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  • McConnell back after fall as Senate resumes | CNN Politics

    McConnell back after fall as Senate resumes | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has returned to the Senate following a period of recovery in the wake of a fall.

    McConnell arrived on Capitol Hill Monday morning and did not answer questions from CNN about how he is feeling after spending the last several weeks recovering after a fall where he suffered a concussion and fractured rib. CNN spotted McConnell in the Capitol exclusively.

    McConnell was at the Capitol on Friday, but Monday marks the GOP Senate leader’s first day back in session. The House and Senate are both returning to session today following a two-week recess period.

    McConnell also did not answer a question about how he will handle the issue of how Democrats want to temporarily replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Judiciary committee. Feinstein’s absence as she recovers from shingles is making it more difficult for Democrats to process judicial nominees on the panel, setting up a potential clash with Republicans as they seek to replace her.

    McConnell was hospitalized last month after he tripped and fell at a dinner event in Washington, DC. He was treated for a concussion and a rib fracture before being released to an inpatient rehabilitation facility for physical therapy.

    At the time, a McConnell aide told CNN, “it is very common to undergo physical therapy to regain strength after a hospital stay.”

    McConnell, who is 81 years old, left the physical therapy facility on March 25. In a statement, the Senate GOP leader said that, following advice from his physical therapists, he would, “spend the next few days working for Kentuckians and the Republican Conference from home.”

    McConnell added that he remained “in frequent touch with my Senate colleagues and my staff. I look forward to returning in person to the Senate soon.”

    Earlier this year, McConnell became the longest-serving party leader in Senate history.

    During his absence, Senate Republicans who spoke with the McConnell said he was itching to get back to the chamber. The No. 2 Senate Republican, Minority Whip John Thune, noted that he was “anxious” to return, and Texas Senator John Cornyn told reporters that McConnell was “chomping at the bit” to come back to the Capitol.

    This was not McConnell’s first fall. Several years ago, he fractured his shoulder in a fall at his home in Kentucky.

    The top Republican is not the only senator returning from an extended absence.

    Across the aisle, Democrat Senator John Fetterman will return to the Senate after receiving inpatient treatment for clinical depression at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Fetterman was discharged from the hospital at the end of last month.

    Feinstein has been absent from the Senate after being treated in the hospital, and then at home, for shingles. It is not yet clear exactly when she may return.

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  • House Republicans in talks over one-year debt ceiling plan in push to challenge White House | CNN Politics

    House Republicans in talks over one-year debt ceiling plan in push to challenge White House | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    House Republican leaders are moving behind the scenes to get their conference behind a plan that would raise the debt ceiling for one year with a slew of cuts and revenue raisers, a move intended to strengthen their negotiating position with the White House in the high-stakes standoff.

    The goal is to put a bill on the House floor as soon as May that could pass the narrowly divided chamber and send a clear signal to President Joe Biden that any legislation raising the debt ceiling must have strings attached, according to GOP sources involved in the talks.

    There is no official estimate yet for the amount of cuts and revenue raisers Republicans are seeking, but one source said the goal is to find $3 trillion to $4 trillion worth of budget savings over 10 years.

    Over the two-week recess, top House Republicans have been speaking with their rank-and-file members to find consensus on a plan that has been under development from the GOP’s so-called five families, representing the various ideological wings of the conference

    Republicans are not yet unified on the emerging plan, with one source familiar with the talks saying some of the more conservative members have pushed for more measures – such as tougher border security provisions and a repeal of green energy tax credits – and some of the more moderate members have raised concerns over proposed changes to Medicaid.

    But GOP lawmakers have called the talks productive and expect internal discussions over a Republican-led plan, which are continuing Sunday, will also intensify when lawmakers return to Washington this week after recess.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy plans to set the tone over the GOP demands with a speech Monday in New York. The California Republican previewed his message during a Sunday call with his conference, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

    It is not yet clear when the country could potentially face its first-ever default if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, but it could happen as soon as this summer or as late as the fall – something that could have drastic economic ramifications. The White House and Senate Democrats have said that the debt ceiling should be approved without any conditions and have challenged Republicans to produce a plan if they won’t move on a clean increase.

    Even if House Republicans can pass their own plan, it has no chance of passing the Democratic-led Senate. But House GOP leaders believe passing their own bill would force the White House to negotiate a package of spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.

    Among the provisions under consideration in the GOP plan are rolling back domestic discretionary spending to fiscal 2022 levels, something that would spare the Pentagon’s budget. Republicans are also looking to rescind funding for certain programs enacted to provide Covid-19 relief, and they want to impose new work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries under the age of 60 and with no dependents.

    Republicans are also considering an overhaul to the federal regulatory process by giving Congress new power to reject rules imposed by the administration. Plus, the GOP believes it can raise new revenue through provisions that would make it quicker to greenlight major energy projects. And they are weighing a 2% cut to federal spending when Congress passes a stop-gap resolution to keep the government funded.

    One senior GOP source said the reception has been mostly positive so far.

    “I think we can get there,” the source said.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Six takeaways from campaign fundraising filings by Trump, Haley, Santos and more | CNN Politics

    Six takeaways from campaign fundraising filings by Trump, Haley, Santos and more | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump’s criminal indictment helped jolt his fundraising. GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley faces questions about her campaign math. Embattled New York Rep. George Santos refunded more contributions than he took in. And some – but not all – of the Democratic Party’s most vulnerable Senate incumbents have stepped up their fundraising ahead of tough 2024 election fights.

    Here’s a look at a few takeaways from new first-quarter campaign filings covering the first three months of 2023:

    Trump raised about $14.4 million for his main campaign committee in the first quarter of this year – with donations spiking at the end of March as news broke of his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury.

    The new filings suggest that the former president’s legal troubles have helped him politically and financially as he makes a third bid for the White House. But the amount only captures the start of what the campaign said was a fundraising surge that continued into the beginning of the second quarter.

    Even so, Trump’s first-quarter haul lagged behind the pace he had set in earlier campaigns.

    Earlier this month, Haley;s campaign publicized what it boasted as a strong haul for her 2024 presidential bid: The former South Carolina governor had raised “more than $11 million in just six weeks,” according to a campaign release.

    But official filings with the Federal Election Commission on Saturday night show that the campaign appears to have double-counted money routed among Haley’s fundraising committees, overstating the topline figure.

    The three committees connected to Haley raised a total of $8.3 million – still a sizable showing for a first-time presidential candidate but not the figure publicly touted by the former UN ambassador’s campaign.

    Fundraising serves as one benchmark of support for a campaign, and candidates are often eager to tout big numbers in advance of their official filings with federal regulators.

    In an email to CNN on Sunday, Haley campaign spokesman Ken Farnaso defended the $11 million figure, saying the accounting mirrored how other candidates have previously described their fundraising.

    Other candidates have sought to present their campaign filings in the most favorable light. Trump’s campaign, for instance, touted a $9.5 million haul during the first six weeks of his campaign. But, in that window, only about $5 million flowed into the joint fundraising committee that powers his political operation.

    Embattled Rep. George Santos’ campaign refunded more contributions than it took in during the first three months of the year, according to a campaign report the New York Republican filed Saturday.

    The freshman congressman from Long Island received $5,333 in contributions during the first quarter and refunded more than $8,000 in donations. It’s highly unusual for a sitting member of Congress to report a net loss on a fundraising report.

    By contrast, another first-term congressman, Republican Anthony D’Esposito, who represents a neighboring district, reported more than $670,000 in receipts during the first quarter, including more than $300,000 from political action committees and other lawmakers’ campaign committees.

    Santos, who has lied about his education, work history and family background, faces a House ethics inquiry, along with local and federal investigations into his finances.

    His campaign reported $25,000 in remaining cash as of March 31 and $715,000 in debt – which Santos has described as personal funds he loaned to his successful 2020 effort for New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

    (How Santos, who in 2020 reported a $55,000 salary and no assets when he ran unsuccessfully for Congress, amassed the money to fund his campaign two years later remains one of the biggest questions surrounding his political rise.)

    Last month, Santos formally filed paperwork for a 2024 reelection bid, but it followed a demand from the FEC that he declare his intentions after he crossed a fundraising threshold that required him to file a statement of candidacy.

    Some of his fellow Republicans have urged the scandal-plagued congressman to resign or not seek reelection. Last month, when asked by CNN whether he intended to run again, Santos responded, “Maybe.”

    In the closely watched race to succeed California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Adam Schiff outraised the rest of the Democratic field, bringing in $6.7 million during the first quarter – topping the nearly $4.5 million raised by Rep. Katie Porter and roughly $1.3 million collected by Rep. Barbara Lee.

    Schiff also led the field in available cash, ending March with more than $24.6 million stockpiled in his campaign account.

    Porter, who transferred nearly $11 million from her House campaign into her Senate account this year, had more than $9.4 million in cash still available on March 31. Lee trailed with a little more than $1.1 million in available cash.

    Feinstein, who at 89 is the oldest sitting senator, has announced she will not seek reelection next year – although she is facing calls from some Democrats to retire now after being sidelined with shingles since early March.

    Last week, she asked to be temporarily replaced on the Senate Judiciary Committee while she continues her recuperation.

    In Arizona, the leading Democratic candidate for Senate, Rep. Ruben Gallego, outraised independent incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, bringing in nearly $3.8 million to his opponent’s $2.1 million.

    Sinema, who changed her affiliation from Democrat late last year, continues to caucus with her former party. She has not formally declared an intention to seek a second term. But she has the resources to compete in what could be a costly, three-way general election battle for the seat. She ended March with nearly $10 million in available cash to Gallego’s $2.7 million.

    Mark Lamb, an Arizona sheriff aligned with Trump, this month became the first major Republican candidate to enter the race, but he won’t file his first fundraising report until July.

    Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio – who is seeking a fourth term in what will be one of the most closely watched contests of the 2024 cycle – raised more than $3.5 million in the first quarter, up from the roughly $333,000 he collected during the last three months of 2022.

    Several Republicans have lined up to challenge Brown, including Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno and former state Sen. Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians Major League Baseball team.

    Saturday’s filings show Dolan collecting $3.3 million – most of which he loaned his campaign. Moreno joined the race in April, after the first-quarter fundraising period had ended.

    Brown is one of three Democratic senators who are up for reelection next year in states won by Trump in 2020.

    Montana Sen. Jon Tester, another Democratic incumbent facing a tough reelection battle in a Republican state, raised $5 million in the first quarter and had $7 million stockpiled as of March 31.

    In deep-red West Virginia – a state Trump won by nearly 40 points in 2020 – Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has not yet declared whether he will seek a third full term in 2024. He pulled in just $370,000 in the first quarter but was sitting atop a $9.7 million war chest of available cash as of March 31.

    West Virginia Rep. Alex Mooney, the first major Republican to enter the Senate race, collected roughly $500,000 in the first quarter.

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  • Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp says GOP can’t be ‘distracted’ by Trump investigations if it wants to win in 2024 | CNN Politics

    Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp says GOP can’t be ‘distracted’ by Trump investigations if it wants to win in 2024 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has a message for his fellow Republicans looking to win back the White House: “We cannot get distracted.”

    “We have to tell people, No. 1, what we’re for. No. 2, that we’re going to be focused on the future and what we’re going to do for the voters in our state or the American people. And then, No. 3, we have to do a simple thing: We have to win,” Kemp told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday on “State of the Union.”

    The governor’s remarks came a day after he’d told donors at a Republican National Committee retreat in Nashville that the GOP needed to move on from the 2020 presidential election. In his speech, Kemp offered a thinly veiled dig at former President Donald Trump and his continued election grievances, without naming him, saying, “Not a single swing voter will vote for our nominee if they choose to talk about the 2020 election being stolen.”

    Trump, currently seen as the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, has repeatedly argued since leaving office that Republicans cannot succeed – either at the ballot box or legislatively – if they turn a blind eye to the past. But candidates who backed his false election claims did poorly in the midterm elections last fall in key swing states Trump will need to win back the White House in 2024.

    Trump is also under a cloud of legal woes. In New York, a hush money payment to an adult-film star shortly before the 2016 election has resulted in his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury over his alleged role in the scheme. And in Atlanta, a select grand jury has investigated efforts by Trump and allies to overturn his election loss in Georgia in 2020.

    “I can’t control what the judicial branch is doing or what a local prosecutor is doing in many ways, but what we can control … is what we’re focused on,” Kemp said Sunday.

    “If we get distracted and talk about other things that the Democrats want to talk about, like these investigations – regardless of what you think about the politics of those – if we get distracted every day and let the media just talk about that, that only helps Joe Biden,” he added. “It does not give us a path for Republicans to win.”

    Asked by Tapper if Trump was unelectable nationwide, Kemp demurred.

    “That’s for the people to decide,” he said.

    Tension between Trump and Kemp has been simmering for years. When Kemp refused to overturn Biden’s 2020 win in Georgia, Trump made the governor his No. 1 enemy, publicly railing against him throughout 2021 and recruiting former US Sen. David Perdue to challenge Kemp in a GOP primary. Through it all, Trump failed to draw Kemp into a fight, and the governor won his 2022 primary overwhelmingly before handily defeating Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams in the November general election.

    Kemp said Sunday that Republicans will need to draw a distinction with what he referred to as “the disaster of the Biden administration” to win next year, pointing to border security, high inflation and energy policy.

    “I think we’re going to have a lot of good candidates that, if they focus on those things, we have got a great chance of winning the White House in 2024,” the governor said.

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  • Opinion: Top secrets come spilling out | CNN

    Opinion: Top secrets come spilling out | CNN

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



    CNN
     — 

    In 1917, British analysts deciphered a coded message the German foreign minister sent to one of his country’s diplomats vowing to begin “unrestricted submarine warfare” and seeking to win over Mexico with a promise to “reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona” if the US entered the world war. When it became public, the Zimmerman Telegram caused a sensation, helping propel the US into the conflict against Germany.

    “Never before or since has so much turned upon the solution of a secret message,” wrote David Kahn in his classic 1967 history of secret communications, “The Codebreakers.” The Germans had taken great pains to keep their intentions confidential, and the codebreakers in London’s “Room 40” had to do a lot of work to decipher the telegram.

    Their efforts stand in stark contrast to the ease with which secrets came tumbling out of a Pentagon intelligence network when 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard cyber specialist Jack Teixeira allegedly posted hundreds of documents on a Discord chatroom known as “Thug Shaker Central.” The disclosures likely won’t start a war, but they could prove extremely damaging to the US and several of its allies, including Ukraine.

    Teixeira is one of more than one million people who have Top Secret clearance. “The Pentagon has already started taking steps to limit the number of people who have access to such sensitive information,” wrote Brett Bruen, a former US diplomat and Obama administration official. “But much more can be done. … Why do so many people, especially those working short stints in government, have access to information that can shape the fate of nations and their leaders?”

    Writing in the Financial Times, Kori Schake saw “some good news.”

    “While specific details will be incredibly valuable to Russia and other adversaries, these are not bombshell revelations: journalists had already reported Ukrainian ammunition running low; peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv were never likely; allies have long been aware that the US eavesdrops on them; and the disparaging assessment of Ukraine’s forthcoming offensive may prove no more accurate than previous predictions were.” These will not prove as damaging as the Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning disclosures.

    But, she warned, “Technology making data ever more portable, distribution more global and communications more bespoke will make it easier to amass information and distribute it — either privately or publicly.”

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    In less than a week, the two Democrats expelled from the Tennessee House for their participation in a gun control protest were sent back to office by local officials.

    Writing for CNN Opinion, Rep. Justin Pearson noted, “This should be a chastening moment for revanchist forces in Tennessee’s legislature and across the country. Over the long haul, the undemocratic machinations employed to oust us from office are destined to fail. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once famously said that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. Events this week demonstrated, more than ever, that this is indeed the case…”

    “Over two-thirds of Americans — including four out of 10 Republicans — support the kind of common sense gun safety laws that Rep. Jones, Rep. Johnson and I were protesting in favor of, in the wake of the senseless March 27 Covenant School massacre.”

    “And yet, calls for common sense gun reform measures fall on deaf ears in our legislature where a Republican supermajority is wildly out of step with most people’s values.”

    The politics of gun control have shifted, argued Democratic strategist Max Burns. The NRA’s internal struggles have weakened its influence while Democrats in office, who once feared touching the issue of guns, are increasingly speaking out. And they are making some progress in enacting new state laws, Burns noted.

    “The American people decisively support Democratic proposals for addressing the scourge of gun violence. Political watchers who criticized Democrats for talking too much about abortion during the 2022 midterm elections later ate crow after that once-dreaded culture war topic topped the list of voter concerns nationally…

    “Biden and the Democrats have the rare opportunity to build yet another winning coalition out of an issue once viewed as political poison.”

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    On Friday, the Supreme Court issued an order that temporarily ensured access to a key drug used in many medication abortions. The move gave the justices more time to consider the issue after a Texas federal judge suspended the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill 23 years ago.

    “If abortion opponents are successful, access to the pill — reportedly used in more than half of abortions in the United States — will be severely undercut,” wrote Michele Goodwin and Mary Ziegler.

    “Beyond the dangerous precedent this sets for challenges to other important FDA-approved drugs that some political factions don’t like, the case is an alarming expression of the way right-wing activists are using junk science to bypass the will of the American public and restrict abortion…”

    “There are no grounds for challenging mifepristone’s approval, especially 23 years after the fact. The drug received extensive review — more than four years — before FDA approval. Moreover, claims that mifepristone threatens the health of those who take it are unfounded. The drug has a better safety record for use than Viagra and penicillin. Notably, it was available and used for years without incident in Europe.”

    In 1986, Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow bureau chief for US News & World Report, was seized by Soviet authorities and locked up in Lefortovo prison. He was the last American journalist to be arrested in Russia before last month’s detention of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, who like Daniloff, speaks Russian fluently. Gershkovich has been charged with espionage but US officials have concluded that he was “wrongfully detained.”

    As David A. Andelman noted, Daniloff’s detention in prison lasted for 13 days before he was put under house arrest and then eventually swapped for an accused Soviet spy. In a conversation with Andelman, Daniloff recalled his reaction when he was imprisoned. “I felt claustrophobic, and I felt like I wanted to get out of there immediately. Of course, there was no chance of that. The door slams, and you have all these thoughts and feelings that run through you, and then you settle down and you realize you’re going to be hanging around that cell for some time.”

    Gershkovich’s family in Philadelphia received a letter, handwritten in Russian, from the reporter Friday.

    “I want to say that I am not losing hope,” he noted. “I read. I exercise. And I am trying to write. Maybe, finally, I am going to write something good.”

    The Amazon series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” returns this month for its fifth and final season — and David Perry is here for it. The series brings back memories of visiting his grandparents Irma and Mordy in their “tiny rent-controlled Greenwich Village apartment,” an experience that helped shape his Jewish identity.

    “As a Jewish historian,” Perry wrote, “I worry about the tension between preserving the memory of past hardships while not locking our entire history into a tale of oppression. The moments of peace and joy are as vital as the moments of violence. In fact, it’s the periods of peace, of success, of interfaith community, that reveal the terrible truth about the violence: it wasn’t inevitable. People could have made different choices…”

    “A show like ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ lets me revel in my personal New York Jewish heritage while also getting a little break from all the worry. It’s a warm, funny, sexy, extremely Jewish …. comedy that hits me straight in my glossy childhood memories. That isn’t to say the show isn’t also problematic — it most certainly is.”

    In the latest installment of CNN Opinion’s “Little Kids, Big Questions” series, 10-year-old Ronan wonders if animals are capable of being smarter than humans. With the help of the John Templeton Foundation, which is partnering on the project, the answer came from Jane Goodall, world renowned for her work with chimpanzees.

    “One of the attributes of intelligence is the ability to think and solve problems. In the early 1960s, I was told that this was unique to humans, and only we could use and make tools, only we had language and culture,” Goodall said. “But more and more research has proved that many animals are excellent at solving problems. Many use tools, and many show cultural differences. Some scientists believe that whales and dolphins are communicating with what may be a real language.”

    “Although the difference between humans and other animals is simply one of degree, our intellect really is amazing. …bees can count and do math, and that just shows how much we still have to learn about animal intelligence. But humans can calculate the distance to the stars.”

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    Earlier this month, a Texas jury convicted Daniel Perry of murder for fatally shooting a Black Lives Matter protester in 2020. The jury deliberated for 17 hours and decided Perry’s action couldn’t be excused under the state’s “stand your ground” law. Prosecutors argued Perry had instigated the incident and they introduced into evidence messages that suggested the shooting was not a spur-of-the-moment act but a premeditated one.

    On the evening of the jury verdict, Fox News host Tucker Carlson criticized the decision and told viewers he had invited Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on the show to ask if he would consider pardoning Perry. Others on the right called for Abbott to issue a pardon, and the governor soon responded with an announcement that he would do just that, as long as the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended that Perry should be granted one.

    “Trial verdicts are determined by judges and juries,” wrote Dean Obeidallah. “What Abbott is doing is not just wrong, it’s dangerous. His pardon, when it comes, is not what the rule of law looks like.”

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    Two of the likeliest candidates for president in 2024 haven’t officially committed yet.

    President Joe Biden says he intends to run again but has delayed making a formal announcement. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is making all the moves a presidential contender usually makes, including hawking his new book and visiting New Hampshire, but he hasn’t joined fellow Republicans including former President Donald Trump, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson in declaring.

    “DeSantis, who was neck and neck with the former president just a few months ago, may have lost a step or two in more recent polling. But his track record of successful governance in Florida should force GOP voters to think long and hard about what version of their party they want to put forward,” observed Patrick T. Brown.

    “A third Trump presidential nomination would indicate that Republican primary voters may prefer style over substance. But if they are serious about not just making liberals mad but advancing actual policy, GOP voters should consider other names, starting with the Florida governor.”

    Even without an official announcement by the president, wrote Julian Zelizer, the Biden-Harris campaign is very much under way. “By choosing to lie low while Republicans are gearing up for 2024, Biden is employing his version of what has become known as the ‘Rose Garden Strategy,’ whereby the incumbent campaigns by focusing on the business of being president and showing voters that he is the responsible figure in the race.”

    “The president’s understated strategy makes room for Republicans to stoke chaos, tear each other apart and make unforced errors while he remains above the fray for as long as possible. This strategy makes the GOP the focus of the election, allowing Biden to reinforce his message from 2020: do voters want someone who will govern and act in a serious manner or do they want a circus?”

    Gene Seymour: I am betting on Cousin Greg. But I am not a serious person (Spoiler alert)

    Frida Ghitis: Amid fallout of Macron-Xi meeting, another world leader tries his luck

    Michael Bociurkiw: How the battle for Bakhmut exposed Russia’s ‘meat-grinder’

    Peggy Drexler: Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s dilemma is a reminder of this universal question

    Christopher Howard: The overlooked problem with raising the retirement age for Social Security

    Elliot Williams: The justice system Trump and other white-collar defendants see is different than what most accused criminals get

    Phoebe Gavin: The hard lessons I learned the first time I was laid off

    Meg Jacobs: ‘Air’ celebrates those who do the hard work and get rewarded

    AND…

    Jill Filipovic recently took a domestic flight in South Africa. “Passengers and airport staff alike were friendly and polite. The airplane seat offered enough room for both of my legs and both of my arms. We took off on time and landed early. My shoes stayed on the whole time I was at the airport.”

    It was a vivid reminder of what’s possible in air travel — and of what’s usually lacking.

    Take the security system: “More than 20 years after Sept. 11, 2001, only passengers who pay for the privilege can avoid removing their shoes and laptops from their bags by submitting their personal information ahead of time and undergoing background checks.”

    Filipovic added, “Admittedly, I do pay — I don’t want to wait in a long security line, walk my stocking feet through a metal detector and have to un- and re-pack the MacBook I’ve carefully crammed into my carry-on. But the existence of pay-to-play shorter-line security options like Clear and TSA Pre-Check make clear that it is indeed possible to pre-screen a critical mass of passengers to avoid the morass of cranky people trying to pull on their shoes while re-packing their electronics.”

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  • Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp urges Republicans to move on from election fraud claims: ‘2020 is ancient history’ | CNN Politics

    Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp urges Republicans to move on from election fraud claims: ‘2020 is ancient history’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Saturday urged his fellow Republicans to move on from the 2020 presidential election, offering a thinly veiled dig at former President Donald Trump and his continued election grievances.

    Without naming Trump, Kemp’ said at a private Republican National Committee donor retreat in Nashville that “not a single swing voter in a single swing state will vote for our nominee if they choose to talk about the 2020 election being stolen.”

    “To voters trying to pay their rent … make their car payment … or put their kids through college … 2020 is ancient history,” Kemp said, according to his prepared remarks, which were obtained by CNN’s Jake Tapper.

    Trump, who announced his reelection campaign last fall, has repeatedly argued since leaving office that Republicans cannot have a successful future – either at the ballot box or legislatively – if they turn a blind eye to the past.

    Tension between Trump and Kemp has been simmering for years. When Kemp refused to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win in Georgia, Trump made the governor his No. 1 enemy, publicly railing against him throughout 2021 and recruiting former US Sen. David Perdue to challenge Kemp in a GOP primary. Through it all, Trump failed to draw Kemp into a fight, and the governor won his 2022 primary overwhelmingly before handily defeating Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams in the November general election.

    Also in the midterm elections, candidates who backed Trump’s false election claims did poorly in key swing states the former president will need to win back the White House in 2024.

    Further complicating Trump’s bid is a cloud of legal woes. In New York, a hush money payment to an adult-film star shortly before the 2016 election has resulted in his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury over his alleged role in the scheme – the first time in American history that a current or former president faces criminal charges.

    And in Atlanta, a select grand jury has investigated efforts by Trump and allies to overturn his election loss in Georgia in 2020.

    Kemp made direct mention of these investigations Saturday, according to his prepared remarks, calling the probes distractions that could take the Republican Party off course and away from issues voters care about.

    “Being distracted by what is happening at the Manhattan and Fulton County district attorney offices is not going to win us back the White House in 2024,” Kemp said. “The media and Democrats would love nothing more than for us to talk about this from sun-up to sundown until next November.”

    “But here’s the truth: Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg’s investigations into allegations of the past don’t help hardworking Americans battling high grocery prices, growing pain at the gas pump or violent crime plaguing their neighborhoods,” he continued, referring to the district attorneys of Fulton County, Georgia, and Manhattan respectively.

    “In fact, the person they help the most is Joe Biden.”

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  • Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose 2014 real estate deal with GOP megadonor, ProPublica report finds | CNN Politics

    Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose 2014 real estate deal with GOP megadonor, ProPublica report finds | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose a 2014 real estate deal he made with a GOP megadonor, according to a ProPublica report published Thursday.

    The deal involved the sale of three properties in Savannah, Georgia, that were owned by Thomas and his relatives to the megadonor, Harlan Crow, according to ProPublica, which said that tax and property records showed that Crow made the purchases through one of his companies for a total of $133,363.

    But Thomas “never disclosed his sale of the Savannah properties,” the report said, noting that ethics law experts told the outlet that his failure to report it “appears to be a violation of the law.”

    “The transaction marks the first known instance of money flowing from the Republican megadonor to the Supreme Court justice,” ProPublica said in its report.

    Thursday’s report comes on the heels of a bombshell investigation published last week by ProPublica that detailed Thomas and his wife’s luxury travel with the Crows, which included trips on the donor’s yacht and private jet. The justice also did not disclose that travel, and he later defended the decision not to, saying in a rare statement last week that he was advised at the time that he did not have to report it.

    CNN has reached out for comment from the Supreme Court and Thomas.

    Crow said in a statement to CNN that he purchased the properties to “one day create a public museum at the Thomas home dedicated to telling the story of our nation’s second black Supreme Court Justice.”

    He added that he made the purchases at “market rate based on many factors including the size, quality, and livability of the dwellings.”

    Though two of the properties were later sold by Crow, according to his statement, the real estate magnate still owns the property on which Thomas’ elderly mother lives. Citing county tax records, ProPublica said one of Crow’s companies pays the “roughly $1,500 in annual property taxes on Thomas’ mother’s house,” which had previously been paid by the justice and his wife, Ginni.

    Experts told ProPublica that Thomas’ failure to disclose the 2014 deal raises more questions about his relationship with Crow.

    “He needed to report his interest in the sale,” Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who now works for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), told the outlet. “Given the role Crow has played in subsidizing the lifestyle of Thomas and his wife, you have to wonder if this was an effort to put cash in their pockets.”

    The report has already prompted the watchdog group to call for an investigation into Thomas’ decision not to disclose the real estate deal and the various trips and gifts.

    In a letter sent Friday to Chief Justice John Roberts and Attorney General Merrick Garland, CREW said that Thomas may have violated the Ethics in Government Act. The group said Roberts also should investigate whether Thomas violated his “ethical obligations” under Judicial Conference regulations.

    In the wake of last week’s revelations, congressional Democrats have also called for an investigation into the matter and for a stronger ethics code for the justices, and some federal judges have also spoken out.

    Earlier this week, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced it plans to hold a hearing “on the need to restore confidence in the Supreme Court’s ethical standards,” and at least one watchdog group has urged lawmakers to call Thomas as a witness in the upcoming hearing.

    This story has been updated with additional details Friday.

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  • DeSantis, on cusp of presidential campaign, defies national abortion sentiments with signing of six-week ban | CNN Politics

    DeSantis, on cusp of presidential campaign, defies national abortion sentiments with signing of six-week ban | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Floridians woke up Friday morning to discover Gov. Ron DeSantis had signed into law a six-week abortion ban overnight, meeting behind closed doors with a select group of invited guests to give final approval to a bill that had just passed the state legislature earlier in the day.

    In backing a six-week ban, DeSantis fulfilled a campaign pledge to block abortion after the detection of a heartbeat – just before he is expected to launch his 2024 presidential bid. But as he inches toward a national campaign, DeSantis, who rarely sidesteps cultural clashes, has also become oddly muted on abortion since the fall of Roe v. Wade and has avoided laying out a federal platform before jumping into the race.

    Speaking Friday morning to an overwhelmingly pro-life audience at Liberty University, a deeply conservative Baptist college in Virginia, DeSantis didn’t mention the bill he had signed the night before.

    The late-night private signing also stood in stark contrast to the celebratory event exactly a year prior, when DeSantis, surrounded by women and children and in front of hundreds of onlookers, enacted a 15-week abortion ban at a Orlando-area megachurch as news cameras captured the scene.

    The six-week ban “is going to cause a lot of problems for him,” said Amy Tarkanian, the former chairwoman of the Republican Party in Nevada, where voters have cemented abortion protections in the state constitution. “And I’m pro-life, but I can see the writing on the wall.”

    The US Supreme Court decision last June that ended a federal right to abortion access has throttled the national political landscape, energizing Democrats and leaving Republicans grasping for a message that can blunt the fallout. The latest harbinger of trouble for the GOP came last week from Wisconsin, a presidential swing state where liberals took control of the state Supreme Court in an election fought over the future of abortion access.

    But with DeSantis on the verge of entering the GOP presidential primary – for which abortion is often a litmus test for candidates – Republican state lawmakers delivered their leader a political victory, flexing their super majorities in both Florida chambers to swiftly push through the new restrictions. The law will take effect if the state Supreme Court overturns its past precedent protecting abortion access, which is widely expected. When that happens, Florida, once a sanctuary for Southern women whose states had made it difficult to legally end a pregnancy, will become one of the hardest states in the country to obtain an abortion.

    In an early sign of how Democrats intend to paint DeSantis, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a statement called Florida’s bill “extreme and dangerous” and said it “is out of step with the views of the vast majority of the people of Florida and of all the United States.”

    A Republican fundraiser close to the governor’s political operation told CNN that the six-week ban would play “great in primary,” where DeSantis would face former President Donald Trump, who appointed three of the justices that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, but acknowledged it was “not good in general” election.

    “But you got to get to the general,” the adviser added.

    In the year following the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Democrats have rattled off a series of victories built in part on voters mobilized by abortion. In solidly red Kansas, voters last year blocked a referendum that would have amended the state constitution to make abortion illegal. In key states like Pennsylvania and Nevada, Democrats pummeled Republican Senate candidate over their views on abortion – with great success, as the party held the US Senate. In battlegrounds like Arizona and Michigan, Democratic gubernatorial candidates won by vowing to lift longstanding state abortion bans that predated the Roe decision.

    Whether the issue continues to animate general voters remains to be seen, but opinions on the Dobbs decision do not appear to have shifted. A Marquette Law School poll last month found two-thirds of voters opposed the ruling, nearly identical to the results in its survey following the November midterms.

    Amid the national outcry to the SCOTUS decision, the typically outspoken DeSantis has remained uncharacteristically reserved on the topic. Unlike other issues, like eliminating college diversity programs and curbing legal protections for the media, he has elevated with staged news conferences and frequent messaging on conservative media, DeSantis has offered vague commitments to protect life but repeatedly declined to say where Florida should draw the line on abortion access.

    In his lone debate last year against Democratic gubernatorial opponent Charlie Crist, DeSantis wouldn’t say what abortion restrictions he would pursue if reelected for a second term. Asked at a March news conference if he supported exceptions for victims rape and incest, DeSantis called it “sensible” and said he would “welcome pro-life legislation,” then quickly pivoted to another topic.

    DeSantis signed the bill at 10:45 p.m. ET Thursday in a closed-door ceremony after returning from a political event in Ohio, a rare-late night action by a governor who often times his actions to maximize exposure.

    “I can’t speculate on his mental processes and what he decides to speak on,” said John Stemberger, president of Florida Family Policy Council, a conservative Christian organization that supported the bill. “I’m concerned not with words but with action and he is a man of action.”

    Some Republican operatives believe DeSantis is better positioned than others to stave off primary attacks from the right without alienating swing voters. In a series of posts on Twitter, Jon Schweppe, director of policy and government affairs at the conservative American Principles Project, suggested that by supporting some exceptions for rape and incest, DeSantis would neutralize a key Democratic talking point.

    “What moves voters the most? What did Democrats spend $500M talking about in the 2022 midterms? EXCEPTIONS,” Schweppe said. “Voters want exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. That’s the most important issue. Outside those exceptions, voters are fairly pro-life.”

    Schweppe had previously raised the alarm that “Republicans need to figure out the abortion issue ASAP” after last week’s defeat of a conservative judge in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

    The exceptions offered by Florida’s proposed six-week ban, though, are limited to 15 weeks after conception and require victims of rape and incest to show a police report or other evidence of their assault to obtain an abortion. Similarly, two doctors would have to sign off that a mother’s health is at serious risk or a fetal abnormality is fatal before a woman can end a pregnancy after 15 weeks.

    Bill McCoshen, a veteran GOP consultant in Wisconsin, acknowledged that Democrats have campaigned effectively on abortion there in recent races. But he said it will be harder to attack DeSantis on abortion in his state, where the current law, passed in 1849 and reinstated after the fall of Roe, bars abortion without exceptions.

    “To voters here, the perception of his answer will be that it’s better than the 1849 law,” McCoshen said. “If he signs that law, that will be an improvement of the law that’s here. It may not be as middle of the road as some states, but it’s better than what we currently have in many people’s minds.”

    Still unclear, though, is how DeSantis will navigate new pressures from conservative voters, many of whom will expect their next nominee to use the powers of the presidency to end abortion nationwide. DeSantis, who has not yet declared but is laying the groundwork for a campaign, has so far not faced any questions about what abortion restrictions he would pursue if elected to the White House.

    It’s a question that has already tripped up one potential rival for the nomination. A day after sidestepping a question earlier this week, Republican Sen. Tim Scott said on Thursday that it should be up to states to “solve that problem on their own” – but also said he would sign a federal 20-week ban if it reached his desk.

    Nor has DeSantis weighed in on the ongoing legal saga surrounding mifepristone, one of the drugs that has been used safely for more than 20 years to provide abortions via medication.

    “Right now, DeSantis represents his state and he has to be the voice of his state, but this is a tightrope he has to walk if he’s serious about running for president,” Tarkanian, the Nevada Republican said. “A lot of people don’t even realize they’re pregnant at seven weeks and if you’re pro-choice that’s a scary thought.”

    Katie Daniel, the state policy director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said Republican candidates risk looking inauthentic if they try to obfuscate their position on abortion. She pointed to Pennsylvania Senate candidate and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who during the GOP primary called abortion “murder” at any stage but in the general election said he supported exceptions for rape, incest or if the mother’s life is at risk. Later, in a debate, Oz said, “I want women, doctors, local political leaders” to decide the issue at the state level.

    “Our message to candidates is define yourself or other candidates will define it for you and you’re not going to like their version of you,” Daniel said. “The ostrich strategy of burying your head in the sand is not going to work.”

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  • Sen. Tim Scott plans to launch 2024 exploratory committee Wednesday | CNN Politics

    Sen. Tim Scott plans to launch 2024 exploratory committee Wednesday | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina plans to launch an exploratory committee for president on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with his plans.

    Scott – the only Black Republican in the Senate – has been testing the waters for months. Since setting off on a listening tour in February focused on “Faith in America,” he’s made frequent visits to Iowa.

    He’s scheduled to hold events in the early voting state on Wednesday.

    The Post and Courier was first to report on the plans.

    “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking the past few months,” Scott wrote in a Tuesday night email to his supporters teasing a Wednesday morning announcement on Fox. “I’ve been thinking about my faith. I’ve been thinking about the future of our country. And I’ve been thinking about the Left’s plan to ruin America.”

    Scott easily won reelection to the Senate last fall and ended the year with more than $21 million in his campaign account, which he could use for a presidential bid.

    Former President Donald Trump, who announced his campaign to win back the White House last fall, has led the GOP primary field, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – who has yet to announce a bid – has also attracted attention from GOP voters. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson – a frequent Trump critic – announced that he’s running for the GOP nomination earlier this month. And Scott’s fellow South Carolinian, former Gov. Nikki Haley, announced her bid in February.

    Scott declined to endorse Haley – who appointed him to a vacant Senate seat in 2012 – a sign that he could seek the presidency himself. Both South Carolinians had attended the anti-tax group Club for Growth’s donor retreat in Palm Beach earlier this year alongside other potential GOP candidates.

    At a Christian conservative forum in his home state last month, Scott took aim at President Joe Biden’s economic policy and what he called the “disrespect” of law enforcement.

    He said that to “restore faith in America, we must be the party of security,” arguing for more funding for police departments and to “close the US southern border, period.”

    Scott spent months in Congress trying unsuccessfully to hash out a deal on policing reform with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and then-Rep. Karen Bass of California. He spoke on the Senate floor following the brutal police beating and death of Tyre Nichols earlier this year, while calling on his colleagues to agree on “simple legislation” regarding police reform.

    He’s occasionally spoken out against Trump – for example, after the former president equivocated on racially motivated protesters and subsequent violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

    “I’m not going to defend the indefensible. I’m not here to do that,” Scott said in an interview with Vice News at the time, going on to add that Trump’s “moral authority” had been “compromised.”

    Scott delivered the GOP response to Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress in 2021, which gave him a prominent national platform from which to speak to the country and counter Biden’s message.

    Before joining the Senate, Scott served one term in the US House. He also served in the South Carolina state House and on the Charleston County Council.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Ohio GOP businessman Moreno files for Senate bid | CNN Politics

    Ohio GOP businessman Moreno files for Senate bid | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Bernie Moreno, a wealthy Ohio businessman, has filed paperwork to run for Senate in 2024 and challenge Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in what’s likely to be one of the most competitive races of the upcoming cycle.

    Moreno is now the second Republican to officially jump into the race after state Sen. Matt Dolan announced his candidacy in January.

    Moreno mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Senate in 2022, loaning his campaign millions from his personal fortune before dropping out of the race ahead of the primary. His decision to drop out came after a meeting with former President Donald Trump, who would go on to endorse one of his rivals, J.D. Vance.

    The Cleveland businessman’s entry into the 2024 race sets up another potentially expensive and contentious primary in the state after the 2022 contest, which was driven by several self-funding candidates, was one of the costliest that year.

    Other potential candidates who have expressed interest include 8th district Rep. Warren Davidson and Secretary of State Frank La Rose.

    Brown is one of several vulnerable Democrats who the party is defending as it seeks to hold its slim majority in the upper chamber. Trump carried the state in 2016 and 2020, and Vance won the 2022 race by nearly 7 points despite a spirited challenge by Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan.

    Still, Brown, seeking his fourth term, won his last race in 2018 by nearly 7 points, bolstering Democratic hopes that they can hang on in a state that has trended increasingly Republican over the last several election cycles. And Brown had more than $3.4 million stockpiled in Senate campaign account as of the end of last year.

    Democrats, though, will be pressed to defend Brown amid a challenging map that includes other incumbents in similarly vulnerable positions, such as Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia and Sen. Jon Tester in Montana, along with an unpredictable three-way race in Arizona.

    CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect that former President Donald Trump endorsed JD Vance in the 2022 Ohio Senate race after a meeting with Bernie Moreno.

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  • The GOP’s silence on guns and abortion is a short-term response with a long-term problem | CNN Politics

    The GOP’s silence on guns and abortion is a short-term response with a long-term problem | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Yet another mass shooting and a new blow to nationwide abortion rights left Republicans facing pointed questions on two of the most emotive issues dominating American politics.

    But the GOP had almost nothing to say, reflecting the way that it is locked into positions that animate its most fervent grassroots voters but risk alienating it from much of the public.

    A controversial ruling from a conservative judge in Texas that could halt the use of a popular abortion drug nationwide, and another shooting spree – this time in Kentucky – sparked outrage among Democrats and calls for strengthening gun safety measures and protecting abortion rights.

    Most Republicans stayed silent on the two issues on which they have achieved their political and policy goals but that are threatening the party’s long-term viability.

    After the shooting in downtown Louisville on Monday, Kentucky’s Republican senators issued condolences but offered no solutions about how the tragedy, which killed five people and injured eight others, might have been avoided. The gunman used a rifle in the attack after being notified of his impending dismissal from a job at a bank, a law enforcement official said.

    “We send our prayers to the victims, their families, and the city of Louisville as we await more information,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell wrote in a tweet that also praised first responders. And Sen. Rand Paul tweeted that he and his wife were “praying for everyone involved in the deadly shooting,” adding that “our hearts break for the families of those lost.”

    Democrats offered condolences too, but also had a more practical response. President Joe Biden called for the kind of gun safety reform that is impossible with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and without Democrats holding more seats in the Senate. “Too many Americans are paying for the price of inaction with their lives. When will Republicans in Congress act to protect our communities?” Biden asked in a tweet.

    Democratic Rep. Morgan McGarvey, who represents Louisville in Congress, called for action to tackle gun violence. “Thoughts and prayers for those we lost, those who are injured and their loved ones and families are appreciated, but today serves as a stark reminder that we need to address gun violence at the national level,” the freshman congressman said.

    Over the last few decades, Republicans have expertly used gun rights and a push to overturn a constitutional right to end a pregnancy to energize their most loyal voters. And on each issue, in a purely political sense, it’s hard to argue that they have not racked up considerable wins.

    There are more guns than ever in the US. Republicans around the country are leading efforts to slash firearms regulation and broaden citizens’ capacity to carry guns. Despite a murderous run of massacres in schools, nightclubs, places of worship and, on Monday, in a bank, the party has effectively closed down all significant attempts in Congress to make it harder to buy weapons – including the assault-style rifles used in recent shootings. A bipartisan effort to persuade states to embrace red flag laws, which could help authorities confiscate weapons from people thought to pose a risk, did pass Congress last year. But its success was all the more notable because of the paucity of other federal legislation in previous decades.

    On abortion, meanwhile, the 50-year conservative campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade ranks as one of the most stunning victories for a long-term political movement in history. It reached its apex with the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.

    Yet it’s possible that these famous wins could carry a significant risk for the party.

    South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace calls herself “pro-life,” but also warns that GOP-backed state laws that don’t provide exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother alienate large and vital sections of the US electorate. Mace was a rare Republican to publicly respond to Texas Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s abortion drug ruling last week, which Democratic groups have seized on to renew claims Republicans want a national ban on abortion.

    “We are getting it wrong on this issue,” Mace said on “CNN This Morning” on Monday. “We’ve got to show compassion to women, especially to women who’ve been raped. We’ve got to show compassion on the abortion issue, because by and large, most of Americans aren’t with us on this issue.” She called for the US Food and Drug Administration to ignore the judge’s ruling, aligning her with progressive Democrats like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

    One reason Republicans have been successful in tightening abortion restrictions and loosening those on guns has been that their voters have embraced these two issues. They are make-or-break for many activists, and candidates have shaped their platforms as a result. Democrats, however, have traditionally been less successful in energizing their core supporters on both. The disparate intensity level among the parties was one factor in the sequence of events that led to a new conservative Supreme Court majority that overturned Roe. For years, Democrats trod carefully around the guns issue, wary of alienating more moderate or soft conservative voters.

    But there are signs this could be changing. Abortion was a huge motivator for Democratic voters in last year’s midterms and the Supreme Court’s ruling clearly hamstrung Republican candidates in several key swing races. In Wisconsin, which reverted to a pre-Civil War law banning almost all abortions once Roe was overturned, the issue was critical to the victory of a liberal candidate in last week’s state Supreme Court race, which flipped the conservative majority.

    Liberal fury over the failure to enact new gun laws stoked a political storm in Tennessee last week. Republicans expelled two Black Democratic lawmakers from the state’s House of Representatives for leading a gun reform protest inside the chamber after a mass shooting at a Nashville school the week before that killed six people, including three nine-year-olds. This highlighted a growing frustration among Democrats at their impotence in the face of endless mass shootings. (One of the lawmakers, Justin Jones, was sworn back into the chamber on Monday on an interim basis after the Nashville Metropolitan Council voted to appoint him.)

    Despite this shifting political terrain, there are few signs that top Republican leaders are willing to change the party’s tack on guns or abortion. Or that they have the political room to do so. Even though it makes sense for Republicans to appeal to a more general audience to avoid alienating crucial suburban, moderate and female voters, the vehemence of their core supporters makes this an impossible straddle. It’s a similar dynamic to the one many GOP power brokers have long faced with Donald Trump. The former president remains so popular with base voters that his GOP critics risk their careers by publicly opposing him. And yet, he has long been a liability among general election voters – as proved by the GOP’s performance in 2020 and 2022.

    The party’s failure to align with most Americans on abortion and on some aspects of gun safety may not be sustainable. Polls show that many voters, including younger Americans, are being driven away from the party because of its positions.

    In a Harvard Youth Poll released last week, which was completed before the shooting in Nashville, 63% of 18-to-29-year-olds said that gun laws should be made more strict, with 22% saying they should be kept as they are, and 13% that they should be made less strict. Young Americans are generally on the same page as the public as a whole. In October 2022, 57% of all Americans said that laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, with 32% saying laws should be kept as they were and 10% that laws should be made less strict, according to a Gallup survey from October 2022.

    On abortion, only 26% of Americans favor laws making it illegal to use or receive through the mail FDA-approved drugs for a medical abortion, while 72% oppose such laws, according to a PRRI report that analyzed polling on the issue over the last year. While 50% of White evangelical Protestants favor making it illegal to use or receive those drugs, less than half of any other racial, gender, educational or age group agree.

    In a Gallup poll in January, 46% of Americans said they were dissatisfied with US abortion policies and would prefer to see less strict abortion laws. That’s a record high in the firm’s 23-year trend, up from 30% in January 2022 and just 17% in 2021.

    Given these numbers, and recent election results, it’s not surprising that some Republicans not actively courting the base may choose not to speak at length on guns and abortion. And such data may also help to explain the GOP’s increasingly anti-democratic turn as it seeks to cling onto power – whether in efforts to expel Tennessee lawmakers for disturbing decorum with their anti-gun protests or through Trump’s insistence he won an election he actually lost.

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  • Senate Republicans confront 2024 primary challenges and Trump’s influence | CNN Politics

    Senate Republicans confront 2024 primary challenges and Trump’s influence | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Kari Lake – the unapologetic supporter of former President Donald Trump and vanquished candidate for Arizona governor – privately made a trip to National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters in February where she discussed the prospects of shaking up the map and running for Senate.

    But Lake, who has faced blowback over pushing baseless accusations of election fraud, was given this suggestion from NRSC officials: Shift to more effective messaging and away from claims about a stolen election, according to sources familiar with the matter.

    The meeting, which was described as a positive one, focused on how Senate bids often turn on issues that are different than governor’s races, multiple sources said. Top Republicans quietly acknowledge Lake could become a frontrunner if she runs in the primary, hoping to steer her towards a viable campaign if she mounts one, even as Arizona’s Pinal County sheriff is expected to soon jump into the race while independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema actively prepares a reelection bid herself.

    And that’s just one state.

    The Arizona race is one of several landmines that Republican leaders are navigating as they work behind the scenes to avoid a repeat of the 2022 debacle that saw weaker candidates emerge from contested primaries – only to peter out and collapse in the general election and hand Democrats a 51-49 Senate majority. Several of those candidates were backed by Trump as the NRSC – run at the time by Florida Sen. Rick Scott – opted to stay away from Republican primaries.

    Now, the NRSC – run by Sen. Steve Daines of Montana – has taken a much more hands-on approach to primaries, actively working on candidate recruitment and vetting. And the committee is weighing whether to spend big bucks in primaries to help root out weaker candidates, a move that risks setting up a clash with hard-right candidates aligning themselves with Trump.

    “You need to learn from your past mistakes,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, told CNN. “If you don’t make adjustments, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, it’s insanity.”

    Privately, Daines has spoken multiple times with Trump and has been in touch with his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., while national Republicans point to the NRSC’s early endorsement and fundraising for Rep. Jim Banks in the Indiana Senate race as an example of how the party’s warring wings can try to avoid messy primaries.

    The goal, GOP sources say, is to keep Trump aligned with Republican leadership – even as the former president has furiously attacked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the aftermath of the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, and as the Senate GOP leader has stayed silent amid the former president’s indictment on 34 felony charges in New York. Daines, however, has been vocal in his defense of Trump.

    “I have a very good relationship with the president. We talk, and it’s no secret we’ve been friends for a long time,” Daines told CNN when asked about the Senate races. “And he provides great insights. And I also provide my thoughts as well. And we have open lines of communication.”

    Daines added: “Wherever we can find common ground is a good thing.”

    That relationship could be put to the test in key battleground states. In West Virginia, Republican leaders are preparing to close ranks behind Gov. Jim Justice, who is seriously weighing a run for the seat occupied by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. A Justice bid would put him against Rep. Alex Mooney, who had won Trump’s backing in a competitive House race in the last cycle but now has the support of the conservative Club for Growth’s political arm.

    In Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano – the controversial candidate who lost a bid for governor last fall but had the support of Trump in the primary – says he’s “still praying” on whether to mount a bid for the Senate, something Republicans in Washington fear. The NRSC plans to put its muscle behind the potential candidacy of David McCormick, the hedge fund executive who narrowly lost the Pennsylvania Senate GOP primary in 2022, according to Republican sources who view him as their best bet at picking up the seat next year.

    “I haven’t decided yet on 2024. I’m thinking about it,” McCormick told CNN. “You run for office … because you think you have something to contribute. You think it’s a moment where you might be able to serve, and if you lose, that motivation doesn’t necessarily go away.”

    And in Montana, Rep. Matt Rosendale, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, is weighing a run in a race that could put him up against two other potential candidates viewed by senior Republicans as more electable – Montana attorney general Austin Knudsen and businessman Tim Sheehy – against Democratic Sen. Jon Tester. Rosendale attended an event last Tuesday in Mar-a-Lago following Trump’s arraignment in New York, a sign one Trump adviser saw as an effort to secure an endorsement ahead of a potential bid.

    Rosendale told CNN he’s in no rush to make a decision.

    “We’re just taking a nice slow time to let the people in Montana decide who they want to replace him with,” Rosendale said of Tester. “I feel very sure he will be replaced.” He added that Daines “is my senator” and that “I see him regularly.”

    Tester contended that the Republican nominee makes little difference to him.

    “I think the person who runs against me is the person McConnell chooses,” Tester said. “Whoever that is, I don’t think it matters much: Same election.”

    Top Republicans say they will have to make key strategic decisions on how to engage in some of these races – or whether to stay out altogether, as they might in Ohio as party leaders view the emerging field as full of electable candidates against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

    If they come in too aggressively, it could prompt blowback and rally the right behind a potentially weaker candidate. But if they disengage, they could see their favored candidate struggle to gain traction.

    In Wisconsin, Republican officials are urging Rep. Mike Gallagher to run, though he could face a potential primary there as well, as former Senate candidate Eric Hovde and others weigh a run. Gallagher, who is chairing a House panel focused on China, said of a potential run against Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin: “I’m not thinking about it at present,” citing his legislative work and family commitments. But he left the door open.

    “I’d never conceived of this as a long-term thing; I don’t think Congress should be a career,” Gallagher said, adding: “I’m going to weigh all those factors and see where I can make the best impact.”

    In interviews with roughly a dozen top senators, nearly all of them agreed they need to be hyper-focused this cycle on helping candidates who can win not only a primary election, but a general election — repeatedly referencing “candidate quality” as their 2024 motto.

    Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a member of Senate GOP leadership and former NRSC chairman, has long had to contend with primary fights between the party establishment and activist base – battles that had effectively cost them the chance at the Senate majority in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles, in addition to 2022.

    “It never goes away,” Cornyn said of the primary complications. “Republicans need to make up their mind. Do we want to win, or do we want to lose? And I think that it’s that simple, and I think people are tired of losing.”

    Yet some on the right are warning against party leaders picking and choosing their candidates – including Scott, who defends his hands-off approach in the last cycle.

    “I believe the citizens of the state ought to pick,” Scott said, adding: “A lot of these weaker candidates often are the ones who actually win. I was not the establishment candidate.”

    Scott’s fellow Florida Republican, Marco Rubio, was not backed by the NRSC in the 2010 election cycle. But he galvanized the GOP base and defeated Charlie Crist, who later became a Democrat.

    “I’m not a big believer that you can determine who the weaker candidate is. A lot of people up here then would not have been their choice,” Rubio told CNN. “Obviously there might be some exceptions here or there, but generally the NRSC should be engaged in helping whoever the Republican nominee is to win the general election.”

    Unlike the last cycle — when the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund and the Rick Scott-run NRSC clashed publicly over the approach to expanding the Senate map — this time, the two committees are largely aligned. Republicans are betting that their preferred chances will vastly improve with the help of big donors and nationwide fundraising – and potentially an aggressive ad campaign in the primary to derail weaker opponents.

    “As we look across the country and look at different traces, it’s pretty straightforward,” Daines said. “We want to see candidates who can win a primary election and also win a general.”

    The map heavily favors the GOP – with 23 Democratic and independent seats in cycle compared to just 11 Republicans facing re-election. But Republicans, burnt by their past failures, are well aware that defeating an incumbent is a difficult task and could grow more challenging in a presidential election year, especially in swing states if Trump is the nominee. Behind the scenes, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is trying to limit Democratic retirements.

    And Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, was skeptical that a more aggressive GOP intervention from Washington would solve Republican woes.

    “I’m not sure who the Republicans will put forward as their nominees, but normally the folks who get to determine who the nominee is are the voters in those individual states in the primaries,” Peters said in an interview. “If we look at what happened last cycle, those primary voters tended to pick highly flawed candidates, and I expect that will happen again.”

    The fight for the seat occupied by Sinema has quickly emerged as the messiest affair – for both parties.

    Sinema’s recent change in party identification — switching from a Democrat to an independent — poses a fresh challenge that party leaders will have to navigate, as it could set up an unpredictable three-way race. Sinema has not yet said if she will run again, but she has been raising enormous sums in preparation for a potential bid and has been meeting with strategists and advisers to map out plans for a possible campaign.

    And Democratic leaders are worried that backing a fellow Democrat in the primary could end up alienating Sinema and potentially lead her to caucus with the GOP, forcing them to stay neutral for now.

    “She’s a very effective legislator,” Schumer, who so far is neutral in the race, said when asked about Sinema recently.

    On the GOP side, several candidates who tried — and failed — to win statewide races last cycle are also complicating that strategy, making it a key source of anxiety among many top Republicans and the Senate committees, according to Republican sources.

    Those candidates include Lake and the 2020 Senate GOP nominee, Blake Masters, two of the most Trumpian candidates who lost last year. Both Lake and Masters garnered enormous support among the GOP base for leaning into 2020 election denials and the populist ideals that Trump touted throughout his presidency. Masters has discussed a potential 2024 Senate bid with several Republicans, though it’s unclear whether he will run, GOP sources say.

    Lake met with the NRSC for roughly an hour in February and is expected to meet with them again in the coming weeks, sources familiar with the meeting told CNN. The issue of focusing on claims of a stolen election was one point discussed at the meeting, the sources said.

    “The point that has been brought up, which Kari knows, is that the issue sets are different from a governor’s race. She knows you can’t run on that because it’s not something, as a senator, that you can fix,” a source close to Lake said, referencing her rhetoric around stolen elections. “The conversation was more about how the issues are different between a governor’s race and a Senate race.”

    Senior Republicans acknowledge that her ultimate decision on whether to enter the race could freeze out other candidates, particularly those wanting to run in the same lane, with the source close to Lake saying establishment-minded Republicans have been reaching out to her about a potential run. The source said Lake has a 200,000-plus donor list she could pull support from and believes she would have “widespread support” if she decides to run.

    But many in the top ranks are skeptical about her chances.

    “If you take a look at the race, where Sen. Sinema is probably going to take some of the right, left and center, it’s going to make for a difficult path for a Republican in that state in any scenario,” North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis told CNN. “The party there is, I think, set on Lake if she decides to run with it, but, I mean, we just have to see how well she performs.”

    Tillis added that, given the “three-way race dynamic,” Lake “is not going to be able to make a lot of headway there.”

    Cornyn said of Lake: “Her recent track record doesn’t indicate that she would be successful. We need candidates who can broaden their appeal beyond the base and win a general.”

    Masters, meanwhile, has quietly reached out to some advisers about what another Senate run would look like and has spoken with some senior GOP officials about a 2024 run.

    Other potential GOP candidates include Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, who is expected to announce a Senate run as soon as this week and is viewed favorably by some top Republicans, according to GOP sources. Abe Hamadeh, formerly the Republican nominee for Arizona attorney general, is also weighing a run. And both Lamb and Hamadeh met recently with NRSC officials, but they have not met directly with Daines, according to a source familiar with the meetings.

    Two other Republicans, Jim Lamon and Karrin Taylor Robson, are also considering jumping into the race, sources familiar with the matter say. Lamon and Robson, who ran in 2022 for Senate and governor respectively, did not receive Trump’s support.

    Robson recently met with the NRSC, and many within the GOP committee “like her and see her as a quality candidate,” a source familiar with the meeting said. Lamon has not yet met with the NRSC, but is expected to set up a meeting in the coming months.

    Arizona’s Senate primary is not until August 6, 2024, and the filing deadline to enter is April 8, 2024 — giving them a long runway to decide whether or not to run — further complicating GOP leadership’s calculus on how to navigate the race dynamics.

    “I just think we’re, we’re more likely to get people elected if they’re focused on the future, as opposed to focusing on what happened in 2020,” Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican of Utah, said when asked about a potential Lake candidacy. “I think the American people have made their judgment about the election and want to move on. So, let’s talk about the future and where we’re headed, and if we’ve got a candidate that is consumed with his or her past, it’s most likely a losing candidate.”

    Caroline Wren, a senior adviser to Lake, told CNN, “There’s no doubt Kari Lake is a formidable force in the Republican party right now, but she’s still focused on her lawsuit in Arizona,” referring to her efforts to dispute her loss in the governor’s race.

    Rubio said that Lake could be a strong Senate candidate, despite her shortfall last year.

    “She was a very competitive candidate. I think I trust the Republican voters in Arizona to pick the nominee,” Rubio said. “I don’t think Washington should be stepping in to do it.”

    But Democrats believe that a Lake candidacy will only bolster their chances, even if Sinema decides to run.

    Rep. Ruben Gallego, the Arizona Democrat running for his party’s nomination in the Senate race, suggested to CNN he was praying for a Lake candidacy.

    “I’m a practicing Catholic – so I have these votive candles for different things,” Gallego said. “I have a special candle for Kari Lake to jump in.”

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  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reiterates call to impeach Justice Clarence Thomas over trips with GOP donor | CNN Politics

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reiterates call to impeach Justice Clarence Thomas over trips with GOP donor | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York reiterated on Sunday her call for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas following revelations that he didn’t disclose several luxury trips subsidized by a Republican megadonor.

    In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” Ocasio-Cortez called for an inquiry into the matter, saying it was “the House’s responsibility to pursue that investigation in the form of impeachment.”

    “I believe that we should pursue the course. And if it is Republicans that decide to protect those who are breaking the law, then they are the ones who then are responsible for that decision,” she said of the House GOP majority, which would be unlikely to pursue such an investigation. “But we should not be complicit in that.”

    Ocasio-Cortez first called for Thomas’ impeachment on Twitter on Thursday following a bombshell ProPublica report that detailed his travel paid for by Republican donor Harlan Crow, which included trips on the donor’s yacht and private jet.

    Thomas said Friday that he did not disclose the luxury travel because he was advised at the time that he did not have to report it.

    In a rare statement sent via the Supreme Court’s public information office, Thomas said that the trips he and his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, took with the Crows were the “sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends” that he was advised did not require disclosure.

    Two dozen Democratic lawmakers from both chambers sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday, calling for a “swift, thorough, independent and transparent investigation” into whether ethics rules and laws were violated by Thomas’ trips.

    But Ocasio-Cortez said she did not have faith in the Supreme Court to conduct an internal investigation, saying, “what we are seeing right now is a breaking of the law.”

    The ProPublica report describes Thomas accepting travel hospitality from Crow that included lavish trips to Indonesia, New Zealand, California, Texas and Georgia. Some of the trips reportedly included travel on Crow’s super yacht or stays at properties owned by Crow or his company.

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  • Tennessee House GOP expels 2 Democrats in retaliation over gun control protest, on ‘sad day for democracy’ | CNN

    Tennessee House GOP expels 2 Democrats in retaliation over gun control protest, on ‘sad day for democracy’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two Democratic members of the Tennessee House of Representatives were expelled while a third member was spared in an ousting by Republican lawmakers that was decried by the trio as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated.

    Protesters packed the state Capitol on Thursday to denounce the expulsions of Reps. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson and to advocate for gun reform measures a little over a week after a mass shooting devastated a Nashville school.

    Speaking to CNN’s Don Lemon on “CNN This Morning,” Jones decried the actions of House Republicans.

    “What happened yesterday was a very sad day for democracy,” Jones said. “The nation was able to see we don’t have democracy in Tennessee.”

    Jones confirmed if he is reappointed to the seat by the 40-member Nashville Metro Council, he would serve. “I have no regrets. I will continue to stand up for my constituents.”

    Nashville City Council Member Russ Bradford told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota he would be voting to send Jones back to the State House.

    “That is who the people of House District 52 elected this last November and so it’s very important that, unlike my state legislature, I will listen to the voice of my constituents and I will do what needs to be done to support democracy in this state,” Bradford said.

    Following their expulsion – which House Republicans said was in response to the representatives’ leadership of gun control demonstrations on the chamber floor last week – Jones and Pearson called for protesters to return to the Capitol when the House is back in session on Monday.

    Rep. Gloria Johnson, who is White and wasn’t ousted, slammed the votes removing Jones and Pearson, who are Black, as racist. Asked by CNN why she believes she wasn’t expelled, Johnson said the reason is “pretty clear.”

    “I am a 60-year-old White woman, and they are two young Black men,” Johnson said. She added that Pearson and Jones were questioned in a “demeaning way” by lawmakers before their expulsion.

    President Joe Biden on Thursday called the expulsions “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent,” and criticized Republicans for not taking greater action on gun reform.

    Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Nashville Friday to advocate for stricter gun control measures and highlight the importance of protecting Americans from gun violence. She also privately met with Jones, Pearson and Johnson.

    “We understand when we took an oath to represent the people who elected us that we speak on behalf of them. It wasn’t about the three of these leaders,” Harris said in remarks after the meeting. “It was about who they were representing. it’s about whose voices they were channeling. Understand that — and is that not what a democracy allows?”

    After a shooter killed three 9-year-old students and three adults at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville last week, Jones, Pearson and Johnson staged a demonstration on the House floor calling for gun reform and leading chants with a bullhorn.

    Jones said he and the other lawmakers had been blocked from speaking about gun violence on the House floor that week, saying that their microphones were cut off whenever they raised the topic, according to CNN affiliate WSMV.

    Following the three representatives’ demonstrations last Thursday, Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton called their actions “unacceptable” and argued that they broke “several rules of decorum and procedure on the House floor.”

    On Monday, three resolutions were filed seeking the expulsions of Jones, Pearson and Johnson. The three members had already been removed from their committee assignments following the protest.

    The resolutions, filed by Republican Reps. Bud Hulsey, Gino Bulso and Andrew Farmer, said the lawmakers “did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor” to the House.

    Tennessee Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison told CNN that the caucus believed the issue did not need to be considered by an ethics committee and accused Jones and Pearson of having a “history” of disrupting floor proceedings.

    “It’s not possible for us to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor,” Faison said.

    The chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party, Hendrell Remus, called the move a “direct political attack” on the party.

    “Their expulsion sets a dangerous new precedent for political retribution,” a statement from the party said. “The day that a majority can simply expel a member of the opposing party without legitimate cause threatens the fabric of democracy in our state and creates a reckless roadmap for GOP controlled state legislatures across the nation.”

    Historically, the Tennessee House had only expelled two other representatives since the Reconstruction, and the move requires a two-thirds majority vote of total members.

    The expulsions have been criticized by Democratic politicians and civil liberties groups who say voters in Jones’ and Pearson’s districts have been disenfranchised. Others, including Jones, have said the move distracts from the real problem of gun violence.

    “Rather than address the issue of banning assault weapons, my former colleagues – a Republican supermajority – are assaulting democracy,” Jones told CNN. “And that should scare all of us across the nation.”

    Rep. Sam McKenzie, chair of the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators, said the expulsion of Jones and Pearson overshadowed the issue they were protesting.

    “This was not about that kangaroo court that happened yesterday. This was about those three young children and those three guardians, those three adults, whose lives were taken away senselessly,” McKenzie said.

    “The world saw what happened yesterday,” McKenzie added, condemning the actions of House GOP leaders. “They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

    The NAACP also condemned the expulsions, calling them “horrific” but “not surprising.”

    “It is inexcusable that, while (Jones and Pearson) upheld their oath to serve Tennesseans who are grieving the loss of last week’s mass murder, their colleagues decided to use racial tropes to divert attention from their failure to protect the people they are supposed to serve,” NAACP President & CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement.

    “We will continue to stand with these champions of democracy, and are prepared to take whatever legal action is necessary to ensure that this heinous attempt to silence the voice of the people is addressed in a court of law,” Johnson added.

    On “CNN This Morning,” Jones said, “I think what happened was a travesty of democracy because they expelled the two youngest Black lawmakers – which is no coincidence – from the Tennessee state legislature because we are outspoken, because we fight for our district.”

    Jones described the session as a “toxic, racist work environment,” and said he spoke out because the House speaker ruled him out of order when he brought up the issue of gun violence. “If I didn’t know this happened to me, I would think that this was 1963 instead of 2023,” he added.

    Justin Jones carries his name tag after he is expelled from the Tennessee House of Representatives on April 6, 2023.

    Prior to the vote, Pearson publicly shared a letter he sent to House members in which he said he took accountability for “not following decorum” on the House floor but defended his actions.

    Following their removal, pictures and profiles of Pearson and Jones have been pulled from the Tennessee General Assembly’s website and their districts have been listed as vacant.

    More about the three representatives:

    Rep. Justin Pearson:

  • District: 86
  • Age: 28
  • In office: 2023-
  • Issues: Environmental, racial and economic justice
  • Of note: Successfully blocked oil pipeline from being built in south Memphis
  • Recent awards: The Root’s 100 Most Influential Black Americans (2022)Rep. Gloria Johnson:
  • District: 90
  • Age: 60
  • In office: 2013-2015, 2019-
  • Issues: Education, jobs, health care
  • Of note: Successfully organized in favor of Insure Tennessee, the state’s version of Medicaid expansion
  • Recent awards: National Foundation of Women Legislators Women of Excellence (2022)Rep. Justin Jones:
  • District: 52
  • Age: 27
  • In office: 2023-
  • Issues: Health care, environmental justice
  • Of note: Wrote “The People’s Plaza: 62 Days of Nonviolent Resistance” after helping to organize a 2022 sit-in
  • Recent awards: Ubuntu Award for outstanding service, Vanderbilt Organization of Black Graduate and Professional Students (2019)

According to the Tennessee Constitution, since there is more than twelve months until the next general election in November 2024, a special election will be held to fill the seats.

Tennessee law allows for the appointment of interim House members to fill the seats of expelled lawmakers until an election is held by local legislative bodies.

In Jones’ case, the local legislative body is the Metropolitan Council of Davidson County in Nashville. The council has scheduled a special meeting Monday afternoon to address the vacancy of the District 52 seat and possibly vote on an interim successor.

For Pearson’s District 86 seat, the local legislative body is the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in Memphis.

It is unclear if or when a special meeting might be called there.

According to Johnson, Jones and Pearson could be reappointed to their seats.

“I think we might have these two young men back very soon,” Johnson said Thursday. “It is my promise to fight like hell to get both of them back.”

Pearson said he hopes to “get reappointed to serve in the state legislature by the Shelby County Commissioners, and a lot of them, I know, are upset about the anti-democratic behavior of this White supremacist-led state legislature.”

Speaking to a crowd following their expulsion, Pearson and Jones insisted they would persist in advocating for gun control measures and encouraged protesters to continue showing up to the Capitol.

The House has only expelled two state representatives in the last 157 years. The first expulsion, in 1980, was of a representative found guilty of accepting a bribe while in office, and the most recent came in 2016 when another member was expelled over allegations of sexual harassment.

Democratic Rep. Joe Towns called the move a “nuclear option.”

“You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, Kathy Sinback, called the move in a statement a “targeted expulsion of two Black legislators without due process.”

She continued, “It raises questions about the disparate treatment of Black representatives, while continuing the shameful legacy of disenfranchising and silencing the voices of marginalized communities and the Black lawmakers they elect.”

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  • House Oversight Committee quietly issues several new subpoenas as part of Biden family probe | CNN Politics

    House Oversight Committee quietly issues several new subpoenas as part of Biden family probe | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Oversight Chairman James Comer has quietly issued several subpoenas for documents and bank records as part of the Republican-led investigation into the financial dealings of President Joe Biden’s family, according to an internal memo shared among Democrats on the panel.

    The memo, obtained by CNN, reveals new details about the subpoenas issued by Comer as part of the ongoing probe, which has stoked the ire of Democratic members who have accused the Kentucky Republican of covertly investigating business dealings by the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

    “This memorandum serves to ensure that Committee Democrats have access to all relevant information, including the six document subpoenas issued to date,” it says.

    The memo comes a day after the committee’s top Democrat, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, criticized committee Republicans for “shielding information” related to the panel’s investigations. House rules mandate that committee materials are shared between the majority and minority.

    “Committee Republicans’ decision to conduct this probe behind a veil of secrecy runs counter to the Committee’s traditional commitment to transparency and raises serious questions about the integrity of the investigation,” Democrats wrote in the memo.

    According to the Democrats’ memo, subpoenas have been sent to: Bank of America, Cathay Bank, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC USA N.A and Mervyn Yan, a former business associate of Hunter Biden. In most cases the subpoenas to the banks span 14 years and relate to six individuals and 10 different entities, House Democrats say. The business entities covered by the subpoenas include several with ties to China and the energy sector, according to those listed in the memo.

    The subpoena to HSBC was initially sent, and later reissued, after the bank requested an updated cover page, according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for HSBC declined to comment.

    CNN has reached out to JP Morgan Chase & Co., and an email address associated with Mervyn Yan for comment.

    “Cathay Bank, a NASDAQ-listed, U.S. financial institution for over 60 years, has cooperated with the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability’s request for information,” said a bank spokesperson. “The bank intends to continue to cooperate with the committee.”

    CNN first reported on Comer’s subpoena for Bank of America in March to compel the bank to turn over records relating to three of Hunter Biden’s business associates.

    The six subpoenas listed do not include “friendly” subpoenas Comer has issued to some witnesses, including former Twitter employees, who have testified before the committee.

    “Despite their vast efforts, Committee Republicans have failed to identify any evidence connecting President Biden to or implicating him in the foreign transactions under investigation,” according to the memo from Democrats.

    Comer slammed the Democrats’ memo in a statement on Friday. “Ranking Member Raskin has again disclosed Committee’s subpoenas in a cheap attempt to thwart cooperation from other witnesses,” Comer said. “No one should be fooled by Ranking Member Raskin’s games. We have the bank records, and the facts are not good for the Biden family.”

    Democrats also laid out what they called “inconsistencies” among the investigations that Comer and the panel’s Republican members are interested in pursuing, arguing they are only interested in probing the Biden family, but not do want to investigate similar issues pertaining to former President Donald Trump and his family.

    “To date, Chairman Comer has issued six subpoenas and sent 39 letters in the Biden family investigation alone. Notably, Mr. Comer has failed to issue a single document subpoena in any other Committee investigation this Congress,” Democrats wrote.

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  • Biden tells officials he’s ‘definitely running’ but formal announcement could wait for summer | CNN Politics

    Biden tells officials he’s ‘definitely running’ but formal announcement could wait for summer | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden often envisions what he could accomplish with a second term, advisers and allies who speak with him say, but he has expressed no urgency to formally launch a campaign to win another four years in office.

    The president has not settled on a campaign manager, narrowed down whether a headquarters would be placed in Philadelphia or Wilmington, Delaware, or selected a date to make a reelection bid official.

    Long known for stretching out major decisions – including several times as a senator when he was weighing a run for president – Biden is offering up one final wait for Democrats as they look ahead to next year’s vote.

    “In what I think is the unlikely chance that he ultimately decides not to run this time, he will need to do so soon enough that other candidates can get into the field to be competitive,” said Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, the president’s close friend and ally. “I am encouraging him to run, and I think he will run. But he will make that decision on his timeline, not mine.”

    The President has been notoriously deliberate over the course of decades in public office, often putting off major decisions until the 11th hour. But holding off on making a reelection announcement is rooted in far more practical considerations, aides say, first and foremost of which is focusing on governing matters such as raising the debt ceiling and avoiding getting drawn into the political fray a moment sooner than he must.

    “He’s not ambivalent about serving a second term, but he’s in no rush to be a candidate again,” a longtime Democratic adviser, who has worked closely with Biden over the years, told CNN. “What’s the upside?”

    That question came into sharp view this week, given how former President Donald Trump dominated the conversation and commanded outsize attention with his arraignment on criminal charges in New York. And the Democratic Party has largely coalesced behind Biden, particularly since the midterm elections last fall, and know the lack of a serious primary threat offers him “the ability to move on his own time,” a senior White House official said.

    Biden has told several elected officials in private conversations that he’s in – “I am definitely running,” he told one person a few weeks ago, according to that person – but he has been less forthcoming on timing.

    April had for a while been seen as a likely timeline for announcing his candidacy, given that it comes four years after he jumped into the race in 2019. And as vice president, he joined then-President Barack Obama in opening a reelection campaign in April 2011.

    The timing of a Biden announcement is now more likely to be the summer rather than spring, three Democratic officials say, with a target date still not determined.

    “President Biden has been clear that he intends to run, and his focus is on finishing the work he’s doing for American families: continuing to bring manufacturing back from overseas, further cutting the deficit by having rich special interests pay their fair share, and standing up for fundamental rights like the freedom to choose,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates told CNN. “There has never been a timeframe for any announcement.”

    Outside of interviews, Biden has remained mostly silent about his reelection plans.

    That made two nods he gave recently to a likely run more notable. During an event handing out national Arts and Humanities medals at the White House last month, Biden said certain people were “ready to run” and, noting novelist Colson Whitehead’s two Pulitzer Prizes, said he was “kind of looking for a back-to-back myself.”

    The allusions were hardly lost on anyone in the East Room, many of whom were ardent supporters of Biden’s last presidential bid and are eager to back a campaign for a second term.

    For other observers, including some in touch with the president that week, the asides also felt like subtle brushback against those who still question whether he actually plans to run again.

    Signs of a pending campaign have been hard to miss.

    Biden has spent the opening months of the year traveling the country to promote the accomplishments of the first half of his term at events that could easily be confused for campaign stops. He has intensified his attacks on Republicans, including taking aim at anti-LGBTQ laws in Florida championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely contender for the GOP nomination. And a string of moves on immigration, crime and energy have bolstered Biden’s image as a moderate while angering some liberals for appearing to back off his prior promises.

    Anita Dunn, at left, senior advisor to President Joe Biden who is part of the team working on Biden's reelection strategy, is seen the US Capitol on July 22, 2021 in Washington, DC.

    Taken together, the portrait is of a candidate-in-waiting. Yet Biden has put off making a final decision about running again, and the time frame for a potential announcement – never set in stone – appears to be extending further into the year.

    Last year, senior advisers to Biden discussed launching the reelection campaign early in the new year, and some members of Biden’s family, too, are said to have favored an announcement as early as February. But that once-debated aspirational timeline has come and gone. Now, sources say, a reelection announcement taking place even by the end of April doesn’t appear guaranteed.

    So far, the stretched-out timeline doesn’t appear to be worrying Democrats, at least outwardly.

    “I have no doubt President Biden will run again and will win,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democratic congressman who has long been a booster of Biden running, attended his very first fundraiser in April 2019 in Philadelphia on the day he launched and who hosted Biden a few weeks ago in his district for the official release of the budget. “As far as when he exactly officially announces his reelection campaign, I couldn’t care less. It’s meaningless.”

    Obama formally launched his reelection campaign in April 2011. George W. Bush filed official papers to run for reelection in May 2003 but didn’t begin actively campaigning until much later. Donald Trump declared his intention to run again the day he entered office in 2017.

    President Barack Obama (R) holds a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden in the Oval Office of the White House April 14, 2011 in Washington, DC.

    All of those presidents’ reelection bids were considered givens. While Biden has said from the get-go that he intends to run again, he faces perpetual misgivings over his advanced age and soft approval ratings. In a CNN Poll conducted by SSRS released Thursday, just a third of Americans said Biden deserves to be reelected, with a majority in his own party saying they would like to see someone else as the Democratic nominee for president next year.

    One person familiar with internal deliberations said a reason there is not a great sense of urgency is because potential Republican presidential candidates, too, have been slow to launch their campaigns. So far, the only major GOP candidates to have formally declared runs have been Trump, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

    Sources also said Biden feels that as an incumbent president, without any serious primary challengers, he has more time to make a final decision. And some close to Biden suggest there is political upside to waiting.

    “Why not just let the Republicans try to out-crazy each other for a little while?” asked one former White House official.

    As Democrats wait for Biden to officially declare a bid for a second term, some crucial decisions for the party remain in limbo. Among those is the location for the 2024 Democratic National Convention, as well as where a Biden reelection campaign would be headquartered – both decisions that need final sign-off from the President himself. He is said to personally favor a Wilmington, Delaware, base for his reelection campaign, though there has been active talk of centering it in Philadelphia as well.

    Inside the White House, deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon and senior adviser Anita Dunn – in consultation with other senior Biden aides – have been running point on preparations for a reelection campaign.

    Multiple sources said that names that have emerged for potential senior roles on the campaign include Jenn Ridder, national states director for Biden’s 2020 campaign, and Sam Cornale, executive director of the Democratic National Committee. Preston Elliott, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s former campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, director of White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, and Quentin Fulks, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock’s ex-campaign manager, are also said to be up for possible senior jobs.

    Other names in the mix include Emma Brown, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly’s former campaign manager, Roger Lau, deputy executive director at the DNC, Addisu Demissie, former campaign manager for New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s 2020 presidential campaign, Mitch Stewart, founding partner of 270 Strategies, and Rob Flaherty, director of digital strategy at the White House.

    Other top Democratic strategists who have been approached for jobs on the campaign declined to sign on, citing personal or professional reasons. And Biden himself hasn’t engaged deeply on the staffing for the senior levels of his potential campaign – another sign that an announcement, at least for now, appears to remain in the distance.

    Many of Biden’s longest-serving and most trusted advisers are expected to remain at the White House for the duration of the campaign, setting up a potentially awkward dynamic for any campaign manager. There is a general expectation that at least one of Biden’s longtime advisers would transfer from the White House to a campaign job, but it remains to be seen whom that would be.

    Other recently departed White House officials, including former chief of staff Ron Klain and ex-communications director Kate Bedingfield, have also suggested they are prepared to assist the campaign.

    At the handful of Democratic fundraising events the president has held over the past month, he has made only vague allusions to reelection.

    “We have a real choice in this election – unrelated to me, unrelated to me – between the Democrats and Republicans and what they stand for and what they’re about,” Biden said in Las Vegas, careful not to run afoul of federal rules barring fundraising before officially declaring his candidacy.

    Even as those around the president wait for an official 2024 decision, there is an air of inevitability about an eventual announcement. Those close to the White House have pointed to some of Biden’s recent policy decisions that have tacked to the center as sending an important signal that his mind is all but made up.

    Earlier this year, Biden blindsided many Democratic lawmakers when he announced that he would not veto legislation to block a controversial Washington, DC, crime bill that critics had painted as being weak on crime. The Biden administration has also rolled out a number of tough proposals aimed at curbing the entry of migrants at the US southern border, to the dismay of many Democratic lawmakers and immigration activists.

    A number of other domestic policy announcements aimed at eliminating so-called “junk fees” and lowering the price of insulin – all moves considered to have broad appeal – have also signaled to Biden allies a pivot to reelection mode.

    first lady jill biden saenz intvw

    Hear what first lady thinks about Biden’s reelection plans

    But that air of inevitability is also creating jitters among some Democrats, who worry that an unexpected scenario in which Biden decides not to seek a second term would spell disaster for the party.

    “Because there’s no clear backup plan. There’s no one else to get fired up about,” said one Democratic congressman. “It’s not like you see anybody else lining up in the wings to really to take him on.”

    Biden himself, along with his wife, have said in interviews they intend to mount another campaign barring unforeseen events.

    Yet both have given themselves some room to back away.

    “It’s Joe’s decision,” the first lady told CNN’s Arlette Saenz during a trip to Africa earlier this year. “And we support whatever he wants to do. If he’s in, we’re there. If he wants to do something else, we’re there too.”

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  • What happens next after the Tennessee House ousted 2 Democrats | CNN

    What happens next after the Tennessee House ousted 2 Democrats | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Just hours after the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to expel two Democratic lawmakers, their pictures and profiles had already been removed from the state’s General Assembly website, a symbol of the vacant seats that now need to be filled.

    Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were kicked out of the legislature by their colleagues in a vote Thursday. A third member also up for expulsion, Rep. Gloria Johnson, survived the vote, which required two-thirds majority support in the Republican-dominated chamber.

    All three had been accused by Republicans of “knowingly and intentionally” bringing “disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives” after they led a gun control protest on the House floor last month without being recognized, CNN affiliate WSMV reported.

    In the wake of a deadly shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, which killed three 9-year-olds and three adults, Jones said he and other lawmakers were blocked from raising the issue of gun violence on the House floor, with their microphones being cut off whenever they raised the topic, according to WSMV.

    According to the expulsion resolutions, Jones, Pearson and Johnson “began shouting without recognition” during their protest, and “proceeded to disrupt the proceedings of the House Representatives.”

    Republican leaders in the chamber condemned the lawmakers’ actions and moved quickly to remove their committee assignments and schedule a vote for their expulsion. Jones, Pearson and Johnson decried the Republicans’ actions as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated. Jones and Pearson are both young, Black men while Johnson is a White woman.

    As focus now shifts to filling the two new vacancies in the state House, local lawmakers in Jones’ and Pearson’s districts are working to determine their next steps, including possibly returning the ousted lawmakers to the chamber.

    According to the Tennessee Constitution, since there is more than twelve months until the next general election in November 2024, a special election will be held to fill the seats.

    In the time between when a seat becomes vacant and when a special election can be held, “the legislative body of the replaced legislator’s county of residence at the time of his or her election may elect an interim successor,” the state Constitution says.

    In Jones’ case, the local legislative body is the Metropolitan Council of Davidson County in Nashville. The council has scheduled a special meeting on Monday afternoon to address the vacancy of the District 52 seat and possibly vote on an interim successor.

    Nashville Mayor John Cooper has expressed his support for Jones and said on Twitter he believes the council will send him “right back to continue serving his constituents.”

    Jones told CNN’s Don Lemon on Friday that if he’s appointed by the council, he will serve. “I have no regrets. I will continue to stand up for my constituents,” he said.

    For Pearson’s District 86 seat, the local legislative body is the Shelby County Board of Commissioners in Memphis.

    Commission chairman Mickell Lowery plans to call a special meeting regarding Pearson’s expulsion, CNN affiliate WMC reported, but the timing of the meeting isn’t yet known.

    Pearson said he hopes to “get reappointed to serve in the state legislature,” and referring to the Shelby County commissioners, he said, “A lot of them, I know, are upset about the anti-democratic behavior of this White supremacist-led state legislature.”

    No date has been set for a special election but state law provides a time frame for when the governor should schedule them.

    A “writ of election” for “primary elections for nominations by statewide political parties to fill the vacancy” must be scheduled within 55 to 60 days, state code says. And a general election to fill the vacancy must be scheduled within 100 to 107 days.

    According to Tennessee law, a state representative must be at least 21 years old, a US citizen, a resident of the state for at least three years and a resident of their county for one year preceding the election.

    They must also be a qualified voter of the district, which requires a resident to be 18 years old and free of certain felony convictions.

    Both Jones and Pearson meet those qualifications.

    And while the state Constitution says members can be expelled for disorderly behavior with a two-thirds majority vote, they cannot be expelled “a second time for the same offense.”

    If Jones and Pearson are elected again, the Tennessee House Republican Caucus said in a statement it hopes “they will act as the thousands who have come before them – with respect for our institution, their fellow colleagues, and the seat that they hold.”

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  • Early struggles of new House Republican majority raise anxiety over high-stakes fights to come | CNN Politics

    Early struggles of new House Republican majority raise anxiety over high-stakes fights to come | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    As House Republicans prepared to pass a parental rights bill – a signature plank of their governing agenda – GOP leaders ran into unexpected headwinds.

    House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who is tasked with counting votes, began picking up on concerns from conservatives who thought the measure was federal overreach and moderates who worried about potential amendments related to transgender students.

    Even Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a member of Emmer’s whip team, informed leadership he would be voting against the bill – prompting grumbling from some senior Republicans who mused about kicking him off the whip team, according to sources familiar with the internal conversations.

    And when it came time for the floor vote, a last-minute hiccup – GOP Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas accidentally voting against the bill – prompted Emmer and other leaders to swarm Nehls on the floor and urge him to change his vote, a frantic scene as the clock ticked down and the measure’s fate hung in the balance.

    In the end, the bill wound up narrowly passing with five Republican defections – a margin that would have been enough to sink the legislation, had it not been for 10 Democratic absences.

    “Nobody ever said it was going to be easy,” Emmer told CNN in a phone interview. “You’re dealing with a whole bunch of people with a whole bunch of personalities, different points of view. (The amendment process) is an exciting process when members are able to come to the floor with an idea to impact a piece of legislation. … It’s always a challenge though.”

    Asked about Buck defying leadership on the education bill, Emmer said they are not booting him from the whip team, but he did joke about getting retribution.

    “I told him instead, we’re going to add a couple people to his whip card that will give him just a little bit more work,” Emmer said.

    The intense whipping effort and internal drama on a messaging bill that is dead-on-arrival in the Senate has become a recurring theme of the House GOP’s first 100 days in office. With little room for error in their razor-thin majority, Republicans have so far struggled to deliver on key priorities like the border and the budget amid their internal divisions – though they have notched some symbolic victories on energy and education, while actually succeeding in overturning a DC crime bill.

    Despite the handful of successes, the party’s more vulnerable members are frustrated with how the House Republican majority has so far spent its time in power, which has also included a heavy focus on investigations and running defense for former President Donald Trump.

    “I’m concerned about the kind of legislation that we’re working on, and what we’re talking about,” Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who represents a swing district, told CNN. “We just spent the last week talking about paying off porn stars, and that doesn’t get us anywhere closer to solving the inflation crisis, it doesn’t inch further to finding ways to protect women. … I’ve been very disappointed with what we’re doing right now.”

    Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, a moderate and outspoken critic of the GOP’s hardline border security bills, was even blunter: “I don’t have time to sit around all day long and drink scotch and bullsh*t about bills that have no chance of passing into law.”

    Senior Republicans chalked up the early struggles to natural growing pains that come with any new majority.

    “There’s always a bit of a learning curve. You have to understand, over half our members have never been in a majority,” said veteran Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a member of the GOP leadership team. “There’s a lot of learning that goes on – then add in a divided government and a narrow majority.”

    But the biggest hurdles are yet to come, with Congress gearing up to deal with must-pass items like lifting the nation’s debt ceiling and funding the government – two politically tricky issues with incredibly high stakes. And while GOP lawmakers say they are generally experiencing a honeymoon phase right now, the anxiety over the challenges ahead was palpable in interviews with over two dozen Republican members for this story.

    In a sign of how difficult things could get for GOP leaders, members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus are already talking about the cudgels they have at their disposal to use in those upcoming fights – namely, the power of any single member to force a floor vote on ousting the speaker. Restoring the procedural tool, known as the “motion to vacate,” was one of the key concessions Kevin McCarthy made in his bid to become speaker.

    “It hasn’t come up as far as in a serious conversation, as this needs to be enacted. But as we look at these issues … It does come up from time to time, as we game plan and we look at all of the alternatives and contingency plans that could play out over the next two years,” said freshman Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, one of the McCarthy holdouts who ended up voting “present” on the last ballot.

    Lawmakers have largely attributed the House GOP’s slow start to the historic, drawn-out speaker’s battle that delayed their ability to organize committees.

    But there are other reasons: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise initially promised to put 11 bills on the floor within their first two weeks in office, but leadership was forced to pull five of them – including legislation on hot-button topics like border security, law enforcement and abortion – amid resistance within their ranks.

    House Republicans also promised to produce a 10-year budget, but have struggled behind the scenes to find consensus and are now discussing delaying – or even skipping – a budget in order to focus on a bill to combine hiking the debt ceiling with spending cuts.

    McCarthy can only afford to lose four Republican votes on any partisan bills. And he made a number of promises to secure his speakership that have complicated his ability to govern, such as vowing a more open amendment process that allows any member to alter legislation on the floor.

    While many lawmakers welcomed this addition to the legislative process, some have expressed concern that it could sink otherwise bipartisan pieces of legislation.

    “I’ve got mixed feelings,” GOP Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a Biden-won district in Nebraska, told CNN. “On the positive side, it gets more people involved. They feel like they have a voice. That’s good. I think, too, though, on the downside, it’s taking some of our bills that should be more bipartisan, but through the amendment process is made more partisan.”

    Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota acknowledged that the process is “not without its stumbles and it’s going to cause problems along the way,” but added: “I think we should celebrate it.”

    Abolishing the House’s remote voting system, though encouraging for many who wanted the chamber to return to its pre-Covid posture, has also made attendance an issue. Emmer told CNN that even a member who recently tore his Achilles’ heel is not planning on missing any time.

    Despite the challenging dynamics, Republicans have notched some real wins, including passing a resolution to block a DC crime bill that lessened penalties for certain offenses and a resolution to end the Covid-19 public health emergency.

    “We’re holding tight to our commitment to America. And I know it looks a little bit dicey and it doesn’t look real fluid. … That’s democracy. I think that’s a positive thing,” said Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan, a new member of the GOP leadership team. “It’s not real pretty all the time, but I think it’s positive.”

    GOP Rep. Jennifer Kiggans, a freshman from Virgina who flipped her seat, said it is important to show what Congress looks like under Republican leadership even if the legislation is not going to pass the Senate.

    “We’ve been there three months. I don’t know anybody that assumes a new position and changes things overnight. So it’s a work in progress. I think we are demonstrating what Republican leadership looks like.”

    A number of House Republicans expressed concern that the toughest fights the party will face are still to come, from reaching a deal on the debt ceiling, to funding the government to continuing to deliver on key campaign promises.

    “We haven’t gotten to the heavy lifting yet,” GOP Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, a committee chairman, told CNN.

    Crane told CNN, “I’m definitely concerned about it” when asked about the pace of legislation coming to the floor.

    And GOP Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas compared the first 100 days to a football scrimmage.

    “In football terms, we have been in a scrimmage. We’ve basically been trying to figure out how this small majority is going to work together with differing viewpoints,” he explained. “We’re going to join the varsity now. Competition is going to get a little tougher. The issues are going to get a little harder. And the challenge to leadership is going to get a little bit more compelling. But I think that they are equal to the task.”

    A number of members also voiced their concern that not enough progress has been made on crucial issues like the debt ceiling.

    “What worries me is the delay,” Cole told CNN about the state of debt ceiling talks.

    There’s also been some miscommunication issues. House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington of Texas ruffled some feathers among Republicans when he told CNN that the GOP would produce a budget in May – a statement his office had to then walk back – and when he told a group of reporters that he is working on a “term sheet” of spending cuts, which McCarthy later shot down, saying: “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

    Still, most House Republicans are pinning their frustrations on President Joe Biden, who they framed as unwilling to come to the negotiating table.

    “I wish we had made more progress on the debt ceiling at this point,” GOP Rep. Dusty Johnson, chair of the centrist-leaning Main Street Caucus, told CNN. “We are getting very close to go time. The fact that we’re where we’re at should concern a lot of us. That is because Joe Biden refuses to come to the table.”

    Kiggans told CNN, “there’s got to be less finger pointing” over the issue.

    “I really disagree with standing up on the floor and making really obnoxious speeches about the other side.”

    The White House has called for the debt ceiling to be raised without any conditions attached.

    Beyond the debt ceiling, the conference is still stalled on a number of key pieces of legislation including a narrow border security bill that has run into fierce opposition from moderates.

    The various ideological groups inside the House GOP met twice about a broader immigration and border package during the last week the House was recently in session, including one meeting involving McCarthy. The hope is to move a package through committee later this month.

    But the two most vocal voices on the issue, Gonzales and Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy, do not appear to be budging.

    “I’m not going to give in, and you’re never going to out-border me,” said Gonzales, who opposes a hardline border security bill from Roy.

    Meanwhile, Roy told CNN: “I’m not really worried about what [Gonzales] has to say.”

    To help deal with the internal divisions, McCarthy tapped GOP Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana to lead negotiations on the debt ceiling and to meet at least weekly with leaders of each faction of the House GOP conference, known as the “five families,” in an effort to privately air grievances and avoid tensions from spilling into public view.

    But the deputization of Graves – as opposed to someone on McCarthy’s elected leadership team, like Scalise, or Arrington, who is actually in charge of budget issues– has raised some eyebrows in GOP circles, who wonder if McCarthy is trying to create some distance from the talks or if he doesn’t feel like he can trust his other deputies.

    One GOP lawmaker said Arrington is not a close ally of the speaker, which has made things more challenging for the pair.

    “Jodey’s not a McCarthy guy,” the member said. “But Jodey is doing his best.”

    Another Republican acknowledged that there’s long been some distrust between McCarthy and Scalise, who were once seen as potential rivals.

    Arrington, in a statement, said he is focused on his mission “to stop the reckless spending that is bankrupting our country and restore fiscal sanity in Washington before it’s too late.”

    And Armstrong pointed out that having Graves in charge of overseeing some of these talks makes sense from a resource perspective.

    “Scalise and his team have to run the floor with a five-vote majority,” he said. “They are doing a great job, but it’s a lot.”

    Graves acknowledged to CNN the significance of being tapped by leadership to take on such a pivotal role.

    “Everything that I’m doing is sort of part of the speaker’s authority,” Graves told CNN. “I was not elected.”

    Graves likened the meetings, which McCarthy joins at least a third of the time, to “a therapy session.”

    “The best way I can describe it is a big family Thanksgiving dinner,” Armstrong, a regular meeting attendee, told CNN. “Everybody fights and is rowdy and will get into arguments but you know what? When you walk out of that Thanksgiving dinner, you better not make fun of my sister or brother at a bar or you’re going to have a problem.”

    “They’re contentious, but they’re respectful,” Armstrong added.

    These meetings are intended to open the lines of communication with members who normally wouldn’t engage with one another and be proactive about working out issues in order to avoid clashes on the House floor. From there, Emmer digs into the details with members who have specific sticking points. Beyond targeted meetings, Emmer said he and his team have had listening sessions with every member of the conference.

    The process of bringing various groups of House Republicans together has become a fixture in the conference’s first 100 days in the majority and a hallmark of McCarthy’s leadership style. Part of that is, by necessity, since McCarthy can only lose four Republicans on any given vote.

    But that process takes time, which is partly why the conference has not been able to put up some of its top priorities up for a floor vote yet.

    “It’s like getting a bunch of stray cats to all come together and go in the same direction. Pretty much the same thing with congressmen,” GOP Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey said.

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  • China sanctions US organizations for hosting Taiwan leader during stopover | CNN

    China sanctions US organizations for hosting Taiwan leader during stopover | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    China has slapped sanctions on two American organizations that hosted Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen during her recent travel in the United States, which Beijing had fiercely condemned.

    China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Friday the Washington-headquartered think tank Hudson Institute and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California would be banned from any cooperation, exchange or transaction with institutions and individuals in China.

    Key leaders of the organizations would also be barred from visiting China, unable to transact or cooperate with organizations or individuals there, and have any assets in the country frozen, the statement said.

    “The Hudson Institute and the Reagan Library have provided a platform and facilitated Tsai’s separatist activities… which seriously undermines China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the ministry said, using a term often used to criticize the actions of Taiwan’s leader.

    The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library was the site of a meeting between Tsai and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday – the first time a Taiwan president had met a US Speaker on American soil.

    And last week, the Hudson Institute presented a Global Leadership Award to Tsai in New York City.

    Both occurred during stopovers in the course of the Taiwan President’s 10-day international tour, which included official visits to Central America.

    CNN has reached out for comment to the Hudson Institute and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. It’s unclear if either organization or its leaders have assets or cooperation in China that would be impacted.

    China had repeatedly said it would take “resolute and strong measures” in response to Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy.

    China’s Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan as its own despite never having controlled it, and has vowed to take the island, by force if necessary.

    China also imposed sanctions on two Taiwanese organizations, The Prospect Foundation and Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats, on Friday, according to the Taiwan Affairs Office.

    A spokesperson accused the groups of promoting Taiwan independence and said they could not cooperate with mainland organizations and individuals. Their directors were also barred from entering the mainland.

    Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan representative to the US, was also hit with sanctions on Friday, according to Chinese state media. Hsiao was previously sanctioned by China last August, following a visit from then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the island. On her Twitter account on Friday, Hsiao reacted to the sanctions saying, “Wow, the PRC just sanctions me again, for the second time.”

    Taiwan’s foreign ministry responded later Friday calling China’s decision to impose new sanctions over Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy “irrational and absurd.”

    It was Taiwan’s “fundamental right” to conduct diplomatic activities overseas, and “coercion and suppression” from Beijing would only boost its “insistence on freedom and democracy,” the statement said.

    Beijing’s overall response to the latest meeting has appeared muted so far compared with its actions following Pelosi’s visit.

    Then, Beijing launched extensive military drills around the island following the Speaker’s departure and suspended several lines of communication with Washington.

    This time there has been little clear military response toward the island, which sees regular incursions into its air defense identification zone and patrols in surrounding waters by the Chinese military.

    Ahead of the meeting between Tsai and McCarthy, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it had tracked a Chinese aircraft carrier group, led by the carrier Shandong, passing through waters southeast of Taiwan for training in the Western Pacific.

    China’s retaliation against the US organizations comes at a tense time between the two powers, which have struggled to stabilize their relationship amid friction over a range of issues.

    Among those is bolstered American support of Taiwan in the face of increased military, economic and diplomatic pressure on the island democracy from Beijing.

    On Friday, US Republican congressman Michael McCaul, who is currently visiting Taiwan, said that speeding up the delivery of weapons to the island was “critically important” in building deterrence against China.

    The chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee told reporters that “we are doing everything in our power to expedite [weapon delivery],” and that the bipartisan congressional delegation he is leading is “in broad agreement that this absolutely needs to be done, to provide the deterrence for Taiwan to promote peace in the region.”

    McCaul said that potential ways to do so included reprioritizing weapon sales to Taiwan or through third-party sales.

    The US maintains an unofficial relationship with Taiwan and Tsai’s transit in the country was therefore not an official visit in order to keep Washington aligned with its longstanding “One China” policy.

    Under the policy, the US acknowledges China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never officially recognized Beijing’s claim to the island of 23 million.

    Tsai is expected to return to Taiwan Friday.

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  • A momentous political showdown in Tennessee lays bare a new chapter in US politics | CNN Politics

    A momentous political showdown in Tennessee lays bare a new chapter in US politics | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Tennessee Republicans’ ruthless use of their state House supermajority to expel two young Black lawmakers for breaching decorum exposed a torrent of political forces that are transforming American politics at the grassroots.

    The GOP action, after the lawmakers had led a gun control protest from the House floor in response to last week’s Nashville school shooting, created a snapshot of how two halves of a diversifying and increasingly self-estranged nation are being pulled apart.

    A day of soaring tensions inside and outside the state House chamber thrust the Volunteer State into the national spotlight in an extraordinary political coda to the mass shooting in which six people, including three 9-year-olds, were gunned down.

    The drama laid bare intense frustration among some voters at the failure to pass firearms reform – and the growing clash between Democrats from liberal cities and a Republican Party that is willing to use its rural conservative power base to curtail democracy. Given the national attention, the showdown could backfire on the GOP with voters who balk at its extremist turn. And it turned two lawmakers – whom most Americans had never heard of – into overnight heroes of the progressive movement.

    The Democrats – Justin Pearson and Justin Jones – were thrown out of their seats in a move that effectively canceled out the votes of their tens of thousands of constituents, simply for infringing the rules of the chamber – an almost unheard of sanction across the country.

    But a third Democrat – Gloria Johnson, a White woman who also joined the gun control protest – escaped expulsion after Republicans failed to muster the required two-thirds majority. The discrepancy raised suggestions of racial discrimination and made an acrimonious day even uglier.

    Republicans said that the Democrats had interrupted the people’s business with their protest, arguing that democracy couldn’t work if lawmakers refused to abide by the rules. But the Democrats have long warned their voices are being silenced by the hardline GOP supermajority and accused Republicans of infringing their rights to free expression and dissent.

    “We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” Jones told Republican legislators on Thursday as he spoke before the House in his own defense.

    At its most basic level, the clash underscored the utter polarization between Republicans and Democrats about how to respond to mass shootings, which pass with little or no significant action to prevent the endless sequence of such tragedies.

    Although it did pass a measure intended to enhance school security, the Tennessee state House essentially decided to use its near unchecked power to protect its behavioral rules rather than take any action to make it harder for mass killers to get deadly weapons. In a deep-red state like Tennessee, this is not a surprise. But the fury and even desperation of lawmakers like Pearson and Jones and the hundreds of protesters at the state capitol on Thursday reflect increasing anger among the majority of Americans who want tougher gun restrictions but find their hopes dashed by Republican legislatures.

    In Tennessee, that frustration over the endless deaths of innocents erupted into activism.

    One protester, teacher Kevin Foster, said the aftermath of the Nashville school shooting had been “deeply, deeply painful.”

    And he tearfully called on Tennessee legislators to do something to stop more school shootings. “Just listen to us, there is absolutely no reason you should have assault rifles available to citizens in the public. It serves absolutely no purpose and it brings death and destruction on children,” Foster told CNN’s Ryan Young.

    The severe penalties meted out by the legislature for a rules infraction, which did not involve violence or incitement, also underscored another increasing trend – the radicalization of the Donald Trump-era Republican Party. Critics see the way the GOP is using its legislative majorities as an abuse of power that threatens the democratic rights of millions of Americans.

    The Tennessee House has only rarely expelled members – and when it has, it’s for offenses like bribery or sexual infractions – so the treatment of Pearson and Jones, who had already had their committee assignments taken away, was regarded by Democrats as disproportionately harsh.

    The expulsions looked like a party dispensing with opponents and positions it didn’t agree with – a perspective Pearson voiced when he accused the GOP of acting to suppress ideas it would prefer not to listen to and questions it wouldn’t answer.

    “You just expelled a member for exercising their First Amendment rights!” he said.

    Tennessee Republican Caucus Chair Jeremy Faison told CNN his members were always firm in wanting the Democratic lawmakers expelled and rejected an alternative route through the House ethics committee. “The overwhelming majority, the heartbeat of this caucus, says ‘not on this House floor, not this way,’” he said. Faison added: “It is not possible for us to move forward with the way they were behaving in committee and on the House floor. There’s got to be some peace.”

    Democrats did break the rules last week – they admitted to doing so and their actions, if adopted by every legislator, would make it impossible to maintain order and free debate. Jones, for instance, used a bullhorn to lead chants of protesters in the public gallery. But the question at issue is the appropriateness of the punishments and whether the GOP majority overreached.

    One Republican, state Rep. Gino Bulso, said that Jones – with his dramatic self-defense in the well of the chamber on Thursday – had made the case for his ejection because he accused the House of acting dishonorably.

    “He and two other representatives effectively conducted a mutiny on March the 30th of 2023 in this very chamber,” Bulso said. State House Speaker Cameron Sexton had previously compared the gun control protest to the mob attack by Trump’s supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

    But this appeared an absurd analogy. While the protest in the Tennessee chamber did disrupt regular order, it wasn’t anti-democratic, nor was it designed to interrupt the transfer of power from one president to the next, like the Capitol riot briefly did. And the behavior of the three Democratic lawmakers, while irregular, was not that unusual in a riotous political age. US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and other Republicans, for instance, heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address this year. And Trump this week attacked a New York judge as biased and singled out his family after becoming the first ex-president to be charged with a crime.

    The racial backdrop of Thursday’s vote could not be ignored after Johnson was reprieved by a single vote. She told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota that she believed race helped explain the differing outcomes.

    “I think it is pretty clear. I am a 60-year-old White woman, and they are two young Black men,” Johnson said, adding that she thought the Republicans questioned Jones and Pearson in a demeaning way.

    US Rep. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, didn’t rule out the possibility that discrimination was behind the expulsion of Jones and Pearson but not Johnson.

    “I am not saying race wasn’t (the reason) – but I haven’t looked at the numbers to see if gender might not have had a play in it, and also maybe some seniority, and also some folks that were on a committee with her,” Cohen told CNN’s Bianna Golodryga.

    The question is especially acute since Pearson and Jones were arguing that their voices – and those of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans in the state’s diverse cities – were being silenced by a largely White Republican majority.

    “I represent 78,000 people, and when I came to the well that day, I was not standing for myself,” Jones said. “I was standing for those young people … many of whom can’t even vote yet, many of whom are disenfranchised. But all of whom are terrified by the continued trend of mass shooting plaguing our state and plaguing this nation.”

    Jones, from Nashville, and Pearson, from Memphis, are representative of a new generation of politically active Americans. Their background in activism and compelling rhetorical styles speak to a kind of politics that is more confrontational than the outwardly genteel but hardball power plays preferred by some of their older Republican colleagues in the legislature.

    At times, the speeches by both lawmakers invoked the atmospherics of the civil rights movement and may augur a new brand of urgent activism by younger citizens – like the multi-racial crowd of protesters who greeted Pearson and Jones as heroes after they left the chamber.

    The topic of the showdown – over infringements of the decorum of the state House – also had uncomfortable racial echoes as they implied, deliberately or not, that the two young Black Americans did not understand the proper way to behave in public life.

    “It’s very scary for the nation to see what’s happening here. If I didn’t know that it was happening to me, I would think this was 1963 instead of 2023,” Jones told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

    More broadly, Pearson and Jones also represent a cementing reality of the American political map in which growing liberal and racially diverse cities and suburbs are increasingly clashing with legislatures dominated by Republicans from more rural areas.

    This dynamic is playing out on multiple issues – including abortion, crime and voting rights – in states like Georgia and Texas. In Florida, meanwhile, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is using his big reelection win and GOP control of both chambers of the state legislature to drive home a radical America First-style conservative agenda that he’s using as a platform for a possible presidential campaign. Some Republicans see similar trends in Democratic-majority California.

    In Tennessee, as Democratic state House Rep. Joe Towns put it, the GOP used a nuclear option by deploying their supermajority to suppress the ability of minority Democrats to speak.

    “You never use a sledgehammer to kill a gnat,” Towns said. “We should not go to the extreme of expelling our members for fighting for what many of the citizens want to happen, whether you agree with it or not.”

    Pearson was specific in viewing his expulsion as being about far more than a thwarted gun control protest.

    “We are losing our democracy to White supremacy, we are losing our democracy to patriarchy, we are losing our democracy to people who want to keep a status quo that is damning to the rest of us and damning to our children and unborn people,” he said.

    The political crisis in Tennessee quickly got national attention.

    Biden described the expulsions as “shocking, undemocratic and without precedent” and lambasted Republicans for not doing more to prevent school shootings.

    “Americans want lawmakers to act on commonsense gun safety reforms that we know will save lives. But instead, we’ve continued to see Republican officials across America double down on dangerous bills that make our schools, places of worship, and communities less safe,” he said in a statement.

    Republicans in Tennessee had their own political reasons for acting against the trio of Democratic lawmakers. But by making national figures of Pearson and Jones and by handing the White House a new example of GOP extremism, their efforts may have badly backfired.

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