ReportWire

Tag: political organizations

  • Ron DeSantis can now make his agenda a reality ahead of a possible 2024 announcement | CNN Politics

    Ron DeSantis can now make his agenda a reality ahead of a possible 2024 announcement | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will soon have new authority over Disney’s iconic Florida theme parks, leeway to transport migrants from anywhere in the country and fewer hurdles to put people behind bars for voting errors – all top priorities that have animated conservatives who may decide the next Republican nominee for president.

    And he amassed this power in less than a week.

    DeSantis possesses a unique asset as he lays the groundwork for a potential presidential campaign: A subservient state party that is eager to hand victories to the Republican leader. The special session in Florida that ended Friday – during which his priorities sailed through the GOP-legislature in a matter of days and with minimal resistance – was a public demonstration of his total control over an ostensibly separate branch of government.

    It’s a tool he is expected to wield often in the coming months as he eschews an early entrance into the race in favor of building up a record of decisive actions that could be appealing to future primary voters.

    DeSantis has already laid out several legislative targets when lawmakers meet again next month, including fewer restrictions on firearms, more restrictions on abortion, weaker legal protections for the media industry and more public funding to attend private schools. With Republicans holding a super majority in both the state House and Senate, there is little expectation that DeSantis will not get his way.

    DeSantis isn’t expected to jump into the race for president until after lawmakers conclude their legislative business in May – a sign of how important that agenda is to his platform for president and the narrative around his candidacy.

    “Everyone is just waiting to take their cues from the governor,” one longtime Florida lobbyist said. “He is setting the agenda and it’s all red meat for 2024 voters.”

    So far DeSantis isn’t missing out on a crowded nomination battle. Former President Donald Trump remains the only declared candidate, but more appear not far behind. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is expected to announce her campaign on Wednesday. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu formed a new political organization as he inches toward a decision. Others, like former Vice President Mike Pence, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have openly acknowledged their interest in the office.

    Behind-the-scenes, DeSantis is also readying a political operation for a presidential campaign, with an eye toward making a campaign announcement in late May or early June, two people close to the governor said.

    His top advisers are in the early stages of launching an organization that could become a super PAC to support his 2024 bid. His memoir “The Courage to be Free” will drop at the end of February, leading into a national book tour and media blitz. The decision for DeSantis to invite top Republican fundraisers to a retreat and policy conference later this month in Palm Beach – the former president’s backyard – is the latest sign of how the governor is ramping up his operation in hopes of sending a signal to donors that he is serious about jumping into the race and he won’t be deterred by Trump.

    But DeSantis has otherwise dismissed speculation around his political ambitions. Even as he becomes the focus of attacks from the prospective field – most notably by Trump, but also Sununu and Hogan – DeSantis has avoided counterattacks that might distract from his focus on stacking legislative wins and culture war victories that his political advisers believe will give him a platform to take to voters, especially in a field full of candidates who are no longer in office.

    “It’s awkward for many of us who genuinely like President Trump, but believe Governor DeSantis should be our party’s nominee,” said a major donor who talks often with DeSantis. “Trump can’t beat Biden. We’ve seen that already.”

    While no president in American history has come from Florida, the prospect of the state having two 2024 GOP candidates – DeSantis and Trump – has added another layer of intrigue and questions of loyalty among many Republican donors, strategists and officials.

    For weeks, Trump has steadily intensified his criticism of DeSantis. For his part, DeSantis has largely ignored the attacks and responded by either declining to attack fellow Republicans or pointing to his 19-point victory in the midterm elections last fall.

    As the Republican field begins taking shape, DeSantis is sending clear signals to donors and prospective campaign staff that he intends to run. But he feels no urgency or pressure to accelerate his timeline.

    “I spend my time delivering results for the people of Florida and fighting against Joe Biden,” DeSantis said when asked about recent Trump attacks on social media. “That’s how I spend my time. I don’t spend my time trying to smear other Republicans.”

    DeSantis has pushed the limits of his executive authority to hold the spotlight and amass a record tailor-made for a primary battle against Trump. He recently stacked the board of New College, a small liberal arts school, with political allies and like-minded conservatives who have already shaken up the progressive university. Under his watch, transgender children can no longer access certain treatments, and he used his veto powers to eliminate funding for LGBTQ mental health programs. He ousted a twice-elected local prosecutor for simply promising not to use office resources to go after abortion providers.

    But it’s through the legislature that DeSantis has built the bulk of his political resume, and where he has demonstrated his command of his party. On Monday, DeSantis launched his latest salvo against the financial industry, announcing a proposal to block banks from lending or investing based on environmental, social and governance factors.

    “Why is it always someone has to try to jam their agenda down our throats?” DeSantis said at a news conference to unveil his plan to take on so-called “woke” banks.

    The special session last week was the sixth time lawmakers were called back to Tallahassee in two and a half years to take on DeSantis’ priorities outside of their regularly scheduled meeting. This time they assembled largely to clean up existing measures taken by DeSantis that earned the governor considerable praise in conservative media but also legal headaches for the state.

    Lawmakers during the five-day special session voted to give the statewide prosecutor jurisdiction to go after Floridians for violating election and voting crimes. The measure comes after DeSantis initiated a crackdown on voter fraud that resulted in the arrest of 20 individuals accused of voting illegally in 2020. However, the move hit a legal snag in some cases, including in Miami-Dade County, where a judge dismissed a case against a Miami defendant on the grounds that the state prosecutor had acted beyond its authority.

    Similarly, the Republican controlled-legislature gave DeSantis the power to transport migrants from anywhere in the country after a legal challenge arose when the governor last year sent two planes of migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, despite a state law that the state’s authority was limited to relocating “unauthorized aliens from this state.”

    The move last week to give DeSantis the power to pick the board members for Disney’s special taxing district was also a step to avoid a potential financial catastrophe after DeSantis last year demanded lawmakers vote to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District without a plan for its existing debt and contracts. Republican lawmakers, though, were happy to oblige.

    “As the governor says, there’s a new sheriff in town,” state House Speaker Paul Renner said as lawmakers prepared to hand control of Disney’s special taxing district over to DeSantis.

    Democrats in Florida, powerless to stop DeSantis and his allies, have mostly used the bully pulpit to criticize their GOP colleagues for ceding so much control to the executive branch.

    “I don’t understand why we just give away this ultimate power to one individual who should live up to the consequences of breaking the law,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat. “The reality is that we have a governor who’s setting up a presidential bid. And this is basically his attempt to get earned media time on Fox News.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • McCarthy leans on ‘five families’ as House GOP plots debt-limit tactics | CNN Politics

    McCarthy leans on ‘five families’ as House GOP plots debt-limit tactics | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The White House and Senate Democrats have calculated that Speaker Kevin McCarthy won’t have enough votes to raise the national borrowing limit and will end up caving to their demands to avoid a first-ever debt default – with no strings attached or any conditions whatsoever.

    House Republicans are trying to prove them wrong.

    Behind the scenes, McCarthy is beginning to chart out a new strategy to ensure the House GOP can muster 218 votes to raise the national debt ceiling and tie that to an array of cuts to federal spending, as the standoff with the White House shows no signs of easing.

    In the speaker’s office last week, leaders of the so-called “five families” of the House GOP – representing the various ideological wings of the conference – met for the first time to discuss the range of possibilities and to kick around ideas about raising the debt limit, according to multiple attendees. McCarthy didn’t attend the session but enlisted a close confidant, Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, to lead the discussions, with top committee chairmen and other members of leadership also participating. Talks are expected to pick up when the House returns from a two-week recess after the Presidents Day holiday.

    The goal, according to multiple Republicans, is to begin to develop a consensus about a proposal that can pass the House with GOP votes and strengthen their conference’s negotiating position as Washington stares into a looming debt default this summer. The belief among Republicans is such a plan would force the White House and Senate Democrats to back off their insistence that they will only accept a “clean” debt ceiling increase without any spending cuts attached.

    The move gives a window into McCarthy’s management of his razor-thin majority, allowing his most conservative members to try to find consensus with more moderate lawmakers – replicating a dynamic that ultimately allowed him to win the speakership after a messy, 15-ballot fight. But it also is a break to how one of his predecessors, John Boehner, dealt with the debt limit the last-time the country nearly defaulted – in 2011 when many of the decisions were made by the leadership, prompting a revolt among the rank-and-file.

    The private GOP talks have been positive so far, attendees said, even as they acknowledged they are in the very early stages, weighing a range of potential budget cuts and not nearing any agreement yet.

    Rep. Patrick McHenry, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, said the meeting amounted to a “healthy discussion” that showed “goodwill” in an effort “to come up with an approach that unifies Republicans and enables us to unlock the rest of the legislative year.”

    “That’s the purpose of the conversation: How do you move the debt limit out of the House of Representatives?” McHenry told CNN.

    The discussions are expected to run parallel to talks between McCarthy and President Joe Biden, with the speaker making clear he believes the next step will be to continue discussions with Biden. The group could potentially help McCarthy present a GOP proposal to the president in future conversations and help vet any White House offer.

    But despite both Biden and McCarthy sounding positive after their first face-to-face encounter earlier this month, there’s been little tangible progress toward finding a deal as Democrats continue to hold firm to their demands to raise the borrowing limit with no horse-trading with Republicans.

    Republicans believe that the White House is slow-rolling Biden’s discussions with the speaker in order to ratchet up pressure to pass a clean debt ceiling increase, something McCarthy has publicly and privately rejected.

    “They say they don’t want to put the economy in jeopardy,” McCarthy told CNN when asked about the lack of progress with Biden since the last White House meeting. “I think that would be the wrong approach.”

    Behind the scenes, McCarthy has been proactive in ensuring regular communication between the five families, a nickname from the “The Godfather” of warring New York mob families who tried to maintain the peace.

    “There’s a level of trust and engagement within the five families that I have not seen in the previous four years,” said South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson, chairman of the Main Street Caucus, a center-right group. “We’re working really well together.”

    Rep. Dave Joyce of Ohio, who leads the pragmatic-minded Republican Governance Group, said the group meeting with Graves was “very productive, and we will continue to have those until we come up with something.”

    Another reason Republicans are eager to outline their vision: Democrats have hammered them for not having a plan – and have tried to speak for them. Indeed, perhaps the most memorable moment of Biden’s State of the Union address was when the president suggested Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare, eliciting jeers and boos from GOP lawmakers in the audience.

    “It’s intellectually dishonest,” Joyce said, noting that McCarthy has said repeatedly that Medicare and Social Security cuts are off the table.

    Some Democrats have speculated that they could peel off at least six House Republicans to back a so-called discharge petition – a lengthy process that forces a bill to the floor if 218 lawmakers sign on – once they get closer to a debt default and still don’t have a resolution.

    But moderate Republicans are ruling out using the discharge petition for a clean debt ceiling hike and are insisting on extracting spending cuts in exchange for raising the nation’s borrowing limit – a sign that the conference is in lockstep with McCarthy’s negotiating strategy.

    “If it’s tied to a clean debt ceiling, I wouldn’t do that,” said Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a Biden-won district in Nebraska. “The President’s got to give us some compromise.”

    The hardline House Freedom Caucus, which ended up forcing McCarthy to make key concessions to win the speakership, is one of the five groups taking part in the debt ceiling talks.

    Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the group and attended the five families meeting, said there’s a consensus on this point: “We’re not going to accept ‘no negotiation,’” a reference to the White House’s position. “And there’s not going to be a clean debt ceiling, alright?”

    South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, also a member of the hardline group, agreed.

    “We got to get 218,” he said of the early talks. “We’re trying to get the framework. We want all buy in.”

    Norman argued that it didn’t make sense for the groups to publicly float competing proposals, even though one of the so-called families, the Republican Study Committee, has outlined its preferred approach, although the group did not lay out specific cuts or spending proposals.

    “There’s no sense in us, one group putting something out, another group puts something out,” Norman said.

    Norman, who initially opposed McCarthy’s speakership bid but ultimately backed him, said the California Republican’s effort to build consensus has helped his standing within the conference.

    “To his credit, Kevin has done a good job of getting us all together and getting us on the same page,” Norman said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Republican senator warns Congress must take action now to protect Medicare and Social Security | CNN Politics

    Republican senator warns Congress must take action now to protect Medicare and Social Security | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota offered Sunday a stark warning about the future of Social Security and Medicare if Congress fails to take action now.

    “In the next 11 years, we have to have a better plan in place than what we do today. Or we’re going to see – under existing circumstances – some reductions of as much as 24% in some sort of a benefit. So, let’s start talking now because it’s easier to fix it now that it would be five years or six years from now,” Rounds told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

    In recent days, President Joe Biden has made a forceful argument against Republicans by highlighting his support for Social Security and Medicare. The president has specifically seized on a proposal from GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida to sunset federal legislation – including Social Security and Medicare – every five years and require Congress to pass them again.

    Referencing his “spirited debate” with Republicans at the State of the Union, Biden called Scott’s proposal “outrageous” and vowed he would veto such a plan during a speech in Florida last week.

    “The very idea the senator from Florida wants to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every five years I find to be somewhat outrageous. So outrageous that you might not even believe it,” he said, pulling out a pamphlet detailing Scott’s plan.

    Scott told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last week that his proposal is intended to eliminate wasteful spending and help ensure the government can “figure out how to start living within our means.”

    “I want to make sure we balance our budget and preserve Medicare and Social Security, and I’ve been clear all along,” he said.

    Rounds also stressed Sunday that Republicans want to better manage Medicare and Social Security in order to improve the programs – not strip them from the American people.

    “We think that there are possibilities out there of long-term success without scaring people and without tearing apart the system and without reducing benefits. But it requires management. And it requires actually looking at and making things better,” he said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Washington forges rare political unity in condemning China over balloon drama | CNN Politics

    Washington forges rare political unity in condemning China over balloon drama | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    China’s audacious spy balloon flight across North America has spectacularly backfired by enshrining rare bipartisan unity in Washington.

    The coming together of Republicans and Democrats is certain to stiffen future US strategic, economic and military resolve in the Pacific region and further damage buckled relations with Beijing.

    The fierce congressional reaction to the balloon and the US government’s disclosure of intelligence about it and China’s balloon espionage program, meanwhile, threatened to further damage the world’s most crucial diplomatic relationship – especially after China hit back by accusing the US of being the world’s most gratuitous spy state.

    The unanimity of American anger toward China was exemplified by a House resolution condemning China that passed by a stunning 419-0 margin. It followed a growing realization in Washington, and more broadly across the country, that a long-predicted geopolitical confrontation may now be a reality.

    But despite the united political front in Washington, fury is boiling in both parties over the failure to down the balloon before it traversed the continent amid rising questions about the implications of China’s breach of US airspace. Administration officials faced a gauntlet of criticism from lawmakers during a classified briefing on the issue on Thursday. And Republicans stepped up efforts to brand President Joe Biden as weak over the incursion despite his warning to President Xi Jinping in his State of the Union address earlier this week that he would vigorously defend US sovereignty.

    This growing discord threatens to so politicize China policy that it will drain any efforts to defuse an escalating Cold War. The Biden administration wants to pursue those efforts despite the tensions caused by the balloon crisis.

    There’s also a risk that Republican efforts to leverage the drama for domestic political gain could bust unity over policy toward America’s giant Pacific rival. Such a partisan split would ironically deliver a greater payoff for China’s communist rulers than any information picked up by the balloon over the US.

    The unanimous House vote on the incident had not been assured. It required Republican leaders to omit language critical of Biden and followed unusual bipartisan cooperation fostered by Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the top Democrat on the panel, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks. The resolution describes the balloon flight as a brazen violation of US sovereignty. McCaul said the bipartisan nature of the vote was critical and called on everyone to stand together against a “common enemy.”

    “We wanted it to be America against China – not internal fighting, because China would see that as a moment of weakness, that we’re divided on party lines, and we didn’t want to project that,” McCaul told CNN.

    This strong signal sent to Beijing raises the possibility that the spy balloon mission has demonstrably hurt China’s interests – especially if it results in a bipartisan zeal to increase defense spending, the size of US arms and equipment packages to allow Taiwan to defend against a possible Chinese attack and more resources to US allies.

    While there is agreement on the challenge now posed by China, there was mystification and some anger elsewhere in Congress on Thursday, even as officials held classified briefings and the FBI pushed forward on its effort to evaluate intelligence from the remains of the balloon salvaged from the Atlantic after it was shot down on Saturday.

    In a Senate hearing, Democrats as well as Republicans, criticized Defense Department officials and questioned why they did not tell Americans more once the balloon was spotted.

    “You guys have to help me understand why this baby wasn’t taken out long before,” said Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat who could be facing a tough reelection next year. The balloon floated above his state, which hosts US missile installations. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was furious that the Chinese balloon crossed her state. “As an Alaskan, I am so angry,” Murkowski said. “If you’re going to have Russia coming at you, if you’re going to have China coming at you, we know exactly how they come. They come up and they go over Alaska.”

    Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, said he understood why the White House might have kept China’s balloon program classified but added, “We all understand that some of the desire to keep things classified, it has to do with not wanting to disclose to the public things that might be inconvenient politically for the department.” The White House has previously explained that it waited until the balloon was off the Carolinas to shoot it down based on Pentagon advice that doing so before could endanger lives and property on the ground. Officials also said they took steps to ensure it was not an intelligence threat as it wafted across the country.

    But some Republicans are accusing the White House of a cover-up that they think exposes Biden as feckless and unfit to be commander-in-chief as he eyes reelection, despite his strong role in standing up to Russia over Ukraine.

    “I think the public, and Congress, would never have known about this if the Billings, Montana, paper hadn’t published a picture that showed the balloon and US assets tracking the balloon. I think their plan was clearly to keep this a secret,” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told CNN after a classified briefing.

    “The United States was grossly unprepared, this administration was grossly unprepared, and frankly I think it was a huge mistake for them not to take down the balloon before it entered the continental United States,” Hawley added.

    While the House vote on the resolution condemning China was unanimous, many Republicans used the debate before the resolution passed to lacerate the Biden administration.

    “We watched in real time from our backyards and workplaces as a foreign aircraft equipped with spyware navigated over our neighborhoods, our military installations and our vital infrastructure,” said Missouri GOP Rep. Ann Wagner, the vice chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

    “The administration again showed the dictatorship in Beijing that they could again be bullied. President Biden’s weakness and indecision sends a dangerous signal to our adversaries like Iran and Russia and North Korea.”

    Still, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said he came away from the classified briefing more confident in the administration.

    “I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care,” Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said.

    Besides the classified briefings, Biden administration officials divulged new information about the balloon to the public Thursday, some of it gleaned by flybys by U-2 spy planes before it was downed. A senior State Department official said the balloon had been capable of conducting signals intelligence collection – or intelligence gathered by electronic means – and was part of a fleet that had flown over “more than 40 countries across five continents.”

    Beijing is likely to be irked by more details being made public about its balloon program, as evidenced by comments by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning in a briefing Thursday.

    “I am not aware of any ‘fleet of balloons,’” Mao said. “That narrative is probably part of the information and public opinion warfare the US has waged on China. As to who is the world’s number one country of spying, eavesdropping and surveillance, that is plainly visible to the international community,” she added.

    Lawmakers were told Thursday that the order to send the balloon was dispatched without Xi’s knowledge, sources familiar with Hill briefings said. But the idea Xi was unaware of balloon “is the working theory and an ongoing intelligence gap,” a source briefed on the matter said.

    Intelligence experts in the United States have been perplexed at the political furor stoked by a mere balloon – a comparatively unsophisticated asset that pales in significance compared to multi-pronged Chinese intelligence operations against the United States including economic, cyber and traditional espionage. Indeed, the US mounts a similarly broad collection mission against China, which was exposed when a Chinese jet fighter collided with a US spy plane in international airspace over the South China Sea in 2001.

    But the balloon flight, over US territory, has had a symbolic impact greater than that so far generated amid years of building tensions with China, including over Taiwan.

    “I would never have imagined that my Saturday afternoon would have been disrupted due to a Chinese spy balloon not – only that floated across most of South Carolina, it floated across the entire continental United States,” said freshman Republican Rep. Russell Fry whose South Carolina district contains coastal areas where the balloon was shot down.

    “It does – if you watch it, and you were there on the ground – sound like it was straight out of a sci-fi movie,” he said on the House floor, blasting the Biden administration for negligence and bemoaning an international incident that unfolded off the shores of Myrtle Beach.

    In the Senate, the dramatic events of the past week have caused a reassessment of years of US-China policy, which has seen efforts by the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations to try to usher China peacefully into the global economy degenerate into a brewing confrontation in the Trump and Biden administrations.

    Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said at a hearing that the Biden administration did not “see another Cold War, but we do ask everyone to play by the same set of rules.”

    The problem, however, is that China interprets such US calls as an attempt to thwart what it sees as its rightful rise as a regional and global superpower. Sherman argued that US policy in the 21st century designed to head off confrontation had not failed, but that conditions in China had changed.

    “Xi Jinping is not the Xi Jinping of the 1990’s that we all thought we knew,” Sherman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She added that China under Xi was “the only country that wants to change that rules-based order, that can successfully do so and are trying to make that happen.”

    “It is true that our way of life, our democracy, our belief in our values, in the rules-based international order is being challenged,” she continued. “And we have to meet that challenge.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Republican AGs sue ATF over new rule regulating pistol-stabilizing braces | CNN Politics

    Republican AGs sue ATF over new rule regulating pistol-stabilizing braces | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    A coalition of primarily GOP-led led states sued the Biden administration Thursday in an effort to block a new federal rule that subjects pistol-stabilizing braces to additional regulations, including higher taxes, longer waiting periods and registration.

    The rule, announced earlier this year by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, went into effect on January 31. Gun control proponents have argued that stabilizing braces effectively transform a pistol into a short-barreled rifle, which is heavily regulated under the National Firearms Act.

    But in the lawsuit filed by 25 Republican state attorneys general, a Second Amendment advocacy coalition and two of its members, and a disabled gun owner who uses the stabilizing braces, the plaintiffs argue the regulations are “arbitrary and capricious” and are not covered by the 1934 law or the Gun Control Act of 1968.

    “The rule regulates pistols and other firearms equipped with stabilizing braces, even though the text, structure, history, and purpose of the NFA and GCA show that the statute does not regulate such weapons,” states the lawsuit, which names US Attorney General Merrick Garland, the ATF and its director as defendants.

    ATF declined to comment on the lawsuit. CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment on the suit.

    The coalition of states challenging the rule is led by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who said Thursday during a news conference announcing the suit that the ATF’s new rule “is also another case of a federal agency not staying in its lane and doing the job the Constitution clearly delegates to Congress – writing laws.”

    “Let’s call this what it is: An effort to undermine Americans’ Second Amendment rights,” he said. “This is an egregious final rule turning millions of common firearms accessories into ‘short-barreled rifles.’ This is a completely nonsensical regulation.”

    According to the new rule, manufacturers, dealers and individual gun owners have 120 days to register tax-free any existing short-barreled rifles covered by the rule. They can also remove the stabilizing brace or surrender covered short-barreled rifles to the ATF, the agency said.

    Restrictions on stabilizing braces have been hotly debated after they were proposed by the ATF in 2020, when the bureau suggested a new rule that would regulate pistol braces under the NFA. The 2020 proposal sparked a major backlash from groups such as the National Rifle Association.

    The regulations challenged on Thursday were given new life in 2021 after pistols with stabilizing braces were used in mass shootings in Boulder, Colorado, and in Dayton, Ohio. At the time, Garland unveiled several proposals aimed at curbing gun violence, including reupping the restriction on pistol braces.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Rick Scott: From embattled health care executive to Biden’s top foil | CNN Politics

    Rick Scott: From embattled health care executive to Biden’s top foil | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Florida Sen. Rick Scott has emerged as Joe Biden’s top Republican foil in the days since the president’s State of the Union address, with the White House seizing on a year-old Scott proposal that even GOP leaders recognized at the time as politically toxic.

    As a spending fight looms in Washington and Biden moves toward his 2024 reelection bid, the White House is attempting to make Scott the poster child for the president’s accusations that Republicans are seeking to cut entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare.

    Scott has responded by accusing Biden of lying, airing a misleading ad that alleges Biden cut Medicare and lambasting the president in a barrage of television interviews.

    Biden traveled Thursday to Florida – where Scott was a health care executive and two-term governor – on the latest leg of his post-State of the Union tour.

    The trip was designed in part to stoke a fight with Scott after Biden in his speech Tuesday night seized on the first-term senator’s proposal to sunset all federal programs – including Social Security and Medicare – every five years unless Congress extends those programs.

    Biden’s assertion that some Republicans are seeking to change entitlement programs was met with jeers from Republican lawmakers, who have said spending cuts should be part of any proposal to raise the debt ceiling.

    The president continued pressing that message Wednesday in Wisconsin, telling union workers, “A lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare.” He waved a pamphlet with Scott’s proposal as he spoke.

    Ahead of Biden’s speech Thursday in Tampa, White House aides placed copies of Scott’s proposal on every seat.

    In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday, Scott said Biden has misrepresented the proposal he put forward ahead of the 2022 midterm elections while serving as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP.

    “Nobody believes that I want to cut Medicare or Social Security. I’ve never said it,” Scott said.

    Scott said his proposal is intended to eliminate wasteful spending and help ensure the government can “figure out how to start living within our means.”

    “I want to make sure we balance our budget and preserve Medicare and Social Security, and I’ve been clear all along. So what I want to do is get rid of wasteful programs that we never review up here,” he said.

    But Scott’s proposal would sunset all federal legislation – including the two entitlement programs – every five years and require Congress to pass them again.

    Long before he was a US senator, Scott had first-hand experience dealing with America’s federal health care programs – and it became the source of much criticism as he entered the political arena.

    In the 1980s, Scott founded Columbia Hospital Corporation by purchasing a pair of distressed Texas hospitals. He later merged his company with Hospital Corporation of America to create Columbia/HCA, becoming the largest for-profit hospital chain at the time and gaining notoriety on Wall Street for what appeared like cost-cutting in an industry with ballooning expenses.

    In 1997, federal agents unveiled a sweeping investigation into Columbia/HCA that would roil the company for years. On the day the FBI swooped in to seize records from 35 of its hospitals across six states, Scott shrugged off the probe. “It’s not a fun day, but … government investigations are a matter of fact today in health care,” he said on CNN.

    The investigation would unearth what the US Department of Justice later called the “largest health care fraud case in U.S. history.” According to a press release, Columbia/HCA schemed to defraud Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE, the military’s health care program, of hundreds of millions of dollars. The company pleaded guilty to criminal conduct, including charges related to fraudulent Medicare billing and paying kickbacks to doctors, and it ultimately agreed to pay $1.7 billion in fines, damages and penalties.

    Scott was pushed out as CEO amid the turmoil. He was never charged with a crime, though much of the alleged financial abuses took place during his watch. His time in the corporate world made Scott a wealthy individual, which he would lean on in 2010 when he decided to kickstart a political career by entering the race for Florida governor.

    Scott’s time at the helm of Columbia/HCA was the subject of negative ads from both Republicans and Democrats, but he fended them off with a self-funded campaign that flooded the airwaves with a jobs-focused message. He told the St. Petersburg Times that “mistakes were made” at his former company and that he had “learned hard lessons,” but he also said during a debate that he was “proud of the company I built.” Regardless of the controversy, the little-known Scott defeated a GOP favorite for his party’s nomination, and Floridians narrowly elected him governor that fall.

    During his eight years leading Florida, Scott fought off attempts to extend safety net benefits to Floridians. He frequently challenged the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act and blocked expansion of Medicaid in Florida. In his first year as governor, he signed a bill to cut unemployment payments and tied benefits to the state’s unemployment rate.

    Democrats continued to make Scott’s time at Columbia/HCA an issue, to no avail. Scott eked out a reelection victory in 2014. He then narrowly unseated longtime Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in 2018 after spending more than $70 million of his own money on his campaign.

    Marching to the beat of his own drum, Scott declined to be sworn in with his class in January 2019. Instead, he waited until his term as governor had ended and flew to Washington for a separate ceremony. For a time, it made him the country’s most junior senator, but he nevertheless soon found himself in party leadership.

    Scott and other Republicans are aggressively pushing back against Biden’s assertions that the GOP is seeking to cut spending on entitlement programs.

    However, Republican leaders have long recognized Scott’s proposal to sunset all federal programs after five years as rocky political terrain.

    The tense relationship between Scott and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell burst into public view during the 2022 election cycle as Republicans sought to retake the Senate.

    Scott, as NRSC chairman, released a platform called “Rescue America,” which would have subjected all federally elected officials to a term limit of 12 years and closed the Department of Education, amid a slew of other initiatives. It would also have required millions of low-income and middle-class Americans to pay income taxes, which was later dropped in a revised version of the plan.

    And, in what Democrats immediately recognized as an opening to accuse Republicans of attempting to undercut popular programs, Scott’s plan proposed sunsetting all federal legislation in five years – unless Congress extended it.

    McConnell quickly disavowed Scott’s plan, seeking to make clear that the Florida senator did not speak for Senate Republicans.

    “Let me tell you what would not be a part of our agenda,” McConnell said at a news conference last March. “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”

    Their frosty relationship did not improve as the 2022 election cycle continued, as the two battled over which candidates to support in primaries and in the general election, and Republicans ultimately fell short of winning a majority.

    After the election, Scott challenged McConnell for the top Senate Republican post but lost.

    The Florida senator said last week that he saw McConnell’s decision to remove him from the Senate Commerce Committee as retribution.

    “He didn’t like that I opposed him because I believe we have to have ideas – fight over ideas,” Scott said on “CNN This Morning.”

    When pressed Thursday by CNN’s Collins about why his proposal left open the opportunity for the government to cut funding for Social Security and Medicare, Scott repeatedly referenced a policy proposal from then-Sen. Biden in 1975 to sunset federal legislation periodically.

    Scott said Biden’s old proposal does less to protect entitlements for seniors than the senator’s plan from last year because “he proposed it year after year after year to reduce Medicare and Social Security. Year after year. I’ve never done that. I don’t believe in that.”

    Asked Thursday about the 1975 proposal mentioned by Scott, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “A bill from the 1970s is not part of the president’s agenda.”

    “The president ran on protecting Medicare and Social Security from cuts. And he reiterated that in the State of the Union,” she said.

    A new ad from Scott released this week in advance of the president’s visit to Florida says that “Joe Biden just cut $280 billion from Medicare” – a claim that was previously debunked when Scott and the NRSC made it in 2022.

    Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is expected to reduce Medicare prescription drug spending by the federal government by $237 billion, according to the most recent Congressional Budget Office estimate, because the law allows the government to spend less money to buy drugs from pharmaceutical companies and not because it cuts benefits to seniors enrolled in Medicare. The law makes Medicare’s prescription drug program substantially more generous to seniors while also saving them money.

    Scott, in his interview with Collins, also defended his recent call for Biden to resign, labeling him “a complete failure.” He said his resignation calls did not specifically stem from Biden’s use of his proposal as an avenue to attack Republicans but expressed his displeasure with the president’s repeated references to his plan.

    “He lies about what I want to get done, and I don’t appreciate it,” Scott said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • New GOP-led panel to hold first public hearing Thursday on alleged ‘weaponization’ of federal government | CNN Politics

    New GOP-led panel to hold first public hearing Thursday on alleged ‘weaponization’ of federal government | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The GOP-led House committee on the alleged “weaponization” of the federal government kicks off Thursday with its first public hearing with a witness list that suggests Republicans on the committee will push a popular narrative among conservatives that has been disputed by federal officials.

    The hearing will be split into two sessions, featuring a swath of current and former lawmakers, former FBI officials and legal experts. They plan to discuss allegations of how the government has been weaponized against Republicans, as well as the general belief among some conservatives that federal officials and mainstream media have been working to silence the right.

    “We’re focused on the whole weaponization of government, and the idea that the government is not working for the American people,” subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan told CNN. “The government is supposed to protect the First Amendment, not have, as Mr. (Jonathan) Turley said, ‘censorship by surrogate,’” he said, referencing one of the witnesses slated for Thursday’s hearing who is a George Washington University Law Center professor.

    The Ohio Republican continued, “I’m sure those will be some of the things that will come up in the course of the hearing,” he added, referencing a line from one of the witnesses GOP members have called.

    Democrats on the panel, however, tell CNN they reject the premise of the weaponization subcommittee itself – and much of their time will be spent disputing GOP messaging.

    “We have an overall strategy, which is to debunk the misrepresentations that are sure to be coming from it,” said Rep. Dan Goldman, a freshman Democrat from New York. “My understanding is that Sens. Grassley and Johnson are going to speak, and I’m glad they are. I hope they talk about how they used their Senate committees to weaponize Russian propaganda and disinformation in 2020.”

    “I think our intention is to make sure that the American people are aware of the actual truth of the matter, and not whatever partisan misinformation that Republicans are going to peddle,” Goldman added.

    Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, is being called as one of the Democrats’ witnesses. He told CNN that “one basic question is whether weaponization is the target of the committee or if weaponization is the purpose of the committee” – previewing a potential line of attack.

    In a new memo released Thursday ahead of the subcommittee’s first hearing, the White House called the subpanel a “Fox News reboot of the House Un-American Activities Committee” and “a political stunt that weaponizes Congress to carry out the priorities of extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress.”

    White House Oversight spokesman Ian Sams writes that the committee “plans to weaponize the MAGA agenda against their perceived political enemies” and is “choosing to make it their top priority to go down the rabbit hole of debunked conspiracy theories about a ‘deep state’ instead of taking a deep breath and deciding to work with the President and Democrats in Congress to improve Americans’ everyday lives.”

    The first panel of witnesses to testify before the committee include GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, as well as former congresswoman from Hawaii and ex-Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.

    The lawmakers are only slated to deliver opening statements and are not expected to answer any questions while testifying, sources familiar with the committee’s plans tell CNN.

    Gabbard has regularly appeared on Fox News since leaving Congress and frequently uses the network to accuse the FBI and the Justice Department of targeting political opponents of the Biden administration.

    Grassley and Johnson have both previously attacked the Justice Department for how it has handled its investigation into Hunter Biden and its approach to addressing threats against school administrators.

    Grassley has also accused the Justice Department of seeking to criminalize the First Amendment right of parents to protest school policies. The Justice Department has denied doing so, pointing to a line in the memo acknowledging that “spirited debate about policy matters is protected under or Constitution.”

    The witnesses’ previous comments regarding the politization of the Biden Justice Department suggest that the committee plans to push a narrative that is popular among the right, but has been publicly disputed by the FBI. There is little public evidence supporting such claims, which Jordan says are backed up by unnamed whistleblowers. Some allegations have been debunked by fact-checkers or news reports, and Jordan has falsely claimed for years that there is an anti-GOP “deep state” within the FBI.

    Democrats, meanwhile, plan to showcase Raskin’s testimony, who is the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee – which is investigating a series of polarizing issues such as Hunter Biden and the former and current presidents’ possession of classified documents. Raskin, a former member of the House select committee on the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill insurrection, and a key fixture in both of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trials, has been a crucial messenger for the left in pushing back against the GOP’s claims and controversial probes.

    The second panel of witnesses will feature former FBI special agents Nicole Parker and Thomas Baker, as well as Turley and the Raben Group’s Elliot Williams.

    Parker wrote an op-ed last month detailing how she left the bureau after over 10 years of service because she believed it became “politically weaponized.”

    Baker, meanwhile, published a book in December 2022 titled, “The Fall of the FBI: How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy.”

    Turley was a prominent figure during Trump’s impeachment trials often referenced by the right.

    Williams, a CNN analyst, is appearing on behalf of the Democrats. Williams previously served as deputy assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Department of Justice, where worked to secure Senate confirmation for both Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

    Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democratic member of the subcommittee, cast doubt on the effectiveness of Republicans’ strategy, telling CNN, “I fail to see what they think they’re going to accomplish by those kinds of witnesses. … I don’t know that that adds anything to their credibility or making their case. I’ll leave it at that.”

    But Democrats are also cognizant of one potential disadvantage ahead of Thursday’s hearing – the fact they have not yet met as a group while the Republicans have. Connolly told CNN that, given they were just named as member of the panel last week, they have not yet had the opportunity to begin preparing for the onslaught of investigations GOP members have planned.

    GOP subcommittee members told CNN the purpose of the first hearing is largely to outline the panel’s investigate plans in the months ahead, and set the stage for what viewers should anticipate from the weekly-hearings the committee is hoping to hold.

    “Chairman Jordan wants to introduce people to what the committee hopes to accomplish, and the scope of the problem. Having these senators speak with authority helps set it. They won’t be questioned as witnesses, but they are testifying as to their observations,” GOP Rep. Darrell Issa said.

    “I’m not sure we’re going to learn what we need to learn about what has happened inside government agencies in sufficient detail with these witnesses, but I think they can kind of cast the vision,” Republican subcommittee member Dan Bishop of North Carolina told CNN.

    Bishop said he hopes the work of this panel will pave the way for legislation to address what he claimed were agencies “going off rogue.”

    Jordan and House Judiciary Committee staff have met with series of whistleblowers behind closed doors this week for transcribed interviews regarding claims about the politicization of the Justice Department. The interviews will serve as the basis for much of the subcommittee’s probe, sources with direct knowledge of the interviews tell CNN.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Romney told Santos ‘You don’t belong here’ in tense exchange in House chamber before SOTU | CNN Politics

    Romney told Santos ‘You don’t belong here’ in tense exchange in House chamber before SOTU | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah told GOP Rep. George Santos of New York: “You don’t belong here,” according to a member who witnessed the tense exchange in the House of Representatives chamber Tuesday night.

    Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, made the remarks as he walked into the chamber for President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.

    After the speech, Romney told CNN he criticized Santos for standing in the front aisle “trying to shake hands” with the president and senators “given the fact that he’s under ethics investigation.”

    “He should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet instead of parading in front of the president and people coming into the room,” he said, noting that Santos may have responded to his remark but he “didn’t hear.”

    Santos posted on Twitter after the speech: “Hey @MittRomney just a reminder that you will NEVER be PRESIDENT!”

    Santos faces multiple investigations over his finances and repeated lies about his resume and biography. In November, he flipped a Democratic seat in a redrawn district, helping Republicans seize a narrow majority in the House.

    Santos, 34, has been caught lying about the schools he attended, his employment history and family background. Complaints with the Federal Election Commission have questioned whether he is a true source of more than $700,000 in loans he said he made to his 2022 campaign.

    Federal investigators are examining his finances, including allegations that Santos took $3,000 from a veteran’s dying dog’s GoFundMe campaign.

    The New York freshman is expected to face an investigation from the House Ethics Committee. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has so far not called on Santos to resign, even as some of his fellow New York Republicans have called on him to step down. Santos has voluntarily stepped down from two House committees even though McCarthy and his allies initially awarded him the spots.

    Romney said he’s disappointed McCarthy hasn’t called on Santos to resign.

    “He says he, you know, that he embellished his record. Look, embellishing is saying you got an A when you got an A-,” the senator said. “Lying is saying you graduated from a college that you didn’t even attend and he shouldn’t be in Congress.”

    “And they’re gonna go through the process and hopefully get him out. .. But he shouldn’t be there and if he had any shame at all, he wouldn’t be there.”

    On Tuesday, Santos told CNN he is “not concerned” about the House ethics probe or about New York constituents calling on him to resign.

    This story has been updated from an interview with Romney.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Republicans across the country push legislation to restrict drag show performances | CNN Politics

    Republicans across the country push legislation to restrict drag show performances | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    A slew of bills, mostly in Republican-led states, are looking to restrict or prohibit drag show performances in the presence of children, part of a larger fight over a burgeoning culture war issue.

    Republicans say the performances expose children to sexual themes and imagery that are inappropriate, a claim rejected by advocates, who say the proposed measures are discriminatory against the LGBTQ community and could violate First Amendment laws.

    As transgender issues and drag culture are increasingly becoming more mainstream, such shows – which often feature men dressing as women in exaggerated makeup while singing or entertaining a crowd, though some shows feature bawdier content – have occasionally been the target of attacks, and LGBTQ advocates say the bills under consideration add to a heightened state of alarm for the community.

    Bills in at least 11 states across the country are working their way through legislatures, though none have yet been signed into law, according to a CNN review.

    Legislation in Tennessee and Arizona, which seek to limit “adult cabaret performances” on public property so as to shield them from the view of children, threaten violators with a misdemeanor and repeat offenders with a felony. A bill in the Texas legislature would include restaurants and bars that host drag performances under the state’s definition of a “sexually oriented business.”

    Under the terms presently being considered in West Virginia, parents or guardians of children who are either involved in drag shows or permit their children to be in the presence of one could be “required to complete parenting classes, substance abuse counseling, anger management counseling or other appropriate services” as determined by the state.

    Shangela, a drag performer who has competed on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” told CNN in an interview that as the drag community has gained visibility, “it becomes a greater target and a greater point of possible division.”

    “Now (people are) seeing drag. They’re seeing it on their cable networks, they’re seeing it in film, and it’s being represented authentically. And it’s forcing, it’s driving conversations that have never had to be had before. And some people are afraid of that,” she said.

    Jonathan Hamilt, the executive director of Drag Story Hour, a non-profit organization that features performers reading to children, believes bigotry is the motivation behind the bills.

    “If drag wasn’t rooted in gay culture and rooted in queer community, I don’t think it’d be up for debate,” Hamilt said. “Nobody is banning clowns, nobody is banning miming. This is nothing new, this is just the 2023 trending version of what homophobia looks like.”

    “Drag meddles in stories about gender, beauty, and culture,” drag queen Sasha Velour wrote for CNN in 2017. “Even in the act of lip syncing, we choose a song – a preexisting story that’s deemed ‘straight’ or ‘normal’ or ‘nothing out of the ordinary’ – and then we squeeze our beautiful queer bodies into it, shifting the meaning, disrupting the total effect. Drag makes room for us queers as we are (or perhaps more importantly, as we imagine ourselves) in the center of every recognizable narrative.”

    Republican sponsors of some bills, however, claim such performances are adult in nature and potentially harmful to children.

    “When you take one of these little kids and put them in front of drag queens that are men dressed like women, do you think that helps them or confuses them in regard to their own gender?” Arkansas state Sen. Gary Stubblefield, a Republican who sponsored legislation that passed in the state Senate last month, asked during floor remarks.

    “This bill is not anti-drag. It is pro-child,” Tennessee state Sen. Jack Johnson told CNN in a statement. “I am carrying the legislation to protect children from being exposed to sexually explicit drag shows that are inappropriate for minor audiences. It is similar to laws that prohibit children from going to a strip club.”

    Johnson’s press secretary, Molly Gormley, insisted to CNN that the bill, which looks to limit “entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest,” is specifically aimed at “sexually explicit” drag performances and that the senator is “not taking issue with drag shows or children at drag shows.”

    A Montana bill, which flatly seeks to prohibit children from attending drag shows, would block drag performances at publicly funded libraries or schools, a reference to events such as Drag Queen Story Hours, which have occasionally faced backlash from far-right groups. During an event last year, Proud Boys interrupted as drag queen Panda Dulce was reading to children at the San Lorenzo Library in California.

    Several sponsors to whom CNN spoke said some constituents complained about the shows, while others offered anecdotal examples of performances they described as sexually explicit.

    “You have the constitutional right as an adult to engage in sexual activity, you have the constitutional right to go to a drag performance. And no one in Texas is actually trying to stop that,” said Texas state Rep. Nate Schatzline, a Republican. “I think when we see minors involved in activities that are inappropriate for a child to be involved in, that’s where we as legislators have to step up and say, ‘Hey, we have to draw a line,’ because ultimately it’s our job to protect the liberties of those that are citizens in the state of Texas and to protect those that can’t protect themselves.”

    Advocates of LGBTQ and free speech rights fear that the laws, if passed, would have a chilling effect on the performances and argue that the language is vague.

    “It’s not clear to me that a trans man for example, who wrote a book, would be able to do a book reading at a local book store under these bills. A high school couldn’t perform a Shakespeare play like Twelfth Night because Twelfth Night explicitly in its plot includes a woman dressed as a man,” said Kate Ruane, the director of Pen America’s US Free Expression program.

    Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, noted that the bills don’t amount to outright bans on drag performances but “libraries, book stores, regular theaters and restaurants would have to comply with all adult business regulations, and they are unlikely to do that so they’re more likely to cancel the shows.”

    Some drag shows indeed may be inappropriate for children, Shangela acknowledged. But, she said, “you can’t characterize the world of the drag by one particular type of show, the same way that you can’t characterize the way a television film by one particular program.”

    “The world of drag is no different than any other aspect of entertainment in our world,” she said. “If you are a parent that is concerned about what your child is seeing, then you stay involved in what you’re allowing your child to be exposed to.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Opinion: Biden doesn’t throw away his shot | CNN

    Opinion: Biden doesn’t throw away his shot | CNN

    [ad_1]

    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 Lord Byron’s satirical epic poem, “Don Juan,” the main character marvels at “the whole earth, of man the wonderful, and of the stars … of air-balloons, and of the many bars to perfect knowledge of the boundless skies — and then he thought of Donna Julia’s eyes.”

    The balloon from China floating eastward over the United States last week riveted the nation’s attention for a lot longer.

    At first, the enormous balloon, carrying a smaller substructure roughly the length of three city buses, seemed to symbolize America’s wide-open vulnerability to what the Pentagon described as surveillance from a rising power.

    But the downing of the balloon off the Carolinas Saturday gave President Joe Biden’s administration a way to unleash its fighter jets without any loss of life.

    “I told them to shoot it down,” said Biden, peering at reporters through his Ray-Ban aviators at a Maryland airport. Referring to his national security team, Biden added, “They said to me let’s wait till the safest place to do it.”

    The incident led to the abrupt postponement of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China and an apologetic statement from Beijing calling it a “civilian airship” that had “deviated far from its planned course.” The US Navy and Coast Guard are taking part in an effort to recover the aircraft. which may yield evidence of its true purpose.

    Some Republicans criticized the President for not shooting it down sooner. China called the downing of the balloon an “obvious overreaction” and said it “reserves the right” to act on “similar situations.”

    In May 1937, the golden age of transcontinental passenger airships came to a catastrophic end in roughly 30 seconds after a spark set the hydrogen fuel on the Hindenburg ablaze, killing 36. But balloons for other uses survived, and they remain a tool of surveillance, even in the era of spy satellites.

    “The question is whether China carefully considered the consequences of its actions,” wrote David A. Andelman. “Intentional or otherwise, if it was indeed monitoring air flows, their engineers might have suspected these weather phenomena would eventually take these balloons over the United States.”

    He pointed out that China has an enormous fleet of satellites which can surveil other nations. “Between 2019 and 2021, China doubled the number of its satellites in orbit from 250 to 499.”

    In the Washington Post, Sebastian Mallaby observed, “To understand how a balloon — at once menacing and farcically Zeppelin-retro — might become a defining image of the new cold war, consider how this alleged Chinese spy contraption captures both sides of the present moment. It is provocative enough to cause Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a much-anticipated trip to Beijing. It is clumsy enough to symbolize China’s immense capacity to blunder — a tendency that President Biden’s team has lately exploited, to devastating effect.”

    05 opinion cartoons 020423

    02 Marie Kondo tidying

    “It is not hard to tidy up perfectly and completely in one fell swoop,” Marie Kondo wrote in the 2011 book that sold more than 13 million copies worldwide and launched her career as a Netflix star and curator of “joy.”

    “In fact, anyone can do it.”

    It was an apt sentiment at a time when striving for perfection at home and at work was the norm, despite it being a sometimes soul-crushing aspiration — and one that began to vanish with the arrival of the pandemic in 2020.

    So it was understandable that people took notice when Kondo, who gave birth to her third child in 2021, recently said, “My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life.”

    As Holly Thomas wrote, “Her benign comment, while welcomed with relief in some circles, prompted a surprisingly febrile reaction in others. … Kondo’s success was built on tidying, and encouraging us to tidy in turn. Where was her loyalty to tidying? How dare she pivot out of her well-ordered lane after selling us a way to live?”

    But that’s the wrong way to look at it, Thomas added. “The discomfort … with Kondo’s personal rebrand demonstrates a rigidity that’s reflected across many areas of life. … On a more sinister level, there can be an implicit sense that once you’ve established a particular trait or activity as inherent to your identity, it is somehow greedy or unfaithful to try your hand at something new.”

    Jura Koncius wrote in the Washington Post, “Kondo, 38, has caught up with the rest of us, trying to corral the doom piles on our kitchen counters while on hold with the plumber and trying not to burn dinner. The multitasker seems somewhat humbled by her growing family and her business success, maybe realizing that you can find peace in some matcha even if you drink it in a favorite cracked mug rather than a porcelain cup.”

    The new Kondo might welcome a bill in Maryland that would provide tax breaks to companies that switch to four-day work weeks as a pilot project. “We are three years into a pandemic that upended work life (and life-life) as many of us knew it,” wrote Jill Filipovic. “We are living in an era in which out-of-work demands, most especially parenting and other forms of caregiving, are more extreme than ever. And we are living in a country that, unlike other nations, provides meager support as its people strive to balance it all…”

    “No wonder so many workers report being fed up and burned out. No wonder so many women, who continue to do the lion’s share of the nation’s parenting, drop out of the workforce.”

    03 opinion cartoons 020423

    The 2024 presidential campaign is just starting to come into focus. Former President Donald Trump has locked on to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the biggest threat to his campaign for the GOP nomination.

    Trump “mercilessly slammed DeSantis again … first at a South Carolina campaign rally and then in remarks to the media,” Dean Obeidallah noted. “On his campaign plane, Trump berated DeSantis as ‘very disloyal’ and accused him of ‘trying to rewrite history’ in recent pronouncements about Covid-19 policy in Florida.”

    If DeSantis enters the race, Obeidallah observed, “he’ll need to show the red meat-loving GOP base that he can punch back against Trump.”

    Yet Trump’s derisive nicknames for DeSantis haven’t stuck, as SE Cupp said. “I know we’re just getting started, but this Trump doesn’t seem to pack the punch that 2016 Trump did. … Maybe he’s lost his touch as he’s faced one political storm after the other.”

    Some other potential rivals are queueing up, with Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, planning to announce her candidacy on February 15 and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mulling a possible run.

    “Haley is a formidable candidate who brings the executive experience from her days as governor as well as the foreign policy experience from her time as ambassador,” wrote Gavin J. Smith, who worked in both the Trump administration and Haley’s executive office in South Carolina. “This experience, paired with her ability to bring people together, her background as a mom and a military spouse, and her track record of fighting the uphill battle of running against old White men — is exactly why she is the right candidate, at the right moment, for Republicans to rally behind as we look to win back the White House in 2024.”

    Mike Pompeo has lost 90 pounds on a diet and exercise regimen. He has a new book out that attacks the media and lambastes some of his Trump administration colleagues. “Based on a close reading of his book,” Peter Bergen wrote, “I bet he will take the plunge. Pompeo could be looking to benefit as Trump loses altitude among some Republicans, and at 59, Pompeo is a spring chicken compared with President Joe Biden and Trump, so if it doesn’t work out well this time around, he sets himself up for other runs down the road.”

    When Biden sums up the State of the Union Tuesday evening, the camera will reveal one change from last year, reflecting divided party control of Congress: Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy — rather than Nancy Pelosi — will be in the backdrop, alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, as Biden speaks from the House podium.

    David Axelrod, who served as a strategist and adviser to former President Barack Obama, has some advice for Biden: “Acknowledge the stress people feel, explain how you’ve tried to help but don’t tell them how great things are. Or worse, how great YOU are. You can’t persuade people of what they don’t feel — and will lose them if you try.”

    “Rather than claim his place in history, the President should paint the picture of where we’ve been and, even more important, where we’re going…”

    Biden met with McCarthy last week, as each staked out their positions on the coming battle over America’s debt limit.

    In 2011, Obama and GOP leaders in Congress narrowly averted a default in US debt payments. Republican Lanhee J. Chen pointed out that one of the people “who facilitated the 2011 deal was none other than Joe Biden. Now, many in Washington are trying to predict what might unfold over the next several months as the once-and-future dealmaker approaches yet another debt ceiling crisis — but this time as commander in chief.”

    “The current crisis presents an opportunity for moderates in both parties to unite around the need both to raise the debt ceiling but also to put in place lasting changes that will fundamentally improve America’s fiscal trajectory.”

    01 opinion cartoons 020423

    For CNN Politics, Zachary B. Wolf spoke with Robert Hockett, a Cornell University law professor, who argues that the President would have legal grounds to ignore the debt ceiling entirely. Moreover, Hockett disputed the notion that US government debt is on an unsustainable path: “When we measure a national debt, we look at it as a percentage of GDP. It’s much, much lower than the Japanese national debt is, for example, relative to Japanese GDP. And you don’t see anybody worrying about the integrity or the worthiness of the Japanese national debt or whether Japan’s economy can sustain its debt.”

    Following Biden’s speech on Tuesday, the new Arkansas governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, will give the GOP response. “The 40-year-old certainly provides a contrast to the 76-year-old former President Donald Trump by virtue of her age and gender,” wrote Julian Zelizer.

    But the Trump approach is still in the background, he added. “Sanders represents a new generation of Republicans eager to weaponize the same outrage machine with familiar talking points about the threats of immigration, the so-called radical left’s attacks on education, and an economy in shambles under Biden — while showing that they can govern without the self-defeating chaos and tumult that rocked the nation from 2017 to 2021.”

    For more on politics:

    Elliot Williams: I had a security clearance. It’s easier to lose classified documents than you think

    Frida Ghitis: The most important of George Santos’ secrets

    06 opinion cartoons 020423

    The death of a young man after a traffic stop and brutal police beating in Memphis cries out for a response to a national problem, wrote Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Tyre Nichols, who was laid to rest on Wednesday, was killed for driving while Black,” she wrote. “The former Memphis police officers fired for his killing will get an opportunity to defend themselves in court against the criminal charges, as they should. Nichols got no such opportunity…”

    “The question we should be asking now is, why are Black people stopped so often for traffic violations? Why are so many across the United States dying at the hands, or tasers or guns of police officers during these stops? And what can be done to change this horrific situation?”

    “Here’s one thing we know: Body cameras are not the answer. Body camera footage is not prevention; there was body camera footage of Nichols’ killing. It is evidence, not a prophylactic.”

    In the summer of 1966, when the young civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael “climbed onto the back of a truck with generator-powered lights below, he looked as though he had stepped onto a floodlit stage.” Carmichael lamented that after six years of shouting for freedom, “We ain’t got nothing. What we’re going to start saying now is ‘Black Power!’”

    Mark Whitaker, who wrote about that moment for CNN Opinion, is the author of a forthcoming book, “Saying It Loud: 1966 – The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement.”

    The day after Carmichael spoke, “a short Associated Press story describing the scene was picked up by more than 200 newspapers across America. Overnight, the Black Power Movement was born. … In 1966, the Black Power pioneers established the principle that all Black lives deserve to matter.”

    Florida’s governor is engaging in a bad faith attack on the College Board’s “proposed Advanced Placement African American Studies course, citing concerns about six topics of study, including the Movement for Black Lives, Black feminism and reparations,” wrote Leslie Kay Jones, assistant professor in the sociology department at Rutgers University. “Gov. Ron DeSantis said the course violates the so-called Stop WOKE Act, which he signed last year, and the state criticized the inclusion in the course of work by a number of scholars, including me.”

    “By villainizing CRT (critical race theory) and then representing African American Studies as synonymous with CRT, the DeSantis administration paved the way to convince the public that the accurate teaching of African American Studies as a field of research was a Trojan horse for teaching students ‘to hate.’ … I must ask where ‘hate’ is being stoked in African American Studies? Is it in the factual teaching that enslaved Black people were considered 3/5ths of a human being?”

    04 opinion cartoons 020423

    Manish Khanduri: ‘Blisters inside my blisters.’ Why we walked the entire length of India

    Lev Golinkin: Germany’s quiet betrayal of victims of the Holocaust

    Darren Foster: After 15 years of reporting on opioids, I know this to be true

    Joyce Davis: How Russia outmaneuvered the US in Africa

    AND…

    Judy Blume

    Young adult author Judy Blume is the subject of a new documentary, set to air in April on Amazon Prime. One of her books, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is the basis for a new film, also aimed for an April release.

    “To say Blume is widely loved would be an understatement, as the documentary shows,” wrote Sara Stewart. “It features interviews with some of the author’s more famous adoring fans, including Molly Ringwald, Samantha Bee and Lena Dunham. It also showcases her correspondence with now-adult women who wrote to Blume, initially, as teenagers — and she wrote back, beginning friendships that would last decades.”

    “All of these women speak about the ways Blume’s books changed them, made them feel seen and understood in a way that their parents often did not.” At a time when books touching the topics she covers are increasingly being banned in schools, Blume’s voice rings out.

    At 84, she “is still fighting the good fight,” wrote Stewart. At the Key West, Florida, bookstore Blume co-founded, “the shelves bear signs proclaiming, ‘We Sell Banned Books.’”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Republicans elevate ‘parental rights’ as top issue while looking to outflank each other heading into 2024 | CNN Politics

    Republicans elevate ‘parental rights’ as top issue while looking to outflank each other heading into 2024 | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential hopefuls have begun casting themselves as impassioned defenders of “parental rights,” turning schoolbooks and curricula, doctors’ offices, and sports leagues into a new political battleground as they work to distinguish themselves ahead of the 2024 GOP primary.

    The issue had already emerged as a major vein in the GOP bloodstream, emanating partly from the coronavirus pandemic, when school closures and vaccine mandates upended family routines and rankled vaccine-hesitant parents. But it took off after Republicans watched Glenn Youngkin defeat Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election following a campaign that placed “parents’ rights” at its center.

    While critics have denounced the theme of parents’ rights as oppressive, 2024 Republicans have nevertheless plowed ahead, seeking to one-up each other with provocative campaign pledges and legislative actions – the most obvious moves in recent weeks coming from former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    Several Republican governors – many with presidential ambitions – responded to Youngkin’s success by championing parental rights in their states, enacting bills that give parents and guardians unfettered access to school curricula, books and learning materials, and, in some instances, requiring school principals to review parental complaints about textbooks and lesson plans before they can proceed with using the material in classrooms. In some states, such as Texas, Florida and Iowa, parental permission is now needed to discuss certain topics with students. Other states, such as Georgia, have put parents and school communities in charge of vetting books their children could encounter at school for signs of race-related or sexual themes, appealing to conservatives who have voiced concerns about “radical” literature.

    But Republicans have also since turned parents’ rights into an umbrella term for a host of cultural issues. Declaring that parents deserve a say in what their children are taught, some GOP power players have pushed to end diversity and equity programs in public schools. Others have sought to restrict lessons about sexual orientation or gender identity. And some have looked to prevent schools from using a child’s preferred pronouns without parental permission.

    “We saw it with Youngkin’s race, and [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis has been playing it up for the last year. The issue has been building from Covid and extended to where we are now,” said Jennifer Williams, who in 2016 became the first openly transgender delegate to the Republican National Convention. Both DeSantis and Youngkin are said to be eyeing 2024 presidential campaigns.

    The sprint to get ahead on the issue is likely to play out over a combative presidential primary, while allies and advisers see it as an opportunity to appeal to a broader electorate if their candidate becomes the next GOP presidential nominee.

    “There are more parents than teachers, so it’s an easy equation. If you’re on the side of parents, that’s going to win you at the local level, and it’s going to win you at the national level,” said Keith Naughton, a longtime Republican consultant. Still, he also cautioned Republicans against “moving too far away from the consensus.”

    But public opinion around parental rights remains murky.

    A Quinnipiac poll released in February 2022 found that nearly 8 in 10 Americans considered efforts to ban books in schools and libraries purely political, versus 15 percent who said the efforts stemmed from content concerns. And as Republicans confront sensitive issues such as transgender rights while championing what they describe as parental empowerment, they could face similar political peril. A separate November poll by Marquette University Law School found that while a majority of Republicans (82%-18%) believed transgender athletes should be prohibited from participating in sports competitions – a topic the GOP has devoted much attention to in recent years – independent voters were nearly evenly split on the matter. The same survey showed that Republicans favored the 2020 Supreme Court decision that the 1964 Civil Rights Act bars employers from discriminating against gay and transgender workers by a 47-point margin, underscoring the political risks 2024 GOP hopefuls could encounter as they link LGBTQ rights to their parental rights push.

    Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, said Republicans are using the guise of parental rights “to eliminate people, history books and marginalized communities.”

    “This is not about parents. It’s a tactic that DeSantis found really whipped up his base in Florida and so [Republicans] are taking it out for a run to see how it does. Their goal, it seems, is that these politicians are trying to turn parents against each other and make classrooms a battleground so they can further their political ambitions,” Ellis said.

    GLAAD is expected to launch a messaging campaign in March that Ellis said will “fill the knowledge gap” that Republicans have “exploited.”

    “They tap into the worst anxieties of any parent,” said Ellis, a parent herself.

    Trump, currently the only declared candidate in the GOP presidential field, is one of several 2024 hopefuls who have elevated “parents’ rights” to new prominence as they work to curry favor with the party’s base.

    Trump pushed to create a “patriotic education” commission and ordered the federal government to end diversity trainings during his term in office, though much of his focus over the past two years has been on relitigating the 2020 election. Recently, though, he has refocused his attention on the kinds of cultural battles that have enabled some of his likeliest rivals – most notably DeSantis – to gain considerable popularity among Republican voters.

    In two straight-to-camera videos this week, Trump suggested that parents should select school principals through a “direct election” process and threatened to end federal funding for schools that teach “a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body” if he were to win another term.

    Even those who agreed with Trump’s proposals suggested he was playing catch-up with his fellow culture warriors – especially as he also went on the attack against DeSantis recently, calling the Florida governor “disloyal” and a “globalist RINO” in separate broadsides.

    “Obviously, DeSantis taking on Disney has shown a lot of leadership on this issue and frankly, I think it’s why Trump came out with his statements this week because in a lot of ways he sees himself running against DeSantis,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a social conservative activist who runs the Iowa-based Family Leader coalition. Vander Plaats was referring to the Florida governor’s push to strip the Walt Disney Company of its special governing powers after the company criticized his legislative efforts to restrict lessons on LGBTQ rights and gender identity in Florida classrooms.

    “Trump is saying, ‘How do I get to the right of DeSantis on this issue?’” Vander Plaats added.

    Allies of the former president rebuffed suggestions that he is taking cues from rivals rather than setting the agenda. They pointed to actions Trump took during his term in office to develop a counter-curriculum to the 1619 Project, an initiative launched by The New York Times to teach American students about slavery but which conservatives have decried as “propaganda.” And they cite the many instances in which Trump has condemned the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports, a topic he first weaved into his stump speech at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference and one that tends to draw some of the biggest applause lines at his campaign rallies.

    “This isn’t anything new,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. “On the school education stuff and critical race theory, he’s been talking about it since 2019 and 2020. And when he talks about gender ideology, he’s been mentioning that in his rallies, too.”

    “He’s a candidate now, and he’s focused on forward-looking policy proposals,” Cheung added.

    Some conservative activists who are still waiting to see how the 2024 primary field takes shape said Trump appears to be taking steps to ensure he isn’t outflanked by opponents on the issues that currently animate Republican base voters. Terry Schilling, executive director of the socially conservative American Principles Project, said Trump is “trying to play catch-up, but it’s good.”

    Referring specifically to Trump’s recently unveiled plan to curtail transgender rights, including ending medical treatments for transgender teens, Schilling suggested the former president was “making sure he’s the most conservative candidate on this issue.”

    “I think he’s just trying to ensure he doesn’t lose any ground or get outflanked. … It’s tough because DeSantis and Youngkin have actually been changing the policies on it, which is why I think he is going above and beyond … to kind of get a leg up,” Schilling said.

    A spokesman for DeSantis’ political operation declined to comment, but the Republican governor’s actions suggest he will not cede the issue by any stretch as he marches toward a potential campaign for president. This week, DeSantis released a 2023 budget framework that repeatedly emphasized the importance of “protecting parents’ fundamental rights,” nearly a year after he signed a “Parents Bill of Rights” into law that banned instructions on sexual orientation and gender identity to K-3 grade students.

    During the 2022 midterms, DeSantis took the unprecedented step of vetting, endorsing and campaigning for school board candidates, generating a wave of like-minded conservatives to carry out his agenda in districts across the state. Meanwhile, at DeSantis’ urging, a state medical board stacked with his appointees has effectively banned medication and surgeries for minors seeking gender transitions. DeSantis has decried such interventions as “chemical castration.”

    In leading these cultural clashes, DeSantis has become a superstar among highly engaged conservatives. He and his wife, Casey, were treated like rock stars at last year’s Tampa summit of Moms for Liberty, a group that mobilizes conservative matriarchs across the country, where he was heralded onstage as an “American hero” and a “shining light” for parents across the country who wish that “Ron would be their governor.” The Florida Republican was reelected to a second term in November by a 19-point margin, a victory he touted at a news conference earlier this week following a fresh round of attacks from Trump.

    Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, said parental rights weren’t on the forefront of minds during Trump’s first campaign in 2016 or when DeSantis first ran for governor in 2018. But DeSantis was among the first to recognize during the pandemic the parental angst around closed schools, mask mandates and an apprehension to ideological creep into the classroom, she said, and it has him well positioned when parental rights becomes “a litmus test for all candidates in 2024.”

    “He’s being rewarded already by having his colleagues and peers watching what he is doing and emulating him across the country,” Justice said. “Ron DeSantis stood up for parents when no one else was. I think he’s a leader that way, and parents across the country have recognized him for that.”

    Indeed, DeSantis’ actions have spawned copycat bills in statehouses across the country this year. The National Center for Transgender Equality is tracking 231 bills in state legislatures across the country that seek to curb transgender rights – 86 of which would restrict access to transgender care. In a sign of how swiftly Republicans have pivoted to this issue, as recently as 2019, not a single state legislature in the country was debating cutting off access to gender affirmation treatment or surgeries, said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the center.

    “If you rewind to 2018, this was not a political matter. There were no bills in statehouses. There were no presidential candidates talking about it. Transgender people were getting health care without a problem, and it was universally recognized as essential care by leading medical institutions,” Heng-Lehtinen said. “It was almost literally overnight we saw these bills pop up.”

    “And the places where we’ve seen the most aggressive actions against transgender people,” he added, “are in states where there’s a governor with all points suggesting they are seeking higher office.”

    Among those governors is Texas Republican Greg Abbott, whose administration has investigated parents of transgender teens for child abuse. In Iowa, where GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds already signed a bill to give parents and guardians more access to their children’s educational lives, lawmakers are now considering whether to ban instruction of sexual orientation or gender identity through eighth grade. Another potential 2024 Republican candidate, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, authored and signed a bill in 2022 that banned transgender women and girls from female scholastic sports, and in December her administration canceled a transgender advocacy group’s contract with the state’s Department of Health. There is also Youngkin, the term-limited Virginia governor who held a donor summit last fall to explore a possible presidential campaign and who recently rolled out a series of policy changes aimed at transgender students, one of which seeks to require parental sign-off for students who wish to use names or pronouns that diverge from what is listed on their official record.

    But not every Republican agrees with the policy fights being waged by the party’s potential presidential contenders as they aim to give parents more control over their childrens’ education.

    “When Youngkin and DeSantis do things like this, they aren’t taking into account the discrimination that can result,” said Williams, the former RNC delegate. “If parental rights are constantly about gender identity and critical race theory, it doesn’t seem to be about education. It seems to me it’s about making sure I can shield my kid from anything other than what I want them to know.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Democrats approve shake-up of 2024 calendar but it’s far from a done deal | CNN Politics

    Democrats approve shake-up of 2024 calendar but it’s far from a done deal | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Philadelphia
    CNN
     — 

    The Democratic National Committee on Saturday approved a plan to shake up the 2024 presidential primary calendar and demote longtime early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire, but significant questions remain about how the new order will be implemented.

    The new calendar upends decades of tradition in which Iowa and New Hampshire were the first two states to hold nominating contests and moves up South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan. President Joe Biden has argued the new nominating order would better reflect the diversity of the nation and the Democratic Party.

    But the party’s early nomination calendar, which was approved Saturday at the DNC’s winter meeting in Philadelphia, is facing opposition from some impacted states and could remain unsettled for months.

    Under the new calendar, South Carolina would hold the first primary on February 3, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on February 6, Georgia on February 13, and Michigan on February 27. Any state can hold a nomination contest starting March 5.

    The changes reflect longstanding concerns from party leaders that the previous calendar, which featured Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina in early voting, prioritized two states that are largely White and don’t represent the diversity of the party. Iowa has gone first in the nominating process since 1972, while New Hampshire has held the first primary in the process since 1920.

    “This calendar reflects the best of who we are as a nation, and it sends a powerful message all across the country,” DNC Chair Jaime Harrison said Saturday. 

    The calendar passed with overwhelming support. However, while the DNC sets the rules for the party’s nominating process, state governments (or state parties) ultimately set the dates of their contests, and New Hampshire and Georgia likely won’t be able to comply with the assigned dates.

    The chairs of the Iowa and New Hampshire Democratic parties objected to the calendar at Saturday’s meeting, noting that Democrats did not have the power in those states to unilaterally change their state laws. Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire control the office of the governor and both chambers of the state legislature.

    Rita Hart, the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, argued, “Iowa has been put in a position that makes it impossible to comply with both DNC rules and our own state law, which has exactly zero chance of being changed by the Republican legislature.”

    Hart said, “Democrats cannot forget about entire groups of voters in our part of the Midwest without doing significant damage to the party.”

    Ray Buckley, the chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said the DNC rules committee “knew that Republican leaders in the state would not bend to their will, and even knowing this, the RBC still decided that New Hampshire Democrats should be set up for failure,” referring to the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee.

    “Every vote matters in New Hampshire,” Buckley said. “Victories are determined by a small number of independent swing voters. Those voters are already being bombarded by the Republicans, who are saying that Democrats have abandoned New Hampshire.”

    New Hampshire has a state law that protects its first-in-the-nation primary status, while Georgia’s primary date is set by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and an early primary would open Peach State Republicans up to sanctions from their own national party.

    New Hampshire and Georgia now have until June to take steps toward scheduling their contests on the assigned dates. If they don’t, they won’t be able to hold primaries before March 5 without being penalized by the DNC.

    While Georgia would likely just hold its primary once any state is allowed to do so, a New Hampshire primary scheduled for “7 days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election,” as state law requires, could lead to delegate penalties for the state party.

    Additionally, any candidate who campaigns in or even has their name on the ballot in a noncompliant primary would be unable to receive delegates from that state and could face other penalties.

    Despite the implementation hurdles ahead, the calendar passed with overwhelming support, and several officials spoke in support of the new order. Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell, who has been a leading advocate for her state to join the early-voting calendar, gave a fiery speech Saturday in support of the proposal, saying it would reflect the diversity of the country.

    “We are overdue in changing this primary calendar to ensure it reflects the range of ideas, thoughts and hopes of Americans throughout this country,” Dingell said.

    While the Democratic rules drop New Hampshire from the second contest (and first primary) into a tie for the second primary, fellow longtime early state Iowa has been removed from the early set entirely.

    Like New Hampshire, Iowa is largely White, but it’s also far less politically competitive – then-President Donald Trump won it by 8 points in 2020 – and uses a complex and less accessible caucus format.

    Iowa’s early caucuses are also protected by state law, and then-Iowa Democratic Party Chair Ross Wilburn said in December that the party would follow that law when planning its contest while also pledging to reform the process.

    The other three early states shouldn’t have a problem complying with the new schedule. In South Carolina, each state party chair has the ability to set the date of their presidential primary. Nevada’s new date matches the one set by state law in 2021, and Michigan this week enacted a law to schedule their primary for February 27 (although the state legislature will have to end its session a few weeks early for it take effect in time).

    The calendar approved Saturday applies only to the Democratic party’s nominating process. Republican early-voting states will be unchanged from recent years, with Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

    “The [Republican National Committee] unanimously passed its rules over a year ago and solidified the traditional nominating process the American people know and understand,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement Saturday. “The DNC has decided to break a half-century precedent and cause chaos by altering their primary process, and ultimately abandoning millions of Americans in Iowa and New Hampshire.”

    The DNC changes could affect Republicans, especially in Michigan, where the new primary date violates national GOP rules. To avoid a delegate penalty, Michigan Republicans could use a party-run process at a later date.

    Ultimately, if Biden seeks a second term, he’s unlikely to face serious opposition, and the order of states would be largely irrelevant. However, the changes demonstrate that the party won’t be permanently attached to the traditional set of early states, and party leaders have already started to prepare to reexamine the schedule again after the 2024 election.

    In her speech, Dingell backed that idea: “No one state should have a lock. We do need to revisit this every four years.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Jim Jordan issues first subpoenas targeting Biden administration’s response to school board threats | CNN Politics

    Jim Jordan issues first subpoenas targeting Biden administration’s response to school board threats | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan on Friday subpoenaed the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Department of Education for documents as part of its investigation into whether a Justice Department strategy to address threats against teachers and school officials was abused to target conservative parents.

    The flurry of subpoenas are the first from the Judiciary’s subcommittee dedicated to investigating the alleged weaponization of the federal government and are an early indication that the newly minted chairman intends to aggressively pursue its probe into the Biden administration’s response to rising tensions and threats of violence surrounding school board meetings.

    The subpoenas set a document deadline of March 1. The panel sent the subpoenas after initially sending letters to the agencies for voluntary cooperation on January 17.

    The allegations being investigated date to 2021, when protests and some violence erupted at school board meetings across the country. Most of the anger came from conservative parents who wanted to repeal mask mandates, opposed anti-racism courses and had concerns about LGBTQ policies.

    With that backdrop, the National School Boards Association wrote to President Joe Biden asking for federal help to address the violence and threats against school administrators. The group said that “these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism” and encouraged the Justice Department to explore which laws, possibly including the Patriot Act, could be applied.

    The group soon apologized for “some of the language” in its letter. But it quickly drew backlash, particularly among conservatives.

    Attorney General Merrick Garland had issued a memo in response – which didn’t cite the letter, compare parents to “terrorists” nor invoke the Patriot Act. It merely told the FBI and federal prosecutors to step up collaboration with state and local law enforcement on the issue.

    According to a report Jordan released last year, emails show that the Biden White House consulted with the NSBA on the letter before the group made its letter public. An independent review by NSBA concluded, however, that there was no “direct or indirect evidence suggesting the Administration requested the Letter” or reviewed the contents before the letter was sent.

    Other emails also show that the Justice Department sent an advance copy of Garland’s memo to the NSBA.

    The FBI later established a “threat tag” to internally track cases about school board threats under the same categorization. Republicans have seized on the “threat tag” to accuse the FBI of carrying out Biden’s desire to stomp out conservative speech at school boards. But the creation of an internal database does not mean the FBI initiated any sort of crackdown against parents.

    Judiciary Republicans are requesting Garland provide a paper trail of the DOJ’s communications with the White House, intelligence agencies and members of the National School Boards Association about alleged violence at school board meetings.

    The subpoena also calls for a number of documents relating to Garland’s directive for FBI and US attorneys’ offices to meet with federal, state and local law enforcement partners to discuss strategies for addressing the issue, focusing specifically on what meetings took place and what recommendations were made.

    A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. Three days after Jordan’s voluntary request to DOJ, a department official responded to the Ohio Republican that “we share your belief that congressional oversight is vital to our functioning democracy” and encouraged the committee to prioritize its document requests to elicit efficient responses, according to a letter obtained by CNN.

    The FBI subpoena specifically demands that Director Chris Wray produce a variety of documents, including communications related to meeting with US attorneys’ offices and “establishment of the Department of Justice’s task force.”

    Wray is also told to hand over all documents related to formal and informal recommendations created or relied upon by FBI employees in accordance with Garland’s October 2021 memo.

    The FBI said in a statement that the bureau “has never been in the business of investigating speech or policing speech at school board meetings or anywhere else, and we never will be,” adding that “attempts to further any political narrative will not change those facts.”

    “The FBI recognizes the importance of congressional oversight and remains fully committed to cooperating with Congress’s oversight requests consistent with its constitutional and statutory responsibilities. The FBI is actively working to respond to congressional requests for information – including voluntary production of documents,” the FBI statement read.

    Jordan’s subpoena to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona called on the Education Department to hand over any documents or communications related to a letter the National School Boards Association sent in September 2021.

    Jordan’s subpoena also called for any files related to Viola Garcia’s appointment to the National Assessment Government Board. Garcia was the president of the National School Boards Association and was one of two individuals who signed the September 2021 letter to Biden.

    An Education Department spokesperson told CNN that “the Department responded to Chairman Jordan’s letter earlier this week. The Department remains committed to responding to the House Judiciary Committee’s requests in a manner consistent with longstanding Executive Branch policy.”

    CNN has reached out to Garcia for comment.

    On Thursday, a day before the subpoena, the Education Department told Jordan’s team that the department played no role in crafting the letter from the National School Boards Association.

    “I would also like to reiterate – as the Department has repeatedly made clear – that the Secretary did not request, direct any action, or play any role in the development of the September 29, 2021, letter from the NSBA to President Biden,” Gwen Graham, assistant secretary for legislation and congressional affairs at the Education Department wrote in a letter obtained by CNN. Graham added that an independent review for counsel retained by the NSBA did not find any connection between the letter and Garcia’s appointment.

    Republicans gave Democrats on the committee a heads up that these subpoenas were coming, a source familiar told CNN. Democratic Del. Stacey Plaskett of the US Virgin Islands, the highest-ranking Democrat on the subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, said the subpoenas were underpinned by “conspiracy theories” and said she is confident that what the Republicans have asked for “will once again disprove this tired right-wing theory.”

    White House spokesperson for Congressional Oversight Ian Sams said in a statement to CNN, “Chairman Jordan is rushing to fire off subpoenas only two days after the Judiciary Committee organized, even though agencies already responded in good faith seeking to accommodate requests he made. These subpoenas make crystal clear that extreme House Republicans have no interest in working together with the Biden Administration on behalf of the American people and every interest in staging political stunts.”

    Since the uproar at school boards became a major political issue in late 2021, Republicans have pushed the baseless narrative that Biden, Garland and Wray have weaponized federal law enforcement to attack innocent parents who care about education.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy falsely claimed that “Biden used the FBI to target parents as domestic terrorists.” Jordan has said Garland tried “to use federal law enforcement tools to silence parents.” This claim even came up in the GOP response to last year’s State of the Union. These claims have been repeatedly debunked by fact-checkers from CNN and other outlets.

    For his part, Garland has aggressively pushed back against Republicans’ accusations. He previously testified to Congress that the Justice Department isn’t using counterterrorism resources against parents and said it was ridiculous to equate “angry” parents to “terrorists.”

    When GOP senators grilled Wray about the “threat tag” matter at an August hearing, he defended the FBI.

    “The FBI is not going to be in the business of investigating speech or policing speech at school board meetings,” Wray said. “We’re not about to start now. Threats of violence, that’s a different matter altogether. And there, we will work with our state local partners, as we always have.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Democrats in Connecticut want to ban state agencies from using ‘Latinx’ | CNN Politics

    Democrats in Connecticut want to ban state agencies from using ‘Latinx’ | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Several state Democratic lawmakers in Connecticut are seeking to ban state agencies from using “Latinx,” – the latest example of political backlash against the term.

    Members of the Connecticut state House introduced a bill last month that would prohibit state agencies and employees acting on behalf of state agencies from using “Latinx” in official communications.

    Rep. Geraldo Reyes, one of the primary sponsors of the bill, told CNN on Thursday that he and his colleagues behind the bill are Puerto Rican and consider the term offensive.

    “It’s a term that we believe is unnecessary because the Spanish language, which is 1,500-plus years old, already identifies male, female and neutral,” Reyes said on “CNN Newsroom,” adding that “Latin” and “Latino” were both gender-neutral options.

    Reyes told CNN that a state House committee is screening the bill, and that he hopes it will soon receive a public hearing. If the committee approves the bill, it would need to pass the state House and Senate and be signed by the governor before it becomes law. Democrats have full government control in Connecticut.

    Some activists, academics, companies and progressive groups have adopted “Latinx” in an effort to include those who fall outside the male/female gender binary. But many Hispanics and Latinos take issue with the term, calling it clunky and nonsensical for Spanish speakers.

    The term has also been swept up into the nation’s culture wars. In one of her first acts as Arkansas governor, Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders barred the use of “Latinx” in official state documents and ordered a review of state agencies’ past usage of the term. GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz of Texas, meanwhile, mocked the term during her victory speech last November, characterizing her win as “a victory for every single Hispanic who loves the Spanish language and does not want to be called Latinx.”

    While “Latinx” is often derided by those on the right, politicians from both parties have expressed opposition to the term. Aside from the state lawmakers in Connecticut, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona said in 2021 that he had instructed his office not to use the term in official communications.

    “Look y’all. Hispanic, Latin American are gender neutral. So we have already gender neutral options to describe the Latino community. Adding an x and creating a new word comes off as performative,” Gallego tweeted at the time. “It will not lose you an election but if your staff and consultants use Latinx in your mass communication it likely means they don’t understand the Latino community and is indicative of deeper problems.”

    Data suggests that “Latinx” is not widely used among the people it is meant to describe.

    A Pew Research Center survey published in 2020 found that only about one in four adults in the US who identify as Hispanic or Latino have heard the term “Latinx,” while just 3% say they use it to describe themselves. Those who used the term tended to be younger, US-born and Democratic-leaning. They were also more likely to be bilingual or predominately English speakers and were more likely to have gone to college.

    Similarly, a 2021 Gallup poll found that just 4% of Hispanic and Latino Americans prefer the term “Latinx” over “Hispanic” and “Latinx,” though a majority of respondents said it didn’t matter to them which term was used.

    Other surveys point to divides along cultural lines. An Axios-Ipsos Latino poll in partnership with Telemundo from last year found that a majority of Mexican Americans surveyed were comfortable with the term “Latinx,” while around just one in three Central Americans were.

    Critics of “Latinx” have noted that the term falls outside the bounds of Spanish grammar and is difficult for Spanish speakers to pronounce. And given its popularity among predominately English speakers, some also feel that the term imposes English conventions upon Spanish speakers.

    In recent years, others have opted for new alternatives such as “Latiné,” which is gender-neutral and more consistent with the way Spanish is spoken.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Republicans slam Biden’s handling of the US-Mexico border in first congressional hearing | CNN Politics

    Republicans slam Biden’s handling of the US-Mexico border in first congressional hearing | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Republican lawmakers slammed President Joe Biden’s border policies on Wednesday and laid the groundwork for an impeachment case against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in the first of a series of hearings on immigration since seizing control of the House.

    Over the course of Biden’s presidency, Republicans have repeatedly criticized the administration over the handling of the US-Mexico border, where an influx of migrants has stretched federal resources. Critics argue the historic number of arrests is evidence of Biden’s policies not working despite the administration largely using the same protocols as the Trump administration, principally a Covid-era border restriction.

    Now, with a House majority and leadership on key committees, Republicans plan to raise those criticisms in congressional hearings and seize on an issue that’s been a political vulnerability for the president, beginning with Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing.

    House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan criticized Biden’s border policies at the outset of the committee’s first hearing this Congress, making clear the Republican’s intent to underscore what the GOP has described as a crisis on the US-Mexico border over the course of the more than three-hour hearing.

    Jordan kicked off the hearing with a series of figures, including the record number of migrant encounters at the border and number of people flagged for being on the terror watchlist – arguing that the data is evidence of the administration’s failed border policies.

    US border authorities encountered migrants more than 2.3 million times along the US-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. Of those, more than 1 million migrants were turned away at the border.

    “These numbers make clear that the Biden administration does not have operational control of the border,” Jordan said. “Month after month after month, we have set records for migrants coming into the country and frankly, I think it’s intentional.”

    Republican lawmakers have argued that Mayorkas’ claims of having operational control of the border are unfounded and that the record arrests mark a dereliction of duty – two themes that came up during Wednesday’s hearing and have been cited as reason to impeach the DHS secretary. The House Judiciary Committee would have jurisdiction over an impeachment resolution.

    The tone of the hearing didn’t sit well with New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the committee’s top Democrat, who lambasted Republicans for their approach.

    “I wish this hearing was starting off on a different note. This hearing is more of the same, haphazard chaotic style we have come to expect of this new Republican majority,” Nadler said in his opening remarks. “The first hearing will showcase the racist tendencies of the extreme MAGA Republican wing of the party,” he added.

    Over the course of the hearing, Democrats seized on disagreements over border policy within the GOP conference. Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson, of Georgia, called it “nothing more than a distraction.”

    The committee described Wednesday’s hearing – the first in a series – as an examination of “border security, national security, and how fentanyl has impacted American lives,” but it also served as a platform for GOP lawmakers to air their grievances over the administration’s immigration policies.

    Brandon Dunn, co-founder of Forever 15 Project, which seeks to raise awareness on fentanyl, Sheriff Mark Dannels of Cochise County, Arizona, and El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego testified before the panel.

    The House Judiciary Committee is one of many committees that will be holding hearings over the situation at the US-Mexico border. The House Oversight Committee also intends to hold a hearing on the issue and has already engaged in a back and forth with the department over its witnesses.

    House Oversight Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, accused DHS of “refusing to permit” four chief patrol agents to testify at an upcoming Oversight hearing that Comer invited them to the week of February 6.

    DHS, however, offered US Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, who oversees the four agents Comer requested, to testify before the House Oversight Committee and said it would make sector chiefs available for a member-level briefing, according to a letter from DHS to Comer obtained by CNN, citing its own assessment of who was appropriate to testify.

    The Biden administration faces unprecedented movement across the Western hemisphere that has contributed to a surge of migrants at the border, including more people from different countries, such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. The US is largely barred from deporting migrants to Cuba and Venezuela, presenting a unique set of challenges for DHS.

    In early January, the Biden administration expanded a humanitarian parole program to include Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Cubans to provide a legal pathway for them to enter the US instead of crossing the border. The administration also made those nationalities eligible for Title 42, meaning they can now be turned away by authorities if they don’t apply for the program.

    Since then, there has been a significant decline in migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela crossing the US-Mexico border unlawfully, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which attributed the drop to new border measures.

    Encounters with migrants from those four nationalities declined 97% in January compared to December, officials previously told reporters, citing preliminary numbers. Border numbers often fluctuate depending on circumstances in the Western hemisphere, so it’s unclear how long the trend will hold.

    Already, though, Republican-led states have sued the administration over the program. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with 19 other states, argued in a lawsuit that the administration didn’t go through the notice and comment rulemaking process before instituting the rule. As a result, the states are asking the court to block the program.

    Administration officials immediately pushed back.

    “It is incomprehensible that some states who stand to benefit from these highly effective enforcement measures are seeking to block them and cause more irregular migration at our southern border,” Mayorkas said in a statement.

    This story has been updated with additional developments Wednesday.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • McCarthy hopeful after first meeting with Biden on debt limit: ‘I think that at the end of the day, we can find common ground’ | CNN Politics

    McCarthy hopeful after first meeting with Biden on debt limit: ‘I think that at the end of the day, we can find common ground’ | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not walk away from his highly anticipated White House meeting on Wednesday with an agreement in hand to address the debt limit, but signaled optimism that both he and President Joe Biden can reach consensus “long before” the United States reaches default.

    McCarthy called it “a good first meeting,” adding, “We both have different perspectives on this, but I thought this was a good meeting. We promised we would continue the conversation and we’ll see if we can get there. I think that at the end of the day, we can find common ground.”

    “I told the president I would like to see if we can come to an agreement long before the deadline and we can start working on other things,” McCarthy added in remarks outside the White House.

    Following his first White House meeting since he won the speakership, McCarthy said he believes that a funding agreement could be reached for the next two years and that “you won’t see omnibuses anymore.”

    “You’ll see the Senate and the House actually do what the American public has elected them to do,” he added.

    The highly anticipated meeting was expected to influence how the fight to raise the national debt limit unfolds as the White House and the new House GOP majority are at odds over how to resolve the critical issue.

    House Republicans say that lifting the borrowing cap must be tied to spending reductions. The White House, however, has countered that it will not offer concessions or negotiate on raising the debt ceiling.

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

    The debt limit fight will be an early test of McCarthy’s leadership as House speaker, where he has to balance competing demands from different factions of his conference amid a razor-thin majority. It will also shed light on how, and to what extent, McCarthy and Biden are able to work with one another.

    Senate Republicans have indicated they will sit back and see how the House GOP maneuvers a way to raise the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit – before deciding if they need to insert themselves into the process.

    McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday the nation has reached “a critical point” with respect to the debt limit.

    Republicans face a political risk as they push to cut spending: If they propose cuts to popular government programs and services, they could face a public backlash.

    While McCarthy had not settled on any individual proposal ahead of the Biden meeting and was unlikely to make a specific offer, he had heard suggestions from key players in his conference.

    Ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, McCarthy has been involved in extensive preparations, consulting regularly with allies on and off the Hill including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as well as his relevant committee chairs who he has been leaning on for their policy expertise, such as Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith of Missouri and Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, sources familiar with the preparation told CNN.

    McCarthy and his House GOP allies are hashing out initial demands, discussing steep cuts to domestic programs and a trim to defense spending – all the while steering clear of two programs to avoid voter blowback: Medicare and Social Security.

    House Republicans had been hoping to strengthen their negotiating hand with the White House by uniting around a proposal, but finding conference-wide consensus on spending cuts has proved challenging.

    The view from Republicans heading into Wednesday’s meeting was that it is still early and there are still months of negotiations ahead – meaning there’s plenty of time for McCarthy to lay out specifics. Still, leaders have also been aware they have to begin laying the groundwork with their members now.

    The White House, meanwhile, has continued to emphasize the critical importance of avoiding a catastrophic default.

    McCarthy’s position that cuts to Medicare and Social Security are not on the table in exchange for a debt ceiling increase has drawn skepticism the White House. And when asked for his message to McCarthy in the meeting, the president told CNN, “Show me your budget and I’ll show you mine.”

    A White House spokesperson told CNN that Biden would remind McCarthy of his “Constitutional obligation to prevent a national default, as every other House and Senate leader in U.S. history has done, and as Leaders (Mitch) McConnell, (Chuck) Schumer, and (Hakeem) Jeffries have pledged to do.”

    “He will underscore that the economic security of all Americans cannot be held hostage to force unpopular cuts on working families,” they added.

    In a memo to “interested parties” dated Monday that was written by National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young, Biden’s top economic advisers said the president intended to pose two questions to McCarthy on Wednesday: Whether McCarthy will commit to the US not defaulting on its financial obligations and when McCarthy and House Republicans will release their budget.

    Biden, the officials wrote, “will seek a clear commitment from Speaker McCarthy that default – as well as proposals from members of his Caucus for default by another name – is unacceptable.”

    They added, “President Biden will ask Speaker McCarthy to publicly assure the American people and the rest of the world that the United States will, as always, honor all of its financial obligations.”

    A day ahead of the meeting, the president suggested McCarthy was entering the talks from a weakened position, hampered by agreements he made with an unruly GOP conference.

    Calling McCarthy a “decent man,” Biden nonetheless said he had been forced to cater to extremist Republicans in his quest to become speaker.

    Biden said at a high-dollar fundraiser in Manhattan that McCarthy had to make commitments “that are just absolutely off the wall for the speaker of the House to make.”

    Responding to the president’s fundraiser comments, McCarthy told reporters, “Apparently, he doesn’t understand … I’m looking forward to sitting down with the president, negotiating for the American public, the people of America, on how we can find savings. We’ve watched what the spending has done, we watched it brought us inflation, we watched the challenge that it happened. We’re looking forward to changing the course.”

    Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip, told “CNN This Morning” on Wednesday that Biden should “absolutely not” negotiate on raising the nation’s borrowing limit and raised fears a default could tank the US economy. He reiterated his support for Biden’s position, while leaving the door open for spending cuts during future negotiations.

    House GOP Whip Tom Emmer said he doubted there would be any agreement on Wednesday, but said,”Everything’s on the table” when asked about defense spending cuts.

    He also said he expected McCarthy to reassure the president that there will not be a default and that spending cuts for Social Security and Medicare will not be considered.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Biden zeroes in on the newly powerful House GOP as a threat to the rebounding economy | CNN Politics

    Biden zeroes in on the newly powerful House GOP as a threat to the rebounding economy | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden is fine-tuning his argument for reelection in an intensive stretch of travel and fundraising, homing in on the newly powerful House GOP as a threat to the rebounding economy as the pieces of his expected campaign come together.

    With several weeks to go before Biden is expected to announce his intention to run again, White House officials have crafted a travel schedule and series of speeches that will see the president opening infrastructure projects, promoting union jobs and laying out the progress he believes the American economy has made under his watch.

    “It’s about good jobs. It’s about the dignity of work,” Biden said Tuesday in front of a tunnel on the West Side of Manhattan that will be improved with the help of the $1 trillion infrastructure law he signed in 2021. “It’s about respect and self-worth. And folks, it’s about damn time.”

    In a string of events along the eastern seaboard, from northern Virginia to Baltimore to Philadelphia to New York City, Biden is setting a multiple-days-per-week travel schedule that aides expect will continue as the presidential contest begins in earnest.

    Last week, he told a steamfitters union hall in Virginia that his agenda was about “seeing communities all over America, not just on the coasts, but all over America, reborn.” He stood at another tunnel on Monday, this time in Baltimore, where improvements will help Amtrak trains triple their speed on one of the busiest rail corridors in the nation.

    He also headlined a high-dollar Democratic fundraiser in Manhattan, kicking off what is expected to be a campaign cash blitz. Donors have been made aware of potential events over the coming months in multiple states, including traditional fundraising enclaves in California and Florida.

    “There’s two things that I think we have to run on: What we stand for – what we did – and what we need to do more of,” Biden told the donors, offering a tacit preview of his 2024 message. Recalling that he ran in 2020 to restore the soul of the country, rebuild the middle class, and unite the country, Biden suggested his work wasn’t finished.

    “The third is turning out to be the hardest thing to do, but we’re getting there,” he said.

    On Friday, Biden will tout lead removal efforts in Philadelphia before addressing the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting – a gathering where his likely reelection bid is top of mind.

    Speaking ahead of Biden in New York on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer underscored the progress Biden has made in implementing his infrastructure bill, readying a message that Biden has accomplished what his predecessor – and currently his only Republican challenger – Donald Trump could not.

    “For four years, the former president was shoveling you know what. And now, we’re gonna put real shovels in the ground, wielded by real American workers,” Schumer said.

    Biden’s aides and other Democrats have been working for months to put in place a campaign infrastructure that will be ready when he decides to make his intentions known. The campaign is expected to draw some staff from the DNC and the White House, and will need to coordinate with both.

    Already, Biden’s West Wing team is reorienting with the upcoming departure of chief of staff Ron Klain. Klain’s replacement, Jeff Zients, is expected to focus on managing the White House and implementing Biden’s legislative and policy agenda, while other top advisers – namely senior adviser Anita Dunn and deputy White House chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon, who managed Biden’s successful 2020 campaign – will take the lead on Biden’s political operation.

    Other political hires are also expected as the likely reelection campaign takes shape, according to a White House official.

    Casting a shadow over Biden’s preparations is the special counsel investigation into his handling of classified material, which is expected to formally get underway this week. Biden has denied any wrongdoing after documents with classified markings were found at his private office and home, but the specter of the probe will hang over the White House for at least the coming months.

    White House aides have felt vindicated by polls showing the documents controversy hasn’t weighed down Biden’s overall approval ratings. And Biden himself shrugged off a question Monday about whether he would sit for an interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

    “I don’t even know about the special counsel,” Biden told reporters at the White House, moving quickly to another question.

    For now, Biden’s principal focus is next week’s State of the Union address, a speech his team has been crafting to act as a launchpad to his reelection run. His string of policy speeches this week have foreshadowed the expected themes of Tuesday night’s address.

    Afterward, Biden is expected to continue traveling the country – including potential stops in Michigan and Wisconsin, two battleground states – as he prepares for his formal campaign announcement.

    Officials said the yearly speech will continue to evolve as Biden and his advisers work on writing it. The text is not expected to be finalized until the final moments before he delivers it in the House chamber next week. The team working on the address, including senior advisers Mike Donilon and Bruce Reed, have held lengthy writing and preparation sessions with Biden over the last several days.

    White House officials said the president’s recent speeches touting the bipartisan infrastructure law that he signed into law in 2021 are designed to signal a shift: whereas much of Biden’s first two years in office was focused on what he hoped to accomplish, officials said now is the time to tout what he has achieved.

    The US jobs market is robust, GDP growth continues to be strong, wages are up, and critically, inflation finally seems to be moderating – all points Biden has made in his public remarks recently. In contrast, the president has warned that lawmakers who he calls “MAGA Republicans” are trying to reverse some of that very progress by proposing ideas like a national sales tax.

    He’s also offered sharp warnings to Republicans looking to use the national debt ceiling as leverage to negotiate spending cuts – setting up a battle that will play out in the opening weeks of his campaign.

    As Biden was speaking in Virginia last week, new Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wrote on Twitter that if Biden was “so eager to speak on the economy, then he should set a date to discuss a responsible debt ceiling increase.”

    He’ll get that date this week, when Biden and McCarthy sit down at the White House for their first one-on-one since McCarthy was elevated to the role earlier this month.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • New questions emerge about George Santos’ old campaign filings | CNN Politics

    New questions emerge about George Santos’ old campaign filings | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Freshman Rep. George Santos, whose finances and fabrications are under investigation, is facing new questions about the accuracy of the campaign reports filed during his unsuccessful 2020 bid for Congress.

    Someone named Stephen Berger, for instance, is described in the New York Republican’s campaign filings as having contributed $2,500 on July 31, 2020.

    But the address attributed to Berger – on Brandt Road in Brawley, California – belongs to William Brandt, a prominent California cattle rancher.

    “It’s my address but not my check,” Brandt told CNN late Monday afternoon.

    He said no one with the name listed on Santos’ filing has ever lived at that address. “I built the house, been there 40-something years,” he said.

    Of Santos, Brandt said: “I wouldn’t give him a dime.”

    Mother Jones magazine first reported the Berger donation as part of a story Monday, detailing its unsuccessful efforts to locate donors listed as contributing large amounts to Santos’ first congressional campaign.

    CNN reached out to Santos’ congressional office, his personal lawyer and to Nancy Marks, who served as his treasurer during the 2020 campaign and his successful 2022 bid for US House.

    Federal prosecutors are investigating Santos’ finances, and he continues to face a myriad of questions about his personal finances, campaign money and repeated lies about his resume and biography. As those questions have mounted, he has sought to distance himself from his campaign’s reports with federal election regulators, telling CNN last week that he does not “touch” those records.

    He also has resisted calls to resign from some of his fellow New York Republicans.

    Last year, Santos flipped a Democratic-held seat in Long Island to help Republicans secure a narrow majority in the chamber. House Republican leaders have largely stood by him while investigations are pending, saying they do not want to overturn the will of his voters.

    But on Monday afternoon, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy summoned Santos to his office for a “check-in,” according to a senior GOP source familiar with the meeting, and asked Santos when he plans to publicly address some of the controversies swirling around him – something Santos keeps claiming he plans to do.

    McCarthy confirmed to CNN he was the one who called up Santos and invited him to meet, but he declined to answer any other questions about their sit-down, including whether he reprimanded Santos or asked about his plans to address the public.

    Santos declined to discuss the nature of the meeting.

    “I had a private conversation with the speaker of the House of the United States of America. That’s all it was, it was a private conversation, so there’s nothing to talk about that conversation,” he told CNN.

    He tried to downplay its significance, saying, “Multiple members go in to have meetings with leadership about various topics.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Biden and his team ramp up travel to highlight effects of infrastructure law ahead of State of the Union | CNN Politics

    Biden and his team ramp up travel to highlight effects of infrastructure law ahead of State of the Union | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and senior administration officials are embarking on a travel swing this week, showcasing what they see as successful measures to rebuild America’s ailing infrastructure.

    In what’s been described as a preview of some of the messaging for next week’s State of the Union address, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Cabinet secretaries are all hitting the road to highlight the implementation of the landmark legislation signed into law during the president’s first two years in office. Among those accomplishments are the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Chips and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act.

    The president traveled to Baltimore on Monday to showcase the implementation of his policies, and later this week, he’ll head to New York City and Philadelphia for similar remarks.

    The trips are taking place in the lead up to Biden’s State of the Union speech in Washington next week – a national platform where he’s expected to illustrate how his policies are successfully going into effect – and a prospective reelection announcement in the coming months. Biden’s approach is expected to be focused on touting the rebound of the American economy and taking aim at Republican proposals – while still underscoring his desire to work across the aisle.

    In Baltimore on Monday, he discussed how the infrastructure law will fund replace the 150-year-old Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, addressing the largest bottleneck for commuters on the Northeast Corridor between Washington, D C, and New Jersey. The new tunnel will be named in honor of civil rights leader and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

    Speaking from a presidential podium set to the backdrop of an American flag and an Amtrak train on the tracks, Biden recalled that he’d made a thousand trips through the tunnel and walked through it in the 1980s.

    “When folks talk about how badly the Baltimore tunnel needs an upgrade, you don’t need me to tell you. I’ve been there and you’ve been there, too,” Biden said.

    “You ought to get inside and see,” he remarked, discussing his tour of the tunnel decades ago. “This is a 150-year-old tunnel. I wonder how in the hell it’s still standing.”

    “The structure is deteriorating. The roof is leaking. The floor is sinking. This is the United States of America, for God’s sake. We know better than that,” he continued.

    When the project is done, Biden said, trains will roll through the tunnel at 110 mph instead of 30 mph, shortening regional MARC train commutes from Baltimore to Washington to 30 minutes.

    At Monday’s project kickoff, the president announced an agreement between the state of Maryland and Amtrak, which includes a $450 million commitment for the tunnel replacement project, according to the White House. A project labor agreement between Amtrak and the Baltimore-DC Building and Construction Trades Council was unveiled to cover the first phase of the project. And he also announced an agreement between Amtrak and the North American Builders’ Trade Union “that ensures Amtrak’s large civil engineering construction projects controlled by Amtrak will be performed under union agreements,” according to the White House.

    The program is expected to cost approximately $6 billion, of which Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding could contribute up to $4.7 billion, the White House said. Biden was joined by labor leaders, state and local officials, as well as members of Congress and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

    On Tuesday, Biden travels to New York City to discuss how Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding will improve the Hudson River Tunnel, which sees 200,000 passengers passing through each weekday on Amtrak and New Jersey Transit.

    On Friday, Biden and Harris are scheduled to travel to Philadelphia to discuss how Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding is removing lead pipes and ensuring clean water across Philadelphia and the country, the official told CNN.

    According to the White House, the pair “will discuss the progress we have made and their work implementing the Biden-Harris economic agenda that continues to deliver results for the American people.”

    Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge will also travel to Chicago to discuss progress made to address homelessness as a result of provisions within the American Rescue Plan, according to the official.

    While Biden has often embarked on domestic trips to highlight his policies in action, these stops have served as a significant messaging platform since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives this year.

    In a speech at a union hall in Virginia, Biden, for example, sought to contrast his economic policies with House Republicans’ effort in the debt limit standoff.

    He asked the crowd, “(Why) in God’s name would Americans give up the progress we’ve made for the chaos they’re suggesting?”

    “MAGA Republicans,” he added, “are literally choosing to inflict this pain on the American people.”

    Despite that heavy emphasis on his warnings about GOP plans, Biden this week is expected to hone in on his ability to work across the aisle to push legislation into law. Specifically, in a preview of the travel, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre underscored Biden’s “success (in) bringing Republicans and independents and Democrats together to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.”

    In Baltimore on Monday, the president brought up his recent trip to Kentucky, where he stood alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to herald the implementation of the massive $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that McConnell and 18 other Senate Republicans supported.

    The policy messaging trips also carry more weight as the prospect of a presidential reelection campaign looms large over the White House.

    Biden has been working intensively on his State of the Union Speech speech – including over the weekend – which his team views as a launching pad for the reelection bid. His speeches around the East Coast week will offer a preview of his message as he touts new infrastructure projects.

    Behind the scenes, aides are building up a campaign infrastructure and the West Wing is in the process of restructuring for a politically intense two years.

    Peppered in between stops to visit projects funded though the proposals which were the bedrock of his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden will participate in events that are part of an intense fundraising push ahead of the campaign announcement.

    The travel comes as Biden also contends with a number of simmering issues in Washington – House Republican probes, investigations into classified documents found at his residence and former office and the debt ceiling standoff. The US Treasury is already taking extraordinary measures to keep the government paying its bills after the US hit the debt ceiling set by Congress.

    While the president is in Washington on Wednesday in between travel stops, he’s scheduled to meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Video of Nichols’ beating prompts renewed calls for police reform | CNN Politics

    Video of Nichols’ beating prompts renewed calls for police reform | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]

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



    CNN
     — 

    New York to San Francisco. Baltimore to Portland. Boston to Los Angeles, and countless cities in between.

    Protesters once again took to the streets over the weekend to decry police brutality after the release of video capturing the violent Memphis police beating that led to the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols.

    On Sunday morning, Nichols’ family attorney made note of the outrage as he aimed a simple but pointed message at Washington.

    “Shame on us if we don’t use [Nichols’] tragic death to finally get the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed,” Ben Crump said on CNN’s “State of Union.”

    President Joe Biden referenced the failed legislation in his statement about Nichols on Friday, and many leaders – from the chairs of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio – are acknowledging a potential role for federal legislation.

    The Congressional Black Caucus is requesting a meeting with Biden this week to push for negotiations. “We are calling on our colleagues in the House and Senate to jumpstart negotiations now and work with us to address the public health epidemic of police violence that disproportionately affects many of our communities,” CBC Chair Steven Horsford, a Nevada Democrat, wrote in a statement on Sunday.

    Gloria Sweet-Love, the Tennessee State Conference NAACP president, called on Congress to step up during a Sunday evening news conference in Memphis. “By failing to craft and pass bills to stop police brutality, you’re writing another Black man’s obituary. The blood of Black America is on your hands. So stand up and do something.”

    But with Congress as divided as ever, it appears public outrage is once again on a collision course with Washington partisanship.

    Here’s what you need to know about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, why it failed, and what chances it stands in the current political climate.

    The legislation, originally introduced in 2020 and again in 2021, would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction.

    It would ban racial and religious profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels, and it would overhaul qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that critics say shields law enforcement from accountability.

    According to a fact sheet on the legislation at the time, the measure would also allow “individuals to recover damages in civil court when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement.”

    The fact sheet also states that the legislation would “save lives by banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants” and would mandate “deadly force be used only as a last resort.”

    The bill twice cleared the House under Democratic control – in 2020 and 2021 – largely along party lines. But it never went anywhere in the Senate, even after Democrats won control in 2021, in part, because of disagreements about qualified immunity, which protects police officers from being sued in civil court.

    Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina spent some six months trying to hash out a deal that could win 60 votes in the Senate, but talks were stymied by a number of complicated issues.

    “It was clear at this negotiating table, in this moment, we were not making progress,” Booker told reporters in the spring of 2021. “In fact, recent back-and-forth with paper showed me that we were actually moving away from it. The negotiations we were in stopped. But the work will continue.”

    With the legislation stuck, Biden signed a more limited executive order to overhaul policing on the second anniversary of Floyd’s death. It took several actions that can be applied to federal officers, including efforts to ban chokeholds, expand the use of body-worn cameras and restrict no-knock warrants, among other things.

    But the president cannot mandate that local law enforcement adopt the measures in his order; the executive action lays out levers the federal government can use, such as federal grants and technical assistance, to incentivize local law enforcement to get on board

    And since then, little has happened on the federal legislative front.

    Here’s the reality: the road for police reform has only become more challenging in the new Congress now that House Republicans, who have placed their priorities elsewhere, are in the majority.

    Senate Democrats picked up one more seat in last year’s midterm elections to pad their majority, but they’re still far short of the 60 votes that would be need for such an effort to succeed. That means any policing overhaul that can find meaningful support in Congress will likely be stripped of the kind of measures that protesters are calling for.

    State officials have been initiating investigations into local police departments, recognizing that the federal government can’t take on every case nationwide.

    And, in some cases, local governments have taken their own steps. In the year after Floyd was killed, at least 25 states had considered some form of qualified immunity reform. In 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed into law a series of police reforms that created a system to decertify law enforcement officers found to have engaged in serious misconduct – joining the majority of states that have similar decertification authorities.

    But, for many, it’s not nearly enough. Read this CNN Opinion piece from Sonia Pruitt, a retired Montgomery County, Maryland, police captain:

    “Many have noted the police assault on Nichols is reminiscent of that on Rodney King, a Black man whose beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers in 1991 was captured on video. But the beating of Nichols is actually much worse because it shows that after nearly 32 years, the needle of police reform has barely moved, and seemingly minor traffic violations continue to lead to the deaths of Black and other minority men and women in police encounters.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link