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  • Sky-high Black turnout fueled Warnock’s previous win. Will Georgia do it again? | CNN Politics

    Sky-high Black turnout fueled Warnock’s previous win. Will Georgia do it again? | CNN Politics

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    Atlanta
    CNN
     — 

    Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young rode his scooter alongside Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, Martin Luther King III and a fervent crowd of marchers on a recent Sunday through a southwest Atlanta neighborhood. The group stopped at an early polling location to vote, forming a line with some waiting as long as one hour to cast their ballots.

    At the age of 90, Young says he is selective about public appearances but felt the “Souls to the Polls” event was one where he could motivate Black voters in Tuesday’s hotly contested US Senate runoff between Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker – a historic matchup between two Black men.

    Community leaders and political observers say the Black vote has consistently played a pivotal role in high-stakes races for Democrats, including in 2021, when Warnock defeated then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a runoff. Black voters likely to cast a ballot are near unanimous in their support for the Democrat (96% Warnock to 3% Walker), according to a CNN poll released last week that showed Warnock with a narrow lead.

    A second runoff victory for Warnock could once again hinge on Black voter turnout in a consequential race. If Warnock wins, it would give Democrats a clean Senate majority – one that doesn’t rely on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote and allows Majority Leader Chuck Schumer more control of key committees and some slack in potentially divisive judicial and administrative confirmation fights.

    Voting, Young said, is the “path to prosperity” for the Black community. He noted that Atlanta’s mass transit system and economic growth have been made possible by voters.

    “Where we have voted we have prospered,” Young said.

    The rally led by Young, King and Warnock seems to have set the tone for many Black voters in Georgia. Early voting surged across the state last week with long lines reported across the greater Atlanta area. As of Sunday, more than 1.85 million votes had already been cast, with Black voters accounting for nearly 32% of the turnout, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. The early voting period, which was significantly condensed from 2021, ended on Friday.

    Billy Honor, director of organizing for the New Georgia Project Action Fund, said the Black turnout so far looks promising for Democrats.

    “When we get Black voter turnout in any election statewide that’s between 31 and 33%, that’s usually good for Democrats,” Honor said. “If it’s between 27 and 30%, that’s usually good for Republicans.”

    Honor added: “This has an impact on elections because we know that if you’re a Democratic candidate, the coalition you have to put together is a certain amount of college-educated White folks, a certain amount of women overall, as many young people as you can get to turn out – and Black voters. That’s the coalition. (Former president) Barack Obama was able to smash that coalition in 2008 in ways we hadn’t seen.”

    Young said he believes that Black voters are more likely to show up for runoff elections, which historically have lower turnout than general elections, when the candidate is likeable and relatable.

    Warnock is a beloved figure in Atlanta’s Black community who pastored the church once led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He grew up in public housing and relied on student loans to get through college.

    Young said Warnock’s story is inspiring.

    “He is an exciting personality, he’s a great preacher,” Young said. “He speaks from his heart and he speaks about how he and his family have come up in the deep South and developed a wonderful life.”

    Young said some Black voters may also be voting against Walker, who has made a series of public gaffes, has no political experience and has a history of accusations of violent and threatening behavior.

    Last week’s CNN poll showed that Walker faces widespread questions about his honesty and suffers from a negative favorability rating, while nearly half of those who back him say their vote is more about opposition to Warnock than support for Walker.

    Views of Warnock tilt narrowly positive, with 50% of likely voters holding a favorable opinion, 45% unfavorable, while far more likely Georgia voters have a negative view of Walker (52%) than a positive one (39%).

    Still, Walker is famous as a Heisman Trophy-winning football star from the University of Georgia. And among the majority of likely voters in the CNN poll who said issues are a more important factor to their vote than character or integrity, 64% favor Walker.

    He campaigned on Sunday with, among others, GOP Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, one of just three Black senators currently serving in the chamber. Scott tried to tie Warnock to President Joe Biden – who, like former President Donald Trump, has steered clear of the Peach State – and reminded voters in Loganville of the GOP’s losses in the 2021 runoffs.

    At the event, which began with prayers in Creole, Spanish and Swahili from speakers with Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, Walker encouraged getting out to vote more than he typically does.

    “If you don’t have a friend, make a friend and get them out to vote,” Walker said.

    Back at the “Souls to Polls” march, some Black voters said they were excited to show up and cast their early votes in the runoff race.

    Travie Leslie said she feels it is her “civic duty” to vote after all the work civil rights leaders in Atlanta did to ensure Black people had the right to vote. Leslie she does not mind standing in line or voting in multiple elections to ensure that a quality candidate gets in office.

    “I will come 12 times if I must and I encourage other people to do the same thing,” Leslie said Thursday while at the Metropolitan Library polling location in Atlanta. “Just stay dedicated to this because it truly is the best time to be a part of the decision making particularly for Georgia.”

    Martin Luther King III credited grassroots organizations for registering more Black and brown voters since 2020, when Biden carried the state, and mobilizing Georgians to participate in elections.

    Their work has led to the long lines of voters in midterm and runoff races, King said.

    King said he believes Warnock also appeals to Black voters in a way that Walker does not.

    “Rev. Warnock distinguishes himself quite well,” King said. “He stayed above the fray and defined what he has done.”

    The Black vote, he said, is likely to make a difference in which candidate wins the runoff.

    “Black voters, if we come out in massive numbers, then I believe that on December 6 we (Democrats) are going to have a massive victory,” King said.

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  • Midwestern Democrat voices concern over Iowa possibly losing front-runner status on 2024 calendar | CNN Politics

    Midwestern Democrat voices concern over Iowa possibly losing front-runner status on 2024 calendar | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois voiced concerns Sunday with Iowa potentially losing its status as the first state to vote in the presidential nominating process following a proposal by President Joe Biden to reshape the 2024 calendar.

    The rule-making arm of the Democratic National Committee voted Friday voted to approve a plan that would make South Carolina the first state to hold a primary, followed by other early-voting states of Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia and Michigan. The proposal needs to be approved at a full DNC meeting, and states will still need to set their own primary dates.

    Such a shake-up would strip Iowa of the first-in-the-nation status it has held since 1972.

    Bustos, who is from the Quad Cities area that includes both Iowa and Illinois and represents a district that borders the Hawkeye State, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” that the “bad” part of the proposal starts with the economic impact it would have on Iowa.

    “The other thing is, do you think a presidential candidate is going to care about ethanol? Or care about farm country as deeply as they do now because Iowa was always that first state for the caucuses?” said Bustos, who is retiring next month after five terms in the House.

    “So that’s the kind of thing that concerns me. I’ve got close to 10,000 family farms in the congressional district I represent. So it’s more about: What issues are going to take a back seat because of this? That is a concern I have,” she added.

    GOP Strategist: If we nominate Trump, Biden will probably win re-election

    Asked by Tapper if Biden was “stabbing the Midwest in the back” with the proposed change to Iowa’s status, Bustos said he wasn’t, pointing to the inclusion of Michigan, a Midwestern state that she said “better exemplifies the make-up of our country.”

    Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status came under scrutiny after the chaos of the 2020 Iowa caucuses received widespread backlash. Additionally, there has been pressure on the Democratic side to oust Iowa from its top slot because it is largely White and no longer considered a battleground state.

    But enacting the new dates on the 2024 Democratic nominating calendar could prove a steep challenge, as primary dates are set at the state level and each state has a different process.

    Lawmakers in Iowa have also made their displeasure with the proposal clear. The state’s junior senator, Republican Joni Ernst, told Fox News on Sunday that “Democrats have really given middle America the middle finger.”

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  • Trump’s call to terminate the Constitution is a fantasy, but it’s still dangerous | CNN Politics

    Trump’s call to terminate the Constitution is a fantasy, but it’s still dangerous | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s call for the termination of the Constitution is his most extreme anti-democratic statement yet and seems oblivious to the sentiments of voters who rejected election deniers in the midterm elections.

    It may also reflect desperation on the part of the former president to whip up controversy and fury among his core supporters in order to inject some energy into a so-far lackluster 2024 White House bid.

    Trump’s comments on his Truth Social network – which should be easy for anyone to condemn – are exposing the familiar moral timidity of top Republicans who won’t disown the former president. But his latest tirade also plays into the arguments of some Republicans now saying that it’s time to move on from Trump’s fixation with the 2020 election.

    And while it is far too early to write off his chances in the 2024 GOP nominating contest, Trump’s behavior since announcing his third presidential bid also suggests his never-ending quest to shock and to fire up his base now means going so far right he ends up on the extremist fringe and almost in self-parody. In the short time he’s been a candidate, he’s expressed support for rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and dined with a White nationalist Holocaust denier.

    Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for Georgia’s Secretary of State Office, chuckled at the incredulity of Trump’s claim about the Constitution when it was described by CNN’s Pam Brown on Saturday.

    “It’s ridiculous, it’s insane, to suspend the Constitution. Come on man, seriously?” said Sterling, a Republican who helped oversee Georgia’s election in 2020, when President Joe Biden carried the state. “I think more and more Republicans, Americans are saying, ‘Ok I am good, I am done with this now, I’m going to move on to the next thing.’”

    The most immediate question raised by Trump’s latest controversy is what it says about a presidential campaign that has been swallowed up by one far-right authoritarian sideshow after another.

    Far from barnstorming the nation, making a case on the economy, health care and immigration or outlining a program for the future, Trump has given comfort to zealots and insurrectionists.

    He hosted Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago last month, at a time when the rapper now known as Ye is in the middle of a vile streak of antisemitism and praising Adolf Hitler. The far-right Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes was at also at that dinner. Trump claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was but the former president still hasn’t criticized his ideology. Last week, Trump, in a fundraising video, praised the mob that invaded the Capitol in the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, again promoting violence as an acceptable response to political grievances.

    His social media assault on the Constitution appears to be proving the point of the House select committee probing January 6, which has portrayed him as a clear and present danger to American democracy and met on Friday to consider criminal referrals to the Justice Department.

    Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee, tweeted on Sunday: “No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution.” Trump’s latest wild social media post could even deepen his legal exposure as the Justice Department seeks evidence of his mindset as it investigates his conduct before the attack on the Capitol.

    Trump’s doubling down on authoritarianism also follows a moment when much of the country, at least in crucial swing states, rejected his 2020 election denialism and anti-democratic chaos candidates he picked for the midterms – with a final test on Tuesday in Georgia’s Senate runoff. It appears to make it even more unlikely that the ex-president, even if he wins the Republican nomination, will be the kind of candidate who could win among the broader national electorate. After all, his message failed in two consecutive elections in 2020 and 2022. And even in the wilder reaches of the GOP, which Trump has dominated since 2015, a call to simply trash the Constitution might seem a stretch – and reflect the former president’s increasing distance from reality.

    One could argue that the most prudent response to Trump’s latest radical rhetoric might be to ignore it and his bid for publicity.

    But even if his idea of crushing the Constitution looks far-fetched, his behavior needs to be taken seriously because of its possible future consequences.

    That’s because Trump remains an extraordinarily influential force in the Republican Party. His acolytes hold outsized power in the new House majority set to take over in January, which they plan to use as a political weapon to promote his restoration in the White House. GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is appeasing this group in an increasingly troubled campaign for speaker. The California Republican also last week shielded Trump over criticism of the Fuentes dinner, saying that while such a person had no place in the party, Trump had condemned him four times – a false claim.

    Furthermore, in an electoral sense, the theory that Republican voters may be willing to move on from Trump – and to find a candidate who may reflect “America First” populism but not dine with antisemites – has not yet been tested. Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen are still broadly accepted among GOP voters – only 24% of whom believe that Biden legitimately won in 2020, according to midterm election exit polls.

    And a GOP primary that includes multiple candidates competing with Trump for the presidential nomination could yet again splinter the vote against the former president and allow him to emerge at the top of a mostly winner-take-all delegate race, a vote that would put a prospective authoritarian who has already tried to dismantle the US system of democracy one step from a return to power.

    Ignoring or downplaying public evidence of extremism and incitement only allows it to become normalized. There is already proof that the ex-president’s rhetoric can cause violence – after he told his supporters to “fight like hell” to save their country on January 6. And the rhetoric of people like West and Fuentes, with whom Trump has associated, risks normalizing odious forces in society that will grow if they are not challenged. Fuentes, after all, has appeared with Republican lawmakers like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – an increasingly influential voice in the House GOP conference.

    Years of norm crushing and acceptance of extremists by the twice-impeached former president never convinced the party to purge him or his views. Were it not for principled, conservative Republicans like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Trump’s election-stealing effort might have worked in 2020.

    As they work through an intense lame-duck session of Congress, Republican lawmakers are, for the umpteenth time, going to be asked this week about the tyrannical attitudes of the front-runner for their party’s presidential nod.

    One newly elected Republican, Michael Lawler – who picked up a Democratic-held House seat critical to the slim GOP majority – stood up for the Constitution on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

    “The Constitution is set for a reason, to protect the rights of every American. And so I certainly don’t endorse that language or that sentiment,” Lawler told Jake Tapper. “I think the former president would be well-advised to focus on the future, if he is going to run for president again.”

    Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, said he “vehemently” disagreed with Trump’s statement and said his dinner with West and Fuentes was “atrocious” and that voters would take both incidents into consideration.

    But a fellow Ohio Republican, Rep. David Joyce, demonstrated the characteristic reluctance of members of his party to confront an ex-president who remains hugely popular among its grassroots. Regarding the threat to the Constitution, Joyce said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, “You know he says a lot of things but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen,” adding that it was important to separate “fact from fantasy.”

    Joyce didn’t directly condemn Trump’s rhetoric and said he would support whomever the Republican Party nominates in 2024. The fact that Republicans are open to a potential president – who would be called upon to swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution but who has already called for its termination – speaks volumes about how much the GOP is still in Trump’s shadow.

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  • Opinion: How the Democrats’ Iowa caucuses self-destructed | CNN

    Opinion: How the Democrats’ Iowa caucuses self-destructed | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Laura Belin is the primary author at the website Bleeding Heartland. She has been covering Iowa politics since 2007. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    The Democratic National Committee’s overhaul of the presidential nominating calendar will create many challenges for Iowa Democrats, who are already at a low point following another disappointing election cycle.

    The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted Friday to recommend a schedule that removes Iowa from the small group of early primary states. The full DNC will vote on the calendar in January; while some tweaks are possible, it’s nearly certain the Iowa caucuses won’t be in the mix.

    I grew up in Iowa with the luxury of seeing presidential candidates up close and have enjoyed attending precinct caucuses since I was 18 years old in 1988. But as painful as it is for fans of the caucuses to accept, the DNC has valid reasons to start the presidential campaign elsewhere.

    Although Iowa was a bellwether state for six straight presidential elections and voted twice to elect Barack Obama, five of the last seven general elections have been Republican landslides here.

    It’s one thing to experience a red wave when the same thing is happening nationwide, as in 2010 and 2014. It’s another for Iowa Democrats to lose up and down the ballot last month — including in many onetime strongholds — when the party’s candidates exceeded expectations in many other states.

    Next year, Iowa will have no Democrats in our congressional delegation for the first time since 1956, only one Democratic statewide elected official for the first time since 1982 and the smallest Democratic state legislative caucuses in decades.

    Granted, South Carolina (which would supplant Iowa on the DNC’s new calendar) is not a swing state either. But moving that state ahead will give Black Democrats a bigger role in choosing a nominee, which is overdue.

    As critics of the current calendar have noted for years, the electorates of Iowa and New Hampshire are much less diverse than the US population and bear little resemblance to the Democratic Party’s base.

    Moreover, President Joe Biden and others, notably former presidential candidate Julián Castro, have rightly pointed out that it is much more difficult to participate in a caucus than a primary election.

    Iowa Democrats didn’t do enough to make our caucus system more accessible and transparent before the last couple of presidential election cycles. Party leaders dismissed most calls for serious reform, instead choosing a united front with New Hampshire.

    The party altered the system in 2020, creating a paper trail and reporting raw supporter totals for the first time. But Iowans who wanted to help select a presidential nominee still needed to be in a specific place and time for an hour or more on a cold winter night. No early voting, no absentee voting, no proxy voting.

    The massive problems with reporting the 2020 caucus results after a mobile app malfunctioned further damaged Iowa’s case for remaining first.

    Iowa Democratic leaders proposed bigger changes this year, including “presidential preference cards” that could be mailed before caucus night. The complicated “realignment” process, which sometimes produced screwy delegate math, would have been eliminated as each caucusgoer selected one presidential contender. It was too little, too late.

    Losing the early state slot will make it harder for Iowa Democrats to rebuild. For decades, presidential candidates have helped the party identify supporters and recruit volunteers. Old-timers will tell you Tom Harkin’s first US Senate campaign in 1984 got a big boost from the organizing that preceded that year’s Democratic caucuses.

    Presidential candidates have headlined fundraisers for numerous down-ballot candidates and local party groups in the early states. Their campaigns have paid large sums directly to the Iowa Democratic Party for access to the voter file or tickets to large “cattle call” events. All of that is going away now.

    Financial considerations aside, Iowa’s 2024 Democratic candidates will find it harder to qualify for the ballot without thousands of caucusgoers signing their nominating petitions as they attend their neighborhood caucuses.

    Meanwhile, Iowa GOP candidates and party organizations will continue to enjoy the old ways as presidential hopefuls generate local enthusiasm and boost attendance at events throughout the coming year.

    Republicans, including Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, already are portraying the DNC’s decision as an insult not only to all Iowans but also to all Americans outside urban areas. Gov. Kim Reynolds tweeted, “Democrats have abandoned rural America and denied everyday Iowans a voice in the presidential nominating process.”

    Iowa law requires our state’s precinct caucuses to take place “at least eight days earlier” than the scheduled date for any other state’s caucus or primary in the presidential nominating process. Republicans who control the Iowa Legislature have no interest in changing that law, especially since the GOP is preserving our state’s first-in-the-nation status.

    Iowa Democratic Party Chair Ross Wilburn confirmed last week that Democrats will follow state law “and address compliance with DNC rules” later. So the party will hold caucuses in early 2024 to select delegates to county conventions and members of various party committees.

    But those caucuses will have no broader significance. While more than 100,000 Republicans show up to support their favorite presidential candidate, only hard-core Democratic activists will attend.

    Serious presidential candidates will avoid campaigning here, so as not to lose delegates under the DNC’s new rules, which would penalize contenders who have staff, run ads or give speeches in unsanctioned early states. Iowa will lose half the state’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention as well.

    As Iowa Democrats prepare for life after the caucuses as we know them, they should seek inspiration from state parties that never received the money and attention that comes with being first.

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  • Sen. Sherrod Brown says Ohio is still a swing state ahead of 2024 election | CNN Politics

    Sen. Sherrod Brown says Ohio is still a swing state ahead of 2024 election | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio said Sunday that “of course” the Buckeye State was still a swing state, brushing off concerns about a 2024 reelection bid after Republican J.D. Vance won the state’s other Senate seat last month.

    “I’m not worried. … I know it’s a challenge always, but I’m going about doing my job,” Brown told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

    Vance’s Senate win over Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan continued a long line of Republican victories in a state that has tilted toward the party in recent years. Other than Brown, no Democrat has won a nonjudicial statewide office in the state since 2008, and former President Barack Obama was the last Democratic presidential nominee to win the state, doing so in 2012.

    But Brown, a liberal populist, has found success in Ohio with a progressive message. In 2019, he explored a presidential bid through a “listening tour” that included stops in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, the four key early-voting states in the 2020 primary, before deciding against a run. He is expected to seek a fourth term next year.

    “Not many people thinking about the 2024 election. I’ll do my job,” Brown said Sunday. “We’ll see how that goes.”

    Brown, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, also said he believed the US is on the “right track” to bring inflation down, and he defended Congress’ role in protecting Americans investing in cryptocurrency following the implosion of FTX, the multi-billion-dollar crypto exchange.

    Soon after FTX went down, crypto firms were inundated by requests from customers seeking to claw their money back – the crypto equivalent of a run on the bank. Several firms have been forced to suspend withdrawals while they sort out their liquidity problems.

    “To say Congress has done nothing is not quite accurate. We’ve done a series of hearings exposing the problems with crypto, the problems for consumers, the problems for our economy here and the problems internationally for their national security,” Brown said. “We will continue that.”

    “I would love to do something legislatively. I don’t know that Congress is capable of that because of crypto’s hold on one political party in the Senate and the House,” he added, referring to the GOP.

    “But we’re trying every day.”

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  • Republican John Duarte wins open House seat in California after Democrat concedes | CNN Politics

    Republican John Duarte wins open House seat in California after Democrat concedes | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democrat Adam Gray conceded on Friday night to Republican John Duarte in the open-seat race to represent California’s 13th Congressional District, the final House race of the 2022 midterms to be called.

    “While I had hoped for a different outcome, I accept the results and have called to congratulate my opponent, John Duarte,” Gray, a state assemblyman, said in a statement posted to Twitter.

    With Duarte’s win in the Central Valley district, Republicans are projected to hold a slim majority in the House of Representatives next year, with 222 seats.

    Democrats are projected to win 213 seats in this year’s midterms, but the recent death of Virginia Democrat Donald McEachin just weeks after he won reelection means they are expected to start the new Congress with one fewer seat. McEachin’s seat will remain vacant until a special election is held.

    The House seat counts by both parties following the midterm elections is reminiscent of the totals after the 2020 election – in reverse. House Democrats won 222 seats in 2020 to 213 for the Republicans.

    Incoming House Republicans’ slim majority has prompted internal questions within the party about whether GOP leader Kevin McCarthy will have the necessary 218 votes needed to secure the House speakership in January.

    McCarthy has expressed confidence, insisting that he has enough votes. But conservative hard-liners seeking to plot the California Republican’s ouster say otherwise.

    No other Republican has declared their candidacy for the speaker’s post, but McCarthy’s foes say another candidate will emerge and that talks have already begun to recruit a replacement.

    Republicans will now hold 12 House seats from California next year, up one from their current 11 seats. California Democrats will hold 40 seats, down two from their current total. The state lost a seat in reapportionment following the 2020 census.

    Five of the 12 California districts Republicans will hold next year would have backed now-President Joe Biden in 2020. They include the seat won by Duarte, which Biden would have carried by 11 points.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Former Trump White House counsel and his deputy testify to Jan. 6 criminal grand jury | CNN Politics

    Former Trump White House counsel and his deputy testify to Jan. 6 criminal grand jury | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone and deputy counsel Patrick Philbin testified to a federal grand jury for several hours in Washington, DC, on Friday, indicating the Justice Department had compelled the men to answer more questions in the January 6, 2021, criminal investigation despite challenges from Donald Trump’s legal team.

    The January 6 grand jury activity is the latest indication the investigation – now led by special counsel Jack Smith – has pushed in recent months to unearth new details about direct conversations with the former president and advice given to him after the election.

    Cipollone was first seen entering the grand jury area with his attorney, Michael Purpura, before 9 a.m., and he was there for more than five hours. Purpura has not responded to requests for comment. The grand jury proceedings themselves are confidential.

    Philbin, whom Purpura also represents, headed into the grand jury area just before the lunch hour on Friday, staying until about 4 p.m.

    Thomas Windom and Mary Dohrmann, prosecutors in the January 6 investigation who are now to be led by Smith, were also seen walking in with Cipollone.

    The investigators are looking at efforts to obstruct the transfer of power at the end of Trump’s presidency and have obtained testimony from several administration advisers closest to the former president after the election and as the Capitol was attacked by his supporters.

    CNN previously reported that Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court, who oversees the federal grand juries in Washington, ordered Cipollone and Philbin to provide additional grand jury testimony this month, following up on their testimony in the fall. The judge has repeatedly rejected Trump’s privilege claims in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to people briefed on the matter.

    Philbin and Cipollone were both key witnesses to Trump’s actions in the last days of his presidency. Cipollone repeatedly pushed back on efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and according to a Senate Judiciary Committee report, he and Philbin opposed a proposal to replace the attorney general with someone willing to look into false claims of election fraud.

    Previously, the Justice Department compelled top advisers from Vice President Mike Pence’s office to testify to the grand jury. They had sought to protect Pence in January 2021 from Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the election.

    Earlier this week, Trump White House official Stephen Miller, who worked with Trump on his speech at the Ellipse, had his own day before the grand jury.

    On Thursday, another leg of Smith’s special counsel investigation – into the handling of documents at Mar-a-Lago after the presidency – was active in the courthouse. At least one Mar-a-Lago prosecutor was working in the secret grand jury proceedings, as three aides to Trump, Dan Scavino, William Russell and Beau Harrison, each appeared, according to sources familiar with them. Their attorney declined to comment.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Biden proposes South Carolina as first primary state in drastic shake up of presidential nominating calendar | CNN Politics

    Biden proposes South Carolina as first primary state in drastic shake up of presidential nominating calendar | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden has asked Democratic National Committee leaders to drastically reshape the 2024 presidential nominating calendar and make South Carolina the first state to host a primary, followed by Nevada and New Hampshire on the same day a week later, Georgia the following week and then Michigan, a source confirms to CNN.

    Biden’s preferences were announced Thursday evening at a dinner for members of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee by committee co-chairs Jim Roosevelt, Jr. and Minyon Moore. The committee is set to meet Friday and Saturday in Washington and is poised to propose a new presidential nominating calendar.

    Biden’s expression of his preferences will play a significant role in the process. A DNC source said his elevation of South Carolina to the first-in-the-nation primary has sparked significant debate as members meet Thursday night. But with Biden’s support, this proposal is likely to ultimately gain the support of the committee, though this person emphasized that nothing is final until the votes are held.

    If the DNC ultimately adopts this calendar, it would be an extraordinary shake up of the existing order and would strip Iowa of the first-in-the-nation status that it has held since 1920. Iowa has traditionally gone first, followed by New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. It would also add a fifth state to the slate before Super Tuesday (the first Tuesday in March) and elevate Georgia and Michigan as early nominating states for the first time.

    South Carolina’s primary would be held on February 6, Nevada and New Hampshire would have their contests on February 13, Georgia’s primary would be on February 20 and Michigan’s would be on February 27, according to the source.

    Biden had also sent a letter to DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee members on Thursday laying out what he believed should be guiding principles for the committee as it discusses the calendar.

    “Just like my Administration, the Democratic Party has worked hard to reflect the diversity of America – but our nominating process does not,” the president’s letter reads. “For fifty years, the first month of our presidential nominating process has been a treasured part of our democratic process, but it is time to update the process for the 21st century. I am committed to working with the DNC to get this done.”

    The president wrote: “We must ensure that voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process and throughout the entire early window. As I said in February 2020, you cannot be the Democratic nominee and win a general election unless you have overwhelming support from voters of color – and that includes Black, Brown and Asian American & Pacific Islander voters.

    “For decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic Party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process,” he continued. “We rely on these voters in elections but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar. It is time to stop taking these voters for granted, and time to give them a louder and earlier voice in the process.”

    Biden said in the letter the Democratic Party should abolish caucuses, arguing they are “inherently anti-participatory” and “restrictive.”

    The Washington Post was first to report on the president’s preferred order for the nominating calendar and the letter he sent to committee members.

    The DNC earlier this year approved a plan to prioritize diverse battleground states that choose to hold primaries, not caucuses, as it considers which states should hold early contests. Beyond the tumult of the 2020 caucuses, Iowa is largely White, no longer considered a battleground state and is required by state law to hold caucuses.

    “There’s very little support for Iowa because they don’t fit into the framework and because of the debacle of 2020. There’s a lot of emotional momentum – it’s not unanimous – but there’s a lot of emotional momentum to replace Iowa with a state that is more representative, more inclusive and instills more confidence and is a battleground state,” one DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee member told CNN.

    Any new proposal by the committee would have to be approved at a full DNC meeting, which will take place early next year. If a new schedule is adopted, it would be the first changes made to the Democratic nominating calendar since 2006, when Nevada and South Carolina were added as early states. It would also break with the Republican calendar, as the Republican National Committee voted earlier this year to reaffirm the early state lineup of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

    Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, who has spearheaded Michigan’s effort to become an early-voting state, told CNN earlier on Thursday she was “feeling good” about Michigan’s chances and that she believed the state was in a “strong position” heading into the committee meeting.

    “The White House knows that we don’t win presidencies without the heartland,” Dingell said. “And we’ve got to have a primary system where candidates are campaigning in a heartland state that reflects the diversity of this country and that they’re testing them because that’s where we win or lose in general elections.”

    Nevada has been making a play to move up further in the calendar and unseat New Hampshire as the first-in-the-nation primary. New Hampshire has held the first primary on the presidential nominating calendar since 1920 and that status is protected by state law.

    Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, whose reelection in November was critical to allowing Democrats to maintain control of the Senate, argues her state’s diverse electorate makes it a “microcosm of the rest of the country.”

    “If you’re a presidential candidate and you can win in Nevada, you have a message that resonates across the country,” Cortez Masto told MSNBC earlier this month.

    The Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ political arm, CHC BOLD PAC, on Wednesday announced it was backing Nevada’s application to host the first-in-the-nation primary.

    “The state that goes first matters, and we know that Latino voters will only become even more decisive in future election cycles when it comes to winning the White House and majorities in the House and Senate,” Reps. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Raul Ruiz of California, leaders of the CHC BOLD PAC, said in a statement.

    New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen tweeted Thursday, “NH’s First-In-The-Nation primary gives every candidate an opportunity to connect directly with engaged, informed voters in a battleground state – and Granite Staters are experts at assessing candidates & campaigns. I’m proud to support NH’s #FITN primary.”

    Earlier this year, the DNC committee heard presentations from 16 states – including the four current early states – as well as Puerto Rico on their pitches on why they should become an early state or hold on to their spot. Amid pressure to boot Iowa from its top position, the Hawkeye State made its case to stay first in the calendar and proposed simplifying the caucus process.

    Minnesota is also among the states jockeying to join the early-state ranks. The chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Ken Martin, sent a memo to DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee members on Wednesday arguing Minnesota is “more diverse and has a stronger party infrastructure than Iowa, but unlike Michigan, it is not large enough that it would overshadow the other early primary states or make it harder and more expensive for candidates to compete in during this critical window.”

    Both Michigan’s and Minnesota’s cases were bolstered after Democrats in both states won trifecta control of the governor and state legislatures in the midterms. Primary dates are generally set by law, so state parties would need cooperation from their legislatures and governors to become early-voting states. The Michigan state Senate, which is currently controlled by Republicans, this week already took the step of voting to move the presidential primary up a month earlier to February.

    Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, along with other party leaders in the state, sent a letter this month to members of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee pledging to passing legislation moving up the primary date if Minnesota was selected as an early state. The letter, obtained by CNN, argued Minnesota is a “highly representative approximation of the country, paired with a robust state and local party infrastructure, an engaged electorate, and a logistical and financial advantage for campaigns.”

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  • The fine print of the Respect for Marriage Act | CNN Politics

    The fine print of the Respect for Marriage Act | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story first ran in July. It also appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    Let’s start with the positive: Republicans and Democrats are coming together to protect same-sex marriage from the Supreme Court. The Respect for Marriage Act, which safeguards the right to same-sex marriage nationwide, passed the House with bipartisan support earlier this week and now awaits a Senate vote.

    The Respect for Marriage Act codifies marriages and came about amid worries among Democrats that the same conservative majority on the Supreme Court that took away the right to abortion will target same-sex marriage in the future.

    The version that overcame a filibuster in the Senate passed the Senate Tuesday. A dozen Republican senators from across the country voted with Democrats before Thanksgiving to limit debate and move toward a final vote.

    RELATED: Meet the 12 Republicans who voted to consider the Respect for Marriage Act

    It next goes to the House for approval before President Joe Biden can sign it into law.

    But there is a fair amount of fine print.

    First, the bill does not require all states to allow same-sex marriage, even though that is the current reality under the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Rather, if the Supreme Court overturned Obergefell and previous state prohibitions on same-sex marriage came back into effect, the Respect for Marriage Act would require states and the federal government to respect marriages conducted in places where it is legal.

    There are religious exceptions. Republican supporters have emphasized the elements in this Senate version that protect nonprofit and religious organizations from having to provide support for same-sex marriages.

    “I will be supporting the substitute amendment because it will ensure our religious freedoms are upheld and protected, one of the bedrocks of our democracy,” said West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito in a statement after helping break the filibuster.

    It took months of behind-the-scenes effort to bring 10-plus Republicans on board.

    This is all academic right now. The bill is only being passed in case the now-solidly conservative Supreme Court, which has taken delight in upending precedent, were to revisit the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that created a national right to marriage for same-sex couples.

    Two of the justices who voted in favor of that ruling have been replaced by Republican-appointed conservatives, which means that if the case were heard today, there’s a real likelihood it would be decided differently.

    While Justice Samuel Alito seemed to want to wall off the abortion rights precedent upended by the Supreme Court earlier this year, CNN’s Ariane de Vogue has written about how the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization could affect issues like marriage. Read her story.

    Here’s a brief history of marriage equality playing a role in prior election years:

    Today, it’s Republicans and Democrats, along with a Democratic president, working together to protect same-sex marriage from a government institution.

    During that time, public support for same-sex marriage grew from about a quarter of the public in the year the Defense of Marriage Act was enacted to 71% in Gallup polling this year.

    The issue has played a role in multiple US elections, including, arguably, the one that just took place.

    Here’s a brief history of marriage equality playing a role in prior election years:

    In 1996, Republican majorities in the House and Senate sensed a political opening after then-President Bill Clinton failed to allow gay people to openly serve in the military.

    They were also trying to get ahead of a Hawaii court decision that could have legalized same-sex marriage in that state. Fearing every state might have to recognize same-sex unions, Republicans pushed the Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA.

    It declared marriage as between one man and one woman and allowed states to refuse to recognize marriages. It also withheld federal benefits from married same-sex couples. In 2013, a part of DOMA was found to be unconstitutional.

    DOMA had broad approval. Democrats like then-Sen. Joe Biden voted for the bill. Current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and many other Democrats whose names you’d recognize, were among the 342 who voted for the bill in the House.

    Current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among the 67 members to vote “no,” along with Rep. Steve Gunderson, who at the time was the House’s only openly gay Republican.

    In 2004, placing anti-gay-marriage amendments on ballots in key states like Ohio was smart politics. It helped George W. Bush win reelection to the White House and the GOP gain seats in the US Senate.

    Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The Democratic candidate, John Kerry, also opposed same-sex marriage at the time.

    In 2008, even as more in his party began to publicly support marriage equality, Obama continued his opposition.

    He has more recently said and written that he always personally supported same-sex marriage rights. His campaign aide David Axelrod has written that Obama made a calculated decision to oppose gay marriage.

    “He grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’” Axelrod wrote in a memoir.

    In 2012, following the lead of then-Vice President Biden, Obama officially evolved on the issue and said he now supported marriage equality. It was a big moment.

    A few years later, in 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide.

    “I’m fine with it,” Trump said in 2016 during an interview with “60 Minutes.”

    He’d go on to brag about being a champion for gay rights, although many LGBTQ activists would disagree.

    The politicians of the ’90s have largely evolved with the country.

    But one of the Supreme Court’s relics from the ’90s, Justice Clarence Thomas, recently questioned the 2015 marriage decision he opposed. As a result, Republicans and Democrats are coming together again, in less than a generation, to undo what they did in 1996, and try to guarantee marriage as a right for all Americans.

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  • Inside the long and winding road to Trump’s historic indictment | CNN Politics

    Inside the long and winding road to Trump’s historic indictment | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The New York grand jury hearing the case against Donald Trump was set to break for several weeks. The former president’s lawyers believed on Wednesday afternoon they had at least a small reprieve from a possible indictment. Trump praised the perceived delay.

    Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had other plans.

    Thursday afternoon, Bragg asked the grand jury to return an historic indictment against Trump, the first time that a current or former US president has been indicted. The surprise move was the final twist in an investigation that’s taken a long and winding road to the history-making charges that were returned this week.

    An indictment had been anticipated early last week – including by Trump himself, who promoted a theory he would be “arrested” – as law enforcement agencies prepared for the logistics of arraigning a former president. But after the testimony of Robert Costello – a lawyer who appeared on Trump’s behalf seeking to undercut the credibility of Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen – Bragg appeared to hit the pause button.

    Costello’s testimony caused the district attorney’s office to reassess whether Costello should be the last witness the grand jury heard before prosecutors asked them to vote on an indictment, multiple sources told CNN.

    So they waited. The next day the grand jury was scheduled to meet, jurors were told not to come in. Bragg and his top prosecutors huddled the rest of the week and over the weekend to determine a strategy that would effectively counter Costello’s testimony in the grand jury.

    They called two additional witnesses. David Pecker, the former head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, appeared on Monday. The other witness, who has still not been identified, testified on Thursday for 35 minutes in front of the grand jury – just before prosecutors asked them to vote on the indictment of more than 30 counts, the sources said.

    Trump and his attorneys, thinking Bragg might be reconsidering a potential indictment, were all caught off-guard, sources said. Some of Trump’s advisers had even left Palm Beach on Wednesday following news reports that the grand jury was taking a break, the sources added.

    After the indictment, Trump ate dinner with his wife, Melania, Thursday evening and smiled while he greeted guests at his Mar-a-Lago club, according to a source familiar with the event.

    The Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Trump has been ongoing for years, dating back to Bragg’s predecessor, Cy Vance. Its focus shifted by mid-2020 to the accuracy of the Trump Org.’s financial statements. At the time, prosecutors debated legal theories around the hush money payments and thought they were a long shot. At several points, the wide-ranging investigation seemed to have been winding down – to the point that prosecutors resigned in protest last year. One even wrote a book critical of Bragg for not pursuing charges against Trump released just last month.

    The specific charges against Trump still remain under seal and are expected to be unveiled Tuesday when Trump is set to be arraigned.

    There are questions swirling even among Trump critics over whether the Manhattan district attorney’s case is the strongest against the former president amid additional investigations in Washington, DC, and Georgia over both his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents at his Florida resort.

    Trump could still face charges in those probes, too, which are separate from the New York indictment.

    But it’s the Manhattan indictment, dating back to a payment made before the 2016 presidential election, that now sees Trump facing down criminal charges for the first time as he runs again for the White House in 2024.

    It was just weeks before the 2016 election when Cohen, Trump’s then-lawyer, paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep silent about an alleged affair with Trump. (Trump has denied the affair.) Cohen was later reimbursed $420,000 by the Trump Organization to cover the original payment and tax liabilities and to reward him with a bonus.

    That payment and reimbursement are keys at issue in the investigation.

    Cohen also helped arrange a $150,000 payment from the publisher of the National Enquirer to Karen McDougal to kill her story claiming a 10-month affair with Trump. Trump also denies an affair with McDougal. During the grand jury proceedings, the district attorney’s office has asked questions about the “catch and kill” deal with McDougal.

    When Cohen was charged by federal prosecutors in New York in 2018 and pleaded guilty, he said he was acting at the direction of Trump when he made the payment.

    At the time, federal prosecutors had determined they could not seek to indict Trump in the scheme because of US Justice Department regulations against charging a sitting president. In 2021, after Trump left the White House, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York decided not to pursue a case against Trump, according to a recent book from CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig.

    But then-Manhattan District Attorney Vance’s team had already picked up the investigation into the hush money payments and begun looking at potential state law violations. By summer 2019, they sent subpoenas to the Trump Org., other witnesses, and met with Cohen, who was serving a three-year prison sentence.

    Vance’s investigation broadened to the Trump Org.’s finances. New York prosecutors went to the Supreme Court twice to enforce a subpoena for Trump’s tax records from his long-time accounting firm Mazars USA. The Trump Org. and its long-time chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg were indicted on tax fraud and other charges in June 2021 for allegedly running an off-the-books compensation scheme for more than a decade.

    Weisselberg pleaded guilty to the charges last year and is currently serving a five-month sentence at Rikers Island. Prosecutors had hoped to flip Weisselberg to cooperate against Trump, but he would not tie Trump to any wrongdoing.

    Disagreements about the pace of the investigation had caused at least three career prosecutors to move off the investigation. They were concerned that the investigation was moving too quickly, without clear evidence to support possible charges, CNN and others reported last year.

    Vance authorized the attorneys on the team to present evidence to the grand jury near the end of 2021, but he did not seek an indictment. Those close to Vance say he wanted to leave the decision to Bragg, the newly elected district attorney.

    Bragg, a Democrat, took office in January 2022. Less than two months into his tenure, two top prosecutors who had worked on the Trump case under Vance abruptly resigned amid a disagreement in the office over the strength of the case against Trump.

    On February 22, 2022, Bragg informed the prosecution team that he was not prepared to authorize charges against Trump, CNN reported. The prosecutors, Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz, resigned the next day.

    In his resignation letter, Pomerantz said he believed Trump was guilty of numerous felonies and said that Bragg’s decision to not move forward with an indictment at the time was “wrong” and a “grave failure of justice.”

    “I and others believe that your decision not to authorize prosecution now will doom any future prospects that Mr. Trump will be prosecuted for the criminal conduct we have been investigating,” Pomerantz wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by CNN.

    At that point, the investigation was focused on Trump’s financial statements and whether he knowingly misled lenders, insurers, and others by providing them false or misleading information about the value of his properties.

    Prosecutors were building a wide-ranging falsified business records case to include years of financial statements and the hush money payments, people with direct knowledge of the investigation told CNN. But at the time, those prosecutors believed there was a good chance a felony charge related to the hush money payment would be dismissed by a judge because it was a novel legal theory.

    Dunne and Pomerantz pushed to seek an indictment of Trump tied to the sweeping falsified business records case, but others, including some career prosecutors, were skeptical that they could win a conviction at trial, in part because of the difficulty in proving Trump’s criminal intent.

    Despite the resignations of the prosecutors on the Trump case, Bragg’s office reiterated at the time that the investigation was ongoing.

    “Investigations are not linear so we are following the leads in front of us. That’s what we’re doing,” Bragg told CNN in April 2022. “The investigation is very much ongoing.”

    At the same time that Bragg’s criminal investigation into Trump lingered last year, another prosecution against the Trump Org. moved forward. In December, two Trump Org. entities were convicted at trial on 17 counts and were ordered to pay $1.6 million, the maximum penalty, the following month.

    Trump was not personally charged in that case. But it appeared to embolden Bragg’s team to sharpen their focus back to Trump and the hush money payment.

    Cohen was brought back in to meet with Manhattan prosecutors. Cohen had previously met with prosecutors in the district attorney’s office 13 times over the course of the investigation. But the January meeting was the first in more than a year – and a clear sign of the direction prosecutors were taking.

    As investigators inched closer to a charging decision, Bragg was faced with more public pressure to indict Trump: Pomerantz, the prosecutor who had resigned a year prior, released a book about the investigation that argued Trump should be charged and criticized Bragg for failing to do so.

    “Every single member of the prosecution team thought that his guilt was established,” Pomerantz said in a February interview on “CNN This Morning.”

    Asked about Bragg’s hesitance, Pomerantz said: “I can’t speak in detail about what went through his mind. I can surmise from what happened at the time and statements that he’s made since that he had misgivings about the strength of the case.”

    Bragg responded in a statement saying that more work was needed on the case. “Mr. Pomerantz’s plane wasn’t ready for takeoff,” Bragg said.

    Prosecutors continued bringing in witnesses, including Pecker, the former head of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer. In February, Trump Org. controller Jeffrey McConney testified before the grand jury. Members of Trump’s 2016 campaign, including Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks, also appeared. In March, Daniels met with prosecutors, her attorney said.

    And Cohen, after his numerous meetings with prosecutors, finally testified before the grand jury in March.

    The second week of March, prosecutors gave the clearest sign to date that the investigation was nearing its conclusion – they invited Trump to appear before the grand jury.

    Potential defendants in New York are required by law to be notified and invited to appear before a grand jury weighing charges.

    Behind the scenes, Trump attorney Susan Necheles told CNN she met with New York prosecutors to argue why Trump shouldn’t be indicted and that prosecutors didn’t articulate the specific charges they are considering.

    Trump, meanwhile, took to his social media to predict his impending indictment. In a post attacking Bragg on March 18, Trump said the “leading Republican candidate and former president of the United States will be arrested on Tuesday of next week.”

    “Protest, take our nation back,” Trump added, echoing the calls he made while he tried to overturn the 2020 election.

    Trump’s prediction would turn out to be premature.

    Trump’s call for protests after a potential indictment led to meetings between senior staff members from the district attorney’s office, the New York Police Department and the New York State Court Officers – who provide security at the criminal court building in lower Manhattan.

    Trump’s lawyers also made a last-ditch effort to fend off an indictment. At the behest of Trump’s team, Costello, who advised Cohen in 2018, provided emails and testified to the grand jury on Monday, March 20, alleging that Cohen had said in 2018 that he had decided on his own to make the payment to Daniels.

    Costello’s testimony appeared to delay a possible indictment – for a brief time at least.

    During the void, Trump continued to launch verbal insults against Bragg, calling him a “degenerate psychopath.” And four Republican chairmen of the most powerful House committees wrote to Bragg asking him to testify, which Bragg’s office said was unprecedented interference in a local investigation. An envelope containing a suspicious white powder and a death threat to Bragg was to delivered to the building where the grand jury meets – the powder was deemed nonhazardous.

    The grand jury would not meet again until Monday, March 27, when Pecker was ushered back to the grand jury in a government vehicle with tinted windows in a failed effort to evade detection by the media camped outside of the building where the grand jury meets.

    Pecker, a longtime friend of Trump’s who had a history of orchestrating so-called “catch and kill” deals while at the National Enquirer, was involved with the Daniels’ deal from the beginning.

    Two days after Pecker’s testimony, there were multiple reports that the grand jury was going into a pre-planned break in April. The grand jury was set to meet Thursday but it was not expected to hear the Trump case.

    Instead, the grand jury heard from one last witness in the Trump case on Thursday, whose identity is still unknown. And then the grand jury shook up the American political system by voting to indict a former president and 2024 candidate for the White House.

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  • Federal appeals court upholds Justice Department’s use of key obstruction law in January 6 cases | CNN Politics

    Federal appeals court upholds Justice Department’s use of key obstruction law in January 6 cases | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The federal appeals court in Washington, DC, has upheld the Justice Department’s use of a key criminal charge against hundreds of January 6 rioters, saying they can be charged with obstructing Congress.

    The appeals court said obstruction can include a “wide range of conduct” when a defendant has a corrupt intent and is targeting an official proceeding, such as the congressional certification of the presidential election on January 6, 2021.

    The major ruling affects more than 300 criminal cases brought in the wake of the Capitol riot. The Justice Department has used the charge – obstructing on official proceeding – as the cornerstone of many of the more serious Capitol riot cases, where defendants were outspoken about their desire to stop Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win or were instrumental in the physical breach of the Capitol building.

    In the cases that prompted the appeal, the defendants had allegedly assaulted law enforcement at the Capitol, which overwhelmed the protection around members of Congress in the building and caused the Electoral College certification to stop for hours.

    The statute makes it a felony to alter, destroy or mutilate a record, document or other object with the intent of making it unavailable in an official proceeding, or to “otherwise” obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding.

    The ruling has been hotly anticipated in the January 6 investigation, and a loss for the Justice Department would have imperiled hundreds of cases against individual rioters.

    But the three judges on the panel weren’t united in their interpretation of the law, with each writing separately about how the obstruction statute should be interpreted.

    “The broad interpretation of the statute – encompassing all forms of obstructive acts – is unambiguous and natural,” Judge Florence Pan of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote Friday in the 2-1 majority opinion.

    The holding from Pan also lays out how prosecutors may use the obstruction charge, which carries a 20-year maximum prison sentence, when weighing defendants’ actions on January 6.

    The circuit court’s opinion – which is now binding precedent in DC federal courts, unless additional appeals change the ruling – could potentially be used against future defendants in January 6-related cases, including ones being looked at by special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which is investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies.

    Yet their opinions on Friday left unsettled a key question on how the Justice Department could use the charge against others with potentially less clear corrupt actions.

    Pan’s majority opinion didn’t decide how the courts should define corrupt action taken by rioters – potentially putting limits around how the Justice Department could use the charge in the future.

    Pan and Walker split on whether the definition of “corruptly” would mean that prosecutors would have to prove a defendants’ actions were to benefit themselves or others people, if they charge obstruction related to January 6.

    That question could arise again in future appeals, and the judges weren’t clear which interpretation may be the controlling law now in DC.

    “Because the task of defining ‘corruptly’ is not before us and I am satisfied that the government has alleged conduct by appellees sufficient to meet that element, I leave the exact contours of ‘corrupt’ intent for another day,” Pan wrote. She noted that the rioter cases that prompted the appeal left no room for disputing corrupt intent, seeing as the defendants were alleged to have assaulted police.

    In his concurring opinion, Circuit Court Judge Justin Walker took a narrower approach to the obstruction law, finding that it requires a defendant to act “with an intent to procure an unlawful benefit either for himself or for some other person.”

    Even so, Walker found that the obstruction law that the DOJ has charged rioters with applies in this case.

    “True, the Defendants were allegedly trying to secure the presidency for Donald Trump, not for themselves or their close associates,” Walker wrote. “But the beneficiary of an unlawful benefit need not be the defendant or his friends. Few would doubt that a defendant could be convicted of corruptly bribing a presidential elector if he paid the elector to cast a vote in favor of a preferred candidate – even if the defendant had never met the candidate and was not associated with him.”

    DC Circuit Judge Greg Katsas disagreed with his colleagues in the 2-1 decision. Katsas sided with a lower-court judge, who had thrown out obstruction charges against some January 6 rioters because the actions during the insurrection didn’t deal specifically with the mutilation of documents or evidence in an official proceeding.

    Katsas argued that his colleagues’ interpretation of the obstruction law was too broad and would allow for aggressive criminal prosecutions any time a protester knew they may be breaking the law. He contended that the law requires that a defendant was trying to “seek an unlawful financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage” while the January 6 cases in question involve “the much more diffuse, intangible benefit of having a preferred candidate remain President.”

    Walker, however, wrote in his opinion that that law applied even under Katsas’ reading.

    “The dissenting opinion says a defendant can act ‘corruptly’ only if the benefit he intends to procure is a ‘financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage.’ I am not so sure,” Walker wrote. “Besides, this case may involve a professional benefit. The Defendants’ conduct may have been an attempt to help Donald Trump unlawfully secure a professional advantage – the presidency.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Draft GOP autopsy of 2022 midterms urges candidates to stop ‘rehashing old grievances’ | CNN Politics

    Draft GOP autopsy of 2022 midterms urges candidates to stop ‘rehashing old grievances’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A draft Republican autopsy report on the party’s worse-than-expected showing in the 2022 midterm elections urges GOP candidates to move past complaints about how the 2020 and 2022 elections were run – a clear criticism of former President Donald Trump, who continues to falsely claim his loss was a result of widespread voter fraud.

    The report does not mention Trump, the leading contender for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, by name.

    But it takes direct aim at his grievances over the 2020 presidential election and false claims of widespread voter fraud in 2022.

    Voters’ distaste for relitigating those elections, the draft report states, is among “the obvious lessons of the 2022 election cycle.”

    “The Republican candidates in 2022 who delivered results and had a vision for the future did much, much better than those stuck in the past and rehashing old grievances,” the draft report says.

    CNN obtained a portion of the draft report, which was expected to be circulated this week at a Republican National Committee meeting in Oklahoma City – however, a source familiar with the presentation said it was likely to be scuttled following reports of its contents.

    The draft report was first reported by The Washington Post.

    Some GOP officials bristled at the upbeat nature of the report – and the notable lack of Trump mentions – which was commissioned before the former president widened his lead in 2024 primary polling.

    The report urges Republican candidates to offer an “aspirational message” that contrasts with President Joe Biden on issues such as taxes, school choice and border security, and to move past complaints about previous elections.

    “America has always been a nation focused on the future. The American people want to move forward and rarely, if ever, are concerned about what happened in the past. The balance of survey data makes it clear that voters are done with the 2020 and 2022 elections. They have no patience for endless conversations relitigating previous elections from Democrats and Republicans,” the draft report states. “Those who don’t heed that lesson from 2022 will be more likely to lose in 2024 and successive cycles.”

    The draft report describes “election integrity” as critical, but it also urges Republican campaigns to focus on tactics that Trump and some 2022 candidates eschewed, including mail-in voting.

    “Republican campaigns must push our supporters to vote early in person or by mail. Republicans cannot continue to give Democrats a head start,” the draft report says.

    Trump and a slew of Trump-backed Republican candidates who lost in 2022 – including Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and Senate candidate Blake Masters and Pennsylvania GOP nominee for governor Doug Mastriano – had campaigned on claims of voter fraud. Lake has still not conceded the Arizona governor’s race.

    “Republicans have only won the popular vote once in the last eight presidential elections. Clearly, something is not working for us,” the draft report says.

    It also describes the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade’s federal protections of abortion rights as politically damaging in the midterm elections.

    “It is true: We underestimated the impact of Dobbs, and we failed to defend our position on the sanctity of life even though more Americans agree with us than with Democrats,” the draft report says. “Democrats will continue to engage on this issue, so we must learn our lesson.”

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  • DeSantis expected to enter 2024 presidential race next week | CNN Politics

    DeSantis expected to enter 2024 presidential race next week | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to enter the 2024 GOP presidential race next week, two Republicans familiar with the matter told CNN, initiating his much-anticipated bid to wrestle the future of the party from former President Donald Trump.

    DeSantis will file paperwork declaring his candidacy next week with the Federal Election Commission, one Republican said, with a formal announcement expected the following week in his Florida hometown of Dunedin. DeSantis is likely to soft-launch the campaign as early as Wednesday to coincide with the filing of the paperwork, according to a Republican consultant close to the governor’s political team.

    However, another source cautioned that the planning remains a moving target, and DeSantis is known to surprise even his closest allies and advisers with last-minute changes. DeSantis, who often boasts that he runs an operation free of leaks, may be further motivated to throw out the script to vex the media outlets who have preempted his announcement, the source said.

    “With him, it’s always a possibility,” the source added.

    But the machinery for a launch is already in motion as dozens of his top fundraisers and donors have been summoned to South Florida under the assumption they will be asked to begin building up a war chest for a DeSantis presidential campaign. By officially submitting his paperwork, his supporters can begin soliciting donations on his behalf.

    About 100 hotel rooms have been reserved at the Four Seasons in Miami, which will host receptions for donors, briefings with DeSantis’ political team and sessions where attendees will dial for dollars, according to two sources familiar with the details. The goal is for each fundraiser to bring in between $100,000 and $150,000.

    A spokesman for DeSantis’ political operation did not respond to a request for comment.

    An announcement around the Memorial Day weekend is on the earlier side of the timeline that the governor’s political operation had targeted six months ago when it eyed a launch after Florida’s legislative session. This suggests DeSantis is responding to donors and supporters anxious to see him get in the race and more directly challenge Trump. Polling shows the former president remains firmly in the lead while DeSantis has lost some momentum during the belabored rollout of his expected campaign, which has included a book release and tour, a dozen appearances at local GOP fundraisers, an international trip, the creation of a super PAC, a donor retreat near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and a blitz through conservative media.

    Along the way, DeSantis has stumbled at times, drawing poor reviews for his oscillating takes on the Russia-Ukraine war, prolonging his clash with Disney into a second year and getting caught flat-footed as Trump unveiled endorsements from Florida Republicans in Congress just before the governor visited Washington to build support.

    However, DeSantis’ allies believe the trajectory of the race will change significantly once he is officially a candidate and responds to Trump’s broadsides and more vigorously shares his vision for the country.

    According to The New York Times, DeSantis told donors and supporters during a call Thursday that there were only three credible candidates in the race – himself, President Joe Biden and Trump – and that only he and Biden had a chance of winning the general election.

    DeSantis said on the call, which was organized by Never Back Down, a super PAC closely aligned with the governor, that data from swing states was “not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him,” the Times reported.

    DeSantis has spent the last couple of weeks tying up loose ends – rapidly signing dozens of bills that have reached his desk, meeting with donors in Tallahassee and South Florida, and shoring up endorsements to boost his launch. He spent Saturday in Iowa, where he appeared to one-up Trump, making an unannounced visit to a BBQ joint in Des Moines – minutes from where the former president had canceled a rally due to threat of weather. While in the state, DeSantis laid the framework for his case against Trump.

    “If we make 2024 a referendum on Joe Biden and his failures and we provide a positive alternative for the future of this country, Republicans will win across the board,” DeSantis told Iowa caucus voters in Sioux Center. “If we do not do that, if we get distracted, if we focus on the election in the past or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again, and I think it will be very difficult to recover from that defeat.”

    On Friday, DeSantis will travel to another early nominating state, New Hampshire, to meet with state lawmakers – many of whom endorsed him earlier this week – for a policy round table, according to three sources familiar with the planning.

    Never Back Down has in recent weeks rolled out dozens of key endorsements for the governor in Iowa and New Hampshire. On Wednesday, the super PAC also announced endorsements from 99 Florida lawmakers – a show of force from the rank-and-file Republicans who helped push DeSantis’ agenda through the state legislature this spring.

    “Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature have worked together to achieve historic results and produce conservative victories for the people of Florida – turning the state into a beacon of freedom and the fastest growing state in the nation,” Never Back Down spokeswoman Erin Perrine said.

    Trump’s campaign dismissed the Florida endorsements as politically motivated, noting that DeSantis had not yet signed the state budget, for which he has line-item veto power over the pet projects of state lawmakers.

    “There are some brave legislators who have stood up to DeSantis’ Swamp-like behavior and resisted his intimidation tactics in order to do what is right for Florida and the country,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said. “Those who he can’t control – including almost the entirety of the Florida federal congressional delegation – have endorsed President Trump because he’s the only candidate who can beat Joe Biden and take back the White House.”

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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  • Harris becomes first woman to deliver commencement address at West Point | CNN Politics

    Harris becomes first woman to deliver commencement address at West Point | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday became the first woman to deliver a commencement address at the graduation ceremony at the US Military Academy in West Point, New York, warning graduates they were “an increasingly unsettled world where long standing principles are at risk.”

    In the history-making speech, Harris discussed themes of global security and prosperity, arguing that America’s democratic ideals “inspire billions.”

    “In the face of all these challenges, America plays a singular role of leadership,” the vice president told the graduates. “Cadets, global security and global prosperity depend on the leadership of the United States of America. And a strong America remains indispensable to the world.”

    Taking aim at Russian aggression in Ukraine, Harris called Moscow’s unprovoked invasion “an attack on international rules and norms that have served as the foundation of international security and prosperity for generations.” She also slammed China for “modernizing its military and threatening both the freedom of the seas and rules of international commerce.”

    Harris’ comments come as President Joe Biden is seeking a second White House term next year. To date, the pair has leaned heavily on a message of saving democratic values at home and strengthening alliances abroad, even as relations with Russia and China remain contentious.

    During Biden’s trip to the G7 summit earlier this month, the group of industrialized nations agreed to counter China’s “malign practices” and “coercion” and pledged to choke off Russia’s ability to finance and fuel its war.

    “To the Class of 2023: You join the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen,” Harris said Saturday. “And in years to come, I promise you, you will be tried, and you will be tested.”

    “And I am so very confident that you will rise to each occasion. Whatever comes your way. You are ready. And you are ready because you are true leaders of character.”

    Harris previously made history in 2021 as the first woman to give a commencement address at the US Naval Academy. Last year, she spoke at the US Coast Guard Academy’s graduation ceremony.

    Biden is expected to address graduates at the US Air Force Academy on June 1.

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  • Another historic week in the investigation and prosecution of Donald Trump | CNN Politics

    Another historic week in the investigation and prosecution of Donald Trump | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump was arrested and arraigned on federal charges this week in a never-before-seen moment in American political and legal history that captured the attention of a nation that has for years been captivated by his norm-busting episodes.

    The former president’s booking at a federal courthouse in Miami on charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified government documents is just the latest twist in his post-presidency legal drama – which has now become a key issue in the GOP primary contest as Trump mounts a third White House bid.

    Here’s the latest on Trump’s legal troubles:

    On Tuesday, Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

    “We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty,” Trump attorney Todd Blanche told the judge.

    Trump’s aide and co-defendant, Walt Nauta, was also arrested, fingerprinted and processed. He had an initial appearance Tuesday but will not be arraigned until June 27.

    The DOJ recommended that both Trump and Nauta be released with no financial or special conditions. Prosecutor David Harbach said that “the government does not view either defendant as a flight risk.”

    The federal criminal charges Trump faces were brought following an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith, who attended Tuesday’s arraignment.

    In the indictment unsealed last week, the Justice Department charged Trump with 37 felony counts, alleging he illegally retained national defense information and that he concealed documents in violation of witness-tampering laws in the Justice Department’s probe into the materials.

    The charges are drastically more serious than those he faces in a separate New York case and present the possibility of several years in prison if Trump is ultimately convicted.

    For his part, Nauta, who serves as Trump’s personal valet, faces six counts, including several obstruction- and concealment-related charges stemming from the alleged conduct.

    In her first order after the indictment,US District Judge Aileen Cannon – a Trump appointee – told DOJ and Trump attorneys’ parties to get the ball rolling to obtain security clearances for the lawyers who will need them.

    Both of Trump’s attorneys – Blanche and Chris Kise – have already been in touch with the Justice Department about obtaining the necessary security clearances to try the case, a source familiar with the outreach told CNN Thursday evening.

    Cannon’s order reflects how the case concerns highly sensitive, classified materials – adding another layer of complexity to the high-stakes, first-of-its-kind federal prosecution of a former president.

    How long the proceedings stretch out, and whether the trial takes place before or after the 2024 election, will depend in part on how efficiently Cannon manages her docket. Thursday’s move by Cannon suggests an interest, at least for now, in moving the proceedings along without delay.

    In an expected, procedural step Friday, Smith’s team asked the judge to bar Trump and his defense team from publicly disclosing some of the materials shared in the criminal case as part of the discovery process. Lawyers for Trump and Nauta do not oppose the requested protective order, according to the new filing, and Cannon has referred the matter to a magistrate judge.

    Trump had already been indicted earlier this spring in a separate case, this one brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in New York state court.

    Trump has been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records over hush money payments made during the 2016 campaign to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which he denies. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

    The case has remained relatively quiet since Trump pleaded not guilty to all of those charges in April, with the judge setting a trial date in New York County for March 2024.

    Still, the former president’s legal team has been attempting to move the case to federal court, and on Thursday his attorneys asked a federal judge to deny Bragg’s motion to remand the case back to the state Supreme Court, again arguing that the charges are related to his duties as president and therefore should not be heard in state court.

    A hearing on the issue is scheduled for June 27.

    Trump still has other active investigations looming over him, including a probe by Smith, the special counsel, into the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

    And in Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has recently indicated that she’s likely to make charging decisions public in August as part of her probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

    In a letter obtained by CNN last month, Willis announced remote workdays for her staff in August and asked judges to refrain from in-person hearings for parts of that month.

    Trump has insisted that any criminal charges will not stop his 2024 campaign, and so far he’s keeping to that commitment.

    On Wednesday, his campaign said it had raised more than $7 million since the former president was indicted in the federal case.

    “The donations are coming in at a really rapid pace,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email.

    Meanwhile, his GOP primary opponents have been weighing in on the new charges in a number of different ways, with some casting the prosecution as political while also stressing that the charges are concerning.

    Trump can still run for president after being indicted or if he is eventually convicted.

    Still, the existing indictments, as well as a potential conviction ahead of the 2024 election, could make it more difficult for Trump to win back the White House.

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  • These are the big ideas Republicans are pushing for 2024 | CNN Politics

    These are the big ideas Republicans are pushing for 2024 | CNN Politics

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



    CNN
     — 

    Amend the Constitution! Touch the third rail! Think big and make things better!

    This is the big ideas period of American politics – a time that occurs roughly every four years in the lead-up to a presidential election – when candidates push expansive proposals, usually short on specifics.

    While the big ideas generally have little chance of becoming law, they speak to what the people who want to be president think will move primary voters.

    With President Joe Biden currently a lock for the Democratic nomination, most of the intellectual action this year is among Republicans.

    Below are some of the big ideas of the moment, which are usually unique to one or two candidates as opposed to positions that are standard for the party. I view these as distinct from the daily political issues – things like abortion rights, foreign policy, border security and gender rights, where there is a sliding scale of positions.

    Nikki Haley: Biden ‘likely’ won’t make it to end of second term

    Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is 51, wants to impose a “mental competency” test for older candidates over 75.

    With both of the current leading candidates – Biden and former President Donald Trump – well beyond when most people would consider retirement, age is already a major issue this year.

    It’s a smart way to tap into fears that Biden, in particular, has lost a step. But it’s hard to imagine it actually put into use. Who would administer this test? Who would assess the results? Why not all candidates?

    The point of the democratic system is that voters should get to choose. This proposal would necessarily limit their choices.

    On the other hand, age limits are not an entirely crazy idea. Corporations impose them on executives, for instance. Pilots have a mandatory retirement age of 65, although that could be raised in the near future to deal with a pilot shortage.

    Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

    Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech founder, wants to raise the legal voting age to 25. It’s hard to imagine how this would work since the current voting age of 18 is guaranteed in the 26th Amendment.

    Democrats like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have in recent years pushed to go in the opposite direction, arguing to lower the voting age to 16.

    Ramaswamy says there would be exceptions to raising the voting age, such as for people who join the military or otherwise meet a “national service requirement.” Others could pass the same test given to naturalized immigrants.

    “I want more civic engagement. My hypothesis is that when you attach greater value to the act, we will see more 18-to-25-year-olds actually vote than do now,” Ramaswamy told The Washington Post.

    01 nikki haley town hall cnn 030823

    Nikki Haley calls for raising retirement age

    Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence are among those pushing to change the age at which Americans can access retirement benefits.

    While both Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are swearing up and down that they will protect these key parts of the social safety net, Haley and Pence are calling for a more honest discussion about the nation’s finances.

    In their telling, raising the retirement age would only affect the youngest Americans – people in their 20s and younger, generations sure to live and work longer than their forebears.

    But specifics are hard to come by, as CNN’s Jake Tapper found when he asked Haley at a CNN town hall in early June what retirement age she is proposing. She said more calculations are needed to come up with a specific retirement age for people currently in their 20s.

    Meantime, she said, “we’re going to go tell them ‘Times have changed.’ I think (Trump and DeSantis are) not being honest with the American people.”

    DeSantis did recently acknowledge in New Hampshire that Social Security is “going to look a little bit different” for younger generations.

    Pence, at his own CNN town hall in early June, said raising the eligibility age for Social Security is one option to have the tough conversation about national spending, but not the only one.

    “It also could include letting younger Americans invest a portion of their payroll taxes in a mutual fund, like the TSP (Thrift Savings Plan) program that 10 million federal employees are in today,” he said.

    trump missouri rally

    Trump slams 14th Amendment at rally

    Both former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis want to revoke birthright citizenship, or the right of every person born in the US to be an American citizen.

    They complain that even babies born to undocumented people become citizens. Birthright citizenship is guaranteed in the 14th Amendment, the key post-Civil War amendment that was meant to protect former slaves.

    Trump has been teasing an end to birthright citizenship for years, but there is not currently a meaningful effort to change the Constitution.

    Trump has pledged to sign an executive order. DeSantis has said he would lean on Congress and the court system. Actually changing the Constitution would be nearly impossible in today’s political environment.

    Former President Donald Trump’s most outside-the-box ideas have a futuristic “Jetsons” feel.

    He wants to build new “freedom cities” on federal land to reopen the American frontier and give people a chance at home ownership. He argues the plan could revitalize American manufacturing.

    And he envisions freeing Americans from hellish commutes by looking to the skies, taking the initiative to innovate vertical-takeoff vehicles. CNN’s report on Trump’s proposals notes that technology is already underway by industry, but a long way from being available to consumers.

    A government-planned city might seem like a strange proposal for a candidate whose party has long embraced free market ideals. But the idea of a planned city is not completely foreign – just look at Washington, DC.

    Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a town hall event in Hollis, New Hampshire on June 27, 2023.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to undo Trump’s greatest bipartisan achievement: The First Step Act, a criminal justice and sentencing reform law.

    The product of intense bipartisan negotiations during Trump’s term in office, the law was hailed for rethinking harsh prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

    But the political landscape has changed since 2018, when Trump signed the law as president and DeSantis voted for it as a congressman. Now, DeSantis calls the law the “jailbreak bill.”

    Both men want to impose the death penalty for drug offenders, an especially awkward pivot for Trump, who has bragged about his compassion in setting drug dealers like Alice Johnson free when he commuted her sentence. The case helped build support for the First Step Act. Her crime could have made her eligible for the death penalty under his new plan.

    Trump still brags about the First Step Act, and repealing it would take help from Democrats in the Senate.

    DeSantis, meanwhile, is moving to the right of Trump on crime and even vetoed a bipartisan criminal justice law in Florida that passed easily through the Republican-dominated legislature.

    Pence also said in his CNN town hall he would “take a step back” from the First Step Act – though it is unclear what that means in practical terms.

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  • Biden raised $72 million in his first quarter of fundraising since announcing reelection bid | CNN Politics

    Biden raised $72 million in his first quarter of fundraising since announcing reelection bid | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden raised $72 million for his reelection effort and for the Democratic Party in his first quarter of fundraising since launching his reelection bid in April, his campaign announced Friday.

    The showing could help quell some concerns about the president’s ability to fundraise as he seeks a second term. His campaign boasted an average contribution of $39 from nearly 400,000 donors and said 97% of all donations were less than $200.

    Biden’s campaign, which has yet to open a headquarters and maintains a skeletal staff several months in, also boasted a sizable war chest, with $77 million in cash on hand at June 30, the end of the quarter.

    While the president’s fundraising haul is stronger than any other 2024 presidential contender, it falls short of the record-breaking $86 million raised in 2011 by President Barack Obama for his reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee in his first quarter of fundraising after launching his second-term bid.

    Obama’s campaign also boasted 158,000 more individual donors in that quarter than Biden’s reported total. Donor contribution limits were lower in the 2012 cycle than they are now: Individual donors could give a maximum of $2,500 to Obama’s campaign when he ran for a second term. This cycle, the individual limit is $3,300. The disparity in maximum contributions between the two cycles is even higher when totaling the maximum allowed contribution to joint fundraising committees.

    Obama launched his campaign three weeks earlier in the second quarter of 2011 than Biden did this year, and as a result, Biden campaign officials noted that they raised more per day than Obama’s campaign did in that quarter.

    Responding to questions about the fewer number of individual donors for Biden compared with Obama’s first quarter of reelection fundraising, Biden campaign officials pointed to a “very different” political climate that has made grassroots fundraising more challenging across the board this year, with political fatigue setting in on both the right and the left.

    Still, the campaign officials said there were signs of enthusiasm, adding that 30% of campaign donors this past quarter had not previously donated to Biden’s 2020 campaign.

    A fundraising sweepstakes to meet the president was especially successful, raising nearly $2 million, campaign officials said. And campaign merchandise that embraced the “Dark Brandon” meme drove over half of the campaign store’s revenue, according to the officials.

    Biden campaign officials declined to disclose the breakdown between funds raised for the campaign versus those raised for the DNC and state parties that are participants in Biden’s joint fundraising operation, noting that Biden’s campaign is heavily integrated with those entities as part of its strategies. That breakdown will become available when the campaign files its report with the Federal Election Commission by Saturday’s deadline.

    In another point of comparison, in 2019, President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee raised a combined $105 million in the second quarter, though Trump’s reelection operation had been well underway for more than two years at that point.

    “Let’s not forget the months of hype about then-President Trump’s “Death Star” his team spent all of 2019 building, which completely fell apart by summer 2020 while the Biden campaign’s rebel alliance surpassed them and then continued to break fundraising records until Election Day,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in response to the comparison. “That’s not exactly the playbook we’re looking to replicate.”

    Trump’s 2024 campaign reported last week that the former president’s joint fundraising committee had raised more than $35 million in the second quarter of the year. Trump launched his comeback bid for the White House in November. The campaign of his chief rival for the GOP nomination – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – reported that it had raised $20 million through June 30 over the six weeks since he announced his candidacy in late May.

    Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez touted the latest fundraising totals as evidence of “incredible enthusiasm” for the president’s agenda and campaign.

    “We’ve seen incredible enthusiasm for President Biden and Vice President Harris’ agenda – including their commitment to restoring democracy, fighting for more freedoms and growing the economy by growing the middle class. While Republicans are burning through resources in a divisive primary focused on who can take the most extreme MAGA positions, we are significantly outraising every single one of them – because our team’s strength is our grassroots supporters,” Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • RFK Jr. hearing encapsulates a political era when truth is upside down | CNN Politics

    RFK Jr. hearing encapsulates a political era when truth is upside down | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    In a Donald Trump-influenced era of through-the-looking-glass politics, everything seems upside down, traditional loyalties are scrambled, history can be rewritten and truth is just what anyone wants it to be.

    A Republican-run House hearing Thursday encapsulated the current political circus ahead of another tense election. In a head-spinning spectacle, a Kennedy family scion and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination was greeted as a hero by Republicans. But he was slammed by Democrats, including by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as “a living, breathing, false flag operation.”

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was given a platform by pro-Trump Republicans because his conspiracies about vaccine and Covid-19, and claims that the government has tried to censor him gel with their efforts to shield Trump by claiming that the political weaponization of government is a Democratic and not a GOP transgression.

    The marriage of convenience in a fiery hearing underscored how populism and the bending of truth pioneered on the right by Trump also has significant currency on the left. It illustrated how the character of mainstream American politics is under siege from fringe voices and extremist positions that once struggled to be heard but in recent years found a footing on social media, the campaign trail and even in Congress and the White House.

    As an example of his creation of alternative realities – a tactic frequently used by Trump – Kennedy forcibly denied that he had ever been anti-vaccine, racist or antisemitic. Yet CNN fact checks show he has repeatedly shared unfounded conspiracy theories with a false link between autism and childhood vaccines. He has also claimed that man-made chemicals could be making children gay or transgender. And just last week, he was hit by new claims of conspiracy mongering, racism and antisemitism over remarks at a dinner in New York City in which he claimed that “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

    Despite this controversy, Kennedy brazenly appeared to be inventing new truths even during the hearing. He said, for instance, “In my entire life, and while I’m under oath I have never uttered a phrase that was either racist or antisemitic.” At another moment he said: “I’ve never been anti-vaccine,” then added: “But everybody in this room probably believes that I have been because that’s the prevailing narrative.”

    Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of President John F. Kennedy, criticized his relative in a social media video Friday, calling his candidacy an “embarrassment.”

    “I’ve listened to him. I know him. I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is, his candidacy is an embarrassment. Let’s not be distracted, again, by somebody’s vanity project.” Schlossberg said.

    In an odd flipping of the normal political order, Democrats in the hearing effectively sought to undermine the candidacy of the son and nephew of assassinated party heroes, former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy. The top Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Virgin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett, for instance, condemned committee chair Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan for letting Kennedy air what Democrats regard as extreme views. “It’s a free country. You absolutely have a right to say what you believe,” she said, adding: “But you don’t have the right to a platform, public or private.”

    Plaskett’s comments did raise serious questions about whether there are limits – if any – on a prominent personality’s right to free speech even if they are saying things that are not true, as well as the extent to which misinformation has swamped politics and elections. But most of the hearing stayed away from such topics and was dominated by Republican attempts to score points and shield Trump and Democratic attacks on Kennedy.

    One of the ex-President’s top allies, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the fourth ranking House Republican, revived conservative claims that the Democratic-leaning officials in the federal government suppressed a story about a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden before the last election, a move she argued had been instrumental in his father beating Trump for the presidency. She cited this theory when asking Kennedy whether he believed there was censorship amounting to government interference in the 2020 election.

    Former Twitter executives admitted under oath this year that the social media network temporarily suppressed a story about the laptop but said there was no government interference in the decision. CNN has previously reported that allegations the FBI told Twitter to suppress the story are unsupported, and a half-dozen tech executives and senior staff, along with multiple federal officials familiar with the matter, denied any such directive was given.

    But the specific truth in this case isn’t necessarily important to Republicans who were using Kennedy to further create the impression of government interference to prevent Trump retaining the White House. The more public confusion there is the better it is for the ex-president politically. Of course, claims that Democrats are the ones really guilty of election interference are a direct attempt to whitewash Trump’s own behavior – since he used the tools of his office to try to subvert the 2020 election and to stay in power.

    Thursday’s hearing is not the first time political reality has seemed mixed up or traditional loyalties subverted. Just last week for instance, Republicans subjected FBI Director Christopher Wray to a fearsome grilling in a hearing while Democrats unusually defended the bureau – long regarded as one of the most conservative organs of the US government. The GOP storm was whipped up by allies of Trump who want to discredit investigations into his effort to overturn the 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents in his Florida resort. Trump has already been indicted in the latter case and there are growing signs he will be charged in the former. He denies any wrongdoing and claims the investigations are politically motivated.

    It’s not that Republicans don’t have genuine ground for oversight. Independent government watchdog reports and internal investigations for instance have found deficiencies and mistakes in some investigations involving Trump. In the Russia probe, there were mistakes in the use of a dossier complied by a former British spy and in applications for surveillance warrants. More recently, an agreement with the Justice Department under which Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to two tax misdemeanors and struck a deal to resolve a felony gun charge is within the right of Congress to investigate. But neither case so far supports the wild claims that a corrupt liberal deep state is conducting schemes designed to suppress conservatives that are often made by Trump and his fellow Republicans.

    There is plentiful evidence that the ex-president is the one who weaponized government to go after his political enemies and to evade accountability. For instance he sacked former FBI chief James Comey and told NBC News it was because of the Russia investigation. He used his position as president and the prospect of military aid to seek to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into opening an investigation into Joe Biden and his son in a phone call that later led to his first impeachment. And Trump, by pressuring multiple officials in key swing states and by lambasting poll workers and making claims of widespread voter fraud, apparently used executive power to try to defy the will of voters in 2020.

    Voters also risked being misled by Washington’s hall of mirrors on another occasion this week. In a more frivolous, but still misleading example of the way it’s often hard to work out what is true, the Biden campaign debuted a campaign video that appeared to show one of Trump’s most fervent allies, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene praising Biden as fulfilling the historic mission of great Democratic presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. The words were those of Greene but they were selectively edited from a speech in a video that disguised her true intent, which was to condemn historic government spending by Democrats on education, health care, and social safety net programs that Republicans claim are akin to socialism.

    This example of things being not quite what they seem was more of a cheeky case of campaign trolling than the wholesale refashioning of truth evident Thursday. The hearing at one point degenerated into both Republicans and Democrats accusing each other of trying to censor their questions and witnesses.

    One veteran Democrat, Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, summed up how the session had in itself warped reality. “I never thought we’d descend to this level of Orwellian dystopia. Suddenly, the tools of the trade are not to get at the truth but to distract, distort, to deflect and dissemble,” Connolly said.

    Oddly, several members on the Republican side of the committee nodded their heads in agreement – apparently convinced the Orwellian behavior in question was on the part of what they see as a tyrannical, censoring government rather than in the obvious truths turned upside down.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Disney rocks DeSantis ahead of expected White House bid announcement | CNN Politics

    Disney rocks DeSantis ahead of expected White House bid announcement | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    “DeSantisland” was likely not the happiest place on Earth on Thursday.

    As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gears up for an expected jump into the 2024 presidential race next week, his powerful adversary, Disney, trampled his pre-launch buzz by scratching a $1 billion plan for an office campus that could have brought 2,000 jobs to the state.

    The move was the latest twist in a bitter feud between DeSantis and one of the most important corporations operating in the Sunshine State, rooted in a political collision over the Republican governor’s hardline conservative ideology that will become his pitch to GOP primary voters. And it raises the question of whether Floridians are paying a big price for his political ambitions.

    Disney’s power play showed that CEO Bob Iger wasn’t bluffing when he asked whether Florida wanted the firm to “invest more, employ more people, and pay more taxes” last week. The timing of the Thursday announcement seemed calculated to damage the governor ahead of the most important week of his political career to date, when he is expected to soft launch his White House bid and make the all-important sell to fundraising bundlers. Disney did not specifically blame DeSantis for the move, partly citing “changing business conditions.” But the message was clear.

    “When you are involved in a situation like this, it doesn’t happen very often that events like this are random or coincidental,” said Mark Johnston, a professor of marketing and ethics at the Crummer School of Business at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.

    Disney’s latest swipe at DeSantis set off multiple political reverberations. It offered a huge opening for ex-President Donald Trump and other Republican primary candidates to argue DeSantis is blundering through an ill-conceived battle with the corporate giant and to accuse him of squandering jobs and business in pursuit of higher office.

    Trump’s campaign gleefully declared that DeSantis got “caught in the Mouse Trap,” after predicting weeks ago that the governor would lose his face-off with Mickey Mouse. (In that same statement, the campaign claimed the GOP front-runner, while in office, was known as the “job’s President.”)

    The fact that some of the new jobs in the Disney project were expected to be transferred from California also undercut a narrative central to the DeSantis platform that businesses and citizens are fleeing liberal areas for a dynamic state dubbed “DeSantisland” by his supporters and which he calls “the free state of Florida.”

    More fundamentally, the latest sign DeSantis was outmaneuvered by Disney threatens to highlight damaging perceptions Trump and other critics are seeking to sow about his candidacy – that despite his thumping reelection win in November, DeSantis lacks basic political skills and strategic nous. This theme has been gathering steam following a series of missteps by DeSantis – who for months was seen as a severe threat to Trump – as he prepped his campaign. His collision with Disney also calls into question whether the bullying persona that the governor adopted to appeal to the conservative base is grounded in reality.

    In other words, has DeSantis picked an enemy – that after decades of mastering societal currents and protecting its image in the courts – is tougher and better at politics than he is? If so, what might this augur for his capacity to thrive in a coming clash with a candidate who is as feral as Trump?

    In a series of moves over the last year, DeSantis created the “Mouse trap” for himself. He recently slammed Disney during a visit to South Carolina, a key primary state and declaring: “They may have run Florida for 50 years before I got on the scene, but they don’t run Florida anymore.”

    The dispute between the governor and Disney dates back to the firm’s objections to legislation that DeSantis signed last spring that restricted the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity for kindergarten through third grade, dubbed by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay bill.” The measure is part of his targeting of cultural issues and his campaign against “woke” diversity, equity and inclusion policies. The strategy is calculated to appeal to conservatives who believe America’s traditional values are under attack from a more diverse and inclusive society. But the governor’s clash with Disney – a huge firm that appeals to millions of mainstream Americans and has sought to become more inclusive in recent years – could hint at difficulties DeSantis might have in selling such policies toward more moderate voters in a general election.

    DeSantis claimed in his recently published autobiography that Disney had been pressured by “leftist activists” to take a position that alienated Floridians, including parents and children, and that had nothing to do with its core business. He justified his subsequent effort to take control of a special tax district that gave Disney wide autonomy by saying that it had ceased to act in the interests of Florida. “The Walt Disney Company had decided to bite the hand that had fed it for more than fifty years,” he wrote.

    Disney, in response to the governor’s moves, has accused DeSantis of infringing its right to free speech and has launched a lawsuit that could shadow his presidential campaign.

    In keeping with his bruising political persona, DeSantis reacted defiantly to Disney’s announcement that it would halt the office project. Jeremy T. Redfern, a spokesman for his office said, “Disney announced the possibility of a Lake Nona campus nearly two years ago. Nothing ever came of the project, and the state was unsure whether it would come to fruition.” Redfern also took a swipe at the entertainment empire: “Given the company’s financial straits, falling market cap and declining stock price, it is unsurprising that they would restructure their business operations and cancel unsuccessful ventures.”

    Whatever the economic backdrop of this dispute, it has enormous political implications, as could be seen from the swift reactions of some his potential GOP primary rivals.

    Trump’s camp issued several statements, including one that crowed that “President Trump is always right,” and recirculated his previous prediction that DeSantis would be “absolutely destroyed by Disney.” The situation is a win-win for Trump: It allows him to portray DeSantis as weak and politically naive and also to take shots at an impressive economic and political record in Florida the governor is using as a bedrock of his campaign. Trump has long styled himself as a famed dealmaker, and while this persona may not be justified by his years of questionable investments and business failures, it remains a powerful one among GOP primary voters, and could help him drive home his attacks on the DeSantis business record.

    “Ron DeSantis’ failed war on Disney has done little for his limping shadow campaign and now is doing even less for Florida’s economy,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.

    Another possible GOP primary candidate, former Vice President Mike Pence, also leveraged the Disney announcement to jab DeSantis. He argued the governor should have simply taken the win in the legislature over the teaching of gender issues in schools.

    “I like Walt Disney, not woke Disney,” Pence said on Fox Business. “I just don’t believe it’s in the interests of the people of any state for a government to essentially go after a business that they disagreed with on a political issue.”

    Democrats also weighed in, foreshadowing general election attacks they could make against DeSantis should he win the Republican nomination.

    “Gov DeSantis is more interested in running for President than running the state of Florida” and is trying to “out-Trump Trump” in the GOP primary, Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on the “Situation Room.”

    “And now the people of Florida are paying the price,” he said.

    Given his political exposure on Disney and the combative political image that is central to his White House hopes, DeSantis probably has no option but to further escalate the showdown.

    “He wants Republicans to know that ‘I am not going to give in just because somebody clamored for it, because the winds changed,’” said Scott Jennings, a veteran of the George W. Bush White House and a CNN political commentator.

    So the feud with Disney is unlikely to end while DeSantis is a presidential candidate, even though it may eventually end up hurting both the well-known entertainment giant and the state that hosts Disney World – and that he calls home.

    “I think that there’s a growing sense that – how does this end in a positive way?” said Johnston, the Rollins College professor. “It’s not Disney needs to lose and the state needs to win or vice versa. It’s how do we do this so that both sides can walk away from this and we can go back to having a great relationship between Disney and the state of Florida.”

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  • Chris Sununu will decide on 2024 presidential bid ‘in the next week or two’ | CNN Politics

    Chris Sununu will decide on 2024 presidential bid ‘in the next week or two’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said Sunday he will decide “in the next week or two” if he wants to mount a bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and enter an already crowded field of candidates.

    “When I start doing something, I’m 120% in,” the governor said on CNN’s “State of the Union” in an interview with Jake Tapper. “Pretty soon, we’ll make a decision, probably in the next week or two. And we’ll either be go or no-go,” he added.

    Sununu’s remarks come as the list of 2024 GOP hopefuls continues to expand, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott entering the race last week.

    Currently in his fourth term, the New Hampshire governor said figuring out where he could be most effective would factor into his 2024 decision.

    “I still have a 24/7 job,” he said. “The money has been lined up. The support’s been lined up. There’s a pathway to win. All that – those boxes are checked. The family’s on board, which is always a big one. I just got to make sure it’s right for the party and right for me,” he said.

    Sununu also said he wanted to ensure he wasn’t more useful outside the presidential race as he looks to steer the Republican Party away from the chaos of its current primary front-runner, former President Donald Trump.

    “Making sure that when it comes to where I want to see the party go … that maybe I talk a little differently, I talk with a different approach. I want more candidates to be empowered. Can I do that more effectively as a candidate? Can I do that more effectively as someone who’s kind of traveling the country, maybe speaking a little more freely?” Sununu said.

    “I just want what’s best for the party,” he continued. “It doesn’t have to be the Chris Sununu show all the time.”

    With Trump leading in current GOP primary polling, Sununu said the former president was playing the “victim card.”

    “Former President Trump is doing better than anybody thought. He is playing this victim card. The media, the DA in New York, all these things have kind of worked in his favor very much,” the governor said. “Just the fact that we are talking about Donald Trump as a victim, I mean, that is unique in itself. But that is not lasting, necessarily. That does not mean the support he has today turns into a vote nine months from now.”

    Sununu avoided harsh criticism of his other potential rivals, calling DeSantis a “very good governor” and praising him for embarking upon a retail politics tour of New Hampshire. The two met for an hour earlier this month when the Florida governor visited the Granite State to meet with state legislators.

    But Sununu suggested Sunday that DeSantis’ focus on cultural fights back in Florida avoided more important issues, such as government efficiency.

    “I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about the culture war stuff, don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I just don’t believe government is going to solve a culture war.”

    DeSantis’ recent pledge to consider pardoning some participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was not “disqualifying” for a presidential candidate, Sununu said, even if it’s not something he would do himself.

    Meanwhile, Sununu said the agreement in principle struck by the White House and Republican negotiators on raising the debt ceiling was likely a win since some members of both parties are now balking at the deal.

    “It is a miracle, I mean release the doves,” the governor said. “Washington is actually moving forward. Both sides seem pretty frustrated, which means it’s probably a pretty good deal, actually.”

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