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  • Sky-high Black turnout fueled Warnock’s previous win. Will Georgia do it again? | CNN Politics

    Sky-high Black turnout fueled Warnock’s previous win. Will Georgia do it again? | CNN Politics

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    Atlanta
    CNN
     — 

    Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young rode his scooter alongside Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, Martin Luther King III and a fervent crowd of marchers on a recent Sunday through a southwest Atlanta neighborhood. The group stopped at an early polling location to vote, forming a line with some waiting as long as one hour to cast their ballots.

    At the age of 90, Young says he is selective about public appearances but felt the “Souls to the Polls” event was one where he could motivate Black voters in Tuesday’s hotly contested US Senate runoff between Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker – a historic matchup between two Black men.

    Community leaders and political observers say the Black vote has consistently played a pivotal role in high-stakes races for Democrats, including in 2021, when Warnock defeated then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a runoff. Black voters likely to cast a ballot are near unanimous in their support for the Democrat (96% Warnock to 3% Walker), according to a CNN poll released last week that showed Warnock with a narrow lead.

    A second runoff victory for Warnock could once again hinge on Black voter turnout in a consequential race. If Warnock wins, it would give Democrats a clean Senate majority – one that doesn’t rely on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote and allows Majority Leader Chuck Schumer more control of key committees and some slack in potentially divisive judicial and administrative confirmation fights.

    Voting, Young said, is the “path to prosperity” for the Black community. He noted that Atlanta’s mass transit system and economic growth have been made possible by voters.

    “Where we have voted we have prospered,” Young said.

    The rally led by Young, King and Warnock seems to have set the tone for many Black voters in Georgia. Early voting surged across the state last week with long lines reported across the greater Atlanta area. As of Sunday, more than 1.85 million votes had already been cast, with Black voters accounting for nearly 32% of the turnout, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. The early voting period, which was significantly condensed from 2021, ended on Friday.

    Billy Honor, director of organizing for the New Georgia Project Action Fund, said the Black turnout so far looks promising for Democrats.

    “When we get Black voter turnout in any election statewide that’s between 31 and 33%, that’s usually good for Democrats,” Honor said. “If it’s between 27 and 30%, that’s usually good for Republicans.”

    Honor added: “This has an impact on elections because we know that if you’re a Democratic candidate, the coalition you have to put together is a certain amount of college-educated White folks, a certain amount of women overall, as many young people as you can get to turn out – and Black voters. That’s the coalition. (Former president) Barack Obama was able to smash that coalition in 2008 in ways we hadn’t seen.”

    Young said he believes that Black voters are more likely to show up for runoff elections, which historically have lower turnout than general elections, when the candidate is likeable and relatable.

    Warnock is a beloved figure in Atlanta’s Black community who pastored the church once led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He grew up in public housing and relied on student loans to get through college.

    Young said Warnock’s story is inspiring.

    “He is an exciting personality, he’s a great preacher,” Young said. “He speaks from his heart and he speaks about how he and his family have come up in the deep South and developed a wonderful life.”

    Young said some Black voters may also be voting against Walker, who has made a series of public gaffes, has no political experience and has a history of accusations of violent and threatening behavior.

    Last week’s CNN poll showed that Walker faces widespread questions about his honesty and suffers from a negative favorability rating, while nearly half of those who back him say their vote is more about opposition to Warnock than support for Walker.

    Views of Warnock tilt narrowly positive, with 50% of likely voters holding a favorable opinion, 45% unfavorable, while far more likely Georgia voters have a negative view of Walker (52%) than a positive one (39%).

    Still, Walker is famous as a Heisman Trophy-winning football star from the University of Georgia. And among the majority of likely voters in the CNN poll who said issues are a more important factor to their vote than character or integrity, 64% favor Walker.

    He campaigned on Sunday with, among others, GOP Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, one of just three Black senators currently serving in the chamber. Scott tried to tie Warnock to President Joe Biden – who, like former President Donald Trump, has steered clear of the Peach State – and reminded voters in Loganville of the GOP’s losses in the 2021 runoffs.

    At the event, which began with prayers in Creole, Spanish and Swahili from speakers with Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, Walker encouraged getting out to vote more than he typically does.

    “If you don’t have a friend, make a friend and get them out to vote,” Walker said.

    Back at the “Souls to Polls” march, some Black voters said they were excited to show up and cast their early votes in the runoff race.

    Travie Leslie said she feels it is her “civic duty” to vote after all the work civil rights leaders in Atlanta did to ensure Black people had the right to vote. Leslie she does not mind standing in line or voting in multiple elections to ensure that a quality candidate gets in office.

    “I will come 12 times if I must and I encourage other people to do the same thing,” Leslie said Thursday while at the Metropolitan Library polling location in Atlanta. “Just stay dedicated to this because it truly is the best time to be a part of the decision making particularly for Georgia.”

    Martin Luther King III credited grassroots organizations for registering more Black and brown voters since 2020, when Biden carried the state, and mobilizing Georgians to participate in elections.

    Their work has led to the long lines of voters in midterm and runoff races, King said.

    King said he believes Warnock also appeals to Black voters in a way that Walker does not.

    “Rev. Warnock distinguishes himself quite well,” King said. “He stayed above the fray and defined what he has done.”

    The Black vote, he said, is likely to make a difference in which candidate wins the runoff.

    “Black voters, if we come out in massive numbers, then I believe that on December 6 we (Democrats) are going to have a massive victory,” King said.

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  • Trump’s call to terminate the Constitution is a fantasy, but it’s still dangerous | CNN Politics

    Trump’s call to terminate the Constitution is a fantasy, but it’s still dangerous | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s call for the termination of the Constitution is his most extreme anti-democratic statement yet and seems oblivious to the sentiments of voters who rejected election deniers in the midterm elections.

    It may also reflect desperation on the part of the former president to whip up controversy and fury among his core supporters in order to inject some energy into a so-far lackluster 2024 White House bid.

    Trump’s comments on his Truth Social network – which should be easy for anyone to condemn – are exposing the familiar moral timidity of top Republicans who won’t disown the former president. But his latest tirade also plays into the arguments of some Republicans now saying that it’s time to move on from Trump’s fixation with the 2020 election.

    And while it is far too early to write off his chances in the 2024 GOP nominating contest, Trump’s behavior since announcing his third presidential bid also suggests his never-ending quest to shock and to fire up his base now means going so far right he ends up on the extremist fringe and almost in self-parody. In the short time he’s been a candidate, he’s expressed support for rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and dined with a White nationalist Holocaust denier.

    Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for Georgia’s Secretary of State Office, chuckled at the incredulity of Trump’s claim about the Constitution when it was described by CNN’s Pam Brown on Saturday.

    “It’s ridiculous, it’s insane, to suspend the Constitution. Come on man, seriously?” said Sterling, a Republican who helped oversee Georgia’s election in 2020, when President Joe Biden carried the state. “I think more and more Republicans, Americans are saying, ‘Ok I am good, I am done with this now, I’m going to move on to the next thing.’”

    The most immediate question raised by Trump’s latest controversy is what it says about a presidential campaign that has been swallowed up by one far-right authoritarian sideshow after another.

    Far from barnstorming the nation, making a case on the economy, health care and immigration or outlining a program for the future, Trump has given comfort to zealots and insurrectionists.

    He hosted Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago last month, at a time when the rapper now known as Ye is in the middle of a vile streak of antisemitism and praising Adolf Hitler. The far-right Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes was at also at that dinner. Trump claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was but the former president still hasn’t criticized his ideology. Last week, Trump, in a fundraising video, praised the mob that invaded the Capitol in the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, again promoting violence as an acceptable response to political grievances.

    His social media assault on the Constitution appears to be proving the point of the House select committee probing January 6, which has portrayed him as a clear and present danger to American democracy and met on Friday to consider criminal referrals to the Justice Department.

    Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee, tweeted on Sunday: “No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution.” Trump’s latest wild social media post could even deepen his legal exposure as the Justice Department seeks evidence of his mindset as it investigates his conduct before the attack on the Capitol.

    Trump’s doubling down on authoritarianism also follows a moment when much of the country, at least in crucial swing states, rejected his 2020 election denialism and anti-democratic chaos candidates he picked for the midterms – with a final test on Tuesday in Georgia’s Senate runoff. It appears to make it even more unlikely that the ex-president, even if he wins the Republican nomination, will be the kind of candidate who could win among the broader national electorate. After all, his message failed in two consecutive elections in 2020 and 2022. And even in the wilder reaches of the GOP, which Trump has dominated since 2015, a call to simply trash the Constitution might seem a stretch – and reflect the former president’s increasing distance from reality.

    One could argue that the most prudent response to Trump’s latest radical rhetoric might be to ignore it and his bid for publicity.

    But even if his idea of crushing the Constitution looks far-fetched, his behavior needs to be taken seriously because of its possible future consequences.

    That’s because Trump remains an extraordinarily influential force in the Republican Party. His acolytes hold outsized power in the new House majority set to take over in January, which they plan to use as a political weapon to promote his restoration in the White House. GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is appeasing this group in an increasingly troubled campaign for speaker. The California Republican also last week shielded Trump over criticism of the Fuentes dinner, saying that while such a person had no place in the party, Trump had condemned him four times – a false claim.

    Furthermore, in an electoral sense, the theory that Republican voters may be willing to move on from Trump – and to find a candidate who may reflect “America First” populism but not dine with antisemites – has not yet been tested. Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen are still broadly accepted among GOP voters – only 24% of whom believe that Biden legitimately won in 2020, according to midterm election exit polls.

    And a GOP primary that includes multiple candidates competing with Trump for the presidential nomination could yet again splinter the vote against the former president and allow him to emerge at the top of a mostly winner-take-all delegate race, a vote that would put a prospective authoritarian who has already tried to dismantle the US system of democracy one step from a return to power.

    Ignoring or downplaying public evidence of extremism and incitement only allows it to become normalized. There is already proof that the ex-president’s rhetoric can cause violence – after he told his supporters to “fight like hell” to save their country on January 6. And the rhetoric of people like West and Fuentes, with whom Trump has associated, risks normalizing odious forces in society that will grow if they are not challenged. Fuentes, after all, has appeared with Republican lawmakers like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – an increasingly influential voice in the House GOP conference.

    Years of norm crushing and acceptance of extremists by the twice-impeached former president never convinced the party to purge him or his views. Were it not for principled, conservative Republicans like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Trump’s election-stealing effort might have worked in 2020.

    As they work through an intense lame-duck session of Congress, Republican lawmakers are, for the umpteenth time, going to be asked this week about the tyrannical attitudes of the front-runner for their party’s presidential nod.

    One newly elected Republican, Michael Lawler – who picked up a Democratic-held House seat critical to the slim GOP majority – stood up for the Constitution on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

    “The Constitution is set for a reason, to protect the rights of every American. And so I certainly don’t endorse that language or that sentiment,” Lawler told Jake Tapper. “I think the former president would be well-advised to focus on the future, if he is going to run for president again.”

    Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, said he “vehemently” disagreed with Trump’s statement and said his dinner with West and Fuentes was “atrocious” and that voters would take both incidents into consideration.

    But a fellow Ohio Republican, Rep. David Joyce, demonstrated the characteristic reluctance of members of his party to confront an ex-president who remains hugely popular among its grassroots. Regarding the threat to the Constitution, Joyce said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, “You know he says a lot of things but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen,” adding that it was important to separate “fact from fantasy.”

    Joyce didn’t directly condemn Trump’s rhetoric and said he would support whomever the Republican Party nominates in 2024. The fact that Republicans are open to a potential president – who would be called upon to swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution but who has already called for its termination – speaks volumes about how much the GOP is still in Trump’s shadow.

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  • Opinion: How the Democrats’ Iowa caucuses self-destructed | CNN

    Opinion: How the Democrats’ Iowa caucuses self-destructed | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Laura Belin is the primary author at the website Bleeding Heartland. She has been covering Iowa politics since 2007. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    The Democratic National Committee’s overhaul of the presidential nominating calendar will create many challenges for Iowa Democrats, who are already at a low point following another disappointing election cycle.

    The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted Friday to recommend a schedule that removes Iowa from the small group of early primary states. The full DNC will vote on the calendar in January; while some tweaks are possible, it’s nearly certain the Iowa caucuses won’t be in the mix.

    I grew up in Iowa with the luxury of seeing presidential candidates up close and have enjoyed attending precinct caucuses since I was 18 years old in 1988. But as painful as it is for fans of the caucuses to accept, the DNC has valid reasons to start the presidential campaign elsewhere.

    Although Iowa was a bellwether state for six straight presidential elections and voted twice to elect Barack Obama, five of the last seven general elections have been Republican landslides here.

    It’s one thing to experience a red wave when the same thing is happening nationwide, as in 2010 and 2014. It’s another for Iowa Democrats to lose up and down the ballot last month — including in many onetime strongholds — when the party’s candidates exceeded expectations in many other states.

    Next year, Iowa will have no Democrats in our congressional delegation for the first time since 1956, only one Democratic statewide elected official for the first time since 1982 and the smallest Democratic state legislative caucuses in decades.

    Granted, South Carolina (which would supplant Iowa on the DNC’s new calendar) is not a swing state either. But moving that state ahead will give Black Democrats a bigger role in choosing a nominee, which is overdue.

    As critics of the current calendar have noted for years, the electorates of Iowa and New Hampshire are much less diverse than the US population and bear little resemblance to the Democratic Party’s base.

    Moreover, President Joe Biden and others, notably former presidential candidate Julián Castro, have rightly pointed out that it is much more difficult to participate in a caucus than a primary election.

    Iowa Democrats didn’t do enough to make our caucus system more accessible and transparent before the last couple of presidential election cycles. Party leaders dismissed most calls for serious reform, instead choosing a united front with New Hampshire.

    The party altered the system in 2020, creating a paper trail and reporting raw supporter totals for the first time. But Iowans who wanted to help select a presidential nominee still needed to be in a specific place and time for an hour or more on a cold winter night. No early voting, no absentee voting, no proxy voting.

    The massive problems with reporting the 2020 caucus results after a mobile app malfunctioned further damaged Iowa’s case for remaining first.

    Iowa Democratic leaders proposed bigger changes this year, including “presidential preference cards” that could be mailed before caucus night. The complicated “realignment” process, which sometimes produced screwy delegate math, would have been eliminated as each caucusgoer selected one presidential contender. It was too little, too late.

    Losing the early state slot will make it harder for Iowa Democrats to rebuild. For decades, presidential candidates have helped the party identify supporters and recruit volunteers. Old-timers will tell you Tom Harkin’s first US Senate campaign in 1984 got a big boost from the organizing that preceded that year’s Democratic caucuses.

    Presidential candidates have headlined fundraisers for numerous down-ballot candidates and local party groups in the early states. Their campaigns have paid large sums directly to the Iowa Democratic Party for access to the voter file or tickets to large “cattle call” events. All of that is going away now.

    Financial considerations aside, Iowa’s 2024 Democratic candidates will find it harder to qualify for the ballot without thousands of caucusgoers signing their nominating petitions as they attend their neighborhood caucuses.

    Meanwhile, Iowa GOP candidates and party organizations will continue to enjoy the old ways as presidential hopefuls generate local enthusiasm and boost attendance at events throughout the coming year.

    Republicans, including Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, already are portraying the DNC’s decision as an insult not only to all Iowans but also to all Americans outside urban areas. Gov. Kim Reynolds tweeted, “Democrats have abandoned rural America and denied everyday Iowans a voice in the presidential nominating process.”

    Iowa law requires our state’s precinct caucuses to take place “at least eight days earlier” than the scheduled date for any other state’s caucus or primary in the presidential nominating process. Republicans who control the Iowa Legislature have no interest in changing that law, especially since the GOP is preserving our state’s first-in-the-nation status.

    Iowa Democratic Party Chair Ross Wilburn confirmed last week that Democrats will follow state law “and address compliance with DNC rules” later. So the party will hold caucuses in early 2024 to select delegates to county conventions and members of various party committees.

    But those caucuses will have no broader significance. While more than 100,000 Republicans show up to support their favorite presidential candidate, only hard-core Democratic activists will attend.

    Serious presidential candidates will avoid campaigning here, so as not to lose delegates under the DNC’s new rules, which would penalize contenders who have staff, run ads or give speeches in unsanctioned early states. Iowa will lose half the state’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention as well.

    As Iowa Democrats prepare for life after the caucuses as we know them, they should seek inspiration from state parties that never received the money and attention that comes with being first.

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  • Incoming GOP congressman says party won’t be ‘held hostage’ by McCarthy detractors | CNN Politics

    Incoming GOP congressman says party won’t be ‘held hostage’ by McCarthy detractors | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Republican Rep.-elect Mike Lawler of New York on Sunday offered his full support for House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s speakership bid, saying the party won’t be “held hostage by a handful of members” seeking to place a different Republican atop the chamber.

    “Kevin is the only person that I will be voting for, for speaker, if it’s one vote or multiple votes. And I think there’s many of my colleagues who feel the same way,” Lawler said on “State of the Union” in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. “And frankly, we’re not going to be held hostage by a handful of members, when the overwhelming majority of the conference is in full support of Kevin.”

    Lawler, a state assemblyman, made headlines last month after he unseated New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of House Democrats’ campaign arm, in a Lower Hudson Valley district.

    McCarthy and his critics are gearing up for a potential floor fight over the speakership in January, raising the possibility of a messy intraparty showdown that could bring uncertainty and chaos just as Republicans prepare to enter their new majority.

    While McCarthy insists he will have the 218 votes needed to secure the speaker’s gavel, the conservative hard-liners seeking to plot the California Republican’s ouster say otherwise.

    It’s still not known what would happen on January 3 if McCarthy cannot get 218 votes to be elected speaker. Republicans will only have a narrow majority in the new Congress, with 222 House seats, so McCarthy can only afford to lose four GOP votes. But there’s an expectation that any number of Republicans could throw their hat into the ring if McCarthy stumbles or drops out.

    “I do think cooler heads will prevail. And I do think, on January 3, Kevin will have the necessary votes to become speaker,” Lawler said Sunday, noting, “A month is a long time in politics.”

    In recent weeks, part of McCarthy’s pitch to his critics has been that if they don’t unify, then Democrats could theoretically band together and peel off a few Republicans to elect the next speaker on the floor. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, McCarthy tied his bid for speaker to a number of GOP priorities and warned Republicans against “squandering this majority.”

    “If people don’t come along, that’s going to delay our ability to secure the border. That’s going to delay our ability to become energy independent, that’s going to delay our ability to repeal 87,000 IRS agents, that’s going to delay our ability to hold government accountable,” he said.

    “There’s no subpoena that can go out until that gets done. And right now, it’s actually delaying our ability to govern as we go. So I’m hopeful that everybody comes together, finds a way to govern together,” McCarthy said.

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  • Republican John Duarte wins open House seat in California after Democrat concedes | CNN Politics

    Republican John Duarte wins open House seat in California after Democrat concedes | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democrat Adam Gray conceded on Friday night to Republican John Duarte in the open-seat race to represent California’s 13th Congressional District, the final House race of the 2022 midterms to be called.

    “While I had hoped for a different outcome, I accept the results and have called to congratulate my opponent, John Duarte,” Gray, a state assemblyman, said in a statement posted to Twitter.

    With Duarte’s win in the Central Valley district, Republicans are projected to hold a slim majority in the House of Representatives next year, with 222 seats.

    Democrats are projected to win 213 seats in this year’s midterms, but the recent death of Virginia Democrat Donald McEachin just weeks after he won reelection means they are expected to start the new Congress with one fewer seat. McEachin’s seat will remain vacant until a special election is held.

    The House seat counts by both parties following the midterm elections is reminiscent of the totals after the 2020 election – in reverse. House Democrats won 222 seats in 2020 to 213 for the Republicans.

    Incoming House Republicans’ slim majority has prompted internal questions within the party about whether GOP leader Kevin McCarthy will have the necessary 218 votes needed to secure the House speakership in January.

    McCarthy has expressed confidence, insisting that he has enough votes. But conservative hard-liners seeking to plot the California Republican’s ouster say otherwise.

    No other Republican has declared their candidacy for the speaker’s post, but McCarthy’s foes say another candidate will emerge and that talks have already begun to recruit a replacement.

    Republicans will now hold 12 House seats from California next year, up one from their current 11 seats. California Democrats will hold 40 seats, down two from their current total. The state lost a seat in reapportionment following the 2020 census.

    Five of the 12 California districts Republicans will hold next year would have backed now-President Joe Biden in 2020. They include the seat won by Duarte, which Biden would have carried by 11 points.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • South African President Cyril Ramaphosa resists calls to resign | CNN

    South African President Cyril Ramaphosa resists calls to resign | CNN

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    Johannesburg, South Africa
    CNN
     — 

    After days of speculation, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa looks set to fight calls for his resignation despite a damning report that found he could have covered up the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars at his private game farm.

    His spokesman Vincent Magwenya said Ramaphosa would not be resigning “based on a flawed report,” and “neither is he stepping aside.”

    “The President has taken to heart the unequivocal message coming from the branches of the governing party who have nominated him to avail himself for a second term of the leadership of the ANC (African National Congress),” Magwenya added.

    Prior to the release of the report, Ramaphosa was widely expected to win a second term as ANC leader. The ANC’s top leadership is expected to meet in the coming hours. Ramaphosa’s fate is likely to be top of the agenda.

    Ramaphosa himself has not made any public statements since the report was released.

    Ramaphosa was elected to root out corruption, but he is being probed in an ongoing scandal linked to the theft of more than $500,000 in cash from his private game farm in 2020. The cash was stuffed inside a leather sofa according to the panel investigation.

    The panel, led by a former chief justice, found that the crime was not reported to the police and that there was a “deliberate decision to keep the investigation secret.”

    Former South African spy chief Arthur Fraser alleged the theft occurred with the collusion of a domestic worker and claimed that the theft was concealed from police and the revenue service. Fraser, whose allegations were detailed in a report into the investigation, said Ramaphosa paid the culprits for their silence.

    Ramaphosa has maintained that the cash was from the sale of buffalo at his Phala Phala farm to a Sudanese businessman and that the theft was reported to the head of presidential security.

    The president also disputes claims by Fraser that the amount hidden at his farm was more than $4 million.

    “Some are casting aspersions about me and money. I want to assure you that all this was money from proceeds from selling animals. I have never stolen money from anywhere. Be it from our taxpayers, be it from anyone. I have never done so. And will never do so,” he said while addressing members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party in June this year.

    He is a well-known owner and trader of rare buffalo, cattle, and other wildlife, and has become a multi-millionaire through his private buffalo farm.

    The panel found that Ramaphosa’s submitted explanations were not yet sufficient and that he could have violated the constitution and his oath of office by having a second income as president.

    The ANC’s top leaders are set to discuss the report and while the party does have a “step-aside” rule for misconduct, the ANC’s national spokesman Pule Mabe told local television that it only applied to those that are “criminally charged.”

    Ramaphosa was recently feted at Buckingham Palace at the first state visit hosted by King Charles, but closer to home, the scandal threatens to end his political career, with speculation swirling around political circles in the country that he could step down.

    The ANC’s elective conference to choose its leadership is due to take place in mid-December, but is likely to be dominated by the President’s troubles.

    South Africa’s official opposition leader was quick to call for impeachment proceedings and early elections.

    “The report is clear and unambiguous. President Ramaphosa most likely did breach a number of Constitutional provisions and has a case to answer. Impeachment proceedings into his conduct must go ahead, and he will have to offer far better, more comprehensive explanations than we have been given so far,” said by John Steenhuisen, the leader of the Democratic Alliance.

    The panel was appointed by the speaker of parliament after a motion from a smaller opposition party.

    The National Assembly will consider the report and may institute impeachment proceedings – though the ANC does hold a majority of seats.

    Ramaphosa took office after his predecessor Jacob Zuma was forced to resign because of multiple allegations of corruption.

    A former trade union head and multi-millionaire from his business career, Ramaphosa has repeatedly said that fighting corruption is a priority for his presidency.

    But the ANC has, by all accounts, been fractured by factional politics during his tenure. Some allies of former president Zuma are now openly asking for Ramaphosa to step down.

    Soon after the report’s findings were released, Ramaphosa’s office reiterated his statement to the panel, “I have endeavored, throughout my tenure as President, not only to abide by my oath but to set an example of respect for the Constitution, for its institutions, for due process and the law. I categorically deny that I have violated this oath in any way, and I similarly deny that I am guilty of any of the allegations made against me.”

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  • China security forces are well-prepared for quashing dissent

    China security forces are well-prepared for quashing dissent

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    BEIJING — When it comes to ensuring the security of their regime, China’s Communist Party rulers don’t skimp.

    The extent of that lavish spending was put on display when the boldest street protests in decades broke out in Beijing and other cities, driven by anger over rigid and seemingly unending restrictions to combat COVID-19.

    The government has been preparing for such challenges for decades, installing the machinery needed to quash large-scale upheavals.

    After an initially muted response, with security personnel using pepper spray and tear gas, police and paramilitary troops flooded city streets with jeeps, vans and armored cars in a massive show of force.

    The officers fanned out, checking IDs and searching cellphones for photos, messages or banned apps that might show involvement in or even just sympathy for the protests.

    An unknown number of people were detained and it’s unclear if any will face charges. Most protesters focused their anger on the “zero-COVID” policy that seeks to eradicate the virus through sweeping lockdowns, travel restrictions and relentless testing. But some called for the party and its leader Xi Jinping to step down, speech the party considers subversive and punishable by years in prison.

    While much smaller in scale, the protests were the most significant since the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that the regime still views as its greatest existential crisis. With leaders and protesters at an impasse, the People’s Liberation Army crushed the demonstrations with tanks and troops, killing hundreds, possibly thousands.

    After the Tiananmen crackdown, the party invested in the means to deal with unrest without resorting immediately to using deadly force.

    During a wave of dissent by unemployed workers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the authorities tested that approach, focusing on preventing organizers in different cities from linking up and arresting the leaders while letting rank-and-file protesters go largely untouched.

    At times, they’ve been caught by surprise. In 1999, members of the Falun Gong meditation sect, whose membership came to rival the party’s in size, surrounded the leadership compound in Beijing in a show of defiance that then-leader Jiang Zemin took as a personal affront.

    A harsh crackdown followed. Leaders were given heavy prison sentences and members were subject to harassment and sometimes sent to re-education centers.

    The government responded with overwhelming force in 2008, when anti-government riots broke out in Tibet’s capital Lhasa and unrest swept through Tibetan regions in western China, authorities responded with overwhelming force.

    The next year, a police crackdown on protests by members of the Uyghur Muslim minority in the capital of the northwestern Xinjiang region, Urumqi, led to bloody clashes in which at least 197 were killed, mostly Han Chinese civilians.

    In both cases, forces fired into crowds, searched door-to-door and seized an unknown number of suspects who were either sentenced to heavy terms or simply not heard from again. Millions of people were interned in camps, placed under surveillance and forbidden from traveling.

    China has been able to muster such resources thanks to a massive internal security budget that reportedly has tripled over the past decade, surpassing that for national defense. Xinjiang alone saw a ten-fold increase in domestic security spending during the early 2000s, according to Western estimates.

    The published figure for internal security exceeded the defense budget for the first time in 2010. By 2013, China stopped providing a breakdown. The U.S. think tank Jamestown Foundation estimated that internal security spending had already reached 113% of defense spending by 2016. Annual increases were about double those for national defense in percentage terms and both grew much faster than the economy.

    There’s a less visible but equally intimidating, sprawling system in place to monitor online content for anti-government messages, unapproved news and images. Government censors work furiously to erase such items, while propaganda teams flood the net with pro-party messages.

    Behind the repression is a legal system tailor-made to serve the one-party state. China is a nation ruled by law rather than governed by the rule of law. Laws are sufficiently malleable to put anyone targeted by the authorities behind bars on any number of vague charges.

    Those range from simply “spreading rumors online,” tracked through postings on social media, to the all-encompassing “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” punishable by up to five years in prison.

    Charges of “subverting state power” or “incitement to subvert state power” are often used, requiring little proof other than evidence the accused expressed a critical attitude toward the party-state. Those accused are usually denied the right to hire their own lawyers. Cases can take years to come to trial and almost always result in convictions.

    In a further disincentive to rebel, people released from prison often face years of monitoring and harassment that can ruin careers and destroy families.

    The massive spending and sprawling internal security network leaves China well prepared to crackdown on dissent. It also suggests “China’s internal situation is far less stable than the leadership would like the world to believe,” China politics expert Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation wrote on the Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank’s website.

    It’s unclear how sustainable it is, he said. “This could have the effect of either changing Chinese priorities or creating greater tensions among them.”

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  • Biden proposes South Carolina as first primary state in drastic shake up of presidential nominating calendar | CNN Politics

    Biden proposes South Carolina as first primary state in drastic shake up of presidential nominating calendar | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden has asked Democratic National Committee leaders to drastically reshape the 2024 presidential nominating calendar and make South Carolina the first state to host a primary, followed by Nevada and New Hampshire on the same day a week later, Georgia the following week and then Michigan, a source confirms to CNN.

    Biden’s preferences were announced Thursday evening at a dinner for members of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee by committee co-chairs Jim Roosevelt, Jr. and Minyon Moore. The committee is set to meet Friday and Saturday in Washington and is poised to propose a new presidential nominating calendar.

    Biden’s expression of his preferences will play a significant role in the process. A DNC source said his elevation of South Carolina to the first-in-the-nation primary has sparked significant debate as members meet Thursday night. But with Biden’s support, this proposal is likely to ultimately gain the support of the committee, though this person emphasized that nothing is final until the votes are held.

    If the DNC ultimately adopts this calendar, it would be an extraordinary shake up of the existing order and would strip Iowa of the first-in-the-nation status that it has held since 1920. Iowa has traditionally gone first, followed by New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. It would also add a fifth state to the slate before Super Tuesday (the first Tuesday in March) and elevate Georgia and Michigan as early nominating states for the first time.

    South Carolina’s primary would be held on February 6, Nevada and New Hampshire would have their contests on February 13, Georgia’s primary would be on February 20 and Michigan’s would be on February 27, according to the source.

    Biden had also sent a letter to DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee members on Thursday laying out what he believed should be guiding principles for the committee as it discusses the calendar.

    “Just like my Administration, the Democratic Party has worked hard to reflect the diversity of America – but our nominating process does not,” the president’s letter reads. “For fifty years, the first month of our presidential nominating process has been a treasured part of our democratic process, but it is time to update the process for the 21st century. I am committed to working with the DNC to get this done.”

    The president wrote: “We must ensure that voters of color have a voice in choosing our nominee much earlier in the process and throughout the entire early window. As I said in February 2020, you cannot be the Democratic nominee and win a general election unless you have overwhelming support from voters of color – and that includes Black, Brown and Asian American & Pacific Islander voters.

    “For decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic Party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process,” he continued. “We rely on these voters in elections but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar. It is time to stop taking these voters for granted, and time to give them a louder and earlier voice in the process.”

    Biden said in the letter the Democratic Party should abolish caucuses, arguing they are “inherently anti-participatory” and “restrictive.”

    The Washington Post was first to report on the president’s preferred order for the nominating calendar and the letter he sent to committee members.

    The DNC earlier this year approved a plan to prioritize diverse battleground states that choose to hold primaries, not caucuses, as it considers which states should hold early contests. Beyond the tumult of the 2020 caucuses, Iowa is largely White, no longer considered a battleground state and is required by state law to hold caucuses.

    “There’s very little support for Iowa because they don’t fit into the framework and because of the debacle of 2020. There’s a lot of emotional momentum – it’s not unanimous – but there’s a lot of emotional momentum to replace Iowa with a state that is more representative, more inclusive and instills more confidence and is a battleground state,” one DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee member told CNN.

    Any new proposal by the committee would have to be approved at a full DNC meeting, which will take place early next year. If a new schedule is adopted, it would be the first changes made to the Democratic nominating calendar since 2006, when Nevada and South Carolina were added as early states. It would also break with the Republican calendar, as the Republican National Committee voted earlier this year to reaffirm the early state lineup of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

    Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, who has spearheaded Michigan’s effort to become an early-voting state, told CNN earlier on Thursday she was “feeling good” about Michigan’s chances and that she believed the state was in a “strong position” heading into the committee meeting.

    “The White House knows that we don’t win presidencies without the heartland,” Dingell said. “And we’ve got to have a primary system where candidates are campaigning in a heartland state that reflects the diversity of this country and that they’re testing them because that’s where we win or lose in general elections.”

    Nevada has been making a play to move up further in the calendar and unseat New Hampshire as the first-in-the-nation primary. New Hampshire has held the first primary on the presidential nominating calendar since 1920 and that status is protected by state law.

    Nevada Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, whose reelection in November was critical to allowing Democrats to maintain control of the Senate, argues her state’s diverse electorate makes it a “microcosm of the rest of the country.”

    “If you’re a presidential candidate and you can win in Nevada, you have a message that resonates across the country,” Cortez Masto told MSNBC earlier this month.

    The Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ political arm, CHC BOLD PAC, on Wednesday announced it was backing Nevada’s application to host the first-in-the-nation primary.

    “The state that goes first matters, and we know that Latino voters will only become even more decisive in future election cycles when it comes to winning the White House and majorities in the House and Senate,” Reps. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Raul Ruiz of California, leaders of the CHC BOLD PAC, said in a statement.

    New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen tweeted Thursday, “NH’s First-In-The-Nation primary gives every candidate an opportunity to connect directly with engaged, informed voters in a battleground state – and Granite Staters are experts at assessing candidates & campaigns. I’m proud to support NH’s #FITN primary.”

    Earlier this year, the DNC committee heard presentations from 16 states – including the four current early states – as well as Puerto Rico on their pitches on why they should become an early state or hold on to their spot. Amid pressure to boot Iowa from its top position, the Hawkeye State made its case to stay first in the calendar and proposed simplifying the caucus process.

    Minnesota is also among the states jockeying to join the early-state ranks. The chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Ken Martin, sent a memo to DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee members on Wednesday arguing Minnesota is “more diverse and has a stronger party infrastructure than Iowa, but unlike Michigan, it is not large enough that it would overshadow the other early primary states or make it harder and more expensive for candidates to compete in during this critical window.”

    Both Michigan’s and Minnesota’s cases were bolstered after Democrats in both states won trifecta control of the governor and state legislatures in the midterms. Primary dates are generally set by law, so state parties would need cooperation from their legislatures and governors to become early-voting states. The Michigan state Senate, which is currently controlled by Republicans, this week already took the step of voting to move the presidential primary up a month earlier to February.

    Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, along with other party leaders in the state, sent a letter this month to members of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee pledging to passing legislation moving up the primary date if Minnesota was selected as an early state. The letter, obtained by CNN, argued Minnesota is a “highly representative approximation of the country, paired with a robust state and local party infrastructure, an engaged electorate, and a logistical and financial advantage for campaigns.”

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  • Opinion: Why Kevin McCarthy may have the hardest job on Capitol Hill | CNN

    Opinion: Why Kevin McCarthy may have the hardest job on Capitol Hill | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, DC. He is also a former senior policy adviser to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. Follow him on Twitter. The views expressed in this piece are his own. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    Like a treasure hunter who hacks his way to the heart of the jungle only to find an empty chest, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy thought he was on his way to achieving his goal of becoming speaker before a rebellion on his right flank put that dream very much in doubt.

    Currently, House Republicans are expected to hold a narrow majority in the next Congress – 222 seats to Democrats’ 213, if there are no changes to the projected winners. McCarthy, who recently was reelected as GOP leader, will need a majority, or 218, of the House representatives to vote for him on January 3 to become the next speaker.

    That leaves the California Republican with just a handful of votes to spare if he wants to win. And CNN’s Chris Cillizza has already tallied five Republican congressmen who have expressed their unwillingness to vote for McCarthy.

    With enough negotiations, concessions and wheeling and dealing, the most likely scenario is that McCarthy will squeak out just enough votes. But the uncertain start to his potential tenure, and the challenges he faces within his own caucus, reflect both the tumult of trying to lead a legislative body in an anti-institutional age and the fundamental uncertainty of what the Republican Party actually stands for.

    McCarthy, don’t forget, started his career as a reform-oriented “Young Gun,” posing for the cover of the Weekly Standard with fellow GOP wunderkinds (and now-former Reps.) Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Eric Cantor of Virginia. The populist thrust in the party ultimately sidelined the other two, along with the magazine they appeared on, but McCarthy survived – in part by adopting the pose of an America First culture warrior.

    In spring 2021, while Democrats were passing an American Rescue Plan that put billions of dollars into states’ hands and ended up fueling inflation, McCarthy made headlines by reading “Green Eggs and Ham” to protest the Dr. Seuss estate’s decision not to continue publishing six older books due to racial stereotypes. (“Green Eggs and Ham” was not one of the six books in question.)

    McCarthy’s plans for the new Congress are far from ambitious. He boldly announced that each day will start with a prayer and the pledge of allegiance, something Congress already does. He also vowed to have the Constitution read aloud in its entirety – a nice gesture, but one Republicans have done in the recent past with little impact on the work of governing.

    Because the Republican Party struggles to put forward a cohesive governing agenda (McCarthy’s touted Commitment to America was better suited as an attack on President Joe Biden’s administration than a detailed list of proactive agenda items), the matters that have caused some Republicans to rebel against a potential McCarthy speakership may seem picayune.

    He has pledged to seek votes on removing Reps. Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff, both of California, and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota from certain congressional committees, nominally for various violations. But diehard partisans will certainly see it as payback for Democratic actions, such as stripping Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia of her committee assignments – the kind of DC insider red meat that leaves most voters cold.

    Other possible inside-baseball concessions are even more in the weeds. Reps. Bob Good of Virginia and Matt Rosendale of Montana, for example, have spoken about their desire to bring back the legislative maneuver known as the “motion to vacate the chair,” which would allow any member of Congress to seek a vote on removing the House speaker. That procedure, coupled with a razor-thin margin, would leave a future Speaker McCarthy on the proverbial hot seat.

    And many of the more Trump-supporting figures, like Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, who challenged McCarthy for his leadership post, prefer a more MAGA-aligned speaker. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, another “no” vote against McCarthy, has endorsed Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, partly stemming from his frustration that McCarthy had initially said the former president bore some responsibility for the riots on January 6.

    But more moderate Republicans would likely shy away from Jordan as a candidate, and a centrist candidate would be anathema to the more populist wing. So McCarthy’s path to the speaker’s chair may end up being the least objectionable option.

    Without a clear vision of what the Republican Party’s legislative priorities are, McCarthy’s presumptive speakership will mostly consist of oversight. And some aspect of feeding the political base is part of the game. His announced intentions to end proxy voting, which allowed lawmakers to cast their vote remotely, would be the right step, as would fully reopening the Capitol complex to visitors.

    But McCarthy’s travails illustrate how trying to lead in an era when parties and institutions are held captive by an anti-establishment mentality will be a continual exercise in frustration. Base-pleasing moves like investigating the president’s son, Hunter Biden, don’t do anything to solidify Republican support where it is needed – the middle-class suburbs, which voted decidedly against stunts and for normalcy in last month’s midterm elections.

    Fights over legislative committee assignments and empty culture war gestures may suck up political oxygen, but they don’t point the way forward to a more compelling argument for Republican control of Congress. Republicans who can hammer home an agenda that puts parents first, and is laser-focused on reducing crime and inflation, will be more attractive to an electorate that’s soured on MAGA candidates but also signaled displeasure with the Biden administration.

    Either Kevin McCarthy will figure that out, or he’ll be replaced.

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  • The fine print of the Respect for Marriage Act | CNN Politics

    The fine print of the Respect for Marriage Act | CNN Politics

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



    CNN
     — 

    Let’s start with the positive: Republicans and Democrats are coming together to protect same-sex marriage from the Supreme Court. The Respect for Marriage Act, which safeguards the right to same-sex marriage nationwide, passed the House with bipartisan support earlier this week and now awaits a Senate vote.

    The Respect for Marriage Act codifies marriages and came about amid worries among Democrats that the same conservative majority on the Supreme Court that took away the right to abortion will target same-sex marriage in the future.

    The version that overcame a filibuster in the Senate passed the Senate Tuesday. A dozen Republican senators from across the country voted with Democrats before Thanksgiving to limit debate and move toward a final vote.

    RELATED: Meet the 12 Republicans who voted to consider the Respect for Marriage Act

    It next goes to the House for approval before President Joe Biden can sign it into law.

    But there is a fair amount of fine print.

    First, the bill does not require all states to allow same-sex marriage, even though that is the current reality under the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Rather, if the Supreme Court overturned Obergefell and previous state prohibitions on same-sex marriage came back into effect, the Respect for Marriage Act would require states and the federal government to respect marriages conducted in places where it is legal.

    There are religious exceptions. Republican supporters have emphasized the elements in this Senate version that protect nonprofit and religious organizations from having to provide support for same-sex marriages.

    “I will be supporting the substitute amendment because it will ensure our religious freedoms are upheld and protected, one of the bedrocks of our democracy,” said West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito in a statement after helping break the filibuster.

    It took months of behind-the-scenes effort to bring 10-plus Republicans on board.

    This is all academic right now. The bill is only being passed in case the now-solidly conservative Supreme Court, which has taken delight in upending precedent, were to revisit the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that created a national right to marriage for same-sex couples.

    Two of the justices who voted in favor of that ruling have been replaced by Republican-appointed conservatives, which means that if the case were heard today, there’s a real likelihood it would be decided differently.

    While Justice Samuel Alito seemed to want to wall off the abortion rights precedent upended by the Supreme Court earlier this year, CNN’s Ariane de Vogue has written about how the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization could affect issues like marriage. Read her story.

    Here’s a brief history of marriage equality playing a role in prior election years:

    Today, it’s Republicans and Democrats, along with a Democratic president, working together to protect same-sex marriage from a government institution.

    During that time, public support for same-sex marriage grew from about a quarter of the public in the year the Defense of Marriage Act was enacted to 71% in Gallup polling this year.

    The issue has played a role in multiple US elections, including, arguably, the one that just took place.

    Here’s a brief history of marriage equality playing a role in prior election years:

    In 1996, Republican majorities in the House and Senate sensed a political opening after then-President Bill Clinton failed to allow gay people to openly serve in the military.

    They were also trying to get ahead of a Hawaii court decision that could have legalized same-sex marriage in that state. Fearing every state might have to recognize same-sex unions, Republicans pushed the Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA.

    It declared marriage as between one man and one woman and allowed states to refuse to recognize marriages. It also withheld federal benefits from married same-sex couples. In 2013, a part of DOMA was found to be unconstitutional.

    DOMA had broad approval. Democrats like then-Sen. Joe Biden voted for the bill. Current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and many other Democrats whose names you’d recognize, were among the 342 who voted for the bill in the House.

    Current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among the 67 members to vote “no,” along with Rep. Steve Gunderson, who at the time was the House’s only openly gay Republican.

    In 2004, placing anti-gay-marriage amendments on ballots in key states like Ohio was smart politics. It helped George W. Bush win reelection to the White House and the GOP gain seats in the US Senate.

    Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The Democratic candidate, John Kerry, also opposed same-sex marriage at the time.

    In 2008, even as more in his party began to publicly support marriage equality, Obama continued his opposition.

    He has more recently said and written that he always personally supported same-sex marriage rights. His campaign aide David Axelrod has written that Obama made a calculated decision to oppose gay marriage.

    “He grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’” Axelrod wrote in a memoir.

    In 2012, following the lead of then-Vice President Biden, Obama officially evolved on the issue and said he now supported marriage equality. It was a big moment.

    A few years later, in 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide.

    “I’m fine with it,” Trump said in 2016 during an interview with “60 Minutes.”

    He’d go on to brag about being a champion for gay rights, although many LGBTQ activists would disagree.

    The politicians of the ’90s have largely evolved with the country.

    But one of the Supreme Court’s relics from the ’90s, Justice Clarence Thomas, recently questioned the 2015 marriage decision he opposed. As a result, Republicans and Democrats are coming together again, in less than a generation, to undo what they did in 1996, and try to guarantee marriage as a right for all Americans.

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  • Biden ‘confident’ rail strike will be avoided though congressional hurdles loom | CNN Politics

    Biden ‘confident’ rail strike will be avoided though congressional hurdles loom | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden said Tuesday he is “confident” a rail strike will be avoided while meeting with the top four congressional leaders, though any one senator could slow down the process of approving legislation that would avert such a strike – and at least one said he was planning to do so.

    “I asked the four top leaders in Congress to ask whether they’d be willing to come in and talk about what we’re gonna do between now and Christmas in terms of legislation and there’s a lot to do, including resolving the train strike,” Biden said while meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

    “It’s not an easy call but I think we have to do it,” Biden said. “The economy is at risk.”

    On Monday, Biden called on Congress to “immediately” pass legislation to avert a railroad shutdown by officially adopting a September tentative agreement approved by labor and management leaders. Rank-and-file members of four unions have rejected the agreement and are prepared to go on a railroad strike on December 9 without either a new labor agreement or congressional action.

    Biden, a longtime labor ally, along with Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and other administration officials helped unions and management reach a tentative deal averting a freight railroad strike in September.

    A railroad strike could clog supply chains and lead to a spike in prices on necessities such as gasoline and food – dampening an economy that many fear is heading toward a recession. It could also cost could cost the US economy $1 billion in its first week alone, according to an analysis from the Anderson Economic Group.

    Michael Baldwin, president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, one of the four unions whose members voted no on the deal, said Tuesday that Biden has let the union and its members down.

    “We’re trying to address an issue here of sick time. It’s very important,” Michael Baldwin, the president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on “Newsroom.” “This action prevents us from reaching the end of our process. It takes away the strength and the abilities that we have to force bargaining or force the railroads into a situation to actually do the right thing.”

    Pelosi said Tuesday the chamber could vote as soon as Wednesday on legislation to adopt the September tentative agreement and avert a possible rail strike. Once passed, Senate action could occur later this week or next, several Senate sources have told CNN. The Senate is expected to have the votes to break a filibuster on the bill to avert a potential railway strike, the Senate sources also said. There are likely to be at least 10 Republicans who will vote with most Senate Democrats to overcome a 60-vote threshold.

    After the meeting, McConnell expressed openness to backing the legislation, and told reporters “We’re gonna need to pass a bill.”

    But any one senator can slow the process down as timing agreements to move along legislation typically require unanimous consent from all 100 members of the chamber. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, criticized the proposed deal to avert a rail strike on Tuesday. Sanders reiterated his threat to slow down rail measure unless he gets sick-leave amendment vote in a tweet Tuesday afternoon.

    “At a time of record profits in the rail industry, it’s unacceptable that rail workers have ZERO guaranteed paid sick days. It’s my intention to block consideration of the rail legislation until a roll call vote occurs on guaranteeing 7 paid sick days to rail workers in America,” he wrote.

    Any one member can delay a quick vote and potentially put off final action until after the December 9 deadline to avert a strike.

    Some Republicans are still skeptical of congressional intervention, arguing they would rather the issue be dealt with administratively.

    Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a frequent swing vote, told CNN that the measure “deserves careful consideration.”

    “I’m going to wait and listen to the debate at lunch today before reaching any kind of conclusion,” she said.

    Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, a member of GOP leadership, also told CNN she was still evaluating the plan.

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  • Rural Arizona county delays certifying midterm results as election disputes persist | CNN Politics

    Rural Arizona county delays certifying midterm results as election disputes persist | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Officials in a rural Arizona county Monday delayed the certification of November’s midterm elections, missing the legal deadline and leading the Arizona secretary of state’s office to sue over the county’s failure to sign off on the results.

    By a 2-1 vote Monday morning, the Republican majority on the Cochise County Board of Supervisors pushed back certification until Friday, citing concerns about voting machines. Because Monday was the deadline for all 15 Arizona counties to certify their results, Cochise’s action could put at risk the votes of some 47,000 county residents and could inject chaos into the election if those votes go uncounted.

    In the lawsuit filed by the office of Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs – a Democrat who will be the state’s next governor – officials said failing to certify the election results violates state law and could “potentially disenfranchise” the county’s voters.

    CNN has reached out to the supervisors for comment.

    The standoff between officials in Cochise County and the Arizona secretary of state’s office illustrates how election misinformation is continuing to stoke controversy about the 2022 results in some corners of the country even though many of the candidates who echoed former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election were defeated in November.

    A crowd of grassroots activists turned up at a special meeting of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to loudly protest that county’s election administration procedures during a public comment portion of the meeting after problems with printers at voting locations on Election Day led to long lines at about a third of the county’s voting locations. In a new letter to the state attorney general’s office – which had demanded an explanation of the problems – the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said that “no voter was disenfranchised because of the difficulty the county experienced with some of its printers.”

    Disputes over the results have erupted elsewhere.

    In Pennsylvania, where counties also faced a Monday deadline to certify their general election balloting, local officials have faced an onslaught of petitions demanding recounts. And officials in Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, deadlocked Monday on whether to certify the results, according to multiple media reports. Election officials there did not respond to inquiries from CNN on Monday afternoon.

    In a statement to CNN, officials with the Pennsylvania Department of State said they have reached out to Luzerne officials “to inquire about the board’s decision and their intended next steps.”

    On Election Day, a paper shortage in Luzerne County prompted a court-ordered extension of in-person voting.

    Arizona, another key battleground state, has long been a cauldron of election conspiracies. GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and GOP secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, both of whom pushed Trump’s lies about 2020, have refused to concede their races, as they continue to sow doubts about this year’s election results.

    Lake’s campaign filed a lawsuit last week demanding more information from Maricopa County’s elections department about the number of voters who checked in to polling places compared to the ballots cast. And Arizona’s GOP attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh – who, like Lake and Finchem, was backed by Trump – filed a lawsuit in the state superior court in Maricopa County last week challenging the election results based on what the suit describes as errors in the management of the election.

    Hamadeh is trailing his opponent Democrat Kris Mayes by 510 votes as their race heads toward a recount. But the lawsuit asks the court to issue an injunction prohibiting the Arizona secretary of state from certifying Mayes as the winner and asks the court to declare Hamadeh as the winner. A recount cannot begin until the state’s votes are certified.

    Alex Gulotta, Arizona state director of All Voting is Local, said the drama over certification of the votes and the refusal by losing candidates to back down is part of an “infrastructure of election denial” that has been building since the 2020 election in Arizona.

    “Those folks are going to continue to try and find fertile ground for their efforts to undermine our elections. They are not going to give up,” Gulotta said. “We had a whole slate of election deniers, many of whom were not elected.”

    But their refusal to concede “was inevitable in Arizona, at least in this cycle, given the candidates. These aren’t good losers,” he added. “They said from the beginning that they would be bad losers.”

    In Cochise County, the Republican officials on the county Board of Supervisors advocated for the delay, citing concerns about voting machines.

    Ann English, the Democratic chairwoman, argued that there was “no reason for us to delay.”

    But Republican commissioners Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, who have cited claims that the machines were not properly certified, voted to delay signing off on the results. Monday’s action marked the second time the Republican-controlled board has delayed certification. And it marked the latest effort by Republicans on the board to register their disapproval of vote-tallying machines. Earlier this month, they attempted to mount an expansive hand count audit of the midterm results, pitting them against Cochise’s election director and the county attorney, who warned that the gambit might break the law.

    State election officials said the concerns cited by the Republican majority about the vote-tallying machines are rooted in debunked conspiracy theories.

    The state’s election director Kori Lorick has confirmed in writing that the voting machines had been tested and certified – a point Hobbs reiterated in Monday’s lawsuit. She is asking the court to force the board to certify the results by Thursday.

    An initial deadline of December 5 had been set for statewide certification. In the lawsuit, Hobbs’ lawyers said state law does allow for a slight delay if her office has not received a county’s results, but not past December 8 – or 30 days after the election.

    “Absent this Court’s intervention, the Secretary will have no choice but to complete statewide canvass by December 8 without Cochise County’s votes included,” her lawyers added.

    If votes from this Republican stronghold somehow went uncounted, it could flip two races to Democrats: the contest for state superintendent and a congressional race in which Republican Juan Ciscomani already has been projected as the winner by CNN and other outlets.

    In a recent opinion piece published in The Arizona Republic, two former election officials in Maricopa County – said the courts were likely to step in and force Cochise to certify the results.

    But Republican Helen Purcell, a former Maricopa County recorder, and Tammy Patrick, a Democrat and the county’s former federal compliance officer, warned that “a Republican-controlled board of supervisors could end up disenfranchising their own voters and hand Democrats even more victories in the midterms.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Arkansas GOP governor says Trump’s meeting with Holocaust denier is ‘very troubling’ and ’empowering’ for extremism | CNN Politics

    Arkansas GOP governor says Trump’s meeting with Holocaust denier is ‘very troubling’ and ’empowering’ for extremism | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump’s meeting last week with White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes was “very troubling” and “empowering” for extremism, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Sunday.

    “No, I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader that’s setting an example for the country or the party to meet with (an) avowed racist or anti-Semite. And so it’s very troubling and it shouldn’t happen and we need to avoid those kind of empowering the extremes,” Hutchinson told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” “You want to diminish their strength, not empower them. Stay away from it.”

    Trump had dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate last Tuesday with both Fuentes and rapper Kanye West, who himself became engulfed in controversy after repeating antisemitic conspiracy theories and making other offensive claims last month.

    The Anti-Defamation League has identified Fuentes as a White supremacist and he has been banned from most major social media platforms for his White nationalist rhetoric. Fuentes was present on the grounds of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and has promoted Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about fraud in the 2020 election. The House select committee investigating the events of January 6 issued a subpoena to Fuentes in January.

    Trump’s meeting with the two figures has drawn intense criticism in recent days, with Hutchinson saying on Sunday: “Well, I hope some day we won’t have to be responding to what former President Trump has said or done. In this instance it’s important to respond.”

    Hutchinson, a former US Attorney in Arkansas, is term-limited and leaving office in January. He’s currently mulling a 2024 White House bid, and he used Trump’s controversial meeting to note his own record on such issues, telling Bash, “the last time I met with a White supremacist it was in an armed standoff. I had a bulletproof vest on. We arrested them, prosecuted them and sent them to prison.”

    During last week’s dinner, Trump was engaged with Fuentes and found him “very interesting,” a source familiar with the dinner said, particularly Fuentes’ abilities to rattle off statistics and data, and his familiarity with Trump world. At one point during the dinner, Trump declared that he “liked” Fuentes.

    Trump acknowledged the dinner in a post on Truth Social Friday stating: “This past week, Kanye West called me to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about. We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. They then left for the airport.”

    Trump repeated later Friday that he “didn’t know” Fuentes and had offered West business as well as political advice.

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  • These are the end-of-year political showdowns that will help decide America’s future | CNN Politics

    These are the end-of-year political showdowns that will help decide America’s future | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    America is heading for a year-end political collision that will set the stage for showdowns between the new Republican-led House and the Democrats who still wield power in the Senate and White House.

    A fraught coda to the political battles of 2022 will decide who holds the government purse strings and how far the US will go in funding Ukraine’s war with Russia. It will showcase extremism in the incoming GOP-run House and the size of the Democratic Senate majority. And the 2024 presidential campaign is grinding into gear with ex-President Donald Trump stirring controversy on multiple fronts and President Joe Biden pondering a reelection bid.

    In Congress, a lame-duck session will see standoffs that could risk a government shutdown and over the must-lift US government borrowing limit, with grave implications for the economy.

    Meanwhile, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is scrambling to solidify support in his bid to become speaker in January, with a smaller-than-expected incoming majority giving his extreme pro-Trump colleagues extra power.

    And the House January 6 committee is poised to soon unveil its final report on Trump’s negligence and incitement leading up to the US Capitol insurrection. The findings, amid signs of acrimony inside the panel, could further color sentiment towards the ex-president as he seeks to build momentum after an underwhelming 2024 campaign launch – and as powerful donors, as well as prominent Republicans considering their own White House ambitions, are openly castigating Trump for hosting and then failing to disavow White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. The special counsel probe into his hoarding of classified documents and 2020 election chicanery is also gathering pace.

    Trump is also one of the factors playing into the Georgia Senate runoff election on December 6 that could give Democrats slender breathing room in the chamber or extend the 50-50 split broken only by Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote that made Biden’s agenda so precarious for the last two years.

    These next few weeks will show the country has failed to fully process the trauma of the Trump presidency or to arrive at the sense of normality that Biden promised during the 2020 campaign – even as the two rivals maneuver ahead of a possible rematch in 2024. They will also stress the near impossibility of governing at a time when America is deeply split between two political poles since big questions are likely to get pushed down the road.

    Big issues not solved this December will be pitched into an even more volatile atmosphere by an aggressive GOP-controlled House primed to slam the White House with partisan investigations.

    There’s also the renewed threat of a freight rail strike that could again clog supply lines and fresh Democratic calls for more action on gun control after a tragic new spate of mass shootings. The Democrats have a massive agenda before relinquishing the House but have little political room or time to accomplish it.

    Still, Congress is expected to mark one milestone in the coming weeks. The Senate is expected to vote to codify rights to same-sex and interracial marriage after a procedural vote on the measure earlier in November demonstrated strong bipartisan support.

    Here is what to look out for in the coming weeks.

    Congress must pass a bill to fund the government by December 16 or risk a partial government shutdown. The administration has asked for $37.7 billion in aid for Ukraine, $10 billion for extended efforts to combat Covid-19 and an unspecified amount for disaster relief after hurricanes hit Florida and Puerto Rico.

    Democrats will remain in control of the House until the new Congress in 2023, but a major spending package will also still likely require agreement from 10 Republicans to beat a Senate filibuster. GOP senators are especially skeptical about the administration’s warnings that the US will suffer a relapse in its exit from the pandemic without billions more dollars in funding. And even getting a Democratic majority in the chamber to sign on could be a challenge since West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin could make another stand against another spurt of government spending, especially since he would face a tough race if he decides to run for reelection in 2024.

    There is likely sufficient support for new aid to Ukraine in the Senate, but funding President Volodymyr Zelensky’s war for democracy against Russia is set to become far less routine next year as pro-Trump House members, like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, are vowing to halt aid needed for vital weapons and ammunition. They want the cash sent to reinforce the southern US border instead.

    The most serious showdown of the new Congress could come over raising the government’s borrowing limit that is due to be reached sometime next year. Failure to do so could trash faith in America’s willingness to pay its bills and send shockwaves through the US and global economy.

    McCarthy has already warned he will require spending concessions on key programs in return for allowing the government to borrow more money – a scenario that triggered several damaging fiscal showdowns during the Obama administration.

    To avoid a repeat, Democrats could use the waning days of their control of both chambers to raise the debt ceiling themselves, using a budgetary process known as reconciliation that could bypass a Senate filibuster. But the process is hugely complex, in terms of congressional choreography and time.

    Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said before Thanksgiving that the “best way to get it done, the way it’s been done the last two or three times is bipartisan.” But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell didn’t express much interest in Schumer’s invitation sit down to sort out the issue, saying “I don’t think the debt limit issue is until sometime next year.”

    The House Republican leader has a big problem – finding the votes in the new GOP majority to fulfill his dream of becoming speaker.

    McCarthy staked out a series of hardline positions heading into the holiday in an apparent effort to appease pro-Trump lawmakers after several declared they won’t vote for him. The California lawmaker can afford to lose only a few GOP votes if he wants to be speaker.

    During a trip to the border last week, he warned Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign or face possible impeachment next year. And he said he’ll follow through on a threat to throw high-profile Democrats, such as Reps. Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar, off of top committees next year.

    Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Schiff accused McCarthy of adopting extremist positions for his own naked political gain.

    “Kevin McCarthy has no ideology, has no core set of beliefs,” Schiff told CNN’s Dana Bash, saying the top House Republican will do “whatever he needs to do to get the votes of the QAnon caucus within his conference.”

    McCarthy’s struggle to confirm his speakership lies partly in the smaller-than-expected GOP majority following the lack of an expected “red wave” in this month’s election. And it could be a preview of a volatile majority and the extent to which his tenure, if he does win the speakership, will be hostage to the whims of the far-right Freedom Caucus and pro-Trump lawyers who want to use their majority as a weapon against Biden. But McCarthy also has to worry that two years of relentless, partisan investigations could turn off voters and lead them to snatch away the party’s fragile edge in the House in the 2024 election.

    But before the 2024 election gets into full swing, there’s unfinished business from 2022. Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker go head-to-head in a runoff on December 6 after neither broke the 50 percent threshold the first time around.

    Former President Barack Obama, who was the most effective Democratic messenger in the midterms, is due to campaign for Warnock on Thursday. Walker’s chances could depend on whether he is able to win over a significant block of Republican voters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him despite backing Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Walker’s problem is that he’s a protégé of Trump, from whom Kemp kept a good distance.

    After Trump announced his 2024 campaign days after the midterms, Warnock and his supporters started framing the runoff as the first chance for Democrats to stop Trump’s bid to return to the White House. Their argument recalled complaints by many Republicans that Trump’s intervention in two 2020 Senate runoffs in Georgia cost the GOP the chance to control the Senate.

    This might all be about one seat. But holding the Senate 51-49 rather than 50-50 would be huge for Democrats because it would insulate them from the incapacitation of one of their members and could diminish the power of Manchin, who has been a stubborn brake on Biden’s aspirations for two years.

    The former president finds himself under unusual political pressure inside the Republican Party he has dominated since 2015. His backing of several losing, election-denying and unpolished candidates in the midterms angered many key figures in the party. His hosting of Fuentes at the same time as rapper Kanye West at his Mar-a-Lago estate worried Republicans who fear that while he may be a formidable candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, Trump’s empathy for the far-right will again doom him before a national electorate.

    Another potential Republican presidential candidate, outgoing Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, condemned the incident as “very troubling” on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

    “I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader that’s setting an example for the country or the party to meet with (an) avowed racist or anti-Semite,” Hutchinson said. “You want to diminish their strength, not empower them. Stay away from it.”

    Trump acknowledged the meeting in a Truth Social post, but claimed he knew nothing about Fuentes. He also did not disavow him or his views.

    This latest storm comes as the new special counsel Jack Smith, blasted by Trump as a “political hitman,” gets up to speed on the serious legal challenges facing the ex-president, who’s suffered several recent defeats in court in his bid to delay accountability. Trump’s early declaration of a campaign – apparently to quell the buzz around possible alternative Republican candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – leaves the former president needing a way to create some traction in December and in the early months of the year when he might find it hardest to win political exposure.

    The opening stages of the campaign will begin to answer the central question of Trump’s 2024 run – whether his so far rock solid appeal to the GOP base will counter concerns in the wider party about his broader viability.

    Trump’s decision to jump in the race has also increased scrutiny of whether Biden, who turned 80 earlier this month, will decide to run for reelection. The president was asked by CNN’s Betsy Klein during his holiday vacation in Nantucket how his conversations about 2024 were going with his family.

    “We’re not having any. We’re celebrating,” Biden replied.

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  • Election deniers faced defeat but election denialism is still swirling in Arizona | CNN Politics

    Election deniers faced defeat but election denialism is still swirling in Arizona | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Many of the candidates who promoted former President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen” were defeated in November, a pattern heralded by Democrats that is already reshaping the contours of the 2024 election – leading the former president to modulate his tone when he recently launched another bid for the White House.

    But the efforts to cast doubts about the management and operation of the 2022 election are still festering in Arizona, long a hotbed of election conspiracies that spawned the sham audit of the 2020 Maricopa County results by the now-defunct firm Cyber Ninjas after Trump questioned Joe Biden’s victory there. The continuing election denialism underscores that although the highest profile promoters of Trump’s election lies were defeated, the efforts to undermine democracy will carry on.

    Several Trump-backed Republican candidates at the top of Arizona’s ticket, including defeated GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, defeated Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem, as well as GOP Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh – who is trailing his opponent Democrat Kris Mayes by 510 votes as their race heads toward a recount – have seized on a problem with Maricopa County’s printers on Election Day to make exaggerated claims about the election.

    Maricopa officials have said that printer problems affected about 70 vote centers, preventing some ballots from being read by tabulator machines on Election Day, but that the problems were fixed and that those ballots were set aside in a secure ballot box and counted separately. Bill Gates, the Republican Chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, called the inconvenience and the long lines that resulted “unfortunate” in one Twitter video but said “every voter had an opportunity to cast a vote on Election Day.”

    But that has not stopped the issue from spiraling into a swirl of misinformation and conspiracy theories about the overall management of the election within the hard-right faction of Arizona’s Republican Party, despite the best efforts by other Republican election officials to squelch conspiracy theories and fact-check them in real time.

    Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican who rebuffed Trump’s efforts to overturn Arizona’s 2020 election results, is once again among the officials signaling that it is time to move on.

    Though Lake has not conceded in her race against Democrat Katie Hobbs, who is the current secretary of state, Ducey posted pictures Wednesday of his meeting with Hobbs on Twitter, noting that he had congratulated the governor-elect on “her victory in a hard-fought race and offered my full cooperation as she prepares to assume the leadership of the State of Arizona.”

    The issues could come to a head next week. Monday is the deadline for counties in the Grand Canyon State to certify their general election results – with statewide certification slated to follow on December 5. Any recounts cannot begin until after certification. In the leadup to those events, Lake has posted videos and missives on Twitter insisting that she is “still in the fight.”

    Because some voters were forced to stand in long lines – a unremarkable occurrence on Election Day in many states – Lake charged during a recent appearance on Steve Bannon’s program “War Room” that her opponents “discriminated against people who chose to vote on Election Day.”

    Rather than using Trump’s 2020 buzzwords like ‘rigged,’ Lake has generally used more narrow language, describing the management of the election as “botched” and “the shoddiest ever” while accusing Maricopa County of “dragging its feet” in providing information about the election to her campaign.

    Marc Elias, an attorney specializing in election litigation who has taken a central role in pushing back against GOP efforts to restrict ballot access, noted in a post on his Democracy Docket website that Lake’s complaints about “voter suppression” were ironic given Republican’s efforts to limit voting access in recent years. He noted that there are videos on Lake’s Twitter feed of voters who “claimed that they waited in long lines to vote, were sent from one polling place to another by overworked election officials and had their provisional ballots rejected because they failed to register in time for the election.”

    “If you didn’t know better, you might think Lake was a champion of access to voting, supporter of funding for election officials and advocate for same day voter registration. She is none of those,” Elias wrote.

    Elias pointed out that the circumstance of voters being forced to wait in long lines due to equipment failures is not out of the ordinary.

    “Long lines caused by insufficient or broken voting equipment is a tax usually paid by Black, brown and young voters. At the same time that voters in Maricopa County were waiting in two-hour lines, students at the University of Michigan were enduring near freezing temperatures during their six-hour long wait to cast their ballots,” Elias said.

    But Lake’s arguments about problems with the election were bolstered by a letter from Arizona’s Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright last week to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office seeking information about what Wright described as “myriad problems that occurred in relation to Maricopa County’s administration of the 2022 General Election.” (Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich is a Republican).

    The letter requested information about ballot-on-demand printer configuration settings that contributed to problems getting ballots read by on-site ballot tabulators; as well as the procedures for handling ballots that were supposed to be segregated and placed in the secure ballot box; and information about the handling of voters who checked in at one polling place but wanted to check out to vote in a second voting location, either because of wait times or other issues.

    Gates said the county would respond to the questions from the attorney general’s office “with transparency as we have done throughout this election” before it holds its public meeting on Monday to canvass the election. The canvass, Gates said, is “meant to provide a record of the votes counted and those that were not legally cast.”

    “There will be no delays or games; we will canvass in accordance with state law,” he said in the statement.

    But in Cochise County, a community of roughly 125,000 people in southeastern Arizona, the two Republicans on the three-person Board of Supervisors recently opted to delay a vote on certification until Monday’s deadline, citing their concerns about vote-tallying machines.

    That prompted the Secretary of State’s office to threaten legal action if county did not complete certification by the deadline. Peggy Judd, one of the Republican supervisors who initially voted to delay action, told The Arizona Republic this week that she has decided to certify the results when the board meets.

    CNN has reached out to Judd for comment.

    Still, the 11th-hour drama in the Republican stronghold underscores the mistrust of standard election procedures that has taken hold in parts of this battleground state ever since Biden won the state in 2020, the first Democrat presidential nominee to do so in nearly a quarter century.

    Officials in a second county – Mohave, in the northwest corner of the state – also voted to delay their certification until Monday’s deadline. But officials there described their move as a political statement to register displeasure with issues that arose on Election Day in Maricopa County.

    Like Lake, Finchem has refused to concede his race to Democrat Adrian Fontes while he has sent out fundraising solicitations to his supporters claiming that he is trying to get to the bottom of “myriad issues” with the election. He has repeatedly called for a new election.

    Hamadeh, the GOP attorney general candidate, filed a lawsuit in state superior court in Maricopa County this week challenging the election results based on what the suit describes as errors in the management of the election. Hamadeh’s lawsuit notes that plaintiffs are not “alleging any fraud, manipulation or other intentional wrongdoing that would impugn the outcomes of the November 8, 2022 general election.”

    But the lawsuit asks the court to issue an injunction prohibiting the Arizona secretary of state from certifying Mayes as the winner and asking the court to declare Hamadeh as the winner – while alleging that there was an “erroneous count of votes,” “wrongful disqualification of provisional and early ballots” and “wrongful exclusion of provisional voters.” The Republican National Committee has joined the lawsuit.

    Hamadeh trails Mayes by just 510 votes and the race is heading toward an automatic recount.

    “Legal counsel for the Secretary of State’s Office is reviewing the election contest and preparing a response but believes the lawsuit is legally baseless and factually speculative,” a spokesperson for the office said Friday, adding that “none of the claims raised warrant the extraordinary remedy of changing the election results and overturning the will of Arizona voters.”

    Lake has promised that her campaign’s attempt to get more information from election officials this week is only the beginning of her efforts. It remains to be seen whether she will have any more success than Trump did in his many failed lawsuits – and whether following a course that has now been resoundingly rejected by voters will be politically prudent as she lays the groundwork for her next act.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Another mass shooting highlights America’s stubborn gun control divide | CNN Politics

    Another mass shooting highlights America’s stubborn gun control divide | CNN Politics

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


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    America’s shameful tradition of gun violence reared its ugly ahead again Tuesday evening at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia.

    At least six people were killed in the store, according to local officials, with four more victims in area hospitals.

    This follows a shooting at the University of Virginia that left three dead less than two weeks ago, and, even more recently, a shooting at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub that left five dead.

    It’s hard not to view each incident as yet another result of America’s polarized gun debate.

    Many Americans hold their right to bear arms, enshrined in the US Constitution, as sacrosanct. But others say that right threatens another: the right to life.

    Each shooting seems to entrench everyone’s respective convictions.

    In an all too familiar cycle, a shooting will prompt some to push for more gun control and others to lobby for less firearm regulation. A tense debate plays out before the issue fades from the national conversation.

    Then another shooting occurs – and we start the cycle over again.

    President Joe Biden on Wednesday again called for congressional action, but the reality of a divided Congress come January makes this unlikely.

    “This year, I signed the most significant gun reform in a generation, but that is not nearly enough. We must take greater action,” the president said in a statement.

    The more interesting political response to watch is Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has been touted by some as future power player in Republican politics.

    “Our hearts break with the community of Chesapeake this morning. I remain in contact with law enforcement officials throughout this morning and have made available any resources as this investigation moves forward. Heinous acts of violence have no place in our communities,” Youngkin tweeted Wednesday morning.

    His message closely echoes his response to the University of Virginia shooting. “I know that there’s nothing that can be said, there’s nothing that can be done in order to bring them any kind of comfort today. And so, I think this is a moment for us to come together to support them, pray for them, recognize that as a community this is a chance to come together and grieve and support them. It’s just horrific, there’s no other way to describe it,” Youngkin said at a makeshift memorial at the school.

    On Thanksgiving, Youngkin also asked his state in a tweet to “lift up in prayer” the families of those killed in the mass shootings.

    Missing from his responses – heartfelt as they may be – is any mention of guns.

    If Youngkin is indeed the Republican Party’s future “unifier,” it doesn’t appear that will extend into gun control.

    There is a direct correlation in states with weaker gun laws and higher rates of gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidental killings, according to a January study published by Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit focused on gun violence prevention.

    Yet the political debate on gun control in America often becomes untethered from the data.

    Consider this: There have been at least 607 mass shootings through November 22 this year, defined as one in which at least four people are shot. That’s just short of the 638 mass shootings in the country at this point last year – the worst year on record since the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive began tracking them in 2014. There were a total of 690 mass shootings in 2021.

    The United States is likely to soon surpass the total of 610 mass shootings in 2020, with more than a month left of 2022 to go.

    What’s worse is the direction the data is trending. Per the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the firearm homicide rate was 8.3% higher in 2021 than it was in 2020. Firearm suicide rates among people 10 years old and older also increased by 8.3% from 2020 to 2021. And the percentage of homicides attributed to firearm injuries rose from 79% in 2020 to 81% in 2021, the highest percentage in more than 50 years.

    It certainly doesn’t have to be this way. Countries that have introduced laws to reduce gun-related deaths have achieved significant changes, a previous, in-depth CNN analysis found:

    Australia. Less than two weeks after Australia’s worst mass shooting, the federal government implemented a new program, banning rapid-fire rifles and shotguns, and unifying gun owner licensing and registrations across the country. In the next 10 years gun deaths in Australia fell by more than 50%. A 2010 study found the government’s 1997 buyback program – part of the overall reform – led to an average drop in firearm suicide rates of 74% in the five years that followed.

    South Africa. Gun-related deaths almost halved over a 10-year-period after new gun legislation, the Firearms Control Act of 2000, went into force in July 2004. The new laws made it much more difficult to obtain a firearm.

    New Zealand. Gun laws were swiftly amended after the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. Just 24 hours after the attack, in which 51 people were killed, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the law would change. New Zealand’s parliament voted almost unanimously to change the country’s gun laws less than a month later, banning all military-style semi-automatic weapons.

    Britain. (The country) tightened its gun laws and banned most private handgun ownership after a mass shooting in 1996, a move that saw gun deaths drop by almost a quarter over a decade.

    But America’s relationship to guns is unique, and our gun culture is a global outlier. For now, the deadly cycle of violence seems destined to continue.

    As a reminder, Biden signed into law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in June after the House and the Senate approved the measure. The package represents the most significant federal legislation to address gun violence since the expired 10-year assault weapons ban of 1994.

    “God willing, it’s going to save a lot of lives,” Biden said at the White House as he signed the bill.

    The package includes $750 million to help states implement and run crisis intervention programs, which can be used to manage red flag programs, as well as for other crisis intervention programs such as mental health, drug courts and veteran courts.

    Red flag laws, approved by the federal measure, are also known as Extreme Risk Protection Order laws. They allow courts to temporarily seize firearms from anyone believed to be a danger to themselves or others.

    The legislation encourages states to include juvenile records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which would provide a more comprehensive background check for people between 18 and 21 who want to buy guns.

    It also requires more individuals who sell guns as primary sources of income to register as Federally Licensed Firearm Dealers, which are required to administer background checks before they sell a gun to someone.

    The law bars guns from anyone convicted of a domestic violence crime who has a “continuing serious relationship of a romantic or intimate nature.” The law, however, allows those convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence crimes to restore their gun rights after five years if they haven’t committed other crimes.

    On Thursday, Biden told reporters that he would work with Congress “to try to get rid of assault weapons.”

    Pressed on whether he would try to do so during the lame duck session, he said, “I’m going to do it whenever – I’ve got to make that assessment as soon as I get in and start counting the votes.”

    Congress returns next week with a jam-packed to-do list in the lame duck session, focused primarily on the must-pass government funding bill, as well as other priorities. But any action on gun legislation – particularly the assault weapons ban Biden has repeatedly called for – does not have the votes to pass. And the reality of a divided Congress in next year’s session makes it highly unlikely that anything will pass over the next two years.

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  • Taiwan votes on lower voting age, mayors, city councils

    Taiwan votes on lower voting age, mayors, city councils

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    TAIPEI, Taiwan — Voters headed to the polls across Taiwan in a closely watched local election Saturday that will determine the strength of the island’s major political parties ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

    Taiwanese citizens will be picking their mayors, city council members and other local leaders in all 13 counties and the six major cities. There’s also a referendum to lower the voting age from 20 to 18. Polls opened at 8 a.m. (0000GMT) Saturday.

    While international observers and the ruling party have attempted to link the elections to the long-term existential threat that is Taiwan’s neighbor, many local experts do not think China has a large role to play this time around.

    “The international society have raised the stakes too high. They’ve raised a local election to this international level, and Taiwan’s survival,” said Yeh-lih Wang, a political science professor at National Taiwan University.

    President Tsai Ing-wen, who also serves as the chairman of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, has spoken out many times about “opposing China and defending Taiwan” in the course of campaigning. But the DPP’s candidate Chen Shih-chung, who was running for mayor in Taipei, only raised the issue of the Communist Party’s threat a few times before he quickly switched back to local issues as there was little interest, experts said.

    During campaigning, there were few mentions of the large-scale military exercises targeting Taiwan that China held in August in reaction to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit.

    “So I think if you can’t even raise this issue in (the capital) Taipei,” Wang said. “You don’t even need to consider it in cities in the south.”

    Instead, campaigns resolutely focused on the local: air pollution in the central city of Taichung, traffic snarls in Taipei’s tech hub Nangang, and the island’s COVID-19 vaccine purchasing strategies, which had left the island in short supply during an outbreak last year.

    Candidates spent the last week before the elections in a packed public schedule. On Sunday, the DPP’s Chen marched through Taipei with a large parade filled with dancers in dinosaur suits and performers from different countries. Chiang Wan-an, the Nationalist party’s mayoral candidate, canvassed at a hardware market, while Vivian Huang, an independent candidate, visited lunch stalls at a market. All three made stops at Taipei’s famous night markets.

    The question is how the island’s two major political parties — the Nationalist and the incumbent DPP — will fare. Because both Tsai and the Nationalist’s chair Eric Chu handpicked candidates, the performance will impact their own standings within their party, as well as the party’s strength in the coming two years.

    “If the DPP loses many county seats, then their ability to rule will face a very strong challenge,” said You Ying-lung, chair at the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation that regularly conducts public surveys on political issues.

    The election results will in some ways also reflect the public’s attitude towards the ruling party’s performance in the last two years, You said.

    Observers are also watching to see if outgoing Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je’s Taiwan People’s Party’s candidates will pick up a mayoral seat. A 2024 presidential bid for Ko will be impacted by his party’s political performance Saturday, analysts say. Ko has been campaigning with his deputy, the independent mayoral candidate Huang, for the past several weeks.

    Food stall owner Hsian Fuh Mei said he was supporting Huang.

    “We want to see someone international,” he said. “If you look at Singapore, before we were better than Singapore, but we’ve fallen behind. I hope we can change direction.”

    Others were more apathetic to the local race. “It feels as if everyone is almost the same, from the policy standpoint,” said 26-year-old Sean Tai, an employee at a hardware store.

    Tai declined to say who he was voting for, but wants someone who will raise Taipei’s profile and bring better economic prospects while keeping the status quo with China. “We don’t want to be completely sealed off. I really hope that Taiwan can be seen internationally,” he said.

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  • CNN projects Rep. Mary Peltola will win race for Alaska House seat, thwarting Sarah Palin’s political comeback again | CNN Politics

    CNN projects Rep. Mary Peltola will win race for Alaska House seat, thwarting Sarah Palin’s political comeback again | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democrat who won a special election that sent her to Congress this summer, will once again thwart former Gov. Sarah Palin’s bid for a political comeback. CNN projected Wednesday that Peltola will win the race for Alaska’s at-large House seat after the state’s ranked choice voting tabulation, defeating Palin and Republican Nick Begich III.

    CNN also projected that Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski will win reelection. She’ll defeat Republican Kelly Tshibaka and Democrat Patricia Chesbro. CNN had previously projected that a Republican would hold the seat.

    And Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy will win reelection, CNN projected. He defeats Democrat Les Gara and independent Bill Walker. Dunleavy won more than 50% of first choice votes, so ranked choice tabulation was not required.

    In Alaska, voters in 2020 approved a switch to a ranked choice voting system. It is in place in 2022 for the first time.

    Under the new system, Alaska holds open primaries and voters cast ballots for one candidate of any party, and the top four finishers advance. In the general election, voters rank those four candidates, from their first choice to their fourth choice.

    If no candidate tops 50% of the first choice votes, the state then tabulates ranked choice results – dropping the last-place finisher and shifting those votes to voters’ second choices. If, after one round of tabulation, there is still no winner, the third-place finisher is dropped and the same vote-shifting process takes place.

    SE Cupp: Palin followed fame but Alaskans were turned off (September 2022)

    Peltola first won the House seat when a similar scenario played out in the August special election to fill the remaining months of the term of the late Rep. Don Young, a Republican who died in March after representing Alaska in the House for 49 years.

    Offering herself as a supporter of abortion rights and a salmon fishing advocate, Peltola emerged as the victor in the August special election after receiving just 40% of the first-place votes. This time, she has a larger share, while Palin’s and Begich’s support has shrunk.

    The House race has showcased the unusual alliances in Alaska politics. Though Peltola is a Democrat, she is also close with Palin – whose tenure as governor overlapped with Peltola’s time as a state lawmaker in Juneau. The two have warmly praised each other. Palin has criticized the ranked choice voting system. But she never took aim at Peltola in personal terms.

    The Republicans in the race, Palin and Begich, both urged voters to “rank the red” and list the two GOP contenders first and second.

    But Peltola had quickly won over many in the state after her special election victory – in part because she has deep relationships with a number of Republicans.

    Peltola told CNN in an interview that she and Palin had bonded in Juneau over being new mothers, and that Palin’s family had given Peltola’s family its backyard trampoline when Palin resigned from the governor’s office.

    At an Alaska Federation of Natives candidate forum in October, Palin effusively praised Peltola.

    “Doggone it, I never have anything to gripe about. I just wish she’d convert on over to the other party. But other than that, love her,” Palin said of Peltola.

    Peltola’s family was also close to the family of the late Young. Peltola’s father and Young had taught school together decades ago and were hunting buddies, Peltola said in an interview.

    In the race for Alaska’s Senate seat, Murkowski, a moderate Republican, was targeted by former President Donald Trump after she voted to convict him during his impeachment trial in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Murkowski also broke with Trump on a number of key votes during his presidency.

    Trump endorsed Tshibaka, and a cadre of former Trump campaign officials worked on her campaign. She was also endorsed by the Alaska Republican Party, which opted to back the more conservative candidate in a state Trump won by 10 percentage points in 2020.

    But Murkowski had built a broad coalition in a state where political alliances are often more complicated than they appear. She and Peltola, had publicly said they would rank each other first in their elections.

    Chesbro, the Democrat, was among the four candidates who had advanced to the general election. Republican Buzz Kelley also advanced, but dropped out and urged his supporters to vote for Tshibaka.

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  • McCarthy tries to boost his conservative bona fides as pro-Trump lawmakers threaten his speaker bid | CNN Politics

    McCarthy tries to boost his conservative bona fides as pro-Trump lawmakers threaten his speaker bid | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Three weeks before the midterm elections, Kevin McCarthy enraged the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus after the GOP leader publicly suggested he has yet to see any impeachable offenses committed by the Biden administration.

    Hardline Republicans – who have been agitating to impeach President Joe Biden or a member of his Cabinet – sounded off on McCarthy in a group chat and expressed deep concern over his comments, according to GOP sources familiar with the internal conversations.

    But two weeks after the elections, where Republicans underperformed and won a slimmer-than-expected majority that has put McCarthy’s House speaker bid at risk, McCarthy struck a different tone: he called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign, accused him of lying to the American public and not enforcing immigration laws, and threatened to launch an impeachment inquiry if he doesn’t step aside. A Mayorkas spokeswoman said he has no plans to resign.

    The change in tune from McCarthy comes at a pivotal moment for the California Republican, who is facing a rebellion from his right flank that could tank his speakership ambitions that have been years in the making. McCarthy’s new impeachment threat is one of just several ways that he is hoping to win over conservative critics and lock down the necessary 218 votes to become speaker in January. McCarthy is deploying a carrot-over-stick approach, using a mix of private negotiations and public professions about what he would do as speaker, in an effort to pick off detractors.

    But it’s unclear if his public and private maneuvering will be enough to assuage the holdouts. On McCarthy’s impeachment threat and resignation calls at the border, one member of the House Freedom Caucus said he is “pandering.”

    “In fact, it was counterproductive,” the GOP lawmaker told CNN. “He didn’t say this when he thought he was going to have a large majority. He is doing all these things because he has a small majority and every vote counts. … I just don’t think it’s going to produce the result that he’s hoping for.”

    Another member who has been critical of McCarthy called his moves a “step” in the right direction but said “he should’ve said it earlier” and wanted McCarthy’s statement to be accompanied with a “funding threat” to show he really means business. McCarthy did, however, promise to use “the power of the purse” and “the power of subpoena” during his press conference at the southern border.

    McCarthy’s allies, however, insist he’s going to pull it off, arguing that no one else is better equipped for the job. Another reason for their confidence: they don’t see anyone else in the conference being able to get to 218. And they believe McCarthy is going to take his fight for the speaker’s gavel all the way to the floor, unlike in 2015, when he dropped out of the race before he even got to the closed-door conference vote.

    “In general, most members think McCarthy’s going to get this done. They don’t really know how. We can’t necessarily articulate how he will pull this off,” Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, who is supporting McCarthy, told CNN. “But there is a sense he is a very savvy operator, he really understands the members, he really understands politics, and his team is really top of the line.”

    “There’s a little trepidation among members who are supporting McCarthy because we can’t exactly see how he is going to pull this off,” he added, “but there is a general sense that he will.”

    So far, at least five House Republicans have publicly threatened to oppose McCarthy on the floor, which could be enough to derail his speakership bid if Republicans only have a four-seat margin, as McCarthy has predicted. They include Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Rosendale of Montana, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Bob Good of Virginia.

    And there could be more names to come, as the anti-McCarthy group has been purposely dripping out names over an extended period of time – a strategy designed to garner more attention from leadership. Three dozen Republicans voted against McCarthy during the GOP’s internal leadership elections last week, where McCarthy was nominated by his party for speaker.

    “The strategy is to drip out a name every four or five days, or every week, just to make sure people know. It’s not just four or five,” one of the GOP lawmakers said.

    McCarthy will have to somehow get at least one of these members to flip their vote or convince them to either “vote present” or skip the floor proceedings – which would lower the threshold he needs to become speaker. Some of the Republicans in the “Never Kevin” camp are seen as slightly more gettable: Rosendale, for example, told CNN he would only vote for McCarthy “under extreme circumstances,” leaving himself the tiniest bit of wiggle room.

    So far, McCarthy has yet to cut any major deals, but is currently negotiating with the House Freedom Caucus on a package of potential rules changes. The group is also pushing him to take a public position on an array of issues, according to GOP sources familiar with the negotiations. Right now, however, they feel like the ball is in McCarthy’s court.

    McCarthy, wary of looking like he is cutting secret side deals with his right flank and alienating some of the more moderate members, has also tried to appeal to conservatives with more public-facing moves.

    He recently reiterated a promise to boot Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Eric Swalwell of California and Adam Schiff of California – three Democrats routinely villainized on the right – from key committee assignments. And McCarthy has also recently vowed to abolish remote voting, reopen the House and start off every day of session with a pledge and prayer – even though the House already does so every day.

    Burned by the Freedom Caucus during his quest for the speaker’s gavel in 2015, McCarthy’s maneuvering for the speakership began long before the midterms.

    Over the past year, he worked to bring freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a former McCarthy critic and staunch Trump ally, into the fold. He has held weekly sit-down meetings with Greene, invited her to House GOP trips at the southern border and in Pittsburgh, and has supported her seeking a coveted seat on the House Oversight Committee. His effort seems to have paid off, as Greene is now vocally backing McCarthy for speaker.

    Similarly, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio – who once challenged McCarthy for a leadership position – is now seen as a steadfast McCarthy ally, in part because McCarthy paved the way for him to lead the powerful House Judiciary Committee. Jordan, too, has lined up behind McCarthy’s speaker’s bid and told CNN he is encouraging other Republicans to do the same.

    Jordan also wouldn’t entertain questions about any scenario in which he’d run for job – like if McCarthy can’t get to 218. “I want to be Judiciary chair,” he said.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • GOP-led states press Supreme Court to keep Biden student debt forgiveness on hold | CNN Politics

    GOP-led states press Supreme Court to keep Biden student debt forgiveness on hold | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A collection of Republican-led states argued on Wednesday that the Supreme Court should keep President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness policy on hold while the litigation around it plays out, pointing to fact that the Biden administration has extended its pause on student loan payments.

    The Republican states, which have already obtained an appeals court order blocking the implementation of the controversial program, said the extension showed that there would be no harm inflicted by the court order being left in place.

    “The Department [of Education] can point to no emergency or imminent harm because, just yesterday, the agency extended the payment pause on student loans until the summer of 2023,” they wrote in the new filing.

    Federal student loan payments were set to resume in January after a years-long pandemic pause. But the Biden administration said Tuesday that it is extending the pause until 60 days after the pending litigation over the forgiveness program is resolved. If the program has not been implemented and the litigation has not been resolved by June 30, payments will resume 60 days after that.

    The Wednesday filing by the states came in response to a request from the Biden administration that the Supreme Court lift the hold that has been placed on the student debt relief program, which would forgive up to $20,000 in loans for individual borrowers who earned less than $125,000 in either 2020 or 2021.

    The Republican states accused the Biden administration of relying “on the COVID-19 pandemic” as “a pretext to mask the President’s true goal of fulfilling his campaign promise to erase student-loan debt.”

    The policy was set to begin going into effect earlier this fall, but was blocked by the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals in a lawsuit brought by Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina.

    They claim that in rolling out the program, Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona went beyond the authority he has under law to cancel individual debts. They also argue that the department violated administrative law in how it launched the policy.

    The states defended the appeals court order blocking the relief program, telling the Supreme Court on Wednesday that they will suffer the types of harm that make it appropriate for a court to intervene.

    This procedural threshold – known as standing – has been a legal obstacle for many opponents of the program who have tried to block it in court, including challengers whose requests for Supreme Court intervention were previously denied. The states in the new filing argue that they’ll suffer a loss of tax revenue and other kinds of injuries if the debt relief program goes into effect.

    The states also pointed to the ruling from a federal judge in Texas in a separate case that struck down the student debt relief policy, which the administration has appealed to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling will remain in effect even if the Supreme Court lifts the hold placed by the 8th Circuit, the states noted in their filing Wednesday.

    The Biden administration has indicated it will take that case to the Supreme Court as well if the 5th Circuit leaves in place the ruling striking it down.

    In the request it put before the Supreme Court, US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that leaving the program on hold “leaves millions of economically vulnerable borrowers in limbo, uncertain about the size of their debt and unable to make financial decisions with an accurate understanding of their future repayment obligations.”

    Prelogar told the Supreme Court that the program was a lawful endeavor “to ensure that borrowers affected by a national emergency are not worse off in relation to their student loans.”

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