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  • Denver council member dragged himself onto stage before a political debate due to a lack of wheelchair accessibility | CNN

    Denver council member dragged himself onto stage before a political debate due to a lack of wheelchair accessibility | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Denver city council member who uses a wheelchair faced a difficult situation this week when he participated in a political debate at a venue that did not have full accessibility, prompting him to drag himself onto its stage.

    Chris Hinds, who is running for reelection, said he has received apologies from the venue for the incident.

    “I felt like a circus monkey. I felt exploited,” Hinds told CNN Thursday.

    When Hinds arrived for the Monday debate, which was held at the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance facility’s theater in Denver, he was told organizers intended to carry him onto the stage. Hinds found the idea both humiliating and impractical.

    “My wheelchair weighs 400 pounds. I’m about 200 pounds. That’s 600 pounds they wanted to try to lift,” Hinds said.

    Organizers asked Hinds if he could raise himself onto the stage’s floor so they would only have to lift his chair, he said. Video shows Hinds, who is paralyzed from the middle of his chest down, shifting himself from the chair’s edge to the edge of the stage floor, and then using his arms to pull his legs onto the stage.

    He then struggles to sit upright until someone brings him a chair to lean on, the video, which Hinds provided, shows.

    Hinds was reluctant to try to get onstage without his wheelchair, he said, but felt he had no choice because candidates in Denver must forfeit public campaign funds if they decline to participate in an official debate.

    “My thought process was, I have to participate in this debate or end my campaign,” Hinds said.

    Eventually, organizers agreed to allow the debate to take place on the main floor of the theater at the foot of the stage, where he could sit in his wheelchair. Video shows him sliding himself back off the stage’s edge to his wheelchair.

    In a written statement, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance’s executive director Malik Robinson publicly apologized to Hinds.

    “I deeply regret it took this incident to elevate the urgency for this change and we are committed to ensuring that no one experiences lack of access to the stage again,” Robinson said.

    Hinds says he also received an apology from the office of the county clerk, who organizes the debates, and says he is satisfied with their response.

    Hinds pointed out that many people with disabilities continue to struggle with lack of access more than 30 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. When he became the first person in a wheelchair elected to the council, the chambers where they hold meetings were not wheelchair-accessible, nor were the restrooms at City Hall, he said. That was quickly rectified after he was elected, he said.

    “I sure hope that we can use this as a teaching moment to understand why it’s important for democracy to be representative of all the people, including people with disabilities,” he said.

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  • Another education fight over DEI emerges, this time at a conservative campus in Texas | CNN

    Another education fight over DEI emerges, this time at a conservative campus in Texas | CNN

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    Lubbock, Texas
    CNN
     — 

    One of the largest universities in Texas is now reviewing its hiring procedures after one department closely scrutinized candidates over their knowledge of diversity, equity and inclusion, more commonly known as DEI.

    “We could see that this could be viewed as possibly exclusionary,” Texas Tech President Lawrence Schovanec said in an interview with CNN. “And so we wanted to step back and review the whole process.”

    The biology department at Texas Tech University – set in deeply conservative West Texas – asked faculty candidates in 2021 to submit statements on their commitment to DEI. Some candidates received negative notes if their answers were deemed insufficient, such as not knowing the difference between “equality” and “equity.”

    The process, which came to light earlier this month, prompted swift conservative backlash against the storied institution, with critics decrying such DEI screenings as litmus tests that discriminate based on ideology. The term DEI has become the latest target among conservative politicians in the recent era of racial reckoning, echoing the heated debates over critical race theory in schools.

    DEI programs have become commonplace in the worlds of business, government, and education to promote multiculturalism and to encourage success for people of all races and backgrounds. But they’ve also become a focal point of those who describe them as another example of extreme political correctness.

    In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said earlier this month he intends to ban state universities from spending money on DEI initiatives. “We want education, not indoctrination,” he said at an event in Jacksonville.

    And in Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott this month issued a memo to state agencies and universities asserting that using DEI as a screening tool is illegal. “When a state agency adjusts its employment practices based on factors other than merit, it is not following the law. Rebranding this employment discrimination as ‘DEI’ does not make the practice any less illegal,” the memo said.

    Schovanec said the school’s lawyers insist the biology department’s actions were not illegal, but the university is ending efforts that use DEI as a screening tool for faculty while it undergoes a review of its hiring practices campuswide.

    A group called the National Association of Scholars first uncovered the situation at Texas Tech by obtaining DEI-specific notes and documents from the biology department’s hiring process through open records requests. The group published the roughly 100 documents online, along with an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, called “How ‘Diversity’ Policing Fails Science.”

    The DEI portion was just one component of screening candidates in the biology department, according to the university. Each applicant was asked to submit a curriculum vitae, three representative publications, separate statements of research and teaching interests, three potential referees, and “a diversity statement that addresses any past contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion and outlines plans and actions for advancing DEI” at Texas Tech. Finalists were also interviewed by a DEI committee.

    According to the documents, candidates were flagged for being “reluctant” to answer questions about DEI or not having a “good grasp” of the concept. Under the “weaknesses” for one candidate, it was noted the candidate repeatedly used the pronoun “he” when talking about professors. The same candidate was “red-flagged” and hiring committee members wrote they had “reservations about sending him into a large, diverse undergrad classroom with his current understanding and strategies.”

    Another candidate’s weakness was listed as: “Mentioned that DEI is not an issue because he respects his students and treats them equally.”

    While the names of the candidates in the documents were redacted, Texas Tech University confirmed to CNN that some of the candidates featured in the documents were hired and not all of the positions have been filled yet.

    Steve Balch is a former Texas Tech professor and founder of the National Association of Scholars, which has done considerable research on DEI efforts in universities to illustrate what it sees as an impediment to academic freedom.

    “My quarrel isn’t with people who think diversity, equity and inclusion are good things,” he told CNN. “My argument and the argument of the NAS is turning them into dogma and then using them to vet faculty members, graduate students, undergraduate students – creating aversive environment in which you feel you have to swear fealty to a particular creed. I think that’s wrong.”

    The issue at Texas Tech also came up in a state Senate hearing on February 8. Sen. Joan Huffman questioned Texas Tech’s chancellor Tedd Mitchell, saying she was “concerned and confused” over the incident.

    “I do not believe in litmus tests of any type,” Mitchell said. “It’s no more appropriate to ask somebody about their position on DEI than it is to ask them if they’re a Christian or a Muslim. When we find out something like that has occurred, we stop it.”

    Schovanec recognizes that Tech is in conservative part of a conservative state with many key conservative stakeholders, donors, and legislators involved in school funding.

    “We have to be pragmatic in acknowledging issues that are being raised,” he said. “Our legislators are responding to their constituents. And in this country right now, education has many challenges.”

    He stressed the importance of diversity at the school, which has its own DEI division. According to Texas Tech, 46% of this year’s incoming class are students of color, and 30% of faculty are faculty of color.

    “So we’re totally committed to a diverse campus community, but those hiring practices could present the perception that certain candidates would be excluded based on their ideological views, as opposed to the real excellence related to that discipline and the ability to address the priorities of our mission here,” he said.

    Schovanec said the school needs more diverse faculty, and he acknowledged that some prospective candidates might see the school’s recent move to end DEI screenings and question Tech’s commitment to diversity.

    “Faculty and students have to judge us by our actions. Do we support them? Do we create an environment here where they feel they belong and this is a place where they can thrive? That’s a much bigger issue than certain elements of a hiring process,” he said “But that is a challenge that we have.”

    Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, said the political firestorm over the incident at Texas Tech is simply an “attempt to fuel the base” among those who don’t agree with longstanding efforts to increase diversity.

    She’s concerned that DEI will follow the same path as critical race theory, or CRT, and become a term that’s twisted and misrepresented for political purposes.

    “It’s demonizing efforts, not only within higher education, but I think within this country to create a more equitable, just United States,” she said. “On some levels it’s misappropriating the work that is being done and using it as a basis for saying we’re discriminating against others.”

    Granberry Russell said she wants people to understand the nuance of DEI and that it’s designed to increase opportunities for people who have been historically marginalized or not well represented in higher education or the workforce.

    “My hope would be that as we begin to think more broadly about inclusion, that people will better understand this is not a situation where some are intending to take access away, but to expand access,” she said.

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  • Joe Biden hates when people talk about his age. A looming reelection run is making it ‘omnipresent.’ | CNN Politics

    Joe Biden hates when people talk about his age. A looming reelection run is making it ‘omnipresent.’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    When President Joe Biden sets out for his annual physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Thursday morning, he’ll be setting a new record – as he does every morning – as the oldest US president ever.

    Biden’s age is “omnipresent” in nearly every conversation, one person involved told CNN, at a time when he’s preparing for a reelection announcement that would try to extend his time in the Oval Office until he is 86 years old.

    Biden hasn’t officially decided to run again, though he’s said he intends to and his campaign infrastructure is largely in place. Even though aides say the president has told them that his age will not be the determining factor in his final decision about running for reelection, conversations about it are shaping everything from planning anticipated campaign schedule logistics to calibrating Vice President Kamala Harris’ role as his running mate. White House spokesman Andrew Bates disputes how much of a factor the president’s age is in conversations: “That’s simply not true, and makes one think they aren’t involved in many conversations here.”

    That is leading to a focus on events that try to play up the president’s vitality, while trying to strike a balance in the schedule of a man who tends to make more blunders when tired.

    It also underscored the importance of a State of the Union address advisers viewed as Biden at his best, from cadence and delivery to his off-script sparring with Republicans in the House chamber. The speech served as a prime-time moment, in front of tens of millions of viewers, to lay out for the country the scale of his accomplishments and vision for the path ahead.

    And, at least implicitly, it also represented a window into why his age shouldn’t be viewed as detriment to his efforts to lead the country down that path.

    The effect was immediate with at least one group watching: quietly anxious Democratic officials. More than a dozen of acknowledged after the fact it was a night that either put to rest or went a long way in assuaging their lingering concerns about the party’s leader.

    That Biden repeatedly went back to the phrase “finish the job” roughly a dozen times during the speech “wasn’t exactly subtle,” one of those Democrats said.

    Though advisers say Biden would keep to the standard of not starting daily campaigning for at least a year, just as President Barack Obama did in 2011, they’re already looking for low impact ways to maximize keeping him in the public eye. To some extent it would track and build on the oft-criticized formula deployed in the lead up to the midterms, where Biden eschewed a road warrior, rally heavy strategy and tailored and targeted events – and smaller crowds – instead.

    “Funny that we didn’t hear much from the critics about that strategy after November 8,” one adviser said sarcastically of the Democrats’ precedent-busting performance on Election Day last year.

    Among the possible strategies are having him keep up the kind of news-making appearances he’s been doing in and around Washington and preparing for what they’re hoping will be the most extensive digital effort of a presidential campaign ever.

    Top surrogates deployed at a regular clip would include a roster populated by a younger generation of politicians, people familiar with the matter say, even as one pointed out that given Biden’s age, that’s to some degree an inevitability.

    “Like we did in 2020, if he runs in 2024 there will be a range of surrogates that show the diversity of the party, across all ages, from Maxwell Frost to Bernie Sanders,” a Biden adviser said, referencing the 26-year-old freshman congressman from Florida and the independent Vermont senator.

    To many top Democratic operatives and officials looking ahead, Biden’s age is the top issue of his reelection campaign – in essence, what he’s running against, at least until a Republican nominee emerges, according to CNN’s conversations with three dozen White House aides, elected officials, leading Democratic operatives and others beginning to prepare for the race ahead.

    “It’s part of who he is – as much a part as his record of legislative accomplishments in the last two years, as much a part as his empathy and his connection with people,” said a senior Biden adviser.

    The adviser went on to spell out a theory of the case Biden’s team believes will outweigh any concerns, no matter how persistent they appear in public polling.

    “At the end of the day, people are going to say, ‘Who’s on my side?’” the adviser said. “‘Who’s fighting for me? Who’s getting things done and making a material difference in my life?’”

    That’s how Mitch Landrieu, the White House infrastructure coordinator, made the case to the antsy Democratic mayors he joined for a political meeting in January at a hotel a few blocks from the White House.

    “People want to focus on one number – the president’s age, 80,” he said, and let the words linger for just a moment.

    The mayors looked around uncomfortably, according to two people in the room. They’d been thinking about Biden’s age themselves, constantly hearing doubts he could or would run constantly from back home. They were startled to hear it said out loud by a White House official.

    “But,” Landrieu said, as he started to tick through stats around Covid-19 shots, jobs created, unemployment rates, “there are a whole lot more important numbers out there.”

    Still, voters bring Biden’s age up constantly in focus groups. Many veer toward assuming he must be ineffective or being puppeteered: “‘brain dead,’ ‘mush’ – ‘dementia’ is a word that comes up all the time,” said one person who observed multiple focus group sessions during campaigns last year.

    More than a dozen Democratic operatives and officials told CNN they’re worried that Donald Trump – himself a septuagenarian who is facing calls for new leadership from younger politicians in his party – or another much younger Republican who may emerge as the nominee could make a show of seeming more energetic just by keeping a pace of two or three events each day. A number of prominent figures in the Democratic Party are privately questioning the president’s ability to keep up an active travel schedule.

    A handful of ambitious Democrats have already quietly prepared rudimentary contingency plans in case Biden has a change of heart and decides against running for reelection, people familiar with the efforts told CNN. Those plans span everything from thinking through top donors to eyeing potential core campaign staff, should Biden reassess his ability to serve another four years or has an unexpected health problem, sparking a short fuse primary.

    And while top White House aides bristle at any suggestion that the president’s age is a liability, others in the building quietly worry that this may be actively underplaying underplaying the concerns that they’re hearing from their own friends and family members.

    Other Democratic operatives preparing for a campaign worry about letting suspicions fester, comparing them to the conspiracies about hidden conditions that trailed Hillary Clinton throughout 2016.

    “They’re going to be talking about it,” said one top Democrat working on planning ahead for the reelection campaign. “So, we’ve got to talk about it.”

    The president’s opponents are talking about it. Right-wing media coverage of the classified documents found in Biden’s former office and garage made him out to be either senile – to explain why he hadn’t remembered what happened to the documents – or at the center of a conspiracy theory about a controversy manufactured by Democrats to ease him into retirement.

    Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told CNN with a sorrowful tone in an interview last month, “He’s plainly diminished, far below the threshold needed to be a functioning and effective president.” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ Republican response to Biden’s State of the Union used the line, “At 80, he’s the oldest president in American history.”

    “They attacked him over age before he beat them in 2020. They attacked him over age as he built the best legislative record in modern history,” said Bates. “They did the same before he beat them 2022. I’m not sure what they think they’re accomplishing. The trend is not good for them. Maybe they forgot?”

    It’s not just them. Voters young and old often say they can’t really believe he’s going to run. Mocking him as ancient or asleep has become an easy joke for late night comedians. Many prominent Democrats privately say some panicky version of what Robert Reich, the 76-year-old former secretary of labor, wrote recently: Biden’s age is “deeply worrying, given what we know about the natural decline of the human brain and body.”

    Biden advisers argue that most of the people making those kinds of comments are partisan Republicans, and that this is just another instance of a hyperpolarization in politics. They point to Biden’s previous physicals and assessments by outside experts who say that he has no physical or mental competence issues at all.

    Sure, there has been a noticeably increased stiffness to his walk since he’s been in office, aides say, so much so that the White House physician, brought in a team to assess Biden’s gait during his last physical in 2021. They concluded it was the result of normal “wear and tear” of his spine.

    They acknowledge there are days where his energy levels at public events can appear less vigorous. But they are unequivocal about their view that Biden wouldn’t green light another run if he didn’t think he could do it – and they wouldn’t support one either.

    And they say these doubts are just the latest way of underestimating the president, pointing out that age concerns also dogged his 2020 campaign – even though some of those same advisers confided to others at the time that they believed his age was his biggest liability when he was four years younger.

    Asked what the argument will be for a 2024 campaign, the Biden senior adviser snapped: “I’ve got two words for you: Wisdom and experience.”

    Those words, and an overall emphasis on Biden as an embodiment of reassuring routine and normalcy, pop up repeatedly among aides who are starting to look ahead.

    They are also quietly reframing a key moment at the end of the 2020 primary campaign, when Biden was endorsed in March 2020 by the much younger Harris, Booker and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and described himself “as a bridge” to the next generation.

    Many at the time took that to mean a four-year bridge, an implicit one-term promise that acknowledged his age. Advisers point out he’d previously rejected a one-term pledge.

    But people around Biden suggest, what he was talking about was not just getting Donald Trump out of the White House but getting past Trump and Trumpism. Advisers say that is what the logic around a 2024 run boils down to: Making the case that the only thing worse than an 82-year-old president is a Republican one.

    Biden advisers also argue that the president’s persona as an elder statesman could help Democrats hold onto voters who see the party as changing too quickly and veering too far left.

    “People feel like it’s a turbulent world that we’re living in, and it is a strength for Joe Biden to be able to point to not just years of experience in government up to this point, but more immediately his last two years in the White House being able to get things done, despite the turbulence,” said a second Biden adviser. “And what we’re seeing from Republicans in the House in terms of chaos and extremism is an incredibly powerful contrast too, that underscores the idea that his experience – and yes, age – is a benefit.”

    Although there are clear moments when Biden is visibly slower physically than he was, dozens of aides, administration officials and members of Congress who’ve actually spent time with him have relayed stories to CNN about how thorough and demanding he is in meeting after meeting.

    “There’s a confidence that comes from knowing what you’re doing,” Ted Kaufman, one of Biden’s closest friends and advisers since his first campaign, told CNN late last year.

    Biden likes to talk and keep talking, but he did spend 36 years in the Senate. He sometimes rambles, but he rambled long before his hair went gray.

    He often gets stuck on, or mispronounces, names on his teleprompter, but that’s far more connected to a convergence of wanting to get the name correct while not encountering a block tied to the childhood stutter he worked intensively and successfully to overcome, but still surfaces in certain moments.

    Several prominent Democratic officials told CNN that they worry even so, every stumble now will be viewed through the prism of age. Biden’s advisers are keenly aware of what they view as a perception – or in some cases, in the words of one person close to Biden, “the bull— caricature” – that they say doesn’t match the reality they see.

    They say he’s the one constantly adding to his schedule, pushing for photo lines with local politicians and extra time to greet crowds after his events, or making meetings run over by peppering policy aides with questions.

    “The energy is higher now than maybe when I first met him, and I really believe that that’s inspired by the work,” said Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who as a Delaware Democrat has known and worked with Biden much of her life.

    There is perhaps no better window into the public perception versus private reality advisers try to convey than a 15-hour stretch in Bali, Indonesia, at the Group of 20 meeting last November.

    Nearing the end of a grueling six-day, three-country trip to Asia that also included his first face-to-face meeting as president with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Biden chose to skip the gala dinner and went back to his hotel. Whispers went around that Biden was too tired, unable to keep going.

    Just a few hours later, he was sitting across from national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken trying to head off a spiraling international crisis.

    Biden, wearing khakis and a gray T-shirt from a Delaware-based tractor and garden supply center, was on the phone with the Polish president over the missile that had landed in Polish territory and killed two people, raising the possibility that Russia’s unrelenting attacks on Ukraine had finally spilled into a NATO ally.

    There were calls with the NATO secretary general and constant communication with his military leadership. Aides discussed an emergency call with G7 and NATO leaders. Biden said that wasn’t enough.

    “We’re all here,” Biden told his senior team of the leaders scattered across nearby hotels. “Bring them here.”

    An hour later, Biden himself walked the 10 leaders who came to the Grand Hyatt through early intelligence that the missile likely was not of Russian origin. Fears of dramatic escalation quickly dissipated. Thirty minutes later, Biden was walking through mangrove trees telling French President Emmanuel Macron and other leaders stories from his Senate days.

    Aides said Biden didn’t skip the gala because he was tired, though they never explained further. The truth, two people familiar with the matter said, was he wanted some time to focus on preparation for his granddaughter’s wedding that weekend at the White House, rather than have more generic conversations with counterparts over another meal. He was ready, however, when a crisis moment arrived, they said. And he drove the response.

    White House aides clock mentions of Biden’s age in the media – with particular attention to those that happen to leave out the ages of similarly aged politicians like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is a year older, and Trump, who is 76.

    They quickly shoot down what they see as sneering insinuations, like when reporters ask why the president has a light public schedule on the days back from overseas trips – though that has been standard practice for multiple recent presidents, including Obama. They insist that his midterm travel schedule proves how robust a presence he can be on the road, even though Biden rarely appeared at more than a few events each week through the fall.

    Biden hated people talking about how old he was when he was younger. He hates it even more now.

    “Do I wish he was 10 years younger? Yeah. So does he!” said one Biden donor. “But there is nothing to me, beyond his chronological age, that would lend itself to the argument he shouldn’t seek reelection.”

    Aides laugh at how often his reaction to seeing news mentions of his age is to do a little jog in or out of his next public event. Friends say he’s taken to making sarcastic references to his age, even as he speaks proudly about all he’s been able to accomplish.

    Or there was his move three weeks ago in the State Dining Room, when he pretended to wobble as he got back up from taking a knee for a photo with the NBA champion Golden State Warriors, taking a moment to make fun of the crowd’s shock.

    “I wanted to get up there and actually give him an arm and help him up, but I didn’t know if I’d get in trouble for that, so I just kinda stood back,” star forward Draymond Green told CNN afterward. “To see him in that physical condition at his age, to get up and down like that, was absolutely incredible.”

    A number of younger Democratic politicians and operatives tell CNN they’re ready to embrace the idea of Biden as a grandfatherly figure, continuing to be a source of comfort and calm for a battered nation, even capitalizing on a specific sort of nostalgia for a pre-Trump time in politics. and the news.

    Of course, that would take Biden himself buying in. Even his grandkids don’t call him grandpa – they call him Pop.

    “He doesn’t want to be a grandpa,” said one person who knows him. “He wants to be a bro.”

    Aftab Pureval, the Cincinnati mayor who just turned 40 in September, said a visit from the president last month left him with the impression that Biden has more than enough left in the tank.

    Pureval saw a man who laughed hard when the mayor deliberately used a famous Biden interjection – one that contains a four-letter word that starts with F – to describe what a big deal the bipartisan infrastructure money was in helping rebuild the local Brent Spence Bridge.

    There were the fist bumps with the crowd at the barbecue spot in town they went to afterward. There was the way the president immediately flashed the fraternity hand sign when a young black man mentioned that he was a member of Phi Beta Sigma.

    “When you’re with him, age was never really on my mind. What was on my mind was the president provided the single biggest grant in our nation’s history to our bridge,” Pureval said.

    “His age is his age, but you can’t argue with the results.”

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  • Here are the Republicans considering 2024 presidential runs | CNN Politics

    Here are the Republicans considering 2024 presidential runs | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United States ambassador to the United Nations, launched her bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination Tuesday.

    But the primary is still in its early stages, and it could take months before the field fully rounds into form and candidates make more than occasional visits to states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina that will kick off the GOP’s nominating process.

    Haley could stand alone for weeks or even months as the party’s only official rival to former President Donald Trump.

    Here’s a look at who’s in and who is considering a 2024 run for the Republican nomination:

    Donald Trump: The former president officially launched his campaign in November, days after the midterm elections. And he never really stopped running after 2020, continuing to hold campaign-style rallies with supporters.

    Nikki Haley: Haley launched her presidential campaign Tuesday. It was a shift from her previous insistence she would not run against Trump. “It’s time for a new generation of leadership to rediscover fiscal responsibility, secure our border and strengthen our country, our pride and our purpose,” she said in a video announcing her bid.

    Ron DeSantis: The Florida governor emerged as the top alternative to Trump in many conservatives’ eyes after his dominant reelection victory. A DeSantis announcement is likely months away, with Florida currently in the middle of its legislative session. But his memoir, accompanied by a media blitz, will drop at the end of February, and top advisers are building a political infrastructure.

    Mike Pence: The former vice president’s split with Trump over the events of January 6, 2021, kicked off a consistent return to political travel. He has made clear that he believes the GOP will move on from Trump. “I think we’re going to have new leadership in this party and in this country,” Pence told CBS in January.

    Tim Scott: The South Carolina senator would make a second Palmetto State Republican in the 2024 field if, as expected, he enters the race in the near future. Scott is building a political infrastructure, including hiring for a super PAC, and is set to visit Iowa for an event his team billed as focused on “faith in America.”

    Ted Cruz: The Texas senator and 2016 GOP contender has not ruled out another presidential bid. But he is also seeking reelection in 2024. “I think there will be plenty of time to discuss the 2024 presidential race. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” he told the CBS affiliate in Dallas in February.

    Glenn Youngkin: The Virginia governor’s 2021 victory offered Republicans a new playbook focused on parental power in education. His political travel, including stops for a series of Republican gubernatorial candidates last year, makes clear Youngkin has ambitions beyond Virginia. He faced a setback to his push for a 15-week abortion ban when Democrats won a state senate special election earlier this year, expanding their narrow majority.

    Chris Sununu: The New Hampshire governor’s timeline isn’t clear, but he recently established a political action committee that borrowed his state’s motto: “Live Free or Die.” He has positioned himself as a strong Trump opponent and alternative within the GOP. He would also start with the advantage of being universally known in an early-voting state. “I think America as a whole is looking for results-driven leadership that calls the balls and strikes like they see them and is super transparent,” Sununu told Axios this week.

    Kristi Noem: The South Dakota governor who won reelection in November has certainly cultivated a national profile, becoming a regular at conservative gatherings and donor confabs. But she hasn’t committed to a presidential run. “I’m not convinced that I need to run for president,” she told CBS in January.

    Greg Abbott: The Texas governor who cruised past a 2020 presidential contender, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, to win his third term in November is unlikely to make any official 2024 moves until his state’s legislative session wraps up at the end of May. He told Fox News in January that a 2024 run “is it’s not something I’m ruling in right now. I’m focused on Texas, period.”

    Larry Hogan: The former Maryland governor is another Trump opponent. He told Fox News he is giving a 2024 run “very serious consideration.”

    Chris Christie: The former New Jersey governor is one of several 2024 GOP prospects headed to Texas for a private donor gathering in late February, along with Pence, Haley, Scott, Sununu and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Christie said on ABC earlier this year he doesn’t believe Trump could beat President Joe Biden in 2024.

    Asa Hutchinson: The former Arkansas governor is a rare Republican from a deep-red state who has been willing to criticize Trump. Now weeks removed from office, he also doesn’t have the at-home responsibilities facing other governors. He told CBS that he’ll decide on a 2024 by “probably April.” He said he believes voters are “looking for someone that is not going to be creating chaos, but also has got the record of being a governor, of lowering taxes.”

    Mike Pompeo: Trump’s secretary of state and the former Kansas congressman said during a tour for his new book, “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,” that he would decide on a presidential run in the coming months. He’s been among the Republicans most openly considering a run, traveling to early-voting states for more than a year.

    Liz Cheney: The former Wyoming congresswoman who emerged as the foremost GOP critic of Trump’s lies about widespread election fraud lost her House seat to a Trump-backed primary challenger. She launched a political action committee last year and made clear she intends to try to purge the GOP of Trump’s influence. But what that means in the context of a potential 2024 bid is not yet clear.

    Will Hurd: The former Texas congressman who represented a border district recently traveled to New Hampshire, an early-voting state, though it’s not clear whether or when he would enter the race. “I always have an open mind about how to serve my country,” he told Fox News.

    Others to keep an eye on: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who fended off a Trump-backed primary challenge on the way to reelection last year, has added political staffers and is sometimes mentioned as a vice presidential prospect. Florida Sen. Rick Scott and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley have both said they will not run for president in 2024 – but things can change, and both had also taken steps to build their national profiles. Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has teased a run as a Trump foil.

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  • Voice of Democracy, one of Cambodia’s last independent media outlets, has been shut down | CNN Business

    Voice of Democracy, one of Cambodia’s last independent media outlets, has been shut down | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    One of Cambodia’s last remaining independent media outlets has been shut down by Prime Minister Hun Sen ahead of national elections in July, in a move condemned by rights groups as a blow to press freedom.

    Based in the capital Phnom Penh, Voice of Democracy (VOD), a local outlet run by the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, published radio and online reports about labor and rights issues, environmental crime and political corruption.

    It reported last week that Hun Manet, son of the prime minister, allegedly signed an agreement to donate aid to Turkey, which was struck by a catastrophic earthquake last week. The report alluded to an apparent overstep of his authority.

    Hun Sen refuted the report and issued statements on Facebook accusing the outlet of attacking his son and hurting the “dignity and reputation” of the Cambodian government.

    He also refused to accept an official apology from VOD and added that its newsroom staff “should look for jobs elsewhere.”

    Government officials revoked VOD’s operating license on Monday and blocked its websites in English and Khmer.

    Several VOD staff took to social media to share news of the company’s sudden closure.

    “It has reached the end point,” wrote Mech Dara, one of its reporters, on Twitter. “I (thought) we might have survived longer.”

    He told CNN that many journalists were “still in shock” after Monday’s events.

    “We were expecting it to happen but not so quickly,” he said. “We fought for the truth. We always have but clearly some people could not handle it.”

    “There are so many stories to be told about Cambodia from Cambodia and this extends to the wider region – countries like Myanmar and Vietnam,” he added. “It’s a space that’s getting narrower and narrower and voices are stifled so that the outside world can’t see in.”

    “We have to face the reality and the challenges that come along with it but we will take it one day at a time.”

    The prime minister’s office hasn’t yet responded to a CNN request for further comment about the VOD closure.

    Hun Sen has served as the country’s prime minister since 1985, making him one of the world’s longest serving leaders.

    During his tenure, several independent newspapers and websites have been shut down and dozens of opposition figures jailed or forced into exile.

    “Voice of Democracy has served as an important mainstay of independent investigative reporting and objective criticism for years,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Hun Sen’s closure of VOD is a devastating blow to media freedom in the country and will have an impact across Cambodian society.”

    “The Cambodian people are the ultimate losers because they have lost one of the last remaining sources of independent news on issues affecting their lives, livelihoods and human rights.”

    Amnesty International said the closure served as “a clear warning to other critical voices” months before national elections in July.

    “The Prime Minister should immediately withdraw this heavy handed and disproportionate order,” it said.

    Exiled former Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy said VOD’s closure was “obviously politically motivated.”

    “Substantially all of Cambodia’s media is now government controlled,” he told CNN. “It also occurs in the context of [the] ongoing wrongful imprisonment of opposition supporters and routine intimidation of those who continue to operate.”

    “Governments [around the world] must educate citizens about the dangers of [those in power in] Cambodia because the Cambodian government won’t play its part in doing so.”

    Western ambassadors in the country expressed their concerns about the closure of VOD.

    “We are deeply troubled by the abrupt decision to revoke VOD’s media license,” according to a statement from the US embassy in Phnom Penh. “A free and independent press is the cornerstone of any functioning democracy, providing the public and decision makers with facts and holding governments to account,” it added.

    “We urge the Cambodian authorities to revisit this decision.”

    “Germany believes in the free access of information as the basis for free and fair elections,” said the German embassy. “The freedom of press in Cambodia has lost one of its last remaining independent media outlets.”

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  • Ron DeSantis can now make his agenda a reality ahead of a possible 2024 announcement | CNN Politics

    Ron DeSantis can now make his agenda a reality ahead of a possible 2024 announcement | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will soon have new authority over Disney’s iconic Florida theme parks, leeway to transport migrants from anywhere in the country and fewer hurdles to put people behind bars for voting errors – all top priorities that have animated conservatives who may decide the next Republican nominee for president.

    And he amassed this power in less than a week.

    DeSantis possesses a unique asset as he lays the groundwork for a potential presidential campaign: A subservient state party that is eager to hand victories to the Republican leader. The special session in Florida that ended Friday – during which his priorities sailed through the GOP-legislature in a matter of days and with minimal resistance – was a public demonstration of his total control over an ostensibly separate branch of government.

    It’s a tool he is expected to wield often in the coming months as he eschews an early entrance into the race in favor of building up a record of decisive actions that could be appealing to future primary voters.

    DeSantis has already laid out several legislative targets when lawmakers meet again next month, including fewer restrictions on firearms, more restrictions on abortion, weaker legal protections for the media industry and more public funding to attend private schools. With Republicans holding a super majority in both the state House and Senate, there is little expectation that DeSantis will not get his way.

    DeSantis isn’t expected to jump into the race for president until after lawmakers conclude their legislative business in May – a sign of how important that agenda is to his platform for president and the narrative around his candidacy.

    “Everyone is just waiting to take their cues from the governor,” one longtime Florida lobbyist said. “He is setting the agenda and it’s all red meat for 2024 voters.”

    So far DeSantis isn’t missing out on a crowded nomination battle. Former President Donald Trump remains the only declared candidate, but more appear not far behind. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is expected to announce her campaign on Wednesday. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu formed a new political organization as he inches toward a decision. Others, like former Vice President Mike Pence, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have openly acknowledged their interest in the office.

    Behind-the-scenes, DeSantis is also readying a political operation for a presidential campaign, with an eye toward making a campaign announcement in late May or early June, two people close to the governor said.

    His top advisers are in the early stages of launching an organization that could become a super PAC to support his 2024 bid. His memoir “The Courage to be Free” will drop at the end of February, leading into a national book tour and media blitz. The decision for DeSantis to invite top Republican fundraisers to a retreat and policy conference later this month in Palm Beach – the former president’s backyard – is the latest sign of how the governor is ramping up his operation in hopes of sending a signal to donors that he is serious about jumping into the race and he won’t be deterred by Trump.

    But DeSantis has otherwise dismissed speculation around his political ambitions. Even as he becomes the focus of attacks from the prospective field – most notably by Trump, but also Sununu and Hogan – DeSantis has avoided counterattacks that might distract from his focus on stacking legislative wins and culture war victories that his political advisers believe will give him a platform to take to voters, especially in a field full of candidates who are no longer in office.

    “It’s awkward for many of us who genuinely like President Trump, but believe Governor DeSantis should be our party’s nominee,” said a major donor who talks often with DeSantis. “Trump can’t beat Biden. We’ve seen that already.”

    While no president in American history has come from Florida, the prospect of the state having two 2024 GOP candidates – DeSantis and Trump – has added another layer of intrigue and questions of loyalty among many Republican donors, strategists and officials.

    For weeks, Trump has steadily intensified his criticism of DeSantis. For his part, DeSantis has largely ignored the attacks and responded by either declining to attack fellow Republicans or pointing to his 19-point victory in the midterm elections last fall.

    As the Republican field begins taking shape, DeSantis is sending clear signals to donors and prospective campaign staff that he intends to run. But he feels no urgency or pressure to accelerate his timeline.

    “I spend my time delivering results for the people of Florida and fighting against Joe Biden,” DeSantis said when asked about recent Trump attacks on social media. “That’s how I spend my time. I don’t spend my time trying to smear other Republicans.”

    DeSantis has pushed the limits of his executive authority to hold the spotlight and amass a record tailor-made for a primary battle against Trump. He recently stacked the board of New College, a small liberal arts school, with political allies and like-minded conservatives who have already shaken up the progressive university. Under his watch, transgender children can no longer access certain treatments, and he used his veto powers to eliminate funding for LGBTQ mental health programs. He ousted a twice-elected local prosecutor for simply promising not to use office resources to go after abortion providers.

    But it’s through the legislature that DeSantis has built the bulk of his political resume, and where he has demonstrated his command of his party. On Monday, DeSantis launched his latest salvo against the financial industry, announcing a proposal to block banks from lending or investing based on environmental, social and governance factors.

    “Why is it always someone has to try to jam their agenda down our throats?” DeSantis said at a news conference to unveil his plan to take on so-called “woke” banks.

    The special session last week was the sixth time lawmakers were called back to Tallahassee in two and a half years to take on DeSantis’ priorities outside of their regularly scheduled meeting. This time they assembled largely to clean up existing measures taken by DeSantis that earned the governor considerable praise in conservative media but also legal headaches for the state.

    Lawmakers during the five-day special session voted to give the statewide prosecutor jurisdiction to go after Floridians for violating election and voting crimes. The measure comes after DeSantis initiated a crackdown on voter fraud that resulted in the arrest of 20 individuals accused of voting illegally in 2020. However, the move hit a legal snag in some cases, including in Miami-Dade County, where a judge dismissed a case against a Miami defendant on the grounds that the state prosecutor had acted beyond its authority.

    Similarly, the Republican controlled-legislature gave DeSantis the power to transport migrants from anywhere in the country after a legal challenge arose when the governor last year sent two planes of migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, despite a state law that the state’s authority was limited to relocating “unauthorized aliens from this state.”

    The move last week to give DeSantis the power to pick the board members for Disney’s special taxing district was also a step to avoid a potential financial catastrophe after DeSantis last year demanded lawmakers vote to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District without a plan for its existing debt and contracts. Republican lawmakers, though, were happy to oblige.

    “As the governor says, there’s a new sheriff in town,” state House Speaker Paul Renner said as lawmakers prepared to hand control of Disney’s special taxing district over to DeSantis.

    Democrats in Florida, powerless to stop DeSantis and his allies, have mostly used the bully pulpit to criticize their GOP colleagues for ceding so much control to the executive branch.

    “I don’t understand why we just give away this ultimate power to one individual who should live up to the consequences of breaking the law,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat. “The reality is that we have a governor who’s setting up a presidential bid. And this is basically his attempt to get earned media time on Fox News.”

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  • Washington Post: Trump campaign commissioned research that failed to prove 2020 election fraud claims | CNN Politics

    Washington Post: Trump campaign commissioned research that failed to prove 2020 election fraud claims | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A research firm commissioned by former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign team to prove his electoral fraud claims instead failed to substantiate his theories, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

    The Berkeley Research Group was commissioned to look into voting data from six states, according to the Post, and a source told the publication that the campaign team wanted about a dozen claims tested. People familiar with the matter told the publication that the findings did not match what the team had hoped for, and the findings were never released.

    While some anomalies and “unusual data patterns” were found, the Post reported, they wouldn’t have made a difference to President Joe Biden’s victory.

    The firm’s findings also refuted some of Trump’s voting conspiracies, including the identities of dead people used to vote and Dominion voting systems used to manipulate the outcome, the paper reported.

    The research was conducted in the last weeks of 2020 and before the January 6 US Capitol attack, according to the Post. Two sources told CNN that the House January 6 committee looking into the role Trump played in inciting the insurrection did not know about the firm’s work.
    Trump has continued to repeat his election lies as he focuses on his 2024 White House bid.

    CNN previously reported that following two years of advice from allies and advisers to stop exhaustively relitigating the 2020 election, his first rally late last month showed an attempted forward-driven message of what he would aim to accomplish with a second term.

    The former president has often pushed back on that advice, arguing that his message is strong enough as it is, and one source close to him told CNN his proclivity for focusing on the 2020 election will be tough to break because he still regularly hears from members of his base who believe so-called election integrity is an important talking point as he seeks reelection.

    Another adviser said that despite the defeat of several Trump-backed midterm candidates who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, Trump has said he does not believe their losses were tied to their election lies.

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  • I tried Microsoft’s new AI-powered Bing. Here’s what it’s like | CNN Business

    I tried Microsoft’s new AI-powered Bing. Here’s what it’s like | CNN Business

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    Seattle
    CNN Business
     — 

    Microsoft’s Bing search engine has never made much of a dent in Google’s dominance in the more than 13 years since it launched. Now the company is hoping some buzzy artificial intelligence can win converts.

    Microsoft on Tuesday announced an updated version of Bing designed to combine the fun and convenience of OpenAI’s viral ChatGPT tool with the information from a search engine.

    Beyond providing a list of relevant links like traditional search engines, the new Bing also creates written summaries of the search results, chats with users to answer additional questions about their query and can write emails or other compositions based on the results. With the new Bing, for example, users can create trip itineraries, compile weekly meal plans and ask the chatbot questions when shopping for a new TV.

    This is the new era of search that Microsoft

    (MSFT)     — which is investing billions of dollars in OpenAI — envisions, one where users are accompanied by a sort of “co-pilot” around the web to help them better synthesize information. The company is betting on the new technology to drive users to Bing, which had for years been an also-ran to Google Search. Microsoft

    (MSFT)     also announced an updated version of its Edge web browser with the new Bing capabilities built in.

    The event comes as the race to develop and deploy AI technology heats up in the tech sector. Google on Monday unveiled a new chatbot tool dubbed “Bard” in an apparent bid to keep pace with Microsoft and the success of ChatGPT. Baidu, the Chinese search engine, also said this week it plans to launch its own ChatGPT-style service.

    The updated Bing and Edge launched to the public on a limited basis on Tuesday, and are set to roll out to millions of people for unlimited search queries in the coming weeks. I took Bing for a spin at a press event at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters Tuesday.

    The tool provides the sort of immediate gratification we now expect from the internet — rather than clicking through a bunch of links to suss out the answer to a question, the new Bing will do that work for you. But it’s still early days for the technology, which Microsoft says is still evolving.

    The homepage of the new Bing feels familiar: you can type a query into the search bar and it returns a list of links, images and other results like a typical search engine. But on the left side of the page are written summaries of the results, complete with annotations and links to the original information sources. The search field allows up to 2,000 characters, so users can type the way they’d talk, rather than having to think of the few correct search terms to use.

    Users can also click over to a “chat” page on Bing, where a chatbot can answer additional questions about their queries.

    I asked Bing to write me a five-day vegetarian meal plan. It returned a list of vegetarian meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner for Monday through Friday, such as oatmeal with fresh berries and lentil curry. I then asked it to write me a grocery list based on that meal plan, and it returned a list of all the items I’d need to buy organized by grocery store section.

    Based on my request, the Bing chatbot also wrote me an email that I could send to my partner with that grocery list, complete with a “Hi Babe” greeting and “XOXO” closing. It’s not exactly how I’d normally write, but it could save me time by giving me a draft to edit and then copy and paste into an email, rather than having to start from scratch.

    The generated portions of Bing have personality. When you ask the chatbot a question, it responds conversationally and sometimes with emojis, letting you know it’s happy to help or that it hopes you have fun on the trip you’re planning.

    With the new Edge browser, I asked the tool to summarize one of my articles, and then turn that into a social media post the length of a short paragraph with a “casual” tone that I could share on Twitter or LinkedIn.

    The new Bing is built in partnership with OpenAI — the company behind ChatGPT in which Microsoft has invested billions — on a more advanced version of the technology underlying the viral chatbot tool. Still, the new Bing has some of the quirks that the public version of ChatGPT is known for. For example, the same query may return different responses each time it’s run; this is in part just how the tool works, and in part because it’s pulling the most updated search results each time it runs.

    It also didn’t cooperate with some of my requests. After the first time it created a meal plan, grocery list and email with the list, I ran the same requests two more times. But the second and third time, it wouldn’t write the email, instead saying something like, “sorry, I can’t do that, but you can do it yourself using the information I provided!” The tool is also sensitive to the wording used in queries — a request to “create a vegetarian meal plan” provided information about how to start eating healthier, whereas “create a 5-day vegetarian meal plan” provided a detailed list of meals to eat each day.

    Even next-gen search technology isn’t immune to basic flubs. I can imagine using the tool ahead of an upcoming local election, to learn about who is running for office in my area, what their positions are and how and when to vote. But when I asked the chatbot, “when is the next election in Kings County, NY?” it returned information about the November election last year.

    The new Bing may also present some of the same concerns as ChatGPT, including for educators. I asked Bing’s chatbot to write me a 300-word essay about the major themes of the book “Pride and Prejudice” and, within less than a minute, it had pumped out 364 words on three major themes in the novel (although some of the text sounded a bit repetitive or wonky). Per my request, it then revised the essay as if it was written by a fifth grader.

    The chatbot tool has feedback buttons so users can indicate whether its answers were helpful or not, and users can also chat directly with the tool to tell it when answers were incorrect or unhelpful, the company says.

    “We know we won’t be able to answer every question every single time, … We also know we’ll make our share of mistakes, so we’ve added a quick feedback button at the top of every search, so you can give us feedback and we can learn,” Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s vice president and consumer chief marketing officer, said in a presentation.

    With some controversial search topics, it appears the new Bing chatbot simply refuses to engage. For example, I asked it, “Can you tell me why vaccines cause autism?” to see how it would react to a common medical misinformation claim, and it responded: “My apologies, I don’t know how to discuss this topic. You can try learning more about it on bing.com.” The same query on the main search page returned more standard search results, such as links to the CDC and the Wikipedia page for autism.

    Likewise, it would not return a chatbot request for how to build a pipe bomb, instead saying in its answer, “Building a pipe bomb is a dangerous and illegal activity that can cause serious harm to yourself and others. Please do not attempt to do so.” However, one of the links provided in the annotation of its answer brought me to a YouTube video with apparent instructions for building a pipe bomb.

    Microsoft says it has developed the tool in keeping with its existing responsible AI principles, and made efforts to avoid its potential misuse. Executives said the new Bing is trained in part by sample conversations mimicking bad actors who might want to exploit the tool.

    “With a technology this powerful I also know that we have an even greater responsibility to make sure that it’s developed, deployed and used properly,” said responsible AI lead Sarah Bird.

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  • Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Trump | CNN Politics

    Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating Donald Trump and his role in January 6, 2021, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

    Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is seeking documents and testimony related to January 6, the source said. They want the former vice president to testify about his interactions with Trump leading up to the 2020 election and the day of the attack on the US Capitol.

    The subpoena marks an important milestone in the Justice Department’s two-year criminal investigation, now led by the special counsel, into the efforts by Trump and allies to impede the transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election. Pence is an important witness who has detailed in a memoir some of his interactions with Trump in the weeks after the election, a move that likely opens the door for the Justice Department to override at least some of Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

    Pence’s attorney Emmet Flood is known as a hawk on executive privilege, and people familiar with the discussions have said Pence was expected to claim at least some limits on providing details of his direct conversations with Trump. Depending on his responses, prosecutors have the option to ask a judge to compel him to answer additional questions and override Trump’s executive privilege claims.

    ABC News first reported on the subpoena.

    Pence’s office declined to confirm he had been subpoenaed. A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment to CNN on the matter.

    Months of negotiations preceded the subpoena to the former vice president, CNN has reported.

    Justice Department prosecutors had reached out to Pence’s representatives to seek his testimony in the criminal investigation, according to people familiar with the matter. Pence’s team had indicated he was open to discussing a possible agreement with DOJ to provide some testimony, one person said.

    That request occurred before the department appointed Smith to oversee two Trump-related investigations, the January 6-related probe and another into alleged mishandling of classified materials found at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

    In November, Pence published his memoir that detailed some of his interactions with Trump as the former president sought to overturn the results of his election loss to President Joe Biden. Pence and his team knew that the book’s publication would raise the prospect that the Justice Department would likely seek information about those interactions as part of its criminal investigation, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

    Pence rebuffed an interview request from the House select committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection, but allowed top aides to provide testimony in the House’s probe, as well as in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation. The DOJ successfully secured answers from top Pence advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short in significant court victories that could make it more likely the criminal investigation reaches further into Trump’s inner circle.

    There are no plans for Trump’s team to challenge the grand jury subpoena of Pence at this time, according to a source familiar with its thinking. But it would still be possible for Trump to attempt to assert executive privilege over some conversations they had, if Pence declines to detail those conversations to the grand jury.

    So far, Trump’s team has lost those challenges when Pence’s deputies and two White House counsel’s office attorneys testified, following Chief Judge Beryl Howell’s rulings that they must answer questions they initially refused to because of confidentiality around the presidency.

    Howell’s tenure as chief judge of the DC District Court ends in mid-March, meaning a different federal judge, James Boasberg, could be the one to field privilege disputes in the continuing grand jury investigation.

    CNN reported earlier Thursday that Smith had also subpoenaed former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien in both of the Trump-related probes, according to a source familiar with the matter. O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him, the source said.

    Trump’s former acting Department of Homeland Security secretary was separately interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in recent weeks as part of the probe into 2020 election interference, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

    Rather than appearing before a federal grand jury, former acting secretary Chad Wolf was interviewed under oath by Justice Department lawyers and FBI officials, something one of the sources characterized as a “standard” first step for prosecutors.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Rick Scott: From embattled health care executive to Biden’s top foil | CNN Politics

    Rick Scott: From embattled health care executive to Biden’s top foil | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Florida Sen. Rick Scott has emerged as Joe Biden’s top Republican foil in the days since the president’s State of the Union address, with the White House seizing on a year-old Scott proposal that even GOP leaders recognized at the time as politically toxic.

    As a spending fight looms in Washington and Biden moves toward his 2024 reelection bid, the White House is attempting to make Scott the poster child for the president’s accusations that Republicans are seeking to cut entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare.

    Scott has responded by accusing Biden of lying, airing a misleading ad that alleges Biden cut Medicare and lambasting the president in a barrage of television interviews.

    Biden traveled Thursday to Florida – where Scott was a health care executive and two-term governor – on the latest leg of his post-State of the Union tour.

    The trip was designed in part to stoke a fight with Scott after Biden in his speech Tuesday night seized on the first-term senator’s proposal to sunset all federal programs – including Social Security and Medicare – every five years unless Congress extends those programs.

    Biden’s assertion that some Republicans are seeking to change entitlement programs was met with jeers from Republican lawmakers, who have said spending cuts should be part of any proposal to raise the debt ceiling.

    The president continued pressing that message Wednesday in Wisconsin, telling union workers, “A lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare.” He waved a pamphlet with Scott’s proposal as he spoke.

    Ahead of Biden’s speech Thursday in Tampa, White House aides placed copies of Scott’s proposal on every seat.

    In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday, Scott said Biden has misrepresented the proposal he put forward ahead of the 2022 midterm elections while serving as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP.

    “Nobody believes that I want to cut Medicare or Social Security. I’ve never said it,” Scott said.

    Scott said his proposal is intended to eliminate wasteful spending and help ensure the government can “figure out how to start living within our means.”

    “I want to make sure we balance our budget and preserve Medicare and Social Security, and I’ve been clear all along. So what I want to do is get rid of wasteful programs that we never review up here,” he said.

    But Scott’s proposal would sunset all federal legislation – including the two entitlement programs – every five years and require Congress to pass them again.

    Long before he was a US senator, Scott had first-hand experience dealing with America’s federal health care programs – and it became the source of much criticism as he entered the political arena.

    In the 1980s, Scott founded Columbia Hospital Corporation by purchasing a pair of distressed Texas hospitals. He later merged his company with Hospital Corporation of America to create Columbia/HCA, becoming the largest for-profit hospital chain at the time and gaining notoriety on Wall Street for what appeared like cost-cutting in an industry with ballooning expenses.

    In 1997, federal agents unveiled a sweeping investigation into Columbia/HCA that would roil the company for years. On the day the FBI swooped in to seize records from 35 of its hospitals across six states, Scott shrugged off the probe. “It’s not a fun day, but … government investigations are a matter of fact today in health care,” he said on CNN.

    The investigation would unearth what the US Department of Justice later called the “largest health care fraud case in U.S. history.” According to a press release, Columbia/HCA schemed to defraud Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE, the military’s health care program, of hundreds of millions of dollars. The company pleaded guilty to criminal conduct, including charges related to fraudulent Medicare billing and paying kickbacks to doctors, and it ultimately agreed to pay $1.7 billion in fines, damages and penalties.

    Scott was pushed out as CEO amid the turmoil. He was never charged with a crime, though much of the alleged financial abuses took place during his watch. His time in the corporate world made Scott a wealthy individual, which he would lean on in 2010 when he decided to kickstart a political career by entering the race for Florida governor.

    Scott’s time at the helm of Columbia/HCA was the subject of negative ads from both Republicans and Democrats, but he fended them off with a self-funded campaign that flooded the airwaves with a jobs-focused message. He told the St. Petersburg Times that “mistakes were made” at his former company and that he had “learned hard lessons,” but he also said during a debate that he was “proud of the company I built.” Regardless of the controversy, the little-known Scott defeated a GOP favorite for his party’s nomination, and Floridians narrowly elected him governor that fall.

    During his eight years leading Florida, Scott fought off attempts to extend safety net benefits to Floridians. He frequently challenged the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act and blocked expansion of Medicaid in Florida. In his first year as governor, he signed a bill to cut unemployment payments and tied benefits to the state’s unemployment rate.

    Democrats continued to make Scott’s time at Columbia/HCA an issue, to no avail. Scott eked out a reelection victory in 2014. He then narrowly unseated longtime Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in 2018 after spending more than $70 million of his own money on his campaign.

    Marching to the beat of his own drum, Scott declined to be sworn in with his class in January 2019. Instead, he waited until his term as governor had ended and flew to Washington for a separate ceremony. For a time, it made him the country’s most junior senator, but he nevertheless soon found himself in party leadership.

    Scott and other Republicans are aggressively pushing back against Biden’s assertions that the GOP is seeking to cut spending on entitlement programs.

    However, Republican leaders have long recognized Scott’s proposal to sunset all federal programs after five years as rocky political terrain.

    The tense relationship between Scott and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell burst into public view during the 2022 election cycle as Republicans sought to retake the Senate.

    Scott, as NRSC chairman, released a platform called “Rescue America,” which would have subjected all federally elected officials to a term limit of 12 years and closed the Department of Education, amid a slew of other initiatives. It would also have required millions of low-income and middle-class Americans to pay income taxes, which was later dropped in a revised version of the plan.

    And, in what Democrats immediately recognized as an opening to accuse Republicans of attempting to undercut popular programs, Scott’s plan proposed sunsetting all federal legislation in five years – unless Congress extended it.

    McConnell quickly disavowed Scott’s plan, seeking to make clear that the Florida senator did not speak for Senate Republicans.

    “Let me tell you what would not be a part of our agenda,” McConnell said at a news conference last March. “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”

    Their frosty relationship did not improve as the 2022 election cycle continued, as the two battled over which candidates to support in primaries and in the general election, and Republicans ultimately fell short of winning a majority.

    After the election, Scott challenged McConnell for the top Senate Republican post but lost.

    The Florida senator said last week that he saw McConnell’s decision to remove him from the Senate Commerce Committee as retribution.

    “He didn’t like that I opposed him because I believe we have to have ideas – fight over ideas,” Scott said on “CNN This Morning.”

    When pressed Thursday by CNN’s Collins about why his proposal left open the opportunity for the government to cut funding for Social Security and Medicare, Scott repeatedly referenced a policy proposal from then-Sen. Biden in 1975 to sunset federal legislation periodically.

    Scott said Biden’s old proposal does less to protect entitlements for seniors than the senator’s plan from last year because “he proposed it year after year after year to reduce Medicare and Social Security. Year after year. I’ve never done that. I don’t believe in that.”

    Asked Thursday about the 1975 proposal mentioned by Scott, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “A bill from the 1970s is not part of the president’s agenda.”

    “The president ran on protecting Medicare and Social Security from cuts. And he reiterated that in the State of the Union,” she said.

    A new ad from Scott released this week in advance of the president’s visit to Florida says that “Joe Biden just cut $280 billion from Medicare” – a claim that was previously debunked when Scott and the NRSC made it in 2022.

    Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is expected to reduce Medicare prescription drug spending by the federal government by $237 billion, according to the most recent Congressional Budget Office estimate, because the law allows the government to spend less money to buy drugs from pharmaceutical companies and not because it cuts benefits to seniors enrolled in Medicare. The law makes Medicare’s prescription drug program substantially more generous to seniors while also saving them money.

    Scott, in his interview with Collins, also defended his recent call for Biden to resign, labeling him “a complete failure.” He said his resignation calls did not specifically stem from Biden’s use of his proposal as an avenue to attack Republicans but expressed his displeasure with the president’s repeated references to his plan.

    “He lies about what I want to get done, and I don’t appreciate it,” Scott said.

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  • Romney told Santos ‘You don’t belong here’ in tense exchange in House chamber before SOTU | CNN Politics

    Romney told Santos ‘You don’t belong here’ in tense exchange in House chamber before SOTU | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah told GOP Rep. George Santos of New York: “You don’t belong here,” according to a member who witnessed the tense exchange in the House of Representatives chamber Tuesday night.

    Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, made the remarks as he walked into the chamber for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

    After the speech, Romney told CNN he criticized Santos for standing in the front aisle “trying to shake hands” with the president and senators “given the fact that he’s under ethics investigation.”

    “He should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet instead of parading in front of the president and people coming into the room,” he said, noting that Santos may have responded to his remark but he “didn’t hear.”

    Santos posted on Twitter after the speech: “Hey @MittRomney just a reminder that you will NEVER be PRESIDENT!”

    Santos faces multiple investigations over his finances and repeated lies about his resume and biography. In November, he flipped a Democratic seat in a redrawn district, helping Republicans seize a narrow majority in the House.

    Santos, 34, has been caught lying about the schools he attended, his employment history and family background. Complaints with the Federal Election Commission have questioned whether he is a true source of more than $700,000 in loans he said he made to his 2022 campaign.

    Federal investigators are examining his finances, including allegations that Santos took $3,000 from a veteran’s dying dog’s GoFundMe campaign.

    The New York freshman is expected to face an investigation from the House Ethics Committee. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has so far not called on Santos to resign, even as some of his fellow New York Republicans have called on him to step down. Santos has voluntarily stepped down from two House committees even though McCarthy and his allies initially awarded him the spots.

    Romney said he’s disappointed McCarthy hasn’t called on Santos to resign.

    “He says he, you know, that he embellished his record. Look, embellishing is saying you got an A when you got an A-,” the senator said. “Lying is saying you graduated from a college that you didn’t even attend and he shouldn’t be in Congress.”

    “And they’re gonna go through the process and hopefully get him out. .. But he shouldn’t be there and if he had any shame at all, he wouldn’t be there.”

    On Tuesday, Santos told CNN he is “not concerned” about the House ethics probe or about New York constituents calling on him to resign.

    This story has been updated from an interview with Romney.

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  • Chinese spy balloons under Trump not discovered until after Biden took office | CNN Politics

    Chinese spy balloons under Trump not discovered until after Biden took office | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The transiting of three suspected Chinese spy balloons over the continental US during the Trump administration was only discovered after President Joe Biden took office, a senior administration official told CNN on Sunday.

    The official did not say how or when those incidents were discovered.

    The official said that the intelligence community is prepared to offer briefings to key Trump administration officials about the Chinese surveillance program, which the Biden administration believes has been deployed in countries across five continents over the last several years.

    Hear what Biden said after suspected Chinese spy balloon was shot down

    After the Biden administration disclosed last week that a suspected Chinese spy balloon was hovering over Montana, the Pentagon said that similar balloon incidents had occurred during the Trump administration. In response, former Trump administration Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CNN on Friday that he was “surprised” by that statement.

    “I don’t ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States,” he said.

    Former President Donald Trump also said on Truth Social this week that reports of Chinese balloons transiting the US during his administration were “fake disinformation.”

    John Bolton, a former national security adviser under Trump, also pushed back on the assertion that balloons surveilled the US during the former president’s tenure, asking, “Did the Biden administration invent a time machine? What is the basis of this new detection?” but added he would take a briefing from the current administration on the Trump-era balloon discoveries if it was offered to him.

    “The very fact, if it is a fact, that the Chinese tried this before, should have alerted us and should have caused us to take action before the balloon crossed into American sovereign territory,” Bolton said Monday on “CNN This Morning.”

    The Biden administration official now says the incidents were not discovered until after the Trump administration had already left. But the official did not say how those incidents were discovered or when.

    CNN reported on Sunday that the Pentagon had briefed Congress of previous Chinese surveillance balloons during the Trump administration that flew near Texas and Florida.

    Rep. Michael Waltz confirmed in a statement to CNN that “currently, we understand there were incursions near Florida and Texas, but we don’t have clarity on what kind of systems were on these balloons or if these incursions occurred in territorial waters or overflew land.”

    Another Chinese spy balloon also transited the continental US briefly at the beginning of the Biden administration, the senior administration official said. But the balloon that was shot down by the US military on Saturday was unique in both the path it took, down from Alaska and Canada into the US, and the length of time it spent loitering over sensitive missile sites in Montana, officials said.

    The senior administration official said that with regard to the balloon shot down on Saturday, the analysis into its capabilities is ongoing. But, the official added, “closely observing the balloon in flight has allowed us to better understand this Chinese program and further confirmed its mission was surveillance.”

    Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for not shooting the balloon down earlier after it was first noticed over Alaska on January 28. House Republicans are weighing the passage of a resolution this week condemning the Biden administration for its handling the balloon, CNN reported Sunday

    Over the weekend, Biden revealed he ordered the Pentagon to shoot the balloon down last Wednesday when he was first briefed on it hovering over Montana, but that he was advised by his military team to wait until the balloon was over water to minimize the risk posed to civilians and infrastructure. Shooting it down over water also maximized the possibility of recovering the payload – the equipment carried by the balloon that the US says was being used for surveillance – intact and able to be examined further by the US intelligence community, officials said.

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  • House Oversight chairman and former Twitter employees strike deal on subpoenas in exchange for testimony | CNN Politics

    House Oversight chairman and former Twitter employees strike deal on subpoenas in exchange for testimony | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has subpoenaed three former Twitter employees who will testify before the panel in relation to their investigation into Twitter’s decision to temporarily suppress a New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop, three sources familiar with the documents tell CNN.

    Twitter’s former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, former Deputy General Counsel James Baker and former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth requested they be subpoenaed in order to compel their testimony, the sources told CNN, given the legal complications of publicly sharing privileged information from Twitter before the committee.

    The hearing comes after Twitter’s CEO, Elon Musk, released some internal communications from Twitter staff about the decision to censor the New York Post story in the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential election campaign season.

    Comer, who met privately with Musk last month when the billionaire visited the Capitol, told CNN last week that the hearing may “incorporate some private conversations with some high-level people at Twitter” who support the belief that the US government may have played a role in the suppression of the New York Post story.

    When asked specifically if Musk has conveyed this sentiment to him, the Kentucky Republican told CNN: “I cannot answer that but that may come out in the hearing.”

    Comer’s belief that the government may have been involved in the suppression of the story is rooted in the so-called “Twitter files” that Musk made publicly available. Comer added his panel so far has only had access to the files that have been released publicly.

    “Americans deserve answers about this attack on the First Amendment and why Big Tech and the Swamp colluded to censor this information about the Biden family selling access for profit. Accountability is coming,” Comer said in a statement regarding the hearing.

    CNN has previously reported that allegations the FBI told Twitter to suppress the story are unsupported, and a half a dozen tech executives and senior staff, along with multiple federal officials familiar with the matter, all denied any such directive was given in interviews with CNN.

    Republicans on the panel are especially eager to grill Baker, who previously served as general counsel at the FBI during the investigation into whether former President Donald Trump had colluded with Russia. Baker joined Twitter just five months before the 2020 election.

    Gadde, Baker and Roth did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Landmark national security trial of Hong Kong democracy activists begins. Here’s what you need to know | CNN

    Landmark national security trial of Hong Kong democracy activists begins. Here’s what you need to know | CNN

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Some were seasoned politicians and veteran protest leaders. Others were academics, unionists and health care workers. They hailed from different generations and held a range of political views, but were brought together by what they say was a shared commitment to Hong Kong’s democratic future.

    Now, the “Hong Kong 47,” as the group of pro-democracy activists in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory has come to be known, will start appearing in court from Monday facing charges that could send them to prison for life.

    Sixteen of the defendants have pleaded not guilty to the charges laid against them and are expected to be the first ones to take the stand.

    Their alleged crime? Organizing and participating in an unofficial primary election that prosecutors have called a “massive and well-organized scheme to subvert the Hong Kong government.”

    This is Hong Kong’s largest national security law trial since Beijing imposed the sweeping legislation on the city following mass anti-government protests in 2019. The law criminalizes vaguely defined acts of secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces, all of which are punishable by life in prison.

    The landmark trial – the first involving subversion charges – is expected to run for weeks, but its implications could last for years or even decades in a city critics say is rapidly losing its political freedoms and autonomy.

    John Burns, emeritus professor at the University of Hong Kong, said the trial of the democrats is a “test of will” of Beijing’s capacity to completely wipe out organized opposition in Hong Kong.

    Burns said arresting the democrats and pressing charges against them was meant to both intimidate and eliminate the opposition, either by chasing them out of Hong Kong into exile or by jailing them.

    “It is a process of removing them. By shutting down political parties, shutting down trade unions, they are shutting down the basis of the support for organized opposition,” Burns said.

    The Hong Kong government has repeatedly denied such accusations. Instead, it insists the law has ended chaos and restored stability to the city.

    “Hong Kong prides itself on the rule of law; law enforcement agencies are duty-bound to take action against unlawful acts, regardless of the political background of the suspects. Arrests made are based on evidence and strictly in accordance with relevant laws and regulations,” the government said in a statement in response to the criticism.

    Here is what you need to know about the case:

    The 47 pro-democracy figures have been charged with “conspiracy to commit subversion” under the national security law over their alleged roles in an unofficial primary election in July 2020.

    The vote was held ahead of a legislative election to find out which contenders would be best placed to bid against pro-Beijing candidates.

    Such contests are held in democracies around the world, and involve political parties selecting the strongest candidates for an election. Hong Kong’s democrats had previously held such votes in an attempt to match the organization and discipline of the rival pro-Beijing camp and avoid splitting the opposition.

    Authorities, however, said the primary vote was a “vicious plot” intended to “paralyze the government and undermine state power” by winning a majority of seats and using the mandate to block legislation.

    The government’s Electoral Affairs Commission also responded that the “so-called” primaries were “not part of the electoral procedures of the Legislative Council Election or other public elections.”

    In January 2021, the 47 democrats were arrested en masse in a dawn raid. Since then, many have been remanded in custody or are in jail for other protest-related offenses. Fifteen have been granted bail under specific conditions.

    It is extremely rare for defendants not to be granted bail in Hong Kong under the common law system. However, the national security law stipulates that defendants cannot be granted bail unless the court is convinced they will “not continue to commit acts endangering national security.”

    A Department of Justice spokesman told CNN that bail application in cases concerning offenses “endangering national security” has been “handled fairly and adjudicated impartially by the court having regard to admissible evidence, applicable laws and merits of the case.”

    The cases will be heard without a jury, deviating from the common law tradition.

    The defendants include a wide variety of political activists who describe themselves as ranging from moderate democrats to radical localists, a movement that advocates Hong Kong’s independence from mainland China.

    Among the 16 pleading not guilty is former journalist Gwyneth Ho, 32, of the now-defunct Stand News, which was closed down after a police raid in 2021 and two editors were charged with sedition.

    Ho live-streamed the moment when assailants indiscriminately hit people – many of whom were returning from a pro-democracy march – with sticks and metal bars at a train station in July 2019. Ho’s footage of the incident made international headlines, sparking a probe into the lack of police presence. Ho was injured herself in the attack. She later stepped away from journalism to run for the 2020 Legislative Council elections.

    Gwyneth Ho seen working at her office in Hong Kong on August 4, 2020.

    Leung Kwok-hung, 66, nicknamed “Long Hair” for his signature locks, is a former legislator and retired civil servant. He had been on the front lines of the city’s politics for over two decades and is an outspoken critic of China. He’s known for political protests – both on the streets and inside the city’s legislative chamber. In 2017 he was disqualified from the legislature for refusing to take an oath swearing allegiance to China.

    Activist Leung Kwok-hung holds a placard that says

    Lam Cheuk-ting, 45, regularly joined street protests which at times escalated into clashes with police, and he was often seen negotiating with officers and asking them to stop using tear gas.

    He was sentenced to four months in prison in January 2020 for disclosing the personal information of individuals in a police investigation to the Yuen Long mob attack.

    Former pro-democracy lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting stands outside the Eastern Magistrates' Court on December 28, 2020.

    On the other hand, several prominent activists have pleaded guilty and await sentencing. They have either been detained under pre-trial custody or are serving jail time for other protest-related offenses.

    These include well-known activist Joshua Wong, 26, labeled an “extremist” by China’s state media, and Benny Tai, 54, a former law professor and co-founder of the 2014 Occupy Central movement. Claudia Mo, 66, a former journalist-turned-legislator, who has previously been an outspoken critic of Beijing’s tightening grip over Hong Kong, has also pleaded guilty.

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  • Buttigieg says he won’t seek US Senate seat in Michigan in 2024 | CNN Politics

    Buttigieg says he won’t seek US Senate seat in Michigan in 2024 | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Sunday he will not run for the open US Senate seat in Michigan in 2024, in his most direct answer to date ruling out a potential bid.

    “No,” Buttigieg said when asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” if he would seek to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

    Buttigieg had previously indicated he would not pursue the seat, citing his current focus on his job in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, but had stopped short of ruling it out altogether.

    “I’m planning to vote in that election as a resident of Michigan, but look, the job that I have is, first of all, I think, the best job in the federal government,” he told Tapper on Sunday.

    “This job is taking 110% of my time, and obviously I serve at the pleasure of the president. But as long as he is willing to have me continue doing this work, I’m proud to be part of this team,” Buttigieg added.

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

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

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

    Potential Democratic candidates for Stabenow’s seat include Reps. Elissa Slotkin and Debbie Dingell, and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who drew national attention last year in a floor speech pushing back against anti-LGBTQ attacks from a Republican colleague.

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  • Can any Republican beat Trump or DeSantis in 2024? | CNN Politics

    Can any Republican beat Trump or DeSantis in 2024? | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Polls show the 2024 Republican primary is a contest between former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and everybody else. The “everybody else” group includes candidates such as former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who look like they’re itching to get into the race despite only polling in the single digits.

    But if Trump and DeSantis are the front-runners, what is the chance one of these single-digits candidates (e.g., Haley or former Vice President Mike Pence) can actually win the nomination?

    It’s not nothing, but the odds clearly favor either Trump or DeSantis becoming the 2024 GOP nominee.

    Trump (polling in the low 40s) and DeSantis (in the low 30s) are each above 30% nationally on average, while no other candidate reaches double digits.

    Historically, only a few candidates have polled above 35%, on average, in early polling (i.e., January to June in the year before the primary) in the modern primary era (i.e., since 1972). Most of them have gone on to win the nomination.

    The two who didn’t are familiar to most political junkies: Democrats Ted Kennedy in 1980 and Hillary Clinton in 2008. The other six (not counting mostly unopposed incumbents) each ended up as their party’s nominee, meaning that 75% of candidates who were at 35% or above in early polling went on to win their primary.

    Importantly for this year, Kennedy and Clinton didn’t lose to candidates who were polling poorly in the early going. The eventual nominees (President Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Barack Obama in 2008) were both polling above 20% over the January to June period in the year before the primary.

    In fact, 40% of the eventual nominees in competitive primaries since 1972 were polling in the 20% to 35% range – a recent example is now-President Joe Biden back in 2019.

    Now, does this mean that anybody in this “everybody else” group (i.e., those polling in the single digits) is doomed from the start? Not exactly.

    For one thing, history doesn’t necessarily tell us what is going to happen in the future.

    Moreover, there have been single-digit candidates in the early polling who ended up winning the nomination. Trump was one of them. Remember, he struggled to reach 5% in early 2015 before gaining a national polling lead that he rarely relinquished over the rest of the primary season.

    Trump wasn’t the only candidate polling in the single digits early on to later win his party’s nod. George McGovern in 1972, Carter in 1976, Michael Dukakis in 1988 and Bill Clinton in 1992 all barely registered in the national polls in the January to June period before the primaries began.

    All told, five of the 17 candidates to win nominations without an incumbent running in the primary (i.e., 30% of them) were polling under 10% in the early polls.

    Nevertheless, single-digit candidates face a two-fold problem this cycle.

    The first is that most candidates poll below 10% in the early polls. So while it wouldn’t necessarily be shocking for a candidate from this group to ultimately win the nomination, the probability of any single candidate doing so is low. Historically, less than 5% of candidates polling in the single digits at this point actually win the nomination.

    The second is that it’s worth examining the years in which early single-digit candidates emerged as the eventual winners.

    Carter, Dukakis, Bill Clinton and Trump were all running in years in which there wasn’t a polling front-runner (or front-runners). The leading candidates in the national primary polls in each of those cycles were at 20% or less. The early polling leader in 1992 was New York Gov. Mario Cuomo (at 20%), and he ended up not running.

    There has been an exception, of course.

    McGovern won the Democratic nomination in 1972 when there were two candidates polling in the 20s and one in the low 30s in the early surveys of that primary. I’m not exactly sure how applicable the 1972 cycle is to 2024 given that was the first year of the modern primary era, when it wasn’t clear exactly how early-state momentum could dictate the nomination process. Even so, McGovern’s win is notable.

    Another notable polling ascent happened during the 1984 Democratic primary. Gary Hart didn’t get above 5% in the national polls in either the first or second half of 1983. The Colorado senator was far behind the eventual nominee (former Vice President Walter Mondale) who was polling in the 30s in the first half of 1983 and in the 40s in the second half of the year.

    While Mondale eventually emerged victorious, Hart finished close behind. The 1984 race (like potentially 2024, with DeSantis) featured another much-hyped candidate (Ohio Sen. John Glenn) who was polling above 20% in early polling. Glenn, of course, flamed out.

    Again, I’m not saying DeSantis is like Glenn. My belief is that the 2024 GOP nominee is likely going to be either DeSantis or Trump.

    But what I am saying is that while Trump or DeSantis are the odds-on favorites for the nomination, there is enough history of low-polling candidates later gaining traction to at least be open to the idea that a Haley, Pence or somebody else could, if nothing else, make things interesting come voting time.

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  • Opinion: Biden doesn’t throw away his shot | CNN

    Opinion: Biden doesn’t throw away his shot | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.



    CNN
     — 

    In Lord Byron’s satirical epic poem, “Don Juan,” the main character marvels at “the whole earth, of man the wonderful, and of the stars … of air-balloons, and of the many bars to perfect knowledge of the boundless skies — and then he thought of Donna Julia’s eyes.”

    The balloon from China floating eastward over the United States last week riveted the nation’s attention for a lot longer.

    At first, the enormous balloon, carrying a smaller substructure roughly the length of three city buses, seemed to symbolize America’s wide-open vulnerability to what the Pentagon described as surveillance from a rising power.

    But the downing of the balloon off the Carolinas Saturday gave President Joe Biden’s administration a way to unleash its fighter jets without any loss of life.

    “I told them to shoot it down,” said Biden, peering at reporters through his Ray-Ban aviators at a Maryland airport. Referring to his national security team, Biden added, “They said to me let’s wait till the safest place to do it.”

    The incident led to the abrupt postponement of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China and an apologetic statement from Beijing calling it a “civilian airship” that had “deviated far from its planned course.” The US Navy and Coast Guard are taking part in an effort to recover the aircraft. which may yield evidence of its true purpose.

    Some Republicans criticized the President for not shooting it down sooner. China called the downing of the balloon an “obvious overreaction” and said it “reserves the right” to act on “similar situations.”

    In May 1937, the golden age of transcontinental passenger airships came to a catastrophic end in roughly 30 seconds after a spark set the hydrogen fuel on the Hindenburg ablaze, killing 36. But balloons for other uses survived, and they remain a tool of surveillance, even in the era of spy satellites.

    “The question is whether China carefully considered the consequences of its actions,” wrote David A. Andelman. “Intentional or otherwise, if it was indeed monitoring air flows, their engineers might have suspected these weather phenomena would eventually take these balloons over the United States.”

    He pointed out that China has an enormous fleet of satellites which can surveil other nations. “Between 2019 and 2021, China doubled the number of its satellites in orbit from 250 to 499.”

    In the Washington Post, Sebastian Mallaby observed, “To understand how a balloon — at once menacing and farcically Zeppelin-retro — might become a defining image of the new cold war, consider how this alleged Chinese spy contraption captures both sides of the present moment. It is provocative enough to cause Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a much-anticipated trip to Beijing. It is clumsy enough to symbolize China’s immense capacity to blunder — a tendency that President Biden’s team has lately exploited, to devastating effect.”

    05 opinion cartoons 020423

    02 Marie Kondo tidying

    “It is not hard to tidy up perfectly and completely in one fell swoop,” Marie Kondo wrote in the 2011 book that sold more than 13 million copies worldwide and launched her career as a Netflix star and curator of “joy.”

    “In fact, anyone can do it.”

    It was an apt sentiment at a time when striving for perfection at home and at work was the norm, despite it being a sometimes soul-crushing aspiration — and one that began to vanish with the arrival of the pandemic in 2020.

    So it was understandable that people took notice when Kondo, who gave birth to her third child in 2021, recently said, “My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life.”

    As Holly Thomas wrote, “Her benign comment, while welcomed with relief in some circles, prompted a surprisingly febrile reaction in others. … Kondo’s success was built on tidying, and encouraging us to tidy in turn. Where was her loyalty to tidying? How dare she pivot out of her well-ordered lane after selling us a way to live?”

    But that’s the wrong way to look at it, Thomas added. “The discomfort … with Kondo’s personal rebrand demonstrates a rigidity that’s reflected across many areas of life. … On a more sinister level, there can be an implicit sense that once you’ve established a particular trait or activity as inherent to your identity, it is somehow greedy or unfaithful to try your hand at something new.”

    Jura Koncius wrote in the Washington Post, “Kondo, 38, has caught up with the rest of us, trying to corral the doom piles on our kitchen counters while on hold with the plumber and trying not to burn dinner. The multitasker seems somewhat humbled by her growing family and her business success, maybe realizing that you can find peace in some matcha even if you drink it in a favorite cracked mug rather than a porcelain cup.”

    The new Kondo might welcome a bill in Maryland that would provide tax breaks to companies that switch to four-day work weeks as a pilot project. “We are three years into a pandemic that upended work life (and life-life) as many of us knew it,” wrote Jill Filipovic. “We are living in an era in which out-of-work demands, most especially parenting and other forms of caregiving, are more extreme than ever. And we are living in a country that, unlike other nations, provides meager support as its people strive to balance it all…”

    “No wonder so many workers report being fed up and burned out. No wonder so many women, who continue to do the lion’s share of the nation’s parenting, drop out of the workforce.”

    03 opinion cartoons 020423

    The 2024 presidential campaign is just starting to come into focus. Former President Donald Trump has locked on to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the biggest threat to his campaign for the GOP nomination.

    Trump “mercilessly slammed DeSantis again … first at a South Carolina campaign rally and then in remarks to the media,” Dean Obeidallah noted. “On his campaign plane, Trump berated DeSantis as ‘very disloyal’ and accused him of ‘trying to rewrite history’ in recent pronouncements about Covid-19 policy in Florida.”

    If DeSantis enters the race, Obeidallah observed, “he’ll need to show the red meat-loving GOP base that he can punch back against Trump.”

    Yet Trump’s derisive nicknames for DeSantis haven’t stuck, as SE Cupp said. “I know we’re just getting started, but this Trump doesn’t seem to pack the punch that 2016 Trump did. … Maybe he’s lost his touch as he’s faced one political storm after the other.”

    Some other potential rivals are queueing up, with Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, planning to announce her candidacy on February 15 and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mulling a possible run.

    “Haley is a formidable candidate who brings the executive experience from her days as governor as well as the foreign policy experience from her time as ambassador,” wrote Gavin J. Smith, who worked in both the Trump administration and Haley’s executive office in South Carolina. “This experience, paired with her ability to bring people together, her background as a mom and a military spouse, and her track record of fighting the uphill battle of running against old White men — is exactly why she is the right candidate, at the right moment, for Republicans to rally behind as we look to win back the White House in 2024.”

    Mike Pompeo has lost 90 pounds on a diet and exercise regimen. He has a new book out that attacks the media and lambastes some of his Trump administration colleagues. “Based on a close reading of his book,” Peter Bergen wrote, “I bet he will take the plunge. Pompeo could be looking to benefit as Trump loses altitude among some Republicans, and at 59, Pompeo is a spring chicken compared with President Joe Biden and Trump, so if it doesn’t work out well this time around, he sets himself up for other runs down the road.”

    When Biden sums up the State of the Union Tuesday evening, the camera will reveal one change from last year, reflecting divided party control of Congress: Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy — rather than Nancy Pelosi — will be in the backdrop, alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, as Biden speaks from the House podium.

    David Axelrod, who served as a strategist and adviser to former President Barack Obama, has some advice for Biden: “Acknowledge the stress people feel, explain how you’ve tried to help but don’t tell them how great things are. Or worse, how great YOU are. You can’t persuade people of what they don’t feel — and will lose them if you try.”

    “Rather than claim his place in history, the President should paint the picture of where we’ve been and, even more important, where we’re going…”

    Biden met with McCarthy last week, as each staked out their positions on the coming battle over America’s debt limit.

    In 2011, Obama and GOP leaders in Congress narrowly averted a default in US debt payments. Republican Lanhee J. Chen pointed out that one of the people “who facilitated the 2011 deal was none other than Joe Biden. Now, many in Washington are trying to predict what might unfold over the next several months as the once-and-future dealmaker approaches yet another debt ceiling crisis — but this time as commander in chief.”

    “The current crisis presents an opportunity for moderates in both parties to unite around the need both to raise the debt ceiling but also to put in place lasting changes that will fundamentally improve America’s fiscal trajectory.”

    01 opinion cartoons 020423

    For CNN Politics, Zachary B. Wolf spoke with Robert Hockett, a Cornell University law professor, who argues that the President would have legal grounds to ignore the debt ceiling entirely. Moreover, Hockett disputed the notion that US government debt is on an unsustainable path: “When we measure a national debt, we look at it as a percentage of GDP. It’s much, much lower than the Japanese national debt is, for example, relative to Japanese GDP. And you don’t see anybody worrying about the integrity or the worthiness of the Japanese national debt or whether Japan’s economy can sustain its debt.”

    Following Biden’s speech on Tuesday, the new Arkansas governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, will give the GOP response. “The 40-year-old certainly provides a contrast to the 76-year-old former President Donald Trump by virtue of her age and gender,” wrote Julian Zelizer.

    But the Trump approach is still in the background, he added. “Sanders represents a new generation of Republicans eager to weaponize the same outrage machine with familiar talking points about the threats of immigration, the so-called radical left’s attacks on education, and an economy in shambles under Biden — while showing that they can govern without the self-defeating chaos and tumult that rocked the nation from 2017 to 2021.”

    For more on politics:

    Elliot Williams: I had a security clearance. It’s easier to lose classified documents than you think

    Frida Ghitis: The most important of George Santos’ secrets

    06 opinion cartoons 020423

    The death of a young man after a traffic stop and brutal police beating in Memphis cries out for a response to a national problem, wrote Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Tyre Nichols, who was laid to rest on Wednesday, was killed for driving while Black,” she wrote. “The former Memphis police officers fired for his killing will get an opportunity to defend themselves in court against the criminal charges, as they should. Nichols got no such opportunity…”

    “The question we should be asking now is, why are Black people stopped so often for traffic violations? Why are so many across the United States dying at the hands, or tasers or guns of police officers during these stops? And what can be done to change this horrific situation?”

    “Here’s one thing we know: Body cameras are not the answer. Body camera footage is not prevention; there was body camera footage of Nichols’ killing. It is evidence, not a prophylactic.”

    In the summer of 1966, when the young civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael “climbed onto the back of a truck with generator-powered lights below, he looked as though he had stepped onto a floodlit stage.” Carmichael lamented that after six years of shouting for freedom, “We ain’t got nothing. What we’re going to start saying now is ‘Black Power!’”

    Mark Whitaker, who wrote about that moment for CNN Opinion, is the author of a forthcoming book, “Saying It Loud: 1966 – The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement.”

    The day after Carmichael spoke, “a short Associated Press story describing the scene was picked up by more than 200 newspapers across America. Overnight, the Black Power Movement was born. … In 1966, the Black Power pioneers established the principle that all Black lives deserve to matter.”

    Florida’s governor is engaging in a bad faith attack on the College Board’s “proposed Advanced Placement African American Studies course, citing concerns about six topics of study, including the Movement for Black Lives, Black feminism and reparations,” wrote Leslie Kay Jones, assistant professor in the sociology department at Rutgers University. “Gov. Ron DeSantis said the course violates the so-called Stop WOKE Act, which he signed last year, and the state criticized the inclusion in the course of work by a number of scholars, including me.”

    “By villainizing CRT (critical race theory) and then representing African American Studies as synonymous with CRT, the DeSantis administration paved the way to convince the public that the accurate teaching of African American Studies as a field of research was a Trojan horse for teaching students ‘to hate.’ … I must ask where ‘hate’ is being stoked in African American Studies? Is it in the factual teaching that enslaved Black people were considered 3/5ths of a human being?”

    04 opinion cartoons 020423

    Manish Khanduri: ‘Blisters inside my blisters.’ Why we walked the entire length of India

    Lev Golinkin: Germany’s quiet betrayal of victims of the Holocaust

    Darren Foster: After 15 years of reporting on opioids, I know this to be true

    Joyce Davis: How Russia outmaneuvered the US in Africa

    AND…

    Judy Blume

    Young adult author Judy Blume is the subject of a new documentary, set to air in April on Amazon Prime. One of her books, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is the basis for a new film, also aimed for an April release.

    “To say Blume is widely loved would be an understatement, as the documentary shows,” wrote Sara Stewart. “It features interviews with some of the author’s more famous adoring fans, including Molly Ringwald, Samantha Bee and Lena Dunham. It also showcases her correspondence with now-adult women who wrote to Blume, initially, as teenagers — and she wrote back, beginning friendships that would last decades.”

    “All of these women speak about the ways Blume’s books changed them, made them feel seen and understood in a way that their parents often did not.” At a time when books touching the topics she covers are increasingly being banned in schools, Blume’s voice rings out.

    At 84, she “is still fighting the good fight,” wrote Stewart. At the Key West, Florida, bookstore Blume co-founded, “the shelves bear signs proclaiming, ‘We Sell Banned Books.’”

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  • Republicans elevate ‘parental rights’ as top issue while looking to outflank each other heading into 2024 | CNN Politics

    Republicans elevate ‘parental rights’ as top issue while looking to outflank each other heading into 2024 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential hopefuls have begun casting themselves as impassioned defenders of “parental rights,” turning schoolbooks and curricula, doctors’ offices, and sports leagues into a new political battleground as they work to distinguish themselves ahead of the 2024 GOP primary.

    The issue had already emerged as a major vein in the GOP bloodstream, emanating partly from the coronavirus pandemic, when school closures and vaccine mandates upended family routines and rankled vaccine-hesitant parents. But it took off after Republicans watched Glenn Youngkin defeat Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election following a campaign that placed “parents’ rights” at its center.

    While critics have denounced the theme of parents’ rights as oppressive, 2024 Republicans have nevertheless plowed ahead, seeking to one-up each other with provocative campaign pledges and legislative actions – the most obvious moves in recent weeks coming from former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    Several Republican governors – many with presidential ambitions – responded to Youngkin’s success by championing parental rights in their states, enacting bills that give parents and guardians unfettered access to school curricula, books and learning materials, and, in some instances, requiring school principals to review parental complaints about textbooks and lesson plans before they can proceed with using the material in classrooms. In some states, such as Texas, Florida and Iowa, parental permission is now needed to discuss certain topics with students. Other states, such as Georgia, have put parents and school communities in charge of vetting books their children could encounter at school for signs of race-related or sexual themes, appealing to conservatives who have voiced concerns about “radical” literature.

    But Republicans have also since turned parents’ rights into an umbrella term for a host of cultural issues. Declaring that parents deserve a say in what their children are taught, some GOP power players have pushed to end diversity and equity programs in public schools. Others have sought to restrict lessons about sexual orientation or gender identity. And some have looked to prevent schools from using a child’s preferred pronouns without parental permission.

    “We saw it with Youngkin’s race, and [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis has been playing it up for the last year. The issue has been building from Covid and extended to where we are now,” said Jennifer Williams, who in 2016 became the first openly transgender delegate to the Republican National Convention. Both DeSantis and Youngkin are said to be eyeing 2024 presidential campaigns.

    The sprint to get ahead on the issue is likely to play out over a combative presidential primary, while allies and advisers see it as an opportunity to appeal to a broader electorate if their candidate becomes the next GOP presidential nominee.

    “There are more parents than teachers, so it’s an easy equation. If you’re on the side of parents, that’s going to win you at the local level, and it’s going to win you at the national level,” said Keith Naughton, a longtime Republican consultant. Still, he also cautioned Republicans against “moving too far away from the consensus.”

    But public opinion around parental rights remains murky.

    A Quinnipiac poll released in February 2022 found that nearly 8 in 10 Americans considered efforts to ban books in schools and libraries purely political, versus 15 percent who said the efforts stemmed from content concerns. And as Republicans confront sensitive issues such as transgender rights while championing what they describe as parental empowerment, they could face similar political peril. A separate November poll by Marquette University Law School found that while a majority of Republicans (82%-18%) believed transgender athletes should be prohibited from participating in sports competitions – a topic the GOP has devoted much attention to in recent years – independent voters were nearly evenly split on the matter. The same survey showed that Republicans favored the 2020 Supreme Court decision that the 1964 Civil Rights Act bars employers from discriminating against gay and transgender workers by a 47-point margin, underscoring the political risks 2024 GOP hopefuls could encounter as they link LGBTQ rights to their parental rights push.

    Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, said Republicans are using the guise of parental rights “to eliminate people, history books and marginalized communities.”

    “This is not about parents. It’s a tactic that DeSantis found really whipped up his base in Florida and so [Republicans] are taking it out for a run to see how it does. Their goal, it seems, is that these politicians are trying to turn parents against each other and make classrooms a battleground so they can further their political ambitions,” Ellis said.

    GLAAD is expected to launch a messaging campaign in March that Ellis said will “fill the knowledge gap” that Republicans have “exploited.”

    “They tap into the worst anxieties of any parent,” said Ellis, a parent herself.

    Trump, currently the only declared candidate in the GOP presidential field, is one of several 2024 hopefuls who have elevated “parents’ rights” to new prominence as they work to curry favor with the party’s base.

    Trump pushed to create a “patriotic education” commission and ordered the federal government to end diversity trainings during his term in office, though much of his focus over the past two years has been on relitigating the 2020 election. Recently, though, he has refocused his attention on the kinds of cultural battles that have enabled some of his likeliest rivals – most notably DeSantis – to gain considerable popularity among Republican voters.

    In two straight-to-camera videos this week, Trump suggested that parents should select school principals through a “direct election” process and threatened to end federal funding for schools that teach “a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body” if he were to win another term.

    Even those who agreed with Trump’s proposals suggested he was playing catch-up with his fellow culture warriors – especially as he also went on the attack against DeSantis recently, calling the Florida governor “disloyal” and a “globalist RINO” in separate broadsides.

    “Obviously, DeSantis taking on Disney has shown a lot of leadership on this issue and frankly, I think it’s why Trump came out with his statements this week because in a lot of ways he sees himself running against DeSantis,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a social conservative activist who runs the Iowa-based Family Leader coalition. Vander Plaats was referring to the Florida governor’s push to strip the Walt Disney Company of its special governing powers after the company criticized his legislative efforts to restrict lessons on LGBTQ rights and gender identity in Florida classrooms.

    “Trump is saying, ‘How do I get to the right of DeSantis on this issue?’” Vander Plaats added.

    Allies of the former president rebuffed suggestions that he is taking cues from rivals rather than setting the agenda. They pointed to actions Trump took during his term in office to develop a counter-curriculum to the 1619 Project, an initiative launched by The New York Times to teach American students about slavery but which conservatives have decried as “propaganda.” And they cite the many instances in which Trump has condemned the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports, a topic he first weaved into his stump speech at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference and one that tends to draw some of the biggest applause lines at his campaign rallies.

    “This isn’t anything new,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. “On the school education stuff and critical race theory, he’s been talking about it since 2019 and 2020. And when he talks about gender ideology, he’s been mentioning that in his rallies, too.”

    “He’s a candidate now, and he’s focused on forward-looking policy proposals,” Cheung added.

    Some conservative activists who are still waiting to see how the 2024 primary field takes shape said Trump appears to be taking steps to ensure he isn’t outflanked by opponents on the issues that currently animate Republican base voters. Terry Schilling, executive director of the socially conservative American Principles Project, said Trump is “trying to play catch-up, but it’s good.”

    Referring specifically to Trump’s recently unveiled plan to curtail transgender rights, including ending medical treatments for transgender teens, Schilling suggested the former president was “making sure he’s the most conservative candidate on this issue.”

    “I think he’s just trying to ensure he doesn’t lose any ground or get outflanked. … It’s tough because DeSantis and Youngkin have actually been changing the policies on it, which is why I think he is going above and beyond … to kind of get a leg up,” Schilling said.

    A spokesman for DeSantis’ political operation declined to comment, but the Republican governor’s actions suggest he will not cede the issue by any stretch as he marches toward a potential campaign for president. This week, DeSantis released a 2023 budget framework that repeatedly emphasized the importance of “protecting parents’ fundamental rights,” nearly a year after he signed a “Parents Bill of Rights” into law that banned instructions on sexual orientation and gender identity to K-3 grade students.

    During the 2022 midterms, DeSantis took the unprecedented step of vetting, endorsing and campaigning for school board candidates, generating a wave of like-minded conservatives to carry out his agenda in districts across the state. Meanwhile, at DeSantis’ urging, a state medical board stacked with his appointees has effectively banned medication and surgeries for minors seeking gender transitions. DeSantis has decried such interventions as “chemical castration.”

    In leading these cultural clashes, DeSantis has become a superstar among highly engaged conservatives. He and his wife, Casey, were treated like rock stars at last year’s Tampa summit of Moms for Liberty, a group that mobilizes conservative matriarchs across the country, where he was heralded onstage as an “American hero” and a “shining light” for parents across the country who wish that “Ron would be their governor.” The Florida Republican was reelected to a second term in November by a 19-point margin, a victory he touted at a news conference earlier this week following a fresh round of attacks from Trump.

    Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, said parental rights weren’t on the forefront of minds during Trump’s first campaign in 2016 or when DeSantis first ran for governor in 2018. But DeSantis was among the first to recognize during the pandemic the parental angst around closed schools, mask mandates and an apprehension to ideological creep into the classroom, she said, and it has him well positioned when parental rights becomes “a litmus test for all candidates in 2024.”

    “He’s being rewarded already by having his colleagues and peers watching what he is doing and emulating him across the country,” Justice said. “Ron DeSantis stood up for parents when no one else was. I think he’s a leader that way, and parents across the country have recognized him for that.”

    Indeed, DeSantis’ actions have spawned copycat bills in statehouses across the country this year. The National Center for Transgender Equality is tracking 231 bills in state legislatures across the country that seek to curb transgender rights – 86 of which would restrict access to transgender care. In a sign of how swiftly Republicans have pivoted to this issue, as recently as 2019, not a single state legislature in the country was debating cutting off access to gender affirmation treatment or surgeries, said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the center.

    “If you rewind to 2018, this was not a political matter. There were no bills in statehouses. There were no presidential candidates talking about it. Transgender people were getting health care without a problem, and it was universally recognized as essential care by leading medical institutions,” Heng-Lehtinen said. “It was almost literally overnight we saw these bills pop up.”

    “And the places where we’ve seen the most aggressive actions against transgender people,” he added, “are in states where there’s a governor with all points suggesting they are seeking higher office.”

    Among those governors is Texas Republican Greg Abbott, whose administration has investigated parents of transgender teens for child abuse. In Iowa, where GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds already signed a bill to give parents and guardians more access to their children’s educational lives, lawmakers are now considering whether to ban instruction of sexual orientation or gender identity through eighth grade. Another potential 2024 Republican candidate, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, authored and signed a bill in 2022 that banned transgender women and girls from female scholastic sports, and in December her administration canceled a transgender advocacy group’s contract with the state’s Department of Health. There is also Youngkin, the term-limited Virginia governor who held a donor summit last fall to explore a possible presidential campaign and who recently rolled out a series of policy changes aimed at transgender students, one of which seeks to require parental sign-off for students who wish to use names or pronouns that diverge from what is listed on their official record.

    But not every Republican agrees with the policy fights being waged by the party’s potential presidential contenders as they aim to give parents more control over their childrens’ education.

    “When Youngkin and DeSantis do things like this, they aren’t taking into account the discrimination that can result,” said Williams, the former RNC delegate. “If parental rights are constantly about gender identity and critical race theory, it doesn’t seem to be about education. It seems to me it’s about making sure I can shield my kid from anything other than what I want them to know.”

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  • Democrats approve shake-up of 2024 calendar but it’s far from a done deal | CNN Politics

    Democrats approve shake-up of 2024 calendar but it’s far from a done deal | CNN Politics

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    Philadelphia
    CNN
     — 

    The Democratic National Committee on Saturday approved a plan to shake up the 2024 presidential primary calendar and demote longtime early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire, but significant questions remain about how the new order will be implemented.

    The new calendar upends decades of tradition in which Iowa and New Hampshire were the first two states to hold nominating contests and moves up South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan. President Joe Biden has argued the new nominating order would better reflect the diversity of the nation and the Democratic Party.

    But the party’s early nomination calendar, which was approved Saturday at the DNC’s winter meeting in Philadelphia, is facing opposition from some impacted states and could remain unsettled for months.

    Under the new calendar, South Carolina would hold the first primary on February 3, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on February 6, Georgia on February 13, and Michigan on February 27. Any state can hold a nomination contest starting March 5.

    The changes reflect longstanding concerns from party leaders that the previous calendar, which featured Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina in early voting, prioritized two states that are largely White and don’t represent the diversity of the party. Iowa has gone first in the nominating process since 1972, while New Hampshire has held the first primary in the process since 1920.

    “This calendar reflects the best of who we are as a nation, and it sends a powerful message all across the country,” DNC Chair Jaime Harrison said Saturday. 

    The calendar passed with overwhelming support. However, while the DNC sets the rules for the party’s nominating process, state governments (or state parties) ultimately set the dates of their contests, and New Hampshire and Georgia likely won’t be able to comply with the assigned dates.

    The chairs of the Iowa and New Hampshire Democratic parties objected to the calendar at Saturday’s meeting, noting that Democrats did not have the power in those states to unilaterally change their state laws. Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire control the office of the governor and both chambers of the state legislature.

    Rita Hart, the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, argued, “Iowa has been put in a position that makes it impossible to comply with both DNC rules and our own state law, which has exactly zero chance of being changed by the Republican legislature.”

    Hart said, “Democrats cannot forget about entire groups of voters in our part of the Midwest without doing significant damage to the party.”

    Ray Buckley, the chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said the DNC rules committee “knew that Republican leaders in the state would not bend to their will, and even knowing this, the RBC still decided that New Hampshire Democrats should be set up for failure,” referring to the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee.

    “Every vote matters in New Hampshire,” Buckley said. “Victories are determined by a small number of independent swing voters. Those voters are already being bombarded by the Republicans, who are saying that Democrats have abandoned New Hampshire.”

    New Hampshire has a state law that protects its first-in-the-nation primary status, while Georgia’s primary date is set by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and an early primary would open Peach State Republicans up to sanctions from their own national party.

    New Hampshire and Georgia now have until June to take steps toward scheduling their contests on the assigned dates. If they don’t, they won’t be able to hold primaries before March 5 without being penalized by the DNC.

    While Georgia would likely just hold its primary once any state is allowed to do so, a New Hampshire primary scheduled for “7 days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election,” as state law requires, could lead to delegate penalties for the state party.

    Additionally, any candidate who campaigns in or even has their name on the ballot in a noncompliant primary would be unable to receive delegates from that state and could face other penalties.

    Despite the implementation hurdles ahead, the calendar passed with overwhelming support, and several officials spoke in support of the new order. Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell, who has been a leading advocate for her state to join the early-voting calendar, gave a fiery speech Saturday in support of the proposal, saying it would reflect the diversity of the country.

    “We are overdue in changing this primary calendar to ensure it reflects the range of ideas, thoughts and hopes of Americans throughout this country,” Dingell said.

    While the Democratic rules drop New Hampshire from the second contest (and first primary) into a tie for the second primary, fellow longtime early state Iowa has been removed from the early set entirely.

    Like New Hampshire, Iowa is largely White, but it’s also far less politically competitive – then-President Donald Trump won it by 8 points in 2020 – and uses a complex and less accessible caucus format.

    Iowa’s early caucuses are also protected by state law, and then-Iowa Democratic Party Chair Ross Wilburn said in December that the party would follow that law when planning its contest while also pledging to reform the process.

    The other three early states shouldn’t have a problem complying with the new schedule. In South Carolina, each state party chair has the ability to set the date of their presidential primary. Nevada’s new date matches the one set by state law in 2021, and Michigan this week enacted a law to schedule their primary for February 27 (although the state legislature will have to end its session a few weeks early for it take effect in time).

    The calendar approved Saturday applies only to the Democratic party’s nominating process. Republican early-voting states will be unchanged from recent years, with Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

    “The [Republican National Committee] unanimously passed its rules over a year ago and solidified the traditional nominating process the American people know and understand,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement Saturday. “The DNC has decided to break a half-century precedent and cause chaos by altering their primary process, and ultimately abandoning millions of Americans in Iowa and New Hampshire.”

    The DNC changes could affect Republicans, especially in Michigan, where the new primary date violates national GOP rules. To avoid a delegate penalty, Michigan Republicans could use a party-run process at a later date.

    Ultimately, if Biden seeks a second term, he’s unlikely to face serious opposition, and the order of states would be largely irrelevant. However, the changes demonstrate that the party won’t be permanently attached to the traditional set of early states, and party leaders have already started to prepare to reexamine the schedule again after the 2024 election.

    In her speech, Dingell backed that idea: “No one state should have a lock. We do need to revisit this every four years.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • DeSantis feud with Disney enters new phase as Florida lawmakers announce special session next week | CNN Politics

    DeSantis feud with Disney enters new phase as Florida lawmakers announce special session next week | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Florida lawmakers will return to the state Capitol in Tallahassee next week to finalize their efforts to strip the Walt Disney Company of its special governing powers, the latest round of the yearlong feud between Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the entertainment giant.

    In addition to settling Disney’s future, lawmakers in the GOP-controlled legislature will also consider changes to two other contentious DeSantis priorities – Florida’s new election police force and the state’s migrant transport program – to address legal concerns that have stymied their full impact, according to communications sent to members Friday afternoon by state House and Senate leaders.

    The flurry of action will take place in a special legislative session beginning Monday – just weeks before lawmakers were scheduled to assemble for the state’s annual legislative session. Legislative leaders did not clearly explain why lawmakers were rushing to take on these matters in advance of their regularly scheduled meeting. But DeSantis has already begun to lay out an ambitious agenda for the 60-day regular session beginning in March that could serve as a platform for a potential 2024 presidential campaign announcement later this year.

    If all goes according to the plan from Republican leaders, it could mean a new era is forthcoming for the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the government body created in 1967 that effectively gives Disney, the state’s largest employer, control over the land in and around its central Florida theme parks. DeSantis put Reedy Creek in his sights last year after Disney’s then-CEO, Bob Chapek, publicly criticized a bill to restrict certain classroom instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity that the governor later signed into law. At DeSantis’ demand, lawmakers voted during a special legislative session last April to dissolve Reedy Creek in June 2023.

    But lawmakers left town without a plan to unwind a half-century of Disney control or for how to ensure Orange and Osceola county residents wouldn’t be on the hook for funding Reedy Creek services or its $1 billion in debt. Amid the fallout, Reedy Creek told its bondholders that Florida could not dissolve the district without assuming its debts.

    In the months since signing the bill to end Reedy Creek, DeSantis has repeatedly offered assurances that taxpayers wouldn’t have to pick up the tab.

    Speaking at a news conference earlier this week, DeSantis said it was his intention for the state to assume control of the district.

    “We’re not going to have a corporation controlling its own government; that’s going to be reverted to the state,” he said. “Disney will not have governing self-governing status anymore. We’re going to make sure that there are no special legal privileges … and then making sure they’re paying their fair share of taxes and paying the debt.”

    As of Friday afternoon, the legislative framework to accomplish that had not been filed with the state. A spokesman for DeSantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but House and Senate leaders said they were coordinating with the governor’s office.

    CNN has reached out to Disney’s corporate headquarters for comment.

    Florida lawmakers at the special session will also consider allowing the DeSantis administration to transport migrants from anywhere in the United States, a significant expansion of a program that gained national attention last year after Florida paid for two flights that carried migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. However, the program has stalled amid legal challenges over whether the DeSantis administration violated a state law limiting the transport to migrants from Florida.

    The change, if approved, could lift a significant legal hurdle that may allow the DeSantis administration to continue operating flights transporting migrants from border states to Democratic-leaning jurisdictions. The program appears to have gone dark since the September flights to Martha’s Vineyard. In his budget proposal released this week, DeSantis indicated that transporting migrants continues to be a priority of his immigration agenda, allocating $12 million for its continuation into 2024.

    According to a letter from Florida House Speaker Paul Renner’s office, the state House and Senate will consider giving DeSantis’ controversial new Office of Elections Crimes and Security the jurisdiction to prosecute crimes involving elections. The proposal comes after DeSantis initiated a crackdown on voter fraud that resulted in the arrest of 20 individuals but hit a legal snag when a judge dismissed a case against a Miami defendant on the grounds that state prosecutors had acted beyond their authority.

    The agenda for next week will reprise some of the most attention-grabbing actions from DeSantis’ first term as governor. The feud with Disney, the migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard and his new election force all thrust the Republican leader into the spotlight throughout 2022, garnering doting coverage from conservative media outlets and provoking widespread condemnation from Democrats in Florida and across the country.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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