Tag: Joe Manchin

Billions are being spent to turn the tide on the US West’s wildfires. It won’t be enough

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DOWNIEVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Using chainsaws, heavy machinery and controlled burns, the Biden administration is trying to turn the tide on worsening wildfires in the U.S. West through a multi-billion dollar cleanup of forests choked with dead trees and undergrowth.

Yet one year into what’s envisioned as a decade-long effort, federal land managers are scrambling to catch up after falling behind on several of their priority forests for thinning even as they exceeded goals elsewhere. And they’ve skipped over some highly at-risk communities to work in less threatened areas, according to data obtained by The Associated Press, public records and Congressional testimony.

With climate change making the situation increasingly dire, mixed early results from the administration’s initiative underscore the challenge of reversing decades of lax forest management and aggressive fire suppression that allowed many woodlands to become tinderboxes. The ambitious effort comes amid pushback from lawmakers dissatisfied with progress to date and criticism from some environmentalists for cutting too many trees.

The haze of unhealthy air that settled over the Great Lakes region Tuesday reminded U.S. residents from the Midwest to the Northeast and as far south as Kentucky to brace for more depending on which way the wind blows as Canadian wildfires rage on.

Canadian officials say rainfall likely won’t be enough to extinguish the wildfires ravaging northern Quebec, but the wet weather could give firefighters a chance to get ahead of the flames as the country surpassed the record for area burned by wildfires this week.

Drifting smoke from the ongoing wildfires across Canada is creating curtains of haze and raising air quality concerns throughout the Great Lakes region, and in parts of the central and eastern United States.

Wildfire smoke from Canada has prompted officials to issue a record 23rd air quality alert for much of Minnesota through late Wednesday night as smoky skies obscure the Minneapolis and St.

Administration officials in interviews and during testimony maintained that the thinning work is making a difference. Work announced to date, they said, will help lessen wildfire dangers faced by more than 500 communities in 10 states. But they also acknowledged finishing the task will require far more resources than what’s already dedicated.

“As much money as we’re receiving, it’s not enough to take care of the problems that we are seeing, particularly across the West,” said Forest Service Chief Randy Moore. “This is an emergency situation in many places, and we are acting with a sense of urgency.”

BIG MONEY FOR BIG PROBLEM

Congress in the last two years approved more than $4 billion in additional funding to prevent repeats of destructive infernos that have torched communities including in California, Colorado and Montana.

By logging and burning trees and low-lying vegetation, officials hope to lessen forest fuels and keep fires that originate on federal lands from exploding through nearby cities and towns.

The enormity of the task is evident in an aerial view of California’s Tahoe National Forest, where mountainsides are colored brown and gray with the vast number of trees killed by insects and drought. After work on the Tahoe was delayed last year, Forest Service crews and contractors recently started taking down trees across thousands of acres.

“The forests as we know them in California and across the West, they’re dying. They’re being destroyed through fire. They’re dying from drought, disease and insects,” said forest Supervisor Eli Ilano. “They’re dying at a pace that we’re having trouble keeping up with.”

The scale of spending is unprecedented, said Courtney Schultz with Colorado State University. The forest policy expert said millions of acres have been through environmental review and are ready for work.

“If we really want to go big across the landscape — to reduce fuels enough to affect fire behavior and have some impact on communities — we need to be planning large projects,” she said.

Key to that strategy is addressing forest patches where computer simulations show wildfire could easily spread to inhabited areas. Some areas have yet to get the extra funding for thinning despite facing high risk, including portions of California’s Sierra Nevada range, Montana’s Bitterroot Valley and around Mescalero Apache lands in southern New Mexico.

Only about a third of the land the U.S. Forest Service treated last year was designated with high wildfire hazard potential, agency documents show. About half the forest was in the southeastern U.S., where wildfires are less severe but weather conditions make it easier to use intentional burns, the documents show.

The infrastructure bill passed two years ago with bipartisan support included a requirement for the administration to treat forests across 10 million acres — 15,625 square miles or 40,500 square kilometers — by 2027. Less than 10% of that was addressed in the first year.

“The Forest Service is obligating hundreds of millions of dollars, but not in the areas required by law,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Forest Service spokesman Wade Muehlhof said the agency was confident in the administration’s strategy, but declined to say if it would meet the acreage mandates.

MIXED FIRST-YEAR RESULTS

An AP analysis of federal data reveals the scale of the challenge: Hundreds of communities are threatened by the potential for fires to ignite on federal forests and spread to populated areas.

In California, thinning zones announced to date address the risk to only about one-in-five houses and other buildings potentially exposed to fires on federal lands, the analysis shows. In Nevada and Oregon, it’s about half of exposed structures, and in Montana it’s one-in 25.

A crew member uses a tree processor to strip bark and branches from logs before being transported to a mill, Tuesday, June 6, 2023, near Camptonville, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

Tahoe National Forest supervisor Eli Ilano, foreground, walks past a pile of cut down trees, Tuesday, June 6, 2023, near Camptonville, Calif. “The forests as we know them in California and across the West, they’re dying,” Ilano said. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez) –
Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP

The stump of a tree can be seen in the Tahoe National Forest, Tuesday, June 6, 2023, near Camptonville, Calif. Using chainsaws, heavy machinery and controlled burns, the Biden administration is trying to turn the tide on worsening wildfires in the U.S. West through a multi-billion dollar cleanup of forests choked with dead trees and undergrowth. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez) –
Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP

Trees are visible from the town of Downieville, Calif., Tuesday, June 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

Most areas identified as hot spots where forest fires have high potential to burn into populated areas won’t be addressed for at least the next several years, according to government planning documents. And computer models project up to 20% of areas that need thinning will be hit by fires before that work occurs.

Architects of the Forest Service’s strategy based it on tens millions of computer wildfire simulations being used to predict areas that pose the greatest risk. Those scenarios showed fires on only 10% to 20% of the land would account for 80% of exposure to communities.

“This is a mapped plan through time, where we can laser-focus on one highly important issue: the problem of communities being destroyed by wildfires started on public lands,” said Forest Service fire scientist Alan Ager.

FALLING SHORT IN A RISKY AREA

In 2022, the Forest Service missed its treatment goals in four of 10 areas targeted as priorities. One was the Tahoe National Forest’s North Yuba region, where the agency addressed only 6% of the acreage planned.

Small towns tucked into the forest’s canyons escaped disaster two years ago when the Dixie fire raged just to the north, destroying several communities and burning about 1,500 square miles (3,900 square kilometers) in the Sierra Nevada range. Those communities also escaped another fire to the south that burned more than 1,000 homes and structures. The previous year, yet another fire killed 15 people and torched more than 2,000 homes and structures in the region.

The same conditions that whipped those fires into infernos exist on the Tahoe forest — densely-packed trees and underbrush primed to burn following years of drought. And government computer modeling suggests it’s among the U.S. communities most exposed to wildfires on federal lands.

Five million trees died on the Tahoe last year alone, said Ilano, the forest supervisor.

“What we’re realizing is we’re not moving fast enough, that the fires are burning bigger and more intense, more quickly than we anticipated,” Ilano said.

FILE – An air tanker drops fire retardant to battle the Dixie Fire in the Feather River Canyon in Plumas County, Calif., July 14, 2021. (Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee via AP)

FILE – Fire Battalion Chief Craig Newell carries a hose while battling the North Complex Fire in Plumas National Forest, Calif., on Sept. 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

Earlier this month, tracked vehicles including one known as a “harvester” worked through dense stands on the North Yuba, clipping large trees at their base and stripping them bare of branches in just seconds, then piling the trunks to be burned later. Elsewhere, work crews walked slowly behind a wood chipper as it was pulled along a forest road, stuffing the machine with small trees and branches cut to clear the understory.

The increased logging needed to reach the government’s lofty goals has gained acceptance as the growing toll from wildfires softens longstanding opposition from some environmental groups and ecologists.

“Gone are the days when things were black and white and either good or bad,” said Melinda Booth, former director of the South Yuba River Citizens League. “We need targeted treatment, targeted thinning, which does include logging.”

Others think officials are going too far. Sue Britting with Sierra Forest Legacy says the North Yuba plan includes about nine square miles (23 square kilometers) of older trees and stands along waterways that should be preserved. Yet for most of the work, Britting said it’s time to “move forward” on a thinning project years in the making.

OBSTACLES TO THINNING STRATEGY

Hindering the Forest Service nationwide is a shortage of workers to cut and remove trees on the scale demanded, government officials and forestry experts say. Litigation ties up many projects, with environmental reviews taking three years on average before work begins, according to the Property and Environment Research Center, a Bozeman, Montana think tank.

Another problem: Thinning operations aren’t allowed in federally designated wilderness areas. That puts off limits about a third of National Forest areas that expose communities to high wildfire risk and means some thinning work must be carried out in a patchwork fashion.

Keeping track of progress presents its own challenges. Acres that get worked on are often counted twice or more — first when the trees are cut down, again when leftover piles of woody material on the same site are removed, and yet again when that landscape is later subjected to prescribed fire, said Schultz of Colorado State University.

Even where thinning is allowed, officials face other potential constraints, such as protecting older groves important for wildlife habitat. A Biden inventory of public lands in April identified more than 175,000 square miles (453,000 square kilometers) of old growth and mature forests on U.S. government land.

The inventory will be used to craft new rules to better protect those woodlands from fires, insects and other side effects of climate change. But there’s overlap between older forests and many areas slated for thinning. That includes more than half of the treatment area at North Yuba, according to an AP analysis of mature forest data compiled by the conservation group Wild Heritage.

“What’s driving all of this is insect infestation, drought stress, and all of that is related to the climate,” said Wild Heritage chief scientist Dominick DellaSalla. “I don’t think you can get out of it by thinning.”

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On Twitter follow Matthew Brown @MatthewBrownAP and Camille Fassett @camfassett.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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June 27, 2023
High-speed internet is a necessity, President Biden says, pledging all US will have access by 2030

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday said that high-speed internet is no longer a luxury but an “absolute necessity,” as he pledged that every household in the nation would have access by 2030 using cables made in the U.S.

“These investments will help all Americans,” he said. “We’re not going to leave anyone behind.”

Biden announced that more than $40 billion would be distributed across the country to deliver high-speed internet in places where there’s either no service, or service is too slow.

The United States has flown nuclear-capable bombers to the Korean Peninsula in its latest show of force against North Korea.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. says a request for his country to temporarily host a U.S. immigrant visa processing center for thousands of Afghans faces security and other concerns but is still being considered by his administration.

The United States is about to start the countdown to its 250th anniversary. The buildup begins this July 4 at a Major League Baseball game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago Cubs at American Family Field in Milwaukee, where the organization created by Congress to oversee the party will ki

The Pell Grant program is about to expand exponentially next month, giving about 30,000 more students behind bars some $130 million in financial aid per year.

“But it’s not enough to have access — you need affordability and access,” the president said, adding that his administration is working with service providers to bring down costs on what is now a household utility — like water or gas — but often remains priced at a premium.

With Monday’s announcement, the administration is launching the second phase of its “Investing in America” tour. The three-week blitz of speeches and events is designed to promote Biden’s previous legislative wins on infrastructure, the economy and climate change going into a reelection year. The president and his advisers believe voters don’t know enough about his policies heading into his 2024 reelection campaign and that more voters would back him once they learn more.

Biden’s challenge is that investments in computer chips and major infrastructure projects such as rail tunnels can take a decade to come to fruition. That leaves much of the messaging focused on grants that will be spent over time, rather than completed projects.

The internet access funding amounts depended primarily on the number of unserved locations in each jurisdiction or those locations that lack access to internet download speeds of at least 25 megabits per second download and upload speeds of 3 Mbps. Download speeds involve retrieving information from the internet, including streaming movies and TV. Upload speeds determine how fast information travels from a computer to the internet, like sending emails or publishing photos online.

The funding includes more than $1 billion each for 19 states, with remaining states falling below that threshold. Allotments range from $100.7 million for Washington, D.C., to $3.3 billion for Texas.

Biden said more than 35,000 projects are already funded or underway to lay cable that provides internet access. Some of those are from $25 billion in initial funding as part of the “American Rescue Plan.”

“High-speed internet isn’t a luxury anymore,” he said. “It’s become an absolute necessity.”

More than 7% of the country falls in the underserved category, according to the Federal Communications Commission ‘s analysis.

Sen. Joe Manchin, who Biden called out as a “friend” during today’s announcement, celebrated the $1.2 billion West Virginia will receive to expand service in the rural, mountainous state of around 1.8 million.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo joined Manchin at a press conference after Biden’s announcement and said West Virginia’s allotment would be enough money to “finally connect every resident.”

“When I say everyone, I mean everyone,” she said. Raimondo said the reason that hasn’t happened in the past is because it’s expensive to lay fiber in a rural or mountainous area.

“And so the internet providers haven’t done it — it doesn’t make economic sense for them,” she said. “What we’re saying to them now is, ‘With this money, $1.2 billion to connect about 300,000 folks in West Virginia, it is plenty of money to get to everyone.’”

Congress approved the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, along with several other internet expansion initiatives, through the infrastructure bill Biden signed in 2021.

Earlier this month, the Commerce Department announced winners of middle mile grants, which will fund projects that build the midsection of the infrastructure necessary to extend internet access to every part of the country.

States have until the end of the year to submit proposals outlining how they plan to use that money, which won’t begin to be distributed until those plans are approved. Once the Commerce Department signs off on those initial plans, states can award grants to telecommunications companies, electric cooperatives and other providers to expand internet infrastructure.

Under the rules of the program, states must prioritize connecting predominantly unserved areas before bolstering service in underserved areas—which are those without access to internet speeds of 100 Mbps/20 Mbps—and in schools, libraries or other community institutions.

Hinging such a large investment on FCC data has been somewhat controversial. Members of Congress pressed FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel about inaccuracies they said would negatively impact rural states’ allotments in particular, and state broadband officials were concerned about the short timeline to correct discrepancies in the first version of the map.

The second version of the map, which was released at the end of May and used for allotments, reflects the net addition of 1 million locations, updated data from internet service providers and the results of more than 3 million public challenges, Rosenworcel, who in the past has been a critic of how the FCC’s maps were developed, said in a May statement.

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AP reporter Leah Willingham contributed from Charleston, West Virginia.

Harjai, who reported from Los Angeles, is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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June 26, 2023
Nusrat Chowdhury confirmed as first Muslim female federal judge in U.S. history

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File: Nusrat Choudhury testifies before Senate Judiciary Committee at confirmation hearing, Apr. 27, 2022.

Screenshot Senate Judiciary Committee hearing

Civil rights lawyer Nusrat Chowdhury has been confirmed by the Senate as the first Muslim female federal judge in U.S. history.

Confirmed along party lines in a 50-49 vote Thursday, Chowdhury will assume her lifetime appointment in Brooklyn federal court in New York.

The confirmation drew praise from the American Civil Liberties Union, where she is the legal director of the ACLU of Illinois. Prior to that post, she served from 2008 to 2020 at the national ACLU office, including seven years as deputy director of the ACLU Racial Justice Program.

In a tweet, the ACLU called her a “trailblazing civil rights lawyer.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who recommended her, said she makes history as the first Bangladeshi American, as well as the first Muslim American woman, to be a federal judge.

“Nusrat Choudhury is a shining example of the American Dream,” Schumer said in a statement. “She is the daughter of immigrant parents, a graduate of Columbia, Princeton, and Yale Law School, and has dedicated her career to making sure all people can have their voices heard in court.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, voted against the appointment, citing her support for criminal justice reform. He said in a statement that some of her past statements call into question her ability to be unbiased toward members of law enforcement.

After finishing law school, Chowdhury clerked in New York City for U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote and 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Barrington Parker Jr.

She has served on the Presidential Task Force on Building Public Trust in the American Justice System.

Her appointment was consistent with President Joe Biden’s pledge to emphasize diversity in background, race and gender in his judicial nominations.

Two years ago, the Senate confirmed the nation’s first federal Muslim judge, Zahid Quraishi, to serve as a district court judge in New Jersey. Quraishi’s first day on the job at a New York law firm was Sept. 11, 2001. He would go on to join the Army’s legal arm and served two deployments in Iraq.

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June 16, 2023
6/4: Face The Nation

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6/4: Face The Nation – CBS News

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This week on “Face the Nation,” West Virginia’s Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Louisiana Republican Garret Graves discuss what’s next for the country after averting a debt crisis, plus Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan on how brinkmanship impacts an ever-changing economy.

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June 4, 2023
Senate Freaking Out After Dianne Feinstein Gets Her Hands On Gun

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WASHINGTON—Thrown into a panic when the confused 89-year-old appeared on the Senate floor randomly pointing a firearm at various colleagues, lawmakers reportedly freaked out Friday after Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) got her hands on a gun. “Good God, someone get that thing away from her!” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who ducked behind a chair as Feinstein rolled down the aisle and waved a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun in several faces, screaming that there were terrorists hiding in the attic and they had been poisoning her food. “She clearly doesn’t understand what she’s doing. If someone puts their hands up and approaches her slowly, maybe she’ll just give it to you. It’s probably not loaded. There’s no way she’s still lucid enough to know how to—oh, shit, hit the deck!” At press time, after appearing surprised to realize where she was and what she was doing, Feinstein was said to have calmly and systemically shot every member of Congress who has called for her resignation.

Taxidermist Returns Finished Bob Dole To Display In Capitol Rotunda

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May 19, 2023
Congress approves measure to reverse Biden’s water protections

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Washington — Congress on Wednesday approved a resolution to overturn the Biden administration’s protections for the nation’s waterways that Republicans have criticized as a burden on business, advancing a measure that President Biden has promised to veto.

Republicans have targeted the Biden administration’s protections for thousands of small streams, wetlands and other waterways, labeling it an environmental overreach that harms businesses, developers and farmers.

They used the Congressional Review Act that allows Congress to block recently enacted executive branch regulations. The Senate voted in favor 53 to 43 Wednesday to give final legislative approval to the measure. Four Democrats and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona joined Republicans to vote in favor of the resolution.

“The overreach, basically, it’s unreal,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat of West Virginia and critic of some of the White House’s environmental policies.

The Senate vote was the latest development in a long-running fight over the definition of “waters of the United States,” which establishes the breadth of the Clean Water Act’s protections. Environmentalists and the Biden administration have pushed to broaden the definition and protect more waterways from pollution while right-leaning groups and the Trump administration have argued that protecting fewer waterways would benefit builders, farmers and business.

In early March, the Republican-controlled House approved the resolution 227-198. A Congressional Review Act resolution requires a simple majority in both chambers and can’t be filibustered.

Water protections are “very symbolic and polarized,” according to Julian Gonzalez, legislative counsel with Earthjustice. He said moderate Democrats may vote for the resolution to show their independence from the Biden administration’s environmental agenda.

“The perceived impact won’t be as significant because the president will veto it, so they can sort of achieve their goal without causing that much damage,” Gonzalez said, adding that supporting efforts to weaken the Clean Water Act are shortsighted.

Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware said the Biden administration’s rule is protective and fair.

“The Biden rule requires us to be good neighbors, and stewards of our planet, while also providing flexibility for those who need it,” said Carper said.

In December, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers repealed the Trump administration’s business-friendly rule that scaled back protections. Since the Biden administration enacted its broader rule, Republicans have targeted it in the courts and Congress.

This month, a federal judge paused the rule in Texas and Idaho in a win for Republican legal challenges. Right-leaning states have argued in court the rule is too vague and would create unacceptable economic hardships.

The Supreme Court is also considering a related case brought by an Idaho couple who are fighting a requirement that they receive a permit to build their home near a lake after the EPA determined that part of their property was a regulated wetland. The justices heard arguments in Sackett v. EPA in October and a decision is expected in the next few months.

“Expansion of federal authority and an encroachment on states’ rights and private lands is the precise reason we have seen overwhelming support for my (Congressional Review Act) resolution,” said Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia.

Democrats hold a 51-49 Senate majority, but Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is in the hospital being treated for depression and is unavailable for votes. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat of California, and GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are also absent.

The Biden administration’s rule is built on a pre-2015 definition of “waters of the United States,” but is more streamlined and includes updates to reflect court opinions, scientific understanding and decades of experience, EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Radhika Fox previously told The Associated Press. She added that the rule modestly increases protections for some streams, wetlands, lakes and ponds.

The new rule repeated the Trump-era rule that was finalized in 2020 and was broadly supported by farm bureaus and business that wanted less regulation on private property. Environmental groups said the Trump-era rules left too many waterways unprotected from pollutants.

Senate Democrats Manchin, Jon Tester of Montana, and both senators from Nevada, Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, supported the resolution. Sinema also voted in favor.

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March 29, 2023
FCC nominee withdraws her nomination after Manchin opposition | CNN Politics

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CNN
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President Joe Biden’s candidate for the Federal Communications Commission, Gigi Sohn, has withdrawn her nomination after West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin announced he’d vote against her confirmation.

In a statement, Sohn says she’d asked Biden to withdraw her nomination Monday evening, blasting what she detailed as “unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks on my character and my career as an advocate for the public interest.”

“It is a sad day for our country and our democracy when dominant industries, with assistance from unlimited dark money, get to choose their regulators. And with the help of their friends in the Senate, the powerful cable and media companies have done just that,” Sohn wrote.

The Washington Post first reported Tuesday that Sohn was withdrawing her nomination after Manchin announced he would oppose her confirmation, citing what he called “her years of partisan activism, inflammatory statements online, and partisan alliances with far-left groups.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to detail who, if anyone, the White House was considering to replace Sohn’s nomination.

“We appreciate Gigi Sohn’s candidacy for this important role. She would have brought tremendous talent, intellect and experience, which is why the President nominated her in the first place,” Jean-Pierre told reporters during Tuesday’s press briefing. “We also appreciate her dedication to public service, her talent, and her years of work as one of the nation’s leading public advocates on behalf of American consumers and competition.”

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March 7, 2023
3/5: Hogan, Manchin, Pritzker

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3/5: Hogan, Manchin, Pritzker – CBS News

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This week on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan tells us he will not seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024, plus we talk to Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

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March 5, 2023
Key senators torn over retirement decisions as party leaders try to fortify 2024 standing | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Sen. Joe Manchin, torn over whether to run for reelection, says he’s “given everything I possibly can” over four decades of holding public office. Sen. Jon Tester is close to making his final decision on a 2024 bid and concedes there’s a risk of his seat flipping next year.

“It’s a commitment,” the Montana Democrat said of another run.

They’re not the only ones in a tough spot.

Sen. Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, is weighing health considerations after treatment for prostate cancer. Sen. Bernie Sanders, 81, says he’ll make a decision about whether to run for a fourth Senate term in Vermont “at the appropriate time.”

And Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who has gone to battle with former President Donald Trump, says he’ll decide whether to run for a second term by mid-April, sounding ready to take on his party’s MAGA wing if he runs again.

“People understand that every action has a consequence, and you accept the consequences for the actions that you think are right,” Romney, 75, said of potentially facing a stiff challenge from the right. He then added bullishly: “If I run, I’ll win.”

As the 2024 landscape begins to take shape, the senators’ decisions about their political futures will dramatically alter the map and hold major ramifications for the makeup of the institution itself.

For Democrats, the concern is the most acute. They already have a difficult road to maintain their slim 51-49 majority, with 23 seats to defend compared to just 11 for the GOP.

Plus they’ll have to hold onto Democratic seats in GOP terrain, such as in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia – not to mention keep their seats in swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada. The map provides them with scant pickup opportunities, since Republican incumbents are mostly running in ruby-red states or states that have trended to the GOP, like Florida.

Then there’s the complicated dance for both parties in Arizona, if Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, now an independent, decides to run again for a seat that would put her up against a Republican and Democrat in a messy, three-way race. For Republicans, fear is growing that the hard-right Kari Lake may mount a bid and put their hopes for a pickup in jeopardy.

And with few pickup chances, Senate Democrats recognize they’ll have to limit losses – and prevent retirements – in order to cling to power.

“I’m doing everything I can to help Manchin in West Virginia,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told CNN when asked if he were concerned that the conservative Democrat might hang it up, referring to legislative actions.

After Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow announced she’d retire, Schumer and his top deputies are hoping to prevent others from following suit, recognizing that an open seat would give Republicans an even better chance of seizing control of the chamber they lost in the 2020 elections. The exception is California, where the 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein announced her retirement this week, something widely expected, as Democrats are expected to keep the seat in their control in the blue state.

In particular, Democratic leaders are urging Tester and Manchin to run again, knowing full well that finding another Democrat to win in those conservative battlegrounds will be an extremely tall order in 2024.

“Clearly, it’s important for them to run,” said Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Democratic campaign arm, when asked about Tester and Manchin. “I don’t know where they are. I’ve talked to them, but they’re just working through issues, personal issues for themselves as to what they want to do. So we just have to give them time to think that through and I look forward to their answers.”

Peters acknowledged that his party’s effort to keep the Senate will grow bleaker if either or both men retire.

“Those are states that are very Republican,” Peters told CNN, referring to Montana and West Virginia. “And I know they can win again, but they’re without question the strongest candidates in those states. It’d be more difficult without them running.”

Democrats acknowledge they have close to no backup plans in Montana or West Virginia. But they have been heartened by the polls that are being released publicly by Republican groups in those states, showing their numbers have been better than expected – and perhaps encouraging – for the incumbents.

But neither Manchin nor Tester seem concerned that the seat could turn red if they retire.

“That’s not my factor,” Manchin said in the interview. “I’m not weighing that because of my, what it might do to the numbers as far as up here. No, I’ve been at this for quite some time. This term being up, there’ll be 42 years I’ve been in public service so I’ve given everything I possibly can.”

Several Democratic operatives involved in planning for Senate races tell CNN they expect that ultimately, Tester will run and that Casey will as well after his successful surgery this week. Manchin has them more on edge, and they anticipate that’s how they’ll remain for almost a year: the West Virginia filing deadline isn’t until next January.

That, after all, is what he did in 2018.

Manchin, a former governor and state legislator who has served in the Senate since 2010, insists he’s not concerned about the prospects that the GOP governor, Jim Justice, is strongly considering a run against him, though Justice would have to escape a difficult primary against Rep. Alex Mooney and potentially the state’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, who may run as well. He has acknowledged that Justice would be the toughest candidate to face, though he insists he could still pull off a victory.

Manchin, 75, just doesn’t know if he wants to do it again as he looks back at the last several years – especially in the 50-50 Senate in the last Congress where he was at the peak of his power in the chamber and played a central role shaping major laws. The question Manchin is weighing: whether he’ll have the same kind of impact with another six years.

“I make a decision based on if I’ve been able to deliver for the state, have I been able to support the Constitution and the oath I’ve taken, I think I have,” Manchin said, confirming he’s been urged by Biden and Schumer both to run. “Is there more I can do in different, other areas? I don’t know.”

Tester, who also said Schumer has been urging him to run, conceded that his seat could flip if he bows out.

“Oh, absolutely there’s a risk of flipping there’s no doubt about that but so are all of them,” Tester said.

But he contended other Democrats could mount a vigorous challenge for the seat.

“Actually, we’ve got some really good folks in the wings that can run,” Tester, 66, said before he noted that things have gotten dire for Democrats in recent cycles. “We haven’t had the best of luck the last few cycles in Montana but I think that’s as much self-inflicted as it is the state turning red.”

But Tester pointed to key positions he holds – chairing a subcommittee on Pentagon spending and running the veterans panel – as he weighs another run.

“I’m at a point and time where we can get a lot of good things done because of my position on Veterans Affairs and defense chairman but it’s just something where I think you just need to take the time to think over,” he said.

Yet Democrats could benefit from a potentially divisive GOP primary in Montana – with the possibility of candidacies from two House members, the governor and the state attorney general. That will put the other Montana senator, Republican Steve Daines, to the test as he plans to use his National Republican Senatorial Committee to be more assertive in GOP primaries to root out lackluster general election candidates, though it’s unclear how he would handle his home state.

In an interview, Daines was noncommittal when asked about one candidate in particular – Rep. Matt Rosendale – a hard-right Republican who lost to Tester in 2018 and is considering running again. He said “it’s early” since candidates have yet to declare and that the field will get “sorted out,” contending the race is “winnable.”

“These are three red states where the only statewide elected official left that’s a Democrat is a US Senator. That’s Montana, it’s West Virginia, it’s Ohio,” Daines said. “These are going to be spirited races.”

And after last cycle’s GOP debacle, where several Donald Trump-aligned candidates petered out in the general election and effectively cost them winning the majority, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell is determined not to allow that to happen again.

“I just think we need to focus on candidates who can win in the general election,” said Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas and close McConnell ally. “We had some great primary candidates, but that won’t get the job done. You got to have somebody who can have a broader appeal than just the base. That was one of the most important lessons of this last cycle.”

Senate leaders in both parties see Arizona as the biggest wildcard – depending on what Sinema decides to do and which Republican decides to run.

Lake, the Trump-aligned Republican who lost one of the nation’s premier governor’s races last fall, recently met with officials at NRSC headquarters – even though many Republicans are nervous about her potential candidacy and one GOP strategist called the potential of a Lake Senate run “disastrous.”

As she made the rounds in Washington, Daines told CNN that he spoke with Lake.

“I want to see a candidate who can not only win a primary, but can win a general election,” Daines said when asked about that visit, not commenting on Lake directly.

Other top Republicans are unnerved about Lake – and her evidence-free claims of widespread election fraud – and are pushing for other candidates to jump into the race.

“I’ve just said to any of our candidates or potential candidates in 2024, that you got to talk about the future, not the past,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican. “And I think if you’re building your campaign around the theme of a stolen election, that’s not a winning strategy. We’ve seen that. So if she does decide to do it again, I think she’s gonna have to talk about the things that are on the hearts and minds of American people.”

Schumer and Democratic leaders, themselves, are in a bind in the state, refusing to say if they’ll back their party’s nominee with Sinema still undecided on a run. The reason: They need Sinema to continue to organize with them in order to maintain their 51-49 majority and are in no mood to alienate her.

But some Democrats are angry at their leaders for refusing to say if they’ll back their nominee, especially backers of Rep. Ruben Gallego, the party’s leading candidate in the race.

“At some point, they’re going to have to endorse a Democrat,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, a fellow Arizona Democrat who backs Gallego, noting it would be “problematic” if party leaders didn’t dump huge resources to help their party’s nominee win a general election.

“If they don’t, that would be an insult at many levels,” Grijavla said.

While some Democrats are nervous that Gallego and Sinema would split the vote and give Republicans a victory, Gallego dismisses the possibility and says only a “strong Democrat” can win.

“No matter what happens, Kyrsten Sinema is always going to be in third place,” Gallego said. “I also doubt she fully runs.”

As she’s grown more alienated from her former party, Sinema has grown closer to Republicans, including one – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – who told CNN she would endorse the senator if she ran again.

“I absolutely support Sen. Sinema,” Murkowski said, noting she’s also backing Manchin. “She’s not afraid to take on hard things, and I’m gonna be supporting her too.”

Even in safe Democratic seats, there’s the potential for a shakeup that could bring more diversity and younger members into the ranks, including in Maryland and Delaware where Sens. Ben Cardin and Tom Carper, respectively, have not made a final decision to run yet.

Cardin, 79, who hasn’t spent much time fundraising yet, said he would make his decision sometime in the spring, while Carper, 76, said he’d be ready to run but noted that campaigns are “way too long.”

In Hawaii, Sen. Mazie Hirono said she plans to run again, as did Maine’s Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

“There’s only two ways to run: Scared or unopposed,” King said.

In more contested states, Nevada’s Jacky Rosen said she is running, as did Ohio’s Sherrod Brown. And in Wisconsin, Sen. Tammy Baldwin said she’d make her announcement about her plans in the spring after upcoming elections in the state.

In Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz has announced plans to run for a third Senate term, and Democrats are weighing whether to mount a serious effort to try to unseat him in the red state – with a focus on whether Democratic Rep. Colin Allred will try to mount an upset bid against the conservative senator.

In Michigan, where Stabenow’s retirement is leaving Democrats with an open seat in a swing state, Rep. Elissa Slotkin is eying a run and could get some implicit help from the outgoing senator herself. Stabenow has spoken by phone with several prominent Michigan Democrats, and while some have perceived that as dissuading some weaker candidates from running, a Stabenow spokesperson says she’s just been giving everyone advice on the challenges of running statewide in Michigan and not trying to clear the field.

Republican recruitment efforts in the state are also up in the air, with a push for newly elected Rep. John James, who has lost two previous bids for the Senate. If he passes, GOP leaders believe other contenders will emerge, potentially former Rep. Peter Meijer and even some current members of the House delegation or local officials.

While several potential Democratic candidates have decided not to run, other political players in the state remain unsure about Slotkin’s statewide strength and have continued talking privately about finding an alternative.

Given how much Democrats in the state rely on high turnout in heavily African-American Detroit, finding a candidate who could run strong there has been a major topic in those discussions. Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, who got his start in Detroit politics is “very seriously thinking about making a run” and is expected to make a decision over the next month, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

Meanwhile, several Democrats in Michigan tell CNN they have been surprised by outreach they’re getting from “The Good Doctor” actor Hill Harper, whose political experience mostly relates to being Barack Obama’s law school roommate, but who owns a coffee shop in Detroit and has gotten involved with the local business community there. Harper did not return a request for comment.

Stabenow said she’s not endorsing any candidate in the primary to replace her.

“What I’m saying to folks is that I want somebody that is strong, effective, who can raise money, who can win,” Stabenow said. “But I’m talking to everybody.”

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February 17, 2023
Manchin says it’s a ‘mistake’ for White House to want Democrats to address debt ceiling without GOP | CNN Politics

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Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said Sunday that it’s a “mistake” for the White House to want Democrats to deal with the debt ceiling without negotiating with congressional Republicans.

“I think it’s a mistake because we have to negotiate. This is a democracy that we have. We have a two-party system, if you will, and we should be able to talk and find out where our differences are. And if they are irreconcilable, then you have to move on from there and let people make their decisions,” Manchin, a key Senate moderate, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

“Using the debt ceiling and holding it hostage hasn’t worked in the past,” Manchin continued, adding that he “respectfully” disagrees with his party’s No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, Majority Whip Dick Durbin, on not negotiating with Republicans.

“Every American has to live within a budget. If they don’t, they’re in trouble financially. Every business that’s successful has to live within a budget. Every state has to live within a budget. Shouldn’t the federal government have some guardrails that, say, ‘Hey, guys … you’re overreaching here and you’re overspending?’ But then pick your priorities. That’s all,” he added.

The US hit the debt ceiling set by Congress on Thursday, forcing the Treasury Department to start taking “extraordinary measures” to keep the government paying its bills and escalating pressure on Capitol Hill to avoid a catastrophic default.

The battle lines for the high-stakes fight have already been set. Hard-line Republicans, who have enormous sway in the House because of the party’s slim majority, have demanded that lifting the borrowing cap be tied to spending reductions. Manchin suggested Sunday he was open to spending cuts.

The White House, however, has countered that it will not offer any concessions or negotiate on raising the debt ceiling. And with the solution to the debt ceiling drama squarely in lawmakers’ hands, fears are growing that the partisan brinksmanship could result in the nation defaulting on its debt for the first time ever – or come dangerously close to doing so.

GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania said Sunday on Fox News that the White House position against negotiating with House Republicans on spending cuts, in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, is “very irresponsible.” He said the first step in addressing the debt ceiling situation is for Speaker Kevin McCarthy to sit down with Biden.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, said in the same interview that he believes the White House will ultimately sit down with McCarthy, which he called “a good thing.”

Fitzpatrick and Gottheimer are the co-chairs of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in the House.

As to whether Social Security and Medicare should be part of these negotiations, Manchin shared his interest in wanting to create a committee that would make the two programs “more financially secure and stable.” But he said no one who currently receives these benefits should receive any cuts.

“No cuts to anybody that’s receiving their benefits, no adjustments to that. They’ve earned it. They paid into it. Take that off the table,” Manchin said. “But everyone’s using that as a leverage.”

The senator indicated he was open to raising the income cap for Social Security taxes.

“I’m open to basically raising – the easiest and quickest thing we can do is raise the cap,” he said.

Meanwhile, Manchin on Sunday also offered support for fellow Senate moderate Krysten Sinema, calling her a “formidable candidate” for reelection in 2024.

Sinema announced last month she was leaving the Democratic Party and registering as a political independent, fueling fresh interest from Arizona Democrats to challenge her next year.

“I would think that she needs to be supported again, yes, because she brings that independent spirit,” Manchin said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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January 22, 2023
EXPLAINER: 2023 tax credits for EVs will boost their appeal

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Starting Jan. 1, many Americans will qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500 for buying an electric vehicle. The credit, part of changes enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act, is designed to spur EV sales and reduce greenhouse emissions.

But a complex web of requirements, including where vehicles and batteries must be manufactured to qualify, is casting some doubt on whether anyone can receive the full $7,500 credit next year.

The Treasury Department is rolling out more information on which vehicles qualify and how individuals and businesses can access credit beginning in 2023. One big loophole that allows tax credits for EVs purchased for “commercial” use, such as leasing or ride-share, even if they are foreign-made is drawing the ire of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who says it could circumvent the intent of the law to favor American manufacturing.

For at least the first two months of 2023, though, a delay in some of Treasury’s rules will likely make the full credit temporarily available to consumers who meet certain income and price limits.

The new law also provides a smaller credit for people who buy a used EV.

Certain EV brands that were eligible for a separate tax credit that began in 2010 and that will end this year may not be eligible for the new credit. Several EV models made by Kia, Hyundai and Audi, for example, won’t qualify because they are manufactured outside North America.

The new tax credit, which lasts until 2032, is intended to make zero-emission vehicles affordable to more people. Here is a closer look at it.

___

WHAT’S NEW FOR 2023?

The credit of up to $7,500 will be offered to people who buy certain new electric vehicles as well as some plug-in gas-electric hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. For people who buy a used vehicle that runs on battery power, a $4,000 credit will be available.

But the question of which vehicles and buyers will qualify for the credits is complicated and will remain uncertain until Treasury issues the proposed rules in March.

What’s known so far is that to qualify for the credit, new EVs must be made in North America. In addition, caps on vehicle prices and buyer incomes are intended to disqualify wealthier buyers.

Starting in March, complex provisions will also govern battery components. Forty percent of battery minerals will have to come from North America or a country with a U.S. free trade agreement or be recycled in North America. (That threshold will eventually go to 80%.)

And 50% of the battery parts will have to be made or assembled in North America, eventually rising to 100%.

Starting in 2025, battery minerals cannot come from a “foreign entity of concern,” mainly China and Russia. Battery parts cannot be sourced in those countries starting in 2024 — a troublesome obstacle for the auto industry because numerous EV metals and parts now come from China.

There also are battery-size requirements.

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WHICH VEHICLES ARE ELIGIBLE?

Because of the many remaining uncertainties, that’s not entirely clear. However, the Treasury Department released an initial list of vehicles that meet the requirements to claim the new clean vehicle tax credit beginning Jan. 1, including models from Chrysler, Ford, Jeep, Lincoln, Nissan and Rivian. More vehicles will be added to the list in the weeks and months to come.

The Energy Department also maintains a list of qualifying EVs.

General Motors and Tesla have the most EVs assembled in North America. Each also makes batteries in the U.S. But because of the requirements for where batteries, minerals and parts must be manufactured, it’s likely that buyers of those vehicles would initially receive only half the tax credit, $3,750. GM says its eligible EVs should qualify for the $3,750 credit by March, with the full credit available in 2025.

Until Treasury issues its rules, though, the requirements governing where minerals and parts must be sourced will be waived. This will allow eligible buyers to receive the full $7,500 tax incentive for qualifying models early in 2023.

___

WHAT ABOUT PRICE?

To qualify, new electric sedans cannot have a sticker price above $55,000. Pickup trucks, SUVs and vans can’t be over $80,000. This will disqualify two higher-priced Tesla models. Though Tesla’s top sellers, the models 3 and Y, will be eligible, with options, those vehicles might exceed the price limits.

Kelley Blue Book says the average EV now costs over $65,000, though lower-priced models are coming.

___

WILL I QUALIFY FOR THE CREDITS?

It depends on your income. For new EVs, buyers cannot have an adjusted gross income above $150,000 if single, $300,000 if filing jointly and $225,000 if head of a household.

For used EVs, buyers cannot earn more than $75,000 if single, $150,000 if filing jointly and $112,500 if head of household.

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HOW WILL THE CREDIT BE PAID?

At first, it will be applied to your 2023 tax return, which you file in 2024. Starting in 2024, consumers can transfer the credit to a dealership to lower the vehicle price at purchase.

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WILL THE CREDITS BOOST EV SALES?

Yes, but it probably will take a few years, says Mike Fiske, associate director for S&P Global Mobility. The credit may cause a bump in sales early next year because of Treasury’s delay in issuing the stricter requirements. But most automakers are now selling all the EVs they build and cannot make more because of shortages of parts, including computer chips.

And automakers may have trouble certifying the sources of battery minerals and parts, a requirement for buyers to receive the full credit. Automakers have been scrambling to move more EV supply chains to the U.S.

___

HOW DOES THE USED-EV CREDIT WORK?

Consumers can receive tax credits of up to $4,000 — or 30% of the vehicle price, whichever is less — for buying EVs that are at least two years old. But the used EV must cost less than $25,000 — a tall order given the starting prices for most EVs on the market. A search on Autotrader.com shows that the Chevy Bolt, the Nissan Leaf and other relatively economical used EVs are listed at $26,000 or more for models dating back to 2019.

On the other hand, used EVs need not be made in North America or comply with the battery-sourcing requirements. That means that, for instance, a 2022 Kia EV6 that’s ineligible for the new-vehicle credit because it’s made in South Korea can qualify for a used-car credit if its price falls below $25,000.

“The real effects where these tax credits will have a big impact will be in the 2026-to-2032 period — a few years into the future — as automakers gear up and volumes increase,” said Chris Harto, a senior policy analyst for Consumer Reports magazine.

___

WHY IS THE GOVERNMENT OFFERING THE CREDITS?

The credits are part of roughly $370 billion in spending on clean energy — America’s largest investment to fight climate change — that was signed into law in August by President Joe Biden. EVs now make up about 5% of U.S. new-vehicle sales; Biden has set a goal of 50% by 2030.

Sales of EVs have been climbing, particularly as California and other states have moved to phase out gas-powered cars. The rise of lower-cost competitors to Tesla, such as the Chevy Equinox, with an expected base price of around $30,000, are expected to broaden the EVs’ reach to middle-class households. S&P Global Mobility expects EVs’ share of auto sales to reach 8% next year, 15% by 2025 and 37% by 2030.

___

COULD REQUIREMENTS BE EASED TO MAKE MORE EVs ELIGIBLE?

It appears that may happen. Some U.S. allies are upset over North American manufacturing requirements that disqualify EVs made in Europe or South Korea.

The requirements knock Hyundai and Kia out of the credits, at least in the short term. They plan to build new EV and battery plants in Georgia, but those won’t open until 2025. European Union countries fear that the tax credits could make their automakers move factories to the U.S.

There is a loophole, however. The law appears to exempt commercial vehicles from the North America assembly and domestic battery mineral and parts requirements. That means that rental car and leasing companies with huge fleets as well as EVs used fuller-time for ride-share such as Uber and Lyft could be eligible for up to $7,500 in tax credits even for foreign-made EVs. A fact sheet released by Treasury on Thursday affirms it would allow exemptions for commercial vehicles, which the department says it must do based on the wording of the law.

That move drew the anger of Manchin, a key vote in passing the Inflation Reduction Act, who on Thursday accused the Biden administration of bending to the desires of foreign countries. He said the exemptions undermine the law’s intent to “bring our energy and manufacturing supply chains onshore to protect our national security, reduce our dependence on foreign adversaries and create jobs right here in the United States.”

Manchin said he would introduce legislation in the coming weeks that “prevents this dangerous interpretation from Treasury from moving forward.”

___

ARE THERE CREDITS FOR CHARGING STATIONS?

If you install an EV charger at home, credits may be available. The new law revives a federal tax credit that had expired in 2021; it provides 30% of the cost of hardware and installation, up to $1,000. It adds a requirement that the charger must be in a low-income or non-urban area. Businesses that install new EV chargers in those areas can receive tax credits of as much as 30% — up to $100,000 per charger.

Residential EV chargers can range in cost from $200 to $1,000; installation can add several more hundred dollars.

___

SO SHOULD I BUY NOW OR WAIT?

That’s entirely a personal decision.

If you’ve grown tired of volatile gasoline prices and are considering an EV, you might want to go ahead. Buying a qualifying EV in January or February could net you the full $7,500 tax break before more stringent requirements take effect in March. Additional state credits also may be available.

But if you’re still on the fence, there’s no urgency. Consumers who rush to buy now, when relatively few qualifying EVs are available, may face dealer price markups. Within a few years, technology will improve, and more EVs will qualify for full credits.

___

WHERE CAN I FIND MORE INFORMATION?

The Treasury Department on Thursday released several frequently asked questions documents for individual and commercial customers on the clean vehicle tax credits meant to help them understand how to access the various tax incentives.

The department also released a white paper explaining the anticipated direction that it is taking ahead of the proposed rule rollout.

____

Krisher reported from Detroit. Associated Press writer Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.

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January 3, 2023
States contend with short timeline to correct broadband map

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LOS ANGELES — States are racing against a deadline to challenge the map federal officials will use to divvy up the nation’s largest-ever investment in high-speed internet.

At stake is a share of the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, part of the infrastructure measure President Joe Biden signed into law last year.

States have until Jan. 13 to challenge a broadband speed map the Federal Communications Commission released last month that, for the first time, illustrates the haves and have nots of internet access down to specific street addresses.

Critics have long suspected that the number of people with internet connections has been overstated by the government, in part because agencies creating the maps have deferred to telecommunications companies to say where service is provided.

Extending service to remote areas with few customers can be expensive for internet providers, but using the surge of new federal funds to fill the gaps depends heavily on knowing where they are.

West Virginia officials have already submitted challenges for 138,000 underserved homes, businesses and other locations in the state that they say are missing, and they’re preparing at least 40,000 more.

“We’re going to find out,” said U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat. “There is no excuse that West Virginia — every nook and cranny, every person — if they’ve got electricity in their house, by God they can get internet in their house, too.”

According to the first draft of this year’s FCC map, 2% of residential addresses in the U.S. have no broadband access at all and 11% are considered underserved. But those figures are likely to rise after the state challenges.

Previous FCC maps depicted broadband availability at the census block level. That meant that if an internet service provider reported that it offered broadband to one home within a census block, the whole census block would be considered served.

But Congress in 2020 tasked the FCC with creating a more precise broadband map. It hired a company called CostQuest, which tapped tax assessment and land use records, as well as census and geospatial data, to create the underlying layer of the map showing every address where broadband can be installed. Then, internet service providers reported what internet speeds they actually offer at each address.

To counter expected discrepancies, the public can challenge the map — an option that wasn’t available with the FCC’s census block-level maps.

“I like to refer to (the new FCC map) as census block-penetrating radar ,” said Jim Stritzinger, the director of South Carolina’s broadband office, which reported 33,000 state addresses missing from the map.

Mississippi’s state broadband director, Sally Doty, said her office found a “tremendous amount” of addresses missing in high-growth areas of the state, including DeSoto and Madison counties and along the Gulf Coast. The state launched a website at the end of November where residents can run speed tests and fill out a survey about their internet service.

“If we have low speeds for an area that is reported as covered, it will allow us to investigate that further and determine the appropriate action,” Doty said, adding that she hopes to get 100,000 unique responses through the website before the end of the year.

Maine’s state broadband office sent engineers to some 2,500 addresses across populated areas where it predicted broadband technology was likely to be misreported. Over the course of two weeks, the engineers identified approximately 1,000 discrepancies between the information on the FCC map and what actually exists in the state, Meghan Grabill, a data analyst working on the project, said. The state is combining its results from the field analysis with data from internet providers, the postal service and emergency dispatchers to identify other discrepancies.

While some states are pouring millions of dollars into the challenge process, others say they lack the resources to fully participate.

Kansas’ state broadband office recently hired two new staff members, boosting the total number to just four. Rather than collect data in bulk, the state has focused its efforts on webinars and public outreach to train residents how to challenge the map themselves.

“We’re walking them step by step through it,” said Jade Piros de Carvalho, Kansas’ broadband director.

Challenges to the map can include assertions that locations are missing or that the internet service depicted on the map isn’t actually available. The challenges can be done in bulk, by state or local governments, or at an individual level, where residents confirm the information for just their address.

The mapping system West Virginia is using to fact check the FCC map was created to provide city-style addresses for large rural areas of the state in order to help emergency services workers respond to 911 calls and other emergencies.

“These maps have been a challenge, and that’s putting it nicely, for years,” said Kelly Workman, director of West Virginia’s Office of Broadband, said of the FCC’s maps. “Everyone in West Virginia has known for a long time that these maps are not serving our state well.”

The Jan. 13 deadline was set so that the FCC can resolve challenges before the National Telecommunications and Information Administration announces states’ allotments in June 2023.

The states will in turn funnel the grant money to several entities, including internet service providers, local or tribal governments and electric co-ops, to expand networks where people don’t have good service. Entities that take this money will have to offer a low-cost service option. Government regulators will approve the price of that service.

Each state will receive a minimum of $100 million and final allocations will be based upon several factors, including an analysis of unserved locations as shown on the FCC map.

Unserved locations are those without reliable service of at least 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload.

Officials in some states, including Texas and Vermont, have pressed for the deadline to be extended, but the FCC has given no indication it will move back the Jan. 13 date.

While acknowledging that the new FCC map is a marked improvement over past versions, Piros de Carvalho, Kansas’ broadband director, questioned whether the timeline of the challenge process will leave certain states behind.

“What makes it really unfortunate is we’re trying to shore up disparities in service, but are we inadvertently exacerbating these inequities by disadvantaging the most rural or economically distressed states that have lower capacities in their offices?” Piros de Carvalho said. “I think it might be an unintentional consequence of these timelines and requirements.”

———

Associated Press reporter Leah Willingham in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed to this story. Harjai is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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December 21, 2022
Manchin says Biden should ask for extension of Trump-era border policy | CNN Politics

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Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said Sunday that President Joe Biden should ask for an extension of Title 42, a public health authority that was invoked under former President Donald Trump and allows officials to expel migrants encountered at the US-Mexico border.

“I understand that the president needs to use every bit of power he has as an executive to find a way or ask for an extension,” the West Virginia senator told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”

“The president can basically, I think, ask for that extension. I think his administration is doing that or will do that. I sure hope they do. But we need an extension until we can get a viable answer for this,” Manchin said.

Title 42 – which has been heavily criticized by public health experts and immigrant advocates – has largely barred asylum at the US-Mexico border, marking an unprecedented departure from traditional protocol.

But while its origins were in the Trump administration, Title 42 has become a key tool for the Biden White House as it faces mass migration in the Western Hemisphere.

A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a bid by several Republican-led states to keep Title 42 in force, after a district court struck the controversial border policy down. The Biden administration is set to stop enforcing the rule Wednesday, though the GOP-led states had previously indicated that they’d seek the intervention of the Supreme Court should the appeals court rule against them.

The states argued in the case that allowing Title 42 to terminate would “cause an enormous disaster at the border” and that a big jump in the number of migrants “will necessarily increase the States’ law enforcement, education, and healthcare costs.”

In an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that aired Sunday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said migrants coming across the border untested for Covid-19 or any other illness pose a “public health risk” to the United States.

“Whether it’s Covid or some other issue, when you have people coming from across the globe, without knowing at all what their health status is, that almost by definition – is a public health risk,” Abbott said, while speaking about the end of Title 42. “There’s every reason to keep that in place.”

On Saturday, Mayor Oscar Leeser of El Paso, Texas, declared a state of emergency in response to the surge in migrants arriving in the community in recent days.

“If the courts do not intervene and put a halt to the removal of title 42, it’s going to be total chaos,” Abbott said.

Biden administration officials have been bracing for an influx of migrants when the authority lifts. The Department of Homeland Security’s six-pillar plan for the scheduled end of Title 42 includes surging resources to the border, increasing processing efficiency, imposing consequences for unlawful entry, bolstering nonprofit capacity, targeting smugglers and working with international partners.

Keisha Lance Bottoms, the White House senior adviser for public engagement, on Sunday defended the administration’s preparedness to deal with any influx at the southern border, telling CBS News, “What we are seeing happening is that many people are taking advantage of the fact that Title 42 may go away.”

“This week, we see many people exploiting migrants, saying, ‘Come now or you lose your ability to come at all.’ And that’s simply not the case,” she said on “Face the Nation.”

Lance Bottoms called on Congress to act on comprehensive immigration reform – something unlikely to happen before Title 42 is lifted or in the next Congress when Republicans will control the House.

Bottoms would not foreshadow what executive actions Biden could take, in lieu of any larger action from Congress.

Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California said Sunday the federal government should focus on funding humanitarian assistance upon the lifting of Title 42.

“The state of California is a prime example. More than a billion dollars of state funds going into humanity assistance for asylum seekers when they come to the United States. While they wait for their hearing, do they deserve some basic food and shelter and health screening? Absolutely. Frankly, the federal government should be investing more in that humane treatment of asylum seekers,” Padilla said on ABC’s “This Week.”

But Manchin stressed Sunday that “we have a crisis at the border. Everyone can see that. I think everyone realizes that something has to be done. [Title] 42 needs to be extended until we can get a really, truly immigration reform.”

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December 19, 2022
12/18: Strassman, Gottlieb, Bottoms

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12/18: Strassman, Gottlieb, Bottoms – CBS News

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This week on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” a Texas border city has declared a state of emergency as officials brace for the end of a pandemic-era rule allowing the expulsion of migrants. We’ll talk to two members of Congress from Texas. Plus, Sen. Joe Manchin and Dr. Scott Gottlieb.

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December 18, 2022
Sinema leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent | CNN Politics

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Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is leaving the Democratic Party and registering as a political independent, she told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an exclusive TV interview.

“I’ve registered as an Arizona independent. I know some people might be a little bit surprised by this, but actually, I think it makes a lot of sense,” Sinema said in a Thursday interview with Tapper in her Senate office.

“I’ve never fit neatly into any party box. I’ve never really tried. I don’t want to,” she added. “Removing myself from the partisan structure – not only is it true to who I am and how I operate, I also think it’ll provide a place of belonging for many folks across the state and the country, who also are tired of the partisanship.”

Sinema’s move away from the Democratic Party is unlikely to change the power balance in the next Senate. Democrats will have a narrow 51-49 majority that includes two independents who caucus with them: Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine.

While Sanders and King formally caucus with Democrats, Sinema declined to explicitly say that she would do the same. She did note, however, that she expects to keep her committee assignments – a signal that she doesn’t plan to upend the Senate composition, since Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer controls committee rosters for Democrats.

“When I come to work each day, it’ll be the same,” Sinema said. “I’m going to still come to work and hopefully serve on the same committees I’ve been serving on and continue to work well with my colleagues at both political parties.”

But Sinema’s decision to become a political independent makes official what’s long been an independent streak for the Arizona senator, who began her political career as a member of the Green Party before being elected as a Democrat to the US House in 2012 and US Senate in 2018. Sinema has prided herself on being a thorn in the side of Democratic leaders, and her new nonpartisan affiliation will further free her to embrace an against-the-grain status in the Senate, though it raises new questions about how she – and Senate Democrats – will approach her reelection in 2024 with liberals already mulling a challenge.

Sinema wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republic released Friday explaining her decision, noting that her approach in the Senate has “upset partisans in both parties.”

“When politicians are more focused on denying the opposition party a victory than they are on improving Americans’ lives, the people who lose are everyday Americans,” Sinema wrote.

“That’s why I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington.”

Sinema is up for reelection in 2024 and liberals in Arizona are already floating potential challengers, including Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, who said earlier this year that some Democratic senators have urged him to run against Sinema.

“Unfortunately, Senator Sinema is once again putting her own interests ahead of getting things done for Arizonans,” Gallego said in a statement following Sinema’s announcement.

Sinema declined to address questions about her reelection bid in the interview with Tapper, saying that simply isn’t her focus right now.

She also brushed aside criticism she may face for the decision to leave the Democratic Party.

“I’m just not worried about folks who may not like this approach,” Sinema said. “What I am worried about is continuing to do what’s right for my state. And there are folks who certainly don’t like my approach, we hear about it a lot. But the proof is in the pudding.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Sinema a “key partner” following her decision and said the White House has “every reason to expect that we will continue to work successfully with her.”

Sources familiar with the matter tell CNN that Sinema gave the White House a heads up that she was leaving the Democratic Party. Schumer said in a statement he also was aware of Sinema’s bombshell announcement ahead of Friday morning.

“She asked me to keep her committee assignments and I agreed,” Schumer said. “Kyrsten is independent; that’s how she’s always been. I believe she’s a good and effective Senator and am looking forward to a productive session in the new Democratic majority Senate.”

Schumer also outlined how he did not expect Sinema’s decision to impact Democrats’ plans for next year, saying in his statement, “We will maintain our new majority on committees, exercise our subpoena power, and be able to clear nominees without discharge votes.”

The Biden White House is offering a muted reaction Friday morning and insisting that they expect to continue having a productive working relationship with the senator.

One White House official tells CNN that the move “doesn’t change much” other than Sinema’s own reelection calculations.

“We’ve worked with her effectively on a lot of major legislation from CHIPS to the bipartisan infrastructure law,” the official said. The White House, for now, has “every reason to expect that will continue,” they added.

Sinema has long been the source of a complex convergence of possibility, frustration and confusion inside the White House.

“Rubik’s cube, I guess?” was how one former senior White House official described the Arizona senator who has played a central role in President Joe Biden’s largest legislative wins and also some of his biggest agenda disappointments.

There was no major push to get Sinema to change her mind, a White House official said, noting that it wouldn’t have made a difference.

“Nothing about the last two years indicates a major effort would’ve made helped – the exact opposite actually,” a White House official said.

The most urgent near-term effort was to quietly find out what it meant for their newly expanded Senate majority, officials said.

While there were still clear details to figure out about process, “I think people exhaled when we had a better understanding of what she meant,” one source familiar with the discussion said.

Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota told “CNN This Morning” that “Senator Sinema has always had an independent streak,” adding that “I don’t believe this is going to shake things up quite like everyone thinks.”

She added, “Senator Sinema has been an independent in all intents and purposes.”

Sinema and West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin have infuriated liberals at various points over the past two years, standing in the way of Biden’s agenda at a time when Democrats controlled the House, Senate and White House.

Sinema and Manchin used their sway in the current 50-50 Senate – where any single Democrat could derail a bill – to influence a host of legislation, especially the massive $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill that Biden proposed last year. Sinema’s objections to increasing the corporate tax rate during the initial round of negotiations over the legislation last year particularly rankled liberals.

While Sinema was blindsided by the surprise deal that Manchin cut with Schumer in July on major health care and energy legislation, she ultimately backed the smaller spending package that Biden signed into law before the election.

Both Manchin and Sinema also opposed changes to the Senate’s filibuster rules despite pressure from their Senate colleagues and Biden to change them. After a vote against filibuster changes in January, the Arizona Democratic Party’s executive board censured Sinema.

Sinema has been in the middle of several significant bipartisan bills that were passed since Biden took office. She pointed to that record as evidence that her approach has been an effective one.

“I’ve been honored to lead historic efforts, from infrastructure, to gun violence prevention, to protecting religious liberty and helping LGBT families feel secure, to the CHIPs and science bill to the work we’ve done on veterans’ issues,” she told CNN. “The list is really long. And so I think that the results speak for themselves. It’s OK if some people aren’t comfortable with that approach.”

Sinema’s announcement comes just days after Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock won reelection in Georgia, securing Democrats a 51st Senate seat that frees them from reliance on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.

Sinema declined to address questions about whether she would support Biden for president in 2024, and she also said she’s not thinking about whether a strong third party should emerge in the US.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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December 9, 2022
What The Mid-Term Elections Mean For U.S. Energy

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WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES – NOVEMBER 09: President Joe Biden answers questions from reporters at … [+] a post-election press conference at the White House on November 9th, 2022. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

I’ve been waiting for election officials in the remaining outstanding congressional districts to determine winners before putting this piece together, in order to avoid needless speculation. However, given that officials in California and other states with close races still outstanding seem in no particular hurry to give up the media spotlight, time has run out on that goal.

The first thing that is quite clear from the outcome which saw Democrats retain a narrow majority in the U.S. senate and flip at least two governor’s offices (possibly three, depending on the final outcome in Arizona) is that voters seem fine with the energy status quo in America. The conventional wisdom held that the high gasoline prices at the pump that have done so much damage to President Joe Biden’s public approval ratings would translate into Republican gains in congress, governorships and state legislatures. None of that materialized.

Biden’s decision to pump hundreds of millions of barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to mitigate gas prices may have harmed America’s energy security, but the visual of his “doing something” to help gas consumers obviously helped Democrats at the ballot box. Similarly, while many energy and political observers chuckle at the Orwellian nature of the title chosen for Biden’s and Senator Joe Manchin’s green energy and social spending bill – the “Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – it is quite apparent that few voters had any similar reaction to that piece of legislation.

Thus, regardless of which party ultimately ends up with a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, it would be unwise to expect any real change in the direction of domestic energy policy in the coming two years. When asked by reporters what he plans to change in the wake of the elections, Mr. Biden answered “nothing,” and he should be taken at his word.

Given the inextricable interrelationship between energy and government policy, what this will mean for U.S. consumers is more of the same. Wind and solar power generation will continue to expand, and the pace of their expansion will accelerate thanks to the array of new incentives and subsidies contained in the IRA and last year’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL).

This expansion will happen regardless of rising instabilities on the nation’s power grids, as grid managers are forced to integrate and try to manage a rising percentage of intermittent energy into their daily mix. Warnings of increasing instability from grid managers like the one issued last week by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) will simply fall on deaf ears, as public officials continue to prioritize signaling their virtues about meeting climate change goals over the provision of affordable and reliable electricity to their constituents.

“If nothing is done to mitigate the long-term risks within the Western Interconnection, by 2025 we anticipate severe risks to the reliability and security of the interconnection,” WECC said in its annual assessment. But policymakers concerned about their next re-election campaign look at the outcomes in these mid-term elections and simply advise the grid managers to deal with it as best they can.

For the domestic oil and gas industry, these mid-terms almost certainly mean the President will feel more emboldened to act on his most aggressive impulses where their business sector is concerned. Expect a more concerted effort to implement a new Windfall Profit Tax, for example, especially should Democrats manage to retain a majority in the House.

The White House said last week that the President would like to see some form of Senator Manchin’s vaunted permitting bill be included in the upcoming Defense Authorization Act. But oil and gas lobbyists should expect any such language to be significantly modified from the version seen in September to include strict sidebars that limit any benefit to oil and natural gas projects, especially any new pipelines. Biden has repeatedly made it crystal clear that he wants “no more drilling” – as he stated to a New York audience just last Saturday – and he has consistently shown that he should be taken at his word where such promises to restrict oil and gas are concerned.

Should the GOP manage to somehow get to 218 seats in the House, then Biden would likely have to put his legislative agenda on hold through 2024. But that would provide scant comfort to producers of fossil fuels in the United States. The Biden regulatory agenda is already in full bloom, and the hundreds of billions in incentives and subsidies contained in the IRA and the BIL will work to ensure the great preponderance of energy-related capital continues to flow away from fossil fuels and into new green energy projects.

Leaders and senior executives in coal, oil and natural gas have had to take on the thankless role of managing their industries’ decline for some years now, since at least 2009. The verdict of the voters in this year’s mid-term elections is that they can expect that decline to accelerate from here.

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David Blackmon, Senior Contributor

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November 13, 2022
Manchin ends pipeline push, easing path for spending bill

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has abandoned, for now, his push to speed up the permitting process for energy projects, easing the Senate’s path toward passing a stopgap spending bill that would keep the federal government running when the fiscal year ends at midnight Friday.

A procedural vote Tuesday advancing the funding bill succeeded easily, 72-23, after Democrats announced that the West Virginia senator’s proposal would be stripped from the final legislation. It was clear that, with Manchin’s plan included, Democrats were falling far short of the 60 votes needed to proceed, as most Republicans objected to it.

While lawmakers are again waiting to the final moments of the fiscal year to pass legislation keeping the government running, they are confident they will do so. Neither party is interested in a shutdown heading into the critical midterm elections Nov. 8 that will determine which party is in charge of the House and Senate.

In addition to government funding, the spending measure provides about $12.3 billion in assistance related to Ukraine, including training, equipment, weapons and direct financial support for the Ukraine government. The assistance would be on top of some $53 billion Congress has already approved through two previous bills.

The measure excludes the White House call for spending $22 billion to respond to COVID-19, and $3.9 billion to fight against an outbreak of the monkeypox virus. Republican lawmakers were overwhelmingly opposed to the health funding. At least 10 Republican senators would have to support the measure to overcome procedural hurdles and advance in that chamber.

The most contentious piece of the legislation was Manchin’s plan to streamline the permitting process for energy projects and make it easier for a pipeline project in his home state and Virginia to proceed.

Manchin in a statement confirmed he had asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to remove the permitting language and said he was holding to his belief that “we should never come to the brink of a government shutdown over politics.”

Manchin said he was ready to work with colleagues to move forward with permitting legislation at another time.

“Senator Manchin, myself and others will continue to have conversations about the best way to ensure responsible permitting reform is passed before the end of the year,” Schumer said.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “We support Senator Manchin’s decision not to press for a floor vote” and promised the administration “will continue to work with him to find a vehicle to bring this bill to the floor and get it passed and to the President’s desk.”

Both chambers of Congress must approve legislation by Friday, which is the end of the fiscal year, to prevent a partial government shutdown. It represents the last bit of unfinished business for lawmakers before the midterm elections in November. Lawmakers from both parties are eager to wrap up and spend time on the campaign trail, lowering the risk of a federal stoppage.

Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, had secured a commitment from President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders to have a vote on the permitting package in return for his support of a landmark law to curb climate change.

While Republicans have voiced support for streamlining the permitting process for energy projects, some, including Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, panned the effort.

“What our Democratic colleagues have produced is a phony fig leaf that would actually set back the cause of real permitting reform,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

McConnell said he would vote against proceeding to the short-term spending bill if it included Manchin’s legislation and encouraged others to vote no, too, a powerful signal to GOP lawmakers.

Other Republicans made clear they agreed with McConnell’s position.

Top Democratic appropriators also said they were unhappy with the inclusion of Manchin’s proposal, but said keeping the government running took priority.

“I am disappointed that unrelated permitting reform was attached to this bill. This is a controversial matter that should be debated on its own merits,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “However, with four days left in the fiscal year, we cannot risk a government shutdown; we must work to advance this bill.”

Language in Manchin’s proposal was tied to the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which would run through West Virginia and Virginia for more than 300 miles. The bill would have effectively approved the pipeline and steered legal challenges to a different federal court.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., was poised to vote against taking up the funding package if it included the pipeline language, another sign that lawmakers didn’t have the 60 votes needed to proceed.

“We should pass a continuing resolution that is free of the unprecedented and dangerous” pipeline deal, Kaine said.

Environmental groups celebrated the hard-earned victory.

“Good riddance to Manchin’s dirty backroom deal and the bottom-of-the-barrel politics that it represented,” said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The funding bill also contains disaster assistance, including $2.5 billion to help New Mexico communities recover from the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, the largest wildfire in the state’s history; $2 billion for a block grant program that aids the economic recovery of communities impacted by recent disasters and $20 million for water and wastewater infrastructure improvements previously authorized for Jackson, Mississippi.

The bill would also provide an additional $1 billion for a program that helps low income households afford to heat their homes.

There has been wide, bipartisan support for boosting support for Ukraine. The bill includes $4.5 billion to help Ukraine’s government provide basic citizen services and authorizes the president to drawdown $3.7 billion worth of equipment from U.S. stocks to support Ukraine’s armed forces. There’s also money to replenish U.S. stocks of equipment and munitions sent to Ukraine and to provide Ukraine with intelligence support and training.

The White House issued a statement in support of the stopgap spending bill as the voting took place, applauding the help for Ukraine.

“The people of Ukraine have inspired the world, and the Administration remains committed to supporting the Ukrainian people as they continue to stand resolute and display extraordinary courage in the face of Russia’s full-scale invasion,” the White House said.

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

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September 28, 2022
Manchin: Americans want a ‘reasonable, responsible middle’ | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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Sen. Joe Manchin declined to say Sunday whether he would run on a centrist presidential ticket but the moderate West Virginia Democrat said Americans were sick of the political division in the country.

“We cannot basically have a divided country, and we cannot withstand that,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” in an interview with Dana Bash. “There’s a movement going on that people want, to bring the extremes back to the sensible and reasonable, responsible middle.”

Manchin would not respond when asked by Bash if he would consider running for president on a ticket of the business-friendly centrist group No Labels, which is seeking to get on the presidential ballot in all 50 states.

Manchin, who holds a pivotal vote in the narrowly divided Senate, has refused to say whether he thinks President Joe Biden deserves a second term in office. He has also been critical of certain aspects of the president’s agenda, and last week he called on Biden to negotiate on the debt ceiling instead of pursuing “an ideological agenda.”

Manchin, who is up for reelection next year, told NBC News on Sunday that any decision about his political future would be made at the end of the year.

“My filing date is January 15 in 2024, and I will make my decision maybe a little bit before that, but not until the end of the year, I can assure you,” he said.

The Democrat would rank among the most vulnerable senators this cycle if he chooses to run for a third full term in deep-red West Virginia – a state former President Donald Trump won by nearly 40 points in 2020.

Asked about Trump’s recent indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, Manchin said that “no one is above the law” but also that “no one should be targeted by the law, especially through the political process.”

“So we’ll just wait and see next week. I hope they are very thorough in the job they do, and basically people should have faith in this judicial system of ours,” the senator told Bash.

Manchin said he did not believe the former president was being targeted but added, “You have to remove all doubt. You have to make sure – cross every ‘T,’ dot every ‘I’, as they say.”

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April 12, 2021
Manchin rails against Biden’s clean energy plans as he faces tough political headwinds in West Virginia | CNN Politics

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CNN
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West Virginia political observers were not surprised when Sen. Joe Manchin appeared on Fox News on Monday to make a stunning threat: He could be persuaded to vote to repeal his own bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, if the Biden administration pushed him far enough.

The conservative Democratic senator reiterated this to CNN, saying he would “look for every opportunity to repeal my own bill” if the administration continued to use the IRA to steer the US quickly towards the clean energy transition and away from fossil fuels.

The IRA, passed and signed into law last year, was a sweeping $750 billion bill that lowered prescription drug costs, raised taxes on large corporations, and invested $370 billion into new tax credits for cleaner energy. Even though Manchin carved out space for fossil fuels, the bill represents by far the biggest climate investment in US history.

From the start, Manchin has insisted the IRA was an “energy security bill,” rather than a clean-energy bill. Still, experts said he must be sensitive to the idea that he ushered in what ended up being the nation’s largest climate law, given he represents West Virginia – a state where coal and natural gas reign supreme.

Manchin’s repeal threat “was probably good politics,” West Virginia University political science professor Sam Workman told CNN. If he decides to seek reelection in 2024, the 75-year-old senator will face his toughest political fight yet, as popular West Virginia Republican Gov. Jim Justice jumped into the race this week.

Justice’s bid for the seat “doesn’t change anything at all,” Manchin told CNN. But political experts from his home state see a man who is gearing up for a fight.

Since delivering President Joe Biden one of his biggest legislative wins with the IRA last summer, Manchin has spent the last few months on a rampage against the administration, homing in on what he calls its “radical climate agenda.” Manchin has voted against Biden’s nominees for high-ranking administration positions, bashed new rules from the Environmental Protection Agency and Treasury Department and clashed with members of the president’s cabinet at Senate hearings.

Manchin’s appearance on Fox to slam Biden and threaten to repeal the law he had an outsized role in writing “is a pretty good indicator to me that he’s running,” said John Kilwein, chair of West Virginia University’s political science department.

Manchin has been silent on whether he’ll run for reelection, but as Justice announced his candidacy, Manchin expressed confidence. “Make no mistake, I will win any race I enter,” he said in a statement.

The Democrat beat his Republican challenger by just three percentage points in 2018. And though Justice still must get through a primary against Republican Rep. Alex Mooney, the governor is already backed by Senate Republicans’ electoral arm and many in the state think he will present a serious challenge to Manchin.

“Justice is a likable candidate – he takes that ‘aw shucks’ thing to the next level,” Kilwein said. “This is going to be [Manchin’s] toughest fight, but I think anyone who thinks this is going to be a piece of cake is wrong. I don’t think he’s going to be easy to beat.”

Manchin is “in danger” politically, his Democratic colleague Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told CNN.

“Joe Manchin is the last remaining statewide elected Democrat [in West Virginia], and we want [him] back in the United States Senate,” Blumenthal said, adding Manchin was a “pillar of strength to Democrats in the last session.”

Justice made little mention of Manchin during his official campaign launch but came out swinging against Biden and his agenda. On Friday, Justice told Fox News that Manchin “would be a formidable opponent” if he runs for reelection, but added that he’s “done some things that have really alienated an awful lot of West Virginians.”

There is no denying that West Virginia is incredibly conservative; the state went nearly 40 percentage points for Trump in the 2020 election. But even with those fundamentals, political experts said Manchin has had tremendous staying power through retail politics and argue he can deliver for the state while standing up to Biden.

“His whole appeal is a retail appeal; every blueberry festival, huckleberry festival, Joe Manchin’s there,” former West Virginia political science professor Patrick Hickey told CNN. “He’s a really smart and talented politician. He gets all the benefits that come from supporting (the IRA), but the next time he’s in West Virginia, he’ll be in a diner telling voters how terrible Biden is.”

Behind the political rhetoric, the Inflation Reduction Act’s energy provisions could be a windfall for West Virginia, and Manchin is walking a tightrope in his messaging around the law.

Despite blasting the Biden administration, Manchin has spent the past few months at home touting the benefits of the IRA and jobs it is already bringing to the state.

Several major clean energy companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build new manufacturing plants in the state: a battery factory, a new industrial facility totally powered by renewable energy, and a plant to make electric school buses.

“The way Manchin talked about those, he’s crediting the IRA and saying, ‘see, these are the good things that have happened,’” said Angie Rosser, executive director of environmental group West Virginia Rivers. “Those are hundreds of jobs reaching into the thousands, which for our small state is a big, big deal.”

Rosser and others pointed out that Manchin designed the IRA specifically to deliver money to West Virginia, designing tax credits to incentivize more manufacturing in coal country and funding to help these communities during the transition to clean energy.

Morgan King, a staff member of West Virginia Rivers, has been traveling across the state recently to talk to local officials about how they can apply for federal IRA funding. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, King told CNN.

“We’ve spoken with people of all parties,” she said. “People don’t care [about] the politics of how this bill was created so long as this funding can make it into their communities. West Virginia is set to disproportionately benefit from this bill more than any other state.”

Manchin has been at odds with the Biden administration on several fronts, but the administration’s climate policies and implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act seem to have struck a particular nerve – and Republicans have continued to heavily criticize the law.

A political ad from Republican dark money group One Nation is already circulating in the state, claiming that the IRA would kill 100,000 jobs in West Virginia.

“The notion that this is just a climate bill … it is damaging here in the state because we’re pretty far to the right on these issues, especially energy issues,” Workman said. “When you sell something as a climate bill, given the economic context here and our history, it’s somewhat harder for people to see indirect benefits like jobs.”

Manchin recently voted alongside Republicans on Congressional Review Act bills to undo EPA emissions rules for heavy-duty trucks as well as a climate-focused Labor Department rule (Biden has already vetoed one and promised to veto the other). In March, Manchin tanked top Interior Department nominee Laura Daniel-Davis, claiming she wasn’t upholding a part of the IRA that mandates offshore oil drilling in certain federal waters.

The dynamic has put Senate Democrats in a tough spot. Democrats have a slightly expanded Senate majority after the midterms, but the continued absence of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has been away from Washington as she recovers from shingles, has made for nailbiter votes.

“He’s one of the most independent US senators out there,” Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii told CNN. “When he is frustrated, he’s not going to be shy about it. And right now, he’s obviously extremely frustrated with the administration, and that has to get sorted.”

Manchin has also spent the last few months lobbing a steady stream of blistering statements aimed at Biden’s agencies. When the Environmental Protection Agency proposed strong new vehicle emissions regulations intended to push the US auto market towards electric vehicles in the next decade, Manchin said the agency was “lying to Americans” and called the regulations “radical” and “dangerous.”

And when the Treasury Department issued guidance on IRA’s new EV tax credits – which were written by Manchin – the senator called it “horrific” and said it “completely ignores the intent” of his law.

Some of his Democratic colleagues have panned his comments about repealing the IRA.

“Maybe he should run for president,” Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico told CNN. “He’s got one job; the president’s got another. The IRA is working.”

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April 12, 2021
The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2024 | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Opportunity is ripe for Republicans to win back the Senate next year – if they can land the candidates to pull it off.

The GOP needs a net gain of one or two seats to flip the chamber, depending on which party wins the White House in 2024, and it’s Democrats who are defending the tougher seats. Democrats hold seven of the 10 seats that CNN ranks as most likely to flip party control next year – and the top three are all in states former President Donald Trump carried twice.

But this spring’s recruitment season, coming on the heels of a midterm cycle marred by problematic GOP candidates, will likely go a long way toward determining how competitive the Senate map is next year.

National Republicans got a top pick last week, with Gov. Jim Justice announcing his Senate bid in West Virginia – the seat most likely to flip party control in 2024. (Rankings are based on CNN’s reporting, fundraising figures and historical data about how states and candidates have performed.) But Justice appears headed for a contentious and expensive primary. And in many other top races, the GOP hasn’t yet landed any major candidates.

Democrats, meanwhile, are thankful that most of their vulnerable incumbents are running for reelection, while a high-profile House member has largely cleared the field for one of their open Senate seats.

Pollster asked Democrats who they like for 2024. Here’s what he found

The unknown remains West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Responding to Justice’s candidacy, Manchin – who has said he’ll decide about running by the end of the year – had this to say to CNN about a potentially messy GOP primary: “Let the games begin.”

The anti-tax Club for Growth’s political arm has already committed to spending $10 million to back West Virginia Rep. Alex Mooney in the GOP primary. And tensions between the club, which has turned against Trump, and more establishment Republicans could become a feature of several top Senate races this cycle, especially with the National Republican Senatorial Committee weighing more aggressive involvement in primaries to weed out candidates it doesn’t think can win general elections.

In the 2022 cycle, most of Trump’s handpicked candidates in swing states stumbled in the general election. But the former president picked up a key endorsement this week from NRSC Chair Steve Daines. The Montana Republican has stayed close with Trump, CNN has previously reported, in a bid to ensure he’s aligned with leadership.

Democrats defending tough seats have previously used GOP primaries to their advantage. Manchin survived in 2018 in part because his opponent was state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. That wasn’t an accident. Democrats had spent big attacking one of his primary opponents to keep him out of the general election.

Last year’s midterms underscored that candidates really do matter after Republicans failed to harness favorable national winds in some key races. In a presidential year, the national environment is likely to loom large, especially with battleground states hosting key Senate races. It will also test whether some of the last remaining senators who represent states that back the opposite parties’ presidential nominees can hold on.

President Joe Biden, who carried half of the states on this list in 2020, made official last week that he’s running for reelection. The GOP presidential field is slowly growing, with Trump still dominating most primary polling. It’s too early to know, however, what next year’s race for the White House will look like or which issues, whether it’s abortion or crime or the economy, will resonate.

So for now, the parties are focused on what they can control: candidates. Even though the 2024 map is stacked in their favor, Republicans can’t win with nobody. But there’s plenty of time for would-be senators to get into these races. Some filing deadlines – in Arizona, for example – aren’t for nearly another year. And there’s an argument to be made that well-funded or high-profile names have no reason to get in early.

Here’s where the Senate map stands 18 months from Election Day.

Incumbent: Democrat Joe Manchin

Sen. Joe Manchin isn’t one to shy away from attention – and he’s getting plenty of it by keeping everyone guessing about his reelection plans. Assuming he runs, Democrats will have a fighting chance to defend this seat in a state Trump carried by 39 points in 2020. The senator has repeatedly broken with the White House – on Biden’s first veto and the White House’s debt ceiling stance, for example.

Without Manchin, Democrats know West Virginia is all but lost. Manchin raised only $371,000 in this year’s first fundraising quarter, which ended March 31, and Republicans are already attacking him, with One Nation – the issue advocacy group aligned with Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell – launching an ad campaign tying him to the Inflation Reduction Act. (The senator went on Fox News last week and threatened to back a repeal of his own bill.) Still, Manchin has nearly $10 million in the bank, as well as outside cover from Democratic-allied groups.

Republicans will likely be spending quite a lot of time and money attacking each other in the primary. The Club for Growth’s political arm is backing House Freedom Caucus member Alex Mooney, while Gov. Jim Justice will likely have backup from GOP party leaders. The wealthy governor, who was first elected as a Democrat before switching parties in 2017, has high name ID and is close with Trump. Mooney also has Trumpian credentials, having won a member-on-member House primary last year with the former president’s endorsement. The congressman is already attacking the governor in an ad as “Liberal Jim Justice,” using imagery of his opponent in a face mask.

Incumbent: Democrat Jon Tester

Democrats got welcome news with Sen. Jon Tester’s announcement that he’s running for a fourth term – and that he raised $5 million in the first quarter (more than a million of which came from small-dollar donors). Tester is running in Trump country – Montana backed the former president by 16 points in 2020 – but like Manchin he has a well-established brand to draw on, which includes breaking with Biden when he needs to. (Tester also voted for a GOP resolution to roll back a Biden administration ESG investing rule, which prompted the president’s first veto.) The GOP field is still taking shape. Republicans are interested in retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, a businessman with the potential to self-fund, and state Attorney General Austin Knudsen.

Another potential candidate is Rep. Matt Rosendale, who lost to Tester in 2018 after winning the GOP nomination with the help of the Club for Growth, which has recently been at odds with Trump. Rosendale made a telling appearance at Mar-a-Lago in April for Trump’s post-indictment speech after snubbing the former president’s pick for House speaker in January when he didn’t back Kevin McCarthy. The congressman hasn’t said yet whether he’s running, but he raised only about $127,000 in the first quarter of the year – well short of what he’d need for a competitive Senate bid.

Incumbent: Democrat Sherrod Brown

Sen. Sherrod Brown is the only Democrat to win a nonjudicial statewide race in Ohio over the past decade, so the big question for 2024 is whether he can defy expectations again in his red-trending state. Trump has twice carried the Buckeye State by 8 points, and his handpicked candidate, JD Vance, defeated Democrat Tim Ryan by about 6 points in last year’s Senate race despite the Republican’s campaign struggles.

Brown is much more of an institution in Ohio than Ryan, and he’s built up relationships not just among White working-class communities but urban centers too. He raised $3.6 million in the first quarter of the year. Two wealthy Republicans are in the race to try to take him on – businessman Bernie Moreno, whom Trump has praised, and state Sen. Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team. Both men ran for Senate in 2022, but Moreno dropped out ahead of the primary. Dolan, who ran as a moderate conservative less than enthralled with Trump and his election lies, finished third in a crowded field. Rep. Warren Davidson and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose could also jump into this year’s GOP race.

Incumbent: Independent Kyrsten Sinema

Arizona has the potential to be one of the most interesting races this cycle, but a lot depends on whether Democratic-turned-independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema runs for reelection. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, who’s running to her left, outraised the incumbent $3.8 million to $2.1 million in the first quarter. Sinema has a clear cash-on-hand advantage – nearly $10 million to Gallego’s $2.7 million.

Earlier this month, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb became the first major Republican to enter the race, leaning into a law enforcement message. But the filing deadline isn’t until next April, so there’s still plenty of time for others to jump in. Some Republicans are anxious about the potential entry of Kari Lake, last year’s losing gubernatorial nominee, who still maintains she won. She’d likely be popular with the base in a state that’s become a hotbed of election denialism, but her candidacy could pose a serious risk for the party in a general election. The NRSC recently pushed her to move away from election conspiracy theories, CNN reported.

Former attorney general nominee Abe Hamadeh and Karrin Taylor Robson, who lost last year’s gubernatorial primary to Lake, have also met with NRSC officials, CNN reported. Also in the mix could be Republican businessman Jim Lamon, who lost the party nod for the state’s other Senate seat last year. Republicans would like to see Sinema run because she and Gallego would likely split the vote on the left. But they’ve got their work cut out from them in landing a candidate who can appeal to the GOP base without alienating the general electorate in a state that narrowly backed Biden in 2020.

Incumbent: Democrat Jacky Rosen

Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is, as expected, running for reelection, touting her middle-class roots and bipartisan legislative wins in an announcement video in April. “Nevada is always a battleground,” the senator says – a reminder that Democrats don’t want to take this state for granted. Rosen was first elected in 2018 – a midterm year – by 5 points. Last fall, her Democratic colleague, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, defeated former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt by less than a point.

The state tends to get bluer in presidential years, but Biden and Hillary Clinton both carried it only by about 2 points. Republicans don’t yet have a major name in the race, but they’re watching two defeated candidates from last year – Army veteran Sam Brown, who lost the GOP Senate nod, and attorney April Becker, who lost a bid for a redrawn House seat.

Incumbent: Democrat Tammy Baldwin

Sen. Tammy Baldwin announced earlier this month that she’s running for a third term, giving Democrats an automatic advantage for now over Republicans, who have no declared candidates in this perennial battleground state. Baldwin raised $2.1 million in the first quarter, ending with nearly $4 million in the bank.

Establishment Republicans have expressed strong interest in Rep. Mike Gallagher. Even Rep. Tom Tiffany, who recently bought Senate web domain names, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he thought his fellow congressman should run. But there’s little sign that Gallagher, the chair of the new House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party, is interested. Two businessmen with the ability to tap into or raise significant resources could be in the mix – Eric Hovde, who lost the GOP Senate nomination in 2012, and Scott Mayer. And then there’s controversial former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who could draw support in a GOP primary but seriously complicate a general election for Republicans.

Democrats are feeling good about the recent state Supreme Court election, which the Democratic-backed candidate won by 10 points, flipping control of the bench to liberals. Still, the competitiveness of this state – which Biden carried by about half a point after Trump had won it by a similar margin four years earlier – shouldn’t be underestimated.

Incumbent: Democrat Debbie Stabenow (retiring)

Rep. Elissa Slotkin has mostly cleared the Democratic field of major rivals in the race to succeed retiring Democrat Debbie Stabenow in another Midwestern battleground state. A few less-known names are in, and actor Hill Harper – of “The Good Doctor” and “CSI: NY” – could throw his hat in the Democratic ring, but it’ll be hard to rival Slotkin’s fundraising. She brought in about $3 million in the first quarter.

On the GOP side, State Board of Education member Nikki Snyder announced her campaign in mid-February, but she hadn’t raised much money by the end of the first quarter. Former Rep. Peter Meijer could run, but his vote to impeach Trump would likely kill his prospects of winning the nomination – unless it were a heavily splintered primary field. Other possible GOP names include businessman Kevin Rinke and former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, who finished second and sixth, respectively, in last year’s gubernatorial primary. (Craig was a write-in candidate after failing to make the ballot because of invalid signatures.)

Michigan Democrats did well last year – retaining the top three executive offices and flipping the state legislature – and they feel optimistic about their chances in the state in a presidential year. Still, Biden only won the state by less than 3 points. And while Slotkin has experience winning tough races, a lot may depend on whom the GOP nominates and which way the national winds are blowing next year.

Incumbent: Democrat Bob Casey

Democrats breathed another sigh of relief when Sen. Bob Casey, who disclosed a prostate cancer diagnosis earlier this year, announced that he was running for a fourth term. A former state auditor general and treasurer and the son of a two-term governor, Casey is well known in the Keystone State. He most recently won reelection by 13 points against a hard-line congressman who had tied himself closely to Trump.

This year, national Republicans are eyeing former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick, who lost the GOP nomination for Senate last year, as a top-tier recruit. Upon Casey’s reelection announcement, McCormick immediately attacked him, saying in a statement that a vote for Casey was “a vote for Biden and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer.” The wealthy Republican has been on tour promoting his new book, “Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America,” and has hired staff but has yet to launch a campaign.

And consternation remains among national Republicans that losing 2022 gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano could jump into the race. An election denier who lost by 15 points last fall, Mastriano could jeopardize the race for Republicans. His candidacy would likely inspire a concerted effort by national Republicans to defeat him in the primary.

Incumbent: Republican Ted Cruz

Texas and Florida – both in a far different category of competitiveness compared with the rest of the states on this list – are trading places this month. GOP Sen. Ted Cruz is running for reelection after passing on another presidential bid. He raised $1.3 million in the first quarter – relatively little for a massive, expensive state – and ended March with $3.3 million in the bank. He’s proved to be a compelling boogeyman for the left, with Democrat Beto O’Rourke raising millions to try to unseat him in 2018, ultimately coming up less than 3 points short.

After a gubernatorial loss last year, O’Rourke hasn’t made any noise about this race. But Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, who raised about half a million dollars in the first quarter, is looking at it. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, is also weighing a bid, the San Antonio Express-News reported. Still, unseating Cruz in a state Trump won by nearly 6 points in 2020 will be a tall order.

Incumbent: Republican Rick Scott

Sen. Rick Scott has a history of close elections – he was first elected in 2018 by a fraction of a point following two prior narrow wins for governor. But GOP Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis won commanding victories last fall, suggesting the state is getting redder.

Democrats don’t seem to have a major candidate as yet, but whoever opposes Scott is likely to use his controversial policy proposal – released last year during his NRSC chairmanship – against him. Scott’s plan had originally proposed sunsetting all federal programs every five years, but the senator later added a carve-out for Medicare and Social Security amid backlash from his own party. His most immediate headache could come in the form of intraparty attacks along those lines – and others.

Attorney Keith Gross has launched a primary challenge, alluding in his announcement video to Scott’s tenure as the head of a hospital chain company that the Justice Department investigated for health care fraud. While the company pleaded guilty to fraudulent Medicare billing, among other things, and paid $1.7 billion in fines, Scott wasn’t charged with a crime. It’s unclear how much of his own money Gross, who previously ran for office in Georgia as a Democrat, would put into a campaign.

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April 12, 2021