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Tag: iab-elections

  • Dianne Feinstein, longest-serving female US senator in history, dies at 90 | CNN Politics

    Dianne Feinstein, longest-serving female US senator in history, dies at 90 | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Dianne Feinstein, whose three decades in the Senate made her the longest-serving female US senator in history, has died following months of declining health. She was 90.

    Feinstein’s death, confirmed to CNN by a source familiar, will hand California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom the power to appoint a lawmaker to serve out the rest of Feinstein’s term, keeping the Democratic majority in the chamber through early January 2025. In March 2021, Newsom publicly said he had a list of “multiple” replacements and pledged to appoint a Black woman if Feinstein, a Democrat, were to retire.

    News of Feinstein’s death also comes as federal funding is set to expire, as Congress is at an impasse as to how to avoid a government shutdown, though Senate Democrats still retain a majority without her.

    Feinstein, a former mayor of San Francisco, was a leading figure in California politics for decades and became a national face of the Democratic Party following her first election to the US Senate in 1992. She broke a series of glass ceilings throughout her political career and her influence was felt strongly in some of Capitol Hill’s most consequential works in recent history, including the since-lapsed federal assault weapons ban in 1994 and the 2014 CIA torture report. She also was a longtime force on the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

    In her later years, Feinstein’s health was the subject of increasing scrutiny and speculation, and the California Democrat was prominent among aging lawmakers whose decisions to remain in office drew scrutiny, especially in an age of narrow party margins in Congress.

    A hospitalization for shingles in February led to an extended absence from the Senate – stirring complaints from Democrats, as Feinstein’s time away slowed the confirmation of Democratic-appointed judicial nominees – and when she returned to Capitol Hill three months later, it was revealed that she had suffered multiple complications during her recovery, including Ramsay Hunt syndrome and encephalitis. A fall in August briefly sent her to the hospital.

    Feinstein, who was the Senate’s oldest member at the time of her death, also faced questions about her mental acuity and ability to lead. She dismissed the concerns, saying, “The real question is whether I’m still an effective representative for 40 million Californians, and the record shows that I am.”

    But heavy speculation that Feinstein would retire instead of seek reelection in 2024 led several Democrats to announce their candidacies for her seat – even before she announced her plans. In February, she confirmed that she would not run for reelection, telling CNN, “The time has come.”

    Feinstein was fondly remembered by her colleagues on Friday.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that he will address Feinstein’s death on the Senate floor later Friday morning, calling it a “very, very sad day for all of us.” North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called her a “trailblazer” and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said “she was always a lady but she never backed down from a cause that she thought was worth fighting for.”

    “We lost one of the great ones,” Durbin said.

    San Francisco native and leader

    Feinstein was born in San Francisco in 1933 and graduated from Stanford University in 1955. After serving as a San Francisco County supervisor, Feinstein became the city’s mayor in 1978 in the wake of the assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician from California to be elected to office.

    Feinstein rarely talked about the day when Moscone and Milk were shot but she opened up about the tragic events in a 2017 interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

    Feinstein was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors then, and assassin Dan White had been a friend and colleague of hers.

    “The door to the office opened, and he came in, and I said, ‘Dan?’ ”

    “I heard the doors slam, I heard the shots, I smelled the cordite,” Feinstein recalled.

    It was Feinstein who announced the double assassination to the public. She was later sworn in as the first female mayor of San Francisco.

    Her political career was marked by a series of historic firsts.

    By that time she became mayor in 1978, she had already broken one glass ceiling, becoming the first female chair of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

    California’s first woman sent to the US Senate racked up many other firsts in Washington. Among those: She was the first woman to sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the first female chairwoman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, and the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

    Feinstein also served on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and held the title of ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2017 to 2021. In November 2022, she was poised to become president pro tempore of the Senate – third in line to the presidency – but declined to pursue the position, citing her husband’s recent death.

    Feinstein reflected on her experience as a woman in politics in her 2017 interview with Bash, saying, “Look, being a woman in our society even today is difficult,” and noting, “I know it in the political area.” She would later note in a statement the week she became the longest-serving woman in US history, “We went from two women senators when I ran for office in 1992 to 24 today – and I know that number will keep climbing.”

    “It has been a great pleasure to watch more and more women walk the halls of the Senate,” Feinstein said in November 2022.

    Led efforts on gun control and torture program investigations

    Though she was a proud native of one of the most famously liberal cities in the country, Feinstein earned a reputation over the years in the Senate as someone eager to work across the aisle with Republicans, and at times sparked pushback and criticism from progressives.

    “I truly believe that there is a center in the political spectrum that is the best place to run something when you have a very diverse community. America is diverse; we are not all one people. We are many different colors, religions, backgrounds, education levels, all of it,” she told CNN in 2017.

    A biography from Feinstein’s Senate office states that her notable achievements include “the enactment of the federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994, a law that prohibited the sale, manufacture and import of military-style assault weapons” (the ban has since lapsed), and the influential 2014 torture report, a comprehensive “six-year review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program,” which brought to light for the first time many details from the George W. Bush-era program.

    Feinstein’s high-profile Senate career made its mark on pop culture when she was portrayed by actress Annette Bening in the 2019 film “The Report,” which tackled the subject of the CIA’s use of torture after the Sept. 11 attacks and the effort to make those practices public.

    In November 2020, Feinstein announced that she would step down from the top Democratic spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee the following year in the wake of sharp criticism from liberal activists over her handling of the hearings for then-President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

    While Democratic senators could not block Barrett’s nomination in the Republican-led Senate on their own, liberal activists were angry when Feinstein undermined Democrats’ relentless attempt to portray the process as illegitimate when she praised then-Judiciary Chairman and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham’s leadership of it.

    Feinstein said at the time that she would continue to serve as a senior Democrat on the Judiciary, Intelligence, Appropriations, and Rules and Administration panels, working on priorities like gun safety, criminal justice and immigration.

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  • Three generations of First Nations men share their views on Australia’s referendum | CNN

    Three generations of First Nations men share their views on Australia’s referendum | CNN

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    Brisbane, Australia
    CNN
     — 

    Before Australians last voted in a referendum on First Nations people in 1967, Uncle Bob Anderson set up a table and chair at a tram stop in central Brisbane.

    From his rail-side office, he’d tell anyone who would stop and listen that Australia counted its horses, cows, sheep and goats, but not its Indigenous people. “My question to you is, do you think they should be?” he’d say.

    Some 56 years later, the Ngugi Elder sat on a chair under the hot Brisbane sun on Sunday, his wispy white hair covered in a straw hat, his presence a sign of support for another referendum concerning his people.

    Nearby, thousands of people gathered for “Walk for Yes” rallies in multiple cities around Australia ahead of the October 14 vote.

    On that day, some 17.5 million registered voters will be asked whether Australia should change the constitution to include a permanent body made up of First Nations people to advise the government on matters affecting them.

    Now 94, Anderson says a Yes vote isn’t just important for him but the country.

    “By talking and walking together as a nation and as a society, we will share a common destiny,” he said.

    But less than four weeks out from the vote, polls suggest the split between the supporters and opponents is widening, in favor of no change to the constitution.

    Veteran grassroots Aboriginal activist Wayne Wharton wore the reason for his objections on his T-shirt, as he shouted at Yes supporters on a bridge in central Brisbane.

    “You’re a thief, a liar and a gatekeeper,” he yelled, to a mix of ages and races walking by. “Give back what you stole, give back what you stole, give back what you stole.”

    Aboriginal activist Wayne Wharton delivers his message to supporters at the

    The 62-year-old Kooma man told CNN on the phone that fundamentally people are being asked the wrong question.

    “In a well-meaning country and a country seeking justice, this question would never have been raised or tabled. The question that would have been offered would have been a question about [a] treaty or just occupation,” he said.

    Like Anderson, Wharton remembers the curfews that confined First Nations people to the outskirts of town between sunset and sunrise, the racial slurs hurled at him and his family, the abuse of his ancestors forced to live in missions, and the theft of First Nations children under policies of assimilation that later prompted a national apology.

    Wharton said he wants “liberation, freedom and restitution” delivered through negotiation by the hundreds of Aboriginal nations with people occupying their land.

    “I’ve seen many things change in my 60 years, and as the White bigots that created this continent of privilege die, the next generations have a greater sense of fairness and justice,” Wharton said.

    “I believe in my children’s time a lot of this will be overcome. And that’s why I want to make sure that the door of opportunity is always going to be there for those people when the opportunity comes to create a just occupation, that the mechanism will be there and that it wouldn’t have been hijacked by some desperates in 2023 that changed the constitution.”

    Other First Nations people see it differently, including Nick Harvey-Doyle, who at 31 is half the age of Wharton, and a third of the age of the Aboriginal Elder Anderson.

    From his New York apartment, Harvey-Doyle, an Anaiwan man from New South Wales, co-organized a walk across Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday, attended by more than 350 people, mostly Australians, calling for a Yes vote.

    “I’m from a really small country town that has about 10,000 people and I think there’s about 8,000 Australians in the New York tri-state area. To me, that’s almost essentially a whole country town worth of votes,” he said.

    Nick Harvey-Doyle is studying in New York and is calling for a Yes vote.

    Harvey-Doyle is a former lawyer who is studying at New York University with a Roberta Sykes Scholarship that provides funding for Indigenous students to undertake postgraduate research abroad. Sykes, who died in 2010, was the first Black Australian to study at Harvard, and fought for a Yes vote in the 1967 Referendum.

    That referendum, to count Indigenous people in Australia’s Census figures, passed with over 90% approval.

    Harvey-Doyle implored Australians living overseas to cast their votes to improve the life outcomes for First Nations people, who have lagged behind the country’s non-Indigenous population in heath and welfare statistics for decades.

    “We as Aboriginal people don’t feel like we have carriage over our most intimate and important personal affairs,” he said.

    “I think Aboriginal people do have a different way of life from non-Indigenous people and the current structures and institutions we have in place, don’t always acknowledge that and aren’t always in the best cultural place to service our needs.

    “Actually having a body that exists that is enshrined in the constitution that allows us empowerment, to give advice over our own lives and our own issues is actually super important.”

    More than 350 people walked across Brooklyn Bridge in New York to call for a Yes vote in the Australian Voice referendum.

    According to the Australian Electoral Commission, as of Sunday, more than 96,000 registered voters were outside Australia – including those living abroad and some 58,000 who have notified the commission that they’ll be traveling on October 14.

    While voting is compulsory within Australia, being overseas is considered a valid reason not to vote. More than 100 polling centers will be open worldwide to enable people to vote in person, or they can return a postal ballot. Overseas voting starts early, on October 2.

    To pass, the referendum needs the majority vote across the country, as well as the majority of people in at least four states.

    Indigenous people won’t determine the outcome of this vote – that will be up to millions of other non-Indigenous Australians, some of whom object to Indigenous people being given a special place over others within the constitution, calling the vote “divisive.”

    Wharton says the concept of millions of non-Indigenous voters deciding what’s best for 3% of the population is racist in itself.

    However, Harvey-Doyle says he’s wary of the message a no vote would send in the country and beyond.

    “If we vote No, it says that we are really happy to be apathetic towards the poor life outcomes that some average Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience, and I feel like that goes against what it means to be Australian to give everyone a fair go,” he said.

    “It’ll be a really sad global position for us to put ourselves in, if we do vote No.”

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  • Trump, who paved way for Roe v. Wade reversal, says Republicans ‘speak very inarticulately’ about abortion | CNN Politics

    Trump, who paved way for Roe v. Wade reversal, says Republicans ‘speak very inarticulately’ about abortion | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump, who paved the way for the undoing of federal abortion rights protections, said that some Republicans “speak very inarticulately” about the issue and have pursued “terrible” state-level restrictions that could alienate much of the country.

    While avoiding taking specific positions himself, Trump said in an NBC interview that if he is reelected he will try to broker compromises on how long into pregnancies abortion should be legal and whether those restrictions should be imposed on the federal or the state level.

    “I would sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate something and we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years,” he said.

    The former president targeted GOP primary rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his criticism of how the Republican party has handled the issue, calling Florida’s six-week ban “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”

    DeSantis’ camp hit back on Sunday, taking aim at the former president for saying he’d be willing to work with both parties on abortion.

    “We’ve already seen the disastrous results of Donald Trump compromising with Democrats: over $7 trillion in new debt, an unfinished border wall, and the jailbreak First Step Act letting violent criminals back on to the streets. Republicans across the country know that Ron DeSantis will never back down,” tweeted spokesperson Andrew Romeo.

    Trump also warned Republicans that the party would lose voters by advancing abortion restrictions without exceptions for cases of rape, incest or risks to the mother’s life.

    “Other than certain parts of the country, you can’t – you’re not going to win on this issue,” he said.

    Trump’s comments made plain the challenge for 2024 Republican presidential primary contenders: trying to balance the priorities of their conservative base, for whom the Supreme Court’s June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade was a victory decades in the making, and those of the general electorate, which has consistently supported abortion rights – most recently in the 2022 midterms and the Wisconsin Supreme Court race this spring.

    Abortion could also be a pivotal issue this fall in Virginia’s state legislative elections, which are widely viewed as a barometer of the electorate’s mood in the lead-up to next year’s presidential election.

    Trump’s appointment of three conservative Supreme Court justices paved the way to the reversal of the 1973 decision that guaranteed abortion rights across the United States through the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.

    That reversal left abortion rights up to the states, which has led to a patchwork of laws – including bans on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy in Florida and Iowa, the first state to vote in the GOP presidential nominating process.

    Abortion rights have been a major fault line in the 2024 Republican primary. Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, has advocated a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks. DeSantis, Trump’s top-polling rival, has touted the six-week ban he signed into law. However, other contenders, including Nikki Haley, have taken more moderate approaches, warning of the political backlash Republicans could face among the broader electorate by pursuing strict abortion restrictions.

    Trump would not commit to a specific policy preference in the interview. He deflected questions about whether he would support a federal ban – and if so, after how many weeks – or would rather the issue be left to statehouses.

    “What’s going to happen is you’re going to come up with a number of weeks or months, you’re going to come up with a number that’s going to make people happy,” Trump said.

    Trump said he believed it was “probably better” to leave abortion restrictions up to the states instead of trying to pass federal legislation on the issue.

    “From a pure standpoint, from a legal standpoint, I think it’s probably better. But I can live with it either way,” Trump said. “It could be state or could it federal, I don’t frankly care.”

    The intra-GOP debate over abortion took center stage at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition gathering, attended by many of the state’s leading conservative evangelical activists.

    Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, one of the most vocal Trump critics among the GOP contenders, told reporters Saturday in Iowa that Trump has “taken evangelical voters for granted” and is “waffling on important issues.”

    “I think he is looking at the abortion question as not whether it’s going to win evangelical support, but what that’s going to look like down the road, and as he said he wants everybody to like him,” Hutchinson said.

    Asked about federal legislation on abortion, DeSantis continued not to engage on the topic of a national ban, instead pointing to new restrictions in states such as Iowa and Florida.

    “I’ve been a pro-life governor. I’ll be a pro-life president,” DeSantis said. “Clearly, a state like Iowa has been able to move the ball with pro-life protections. Florida has been able to move the ball.”

    Pence reiterated his support for a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy as a minimum, saying, “It’s an idea whose time has come.” He said Trump and other GOP candidates want to relegate the abortion issue to the states, “but I won’t have it.”

    ‘Personal for every woman and every man’

    However, other contenders more focused on the general electorate, including Haley – the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations – have sought to thread the same needle as Trump.

    Haley on Saturday told attendees at the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Iowa that her beliefs are the “hard truth.” She said pursuing a federal 15-week abortion ban would have “everybody running from us.”

    While Haley opposes abortion, she has emphasized she believes Republicans and Democrats need find a consensus on abortion issues, such as banning later abortions and agreeing not to jail women who get them.

    “This issue is personal for every woman and every man. And we need to treat it that way. I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice any more than I want them to judge me for being pro-life,” she said.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said on CNN last week that he would be open to signing a federal abortion ban “if it represented consensus,” while admitting the current setbacks to reaching that consensus within the US Senate and across states.

    “I want all of the 50 states to be able to weigh in if they want to, and what their state laws should be, and then let’s see if it’s a consensus,” he said.

    Democrats, meanwhile, are eyeing abortion as one of the most important issues in the 2024 presidential election.

    CNN previously reported that President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign earlier this month made a digital advertising buy highlighting the positions of Trump and other GOP 2024 contenders on the issue.

    “As Donald Trump visits states where women are suffering the consequences of his extreme, anti-abortion agenda, this ad reminds voters in states that have passed some of the most extreme abortion bans of Trump’s key role in appointing conservative justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a statement to CNN.

    This story has been updated with additional information Sunday.

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  • Trump says he supports mental competency tests for presidency amid concerns over age | CNN Politics

    Trump says he supports mental competency tests for presidency amid concerns over age | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump, the oldest candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential field, said there should not be an age limit for the presidency but expressed support for requiring mental competency tests for candidates.

    “I’m all for the tests,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in an interview clip that aired Saturday, citing a cognitive test he took in 2020 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. “I aced it. I get everything right.”

    But the former president, 77, cast doubt on the practicality of requiring such a test, adding, “A lot of people say it’s not constitutional to do it.”

    Trump’s comments come as he considerably leads the Republican presidential pool to face President Joe Biden – who is 80 – in 2024.

    When asked if there is a need for a new generation to take the helm, Trump said, “It’s always time for a new generation.”

    But, he added, “Some of the greatest world leaders have been in their 80s,” though the 77-year-old quickly clarified that he’s “not anywhere very near 80, by the way.”

    The ages of the incumbent and the GOP front-runner have raised questions about whether they are fit for office, and other presidential candidates have used the issue to argue that they will not be effective leaders.

    Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is challenging his former boss for the GOP presidential nomination, told CNN in an interview that aired Sunday, “We don’t need a president whose too old and we don’t need a president whose too young.” But he stopped short of saying whether 77 is too old to be president.

    “I think that’s a judgment for voters,” Pence told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “I trust voters to make their decision, whether it be the mental competency of people or whether it be their age or energy level.”

    But Trump said the problem with his successor is “bigger” than his age.

    “I don’t think Biden is too old, but I think he is incompetent,” Trump said. “And that’s a bigger problem.”

    Biden, who would be 82 at the start of his next term if reelected, has also shrugged off concerns about his age in recent months. When asked why an 82-year-old would be the best fit for president, Biden told MSNBC in May that he has “acquired a hell of a lot of wisdom.”

    “I’m more experienced than anybody (who’s) ever run for the office,” he said, adding that he thinks he’s proven himself to be effective.

    However, a recent CNN poll showed that roughly three-quarters of Americans say they’re seriously concerned that Biden’s age might negatively affect his current level of physical and mental competence and his ability to serve out another term if reelected.

    This story has been updated with additional information Sunday.

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  • Why some of Biden’s problems may be overblown at this time | CNN Politics

    Why some of Biden’s problems may be overblown at this time | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. He’s under an impeachment inquiry, his son was indicted in Delaware, inflation seems to be tilting back up, the United Auto Workers went on strike after Biden said they wouldn’t, and the chattering class is talking about him not running for reelection.

    Some of these factors explain why my colleague Zach Wolf wrote that “Biden’s two worst weaknesses were exposed” this past week, and it’s also why I’ve written about the president’s difficulties heading into next year.

    But while Biden clearly has problems – no president with an approval rating hovering around 40% is in good shape – some of his issues appear to be overblown at this time. Here are three reasons why:

    A Washington Post op-ed by columnist David Ignatius that called on Biden not to run for reelection got a lot of play this past week.

    Putting aside whether Biden should or shouldn’t run, the fact is that he is running. A lot of people will point to polls (like those from CNN) showing that a majority of Democrats don’t think the party should renominate him.

    But these surveys only tell you so much. They’re matching Biden against himself and not anyone else. When asked in the CNN poll to name a preferred alternative to Biden, only a little more than 10% wanted someone else and could name a specific person.

    When matched up against the announced Democratic opposition (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson), Biden is crushing it. He’s over 70%, on average, in recent polling.

    Moreover, Biden’s job approval rating with Democrats hovers around 80%. That is well above the level at which past incumbents have faced strong primary challenges. Those challenges (such as when Ted Kennedy challenged incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980) came at a time when the president had an approval rating in the 50s or 60s among his own party members.

    It is worth analyzing whether the fact that a lot of Democrats don’t think Biden should be renominated masks a larger problem he could face in a general election.

    But Biden’s pulling in more than 90% of Democrats in Fox News and Quinnipiac University general election polling released this past week. In both polls, his share slightly exceeded former President Donald Trump’s among Republicans (though within the margin of error).

    The fact is Biden’s got problems, but worrying about renomination is not one of them.

    From a political point of view, Biden’s connections to his son Hunter have caused the president nothing but heartache. Most voters think Biden did something inappropriate related to his son’s business dealings.

    So, it might naturally follow that House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president’s ties to his son’s foreign business deals would be harmful to his political future.

    About 40% of voters, on average, think Joe Biden did something illegal. Most voters don’t.

    Some Republicans are no doubt hoping that Biden’s own troubles will make their likely nominee (Trump), who is under four indictments, look less bad by comparison. A majority of voters, however, think that Trump committed a crime.

    The public doesn’t see the Biden and Trump cases the same way.

    A Wall Street Journal poll from the end of August found that a majority of Americans (52%) did not want Biden to be impeached.

    Republicans will have to prove their case in the court of public opinion.

    It’s conceivable that Republicans will overshoot the mark like they have in the past. The impeachment inquiry into Bill Clinton in 1998 preceded one of the best performances by a president’s party in a midterm election. Clinton’s Democratic Party picked up seats in the House, which has happened three times for the president’s party in midterms over the last century.

    To see how impeachment could turn things upside down for the GOP this cycle, consider independent voters. While the vast majority of independents disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president (64%) in our latest CNN poll, only 39% think he did something illegal.

    An election about a potentially unpopular impeachment would be better for Biden than one about an issue that really hurts him (such as voters seeing him as too old).

    Stop me if you heard this one before: Biden is the president heading into an election, voters are unhappy with the state of the economy, and his party does much better in the elections than a lot of people thought.

    That’s what happened in the 2022 midterms.

    The inflation rate is lower now than it was then, but it’s on the uptick. Voters, both now and then, overwhelmingly disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy. They even say the economy matters more than any other issue, like they did in 2022.

    What none of this data takes into account is that Americans almost always call the economy the top issue, according to Gallup.

    Believe it or not, fewer Americans say the economy is the top problem facing the country now (31%) than they have in either the median (40%) or average (45%) presidential election since 1988.

    If you think about recent presidential elections in which the economy was the big issue (1992, 2008 and 2012), the state of the economy dominated the headlines.

    But as mentioned above, right now, there are a lot of other things going on in the country, as was also the case during the 2022 midterms.

    It’s not as if the economy is helping Biden. I’m just not sure it’s hurting him.

    After all, there’s a reason why Democrats have consistently outperformed the 2020 presidential baseline in special elections this year.

    If things were really that bad for Biden and the Democrats, they’d most likely be losing elections all over the country. That simply isn’t happening at this point.

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  • Florida GOP scraps planned loyalty oath in win for Trump over DeSantis in their shared home state | CNN Politics

    Florida GOP scraps planned loyalty oath in win for Trump over DeSantis in their shared home state | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Republican Party of Florida on Friday night scrapped plans to require presidential candidates to sign a loyalty oath, siding with former President Donald Trump over Gov. Ron DeSantis in a proxy war that tested the strength of the two rivals’ support in their home state.

    The party had quietly agreed in May to institute a pledge, mandating candidates promise to endorse the GOP nominee in order to make next year’s primary ballot – a move seen by Trump allies as a maneuver intended to boost DeSantis. Pro-Trump forces in the party, led by state Sen. Joe Gruters, pushed to reverse course Friday, arguing that the state GOP violated national party rules that bar such changes to candidate eligibility requirements within two years of an election.

    Gruters, a former chairman of the Florida GOP, made a motion to remove the language and won out in a voice vote by an “overwhelming” margin, he told CNN.

    “Common sense prevailed at the Republican Party of Florida tonight,” Gruters said.

    The vote by the state GOP’s executive committee took place during the organization’s quarterly meeting in Orlando, an event that should have been a celebration of the party’s recent electoral successes and a chance to lay the groundwork for the campaign to keep Florida red in 2024.

    Instead, the meeting exposed deepening divisions in the state party over its two presidential candidates. The outcome suggests that Trump maintains the upper hand over DeSantis in their shared home state.

    Republican Party of Florida Chairman Christian Ziegler did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    In a statement to CNN after the vote, DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin said, “Once Ron DeSantis secures the party’s nomination, we hope everyone in the field will join him in that fight.”

    “We believe anyone who wants to run for president as a Republican should be willing to pledge their support for our eventual nominee,” Griffin said. “It is surprising that anyone interested in seeing the defeat of Joe Biden in 2024 would disagree.”

    On Friday night, the two 2024 rivals had dueling speeches in Washington, DC, about two miles from each other at separate Christian conservative events. DeSantis at the Pray Vote Stand Summit hosted by the Family Research Council and Trump at the Concerned Women for America Summit, where DeSantis made remarks earlier in the afternoon.

    In August, DeSantis signed the Republican National Committee’s loyalty pledge to support the party’s eventual nominee, one of the requirements to appear on the debate stage. Trump has not signed the RNC’s loyalty pledge.

    On Thursday, Trump told conservative host Megyn Kelly he does not plan to debate his fellow Republicans, pointing to his commanding lead over the 2024 primary field.

    “I don’t see it,” Trump told Kelly. “Why would I do it?”

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  • Biden’s two worst weaknesses were exposed this week | CNN Politics

    Biden’s two worst weaknesses were exposed this week | 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
     — 

    Two major threats to President Joe Biden’s reelection – his son Hunter’s legal problems and the widely held perception the 80-year-old is too old for reelection – are both causing him major pain this week.

    Hunter Biden was indicted on federal gun charges in Delaware on Thursday, accused of lying about his past drug abuse and violating a gun law when he bought a handgun in 2018, before his father’s presidential campaign. The weapon was later abandoned behind a grocery store by Hallie Biden, the wife of Hunter’s late brother, Beau. Hallie and Hunter were having an affair at the time.

    Read an annotated version of the indictment.

    That sad and sordid family drama of addiction could land the president’s son in prison, although separate investigations on tax evasion and foreign business dealings have not yet led to charges from the Delaware US attorney David Weiss, who was elevated earlier this year to special counsel to guarantee independence from the US Department of Justice.

    While Weiss has found no basis to criminally charge Hunter Biden over his foreign business dealings and no direct connection has been drawn between the son’s business interests and the father’s policy positions, House Republicans plan to dig deep as they look for more evidence during an official impeachment inquiry authorized by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this week.

    The impeachment may never occur, and the years of investigation may not have exposed any wrongdoing by President Biden – but the inquiry will certainly keep Hunter Biden top of mind for voters who may wonder why the president would let his family operate like this.

    Any Democrats who dismiss the effort might recall that McCarthy bragged in 2015 that the exhaustive House investigations focused on Hillary Clinton wounded her politically. At the time, he was talking about investigations into the death of a US ambassador in Benghazi, Libya, while she was secretary of state. The effort by today’s GOP to tie Biden to his son could have a similar effect.

    Even if there is nothing to tie President Biden to the millions of dollars Hunter Biden and other family members made from interests in China, Ukraine and elsewhere, most Americans are not convinced.

    Well more than half the country, 61%, thinks Biden had some involvement in his son’s business dealings while serving as vice president, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS in late August, before the gun-related indictment was handed down but after a previous plea deal fell apart. Most of those people who think the president was involved back then also think the actions were illegal.

    What’s not clear is whether the Hunter Biden issues will be a motivating factor outside the group of voters who already dislike the president. His low job approval rating and concerns about the economy could ultimately be more damaging in an election.

    The public’s perception of his relationship with his son is not even the most concerning element for Biden in the poll. That would be his age.

    “Biden’s age isn’t just a Fox News trope; it’s been the subject of dinner-table conversations across America this summer,” the Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote this week in calling for Biden to step aside ASAP to give someone else a shot at winning the 2024 election.

    Just about a quarter of Americans in CNN’s poll said Biden has the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively, far from a ringing endorsement of a president who brought policy wins back from a trip to Asia last week but left the impression he was confused at a press conference.

    Romney calls on Trump and Biden to ‘stand aside’ for younger candidates

    Only a third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning registered voters in the poll said they think Biden should be the Democrats’ candidate in 2024. Two-thirds want a different candidate, although almost nobody knows who.

    Ignatius had enough of the president’s respect earlier this summer to get an invite to Biden’s state dinner for the Indian prime minister in June. Hunter Biden also attended.

    Ignatius is among the people who effusively say Biden has been a very good president, both “successful” and “effective.”

    “What I admire most about President Biden is that in a polarized nation, he has governed from the center out, as he promised in his victory speech,” Ignatius wrote, adding plaudits for Biden’s domestic accomplishments and foreign policy leadership.

    But Ignatius fears another pairing of Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris “risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.”

    Among Democratic voters, the most-cited concerns with Biden are his age and the need for someone younger.

    The vast majority of the Democrats interested in a Biden alternative picked “just someone besides Joe Biden.” One of the most-supported specific alternatives, Sen. Bernie Sanders, is older than Biden.

    The lack of confidence in Harris to take up the mantle was evident when CNN’s Anderson Cooper talked Wednesday night to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is running for reelection to Congress but stepped away from her leadership position.

    Cooper asked Pelosi if Harris was the best running mate for Biden.

    “He thinks so and that’s what matters,” Pelosi said, although she did commend Harris for being “politically astute.”

    kamala harris nancy pelosi split

    Anderson Cooper asks Nancy Pelosi twice if she thinks Harris is best running mate for Biden

    Pelosi promised that Democrats are behind Biden, and she does think he’s the best candidate to beat Trump.

    “He has great experience and wisdom,” Pelosi said.

    CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere writes that the Biden campaign is plotting a long-game strategy and that aides blame the media for “what they view as validating concerns about Biden’s age and about Republican claims of Hunter Biden’s corruption by covering those concerns, despite what they argue is a lack of evidence.”

    They are banking, he writes, on a data-focused emphasis on key states to turn the moveable voters away from Trump.

    He lost badly in Iowa and New Hampshire in the 2020 primary, for instance, before riding a wave of support from moderates in southern states to a dramatic upset of multiple younger candidates and those with more committed followings.

    Biden emerged from a crowded pack four years ago. There’s little indication it would make sense for him to open the primary up, as Ignatius suggests, to some of those same people today.

    Ultimately, there is an open question over what this election will be about.

    If it’s about a referendum on an aging president whose fitness worries voters and who allowed his son to make millions in circumstances that raise suspicions even without evidence of wrongdoing, Biden will struggle.

    That said, one of the few things voters might like less is a person who tried to overturn an election.

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  • Nikki Haley says she views China ‘as an enemy’ in pointed rebuke | CNN Politics

    Nikki Haley says she views China ‘as an enemy’ in pointed rebuke | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and 2024 Republican presidential contender, said Sunday that she views China “as an enemy” in a potential preview of the hardline approach she would take if elected president.

    “China’s been practically preparing for war with us for years,” Haley told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday. “Yes, I view China as an enemy.”

    America, the former United Nations ambassador said, needs to “make sure that we’re serious about China and they know that we’re serious about them – not going and being nice to them and thinking that they’re going to change.”

    Her comments come while President Joe Biden is in Vietnam trying to secure stronger diplomatic, military and economic ties with a network of allies and partners in response to China’s increasingly aggressive military and economic posture.

    On a separate track, the Biden administration has also pursued more stable ties and improved communication with Beijing over the last year, with a series of top Cabinet secretaries making the trip to China’s capital in just the last few months.

    “How much more has to happen for Biden to realize you don’t send Cabinet members over to China to appease them; you start getting serious with China and say: ‘We’re not going to put up with it,’” Haley said Sunday.

    “They keep sending different Cabinet officials over, Jake, and it’s embarrassing,” she added.

    Discussing the US’ relationship with China in an interview with CBS’ Margaret Brennan that aired Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris said, “Yes, there’s tension when you are in a competition of any sort. But that does not mean that we are seeking conflict.”

    “And I think it’s important to not conflate the two,” Harris added.

    Detailing what her own approach would look like, Haley stressed the importance of cutting off China’s access to US oil, combating “Chinese infiltration” in American universities, and ending all normal trade relations until the flow of fentanyl to the US is stopped.

    “And then we’re going to build up our military, because China now has the strongest naval fleet in the world,” Haley said.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Rudy Giuliani files new legal challenge to Georgia election interference case | CNN Politics

    Rudy Giuliani files new legal challenge to Georgia election interference case | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Rudy Giuliani has filed a new legal challenge against the criminal charges he’s facing in Georgia over his attempts to subvert the 2020 presidential election.

    The former Trump attorney on Friday asked Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to quash the indictment, or at least to set a hearing on the matter. Giuliani argued in the filing that there were “deficiencies” in the indictment that render it invalid, and that prosecutors are violating his rights against “double jeopardy” by how they structured the racketeering conspiracy allegations.

    The indictment is “a conspiratorial bouillabaisse consisting of purported criminal acts, daily activities, and constitutionally protected speech,” the filing argues.

    Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged Giuliani last month with 13 crimes, including violating the state’s racketeering law (known as RICO), soliciting public officials to violate their oath of office, conspiring to commit forgery, and making false statements.

    State prosecutors argue that Giuliani participated in a “criminal enterprise” by peddling false claims about voter fraud to state legislators and by orchestrating the fake electors scheme. He pleaded not guilty, as have the other 18 defendants in the sweeping case.

    In the weeks since his indictment, Giuliani has railed against Willis, saying in a recent podcast that she is “so damn stupid” and “doesn’t even know what the RICO statute is.”

    The former New York City mayor held a fundraiser Thursday to help with his growing legal bills. CNN previously reported that he owes millions of dollars in legal expenses.

    Giuliani also is an unindicted co-conspirator in Trump’s federal election subversion case. And he faces defamation suits from Dominion and Smartmatic, voting technology companies that he falsely said rigged the 2020 election. In a separate case, a judge ruled that he defamed two Georgia election workers, and a jury will decide what he owes damages.

    The Georgia election workers who won a defamation lawsuit against Giuliani for his bogus fraud claims in the 2020 election say they are entitled to another $104,000 in attorneys’ fees stemming from the discovery disputes that arose in the case.

    It will be up to US District Judge Beryl Howell to approve the amount Giuliani must pay.

    The ask would be in addition to the nearly $90,000 in sanctions the judge previously ordered for Giuliani in the case.

    Last month, Howell determined that Giuliani had lost the lawsuit brought by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss after he failed to provide information sought in subpoenas.

    A trial to determine the amount of damages for which Giuliani will be held liable will be set for later this year or early 2024.

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  • CNN Poll: Biden faces negative job ratings and concerns about his age as he gears up for 2024 | CNN Politics

    CNN Poll: Biden faces negative job ratings and concerns about his age as he gears up for 2024 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden faces continued headwinds from broadly negative job ratings overall, widespread concerns about his age and decreased confidence among Democratic-aligned voters, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS.

    There is no clear leader in a potential rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump, who is widely ahead in the GOP primary. And nearly half of registered voters (46%) say that any Republican presidential nominee would be a better choice than Biden in 2024.

    Meanwhile, hypothetical matchups also suggest there would be no clear leader should Biden face one of the other major GOP contenders, with one notable exception: Biden runs behind former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

    Since Biden announced his reelection bid earlier this year – where he framed the 2024 contest as a fight against Republican extremism – his approval ratings have remained mired below the mid-40s, similar to Trump’s standing in 2019, and several points below Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at this point ahead of their reelection campaigns.

    Still, Biden’s prospective opponents face challenges of their own: 44% of voters feel any Democratic candidate would be a better choice than Trump. Among the full public, both Biden’s and Trump’s favorability ratings stand at just 35%.

    Views of Biden’s performance in office and on where the country stands are deeply negative in the new poll. His job approval rating stands at just 39%, and 58% say that his policies have made economic conditions in the US worse, up 8 points since last fall. Seventy percent say things in the country are going badly, a persistent negativity that has held for much of Biden’s time in office, and 51% say government should be doing more to solve the nation’s problems.

    Perceptions of Biden personally are also broadly negative, with 58% saying they have an unfavorable impression of him. Fewer than half of Americans, 45%, say that Biden cares about people like them, with only 33% describing him as someone they’re proud to have as president. A smaller share of the public than ever now says that Biden inspires confidence (28%, down 7 percentage points from March) or that he has the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president (26%, down 6 points from March), with those declines driven largely by Democrats and independents.

    Roughly three-quarters of Americans say they’re seriously concerned that Biden’s age might negatively affect his current level of physical and mental competence (73%), and his ability to serve out another full term if reelected (76%), with a smaller 68% majority seriously concerned about his ability to understand the next generation’s concerns (that stands at 72% among those younger than 65, but just 57% of those 65 or older feel the same).

    A broad 67% majority of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters now say it’s very or extremely likely that Biden will again be the party’s presidential nominee, up from 55% who felt that way in May. But 67% also say the party should nominate someone other than Biden – up from 54% in March, though still below the high of 75% who said they were seeking an alternative last summer.

    That remains largely a show of discontent with Biden rather than support for any particular rival, with an 82% majority of those who’d prefer to see someone different saying that they don’t have any specific alternative in mind. Just 1%, respectively, name either of his two most prominent declared challengers, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. or Marianne Williamson.

    Much of the hesitation revolves around Biden’s vitality rather than his handling of the job. While strong majorities of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters continue to say that Biden cares about people like them (81%) and to approve of his overall job performance (75%), declining shares see him as inspiring confidence (51%, down 19 percentage points since March) or having the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as president (49%, down 14 points from March).

    Asked to name their biggest concern about a Biden candidacy in 2024, 49% directly mention his age, with his mental acuity (7%) and health (7%) also top concerns, along with his ability to handle the job (7%) and his popularity and electability (6%). Just 5% say that they have no concerns.

    “I think he’s a trustworthy, honest person. But he’s so old and not totally with it,” wrote one 28-year-old Democratic voter who was surveyed. “Still love him though. But I also wish he was more progressive. It’s complicated.”

    Others see both positives and negatives to his age. “His age is a bit worrisome, but I would like to see a good strong Democrat as a consideration,” wrote a 66-year-old Democratic-leaning independent voter. “Otherwise I and husband will stick with Biden. He has wisdom many younger do not have nor understand.”

    Asked directly about the potential effects of his age, majorities of Democratic-aligned voters say they are seriously concerned that Biden’s age might negatively affect his current level of physical and mental competence (56%), his ability to win the 2024 general election if nominated (60%), and his ability to serve another full term as president if reelected (61%). Fewer, 43%, say they’re seriously concerned that his age would negatively affect his ability to understand the concerns of the next generation of Americans, although that rises to 59% among Democratic-aligned voters younger than 45. If reelected, Biden would take office in January 2025 at age 82.

    Most Democratic-aligned voters younger than 45 say they approve of Biden’s job performance overall. But in a break from older partisans, substantial majorities also say that Biden does not inspire confidence (63%), does not have the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively (64%), and that his policies have failed to improve the economy (64%).

    In an early gauge of a hypothetical Biden-Trump rematch, CNN’s poll finds, registered voters are currently split between Trump (47%) and Biden (46%), with the demographic contours that defined the 2020 race still prominent. Biden sees majority support among voters of color (58%), college graduates (56%), voters younger than 35 (55%) and women (53%), while Trump has majority support among Whites (53%), men (53%) and voters without a college degree (53%). Independent voters break in Biden’s favor, 47% to 38%, as do suburban women (51% Biden to 44% Trump). Trump holds wide, though not unanimous, support among voters who currently disapprove of Biden’s job performance, with 13% in this group saying they’d back Biden over Trump regardless.

    Presidential elections are decided by the state-by-state votes that determine the makeup of the electoral college rather than by national preferences, and given the distribution of electoral college votes among the states, a near-even race in the nationwide ballot is more likely to tilt to the Republican candidate in the electoral college count than the Democratic one.

    Nearly 6 in 10 registered voters say that their vote in a matchup between Trump and Biden would be largely motivated by their attitudes toward the former Republican president – 30% say they’d vote for Biden mostly to express their opposition to Trump, and 29% that they’d vote for Trump mostly in an affirmative show of support. Only about one-third, by contrast, said they’d see their votes mostly as a way to cast judgment on Biden.

    The criminal cases against Trump loom large over his candidacy, with both those motivated by support and those driven by opposition to him offering strongly held views on the charges. Those who say their support for Biden is more of an anti-Trump vote are near universal in saying the charges related to his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol (96%) and to efforts to overturn the 2020 election (93%) are disqualifying if true, while about seven in 10 of those who say their backing for Trump is to show support for him say the former president faces so many charges largely due to political abuse of the justice system (69%).

    Despite voters’ strong opinions toward Trump, Biden fares no better against any other Republican hopefuls tested in the poll. He is about even with Ron DeSantis (47% each), Mike Pence (46% Pence, 44% Biden), Tim Scott (46% Scott, 44% Biden), Vivek Ramaswamy (46% Biden, 45% Ramaswamy), and Chris Christie (44% Christie, 42% Biden). Haley stands as the only GOP candidate to hold a lead over Biden, with 49% to Biden’s 43% in a hypothetical match between the two. That difference is driven at least in part by broader support for Haley than for other Republicans among White voters with college degrees (she holds 51% of that group, compared with 48% or less for other Republicans tested in the poll).

    As of now, Republican and Republican-leaning voters are more deeply driven to vote in 2024 (71% extremely motivated) than Democratic-aligned voters (61% extremely motivated).

    The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS from August 25-31 among a random national sample of 1,503 adults drawn from a probability-based panel, including 1,259 registered voters and 391 Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters. The survey included an oversample to reach a total of 898 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents; this group has been weighted to its proper size within the population. Surveys were either conducted online or by telephone with a live interviewer. Results among the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 points; among registered voters, the margin of sampling error is 3.6 points, and it is 6.0 for Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters.

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  • Rhode Island and Utah hold special election primaries for House seats | CNN Politics

    Rhode Island and Utah hold special election primaries for House seats | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Rhode Island and Utah voters are choosing party nominees for US House seats on Tuesday with the two states each holding a special primary election.

    In Rhode Island, a crowded Democratic field will be narrowed down to one in the race to succeed Democrat David Cicilline in the state’s 1st Congressional District. Cicilline resigned in May to lead the Rhode Island Foundation.

    In Utah, Republicans will decide their nominee in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, which GOP Rep. Chris Stewart is expected to vacate on September 15. Stewart announced in June that he would be departing Congress, citing his wife’s health concerns.

    Both seats are not expected to change party hands in November, given the partisan leans of each district, so the outcome of Tuesday’s primaries will be critical to determining who their next members of Congress will be.

    Rhode Island’s general election is set for November 7, while the general election in Utah will take place on November 21.

    Rhode Island

    Rhode Island’s 1st District covers the eastern part of the state, including East and North Providence, Pawtucket and Portsmouth. Eleven Democrats are vying for the chance to succeed Cicilline.

    The district is a Democratic stronghold – Cicilline won a seventh term by 28 points last fall, and President Joe Biden would have carried the district by a similar margin in 2020 under its present lines. A Republican hasn’t held the seat since 1995.

    Former state Rep. Aaron Regunberg has raised the most funds of the Democrats currently in the race, bringing in $630,000 through August 16. Former White House official Gabe Amo and Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos trailed with $604,000 and $579,000, respectively.

    Regunberg is running on a progressive platform, focused on issues such as fighting climate change and housing insecurity. He has the backing of multiple prominent progressives, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, and the endorsement of the campaign arm of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He has faced criticism over support he’s received from a super PAC primarily funded by his father-in-law. After an unsuccessful bid for Rhode Island lieutenant governor in 2018, he earned a law degree from Harvard and worked as a judicial law clerk.

    Amo, the son of Ghanaian and Liberian immigrants, has worked in both the Obama and Biden administrations. He has received endorsements from high-profile Democrats such as former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who represented the 1st District for eight terms before Cicilline, and former White House chief of staff Ron Klain. He also has the backing of the campaign arm of the Congressional Black Caucus and Democrats Serve, which supports candidates with public service backgrounds.

    Amo, a former deputy director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, has made preventing gun violence a top priority, noting that during his White House tenure, he “was often the first call to a mayor following a mass shooting.”

    Matos, who emigrated to the US from the Dominican Republic at the age of 20, could make history as the first Afro-Latina in Congress. She has the backing of the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and EMILY’s List, which backs Democratic women who support abortion rights.

    Matos’ campaign endured controversy this summer following allegations her campaign had submitted falsified nominating signatures. Hundreds of signatures were thrown out, but her campaign submitted enough valid signatures to make the ballot. The incident is being investigated by the state attorney general. Matos has blamed an outside vendor for submitting the alleged false signatures.

    In another controversy leading up to the primary, businessman Don Carlson, who had loaned his campaign $600,000, ended his bid a little over a week ago following allegations of an inappropriate interaction he had with a college student in 2019. While his name remains on the ballot, the state Board of Elections ordered local boards to post a notice that he’d withdrawn, Chris Hunter, a spokesman for the state board told CNN. Carlson has endorsed state Sen. Sandra Cano, a Colombian immigrant who has made education a top priority in her campaign and has labor support.

    Marine veteran Gerry Leonard Jr., who had the endorsement of the state GOP, will win the party nomination, CNN projected Tuesday evening.

    Utah’s 2nd District covers the western portion of the state, stretching from the Salt Lake City area to St. George. Republicans are heavily favored to hold the seat – Stewart won a sixth term last fall by 26 points, while former President Donald Trump would have carried it under its current lines by 17 points in 2020.

    Three Republicans are looking to succeed Stewart: Former Utah GOP Chairman Bruce Hough, former Stewart aide Celeste Maloy and former state Rep. Becky Edwards.

    Maloy, who has Stewart’s backing, earned her spot on the ballot by winning a nominating convention in July, while Hough and Edwards qualified by collecting sufficient signatures.

    Edwards and Hough, boosted by significant self-funding, both outraised Maloy through August 16.

    Edwards raised $679,000 – $300,000 of which she loaned to her campaign – while Hough raised nearly $539,000, including $334,000 of his own money. Maloy had brought in $307,000 through August 16.

    Maloy, who worked as a counsel in Stewart’s Washington office, has faced questions over her eligibility for the special election primary ballot over voter registration issues. She was marked inactive in the state’s voter database because she did not cast a ballot in 2020 and 2022, according to The Salt Lake Tribune, after she relocated to Virginia to work for Stewart. But the state GOP submitted her name for the ballot, noting that no objections to her candidacy were filed before the convention.

    On the campaign trail, Maloy said she’s been focusing on government overreach. She has proposed defunding federal agencies to eliminate “anything they’re doing that Congress hasn’t authorized.”

    Voters are “worried that these executive branch agencies have too much power, they’re not checked and they’re too involved in our lives,” Maloy told CNN affiliate KUTV in an interview. “And I happen to agree.”

    Maloy’s campaign has received financial support from VIEW PAC, which is dedicated to recruiting and electing Republican women to Congress.

    Hough – the father of professional dancers Julianne and Derek Hough, who rose to fame on “Dancing with the Stars” – is focusing on debt reduction and deficit control, citing his family as one of the reasons why he’s running.

    “With 22 grandkids, 10 kids and a $32 trillion (US) debt, I’m very anxious about their future and about the future of all Americans and all Utahns,” Hough told ABC4 in a video posted in June. “It’s time that we actually do something about it.”

    Hough, who until recently had been Utah’s Republican national committeeman, has positioned himself as the candidate most supportive of Trump.

    Edwards, meanwhile, challenged GOP Sen. Mike Lee in a primary last year as a moderate opposed to Trump and took 30% of the vote. On the trail, she has touted her experience as a state lawmaker, focusing on priorities such as health care, education and fiscal responsibility.

    Edwards, who backed Biden in 2020, expressed “regret” for that support at a debate in June, saying she had been “extremely disappointed” with his administration, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

    The winner of Tuesday’s GOP primary will face Democratic state Sen. Kathleen Riebe in November. Riebe won her party’s nomination at a June convention.

    This story has been updated with a CNN projection.

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  • State Rep. Gloria Johnson of ‘Tennessee Three’ launches US Senate bid | CNN Politics

    State Rep. Gloria Johnson of ‘Tennessee Three’ launches US Senate bid | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Tennessee Rep. Gloria Johnson, who made national headlines earlier this year as one of three lawmakers facing expulsion over protesting for more gun control on the state House floor, announced a longshot bid for the US Senate on Tuesday.

    “We need somebody that’s gonna care about Tennessee families and lifting them up and making sure that it’s them that we’re trying to cut costs and not cutting costs for corporations and billionaires. We’ve got to make sure that Tennessee families are earning a good wage, have access to affordable health care, have great schools for their kids, and can live in dignity and be able to retire,” Johnson said during remarks, according to a campaign news release.

    Johnson first made national headlines when she and state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson advocated for gun reform measures in late March following a mass shooting that devastated a Nashville school. They all faced expulsion after Republicans in the chamber accused them of “knowingly and intentionally” bringing “disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives” for leading the protest. Jones and Pearson, who are Black, were expelled – but Johnson, who is White, was not, a decision she categorized as racially motivated at the time.

    Pearson will serve as a co-chair on the campaign, according to the news release.

    Johnson faces long odds in her hopes of unseating Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn in the deep red state of Tennessee, which hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1990.

    Nonetheless, some of Johnson’s campaign video was aimed at Blackburn’s stance on reproductive rights and her voting record on lowering prescription costs.

    “Look, I’m 6’3. I’m not afraid to stand up to anyone when it comes to doing what’s right for Tennessee, especially Marsha Blackburn, and that’s why I’m running for Senate,” Johnson said.

    First, Johnson will have to win the Democratic primary, where she already has company. Memphis environmental activist Marquita Bradshaw, the Democratic Senate nominee in 2020 who lost to Republican Bill Hagerty, announced in July that she would challenge Blackburn.

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  • CNN Exclusive: Special counsel election probe continues with focus on fundraising, voting equipment breaches | CNN Politics

    CNN Exclusive: Special counsel election probe continues with focus on fundraising, voting equipment breaches | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Special counsel Jack Smith is still pursuing his investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election a month after indicting Donald Trump for orchestrating a broad conspiracy to remain in power, a widening of the probe that raises the possibility others could still face legal peril.

    Questions asked of two recent witnesses indicate Smith is focusing on how money raised off baseless claims of voter fraud was used to fund attempts to breach voting equipment in several states won by Joe Biden, according to multiple sources familiar with the ongoing investigation.

    In both interviews, prosecutors have focused their questions on the role of former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell.

    According to invoices obtained by CNN, Powell’s non-profit, Defending the Republic, hired forensics firms that ultimately accessed voting equipment in four swing states won by Biden: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona.

    Powell faces criminal charges in Georgia after she was indicted last month by Atlanta-area district attorney Fani Willis, who alleges that Powell helped coordinate and fund a multi-state plot to illegally access voting systems after the 2020 election.

    Powell pleaded not guilty to the charges.

    Those charges center around a voting system breach in Coffee County, Georgia, a rural, Republican district that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2020. Willis’ indictment describes the breach, and Powell’s alleged involvement, as central to the broader conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

    Powell has also been identified by CNN as one of Trump’s un-indicted co-conspirators listed in Smith’s federal election indictment.

    New details about Smith’s ongoing investigation indicate federal prosecutors are scrutinizing a series of voting breaches following the 2020 election that state investigators have been probing for more than a year.

    Exactly how this recent line of inquiry fits into Smith’s ongoing criminal investigation remains unclear. Smith’s grand jury in Washington, DC, is set to expire on Sept. 15 but it can be extended beyond then.

    The special counsel’s office declined to comment.

    According to sources, witnesses interviewed by Smith’s prosecutors in recent weeks were asked about Powell’s role in the hunt for evidence of voter fraud after the 2020 election, including how her nonprofit group, Defending the Republic, provided money to fund those efforts.

    Powell promoted Defending the Republic as a non-profit focused on funding post-election legal challenges by Trump’s team as it disputed results in key states Biden had won. Those challenges and fundraising efforts underpinning them were all based on the premise that evidence of widespread voter fraud was already in hand.

    But according to documents reviewed by CNN and witness testimony obtained by the House select committee that investigated January, 6, 2021, the group was used to fund a desperate search to retroactively back-up baseless claims that Trump’s lawyers had already put forward in failed lawsuits challenging the results in several states.

    A series of invoices and communications obtained by election integrity groups including The Coalition for Good Governance and American Oversight show Defending the Republic contributed millions of dollars toward the push to access voting equipment in key states.

    In a court filing after her indictment in Georgia, Powell denied involvement in the Coffee County breach but acknowledged that “a non-profit she founded” paid the forensics firm hired to examine voting systems there.

    Powell did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Smith’s team has specifically asked witnesses about certain conspiracy theories pushed by Powell including that Dominion Voting Systems had ties to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and featured software he used to rig his own election. The software company has previously said the turnout in those Venezuelan elections, not the voting system, was manuipulated.

    One witness who met with Smith’s team earlier last month, former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik, spoke at length about how Trump allies accessed voting systems in Antrim County, Michigan, shortly after Election Day. Kerik also discussed the origins of a theory that voting machines could switch votes from one candidate to another, according to his lawyer Tim Parlatore.

    Kerik also acknowledged the breach of voting systems in Coffee County during his interview with federal prosecutors, Parlatore told CNN, adding that while his client raised the topic, the conversation did not delve into specifics.

    Kerik and another witness who met with Smith’s team in recent weeks were both asked if Powell was ever able to back-up her various claims of fraud, including conspiracy theories that foreign countries had hacked voting equipment.

    Both were also asked about Defending the Republic and how it was used as a source of funding efforts to find evidence of voter fraud, sources told CNN.

    In addition, special counsel prosecutors have also heard from other witnesses about efforts to breach voting equipment in other states.

    In April, an FBI agent and a prosecutor from Smith’s special counsel’s office interviewed a Pennsylvania resident named Mike Ryan, who used to work for a wealthy Pennsylvania Republican donor named Bill Bachenberg.

    coffee county election office vpx

    Inside the election office involved in latest Trump indictment

    During his interview, which Ryan described to CNN, Ryan says he told federal investigators that Bachenberg worked with Powell and other Trump lawyers to access voting systems in Pennsylvania and other states after the 2020 election.

    Bachenberg, who helped organize Pennsylvania’s fake electors, was subpoenaed by the House select committee last year but there is no public indication he testified. Ryan says he told federal investigators that after the 2020 election Bachenberg was in direct contact with Trump and a host of the former president’s most prominent allies – including lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman – participating in strategy calls about efforts to overturn the election results in multiple states.

    It is unclear if Bachenberg has been contacted by Smith’s team or the FBI. Bachenberg did not reply to requests for comments from CNN.

    Breaches in Pennsylvania and Michigan

    Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson also told CNN that she’s spoken to investigators at both the state and federal level about the push to access voting systems.

    Benson says when she met with Smith’s team earlier this spring, she, like Kerik, was asked specifically about efforts related to Antrim County, Michigan, where Powell and a lawyer named Stefanie Lambert helped fund a team of pro-Trump operatives who accessed voting systems shortly after Election Day in 2020.

    Stefanie Lambert listens during a court hearing in Detroit, Michigan, in October 2022.

    The operatives then produced a report claiming votes were flipped from Trump to Biden in Antrim County. That report was then used as supposed evidence to support the dozens of failed lawsuits that Powell filed on Trump’s behalf alleging voter fraud. The report was since debunked.

    “I believe the investigation at the federal level is broad and is meticulous and is looking at all the ways in which democracy was attacked in 2020. And so I would expect everything is on the table, every law that was violated,” Benson told CNN last month referring to the special counsel’s interest in efforts to access voting systems.

    Lambert was charged last month by state prosecutors in Michigan for her alleged involvement in a conspiracy to access voting machines there. Lambert is also linked to a breach in Fulton County, Pennsylvania, where she provided legal representation for the county itself after two Republican county officials secretly allowed a forensics firm to copy voting machine data in an effort to help Trump overturn his 2020 loss in the state.

    The breach is currently the subject of an ongoing probe being conducted by a prosecutor selected by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

    Lambert and Bachenberg both received copies of voting system data from Fulton County during the breach, according to the recent civil lawsuit that names both individuals.

    Lambert has also been identified by CNN as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Georgia indictment, which alleges she worked with Powell to secure voting system data that was copied from Coffee County and was tasked with helping collect invoices from the forensics firm hired through Defending the Republic.

    In a statement to CNN, Lambert did not elaborate on her ties to Bachenberg but defended her election-related work, saying, “I am a zealous advocate for my clients. I haven’t broken any laws.”

    Emails obtained by American Oversight indicate Bachenberg was involved in discussions about funding for the Arizona audit and helped facilitate a similar review in Pennsylvania.

    In a September 2021 email containing a summary of the final report on the controversial election audit conducted in Arizona, Bachenberg wrote that “PA will be one of the next domino’s [sic] to fall.”

    That same month, Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate launched a “forensic investigation” of the state’s 2020 election results.

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  • Tim Scott plots more aggressive approach as he looks to break through in 2024 GOP race | CNN Politics

    Tim Scott plots more aggressive approach as he looks to break through in 2024 GOP race | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott has shown a new willingness to needle his rivals in recent days after his affable approach proved a mismatch for last week’s pugilistic first 2024 primary debate.

    The South Carolina senator poked former President Donald Trump for his coziness with Vladimir Putin. He dismissed entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy as a “good showman” who wouldn’t support the United States’ allies. He broadly swiped at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum for failing to endorse a national 15-week abortion ban.

    In the wake of Scott’s wallflower performance in the Republican debate in Milwaukee last week, his subtle jabs at rivals during a six-day, three-state post-debate campaign swing could signal a shift toward a more confrontational approach for a candidate who has struggled to break through.

    Scott plans to “be more aggressive” in the next debate, one person close to his campaign said.

    “He’s going to come out hot,” the person said.

    What’s not yet clear is how Scott – a candidate who, more than any other 2024 Republican contender, is offering primary voters a clean break from the grievance-fueled Trump era – will work himself into the mix, particularly against the more natural brawlers who are also vying to emerge as the party’s chief alternative to Trump.

    Though their ideological positions are similar, Scott’s approach is diametrically opposed to the Trump-inspired, bare-knuckle tactics of DeSantis, who for months has placed second behind the former president in national and early-state polls of Republican primary voters.

    Haley, Scott’s home-state rival and a onetime US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, is courting a similar base of White evangelical voters – and is also dependent on a strong performance in South Carolina’s primary, which follows the Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada nominating contests, as a catapult before the race turns national and delegate-rich Super Tuesday approaches.

    While Scott largely stayed out of the mix at the Milwaukee debate, Haley was at the center of its most memorable moments when she lambasted Ramaswamy for his isolationist foreign policy stances and defended US support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.

    “You have no foreign policy experience and it shows,” she said to Ramaswamy at one point.

    A Washington Post/FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll found that 46% of potential GOP primary voters who watched the debate said they would consider voting for Haley – up from 29% before the event.

    Scott’s numbers barely budged in the same poll – from 40% pre-debate to 43% – after a performance in which he largely stuck to his no-fighting approach and stayed out of the squabbling among the candidates.

    Scott spoke the third-least among the eight contenders onstage, with only Burgum and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson commanding less time.

    And Republican viewers ranked Scott’s debate performance near the back of the field, according to the Post/FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll. Just 4% said Scott had impressed them the most – tied with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and leading only Burgum and Hutchinson. The South Carolina senator was well behind the leaders, DeSantis (29%), Ramaswamy (26%) and Haley (15%).

    Google search trends found that interest in Ramaswamy and Haley spiked after the first debate, while Scott drew just 3% of candidate searches the day after; he was at 1%, tied with former Vice President Mike Pence and ahead of just Burgum and Hutchinson, a little more than a week later.

    Asked about his Milwaukee performance and his approach to the second debate in California later this month, Scott’s campaign pointed to the differences he has expressed in recent days over abortion and foreign policy.

    “Tim was disappointed by the other candidates on the debate stage and their unwillingness to advocate for life and stand with our allies. While other candidates were engaged in a food fight, Tim was focused on beating Biden and defending the values our nation was founded on. Tim’s message of faith continues to resonate with voters across Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina,” Scott spokesman Nathan Brand said in a statement.

    Scott, while campaigning this week in Charleston, South Carolina, acknowledged that he’d been peripheral to the first debate.

    “I learned that the more you insult people, the more time you get,” he said to laughs from the crowd. “I learned having no obvious good home training is another way to get more time.”

    He said he believes that “the longer these debates go on, the more focused on substance they will get, and we will continue to rise to the top.”

    One former Scott adviser said that in sticking with an optimistic message and staying out of skirmishes with rivals, Scott failed to reflect the depth of voters’ frustrations and their desire for a GOP nominee who will fight against what they see as unfavorable political and cultural currents.

    “He’s not just a happy warrior. He’s just happy,” the former adviser said.

    Another Republican strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity said debates are a “bad venue” for Scott.

    “It’s not a ‘Morning in America’ moment, and I don’t know that the appetite is there for a soft-spoken, positive, optimistic dude,” the strategist said, referring to Ronald Reagan’s famous 1984 ad.

    Still, other GOP strategists said the debates – especially those that take place without Trump onstage – won’t reshape the 2024 primary race.

    “If you’re someone that is not Donald Trump, the debates don’t make or break you,” said Republican strategist Jai Chabria. “You’re trying to be a steady voice, you’re trying to be a credible voice, you’re trying to pick up enough institutional donors to keep your campaign going and then you build up enough presence and you figure out a place to make a splash.”

    Scott’s campaign has the financial resources to outlast many of his rivals in what could become a grueling battle to emerge as the party’s top Trump alternative.

    He is a formidable fundraiser whose campaign has already placed $13.7 million in ad buys, according to AdImpact data.

    A pro-Scott super PAC, meanwhile, has already reserved about $37 million in ads and has announced plans to spend nearly $50 million, meaning that early-state voters could see about $64 million in pro-Scott advertising before the first votes of the 2024 GOP race are cast.

    Metal mogul Andy Sabin, who attended a Milwaukee breakfast with Scott supporters the morning after the debate, said he is with Scott “more so than ever.”

    A lawyer who recently co-hosted a Scott fundraiser and spoke on the condition of anonymity lauded the discipline of the candidate’s campaign team, which he described as not “shiny object people.”

    Scott in recent days has also shown an increased willingness to take on his rivals.

    “The loudest voices in the debate were the quietest voices on the issue of life,” he said in an interview with Fox News’ Trey Gowdy, criticizing DeSantis, Haley and Burgum for failing to endorse a 15-week federal abortion ban.

    He also addressed Haley’s clash with Ramaswamy on foreign policy, describing the tech entrepreneur as uncommitted to supporting US allies, including Israel.

    “Standing shoulder to shoulder with our allies like Israel is absolutely essential. We must be loyal to our allies and lethal to our adversaries,” Scott said. “And you heard folks who are good showmen on the stage but they refuse to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies, whether that’s Taiwan, Israel or other countries. That’s a problem if you want to be commander in chief of the United States.”

    In Iowa on Wednesday, Scott drew a sharp distinction between his foreign policy vision and Trump’s.

    “I don’t think you can sit down with President Putin and come to a decision in 24 hours. I think that’s completely unrealistic,” Scott said of a recent Trump claim. “So from my perspective, that aspect of his foreign policy, we’re just on different pages.”

    “I don’t necessarily have high regard for dictators and murderers, even if they are world leaders,” he added.

    Scott also pitched himself as a candidate who can attract a wider group of voters than Trump did in the 2020 presidential election.

    “I think the power of persuasion is incredibly important. If we’re going to win the next election, the ability for us to get independents to vote with us, as opposed to against us, is a very clear area of distinction, not in the substance of the policy, but in the style of the delivery,” Scott said.

    “If you want the power of persuasion so that we win elections going forward, may the Lord bless you to say yes to Tim Scott.”

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  • Gabon’s military coup has overthrown a powerful political dynasty. Here’s what to know | CNN

    Gabon’s military coup has overthrown a powerful political dynasty. Here’s what to know | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A military coup thrust the Central African nation of Gabon into turmoil Wednesday, unseating the president – whose family had held power for more than half a century – just minutes after he was named the winner of a contested election.

    Ousted President Ali Bongo Ondimba, also known as Ali Bongo, has faced accusations of election fraud and corruption since he began ruling the oil-rich but poverty-stricken nation nearly 14 years ago. Following the coup, residents in the country’s capital were seen celebrating and embracing soldiers on the street.

    But much remains uncertain, with Bongo reportedly under house arrest, his son arrested, all borders closed and the government ostensibly shut down. International leaders have expressed concern and condemnation of the coup, some warning their citizens in Gabon to shelter in place.

    Here’s what you need to know.

    The military’s power grab began Wednesday, shortly after Gabon’s election authority said Bongo had been re-elected president following last weekend’s election.

    Men in army uniforms announced on national television that they had seized power. They said the election results were voided, all borders shut, and numerous government bodies dissolved, including both houses of parliament.

    The coup leaders said Bongo had been placed under house arrest, surrounded by “family and doctors.” The ousted president’s son, Noureddin Bongo Valentin, was arrested alongside six others for “high treason.”

    A video aired by the Agence France-Presse news agency shows Bongo seated in what looks like a library, saying he was “at the residence” and didn’t know what was happening. “My son is somewhere, my wife is another place,” he said.

    It was not immediately clear under what circumstances the clip was filmed.x

    Meanwhile, the junta named Gen. Brice Oligui Nguema – who was once the bodyguard of Bongo’s late father, the previous ruler of Gabon – as a transitional leader.

    Speaking to French newspaper Le Monde on Wednesday, Oligui claimed Bongo was enjoying “all his rights” as a “normal Gabonese” citizen.

    Videos of celebration in Gabon circulated online Wednesday, including footage of soldiers carrying Oligui on their shoulders and shouting “president.”

    Residents in the capital Libreville were seen dancing on the streets, according to videos shared with CNN and posted on social media. In one video obtained by CNN, people can be seen shouting “liberated!” and waving the Gabon flag in the Nzeng Ayong district of the capital, alongside military vehicles.

    Similar scenes played out in other parts of Gabon, including the second-largest city Port-Gentil.

    Some members of the Gabonese diaspora also celebrated Wednesday, with students from Gabon gathering outside the country’s embassy in Dakar, Senegal.

    “I assure you that what the Gabonese people wanted was just for the Bongo PDG system to leave power,” one student said, referring to Bongo’s political party, according to Reuters. “Because as we said, 60 years is too much.”

    Gabonese soldiers hoist up Gen. Brice Oligui Nguema in Libreville on August 30, 2023.

    It’s hard to say – and there’s still a lot we don’t know.

    The junta will temporarily restore the country’s constitutional court, resume domestic flights and establish the “institutions of the transition,” a spokesperson said Thursday. The military is expected to swear in Oligui as transitional president before the constitutional court on Monday.

    It also pledged to continue public services in the country, and to follow the country’s commitments domestically and internationally.

    The military imposed a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and national borders will remain closed “until further notice,” a junta spokesperson said. However, Oligui has ordered signal to be restored to international radio and television channels.

    But questions remain over what will happen to the country’s leadership; what awaits Bongo and his family; and what the coup means for Gabon’s international standing and diplomatic relationships.

    On Thursday, Gabon’s main opposition members expressed gratitude to the military – but called on it to resume the election process, complete the vote count and grant victory to Bongo’s main challenger in the election.

    The opposition representative invited military leaders to talks, and to “limit the consequences in the lives of our compatriots.”

    Ali Bongo, 64, took over from his father, Omar Bongo, who died of cardiac arrest while receiving treatment for intestinal cancer in Span in 2009, following nearly 42 years in office.

    The elder Bongo came to power in 1967, seven years after Gabon gained independence from France.

    He ruled over the small nation with an iron fist, imposing a one-party system for years and only allowing multi-party rule in 1991, though his party retained its grip on government.

    Ali Bongo began his political career in 1981, serving as foreign minister, congressman and defense minister before becoming president in 2009, according to the Gabonese embassy website in the United States.

    Gabon's then-President Omar Bongo Ondimba with bodyguard Brice Oligui Nguema and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris on July 2, 2008.

    But the Bongos have their fair share of critics, especially given the country’s enormous wealth gap. A French financial police investigation in 2007 found the Bongo family owned 39 properties in France, 70 bank accounts, and nine luxury cars worth a total of 1.5 million euros, according to Reuters.

    Each of Ali Bongo’s three election victories has been deeply disputed, sometimes sparking violent nationwide protests. This week’s election has been decried by the opposition as fraudulent; Bongo’s team has rejected allegations of electoral irregularities.

    Similarly in 2016, after Bongo was named the election victor, his main challenger said the decision by the country’s constitutional court to validate the contested result was “biased.” Another failed coup attempt against Bongo took place in 2019.

    Gabon's ousted president Ali Bongo Ondimba appears in a video aired after the coup on August 30.

    There have been multiple coups over the past three years in Africa’s former French colonies – Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Tunisia and now Gabon – that threaten a reversal of the democratization process the continent has undergone in the past two decades.

    Coups in Africa were rampant in the early postcolonial decades, with coup leaders offering similar reasons for toppling governments: corruption, mismanagement and poverty, according to political analyst Remi Adekoya.

    These justifications still resonate with many Africans today, he wrote for CNN in 2021 – and in many countries, people feel these problems are worsening. All the while, the population is growing in the world’s youngest continent, intensifying already fierce competition for resources.

    These conditions have helped drive more recent coups – with many young Africans disillusioned with allegedly corrupt leaders and ready for radical change, as seen by the celebrations in Gabon Wednesday, and similar celebrations after the Guinea coup two years ago.

    The Gabon coup has been widely criticized by other African nations and in the West. The African Union, representing 55 member states, condemned the coup and has suspended Gabon from participating in all of the group’s activities “until the restoration of constitutional order.”

    The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) also condemned the takeover and called for dialogue to return the country to civilian rule. It is expected to hold a meeting with the heads of state of member nations to discuss “the path to follow” regarding Gabon.

    United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres also condemned the coup Wednesday, according to his spokesperson. Guterres expressed concern over “reports of serious infringements of fundamental freedoms” during the contested election, but urged all parties to respect the rule of law and human rights.

    US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Wednesday the United States is “strongly opposed to military seizures or unconstitutional transfers of power,” and urged coup leaders to “preserve civilian rule.” He added: “The United States stands with the people of Gabon.”

    The US embassy in Gabon advised its citizens in the country to shelter in place and limit “unnecessary movements around town.” Americans in Gabon should “keep a low profile … avoid demonstrations … make contingency plans to leave … (and) have evacuation plans that do not rely on US government assistance,” it said on its website.

    The European Union’s top diplomat said the bloc “rejects” the coup, though he said the EU shared “deep concerns” about how the electoral process was held. He said the EU currently has no plans to evacuate its staff based in Gabon.

    Similar statements were made by other European nations including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Spain.

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  • Trump pleads not guilty in Georgia election subversion case | CNN Politics

    Trump pleads not guilty in Georgia election subversion case | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty in the sprawling Fulton County election interference case, according to a new court filing.

    Trump had been scheduled to be arraigned in person on Wednesday. Georgia law allows criminal defendants to waive their in-person appearance and enter a formal plea through court filings.

    His arraignment marks the fourth time that Trump has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges since leaving the presidency. In this case, Trump is charged with racketeering in his alleged efforts to upend the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

    Several of the former president’s co-defendants have also waived their in-court appearances and have pleaded not guilty, including Sidney Powell and Trevian Kutti. Defendants who do not waive their appearance will attend court as scheduled on September 6.

    Though no official date for Trump to go to trial in Georgia has been set, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, has asked the judge overseeing the case last week to schedule a trial for all 19 defendants for October 23, 2023.

    In response, lawyers for Trump said they oppose the proposed date and have previewed the likelihood of pre-trial disputes that will drag the proceedings. Several co-defendants, including his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, have sought to move their cases from Georgia state court to federal court, a more advantageous legal spot and a move that also would have the effect of delaying the proceedings.

    Trump faces more than a dozen charges, some of which relate to efforts to put forth fake electors to falsely claim that the then-president won Georgia in 2020. He surrendered last week and agreed to a $200,000 bond and other release conditions, including not using social media to target the co-defendants and witnesses in the case.

    He has also been indicted in three other cases: one related to a hush-money payment to an adult-film star in 2016 in Manhattan, another involving the alleged mishandling of classified national defense documents and a third federal investigation related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

    This story has been updated with additional background information.

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  • DeSantis leaves campaign trail and returns to Florida amid crises | CNN Politics

    DeSantis leaves campaign trail and returns to Florida amid crises | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    With a tropical storm intensifying in the Gulf of Mexico and Florida’s largest city reeling from a racially motivated attack that left three Black people dead, Gov. Ron DeSantis left the campaign trail Sunday and returned to his state to navigate the crises.

    DeSantis spoke Sunday afternoon from the state’s emergency operations center in Tallahassee to brace Florida’s gulf coast for Tropical Storm Idalia, which could make landfall as a hurricane as early as Wednesday.

    Before speaking on the storm, DeSantis read a statement addressing the attack at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville. The White gunman, who DeSantis called “a deranged scumbag,” used racial slurs, left behind a racist screed and drew swastikas on his firearm, authorities said.

    “Perpetrating violence of this kind is unacceptable,” DeSantis said. “And targeting people due to their race has no place in the state of Florida.”

    Saturday’s tragedy and the looming potential for devastation from another storm will test how DeSantis balances his official duties with his political ambitions. The Republican has spent much of the past three months on the road as he seeks to win the GOP nomination over a large field of contenders, including former President Donald Trump, whose own response to disasters became fodder for Democrats at election time.

    DeSantis’ campaign did not immediately provide an update on his future political travel, but he told reporters Sunday that he was “locked in on this” storm and “we’re gonna get the job done.” DeSantis canceled a town hall scheduled for Monday morning in South Carolina, as well as his keynote address at South Carolina Rep. Jeff Duncan’s 12th annual Faith & Freedom BBQ. His wife, Casey, will attend in his place, campaign press secretary Bryan Griffin said in a statement on X.

    Asked where he planned to be this week, DeSantis responded: “I’m here. I am here.”

    DeSantis provided updates on Idalia’s trajectory as it gained strength between Cuba and Mexico. The storm has maximum sustained wind speeds of 40 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center, and it could become a hurricane by Tuesday afternoon. DeSantis warned that the Gulf of Mexico, experiencing record warm sea surface temperatures, could quickly turn this storm more powerful.

    “Please just heed the warnings of your local officials (and) continue to watch the news,” he said.

    The remarks came during one of DeSantis’ first public appearances in his home state since he entered the race for president in May. He returned to Florida from Iowa, where he spent the weekend following the first Republican presidential primary debate touring the Hawkeye State for the fifth time in the last seven weeks. On Saturday evening, the governor’s office shared a video of DeSantis from Iowa condemning the violence as “totally unacceptable” and called the shooter “cowardly” for taking his own life.

    Until now, DeSantis has not felt the need to come back to Florida to publicly address a handful of other emergencies his administration has faced this summer, including outbreaks of leprosy and malaria, a deadly spree of flesh-eating bacteria, record-breaking temperatures off Florida’s shore that have threatened delicate coastal ecosystems and a teetering property insurance market.

    DeSantis’ return to Florida to manage two high-profile crises comes as he has intensified his criticism of President Joe Biden’s response to the Maui wildfires. Republicans have seized upon a five-day period of silence from when Biden first commented on the deadly fires to when he next spoke publicly about the devastation there.

    “Biden was on the beach while those people were suffering. He was asked about it and he said no comment. Are you kidding me?” DeSantis said at Wednesday’s GOP debate in Milwaukee. “As somebody that’s handled disasters in Florida, you’ve got to be activated. You’ve got to be there. You’ve got to be present. You’ve got to be helping people who are doing this.”

    DeSantis, though, has also faced blowback at home for his own handling of events that preceded the challenges he is now confronting upon arrival in Florida.

    Democrats have accused DeSantis of not speaking out forcefully enough against pervasive demonstrations of neo-Nazism in Florida. A string of antisemitic demonstrations have rocked Florida in recent years, especially in Jacksonville, where hateful messages were displayed in public, including a stadium during a Florida-Georgia college football game DeSantis attended.

    In January 2022, DeSantis lashed out at those who called on him to condemn neo-Nazi demonstrations that had taken place near Orlando, accusing his political opponents of trying to “smear me as if I had something to do with it.” During a visit to Israel this year, DeSantis signed a bill into law that prohibited antisemitic displays onto buildings.

    “Ron DeSantis repeatedly refused to condemn numerous Nazis rallys (sic) across Florida. Some even flew DeSantis flags alongside swastikas,” former state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith wrote on social media after Saturday’s deadly shooting.

    The Florida governor was interrupted by crowd members Sunday evening when he began to speak at a vigil for the Jacksonville shooting victims. As DeSantis was interrupted, Councilwoman Ju’Coby Pittman took the microphone and addressed the crowd, telling everyone to put parties aside.

    As for Idalia, storms often put Florida executives in a leadership crucible that test their responsiveness and ability to console during periods of tremendous devastation.

    DeSantis was elected in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, a powerful, destructive storm that ripped through the Florida panhandle. DeSantis as governor has overseen the recovery of the region, which is still ongoing.

    Last year, DeSantis commanded the state’s response to Hurricane Ian by holding regular news conferences that offered detailed and matter-of-fact updates on the logistics going into the rescue and recovery missions. He put aside his political rivalry with Biden during a joint appearance where the two assured local residents that their administrations were working in harmony.

    Ian’s destruction killed dozens of people who failed to leave their gulf coast homes in time, forcing DeSantis to defend the timing of evacuation orders from local officials and the efforts by his department of emergency management to warn people about the storm’s potential surge.

    Asked Sunday if Ian altered how the state prepares for evacuations, DeSantis again stood by the county response and said evacuation orders would continue to come from local officials.

    “That’s the way it’s always been,” he said. “That’s the way it’s going to be.”

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  • Vivek Ramaswamy has Iowa voters curious, but not yet committed, after standout debate | CNN Politics

    Vivek Ramaswamy has Iowa voters curious, but not yet committed, after standout debate | CNN Politics

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    Urbandale, Iowa
    CNN
     — 

    At the conclusion of Vivek Ramaswamy’s second campaign stop here on Saturday – his sixth event out of eight over two days in Iowa – his staff rushed him towards their campaign bus. The businessman-turned-politician was late for a flight across the state to his next event. But as reporters and camera crews crowded the bus to see him off, Ramaswamy stopped and took time for questions.

    It was hardly a new occurrence. He’d held impromptu press availabilities after nearly every event on this tour up to that point. More striking was that, nearly 72 hours after playing a starring role in Wednesday’s heated and highly combative Republican primary debate, he was still taking stock of the defining moment of his campaign thus far.

    “I think it’s a major accomplishment that many people are able to pronounce my name now. That’s the true mark of a real milestone on this campaign,” Ramaswamy joked. “If we got there, anything’s possible.”

    Ramaswamy’s ascent from political unknown to attention-grabbing insurgent has been one of the most unexpected developments of the Republican primary so far. The only candidate in the race with no previous role in public life, he became a central figure in the first primary debate, standing in the middle of the stage and receiving sharp attacks from several Republican rivals after pre-debate nationwide polls of Republican voters put him in third place behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump, who did not attend the event.

    For many voters in Iowa, the debate was their introduction to the 38-year-old candidate. Some told CNN they came away intrigued, if not entirely convinced, by his message.

    “I’m really intrigued by this new candidate. He’s very young, very personable. There’s a spark there,” Mara Brown, a retired teacher from Des Moines, Iowa, said.

    Brown considered herself a “dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporter” heading into Wednesday night’s debate. But after seeing Ramaswamy speak, she said she’s giving his candidacy further consideration. She felt she was able to connect with Ramaswamy personally when he spoke and commended him for how he handled the barrage of attacks.

    “When it was dished out, he was able to very calmly and compassionately turn it around on the other candidates,” she said. “He is absolutely the biggest standout out of all the candidates.”

    Those who tuned in saw Ramaswamy’s policies and perspective under intense scrutiny from the other candidates on stage. Former Vice President Mike Pence called Ramaswamy a “rookie” and frequently emphasized his lack of experience in public office. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie poked at his verbose rhetorical style, comparing him to the ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool. Arguably the most piercing blow came from former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who forcefully attacked Ramaswamy’s polarizing proposals to amend US foreign policy toward Russia, China and the Middle East at the expense of Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel respectively.

    “Under your watch, you will make America less safe,” Haley said to Ramaswamy. “You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.”

    Yet despite being the subject of a deluge of criticisms, early indications show voters thought Ramaswamy made a strong impression. A survey of potential Republican primary voters who watched the debate conducted by The Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos showed 26% of voters thought Ramaswamy won the debate, second highest behind DeSantis. Ramaswamy’s favorability ratings rose among voters who watched the debate compared to their views beforehand, but his unfavorability ratings rose, too. Still, the Ramaswamy campaign said it raised $600,000 in the day after the debate, the largest single-day total since its launch.

    After the debate concluded, Ramaswamy told CNN in the spin room that he viewed the critiques against him as an indicator of the strength of his campaign.

    “I took it as a badge of honor,” he said in Milwaukee on Wednesday. “To be at center stage and see a lot of establishment politicians that threatened by my rise, I am thrilled that it actually gave me an opportunity to introduce myself to the people of this country.”

    In his first campaign stops after the debate, Iowans packed into restaurants and event halls, looking to hear more about his vision for the country. Melissa Berry, a nurse from Winterset, Iowa, came to see Ramaswamy speak in her hometown because she’d never heard his views prior to the debate but liked what she saw in his performance. She said economic issues and safety were her two biggest concerns and connected with how Ramaswamy talked about those issues.

    “I feel like all the principles that he brings forth is what I support and there wasn’t anything that I really disagreed with,” Berry said. “I like what he stands for and he’s been very successful, and I felt like that can bring a lot to our country and help our country flourish.”

    Jake Chapman, Ramaswamy’s Iowa co-chair, said the candidate’s impassioned delivery and highly-charged message are creating a unique atmosphere at his recent campaign stops.

    “There is an energy level in these rooms where people come out of the room inspired and wanting to do something,” Chapman said. “It’s one thing to go hear a boring political speech. That’s not what you get with Vivek Ramaswamy.”

    These Iowa voters thought Republican debate had a clear winner. Hear who

    Ramaswamy’s recent rise in the polls was among the biggest storylines heading into Wednesday night’s debate. A former biotechnology CEO, he first stepped into politics when he found an investment management firm that specialized in “anti-woke” asset management and refused to consider environmental, social and corporate governance factors when investing. His wife, Apoorva, told The Atlantic magazine recently that Ramaswamy hadn’t mentioned running for political office until December 2022, when he floated the idea of running for president.

    When his campaign launched in February, many Republicans didn’t seriously consider the Ohio-based entrepreneur amid a wide field of possible presidential hopefuls. A Quinnipiac poll from March showed Ramaswamy with less than 1% support from Republicans and Republican-leaning voters nationally.

    But since then, Ramaswamy has catapulted himself from unknown outsider to center stage, largely through a combination of non-stop interviews and cross-country campaign travel mixed with a willingness to embrace and engage with ideas that fall outside the mainstream principles of many of his Republican rivals.

    Ahead of the debate, national Republican primary polling showed Ramaswamy as high as third behind Trump and DeSantis, but still lagging behind in support among Republicans in Iowa.

    Milt Van Grundy, a retired physician from Marshalltown, Iowa, started to seriously consider Ramaswamy after seeing him at the debate. His wife had been intrigued by him before Wednesday, but he said he liked hearing Ramaswamy propose a forward-looking vision for the country.

    “He’s offering a new way of trying to do business in Washington, DC, that I think is good for the country,” he said.

    Van Grundy voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but said Ramaswamy’s youth and Trump’s age have turned his head away from the former president, self-effacingly referencing his own age in explaining his thinking.

    “I’m 77, and I don’t want to be president,” he joked. “These guys that are 80 and up, not interested.”

    Ramaswamy has closely tied himself to Trump’s ideology, and, at times, to Trump himself. He has referred to the former president as a “friend” and credited him with redefining conservative thinking on a number of issues, from immigration and foreign policy to the federal bureaucracy. He has also gone further than any other candidate in defending Trump amid the multiple state and federal indictments he currently faces. Ahead of Trump’s arraignment hearing in Florida following the former president’s indictment for retaining classified documents, Ramaswamy held a news conference outside the courthouse where he pledged as president to fully pardon Trump and called on other candidates to do the same. During Wednesday’s debate, Ramaswamy praised Trump as “the best president of the 21st century.”

    When he does distance himself from Trump, he does so primarily to pitch himself as the candidate who can advance Trump’s agenda more successfully than the former president. Ramaswamy told reporters after speaking to a crowded restaurant in Indianola on Friday he believes his background – and Trump’s baggage – make him more likely to bring their overlapping worldview to a broader group of voters.

    “President Trump, through no fault of his own in my view, in large part is – when he’s in office, about 30% of this country loses their mind. They become psychiatrically ill, disagreeing with things they once agreed with, agreeing with things they never agreed with,” Ramaswamy said. “I’m not having that effect on people. I think it’s because I’m a member of a different generation, because I’m somebody who’s lived the American dream, because I speak about the country for what is possible for where we can go even though I do recognize the downward slide we’ve long been in.”

    “I think that positions me to not only unite the country, but to go further than Trump did with the America first agenda,” he added.

    Haloti Tukuafu grew up in Maui but moved to Clarion, Iowa, after his wife got a job nearby. He said he sees Ramaswamy as a “mini-Trump,” and likes that he’s reaching out to younger voters. He supported Trump in 2016 and 2020, but currently he’s split between Trump and Ramaswamy and concerned the multiple indictments against Trump could negatively affect his chances of beating President Joe Biden.

    “Trump didn’t have the younger voters. Vivek has that connection with the younger crowd to bring in more in the Republican party than anybody else,” Tukuafu said.

    Despite their different faiths, Pam McCumber – a Christian from Newton, Iowa, who came to see Ramaswamy, a practicing Hindu, speak at a Pizza Ranch restaurant in her hometown – said she feels she can connect with the Ohio-based entrepreneur, and recognizes some characteristics of the former president in him.

    “He’s got the energy that Trump does, but then he’s also got the personality that most, I say, hometown Christians want. You know, don’t have to be worried about what he’s going to say next,” McCumber said.

    His willing alignment with Trump made Ramaswamy a focal point for many of his rivals even before the debate. A strategy and research memo released by a research firm aligned with the super PAC backing DeSantis urged the Florida governor to “hammer” Ramaswamy and outlined various contradictory statements he’s made on several issues. Haley tipped off her forthcoming attack on Ramaswamy’s foreign policy views with a statement ahead of the debate highlighting his proposal to withdraw aid from Israel. And Pence helped elevate a podcast interview Ramaswamy gave earlier this month where he suggested an openness to conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks, an issue that resurfaced just ahead of the debate when The Atlantic published an interview he gave questioning whether federal officials may have been involved in the attacks.

    The underlying criticisms made by his rivals have left lingering questions in the minds of some, including Gene Smith, a retiree from Des Moines. She and her husband, Terry, like Ramaswamy’s message, but she’s concerned his lack of government experience would make it difficult for him to execute his policy vision if he became president. She cited the pushback Trump received during his four years in office toward some of the policies he tried, but ultimately failed, to enact.

    “He’s never held political office, and it is truly a swamp in DC,” she said. “I think even Trump, who’s a very experienced person, was I think blindsided by it. I think when you get into politics you are blindsided by the corruption.”

    Gay Lee Wilson, a retiree from Pleasant Hill, Iowa, and a Christian, cares deeply about Israel, and was confused by Ramaswamy’s proposal to suspend aid to the US’ strongest ally in the Middle East, a proposal Ramaswamy has since backed away from.

    “That is a big deal for me. And I thought, well, maybe somebody’s misstating, misquoting him. But then he said it himself. But then he was saying, ‘no, that isn’t exactly –’ So, I don’t know where he stands,” Wilson said.

    To her, the questions about his policy toward Israel raise questions about his broader foreign policy judgment and his commitment to protecting Judeo-Christian values.

    “I think if his thought process is of backing away from our support of Israel, that I want to know why he’s thinking that. Because as a believer, I don’t think you would think that if you knew biblically, and if you knew world politics and everything, I think you would think differently about that,” she said.

    After Ramaswamy’s prepared remarks in Winterset, Iowa, Ramaswamy took a question from Cory Christensen, who had traveled a half hour from Waukee, Iowa, to hear him speak. He said he responded to almost everything Ramaswamy said at the event but had “one residual doubt” about his proposal to negotiate a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine that would see Russia take control of territory they currently occupy in Ukraine.

    “I’m hard pressed to believe that allowing Russia’s aggression to stand is in our American interests, so can you help me understand your policy?” Christensen asked.

    Ramaswamy proceeded to give a winding, intricate, nearly 10-minute long answer to Christensen’s question, touching on former President Richard Nixon’s foreign policy strategy, criticizing the US aid packages to Ukraine, warning of Chinese technology inside US critical infrastructure systems, and portraying the stark danger of a nuclear war with either Russia or China before ultimately laying out the details of his proposal to allow Russia to claim Ukrainian territory and receive assurance Ukraine would not join NATO in exchange for commitment from Russia to “exit its military alliance” with China.

    After the event, Christensen said he found Ramaswamy’s answer “persuasive.” He said he’s nearly ready to commit to caucusing for Ramaswamy and has already donated to his campaign but is holding out for now with the caucuses still over four months away.

    “I found it pretty persuasive,” Christensen said. “I’m not 100% of the way there yet, but well on the way.”

    Christensen said he much preferred to hear him speak in an unrestricted format like the event in Winterset, as opposed to hearing him at the debate, which left him with unanswered questions following his back-and-forth with Haley.

    “The tagline and attacking Nikki on you know, you’ve got your Raytheon board seat or whatever – that doesn’t help me. It didn’t help me at all. And I want to like him,” Christensen said.

    “I would have loved to see it in the debate, something, even if he condensed his argument here on Ukraine into like, five bullet points. I would rather see that than sort of just attacking her on ‘Hey, you’re just a part of the establishment,’ and those sort of superficial answers,’ he added.

    Ramaswamy acknowledged the downsides of being an inexperienced politician while speaking to reporters after an event in Clarion, Iowa, but also highlighted the benefits of approaching issues with a different perspective.

    “There’s always going to be tradeoffs, but with experience comes tiredness, defeat, status quo, biases, corruption. I don’t have any of that. And I think that that’s both an advantage and – and also, in some ways, you don’t know what you don’t know. So, I’ll admit that,” he said.

    The Ramaswamy campaign plans to continue visiting Iowa and answering voter questions like Christensen’s around the state, Chapman told CNN. He dismissed state polling that showed Ramaswamy lagging behind where he stands in the national polls and said Ramaswamy will continue to show up in towns around the state to carry his post-debate momentum forward.

    “We go from having 20 people in a room to now hitting max capacity of some of these rooms, and we’re going to continue to build that energy,” Chapman said.

    “I think here in Iowa, ultimately, we reward people who are willing to put in the hard work. And he’s willing to do that,” he added.

    Chapman says the campaign doesn’t plan on advancing Ramaswamy’s message in the state through television advertising any time soon, dismissing the traditional campaign strategy as a “short-lived tactic” that he believes only helps some candidates marginally.

    “You have career politicians that they believe they can buy elections. The more money they spend, they can get more votes, and sure, that has helped some of them here and there. But Iowans see right through that,” he said.

    Hillary Ferrer, a former teacher and writer from Pella, Iowa, said she really likes Ramaswamy’s ideas, but is concerned about his appeal to a mainstream audience and wants to support a candidate she sees as electable. She thinks more exposure to voters around the state could help him leapfrog DeSantis and Trump, but acknowledged one built-in disadvantage for Ramaswamy she encountered when spreading his message to her circle of friends.

    “I mean, he’s not lying. He’s got a hard name to say,” Ferrer said. “I couldn’t spell it out when I posted something today.”

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  • Why most of Trump’s Republican rivals won’t attack him | CNN Politics

    Why most of Trump’s Republican rivals won’t attack him | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Polls show Donald Trump leading Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his nearest rival for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, by about 40 points. You might think this would cause the former president’s GOP rivals to attack him in an attempt to eat into that support, which stands at north of 50% of the primary vote.

    Yet, most of his opponents seem hesitant, if not totally unwilling, to do so.

    A look at the numbers reveals why. Those who have gone after him have seen their popularity among Republican voters suffer, while those who have risen in primary polling are either mostly not mentioning Trump or are praising him.

    You needn’t look further than former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to understand what happens when a Republican candidate is highly critical of the former president. Christie is setting records for intraparty unpopularity.

    His net favorability rating in the latest Quinnipiac University poll stands at minus-44 points among Republicans. An astounding 61% of Republican voters hold an unfavorable view of him.

    Indeed, Christie has, if anything, become more unpopular as the presidential campaign has gone on.

    From what I can tell, he appears to have the lowest net favorability rating at this point in the cycle of any Republican running for president since at least 1980.

    This doesn’t mean that Christie does not have a base of support within the GOP. A New York Times/Siena College poll from July illustrates the point well.

    The former New Jersey governor led the Republican field (with 22%) among likely GOP primary voters who cast ballots for Joe Biden in 2020. The problem is this group makes up less than 10% of the Republican primary electorate. Christie earned only about 1% support among the remaining 90-something percent.

    Christie’s not alone in his poor favorability ratings among Republican presidential candidates seen as anti-Trump.

    Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson – who has called on the GOP to move on from Trump – was the only presidential contender during the first GOP debate last week not to raise his hand when candidates onstage were asked if they would back the former president as the party nominee even if he were convicted in a court of law. (Christie raised his hand but later gestured with a pointed finger, saying that Trump’s conduct should not be normalized. The former president skipped the Milwaukee debate.)

    Prior to the debate, most Republicans (65%) hadn’t heard enough about Hutchinson to form an opinion, according to Quinnipiac. Those with an opinion viewed him unfavorably by more than a 3-to-1 ratio (26% unfavorable to 8% favorable, a net favorability rating of minus-18 points).

    Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, another Trump critic, didn’t make the debate stage, and the vast majority of Republicans (83%) haven’t heard enough of him to form an opinion. Among those who have, Hurd has a similar net favorability ratio to Hutchinson’s – 4% viewed him favorably and 11% unfavorably. This isn’t shocking given that Hurd has signaled he wouldn’t back Trump if the former president were the nominee.

    Other polling data confirms the dilemma facing Christie, Hutchinson and Hurd. Beyond the fact that Trump is consistently viewed favorably by about 80% of his party – and as “strongly favorable” by more than 50% – most Republicans simply don’t want Republicans making the case against Trump.

    A CBS News/YouGov poll taken prior to the GOP debate found that 91% of likely Republican primary voters wanted candidates to make their own case for the GOP nomination onstage. Just 9% wanted them to make the case against Trump.

    That 91% figure makes it clear why South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott has been hesitant to attack other Republicans. He’s been seen as a happy warrior of sorts.

    As a result, Scott has gone up in the polls and is at a consistent third place in Iowa. His net favorability rating among Republicans in the latest Quinnipiac national poll was plus-41 points, with 49% holding a favorable view of him and 8% an unfavorable one.

    Scott has been a rare Republican to break through besides Trump and DeSantis.

    The other Republican to do so has been Vivek Ramaswamy. The Ohio businessman has been unrelenting in his praise of Trump, going so far as pledging to pardon the former president if elected to the White House should Trump be convicted of a crime in federal court.

    Ramaswamy was a top target at last week’s debate. That makes sense considering he is polling in third place on average nationally.

    His net favorability rating was at plus-30 points in the Quinnipiac poll. Thirty-nine percent of Republicans had a favorable view of him, eclipsed only by the 51% who couldn’t even form an opinion.

    Of course, the ultimate issue when it comes to going against Trump can perhaps best be seen in the CBS News poll. The former president’s supporters were asked about the truthfulness of what they hear from others. The vast majority of them (71%) felt that what Trump tells them is true – a higher percentage than those who said the same about friends and family (63%).

    Given that Trump is commanding a majority of the GOP vote, Republicans seen as too negative toward him aren’t likely to go anywhere in the primary.

    This leaves Trump’s GOP rivals with a conundrum that even Harry Houdini would find difficult to solve: how to eat away at Trump’s support without being seen as trying to bring him down.

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  • Zimbabwe’s President Mnangagwa reelected after tense contest | CNN

    Zimbabwe’s President Mnangagwa reelected after tense contest | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Zimbabwe’s incumbent President Emmerson Mnangagwa was declared the winner in the country’s presidential elections on Saturday after securing an absolute majority in a tense presidential contest that was marred by delays.

    “The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has announced the 2023 presidential election results. His Excellency President Emmerson Mnangagwa was declared the winner with 2,350,711 votes, consisting 52.6% of the vote, followed by Nelson Chamisa of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party who scored 1,906,734, which is 44% of the vote,” Zimbabwe’s Information Ministry tweeted on Saturday.

    The 80-year-old’s victory extends the Zanu-PF’s decades-long stranglehold on Zimbabwe’s politics, having been the dominant party in the country since it gained independence from Britain in 1980.

    Chamisa, 45, had been upbeat about victory, and has now rejected the results announced by the electoral body. It’s not immediately known if he will mount a legal challenge.

    His party earlier decried the late deployment of voting materials that triggered widespread voting delays and also cited some alleged irregularities in the voting process.

    In a statement on Wednesday, the CCC said some of its candidates were omitted from the ballot papers, which in some cases, it added, were printed with the photos of the ruling party’s candidates on CCC’s rolls.

    The electoral commission did not respond to those allegations.

    Voting continued for a second day in parts of Zimbabwe where polling started behind schedule on Wednesday. A presidential decree extended voting until Thursday in three provinces, including the capital Harare where Chamisa’s party enjoys popular support.

    Observers commended the peaceful conduct of the polls but said the election process fell short of many regional and international standards.

    The European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) said in a preliminary report released on Friday that “fundamental freedoms were increasingly curtailed” during the elections, adding that “acts of violence and intimidation” resulting in a “climate of fear” were also witnessed during the polls.

    Around 40 election monitors were arrested by Zimbabwe’s police Thursday for allegedly co-ordinating the release of results ahead of the final tally of the ballots.

    Human rights group Amnesty International said the arrests occurred “after the Zimbabwe NGO Forum released a report detailing irregularities that they had observed on election day.”

    This was the second election in Zimbabwe since authoritarian leader Robert Mugabe was deposed by the military in 2017.

    Mnangagwa, nicknamed “The Crocodile,” succeeded Mugabe after helping to orchestrate the coup that ousted him. He retained his grip on power the following year when he beat Chamisa in a hotly contested presidential vote.

    In that election, in 2018, Mnangagwa won 51% of the total ballots, while Chamisa took 44%. The results were disputed by Chamisa, who described the election as “fraudulent and illegal” and mounted a legal challenge. However, Mnangagwa was sworn in after Zimbabwe’s constitutional court upheld his victory.

    Analysts said the outcome of the latest election was easier to predict. “I’m not sure that it will be a game-changing election,” said Eldred Masunungure, an expert in politics and governance at the University of Zimbabwe. “I don’t see any signals or any indications that it is a watershed election,” he told CNN ahead of the Wednesday polls.

    Mnangagwa’s Zanu-PF party also told CNN it expected to win by a landslide. “We are going to wallop the opposition,” its national spokesperson Chris Mutsvangwa said in the buildup to the election.

    “It will be a landslide against the opposition,” he added.

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