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  • How the Senate GOP’s campaign chief is navigating Trump and messy primaries | CNN Politics

    How the Senate GOP’s campaign chief is navigating Trump and messy primaries | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Top Senate Republicans look at the prospects of a Donald Trump primary victory with trepidation, fearful his polarizing style and heavy baggage may sink GOP candidates down the ticket as their party battles for control of the chamber.

    But Sen. Steve Daines doesn’t agree.

    The Montana Republican, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has spent the past year working to ensure Trump and Senate Republican leaders don’t clash about their preferred candidates in key primaries, after the 2022 debacle that saw a bevy of Trump-backed choices collapse in the heat of the general election and cost their party the Senate majority. So far, the two are on the same page.

    Daines argues that Trump is “strengthening” among independent voters and that could be a boon for his Senate candidates – even in purple states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The senator says that his down-ticket candidates should embrace the former president, even as he’s facing four criminal trials with polls showing that he remains a deeply unpopular figure with wide swaths of voters.

    “What’s key is we want to make sure we have high-quality candidates running with President Trump,” Daines said. “Candidates that can again appeal beyond the Republican base – that’s my goal.”

    In an interview with CNN at NRSC headquarters, Daines detailed his latest thinking about the GOP strategy to take back the Senate, saying his candidates need to have a stronger position on abortion, signaling he’s eager to avoid a primary in the Montana race and arguing that neither Sens. Kyrsten Sinema nor Joe Manchin could hold onto their seats if they ran for reelection in their states as independents.

    And as Kari Lake is poised to announce a Senate bid in Arizona as soon as next week, Daines has some advice for the former TV broadcaster, who falsely blamed mass voting fraud for her loss in last year’s gubernatorial race in her state.

    “I think one thing we’ve learned from 2022 is voters do not want to hear about grievances from the past,” Daines said. “They want to hear about what you’re going to do for the future. And if our candidates stay on that message of looking down the highway versus the rearview mirror, I think they’ll be a lot more successful particularly in their appeal to independent voters, which usually decide elections.”

    Daines, who called Lake “very gifted” and said he’s had “positive” conversations with her, added: “I think it’s just going to be important for her to look to the future and not so much the past.”

    Asked if Trump’s repeated false claims of a “stolen” election could be problematic down-ticket, Daines instead pointed out that Trump was the last GOP president since Ronald Reagan to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan in 2016, though he lost those states in 2020.

    “As we continue to watch the president strengthen, we’ll see what happens here in ’24, but I’ll tell you he provides a lot of strength for us down ballot in many key states,” said Daines, who was the first member of Senate GOP leadership to endorse Trump.

    Daines’ assessment comes as he is benefitting from a highly favorable map, with 23 Democrats up for reelection, compared to just 11 for the GOP. Democratic incumbents in three states that Trump won – Ohio, Montana and West Virginia – are the most endangered, while the two best Democratic pickup opportunities – Texas and Florida – remain an uphill battle.

    “We’ll have to keep an eye on Texas – the Ted Cruz race,” Daines said. “Just because he’s Ted Cruz he’ll draw a lot of money from the other side to try to defeat Ted Cruz.”

    Beating incumbents is usually a complicated endeavor, plus Republicans are facing messy primaries that could make it harder to win a general election, including in Daines’ home-state of Montana. There, Daines has gotten behind Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL who owns an aerial firefighting company. But there’s a possibility that Sheehy could face Rep. Matt Rosendale in the primary, something that Republicans fear could undercut their effort to take down 17-year incumbent Sen. Jon Tester.

    Rosendale, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, narrowly lost to Tester in 2018 and is considering another run in 2024.

    “I’ve known Matt a long time. He’s a friend of mine. I like Matt Rosendale,” Daines said. “I think it’s best if he were to stay in the US House and gain seniority.”

    Unlike in the last cycle when the NRSC stayed neutral under previous leadership, the campaign committee now is taking a much heavier hand in primaries, picking and choosing which candidates to endorse. While Daines declined to say how his committee would handle the Arizona primary, he indicated they would stay out of the crowded Ohio primary, arguing the three GOP candidates battling it out there are on solid footing in the race for Sen. Sherrod Brown’s seat.

    While West Virginia remains perhaps the best pickup opportunity for the GOP, the NRSC will have a much harder time if Manchin decides to run for reelection. In an interview, Manchin signaled that if he runs again, it may be as an independent – not a Democrat.

    “I think everyone thinks of me as an independent back home,” Manchin told CNN. “I don’t think they look at me as a big D or a big R or an anti-R or anti-D or anything. They say it’s Joe, if it makes sense, he’ll do it.”

    Daines said that wouldn’t make much of a difference.

    “It’d be very difficult for Joe to get reelected in West Virginia based on looking at the numbers,” Daines said, pointing to Manchin’s support for the Inflation Reduction Act.

    Similarly, Daines said that if Sinema runs in Arizona, he doesn’t believe she can win as a third-party candidate, as she faces a GOP candidate and the likely Democratic nominee, Rep. Ruben Gallego.

    “I think Sinema will have a difficult path if she gets in the race,” he said.

    In addition to facing weaker candidates last cycle, many Republicans continue to sidestep questions on their positions over abortion – a potent issue in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

    But Daines says he doesn’t think abortion will be “as potent this cycle,” indicating he is pressing candidates to do a “better job” messaging on the issue to suburban women. He said that Republicans need to impress upon voters that they support limits on late-term abortions, with exceptions for rape, incest or life of the mother, arguing that’s a “more reasonable position” in line with most Americans – all the while rejecting calls for a national ban on all abortions.

    “I think we actually had candidates who just kind of ran away from the issue and kind of hoped it went away,” Daines said. “And when you do that, if you don’t take a position, the Democratic opponents there will define the issue for them. And that’s a losing strategy.”

    Daines is also in the middle of another internal party war – between Trump and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, as the two men have been at sharp odds since the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

    Asked if he believed the two could work with each other if Trump is president again and McConnell returns as Republican leader, Daines said: “It’d be a privilege to have a Republican president and a Republican majority leader working – that’d be a nice problem to have.”

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  • New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman pulls fire alarm in House office building but says it was an accident | CNN Politics

    New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman pulls fire alarm in House office building but says it was an accident | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Rep. Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building on Saturday morning, shortly before the House was scheduled to vote on a government funding bill, which the New York Democrat said was an accident.

    The incident was first revealed by House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, a Republican from Wisconsin.

    “Rep (Jamaal) Bowman pulled a fire alarm in Cannon this morning. An investigation into why it was pulled is underway,” Steil said in a statement.

    Bowman’s office said it was an accident, and the congressman told reporters later Saturday: “I was trying to get to a door. I thought the alarm would open the door and I pulled the fire alarm to open the door by accident.”

    “I was just trying to get to my vote and the door that’s usually open wasn’t open, it was closed,” Bowman added.

    Leadership in both parties was informed of the situation once Bowman was identified in security footage, a source familiar said.

    Rep. Lisa McClain, a Michigan Republican and member of the GOP leadership team, told CNN she is circulating a resolution to censure Bowman over the incident. She said she already has co-sponsors.

    Bowman, however, laughed off the GOP response to the incident on Saturday, telling reporters, “They’re gonna do what they do. This is what they do.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Government on brink of shutdown ahead of midnight deadline as McCarthy slates last-minute vote | CNN Politics

    Government on brink of shutdown ahead of midnight deadline as McCarthy slates last-minute vote | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Federal agencies are making final preparations with the government on the brink of a shutdown and congressional lawmakers racing against Saturday’s critical midnight deadline – as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy mounts a last-minute push to avert the lapse in funding.

    McCarthy announced that the House will vote on a 45-day short-term spending bill Saturday, and it will include the natural disaster aid that the White House requested.

    The bill does not include $6 billion in funding to aid Ukraine, a key concession that many House Republicans demanded and a blow to allies of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who lobbied Congress earlier this month for additional assistance.

    Asked if he is concerned that a member, including Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, could move to oust him over this bill, McCarthy replied, “If I have to risk my job for standing up for the American public, I will do that.”

    Infighting among House Republicans has played a central role in bringing Congress to a standoff over spending – and it is not yet clear how the issue will be resolved, raising concerns on Capitol Hill that a shutdown, if triggered, may not be easy to end.

    Democrats in the House have been trying to slow down passage of the GOP-led continuing resolution throughout the day Saturday, objecting to being forced to vote on a bill just introduced and wanting to keep Ukraine aid. It’s unclear how long Democrats will stall the House from voting.

    House Republicans met throughout Saturday morning, seesawing between options for how to proceed. Republicans including veteran appropriators and those in swing districts pushed to bring a short-term resolution to keep the government funded for 45 days to the House floor for a vote Saturday.

    McCarthy has faced threats to keeping his job throughout the month if he works with Democrats as he endures a consistent resistance from the hardline conservatives in his own party.

    A shutdown is expected to have consequential impacts across the country, from air travel to clean drinking water, and many government operations would grind to a halt – though services deemed essential for public safety would continue.

    Both chambers are scheduled to be in session Saturday, just hours before the deadline. The Senate was expected to take procedural steps to advance their own plan to keep the government funded – GOP Sen. Rand Paul had vowed all week to slow that process beyond the midnight deadline over objections to the bill’s funding for the war in Ukraine. The Senate is now waiting to see how the House developments shake out before proceeding.

    But Paul told CNN on Saturday afternoon that he won’t slow down the Senate’s consideration of the House GOP’s 45-day spending bill, if it passes the House and the Senate takes it up, allowing the Senate the ability to move the bill quickly – though any one other senator could slow that down beyond the midnight deadline.

    House Republicans have so far thrown cold water on a bipartisan Senate proposal to keep the government funded through November 17, but they have failed to coalesce around a plan of their own to avert a shutdown amid resistance from a bloc of hardline conservatives to any kind of short-term funding extension.

    “After meeting with House Republicans this evening, it’s clear the misguided Senate bill has no path forward and is dead on arrival,” McCarthy wrote on X. “The House will continue to work around the clock to keep government open and prioritize the needs of the American people.”

    His late Friday night message came after a two-hour conference meeting in the Capitol, where McCarthy floated several different options – including putting the Senate bill on the floor or passing a short-term bill that excludes Ukraine money. But there is still no consensus on what – if anything – they will put on the House floor Saturday to avoid a government shutdown.

    McCarthy suffered another high-profile defeat on Friday when the House failed to advance a last-ditch stopgap bill.

    In the aftermath of Friday’s failed vote, McCarthy told reporters he had proposed putting up a “clean” stopgap bill, and said he was “working through maybe to be able to do that.”

    “We’re continuing to work through – trying to find the way out of this,” McCarthy said.

    The Senate’s bipartisan bill would provide additional funds for Ukraine aid, creating a point of contention with the House where many Republicans are opposed to further support to the war-torn country.

    McCarthy argued on Friday that aid to Ukraine should be dropped from the Senate bill. “I think if we had a clean one without Ukraine on it, we could probably be able to move that through. I think if the Senate puts Ukraine on there and focuses on Ukraine over America, I think that could cause real problems,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju.

    The Senate, meanwhile, is working to advance its own bipartisan stopgap bill. The chamber is on track to take a procedural vote Saturday afternoon to move forward with the bill, particularly if the last-minute House bill falters. But it’s not yet clear when senators could take a final vote to pass the bill and it may not happen until Monday, after the government has already shut down.

    Border security has also become a complicating factor for the Senate bill as many Republicans now want to see the bill amended to address the issue.

    Senate Republicans said Friday that they were still discussing what kind of border amendment they would want to add to the bill, and were unsure if the chamber could even advance the bill in Saturday’s procedural vote without the addition of a border amendment.

    “Nothing’s really coming together, too many moving parts at this stage,” said Sen. Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican. “I think what I understand is we’re going to have a vote tomorrow … and other than that, there’s nothing that’s really crystallized in anything that probably would be palatable with the House.”

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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  • As he turns 99, Jimmy Carter’s hometown honors the former president as a global humanitarian — and a good friend | CNN Politics

    As he turns 99, Jimmy Carter’s hometown honors the former president as a global humanitarian — and a good friend | CNN Politics

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    Plains, Georgia
    CNN
     — 

    More than 14,000 people have written to Jimmy Carter for his 99th birthday.

    The wishes, posted in a digital mosaic created by The Carter Center, come from around the world: an Ohio family thanks the 39th US president for being an example of “how to live”; a Georgia resident recalls shaking his hand during his run for governor; a man sends best wishes from Switzerland.

    There are notes from Ecuador and Costa Rica, Europe and Australia and from every corner of the United States. Many thank Carter for his humanitarian service. Others – a few famous, most not – share admiration or memories of brief encounters. Some say they love him.

    The messages’ renowned recipient – with a brief exception last Saturday, during a peanut festival – has largely stayed out of the public eye since opting seven months ago to start receiving home hospice care following a series of hospital stays. Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, has dementia, the non-profit they founded announced in May.

    The couple, married for 77 years, has been spending slow days – likely among his last, their closest relatives acknowledge – together at their home in the southwest Georgia city of Plains, population: 700-ish.

    Here, the former president – who years after his White House term won a Nobel Peace Prize and launched a global charge to eradicate a painful disease – is known simply as “Mr. Jimmy.”

    And here, the small, middle-of-nowhere town Carter helped put on the map is also perhaps the center of his legacy, where hundreds of annual visitors exchange stories with residents who know him not as the former commander in chief but as the man who sat by a friend’s bedside during a difficult illness, who sent an encouraging note when a new restaurant owner’s business slowed and who regularly spoke about his faith on Sundays in his longtime church.

    “He was only president for four years. He was governor for four years. But he was a resident of Plains, Georgia, for 99,” his grandson, Jason Carter, told CNN. “And that is, fundamentally, who he is.”

    On Wednesday morning, four days before Carter’s birthday, the single-block downtown of Plains was – as it usually is – quiet. A rainstorm was slowly clearing. Tractor engines drove back and forth over the railroad tracks that separate a skinny highway from Main Street.

    A peanut wagon is pulled across Main Street in February in Plains, Georgia.

    Doris Day’s “Sentimental Journey” played over public speakers.

    Along a row of colorful brick façades, every downtown store was open for business. Among them: Plain Peanuts, where owner Bobby Salter spent more than a year in the early 2000s perfecting his peanut butter ice cream recipe.

    It’s Carter’s favorite, he says.

    Two doors down, Philip Kurland sits by the register inside the Plains Trading Post. He runs the business – with hundreds of political campaign buttons dating back to Millard Fillmore – with his wife. The pair was driving through Plains more than 30 years ago when they spotted an empty building for sale and decided to call this place home.

    Kurland had had his doubts about whether the Carters really lived in Plains, he admitted – until the former president and his wife showed up at the store to welcome them.

    Philip Kurland of the Plains Trading Post poses in February 20 in Plains.

    In the past few years, the Kurlands had reduced the store’s hours to just two days a week. But when Carter announced in February he would begin hospice care, Kurland began opening the store all seven days, he said, as a way of giving back. “I talk to people every day of the week and listen to their stories about Jimmy Carter and how they interacted,” he said. “People want to tell their stories and reminisce. And I want to be there to listen.”

    Some say they campaigned with Carter; others met him at a book signing. Still others say he helped them through hardship. Kurland, who never shies away from talking politics with customers, once asked a visitor how they thought Carter as president handled the Iranian hostage crisis.

    “The guy looked up and smiled,” Kurland recalled.

    “And he said: ‘I’m still alive.’”

    Kurland also has stories of his own, including how Carter spent an hour with him when he was laid up with a bad respiratory virus. “I remember he got my life story. I remember I was a little bit surprised because he already knew some of it. And I remember … I was happy about being sick, that I got the opportunity to really get to know the president.”

    Campaign buttons for former President Jimmy Carter and others are seen in February in Plains.

    Plains City Councilperson Eugene Edge Sr. recalled getting to know Carter when the then-future president came back to Plains from years of service in the US Navy to run his father’s peanut business.

    “I don’t know a better person,” Edge said. “He didn’t look at you differently because you were a different color, and I liked that.”

    It was that attitude, Kurland said, that helped create the culture here: “In Plains, everyone might not like each other each day, but everyone respects each other, and if you have a problem, everyone’s going to help you,” he said. “And I think a lot of that is because President Carter has set the tone.”

    Jan Williams stopped into Kurland’s store that Wednesday morning to say hello. They briefly talked about her upcoming birthday, just two days before the former president’s. Williams once taught Carter’s daughter, Amy, in school, and she traveled with them during the 1977 inauguration.

    Jan Williams, who attends church with former President Jimmy Carter and taught his daughter fourth grade, poses in front of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains with a collection plate Carter made.

    She named her own daughter after Amy Carter in honor of the family. And when Carter came back to Plains, she would listen to him teach on Sundays at church.

    “One of the things he said at church all the time was if everybody could love the person in front of them, wouldn’t we have a happier world – instead of thinking about who they are, where are they from, what kind of life do they live?” she said. “And just show some love. And he was so good at that.”

    “We may be a small town,” she added. “But we’ve produced, in my opinion, one of the greatest Americans.”

    Keeping up with the news – and baseball

    The town, and Carter’s nearest kin, know these are likely the former president’s final days.

    But they don’t guess at how long this chapter will last: After all, the nonagenarian has already defied the odds many times, from his journey from the Plains peanut business to the White House to beating cancer in 2015 to spending so long in end-of-life care.

    “He always surprises us, so we’re not terribly surprised it’s been seven months,” The Carter Center CEO Paige Alexander told “CNN This Morning” on Friday. “But he’s surrounded by love, and that’s what counts.”

    The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum has planned birthday events this weekend, including a movie screening and a naturalization ceremony for 99 new US citizens.

    Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason Carter, center, looks Thursday at a digital mosaic of his grandfather at The Carter Center.

    Carter, meanwhile, is physically limited but stays up on the current news, including on how his favorite team – the Atlanta Braves – is doing, his grandson said. And he’s very much aware of and heartened by the tributes that have poured in over months since his hospice announcement.

    “I was not ready to deal with just sort of the everyday grief part,” Jason Carter said. “In that way, going through this publicly has been wonderful because of the support and it’s really also because we’ve had this extended time, given us the time to, on a personal level, process what’s happening, process our relationships with him and with my grandmother and really spend some really, really important time as a family together.”

    The family will gather privately to celebrate Carter’s birthday Sunday, his grandson said.

    For now, his grandparents “are at home, in love and they know who they are,” he said, “and you don’t get more from a life than they’ve gotten and they know that, and they are at peace.”

    Even after he’s gone, Jimmy Carter will “always be alive in Plains,” Kurland said. And as his next birthday approaches, neighbors here know even though they don’t see Carter out and about anymore, his life’s message still spreads.

    “He’s passing the torch, that we all need to be kinder and be more giving and caring and considerate and loving,” the shopkeeper said. “So, I don’t look at it as, one point he’ll be passing on; he’ll be passing the torch for us to be better people and do better.”

    Down the street, Bonita Hightower thinks about the former president a lot, too.

    Bonita Hightower poses in February at Bonita's Carry-Out in Plains.

    “If he came from here and he became the 39th president, I wonder what I can do. That’s how I look at it,” she said.

    While the 68-year-old has never met Carter, he’s played a big role in her life. Hightower opened a restaurant in Plains some two months before the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the world. When customer traffic slowed, she questioned her decision to open a business in the small town.

    Then, she got a call.

    It was from Carter’s staff, who shared that the couple had recently ordered a take-out meal from her restaurant – and were fans of her food. “It was like that message from President Carter was to encourage my heart,” Hightower said.

    The next year, his staff asked her to make a meal for his birthday’s party, she said.

    “That gentleman, he was our president for a moment, but then he became – I heard this, and I think I’m going to adopt it – then he became the world’s president,” she said.

    “I think he came back home so maybe somebody would get ignited.”

    Carter's hometown of Plains is seen in February from the sky.

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

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

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Feinstein was fondly remembered by her colleagues on Friday.

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

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

    San Francisco native and leader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Led efforts on gun control and torture program investigations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Takeaways from President Biden’s first impeachment hearing by House Oversight panel | CNN Politics

    Takeaways from President Biden’s first impeachment hearing by House Oversight panel | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Republicans kicked off their first impeachment inquiry hearing Thursday laying out the allegations they will pursue against President Joe Biden, though their expert witnesses acknowledged Republicans don’t yet have the evidence to prove the accusation they’re leveling.

    Thursday’s hearing in the House Oversight Committee didn’t include witnesses who could speak directly to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealing at the center of the inquiry, but the hearing offered Republicans the chance to show some of the evidence they’ve uncovered to date.

    None of that evidence has shown Joe Biden received any financial benefit from his son’s business dealings, but Republicans said at Thursday’s hearing what they’ve found so far has given them the justification to launch their impeachment inquiry.

    Democrats responded by accusing Republicans of doing Donald Trump’s bidding and raising his and his family’s various foreign dealings themselves, as well as Trump’s attempts to get Ukraine to investigate in 2019 the same allegations now being raised in the impeachment inquiry.

    Here’s takeaways from Thursday’s first impeachment inquiry hearing:

    While Republicans leveled accusations of corruption against Joe Biden over his son’s business dealings, the GOP expert witnesses who testified Thursday were not ready to go that far.

    Forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky, one of the GOP witnesses, undercut Republicans’ main narrative by saying there wasn’t enough evidence yet for him to conclude that there was “corruption” by the Bidens.

    “I am not here today to even suggest that there was corruption, fraud or wrongdoing,” Dubinsky said. “More information needs to be gathered before I can make such an assessment.”

    He said there was a “smokescreen” surrounding Hunter Biden’s finances, including complex overseas shell companies, which he said raise questions for a fraud expert about possible “illicit” activities.

    Conservative law professor Jonathan Turley also said that the House does not yet have evidence to support articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, but argued that House Republicans were justified in opening an impeachment inquiry.

    “I want to emphasize what it is that we’re here today for. This is a question of an impeachment inquiry. It is not a vote on articles of impeachment,” Turley said. “In fact, I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment. That is something that an inquiry has to establish. But I also do believe that the House has passed the threshold for an impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Biden.”

    Turley said that Biden’s false statements about his knowledge of Hunter Biden’s business endeavors, as well as the unproven allegations that Biden may have benefited from his son’s business deals, were reason for the House to move forward with the impeachment inquiry. (CNN has previously reported that Joe Biden’s unequivocal denials of any business-related contact with his son have been undercut over time, including by evidence uncovered by House Republicans.)

    Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor, has repeatedly backed up Republican arguments on key legal matters in recent years, including his opposition to Trump’s first and second impeachments.

    Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, pushed Turley further on his comments, asking whether he would vote “no” today on impeachment.

    “On this evidence, certainly,” Turley said. “At the moment, these are allegations. There is some credible evidence there that is the basis of the allegations.”

    Witnesses are sworn in before the House Oversight Committee on September 28, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

    House Republicans opened their first impeachment hearing Thursday with a series of lofty claims against the president, as they try to connect him to his son’s “corrupt” business dealings overseas.

    House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer claimed the GOP probes have “uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain,” even though he hasn’t put forward any concrete evidence backing up that massive allegation.

    Two other Republican committee chairs further pressed their case, including by citing some of the newly released Internal Revenue Service documents, which two IRS whistleblowers claim show how the Justice Department intervened in the Hunter Biden criminal probe to protect the Biden family. However, many of their examples of alleged wrongdoing occurred during the Trump administration before Joe Biden took office.

    Ahead of the hearing, the Republican chairs released a formal framework laying out the scope of their probe, saying it “will span the time of Joe Biden’s Vice Presidency to the present, including his time out of office.”

    The document outlines specific lines of inquiry, including whether Biden engaged in “corruption, bribery, and influence peddling” – none of which Republicans have proved yet.

    The memo included four questions the Republicans are seeking to answer related to whether Biden took any action related to payments his family received or if the president obstructed the investigations into Hunter Biden.

    House Oversight Committee ranking Democratic member Rep. Jamie Raskin speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on September 28, 2023.

    At the close of the hearing Thursday, Comer announced that he was issuing subpoenas for the bank records of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and brother, James Biden.

    The subpoenas will be for Hunter and James Biden’s personal and business bank records, a source familiar with the subpoenas confirmed.

    The subpoenas are not a surprise, as Comer has been signaling his intention to issue the subpoenas for the personal bank records. They show where Republicans will head next in their investigation as they continue to seek evidence to substantiate their unproven allegations about the president.

    Some inside the GOP expressed frustration to CNN in real time with how the House GOP’s first impeachment inquiry hearing is playing out, as the Republican witnesses directly undercut the GOP’s own narrative and admit there is no evidence that Biden has committed impeachable offenses.

    “You want witnesses that make your case. Picking witnesses that refute House Republicans arguments for impeachment is mind blowing,” one senior GOP aide told CNN. “This is an unmitigated disaster.”

    One GOP lawmaker also expressed some disappointment with their performance thus far, telling CNN: “I wish we had more outbursts.”

    The bar for Thursday’s hearing was set low: Republicans admitted they would not reveal any new evidence, but were hoping to at least make the public case for why their impeachment inquiry is warranted, especially as some of their own members remain skeptical of the push.

    But some Republicans are not even paying attention, as Congress is on the brink of a shutdown – a point Democrats hammered during the hearing.

    “I haven’t watched or listened to a moment of it,” said another GOP lawmaker. There’s a shutdown looming.”

    Rep Jim Jordan delivers remarks during the House Oversight Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on September 28, 2023 in Washington, DC.

    Democrats repeatedly pointed out that the Republican allegations about foreign payments were tied to money that went mostly Hunter Biden – but not the to the president.

    “The majority sits completely empty handed with no evidence of any presidential wrongdoing, no smoking gun, no gun, no smoke,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight committee.

    Raskin’s staff brought in the 12,000 pages of bank records the committee has received so far, as Raskin said, “not a single page shows a dime going to President Joe Biden.”

    Raskin also had a laptop open displaying a countdown clock for when the government shuts down in a little more than two days – another point Democrats used to bash Republicans for focusing on impeachment and failing to pass bills to fund the government. The Democrats passed the laptop around to each lawmaker as they had their five minutes to question the witnesses.

    Their arguments also previewed how Democrats intend to play defense for the White House as Republicans move forward on their impeachment inquiry.

    The Democrats needled Republicans for not holding a vote on an impeachment inquiry – one Democrat asked Turley whether he would recommend a vote, which Turley said he would.

    Rep. Jamie Raskin speaks on the Democratic side of the aisle, as the House Oversight Committee begins an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

    House Democrats’ 2019 impeachment of Trump was sparked by Trump’s attempts to push Ukraine to investigate allegations involving Biden and his son’s position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company – some of the same allegations now being probed by the House GOP.

    That led Democrats Thursday to push for testimony from Rudy Giuliani, who as Trump’s personal lawyer sought to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine in 2019.

    Twice, the Democrats forced the Oversight Committee to vote on Democratic motions to subpoena Giuliani, votes that served as stunts to try to hammer home their argument that Giuliani tried and failed to corroborate the same allegations at the heart of the Biden impeachment inquiry.

    “I ask the question: Where in the world is Rudy Giuliani?” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, one of the Democrats who forced the procedural vote. “That’s how we got here, ladies and gentlemen. And this committee is afraid to bring him before us and put him on the record. Shame! And the question was raised. What does this have to do with it? It has everything to do with it.”

    In addition to Giuliani, Raskin sought testimony from Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani’s who was indicted in 2019. Parnas subsequently cooperated with the Democratic impeachment inquiry, including providing a statement from a top official at Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company, stating, “No one from Burisma had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him.”

    Several Democrats also raised Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who worked in the White House, receiving $2 billion from Saudi Arabia through a company he formed after leaving the White House.

    The Democrats charged that Kushner’s actions were far worse than Hunter Biden’s, because Kushner worked in government, while Biden’s son did not.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • 5 takeaways from America’s landmark lawsuit against Amazon | CNN Business

    5 takeaways from America’s landmark lawsuit against Amazon | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    An antitrust lawsuit from 17 states and the Federal Trade Commission this week against Amazon represents the US government’s biggest regulatory challenge yet against the e-commerce juggernaut.

    The landmark case targets Amazon’s retail platform, alleging that it’s harmed shoppers and sellers alike on a massive scale.

    Through an alleged “self-reinforcing cycle of dominance and harm,” the plaintiffs claim, Amazon has run an illegal monopoly in ways that are “paying off for Amazon, but at great cost to tens of millions of American households and hundreds of thousands of sellers.”

    In response, Amazon has argued the case is “wrong on the facts and the law” and warned that a victory for the FTC would lead to slower shipping times or higher prices, including perhaps for Amazon’s Prime subscription service.

    Here are five of the biggest highlights and takeaways from the plaintiffs’ 172-page lawsuit.

    The plaintiffs’ central claim is that Amazon has used a variety of tactics to lure shoppers and sellers onto its platform and then to trap them there, preventing other online retailers like Walmart, Target or eBay from attracting those same consumers and vendors to their own sites.

    Walmart, Target and eBay are not parties to the suit.

    Not only has that lock-in effect hurt competition between the likes of Amazon and Walmart, the lawsuit claims, but it has also given Amazon confidence it can exploit its sellers and shoppers with impunity — allowing the company to extract ever more value from them without fear those people will leave for a rival platform.

    The complaint portrays Amazon as offering a kind of Faustian bargain — first enticing sellers with the ability to access tens of millions of potential customers and drawing in shoppers with low prices and numerous Prime benefits, such as Amazon Music and Prime Video, that other e-commerce platforms can’t hope to match.

    Then, in the plaintiffs’ narrative, Amazon takes advantage of sellers’ and shoppers’ dependence by increasing platform fees; bloating its search results with advertising that sellers are forced to buy if they want any hope of reaching shoppers; requiring sellers to use Amazon’s in-house fulfillment services if they want the best seller benefits, including the coveted “Prime” badge; and punishing sellers who try to sell their goods elsewhere online at a lower price than on Amazon.

    The overall result, the plaintiffs claim, is a worse experience for Amazon users and artificially high prices for everyone, including on non-Amazon platforms.

    “There are internet-wide effects here,” FTC Chair Lina Khan told reporters on a conference call Tuesday.

    Amazon has responded that the lawsuit “reveals the Commission’s fundamental misunderstanding of retail.” Amazon’s general counsel, David Zapolsky, wrote in a blog post that the company’s pricing programs for sellers are meant to “help them offer competitive prices,” that consumers “love Prime because it’s such a great experience,” and that the claim “that we somehow force sellers to use our optional services is simply not true.”

    A big, swirling question is whether Amazon could be broken up as a result of this suit.

    Officially, the FTC is saying that talk of a breakup is premature.

    “At this stage, the complaint is really focused on the issue of liability,” Khan said at an event hosted by Bloomberg News on Tuesday, hours after the lawsuit was filed.

    If the courts find that Amazon did violate the law, then there could be a separate remedies phase to consider potential penalties.

    A breakup is not off the table. The plaintiffs’ complaint, filed in Seattle federal court, suggests that any court order to address the issue could include “structural relief,” a legal term referring to a potential breakup of Amazon.

    Khan also left open the possibility that Amazon executives could be held personally liable and added to the case if there is sufficient evidence of their responsibility for Amazon’s alleged misconduct.

    “We want to make sure that we are bringing cases against the right defendants,” Khan said in response to a question from CNN about whether the FTC considered naming specific executives in Tuesday’s case. “If we think that there is a basis for doing so, we won’t hesitate to do that.”

    Those remarks echo what Khan has said elsewhere about her willingness to name individuals in FTC enforcement actions. Just this month, the FTC added three Amazon officials to a separate consumer protection case dealing with Amazon Prime.

    An entire section of the complaint is devoted to a mysterious algorithm Amazon has developed named Project Nessie. Virtually every detail surrounding Project Nessie is heavily redacted from the complaint, but what little is revealed about the program suggests it is an “algorithmic tool” and “pricing system” that has allegedly helped Amazon “extract” an undisclosed amount of “excess profit” from Amazon shoppers.

    Amazon did not respond to CNN’s questions about Project Nessie. And Project Nessie isn’t the only matter subject to redactions in the lawsuit; black bars obscuring key business numbers, executive testimony and other evidence are strewn throughout the complaint.

    In response to public questioning about the redactions, FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar said in a statement: “We share the frustration that much of the data and quotes by Amazon executives … is redacted,” and that “we do not believe that there are compelling reasons to keep much of this information secret from the public.”

    Farrar added that Amazon has a limited procedural window in which to file arguments for why many of the redacted details should remain sealed.

    Whether the FTC can prove in court that Amazon’s actions are illegal will hinge, to a large degree, on showing that Amazon has monopolized certain specific markets.

    The exercise is not as simple as pointing to Amazon’s sales figures or the percentage of online shopping that happens on Amazon’s platform. Instead, the plaintiffs have to show that Amazon is part of a well-defined geographic and economic market that it dominates.

    The complaint tries to define two such markets in the United States: a market the plaintiffs label as “online superstores” — essentially describing large retail websites that offer many different types of goods, with convenient search, checkout and shipping features for consumers — and a seller-focused “online marketplace services” market that grants third-party vendors access to customers, provides them with sales tools like data analytics and listing services, and a review or product ratings system, among other things.

    Expect Amazon to try to challenge how the plaintiffs draw their market boundaries. Zapolsky’s blog post argues that the plaintiffs have attempted to “gerrymander” their proposed markets to make it look like Amazon is more dominant than it is.

    Whether that argument succeeds will be up to the court, but it is clear the plaintiffs have carefully crafted their market definitions. For example, they claim that in this case, Amazon can’t be said to compete with online grocery delivery services such as FreshDirect or Instacart because of the unique and often hyper-local constraints of shipping perishable goods. The FTC also wants to exclude medium-sized or interest-specific retail sites that don’t offer a wide variety of products. Presumably this might exclude websites belonging to companies like the pet care retailer Chewy, or the electronics seller Best Buy.

    FreshDirect, Instacart, Chewy and Best Buy are not parties to the suit.

    Excluding those types of companies allows the plaintiffs to make claims such as that “Amazon’s share of the overall value of goods sold by online superstores is well above 60% — and rising.”

    Even as the lawsuit takes on some of the most important parts of Amazon’s retail business, there is much that the suit doesn’t cover.

    In recent years, critics of Amazon have lobbed a kitchen sink of antitrust allegations at the company, including that it snoops on seller data to figure out what products it should sell under its own brand; that the fact Amazon sells its own products alongside third-party sellers creates an anticompetitive conflict of interest; that Amazon has used predatory pricing to weaken rivals and to ultimately acquire them; and that Amazon wields enormous power in labor markets. Many of these observations were included as part of a 450-page congressional report that Khan helped author while working as a House Judiciary Committee staffer prior to being appointed to the FTC.

    Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has acknowledged in congressional testimony the possibility that employees may have inappropriately accessed seller data in violation of company policy, but Amazon has broadly disputed most of the other allegations.

    Virtually none of those claims, however, are reflected in this week’s lawsuit. The complaint does allege that Amazon biases its search results to rank its own products higher than those sold by third parties, but largely as a byproduct of Amazon’s main moves to protect its dominance.

    The complaint doesn’t articulate how regulators came to select some allegations and not others.

    When a reporter asked Khan to reflect on her past criticism of how narrowly courts have focused on the issue of consumer prices, in contrast to Tuesday’s Amazon suit that mentions the word “price” some 223 times, not including any redacted parts, Khan said her job was to present the case that stood the best chance of winning.

    “As enforcers, we want to both follow the facts where they take us and also look at how the law applies to the facts,” Khan said. “You want to bring the strongest case that you can.”

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  • Schumer declines to call on Menendez to step down | CNN Politics

    Schumer declines to call on Menendez to step down | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday declined join a growing group of Democrats who are calling on indicted Sen. Bob Menendez to resign his seat, though he did say the New Jersey Democrat’s actions fell “way, way below the standard” of the office.

    “Like you, I was just deeply disappointed, disturbed when I read the indictment,” Schumer said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. “Look, I’ve known Sen. Menendez a very long time. And it was truly, truly upsetting.”

    At least 30 of the members of the Democratic caucus, including members of Schumer’s leadership team have called on Menendez to resign. According to CNN’s count on Wednesday, 21 Democrats and independents who caucus with the Democrats have not called on Menendez to resign, including Schumer and Menendez himself. Three of those who have not called on Menendez to resign sit on the Senate Ethics Committee and therefore will not comment on any issue that may come before their panel.

    “For senators, there’s a much, much higher standard,” Schumer added. “And clearly, when you read the indictment, Sen. Menendez fell way way below that standard. Tomorrow, he will address the Democratic caucus, and we’ll see what happens after that.”

    Menendez is expected to address the Senate Democratic caucus at a closed-door meeting on Thursday, according to Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Mark Warner of Virginia.

    On Wednesday, Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, pleaded not guilty to all corruption-related charges.

    Menendez has been charged with three counts for allegedly taking bribes to use his political power and connections to help the government of Egypt obtain military aid as well as pressure a state prosecutor investigating New Jersey businessmen and attempt to influence the federal prosecution of a co-defendant.

    Co-defendants Jose Uribe and Fred Daibe, entered not guilty pleas as well. A fifth co-defendant, Wael Hana, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday.

    Menendez has said he will not step down. In a public statement Monday, he accused those who “rushed to judgment” of doing so for “political expediency.”

    “I recognize this will be the biggest fight yet,” Menendez said, referencing the legal battle ahead. “But as I have stated throughout this whole process, I firmly believe that when all the facts are presented, not only will I be exonerated, but I still will be New Jersey’s senior senator.”

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  • Supreme Court returns for first private meeting of the term amid even more controversy | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court returns for first private meeting of the term amid even more controversy | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court returns to Washington to face a new term and the fresh reality that critics increasingly view the court as a political body.

    In the wake of a series of controversial decisions made possible by former President Donald Trump’s three nominees, including the seismic reversal of Roe v. Wade, the justices find themselves catapulted into the very center of the political discourse.

    Their opinions feature prominently on the campaign trail, approval ratings have plummeted to new lows and Democrats in Congress are vowing to regulate the third branch in the midst of allegations justices are skirting ethics rules and attacks on the very legitimacy of the court.

    So far, they have struggled to respond. At public appearances they grasp at the promise of judicial independence while sending mixed signals about changes that might be afoot.

    Tuesday, the justices will meet in person for their first closed-door conference of the term.

    Chief Justice John Roberts is at the center of it all.

    How he navigates this term will shape the trajectory of his tenure going forward. Some say he’ll remain on the sidelines, out of the fray. Others say he cannot afford to do so.

    Earlier this year, Roberts declined an invitation to appear before the Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss Supreme Court ethics, citing separation of powers concerns. In May, speaking before an audience in Washington, Roberts said he wanted to assure the public that the court is committed to adhering to the “highest standards of conduct.”

    It was one line in one speech.

    But at the end of June, as controversy continued amid a raft of high-profile decisions that largely broke along ideological lines, Roberts made an unusual choice. In a 6-3 opinion striking down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, the chief strayed from the case at hand.

    He said that it had become a “disturbing feature of some recent opinions to criticize the decisions with which they disagree as going beyond the proper role of government.”

    He appeared to be responding to the dissent penned by Justice Elena Kagan and joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “In every respect, the Court today exceeds its proper limited role in our Nation’s governance,” Kagan began.

    Noting her disagreement, Roberts took the occasion to write, “we do not mistake this plainly heartfelt disagreement for disparagement.” He added: “Any such misperception would be harmful to this institution and our country,” he wrote.

    It was unclear if the line was directed at his dissenting colleagues or critics outside of court or both, but it was an unusual digression from a justice who, by definition, lacks an obvious pulpit to defend his branch of government.

    The way forward for Roberts is not obvious.

    Even if he did believe a formal ethics code is necessary, it’s unclear whether he would need a unanimous vote to move forward. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito might, for instance, balk at such a move arguing that it would never satisfy critics whose true goal is to damage the institution.

    Some believe Roberts ultimately will steer clear of the controversy.

    “I don’t see him moving in any direction to encourage further disclosure reforms, and I don’t see Congress as being able to get sufficient traction,” Cate Stetson, a lawyer at Hogan Lovells, said at the Cato Institute earlier this month.

    But if the court does nothing, pressure will continue.

    Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, a Democrat, traveled to the Supreme Court on September 12 as an invited guest to the annual meeting of the Judicial Conference – the policymaking body for the federal courts.

    Sitting next to the chief justice on Roberts’ home turf, Durbin lobbied him to adopt an enforceable code of conduct directed specifically at the justices, according to a source.

    Roberts and others have continuously stressed how difficult it would be to adopt such a code, particularly when it comes to recusal issues.

    In April, all nine justices released a new statement hoping to provide “clarity” to the public about their ethics procedures, noting that they consult a “wide variety of authorities” when addressing specific ethics issues. They noted that while the Judicial Conference has a code of conduct followed by lower court judges, the conference “does not supervise the Supreme Court.”

    The statement outlined complications that distinguish the Supreme Court from the lower courts.

    At the lower court level, for instance, federal judges can substitute for each other if one judge recuses from a case. That’s not true at the high court where only members can hear a dispute.

    The statement did little to appease critics who say the justices can no longer continue to voluntarily follow rules that govern lower court judges. They must, critics say, have a code of conduct that binds them directly.

    Response from the bench

    Some conservatives believe there is no impending judicial crisis. Instead, they say, critics of the court are manufacturing a controversy to delegitimize the institution and staunch the flow of conservative opinions.

    Carrie Severino, president of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, who is also a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, tweeted recently that the problem is not corruption.

    “The problem is the coordinated campaign by dark money activists, radical politicians, and a willing media to imply there is corruption, undermining the Court’s integrity and selectively smearing the justices they disagree with,” she wrote.

    Alito, who wrote the opinion overturning Roe, has taken a radically different approach than the chief justice.

    In an interview in July that appeared on The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, Alito said forthrightly that Congress should stay out of the Supreme Court’s business.

    “I know this is controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” he said. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court – period.”

    Alito said that he marveled “at all the nonsense that has been written about me in the last year” and noted that in the face of a political onslaught he was rejecting the notion that judges and justices “should be mute” and leave it to others to defend them.

    “I’ve said to myself, nobody else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself,” he wrote.

    A month earlier he sought to preempt a ProPublica report that had not yet been published concerning allegations that he should have disclosed luxury travel from 2008.

    Over the summer, other justices were asked about ethics and the court’s legitimacy by friendly questioners at universities and judicial conferences – although they never addressed specifics.

    Unlike Alito, Justice Elena Kagan suggested in August that here was some daylight on the question of whether Congress has a role to regulate the Supreme Court. Last week, she told an audience in Indiana that she thought it would be a “good” idea if the court were to adapt the ethics code used by lower court justices to fit the Supreme Court.

    For her part, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that criticism of the court is nothing new. At an appearance before a judicial conference in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, she said that “critiques of the court” are part of its history. Public criticism “comes with the job” she said.

    Justice Brett Kavanaugh had a different message in Ohio saying he was “hopeful” that there would be some “concrete steps” taken soon to address the ethics issue.

    But his sentiment may have been aspirational.

    As the justices grapple with how to respond, they are hampered by an additional factor.

    Change at the high court comes slowly. The court’s unofficial mascot – the tortoise – can be found at the bottom of bronze lampposts on the building grounds. The tortoises are meant to symbolize the slow and steady pace of justice.

    Almost nothing at the high court comes quickly, and the institution is not new to controversy. The justices may decide to ride out the storm.

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  • White House strategy on government funding meets serious test this week | CNN Politics

    White House strategy on government funding meets serious test this week | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and his top aides at the White House plan to hammer away at a blunt message as the US government inches closer to a shutdown this week: A handful of extremist Republicans are entirely to blame for the havoc that would be unleashed across the country.

    For Biden, there’s a lot riding on that message getting through to Americans.

    Biden’s advisers have been assessing for weeks how involved to get in lawmakers’ deliberations to fund the government ahead of the end-of-month deadline, and ultimately decided to take a hands-off approach. The expectation: Should the Republican-led House struggle to reach consensus, they would ultimately shoulder the blame for any disruption.

    “Watch the GOP struggle and force them to govern or be blamed for shutdown,” a Biden administration official said, summing up the strategy.

    The White House is planning to dispatch a number of Cabinet officials this week to help lay out the broad range of ramifications if the government were to shutdown – everything from flight delays to childcare centers shutting down.

    Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will appear at Monday’s White House news briefing to discuss how a government shutdown could hit everything from food programs to loans for farmers, a White House official said.

    “This would stop us in our tracks,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on CNN on Sunday. “A shutdown that would mean service members wouldn’t get paid, coming back to transportation to air traffic controllers who would be working in the towers. They wouldn’t get paid.”

    Over the weekend, White House officials continued to monitor for any signs of movement on Capitol Hill to extend funding for the federal government ahead of the deadline. How to handle a possible shutdown was a key agenda item when White House chief of staff Jeff Zients huddled with senior advisers in the West Wing on Saturday, according to people familiar. But heading into a new work week, Republican members had not put anything realistic on the table, officials said, leaving the White House bracing for what is to come.

    In the days ahead, the president and his allies will repeatedly point to “who’s responsible” for the mess that could unfold, one senior administration official said simply.

    The White House took a similar approach this spring during the debt ceiling negotiations, but not without a seeming hit to Biden. In a CNN poll conducted mid-May, 59% of respondents said the president was not acting responsibly as talks stalled and the government careened toward default. The difference then: Republicans had coalesced around a specific position, passing a bill in the House that reflected their priorities and catching the White House off guard. Negotiations escalated in the weeks that followed, resulting in a deal that set broad guardrails around federal spending for the 2024 fiscal year.

    That deal was supposed to usher in months of in-depth appropriations work that would yield a full-year spending package and avert a government shutdown. Now, the White House says Republicans dropped the ball.

    Speaking over the weekend at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Phoenix Awards Dinner, Biden said it was “small group of extreme Republicans” that was refusing to “live up to the deal” that he had struck months ago with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

    “The president did his job,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked whether the White House would do anything to stave off a shutdown. “This is not something we can fix. The best plan is for House Republicans to stop their partisan political play and not do this to hurt Americans across the country. That’s the plan.”

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  • The Fed has a perfect interest rate in mind. Here’s what it is | CNN Business

    The Fed has a perfect interest rate in mind. Here’s what it is | CNN Business

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    There’s a star the Federal Reserve is chasing.

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  • Biden unveils a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention | CNN Politics

    Biden unveils a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden on Friday unveiled a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, a step he said was part of an effort “to send a clear message about how important this issue is to me and the country.

    In a speech in the White House Rose Garden, the president detailed his experience traveling to the sites of mass shootings across the country, including after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 as vice president.

    “Anyone who doesn’t think that these kinds of engagements have a permanent effect on young children … these were hardened, tough cops, asking me, could I get them psychiatric help?” he asked, raising his voice.

    An official told reporters on a call Thursday previewing the announcement that the office’s mandate will be twofold – it will be tasked with implementing and expediting last year’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the president’s signature gun legislation, and with finding additional actions within the president’s purview to stem the flow of gun violence.

    The announcement comes just days after a group of congressional Democrats in a letter called on Biden to leverage “the full power of the executive branch” to combat gun violence. In March, a day after a mass shooting left six dead in Nashville, Biden told reporters, “I have gone the full extent of my executive authority to do, on my own, anything about guns.”

    Biden on Friday took the opportunity to tout the steps his administration had taken to address the scourge of gun violence.

    “To date my administration has announced dozens of executive actions to reduce gun violence – more than any of my predecessors at this point in their presidencies, and they include everything from cracking down on ghost guns, breaking up gun trafficking, and so much more,” he said.

    “And last year with the help – with your help I signed into law the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant gun safety law in almost 30 years. It expanded background checks, expands the use of red flag laws, improves access to mental health services and so much more. This historic law will save lives. It’s a really important first step.”

    Vice President Kamala Harris will head the new office, Biden said.

    Biden said Harris “understands this more than any vice president ever – no, really. That’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact. She’s been on the front lines of this her entire career as a prosecutor, as an attorney general and as a United States senator. Her deep experience will be invaluable for this office.”

    And he thanked the gun safety advocates assembled in the Rose Garden for their work.

    “We’re never going to forget your loved ones, we’re never going to get there unless we remember. You know, I know we will do this because I know you – heroes, heroes proving that even with heavy hearts, you have unbreakable spirits,” he said.

    CORRECTION: This headline and story have been updated to reflect the correct name of the office.

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  • GOP hardliners sink Pentagon bill in another blow for McCarthy | CNN Politics

    GOP hardliners sink Pentagon bill in another blow for McCarthy | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The House on Thursday has voted down a rule that would have advanced a Defense Department bill, another stumbling block for Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republican leadership ahead of a looming government shutdown deadline.

    The final vote was 216-212.

    While the specific legislation is separate from a proposal to keep the government funded beyond the present September 30 deadline, the defeat is another sign of divisions within the House Republican Conference, which has been negotiating for days to come up with a plan that can unify GOP House members. This is the third time House Republicans have bucked McCarthy and GOP leadership in a vote on a rule, a traditionally pro forma step that is taken to advance legislation.

    McCarthy emerged visibly frustrated from the House floor while it was in total paralysis as House hardliners tanked another rule, slamming the group for just wanting to “burn the place down.”

    “It’s frustrating in the sense that I don’t understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate,” McCarthy told reporters.

    Opposition from hardliners has plagued efforts by Republican leadership to unify behind a plan to fund the government. Days of negotiations have yielded a few apparent breakthroughs, but McCarthy’s Republican opponents have been quick to throw cold water on progress and openly defy the speaker’s calls for unity. McCarthy’s thin margin in the chamber means that in most votes he can only lose four members without any support from Democrats – and absences can raise and lower the majority threshold.

    Late Thursday evening, McCarthy briefed his conference behind closed doors on a new plan to keep the government open – paired with deeper spending cuts and new border security measures – all in an attempt to win over wary members on his right flank. The plan, as outlined by the speaker, would keep the government open for 30 days at a $1.471 trillion spending level, a commission to address the debt and a border security package. Separately, they also agreed to move year-long funding bills at a $1.526 trillion level. That level is below the bipartisan agreement that the speaker reached with the White House to raise the national debt limit.

    As part of the deal, Republicans told CNN on Thursday night that they have the votes to move forward on the yearlong Pentagon spending bill that five conservative hardliners scuttled just Tuesday, with Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Ken Buck of Colorado indicating they will flip to a yes on the rule and will vote to advance the Department of Defense bill Thursday after the speaker came down to the spending levels that Norman had been demanding.

    But Thursday’s vote had five Republican opponents as well – as six Republicans total ended up voting against the rule. Reps. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Rosendale of Montana, Eli Crane of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia voted against the bill. House Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma also eventually changed his vote, casting his vote against the Rule so he could bring it back up for reconsideration. It’s unclear when Republicans may try the vote again.

    Republican leadership has alerted House members they plan to stay in session Friday and Saturday amid the standoff.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • McCarthy privately outlines new GOP plan to avert shutdown, setting up clash with Senate | CNN Politics

    McCarthy privately outlines new GOP plan to avert shutdown, setting up clash with Senate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy privately outlined to members a new GOP plan to keep the government open on Wednesday after a marathon two-and-a-half-hour GOP conference meeting.

    The California Republican later told reporters that Republican negotiators made “tremendous progress as an entire conference,” following days of GOP infighting and less than two weeks before a government funding deadline.

    “We are very close,” McCarthy said Wednesday evening when asked specifically what progress had been made on the GOP short-term bill. “I feel like just got a little more movement to go there,” he added of the new GOP plan. When asked specifically about the topline numbers, he wouldn’t get into details but said: “We’re in a good place.”

    The plan, as outlined by the speaker, would keep the government open for 30 days at $1.471 trillion spending levels, a commission to address the debt and a border security package. Separately, they also agreed to move year-long funding bills at a $1.526 trillion level. That level is below the bipartisan agreement that the speaker reached with the White House to raise the national debt limit.

    The levels are also far lower than what senators from both parties and the White House are willing to accept, meaning it’s unclear how such a deal would avert a government shutdown. With just 10 days left to fund the government, the new plan sets up a standoff with the Senate over how to keep the government open.

    As part of the deal, Republicans now believe they have the votes to move forward on the yearlong spending bill that five conservative hardliners scuttled just Tuesday.

    GOP Rep. Mike Garcia of California said after Wednesday evening’s conference meeting there is now “a little more clarity” on the path forward.

    “We have a little more clarity as to a potential plan moving forward,” Garcia said, adding, “We are still negotiating that final number and trying to figure out exactly what we can do.”

    Some of the people that were previously opposed now signaled they are supportive. Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Ken Buck of Colorado indicated they will flip to a yes on the rule and will vote to advance the Department of Defense bill Thursday after the speaker came down to the spending levels that Norman had been demanding.

    “Sounds like we’ve got the votes for the rule,” Garcia said, pointing to Buck and Norman as having committed to changing to a “Yes.”

    With McCarthy’s extremely thin margin in the chamber – and Democrats so far united against the GOP proposal – Republican leadership has been negotiating for days to try to win over enough GOP support to pass their legislation.

    When asked about struggling to make progress earlier Wednesday, McCarthy repeated his favorite line, insisting he will never back down from a challenge no matter how messy.

    “I wouldn’t quit the first time I went for the vote for speaker,” McCarthy said, a reference to how he was voted speaker only after 15 rounds and days of voting in January. “The one thing if you haven’t learned anything about me yet, I will never quit.”

    However, an additional potential complicating factor emerged Wednesday night with former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, coming out in opposition to a short-term funding bill as he called on lawmakers to defund the DOJ and the investigations into him.

    McCarthy and his GOP leadership team have been trying to sell the House Republican Conference on unifying behind a plan to fund the government, brokered between the House Freedom Caucus and the more moderate Main Street Caucus over the weekend. But that proposed legislation encountered immediate opposition from more than a dozen far-right Republican lawmakers who wanted deeper spending cuts attached.

    Amid that impasse with conservatives, moderates in the bipartisan House Problem Solver’s Caucus are close to finalizing their own framework on a short-term spending bill that would fund the government for several months at current levels and include Ukraine aid and disaster assistance, according to two sources. Even with Democratic support, that plan would still likely face major challenges – not the least of which is how it would get to the floor before the government runs out of money.

    There are already signs that this alternative plan could face its own strong headwinds – not just with Republicans but with Democrats. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a progressive Democrat from Washington state, told CNN on “Inside Politics” that she wants a “clean” continuing resolution of funds, a sign that progressives may not back some of the border security provisions that the Problem Solvers Caucus members are eyeing.

    House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met with the House Problem Solvers Caucus earlier Wednesday, and said afterward that they need a bipartisan agreement in line with what was already negotiated in the debt ceiling package.

    “We need to find a bipartisan agreement consistent with what was previously reached,” he said.

    House GOP leadership announced Wednesday night that the House will be in and voting on Friday and Saturday, making official what was expected as the majority struggled to reach an agreement all week.

    The House is expected to pass a rule for the defense appropriations bill Thursday. Assuming the rule passes, the House will then start consideration of the defense bill with final passage expected Friday.

    The thinking would then be to pass the new GOP stopgap plan on Saturday, which is expected to be a full day.

    Members were advised on Tuesday to keep their schedules flexible as weekend votes were possible. Members filtering in and out of Whip Emmer’s office the past two days are insistent that they are making progress, but Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota told CNN earlier Wednesday that while they are getting closer, they are not close yet.

    Rep. Garrett Graves from Louisiana, who has been in the room for negotiations, had echoed that schedule change and projected Friday and Saturday work.

    “I think we’re going to be here this weekend,” he said.

    When pressed on what exactly they’d be up to and if they’d be able to vote by Saturday, Graves said, “Well, we won’t be having Mardi Gras parties,” indicating they’d be voting.

    Rep. Steve Womack, a Republican from Arkansas who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, lambasted the hardliners, calling it a “breach of duty.”

    “We’ve got a handful of people that are holding the rest of the conference, the majority of our conference kind of held hostage right now and in turn, holding up America,” he told CNN.

    Womack also said this will likely extend into the weekend and that “either it’s gonna be good or it’s gonna be bad.”

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    ‘Personal for every woman and every man’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    This story has been updated with additional information Sunday.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    This story has been updated with additional information Sunday.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    That’s what happened in the 2022 midterms.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



    CNN
     — 

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

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

    Read an annotated version of the indictment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    kamala harris nancy pelosi split

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Autoworkers strike deadline nears as negotiators rush to avoid historic walkout | CNN Business

    Autoworkers strike deadline nears as negotiators rush to avoid historic walkout | CNN Business

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    Detroit
    CNN
     — 

    With just hours to go before labor contracts expire at America’s three unionized automakers, thousands of autoworkers could walk off the job.

    Those limited, targeted strikes could be enough to grind production to a halt at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, which builds vehicles under the Jeep, Ram, Dodge and Chrysler brands for North America.

    But the uncertainty and confusion underscore the high stakes, with a possible historic strike at all three major automakers, disruptions to the local and national economies, and, perhaps more than anything, a hint at the future of manufacturing jobs in America.

    The union and the automakers continued to negotiate down to the wire on Thursday. GM made a new offer on Thursday afternoon, including a 20% raise, matching Ford’s offer.

    “We don’t want there to be a strike. We’re ready to work until the deadline,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told CNN. “We’d like to make history by making a historic deal, not having a historic strike,” he said.

    And President Joe Biden himself spoke to leaders of the union and the automakers, as a strike could be politically costly for him, as well.

    UAW President Shawn Fain on Wednesday evening announced plans for those targeted strikes at any company that fails to reach a labor deal with the union before contracts expire at 11:59 pm Thursday. Fain suggested the strategy, including the possibility of ramping up strikes as negotiating continues, would give the UAW more leverage. “We have the power to keep escalating and keep taking plants out,” he said.

    But Farley said on CNN Thursday that striking plants that make critical parts could affect workers at downstream assembly plants.

    “We can’t make a vehicle without an engine or transmission or stamping. So those people will, you know, basically be furloughed,” Farley said.

    Slowing or stopping the production of a few engine or transmission plants at each company could be as effective at stopping operations as a full strike at all plants, according to industry experts.

    One engine or transmission location per company might be enough to shut down nearly three-quarters of the US assembly plants, said Jeff Schuster, global head of automotive for GlobalData, an industry consultant.

    “Two plants per company, you can pretty much idle North America,” he said.

    Halting the companies’ assembly lines would likely happen in less than a week that way, Schuster said.

    One advantage for the union of a targeted strike is the potential to save resources and extend a possible walkout. Striking union members are eligible for $500 a week from the union’s strike fund.

    If all 145,000 UAW members among the three automakers were to strike at the same time, it could cost the fund more than $70 million a week, draining the $825 million fund.

    If the companies shut down operations and lay off members who are not technically on strike, those workers could be eligible to receive state unemployment benefits rather than strike benefits, which could preserve the union’s resources.

    Strikers are not eligible for unemployment benefits, but workers on temporary layoff can receive the benefits, which differ by state but would be less than the union’s $500 strike pay. There also are legal questions in different states about qualifying for unemployment.

    An official with Ford told reporters Thursday that under state law, workers in Michigan and Ohio were not eligible to receive unemployment benefits if they were laid off due to lack of parts at their plant caused by a strike. There are some other states, such as Kentucky and Tennessee, where they would be able to receive unemployment benefits, according to the officials.

    But they said none of the Ford UAW members would be eligible for so-called “sub-pay,” which they typically receive during temporary layoffs. Sub pay is far more lucrative, covering most of the gap between unemployment benefits, typically less than $300 a week, and normal company pay, which can be close to $1,300 a week.

    GM CEO Mary Barra sent a letter to employees Thursday saying the company’s latest offer now includes a 20% raise, with an immediate 10% pay hike. The lower paid temporary employees would get $20 an hour, which represents a 20% raise from the current $16.67 an hour they receive. She called the offer “historic.”

    “We are working with urgency and have proposed yet another increasingly strong offer with the goal of reaching an agreement tonight. Remember: we had a strike in 2019 and nobody won,” she said in the letter.

    Farley told CNN the offer from Ford of a 20% raise over the life of the contract is the most lucrative offer the company has made to the union in the 80 years it has been there. But he said meeting the union’s demands of close to a 40% raise, along with a four-day work week and other benefit improvements, would have been unaffordable.

    Farley blamed the union for the lack of progress in negotiations. But the union has blamed the companies for waiting until the end of August or early September to make their first counteroffers.

    The union came up with the 40% raise request based on the increase in the pay of CEOs at the three automakers over the last four years. Ford CEO pay rose 21%, from $17 million for Farley’s predecessor Jim Hackett in 2019, to $21 million for Farley last year. (Farley is the lowest compensated of the three CEOs.)

    Asked why the union workers shouldn’t get the same increases, Farley responded, “We’re really open to huge increases.” As to the 40% increases for CEOs, Farley responded, “I wasn’t CEO four years ago, but we have put on the table huge increases, double digit increases.”

    Ford has not had a strike since 1978; it has more UAW workers than the other two automakers.

    President Joe Biden spoke with Fain and leaders of the major auto companies “to discuss the status of ongoing negotiations,” the White House said Thursday.

    The White House declined to say Wednesday that Biden would support UAW workers if they chose to strike.

    “I’m gonna leave it at, [Biden] believes the auto workers deserve a contract that sustains middle class jobs and wants the parties to stay at the table, to work round the clock to get a win-win agreement,” Council of Economic Advisors Chair Jared Bernstein told reporters during Wednesday’s White House press briefing.

    Biden became directly involved in 11th hour negotiations a year ago to stop engineers and conductors at the nation’s major freight railroad from going on strike and was credited by both sides with a deal being reached at that time. But Biden and Congress had power under a different labor law to keep workers on the job by imposing a contract, a power he used later in the year when rank-and-file rail workers rejected the deal he brokered and again threatened to strike

    The autoworkers fall under a different labor law, one that leaves Biden with no power to stop a walkout. And he has limited influence with the UAW, which has been critical of his push to have the industry convert to electric vehicles, a move that could cost members jobs in the long run.

    In a statement midday Thursday, GM said it remains in “good faith negotiations” with the UAW but cautioned that a strike would be disruptive to its business.

    “Any disruption would negatively impact our employees and customers, and would have an immediate ripple effect across our communities,” a company spokesperson said.

    One sticking point in negotiations is that wages are only part of the gap between the two sides. In some ways it might be the least difficult problem to solve, said Patrick Anderson, CEO of Anderson Economic Group, a Michigan research firm.

    “The difference between the automakers and the unions on wages is a gap that could be closed,” said Anderson. “The differences involving non-wage demands are a gulf, not a gap.”

    The union is attempting to reverse deep concessions that go back as far as 2007. At the time, years of losses had left Ford nearly out of cash, and GM and Chrysler were on their way to bankruptcy and federal bailouts.

    The number one concession the union wants to end is a lower tier of wages and benefits for workers hired since 2007. While top pay for those newer hires, who today make up a majority of membership, is the same as the $32.32 paid to more senior members, it takes many more years to reach that level.

    The union also wants to restore traditional pension plans for those hired since 2007, as the more senior workers now receive, as well as the same retiree health care coverage. And to protect members from rising prices, it wants a return of the cost-of-living adjustments to pay that all employees lost in 2007.

    Even Fain calls those demands “ambitious,” but he said they’re driven by record or near record profits at the automakers.

    Pandemic supply chain disruptions and shortages of some parts, particularly computer chips, have led to record car prices. The average purchase price of a new car in August was nearly $48,000, according to Edmunds. That’s up 30% from August of 2019.

    Automakers have used their limited supply of parts to build vehicles loaded with options to maximize profits. That’s produced a strong bottom line. General Motors reported record profits in 2022, and Ford posted near-record profits as well. Stellantis, a European-based automaker formed in 2021 by the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group, had 2022 profits up 26% compared to its first year of combined operations.

    A strike that halts production nationwide could also be costly for the automakers at a time of strong demand by car buyers and strong competition from nonunion automakers such as Tesla and foreign brands. GM said it lost $2.9 billion during its 2019 strike.

    While the automakers have done their best to build up inventory at dealerships, car buyers could have trouble finding some of the models they want and could have to wait longer for their choice of colors and options. And limited supplies could put upward pressure on some vehicle prices.

    – CNN’s DJ Judd contributed to this report

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