noted that the October figures are only a couple steps lower than what was seen in September.

    “These aren’t the types of things that tell the Fed to stop tightening rates,” he said. However, “they may tell you [that] you don’t need 75 basis points.”

    CNN’s DJ Judd and Matt Egan contributed to this report.

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  • First-time NASA spacewalkers venture outside the space station | CNN

    First-time NASA spacewalkers venture outside the space station | CNN

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    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



    CNN
     — 

    Things are about to get busy on the International Space Station as the first in a series of end-of-the-year spacewalks kicked off Tuesday morning.

    First-time spacewalkers and NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio began their excursion outside the space station at 9:14 a.m. ET, with live coverage on NASA’s website. The event is expected to last for about seven hours.

    Cassada is wearing the spacesuit with red stripes as extravehicular crew member 1, while Rubio is in the unmarked suit as extravehicular crew member 2.

    The astronauts will assemble a mounting bracket on the starboard side of the space station’s truss. The hardware that will be installed during the spacewalk was delivered to the space station on November 9 aboard a Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, which safely delivered its cargo despite only one of its two solar arrays deploying after launch.

    This hardware will allow for the installation of more rollout solar arrays, called iROSAs, to give the space station a power boost. The first two rollout solar arrays were installed outside the station in June 2021. Six iROSAs total have been planned and will likely boost the space station’s power generation by more than 30% once all are operational.

    During two more spacewalks on November 28 and December 1, a two-astronaut crew will unroll and install another pair of solar arrays once the mounting hardware is in place. The solar arrays will be delivered on the next SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply mission, currently slated for launch on November 21.

    Spacewalks are part of the space station crew’s routine as they maintain and upgrade the aging orbital laboratory, but Tuesday’s spacewalk is NASA’s first since March. The agency’s spacewalks came to a halt after European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer ended his first spacewalk with water in his helmet.

    A thin layer of moisture that exceeded the normal, expected amount was discovered in Maurer’s helmet once he returned to the airlock after a nearly seven-hour spacewalk. Maurer quickly shed the helmet, in an event deemed “a close-call” by NASA, and water samples, suit hardware and the spacesuit itself were returned to Earth for investigation. Officials at NASA determined the suit didn’t experience any hardware failures.

    “The cause for the water in the helmet was likely due to integrated system performance where several variables such as crew exertion and crew cooling settings led to the generation of comparatively larger than normal amounts of condensation within the system,” according to NASA in a blog post update.

    “Based on the findings, the team has updated operational procedures and developed new mitigation hardware to minimize scenarios where integrated performance results in water accumulation, while absorbing any water that does appear. These measures will help contain any liquid in the helmet to continue to keep crew safe.”

    Officials at NASA gave the “go” for spacewalks to resume after concluding the review in October.

    The investigation team has developed techniques to manage temperatures in the suit and added new absorption bands to the helmet, said Dina Contella, operations integration manager for the International Space Station Program.

    The thin orange pieces have been placed in different parts of the helmet, which has already been tested on orbit by the astronauts inside the space station.

    “We’ve taken several different models of this up and the crew on board sloshed water around, essentially tried to inject water into the helmet at the same rate that would be kind of a worst, worst case. And we found that these pads were very, very effective,” Contella said.

    Tuesday’s spacewalk will allow the crew to test the new pads as they work outside of the space station before the more complex solar array installation spacewalks within the next couple of weeks.

    Meanwhile, a Russian spacewalk is scheduled to take place on Thursday. Cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin will begin their walk at 9 a.m. ET to work on the outside of the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. The duo will prepare a radiator for transfer from the Rassvet module to Nauka during their seven-hour spacewalk, which will also stream live on NASA’s website.

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  • Trump’s 2024 bid gets harsh reaction among Hill Republicans | CNN Politics

    Trump’s 2024 bid gets harsh reaction among Hill Republicans | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Many House and Senate Republicans recoiled on Monday at the prospect of former President Donald Trump launching a third run for the presidency this week, a sign of his waning support on Capitol Hill after years of controversy and scandal and following their party’s disappointing midterm performance.

    In interviews with a couple dozen Republicans in both chambers, very few were eager to embrace a 2024 run – instead pointing to their hope that another candidate will emerge or that the field will be big enough so voters can choose someone else who could appeal to middle-of-the-road voters.

    “I want someone who is going to unite our party,” said South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, refusing to say if he would back Trump. “That’s how we win elections. A reasonable person who would unite the party.”

    Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson added of Trump: “Let’s see who runs. Personally, I don’t think it’s good for the party. … I think his policies were good. I just don’t need all the drama with it.”

    That sentiment was echoed up and down-the-line by one-time allies of the former president – underscoring how the de facto leader of their party has grown increasingly alienated on Capitol Hill – especially after last Tuesday’s elections.

    “Still?” Texas GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw said when asked about the prospect of Trump running again.

    Asked if he would get involved in the primary, Crenshaw said: “Hell no.”

    “None of us are entitled to these jobs,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, a Trump ally and North Dakota Republican when asked about the likely 2024 bid. “He’s certainly not entitled to it. And I certainly won’t be making any decision (to endorse) this soon.”

    Cramer said it would be better if more candidates ran in 2024. “I think we’re all better if there’s more of them up on the stage.”

    Others began floating rival candidates. GOP Sen. Jerry Moran said he had his eyes on fellow Kansan and ex-secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, as well as South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott.

    “I think we have lots of Republicans who are interested in being our nominee for president,” Moran said when asked about Trump. “And I’m interested in letting the American people make this decision. … And I’m interested in seeing those people rise to the top.”

    Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican, dodged on whether she would support Trump and said: “Let me tell you something: I do know the next Republican presidential contender is coming from Florida.” (The state’s newly reelected governor, Ron DeSantis, is becoming a favorite among Washington Republicans.)

    Several Republicans on Monday blamed Trump for pushing forward lackluster candidates and obsessing about his 2020 election loss as undercutting the case they tried to make against Democrats this year.

    South Dakota Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said that it’s clear that “relitigating the 2020 election is not a winning strategy.”

    Others agreed.

    “I think looking forward is always a better campaign strategy,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. “Looking back to 2020 obviously didn’t work out.”

    In private, the view was harsher. One moderate-leaning GOP lawmaker said of a Trump presidential bid: “It’s like we’re on season 7, 8 of ‘The Apprentice.’ People are sick of it, they want to turn the channel. Let’s find something else.”

    And other long-time Trump critics, like Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, wanted nothing to do with a Trump 2024 bid.

    “I think that President Trump and election denying was an albatross around Republican necks,” Romney said. “And frankly, I think he’s been on the mountain too long. We’ve lost three races with him. And I’d like to see someone from the bench, come up and take his place and lead our party and help lead the country.”

    Others were slow to embrace the former president.

    “That’s his decision,” said Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul when asked about Trump 2024. “I think every member will have to look and see what’s in the field out there.”

    But Trump’s former vice president has at least one backer in the Capitol – his brother.

    “I’m for my brother,” Rep. Greg Pence, an Indiana Republican, said of former Vice President Mike Pence. “Absolutely. I hope my brother runs.”

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  • Biden steps into G20 aiming to unite leaders in opposition to Russia’s war on Ukraine | CNN Politics

    Biden steps into G20 aiming to unite leaders in opposition to Russia’s war on Ukraine | CNN Politics

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    Bali, Indonesia
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden is confronting competing issues at home and abroad while he’s at the Group of 20 Summit in Bali this week, using the moment on the world’s stage to lean into international support for condemning Russia’s aggression while also facing the prospect of hearing Donald Trump announce his next run for the presidency.

    Administration officials previewing Biden’s G20 summit activities have their sights set on the coalition’s efforts to voice its opposition against the war in Ukraine, which could send a powerful signal amongst a group that’s so far had fragmented approaches to the Kremlin’s aggression.

    This marks the first time the group has gathered in-person since the start of the invasion, and most G20 members are expected to sign onto a statement condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine “and the human suffering it has caused both for Ukrainians and for families in the developing world that are facing food and fuel insecurity as a result,” a senior administration official said.

    Such an expression of condemnation has been the work of months of diplomacy between G20 leaders. However, it’s not clear yet exactly which countries will sign onto the declaration.

    Although the G20 is comprised of world powers who have long backed Ukraine during the war, it also includes other nations that have been tepid in their response to Russia’s aggression – including India, China, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, the host of this year’s summit. The coalition, which is broadly focused on the global economy, also includes Russia itself. But Russian President Vladimir Putin is not making an appearance at the summit this year.

    Since the spring, US officials have anticipated a showdown at this year’s G20 over the war. Biden has stated Russia should no longer be a member of the bloc, though expelling Moscow would require support from all of the G20’s members.

    As of now, no official “family photo” is listed on a schedule, a sign of the deep acrimony within the G20 spurred by the war in Ukraine.

    The president’s diplomatic Tuesday – a day working alongside leaders that’s capped off with a gala dinner – is expected to precede a 2024 presidential campaign announcement by Biden’s predecessor, Trump, from the other side of the world. The prospective announcement would set the stage for a two-year battle for the American presidency, having the power to cast a shadow over Biden’s efforts to unify world leaders – some already personally stung by Trump’s nationalist approach.

    Biden and his team have already spent time during his multi-leg, cross-continental trip abroad addressing domestic politics, suggesting the issue has not only loomed on their minds, but also among their foreign counterparts in meetings throughout their travels.

    On Sunday, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that “many leaders” at the ASEAN Summit addressed the midterms with Biden, that many leaders were “following them closely” and that the president now feels he has a strong position on the international stage.

    Vote counts for midterm races last Tuesday continue to trickle in, with Democrats only securing their continued majority in the US Senate this past weekend and the future of the US House of Representatives remaining up in the air. But Biden – who has frequently cast the US’ dynamic with other world powers as a global fight between democracy and autocracy – brought up the political headwinds working in his favor on Monday in Bali after he took part in a roughly three-hour meeting with Xi Jinping.

    At a news conference after his meeting with Xi, Biden sought to cast the election results seen so far as a victory for the future of American democracy – a matter he had said was at stake at the polls.

    “The American people proved once again that democracy is who we are. There was a strong rejection of election deniers at every level from those seeking to lead our states and those seeking to serve in congress and also those seeking to oversee the elections,” Biden said at the start of his remarks after the Xi meeting.

    On Tuesday, Biden will participate in working sessions and a luncheon with leaders at the summit. He’ll also co-host an event on the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, which the White House said “aims to mobilize $600 billion in the next five years with G7 partners to deliver sustainable infrastructure and advance U.S. national security and economic security interests.” The president will later meet with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy and end the night at a gala dinner.

    The meeting with Meloni will be Biden’s first chance to confer the new Italian prime minister in person since she took office in October – when she became the country’s most far-right leader since Benito Mussolini.

    The two leaders undoubtedly have differences on LGBT rights, abortion rights and immigration policies. But they’re expected to focus on shared interests – in particular, their support of Ukraine. According to the White House, Biden and Meloni will discuss “cooperation on shared global challenges, including those posed by the People’s Republic of China, and our ongoing efforts to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression.”

    The global infrastructure initiative event follows a launch in 2021 amongst G7 partners to better position the US and its allies to compete with China.

    China’s Belt and Road Initiative, first announced in 2013 under Xi, aims to build ports, roads and railways to create new trade corridors linking China to Africa and the rest of Eurasia. The Chinese-funded, cross-continental infrastructure initiative has been seen as an extension of the country’s sharp ascent to global power.

    At the summit, Biden is also expected to “speak to energy security as a core issue facing the global economy,” calling for a price cap as a “key way that we can help to preserve global energy security.”

    Other topics at the summit, the senior administration official said, include economic coordination, climate change, and the Covid-19 pandemic, with new announcements expected on digital infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific and solar power in Honduras.

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  • Everything you need to know about Biden’s student loan forgiveness program | CNN Politics

    Everything you need to know about Biden’s student loan forgiveness program | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden’s federal student loan forgiveness program, which promises to deliver up to $20,000 of debt relief for millions of borrowers, is on hold indefinitely as legal challenges work their way through the courts.

    About 26 million people had already applied by the time a federal district court judge struck down the program on November 10 – prompting the government to stop taking applications. No debt has been canceled thus far.

    The administration officially launched the application on October 17, following a brief “beta period” during which its team assessed whether tweaks were needed.

    If the courts ultimately allow the program to move forward, not every student loan borrower is eligible for the debt relief. First, only federally held student loans qualify. Private student loans are excluded.

    Second, high-income borrowers are generally excluded from receiving debt forgiveness. Individual borrowers who make less than $125,000 a year and married couples or heads of households who make less than $250,000 annually will see up to $10,000 of their federal student loan debt forgiven.

    If a qualifying borrower also received a federal Pell grant while enrolled in college, the individual is eligible for up to $20,000 of debt forgiveness. Pell grants are awarded to millions of low-income students each year, based on factors including their family’s size and income and the cost charged by their college. These borrowers are also more likely to struggle to repay their student debt and end up in default.

    Here’s what else borrowers need to know about the new student loan forgiveness plan:

    It’s unclear when, or if, borrowers will see debt relief under Biden’s program.

    Administration officials expected to be able to grant relief before federal student loan payments are set to resume in January, when the pandemic-related pause expires. But now that timeline is in jeopardy.

    The White House has said that it has already approved 16 million applications for debt relief. The Department of Education will hold on to that information so it can quickly process those borrowers’ relief if the government prevails in court.

    If and when the program moves forward, an estimated 8 million borrowers may receive debt relief automatically because the Department of Education already has their income on file.

    If the government restarts taking applications, borrowers can apply online here: https://studentaid.gov/debt-relief/application.

    Applicants can expect to receive an email confirmation once their application is successfully submitted. Then, borrowers will be notified by their loan servicer when the debt cancellation has been applied to their account.

    Borrowers were expected to have until December 31, 2023, to submit an application.

    There are a variety of federal student loans and not all are eligible for relief. Federal Direct Loans, including subsidized loans, unsubsidized loans, parent PLUS loans and graduate PLUS loans, are eligible.

    But federal student loans that are guaranteed by the government but held by private lenders are not eligible unless the borrower applied to consolidate those loans into a Direct Loan by September 29.

    The Department of Education initially said these privately held loans, many of which were made under the former Federal Family Education Loan program and Federal Perkins Loan program, would be eligible for the one-time forgiveness action – but reversed course in September when six Republican-led states sued the Biden administration, arguing that forgiving the privately held loans would financially hurt states and student loan servicers.

    Defaulted Federal Family Education Loans and defaulted Perkins Loans are still eligible for the debt relief even if they are privately held.

    If Biden’s program is allowed to move forward, eligibility is based on a borrower’s adjusted gross income for either tax year 2020 or 2021. Adjusted gross income can be lower than your total wages because it considers tax deductions and adjustments, like contributions made to a 401(k) retirement plan.

    A taxpayer’s adjusted gross income can be found on line 11 of IRS Form 1040.

    The Department of Education says it already had income information for nearly 8 million borrowers, likely because of financial aid forms or previously submitted income-driven repayment plan applications. If the program is allowed to move forward, those borrowers will automatically receive the debt relief if they meet the income requirement, unless they choose to opt out. The department has said it will email borrowers who will be considered for debt relief but don’t need to apply.

    Millions of other borrowers will need to apply for student loan forgiveness if the Department of Education doesn’t have their income information on file. When they submit the application, borrowers are required to self-attest that their income is under the eligibility threshold. They are required to certify that the information provided is accurate upon penalty of perjury.

    The Biden administration has said that applicants who are “more likely to exceed the income cutoff” will be required to submit additional information, like a tax transcript. Officials expect that just 5% of borrowers with eligible federal student loans would not qualify due to the income threshold.

    Borrowers will not have to pay federal income tax on the student loan debt forgiven, thanks to a provision in the American Rescue Plan Act that Congress passed last year.

    But it’s possible that some borrowers may have to pay state income tax on the amount of debt forgiven. There are a handful of states that may tax discharged debt if state legislative or administrative changes are not made beforehand, according to the Tax Policy Center. The tax liability could be hundreds of dollars, depending on the state.

    Yes, some current students are eligible. Eligibility for borrowers who filed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA, as an independent will be based on the individual’s own household income.

    Eligibility for borrowers who are enrolled as dependent students, generally those under the age of 24, will be based on parental income for either 2020 or 2021.

    Yes, if your income meets the eligibility threshold.

    Yes, if your income meets the eligibility threshold. A parent borrower with federal Parent PLUS loans for multiple children is still only eligible for up to $20,000 of loan forgiveness.

    But a parent is only eligible for up to $20,000 in debt relief if he or she received a Pell grant for his or her own education. If only the child received a Pell grant, the parent is eligible for up to $10,000 in forgiveness.

    Most borrowers can log in to Studentaid.gov to see if they received a Pell grant while enrolled in college. Information about Pell grants received is displayed on the account dashboard and on the My Aid page. This is also where borrowers can find out how much they owe and what kind of loans they have.

    Borrowers who received a Pell grant before 1994 won’t see their Pell grant information online, but they are still eligible for the $20,000 in student loan forgiveness.

    As long as borrowers received at least one Pell grant, they are eligible.

    The Biden administration has said that eligible borrowers who have received Pell grants will automatically receive the additional debt relief.

    Yes, defaulted federal student loans are eligible for debt relief.

    For borrowers who have a remaining balance on their defaulted student loans after the cancellation is applied, there will be an opportunity to get out of default once payments resume in January 2023 as part of what the Department of Education is calling its “Fresh Start” initiative.

    The Biden administration is facing several lawsuits over the student loan forgiveness program. Many of the plaintiffs argue that the Department of Education is overstepping its authority.

    In one case, a federal judge in Texas struck down the program on November 10, declaring it illegal. The Department of Justice has appealed the ruling to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, but debt relief is on hold while that case plays out.

    Previously, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals put a temporary, administrative hold on the program on October 21, barring the administration from canceling loans covered under the policy while the court considers a challenge brought by six Republican-led states. The appeals court then granted an injunction on the program on November 14, which will remain in place until the appeals court, or the Supreme Court, issues a further order in the case.

    A lower court judge dismissed the lawsuit on October 20, ruling that the plaintiffs did not have the legal standing to bring the challenge.

    On the same day as the lower court dismissal, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected a separate challenge to Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, declining to take up an appeal brought by a Wisconsin taxpayers group.

    The Biden administration is also facing lawsuits from Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich and the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

    Lawyers for the government 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.

    Borrowers who have debt remaining after either $10,000 or $20,000 is wiped away could see their monthly payment amounts recalculated if they are enrolled in a standard repayment plan. Under a standard repayment plan, borrowers pay a fixed amount that ensures loans are paid off within 10 years.

    Borrowers who are already enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan are not likely to see their monthly payment amounts change due to the forgiveness, because their payments are based on household income and family size.

    Borrowers have not been required to make payments on their federal student loans since March 2020 because of the government’s pandemic-related pause. Biden has extended the pause through the end of this year, and payments will resume in January 2023.

    Along with Biden’s August announcement about canceling some federal student loan debt, he also said he would create a new plan that would make repayment more manageable for borrowers.

    There are currently several repayment plans available for federal student loan borrowers that lower monthly payments by capping them at a portion of their income.

    The new income-driven repayment plan that Biden is expected to propose would cap payments at 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income, down from 10% that is offered in most current 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 years.

    Biden is also proposing that the new plan cover the borrower’s unpaid monthly interest. This could be very helpful for people whose monthly payments are so low that they don’t cover their monthly interest charge and end up seeing their balances explode, growing larger than what was originally borrowed.

    But we don’t know when these changes will take effect. The Department of Education has not provided any sense of timing, but has said it will propose a new rule to create the repayment plan. The department’s formal rule-making process usually includes soliciting public comments and can take months, if not more than a year.

    Yes. Borrowers have not been required to make payments on their federal student loans since March 13, 2020, because of the pandemic-related pause. But if borrowers did make payments, they are allowed to contact their loan servicer to request a refund.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Opinion: She had the most endangered seat in the US Senate. Here’s how she held onto it | CNN

    Opinion: She had the most endangered seat in the US Senate. Here’s how she held onto it | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sheila Leslie, a long-term Nevada resident, served as a Democrat in the Nevada state legislature for 14 years. She is a columnist for the Reno Gazette-Journal and a retired human services professional. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    Of all the Senate Democrats said to be at risk of being engulfed by a Republican “red wave,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was widely viewed as the most vulnerable. And yet as we all now know, the incumbent senator from Nevada now will serve another six years, after being declared the projected winner this weekend over her Republican challenger.

    Cortez Masto’s crucial win, which doubters had insisted was unlikely at best, clinched Democratic control of the Senate for the second half of Joe Biden’s presidency.

    When the last large batch of ballot results were released from Democrat-leaning Clark County late Saturday, Cortez Masto took a decisive lead over her election-denying Republican challenger Adam Laxalt. And when she was pronounced the winner, progressives breathed a long sigh of relief. We’ve been waiting for years for the country to regain its sanity and repudiate the lies and misinformation from Trump and his acolytes.

    The full story has yet to be written about how she was able to wrest victory from Laxalt, but if you look at the vote percentages coming in for Cortez Masto from rural Nevada over the last few days, they are surprisingly high given the overwhelming Republican registration there. Those critically important rural votes, added to the urban vote, pushed her over the top.

    Simply put, Cortez Masto was able to siphon away just enough votes from Laxalt, former President Donald Trump’s 2020 Nevada campaign co-chair, by making forays into the MAGA-leaning, rural parts of her state, padding her wins in urban strongholds like Reno and Las Vegas.

    Nevadans are still adjusting to Covid-era election reforms that provide many early voting opportunities, universal mail-in ballots, drop-off boxes and same-day registration. Since much of the mail is counted in the days after the election, Republicans running statewide often see their leads slowly evaporate. It’s expected and explainable, although that doesn’t always stop MAGA Republicans from irresponsibly claiming election fraud when they lose.

    Cortez Masto campaigned vigorously throughout the Silver State, running a textbook campaign, even earning endorsements from high-profile Republicans throughout the state who praised her bipartisan leadership, work ethic and integrity. This was in contrast to Laxalt, who many viewed as a carpet-bagging Virginian, capitalizing on his grandfather’s sterling reputation in the state.

    (Adam Laxalt’s grandfather Paul Laxalt was a beloved former governor and US senator from Nevada, whose family emigrated from the Basque country in the 1920s to raise sheep in the high desert of Northern Nevada.)

    Aside from her outreach to moderate Republicans, Cortez Masto followed a tried-and-true campaign playbook, making fulsome use of the Nevada Democratic establishment’s vaunted get-out-the-vote ground game, honed and perfected by the late Harry Reid, the former Democratic Senate Majority Leader.

    That ground game was bolstered by the influential Culinary Union members who reportedly knocked on over a million doors in a coordinated push to get Cortez Masto across the finish line. She also leaned in on abortion rights, an issue of great interest to voters across the political spectrum.

    The senator received ample support from a variety of progressive advocacy organizations and individual backers, including hundreds of volunteers from California, who streamed into Nevada, where their time and talents are more politically productive, to provide election help.

    And the week before the election, Third Act, a new national group targeting people over 60 to work on climate justice and protecting democracy, sent its celebrity founder, climate activist Bill McKibben to Nevada to meet with hundreds of older Nevadans. He was joined by renowned author Rebecca Solnit and Secretary of State candidate Cisco Aguilar at a “Defend Our Democracy” event in Reno.

    That event inspired scores to show up the next day to walk door-to-door for pro-democracy candidates, shining a bright spotlight on Aguilar who subsequently won a close race against a staunch election-denier, Jim Marchant. He had vowed to “overhaul the fraudulent election system” in Nevada.

    Marchant had a hand in organizing a false slate of “alternative” electors that was sent to Congress after the 2020 election. He indicated he would not have certified the vote in 2020 – and officials in Nevada fear he might not observe the election norms in 2024 if Trump is the Republican party’s presidential nominee.

    The Reid machine and grassroots efforts were not as successful for Gov. Steve Sisolak however. He was denied a second term by Sheriff Joe Lombardo, a Trump-endorsed candidate who was forced to dial back his characterization of Trump in a debate as merely a “sound president.”

    When the former president expressed grumpy displeasure at the comment, Lombardo proclaimed him “the greatest president” a few days later. Lombardo looked weak and beholden to Trump, but he pacified the MAGA crowd and maintained their support.

    Many factors played into Sisolak’s defeat, some of them outside his control, including the global pandemic, which devastated Nevada’s tourism industry for months. Sisolak, to his credit, prioritized public health measures and saving lives while absorbing anger and resentment from Nevadans who valued their mask-avoiding liberty over protecting their neighbors.

    In coordination with casino executives, he closed the Las Vegas strip for months, overwhelming the state’s unemployment system, which couldn’t keep up with the number of people suddenly unable to work.

    Sisolak’s reelection bid suffered from other challenges: He alienated progressives with vetoes of several key Democratic policy bills, including a death penalty abolition bill that certainly won’t resurface under Lombardo’s administration. Progressives likely still voted for him, but with little enthusiasm – complaining about his lack of vision and inaction on many priority concerns. Some undoubtedly chose the unique Nevada option of “none of the above” on their ballots, in a protest against both candidates.

    But aside from Sisolak being given a pink slip, it was a good election for Nevada’s Democrats. They kept their three congressional seats and added to their majorities in the state assembly and state senate, majorities which mean that they can limit any drastic budgetary or policy measures Lombardo may want to enact.

    And, importantly, they kept an election-denier out of the all-important post of secretary of state. In previous election years, that race would have been of back burner interest. But this year, flipping the seat into Democratic hands and away from meddling of the Republican challenger – QAnon-linked Marchant – was a top priority for many Democratic voters.

    The governor-elect will now get an opportunity to wrestle a severely underfunded state government into shape. He may be in for a shock when he discovers just how woefully underpaid the state workforce is and its astronomical vacancy rates.

    Now Nevadans will have to wait to see how Lombardo makes good on his promise to boost the economy by reducing regulations (as if that is what ails the state.) There’s a good reason why Nevada’s Republican governors never make good on their tired promises to cut taxes and ‘waste’ in state government. Lombardo is about to find out.

    If our newly-elected governor absorbs the national message of this election cycle, he’ll approach his new job with a post-MAGA attitude and get to work with the Democratic legislature on the many pressing issues facing Nevadans.

    Voters have shown us they’re exhausted by the political chaos and lack of civility. They want problem solvers, not flame throwers. With its mixed election results, Nevada may lead the way back to a democratic norm that we worried we might not see again.

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  • What to know about upcoming House leadership elections | CNN Politics

    What to know about upcoming House leadership elections | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A new Congress won’t be sworn in until January and control of the House has not yet been determined, but Republicans appear on track to recapture the chamber and the race to determine who will serve as the next speaker is underway.

    House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy has officially declared his bid for the speakership, but is already facing headwinds from members of the hardline, pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus who are threatening to withhold their support as they hope to extract concessions.

    On the Democratic side, Nancy Pelosi, the current House speaker, has not yet made clear what her next move will be. Speculation has intensified in Washington over her political future and whether she will run again for the top leadership spot for House Democrats or if she will instead decide to step aside as a new generation of potential leaders waits in the wings.

    The vote to elect the next speaker will take place in January at the start of the new Congress, but House Republicans will hold their internal leadership elections to pick a Speaker nominee this week.

    Republicans are scheduled to hold a candidate forum on Monday evening, followed by leadership elections on Tuesday, November 15, according to a copy of the schedule shared with CNN.

    The elections are conducted behind closed doors and are done via secret ballot. In the GOP’s internal leadership elections, McCarthy only needs a simple majority to win his party’s nomination for speaker. That is expected to happen, but McCarthy could still fall short of 218 votes – the magic number needed to win the speaker’s gavel in January.

    During that speaker vote, McCarthy will have a higher hurdle to clear. The full House holds a vote on the floor for Speaker and to win, a candidate needs to win a majority of all members, which amounts to 218 votes if no member skips the vote or votes “present.”

    House Democrats will hold their internal leadership elections later – the week after Thanksgiving.

    House Democratic leadership elections have been announced for Wednesday, November 30. Voting will take place behind closed doors via secret ballot using an app.

    To be elected to any position in Democratic leadership, a candidate needs to win a majority among those present and voting. If more than two candidates run and no one wins a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes after the first round of voting will be eliminated and voting will proceed to a second round. That process continues until one candidate wins a majority.

    Whoever is elected for the top leadership spot in the House Democratic caucus would serve as their party’s Speaker nominee. But if Republicans have a majority, that nominee would be expected to fall short in the vote by the full House in the Speaker’s election in January and would be poised to become House Minority Leader instead.

    The first election on November 30 will be for the next House Democratic Caucus Chair and whoever is elected to that role will administer the rest of the leadership elections.

    McCarthy has been working the phones locking down support from across the conference and has received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement. But even if he becomes his party’s speaker nominee, as is expected, he could still face a rocky road to securing the gavel.

    Members of the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus are threatening to withhold support for McCarthy’s speakership bid and have begun to lay out their list of demands, putting the California Republican’s path to securing 218 votes in peril if the party ultimately takes the House with a slim majority. Members of the caucus are emboldened by the likelihood of a narrow House GOP majority – which would make the margins for McCarthy’s vote math tight.

    McCarthy and his team are confident he will ultimately get the votes to be speaker. And two would-be challengers, Reps. Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise, the current House GOP whip, have lined up behind his speakership bid.

    But if enough members of the Freedom Caucus withhold their support, it could imperil his speaker bid or force him to make deals to weaken the speakership, something he has long resisted.

    CNN reported Sunday that Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, a former chairman of the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus, is considering mounting a long-shot challenge to McCarthy, according to GOP sources familiar with the matter. McCarthy’s team has been prepared for this possibility.

    If a challenger does emerge, it would be more of a protest candidate than a serious one. But the House Freedom Caucus is hoping to show McCarthy during the internal GOP leadership elections that he doesn’t have the floor votes for speaker, in hopes of forcing him to the negotiating table.

    Aside from the speaker’s race, Republicans’ underwhelming performance in the midterms has scrambled other leadership races.

    The race for House GOP whip – a position that will only open up if Republicans win the majority – was already competitive, though Rep. Tom Emmer, who chairs the House GOP’s campaign arm, was seen as having the edge since he was likely to be rewarded if they had a strong night.

    Now, Republicans say it could be tougher for Emmer to pull out a win.

    Emmer told reporters Tuesday he still plans to run and that he doesn’t know if a smaller majority impacts his bid. But his pitch to members is similar to McCarthy’s, saying: “we delivered.”

    Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, a Trump ally and the head of the conservative Republican Study Committee, also officially declared his candidacy for the whip’s position. And Rep. Drew Ferguson of Georgia, the current deputy whip, is also vying for the post, arguing that his experience on the whip’s team will be even more valuable in a slimmer majority, where the chief vote counting job will be crucial for governing.

    What happens in Democratic leadership elections revolves around the key question of what Pelosi decides to do.

    Pelosi was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday whether she would make a decision on running for leadership before the party’s leadership elections.

    “Of course. Well, you know that I’m not asking anybody – people are campaigning, and that’s a beautiful thing,” the California Democrat told Bash. “And I’m not asking anyone for anything. My members are asking me to consider doing that. But, again, let’s just get through the election.”

    If Pelosi decides to run again for the top leadership spot for House Democrats, it will make clear that she is not yet ready to relinquish her role atop the House Democratic caucus. Pelosi, a towering figure in Democratic politics, commands widespread support among her members and is viewed as an effective leader within her party.

    But if she runs again for leadership, such a move would also likely surprise, and even frustrate, many in Washington, including members of her own party, who have been anticipating that she might step aside for a new generation of leadership to take the reins.

    If Pelosi does not run for the top leadership post, it would set the stage for a major shakeup in House Democratic leadership and mark the end of an era for Washington. The move would kick off a fight for her successor that could expose divisions within the party as other prominent members of the party look to move up the leadership ladder.

    Until Pelosi makes her announcement, much of the rest of the field is expected to remain essentially frozen in place.

    Currently, Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer serves as the No. 2 House Democrat, in the role of House majority leader, and South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn serves in the role of House majority whip. Massachusetts Rep. Katherine Clark serves in the role of assistant Speaker and New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries serves as House Democratic caucus chair.

    As potential candidates for the higher rungs of House Democratic leadership wait to see what Pelosi does before publicly making moves, some Democrats vying for other positions in their party’s leadership have already announced their candidacy.

    Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, who currently serves as the co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, has announced his run for caucus chair to replace Jeffries who is term limited.

    The race to lead the party’s campaign arm, DCCC chair, is starting to take shape up after the current chair Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney of New York lost his reelection.

    Democratic Rep. Tony Cardenas of California announced his race for the spot on Friday but others are being floated as well including Reps. Ami Bera and Sara Jacobs of California.

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  • A day of chaos brings Twitter closer to the brink | CNN Business

    A day of chaos brings Twitter closer to the brink | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    Two weeks after Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter, the future of the company has never looked less certain.

    In the past week alone, one of the world’s most influential social networks has laid off half its workforce; alienated powerful advertisers; blown up key aspects of its product, then repeatedly launched and un-launched other features aimed at compensating for it; and witnessed an exodus of senior executives.

    The wild swings at Twitter only seemed to accelerate on Thursday with more executive departures, growing chaos over fake, verified accounts and an unusual public rebuke from the US government. Twitter now appears to be on the brink, a point Musk himself seemed to concede on Thursday by reportedly telling employees that bankruptcy could be on the horizon (though it’s far from the first time he’s warned about bankruptcy at one of his companies).

    “Quite the day!” Musk tweeted.

    It’s a stunning reversal of fortunes not just for Musk, who bought the company for $44 billion, but also for a platform used by some of the most powerful people on the planet, including world leaders, CEOs, and the Pope.

    An end to the disruption seemed nowhere in sight on Friday. In its latest reversal on the matter, Twitter said it would re-introduce a gray “Official” badge for select accounts to help confirm their identities. The decision came after Twitter was forced to fend off a wave of verified-account impostors this week, including some posing as former President Donald Trump, Nintendo, and the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, among others. These accounts were the result of Musk’s decision to rush ahead with offering a blue check mark to any account holder willing to pay $8 a month, no questions asked, as he races to find new ways to make money from the platform.

    That paid subscription service, too, was also suspended on Friday with little warning, just two days after its official launch, with the menu option to sign up for Twitter Blue suddenly disappearing from Twitter’s iOS app — the only place the add-on had been offered. It was not immediately clear when the company might restore the offering.

    The gray “Official” badge has become an illustration of the whiplash users, employees, and advertisers have experienced in recent days.

    Hours after the gray badges launched on Wednesday as a way to help users differentiate legitimate celebrity and branded accounts from accounts that had merely paid for a blue check mark, Musk abruptly tweeted that he had “killed” the feature, forcing subordinates to explain the reversal.

    “We’re not currently putting an ‘Official’ label on accounts but we are aggressively going after impersonation and deception,” Twitter’s verified support account tweeted on Wednesday evening.

    The account’s very next tweet, a day and nine hours later, said exactly the opposite: “To combat impersonation, we’ve added an ‘Official’ label to some accounts.”

    Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the changes to the rollout of Twitter Blue or “Official” badges.

    The paid verification feature’s rocky rollout attracted widespread criticism from misinformation experts who had warned it would make identifying trustworthy information much more difficult, particularly in the critical period following the US midterm elections. Even some of Musk’s fellow high-powered users of the platform had tough feedback.

    “@elonmusk, from one entrepreneur to another, for when you have your customer service hat on. I just spent too much time muting all the newly purchased checkmark accts in an attempt to make my verified mentions useful again,” tweeted billionaire Mark Cuban.

    “Bottom line is that you have a decision to make,” Cuban added. “Stick with the new Twitter that democratizes every tweet by paid accounts and puts the onus on all users to curate for themselves. Or bring back Twitter curation. One makes Twitter time and information efficient. The other is awful.”

    In a Twitter Spaces event held for advertisers this week, Musk pleaded with brands to keep using the platform, after a growing number of companies paused ads, causing what Musk previously described as a “massive drop in revenue.” In the event, Musk sought to appear magnanimous in accepting responsibility for the company’s performance.

    “If things go wrong, it’s my fault, because the buck stops with me,” he told an audience of over 100,000 listeners.

    But privately, Musk’s critics have described the billionaire as dismissive of accountability, even in the face of scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission, which publicly warned on Thursday, in a rare forward-looking statement, that it is “tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern.”

    According to an internal Slack message posted by a Twitter employee and viewed by CNN, Musk has shown little fear of the FTC regulators overseeing the company’s multiple, legally binding consent agreements committing it to maintaining a robust cybersecurity program and producing written privacy impact reports before launching any new products or services, a requirement that could cover Twitter Blue.

    The company is already facing billions in potential fines from the FTC over alleged privacy missteps dating to before Musk’s ownership. But, the Twitter employee warned colleagues, Twitter could find itself even more legally exposed after the sudden resignation of multiple top Twitter executives charged with fulfilling the company’s FTC obligations, including its chief information security officer and chief privacy officer.

    Forced to address the looming risk of FTC oversight, Musk reportedly struck a conciliatory tone.

    “Twitter will do whatever it takes to adhere to both the letter and spirit of the FTC consent decree,” Musk reportedly wrote in an email to employees Thursday evening.

    The one thing Musk claims is going in his favor at Twitter is user growth, as more people tune in to watch him fumble his way through owning the company.

    “Twitter usage is at an all-time high,” Musk tweeted earlier this week, before adding in a follow-up tweet: “I just hope the servers don’t melt!”

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