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Trump and DeSantis trade shots in New Hampshire showdown | CNN Politics

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described former President Donald Trump as having over-promised and under-delivered on Tuesday, vowing in New Hampshire to “break the swamp” in Washington while faulting Trump for failing to deliver on his 2016 campaign promises to “drain” it.

“If I tell you I’m going to do something, I’m not just saying that for an election,” DeSantis said in one of his sharpest attacks on the former president yet.

Trump, meanwhile, mocked the size of DeSantis’ town hall crowds, telling attendees at a luncheon in Concord that “nobody showed up” to the Florida governor’s event a 40-minute drive south in Hollis.

The two top-polling contenders for the GOP’s 2024 nomination circled each other Tuesday in New Hampshire, trading shots as they crisscrossed the state that hosts the first primary – after Iowa’s caucuses – and is a crucial momentum-builder.

Their exchanges offered a preview of the months to come, with the Republican field having taken shape in recent weeks and the party’s first presidential debate less than two months away.

Trump was blunt about why he was targeting DeSantis, rather than other GOP 2024 rivals, such as his former vice president, Mike Pence, or his former United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley.

“Somebody said, ‘How come you only attack him?’” Trump told the crowd in Concord. “I said, ‘Cause he’s in second place.’”

“‘Well, why don’t you attack others?’” Trump said, repeating the question he said he was asked. “Because they’re not in second place. But soon, I don’t think he’ll be in second place, so I’ll be attacking somebody else.”

The former president even praised two other GOP contenders, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who he said is “actually a pretty good guy” after Ramaswamy said he would pardon Trump, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who he said “happens to be a very nice guy, actually.”

Harping on early-state polls that show Trump with a lead in the GOP’s 2024 primary, Trump focused his attacks on DeSantis over his response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Florida and his past support for privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

Trump argued that during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, DeSantis wanted “everything closed” in Florida and gave “very threatening speeches – you know, thinks he’s a tough guy.”

He said DeSantis “loved Fauci,” referring to the government’s former top infectious disease expert, who was a central figure in the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic and recently retired during President Joe Biden’s administration.

Trump’s remarks came shortly after DeSantis had fielded a voter’s question about Trump at a town hall in Hollis.

A voter told DeSantis “most of us in this room voted to drain the swamp twice” and asked why he’s the one to “get it done this time as opposed to the other choice.”

“I remember these rallies in 2016. It was exciting. ‘Drain the swamp.’ I also remember ‘Lock her up, lock her up,’ right? And then two weeks after the election, ‘Ah no, forget about it. Forget I ever said that.’ No, no, no. One thing you’ll get from me, if I tell you I’m going to do something, I’m not just saying that for an election,” DeSantis said.

He said he doesn’t make promises he can’t follow through on, even if they might help him “marginally politically.” DeSantis also said just draining the swamp is not effective enough. Instead, he said he wants to “break” it.

It was a riff on one of Trump’s signature 2016 campaign lines, and a suggestion that the former president had not delivered on his lofty promises to remake Washington.

“The idea of draining the swamp, in some respects, I think it misses it a little bit,” DeSantis said. “We didn’t drain it. It’s worse today than it’s ever been by far. And that’s a sad testament to the state of affairs of our country. But even if you’re successful at draining it, the next guy can just refill it. So, I want to break the swamp. That’s really what we need to do.”

The Florida governor said he would “drop the hammer” on some federal agencies, including the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service, and “end the weaponization of government.”

“All of these agencies are going to be turned inside and out,” DeSantis said.

His promise of a more aggressive approach than Trump’s ignores the potential legal hurdles he could encounter if elected next November. In Florida, more than a dozen legal battles testing the constitutionality of many of the victories DeSantis has touted on the campaign trail are ongoing. Critics say DeSantis has built his governorship around enacting laws that appeal to his conservative base but that, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, he knows are unconstitutional and not likely to take effect.

The Florida governor’s remarks in New Hampshire came the day after he had taken aim at another signature Trump 2016 campaign pledge: DeSantis said that “not nearly enough” of the wall Trump had promised on the United States-Mexico border had been built.

“For us, it’s going to be a national emergency on day one. This is going to be mobilizing all available assets on day one. We have a plan for all the different levers of authority that we have to be able to bring this to bear,” DeSantis said at the Rio Grande River on the U.S. Mexico Border in Maverick County, Texas, on Monday.

In an effort to position himself to Trump’s political right on immigration enforcement, DeSantis also said he would be “more aggressive in terms of our plan than anything he did in empowering local officials to enforce immigration law.”

Trump fired back on the issue later Tuesday in his second New Hampshire stop as he mingled with voters in Manchester at the opening of his campaign headquarters there, saying that DeSantis was promising to carry out policies that Trump had already enacted as president.

“I saw DeSantis yesterday, he got up and said exactly what I was doing,” with his border and immigration policies, Trump said.

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June 27, 2023

Why power in Congress is now so precarious | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Control of Congress has become so precariously balanced between the two parties that it may now be subject to the butterfly effect.

The butterfly effect is a mathematical concept, often applied to weather forecasting, that posits even seemingly tiny changes – like a butterfly flapping its wings – can trigger a chain of events that produces huge impacts.

Because it has become so difficult for either party to amass anything other than very narrow majorities in the House and Senate, the exercise of power in both chambers now appears equally vulnerable to seemingly miniscule shifts in the political landscape.

Just in the past few weeks, a revolt by a small band of House conservatives effectively denied the Republican majority control of the floor for days. At the same time, a Supreme Court voting rights decision that might affect only a handful of House seats has raised Democratic hopes of recapturing the chamber in 2024. In the Senate, the extended absence of a single senator to illness – California Democrat Dianne Feinstein – prompted an eruption of concern among party activists over the upper chamber’s ability to confirm President Joe Biden’s judicial nominations.

In different ways, these developments are all manifestations of the same underlying dynamic: the inability of either side to establish large or lasting congressional majorities.

Viewed over the long-term, majorities in the House and Senate for the past 30 years have consistently been smaller than they were when Democrats dominated both institutions in the long shadow of the New Deal from the 1930s into the 1980s. And those majorities have grown especially tight since former President Donald Trump emerged as the polarizing focal point – pro and con –of American politics.

Since the Civil War, only rarely has either chamber been as closely divided between the parties as it is this year, with Republicans holding just a five-seat advantage in the House and Democrats clinging to a one-seat Senate majority. It’s been even more rare for both chambers to be so closely divided at the same time – and rarer still for them to be split almost evenly between the parties in consecutive Congresses, as they have been since 2021.

It remains possible that either side could break out to a more comfortable advantage in either chamber. The 2024 map offers Republicans an opportunity, especially if they run well in the presidential race, to establish what could prove a somewhat durable Senate majority. But many analysts consider it more likely that the House and Senate alike will remain on a razor’s edge, with narrow majorities that frequently flip between the two sides.

The key development shaping this “butterfly effect” era are the indications that narrow majorities are now becoming the rule in both legislative chambers.

Slim majorities and frequent shifts in control have been a central characteristic of the Senate for longer. In the 12 Congressional sessions since 2001, one party or the other has reached 55 Senate seats only three times: Republicans after George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004, and Democrats after Barack Obama’s wins in 2008 and 2012. In six of the past 12 sessions, the majority party has held 52 Senate seats or less, including two when voters returned a Senate divided exactly 50-50.

By contrast, one party or the other amassed 55 seats or more seven times in the 10 sessions from 1981 through 2000. Lopsided majorities were even more common in the two decades of unbroken Democratic Senate control from 1961 to 1980: the party held at least 55 seats nine times over that interval.

Largely because the Senate majorities have been so small for the past several decades, control of the body has shifted between the parties more frequently than in most of American history. Neither party, in fact, has controlled the Senate for more than eight consecutive years since 1980. Never before in US history has the Senate gone so long without one party controlling it for more than eight years.

Generally, over the past few decades, the parties have managed somewhat more breathing room in the House. Neither side lately has consistently reached the heights that Democrats did while they held unbroken control of the lower chamber from 1955 through 1994 when the party routinely won 250 seats or more. But Republicans reached 247 seats after the second mid-term of Obama’s presidency in 2014. Democrats, for their part, soared to more than 250 seats after Obama’s victory in 2008, and 235 following the backlash against Trump in the 2018 election.

But the Democratic majority fell to just 222 seats after the 2020 election. And Republicans likewise eked out only 222 seats last fall, far below the party’s expectations of sweeping gains. Those slim majorities may reflect a precarious new equilibrium. “I don’t think a major swing in either direction is possible in this new normal,” said Ken Spain, former communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “We are in this perpetual state of power shifting hands, where the House is often times on a razor’s edge.”

Former Rep. Steve Israel, who served as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, sees the same pattern continuing. “We’re looking at very narrow House majorities for the foreseeable future,” he told me in an email.

Like the Senate, smaller majorities in the House are translating into more frequent shifts in control. While Democrats held the House for 40 consecutive years until 1994, the longest either party has controlled it since was the GOP majority from 1995 through 2006. In the post-1994 era, Democrats have twice captured the House only to lose it just four years later. If Republicans lose the White House next year, there is a strong chance they could surrender their current House majority after just two years.

As recent events show, this era of narrow majorities is changing how Congress operates in ways that are often overlooked in the day-to-day scrimmaging.

One is creating a virtually endless cycle of trench warfare over House redistricting. As I’ve written, the district lines for an unusually large number of seats are still in flux beyond the first election following the reapportionment and redistricting of seats after the decennial Census.

Because the margins in the House are now so small, the parties have enormous incentive to use every possible legal and political tool to influence any seat that could conceivably tip the balance. “We are in the perpetual redistricting era,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “We’ve been creeping into that era for the past 10 years, and I think it’s just going to continue to be that way.”

The two sides are scrimmaging across a broad battlefield. Republican gains on the state Supreme Courts in Ohio and North Carolina could pave the way for the GOP to draw new lines that might net the party a combined half a dozen House seats. Democratic gains on the state Supreme Courts in Wisconsin and New York could allow Democrats to offset that with new maps that produce gains of two seats in the former and four or five in the latter.

The Supreme Court’s surprising decision this month to strike down Alabama’s congressional map as a violation of the Voting Rights Act, could lead by 2024 to the creation of new Black-majority seats that would favor Democrats not only in Alabama, but also Louisiana and maybe Georgia, experts say. The Court’s decision could also invigorate a voting rights case that could force Texas Republicans to create more Latino-majority seats there; while that case is unlikely to be completed in time for the 2024 election, it could ultimately produce a dramatic impact, with three or more redrawn seats that could favor Democrats. Racial discrimination cases brought on other grounds could eventually threaten GOP congressional maps in South Carolina, Arkansas and Florida.

And even all this maneuvering doesn’t mark the end of the potential combat. If Democrats win multiple voting rights judgements against Republican-drawn maps, some observers think other GOP-controlled states may try to offset those gains by simply redrawing their own maps to squeeze out greater partisan advantage. Most states do not bar that sort of mid-decade redistricting, which was used most dramatically in Texas after the GOP won control of the state legislature there in 2002. “That threat is real,” said Jenkins.

The unusual recent rebellion by House conservatives that denied the GOP a majority to control the floor marks another key characteristic of the butterfly effect era in Congress: the ability of small groups to exert disproportionate influence. When Democrats held their slim majority in the last Congress, they were stalemated for months by a standoff between centrists and progressives over whether to decouple the bipartisan infrastructure bill from Biden’s sweeping Build Back Better agenda.

Ultimately, though, progressives reluctantly agreed to separate the two issues, allowing the infrastructure bill to pass. And then progressives, reluctantly again, agreed to pass the much scaled-back version of the Biden agenda that became the Inflation Reduction Act. Democrats, in fact, over the previous Congress displayed a record-level of party unity in passing not only those two bills but almost every other major party priority through the House, from multiple voting rights bills, to legislation restoring abortion rights nationwide, an assault weapon ban, police reform, and a bill barring LGBTQ discrimination.

Republican leaders are finding it tougher to corral their narrow majority. The recent backlash against the debt ceiling deal by far-right conservatives prevented Republicans from passing the “rules” needed to control floor debate on legislation in the House. Less than a dozen House Republicans joined the rebellion, but it was enough to trigger a stunning stumble into chaos for the majority party.

“Culturally the two parties are somewhat different when it comes to governing,” said Spain, now a Washington-based communications consultant. “On the Democratic side there tend to be family squabbles but ultimately everybody falls in line… On the Republican side, the tail tends to wag the dog. I think [Speaker Kevin] McCarthy did a pretty effective job threading the needle in getting the debt ceiling negotiated. Now we’re seeing the fall out.”

Former Republican Rep. Charlie Dent, who now directs the Aspen Institute Congressional program, also believes it is more difficult for Republicans than Democrats to govern with a narrow House majority, largely because governing is not a priority for the right flank in the GOP conference.

“It’s important to remember that the House Democratic conference certainly believes in governance,” Dent said. “That’s true of virtually all of them, whether they are more moderate or centrist vs. those who are on the far left. They want the government to function.” But, he added, “When you have a narrow Republican majority like we do, there is a rump group in the House Republican caucus who simply thrives on throwing sand into the gears of government and don’t want it to function well, if at all. They are more inclined to shut the government down. Some of them would be willing to default. And that’s the difference” between the parties.

Narrow majorities are also roiling the Senate, as demonstrated both by the uproar over Feinstein’s absence and the liberal discontent in the last Congress over the enormous influence of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. If Senate majorities stay as small as they have been recently, pressure is almost certain to grow for either party to end the filibuster the next time it wins unified control of the White House and Congress.

In this century, neither side has controlled the 60 Senate seats required to break a filibuster except for a few months when Democrats did in 2009 and early 2010 (until losing that super-majority when Republicans won a special election to replace Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who had died of brain cancer.) And even as it has grown more difficult for either party to approach 60 Senate votes, both have also found it harder to attract more than token crossover support from senators in the other party. In a world where 60 Senate votes is virtually out of reach, it’s difficult to imagine a party holding “trifecta” control of the White House and both congressional chambers granting the minority party a perpetual veto of the majority’s agenda through the filibuster.

Political analysts caution that it remains possible that either party might break through this trench warfare to reestablish larger majorities. But to do so, it would need to overcome the interplay between two powerful political trends.

The first is the hardening separation of the country into reliably red and blue blocks. Far fewer states than in the past are genuinely up for grabs in the presidential race: perhaps as few as five to seven, or even less, may be truly within reach for both sides next year. And even within the states, the divisions are hardening between Democratic dominance in larger metropolitan areas and Republican strength outside of them.

The impact of this sorting both between and within the states is magnified by the second big trend: the decline of split-ticket voting. Fewer voters are hopscotching between the two sides with their votes; more appear to be viewing elections less as a choice between two individuals than as a referendum on which party they want in control of government.

In 2022, only 23 House Members were elected in districts that supported the other side’s presidential candidate. (Eighteen House Republicans hold districts that voted Biden; just five House Democrats hold seats that voted for Trump.) Democrats now hold 48 of the 50 Senate seats in the 25 states that backed Biden in 2020 while Republicans hold 47 of the 50 in the 25 states that voted for Trump. And all three of those remaining Trump-state Democratic senators – Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Montana’s Jon Tester and West Virginia’s Manchin – face difficult reelection races in 2024.

With more states reliably leaning toward either party in the presidential race, and fewer legislators winning in places that usually vote the other way for president, both parties are grappling over a shrinking list of genuine congressional targets. Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a political newsletter from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, points out that wave elections that produce big congressional majorities typically have come when one party faces a bad environment and must also defend a large number of seats that it had previously won in places that usually vote for the other side. (That was the compound dynamic that wiped out rural House Democrats in 2010 and suburban House Republicans in 2018.) Now, he notes, the potential impact of a bad environment is limited because each side holds so few seats on the other’s usual terrain. “Neither side is that dramatically overextended,” said Kondik. “Everything is sorted out.”

The paradoxical impact of more sorting and stability in the electorate, though, has been more instability in Congress, as the two sides trade narrow and fragile majorities. For the foreseeable future, control of Congress may pivot on the few quirky House and Senate races in each election that defy the usual partisan patterns. Such races are often decided by idiosyncratic local developments – a scandal, a candidate with an unusually compelling (or repelling) personal style, a major gaffe – that are as hard to predict or foresee as the sequence of events that begins when a butterfly flaps its wings.

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June 19, 2023

Christie calls GOP presidential debate pledge a ‘useless idea’ | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie said Sunday it was a “useless idea” to force 2024 GOP contenders to sign a pledge to back the party’s ultimate nominee in order to participate in primary debates.

“It’s only in the era of Donald Trump that you need somebody to sign something on a pledge. So I think it’s a bad idea,” the former New Jersey governor told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” about the Republican National Committee requirement.

Christie, who kicked off his presidential bid earlier this month, said he’s expressed his views directly to RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, “so this is not the first time she’s hearing it.” But he affirmed that he would do what was needed to be up on the stage to try to save my party and save my country from going down the road of being led by three-time loser Donald Trump.”

“I’ll take the pledge in 2024 just as seriously as Donald Trump took it in 2016,” Christie said.

Trump, as a candidate in 2015, did not rule out an independent run for president at a debate in Cleveland. He ultimately signed a pledge to support the party’s eventual nominee and to not run as a third-party candidate if he did not win the GOP nomination.

McDaniel has repeatedly supported requiring a so-called loyalty pledge for participation in the GOP debates, telling CNN on Friday it was a “no-brainer.”

“Once it’s all done and the dust is settled and you’ve made your best case, if the voters choose someone else, then you need to get behind who the voters chose and make sure we beat Joe Biden,” McDaniel said. “We can’t have division. We can’t have people who get on the debate stage who are going to come out and say, ‘I’m not going to support the eventual nominee.’”

Most of the GOP primary field has signaled support for the pledge, including most recently former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, whose campaign had previously sought to amend to pledge.

“You have to make the pledge based on the fact that Donald Trump is not going to be our nominee and you’re confident of it. Therefore, you can sign a statement saying you’re going to support the nominee of the party. I’m not going to, you know, support – just like other voters are not going to support – somebody for president who is under indictment,” Hutchinson told ABC News on Sunday.

Trump pleaded not guilty in federal court last week to 37 charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office.

The RNC announced earlier this month that the first presidential primary debate will take place on August 23 in Milwaukee. Qualifying candidates will need to register at least 1% in three national polls, or a combination of national polls and a poll from the early-voting states recognized by the RNC. Candidates will also need “a minimum of 40,000 unique donors to candidate’s principal presidential campaign committee (or exploratory committee), with at least 200 unique donors per state or territory in 20+ states and/or territories,” the RNC said in a statement.

A recent CNN Poll found Trump was the first choice of 53% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters in the primary, roughly doubling Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 26%. Other hopefuls were all polling in the single digits, including Christie, Hutchinson, former Vice President Mike Pence, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

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June 18, 2023

Trump’s indictment divides 2024 Republican hopefuls | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Republican presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson Sunday articulated vastly different plans for how they’d approach the federal indictment against former President Donald Trump should either capture the White House in 2024.

Contenders for the GOP nomination are grappling to strike the right tone on Trump, seen as the GOP front-runner to take on President Joe Biden next year, as they look to build their support among Republican primary voters.

Trump is facing his first federal indictment for retention of classified documents and conspiracy with a top aide to hide them from the government and his own attorneys – a total of 37 counts.

Ramaswamy, who vowed to pardon Trump if elected president before details of the 37-count indictment were revealed, doubled down Sunday, telling CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” that after “reading that indictment and looking at the selective omissions of both fact and law,” he was “even more convinced that a pardon is the right answer here.”

Ramaswamy acknowledged that he “would not have taken those documents with me,” but the tech entrepreneur maintained there was a difference between “bad judgment and breaking the law.”

Bash presses Ramaswamy on pledge to pardon Trump

Those comments stood in contrast to Hutchinson, who called Ramaswamy’s vow to pardon Trump “simply wrong” in a separate interview on “State of the Union” later Sunday.

“It is simply wrong for a candidate to use the pardon power of the United States of the president in order to curry votes, and in order to get an applause line. It is just wrong,” the former Arkansas governor told Bash.

“We do not need to have our commander in chief of this country not protecting our nation’s secrets,” Hutchinson said, adding later, “These are things that should not be disclosed as entertainment value to a political contact that you’re speaking with.”

Asked if he believes the indictment will help Trump in the 2024 race, Hutchinson said, “I suspect that he’s going to raise money on the indictment as he did before. And obviously with a lot of Republican leaders saying that this is selective prosecution, that this is unfair – there is a sympathy factor that is built in.”

But, Hutchinson said, “The Republican Party stands for the rule of law and our system of justice. Let’s not undermine that by our rhetoric, by making up facts, and by accusing the Department of Justice of things that there is no evidence of.”

Ramaswamy isn’t the only 2024 GOP contender to criticize the Justice Department in the days since Trump first disclosed the indictment.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday accused the DOJ of “weaponization of federal law enforcement” while vowing, if elected president, to “bring accountability to the DOJ, excise political bias and end weaponization once and for all.”

DeSantis declined to comment on the indictment Saturday at a campaign stop in Oklahoma, but he repeated his vow to end the “weaponization” of government and clean house from top to bottom” as president.

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to “stop hiding behind the special counsel and stand before the American people” to explain “this unprecedented action.”

“We also need to hear the former president’s defense so that each of us can make our own judgment,” Pence told attendees at the North Carolina GOP convention in Greensboro, where Trump also spoke hours after addressing a similar gathering in Georgia.

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Trump’s United Nations ambassador, characterized the indictment as “prosecutorial overreach” in a statement Friday, adding that it was time to move “beyond the endless drama and distractions.”

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who entered the GOP race last week, vowed Sunday in an interview on CBS News to “follow every rule related to handling classified documents” after potentially leaving office as president. He told Fox News on Saturday that Trump’s mishandling of documents was not something that voters want to spend their time talking about.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a onetime ally and close adviser to Trump who has emerged as his chief critic in the 2024 race, however, described the details of the indictment as “damning.”

“This is irresponsible conduct,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday, adding that “the conduct that Donald Trump engaged in was completely self-inflicted.”

Christie is scheduled to participate in a CNN town hall hosted by Anderson Cooper in New York on Monday.

SOTU rep jim jordan full interview_00123522.png

Full Interview: Dana Bash presses Rep. Jim Jordan on indictment

Trump has maintained the reliable backing of hard-line conservatives in Congress, such as House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, who fiercely defended the former president in an interview with Bash on Sunday.

“The president’s ability to classify and control access to national security information flows from the Constitution,” the Ohio Republican said. “He alone decides. He said he declassified this material. He can put it wherever he wants. He can handle it however he wants.”

But the laws under which the Justice Department said it was investigating possible crimes – statutes about the willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of a federal investigation, and the concealment or removal of government records – do not require documents to be classified for a crime to have been committed, CNN previously reported.

Bash also reminded Jordan that Trump, on tape, in a 2021 meeting admitted to having a document that wasn’t declassified, a detail first reported by CNN. But Jordan repeatedly countered, claiming that saying Trump “could have” declassified material as president was not the same as saying he “didn’t” already declassify the material.

“He has said time and time again, he’s declassified all this material,” the congressman said.

Asked if he had evidence of Trump declassifying any documents, Jordan said, “I go on the president’s word, and he said he did.”

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June 11, 2023

DeSantis gets his first gubernatorial endorsement from Oklahoma governor | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis earned his first gubernatorial endorsement Saturday from Oklahoma GOP Gov. Kevin Stitt.

Ahead of DeSantis’ remarks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Stitt said DeSantis is “the right guy to beat Biden for the next eight years.”

Stitt highlighted DeSantis’ handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and argued that his tenure as Florida’s governor proves his leadership capacity.

“As fellow Governors during COVID, DeSantis did not surrender states’ rights and individual liberties over to groupthink,” Stitt said in a statement. Both governors passed similar measures to ban mask mandates in their states.

“As a proven leader, DeSantis has boldly delivered results for the people of Florida that laid the groundwork for a booming economy, an education system focused on student outcomes, and better infrastructure for working families,” Stitt continued. He added that he is confident that DeSantis can “deliver these same results all across America.”

Stitt is among DeSantis’ highest-profile endorsements to date. With many Republicans backing former President Donald Trump, DeSantis has earned the support of four GOP members of Congress thus far: Reps. Bob Good of Virginia, Laurel Lee of Florida, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Chip Roy of Texas, who is one of the hardline members of the party.

Stitt’s endorsement comes as the GOP presidential field has widened with former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie announcing their bids earlier this week. Trump, however, remains the front runner despite his legal troubles.

A CNN poll last month showed that the former president has consolidated the support of slightly above half of his party at this early stage of the race — nearly double the support for DeSantis.

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June 10, 2023

Biden set to project a business-as-usual attitude after Trump indictment | CNN Politics

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The last time former President Donald Trump was indicted, his successor left the White House the next day intent on going about his schedule without wading into the matter.

As Trump is indicted a second time, President Joe Biden is planning to do the same thing – an intentional demonstration of calm and normalcy amid the continuing chaos of his predecessor.

He’ll probably get asked about the indictment throughout the day as he leaves the White House to visit sites in North Carolina. But there is little to suggest he’ll weigh in on the substance of the case.

That’s because he and his aides believe doing so would only lend grist to Trump’s claim that he’s the victim of a political “witch hunt.” Biden doesn’t want to be baited into providing Trump any fuel for his allegations, people familiar with his thinking said. And he remains firmly of the belief that sitting presidents should not comment on legal matters.

Those dynamics – already in play when Trump was indicted in New York – are only amplified now that former president has been handed a federal indictment by Biden’s Justice Department. It’s a situation Biden and his team know they must handle carefully.

“You’ll notice, I have never once – not one single time – suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do on whether to bring any charges or not bring any charges. I’m honest,” Biden said at a news conference Thursday.

Biden and first lady Dr. Jill Biden are set to travel to North Carolina on Friday to promote his job training agenda and sign an executive order meant to help military spouses remain in the workforce. The official trip is the type of activity Biden is planning a lot of over the coming year, as he works to sell his accomplishments to a skeptical electorate.

Aides know Biden’s dutiful, there-and-back stops at community colleges, union halls and construction sites aren’t likely to generate the same level of headlines as those about Trump’s legal peril.

Yet perhaps more than the accomplishments themselves, Biden is hoping to project an air of competence and authority as a contrast to the chaos that has accompanied Trump for years. That comparison could hardly be starker this week.

There is another additional goal with Friday’s trip – kicking off a push to flip a state that has gone Republican in the last three presidential elections.

The last time Biden traveled to North Carolina, Rep. Wiley Nickel offered a bullish outlook on his state’s political potential during the flight to Durham on Air Force One.

“I talked to him a number of times about it. We have been pushing with folks from all over on why North Carolina is a must win and why it’s a state that’s set to have a great outcome in November,” the Democrat told CNN this week.

The pitch may have worked. The trip is one of Biden’s first trips outside Washington to sell his agenda since he announced his bid for reelection in April.

He won’t be the only 2024 contender in the state. A two-hour drive west, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis plans to speak at the North Carolina Republican Party convention in Greensboro. Former Vice President Mike Pence and Trump are also expected to address the gathering over the weekend.

The convergence of candidates in the Tar Heel State is hardly a coincidence. After narrowly losing there to Trump in 2020, Biden’s campaign said in a strategy memo this spring the state is among their top targets next year as they look to expand the electoral map.

On the Republican side, North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes would be essential for a pathway back to the White House. The last Democratic presidential candidate win there was Barack Obama in 2008.

Yet the 1.3% margin Trump won by in 2020 was the smallest of any state, a demonstration – at least in Biden’s mind – that it is well within grasp in 2024. The state’s demographics are becoming more urban and diverse. Biden’s campaign has already purchased television ad time there.

On Friday, Biden’s stops are considered official business, not campaign-related. But they reflect his team’s strategy of working to promote his accomplishments in places up for grabs in next year’s election.

He plans to visit a community college in Rocky Mount to tout job training programs before heading to Fort Liberty – recently renamed from Fort Bragg, removing the moniker of a Confederate general – to sign an executive order meant to help military spouses remain in the workforce.

“We’re asking agencies to make it easier for spouses employed by the federal government to take administrative leave, telework and move offices. We’re creating resources to support entrepreneurs and the executive order helps agencies and companies retain military spouses through telework or when they move abroad,” said first lady Dr. Jill Biden, who’s accompanying her husband in North Carolina on Friday.

Both stops will put a spotlight on the types of agenda items the president plans to use as the basis for his reelection argument next year, centering on job creation and the middle class. Biden has focused heavily on job training for those without college degrees as part of his effort to revive American manufacturing.

Despite a strong job market and rising wages, however, Biden has struggled to convince Americans of his economic agenda, according to polls. The three Republican candidates speaking in Greensboro this weekend will undoubtedly hammer the president on issues like inflation.

Events like the stops in Rocky Mount and Fort Liberty on Friday are meant to explain to Americans what Biden has done so far, an approach he’s expected to continue pursuing in the coming year as Republicans engage in a primary battle.

Nash Community College, where the president is visiting, is part of a coalition of historically black colleges that has received around $24 million from Biden’s American Rescue Plan for training on clean energy careers, according to the White House.

The executive order he’ll sign later at Fort Liberty is meant to allow military spouses to remain in the workforce through greater employer flexibility. The issue has been a main agenda item for the first lady.

It wasn’t clear whether Biden would address the renaming of the base, which became official last week. Many Republicans opposed stripping the names of Confederate generals from bases, an effort that began under Biden. Trump has likened the moves to erasing American history.

Biden’s aides have acknowledged that simply selling the president’s agenda isn’t likely to be enough to get him reelected. They have also worked to highlight what they say are extreme Republican positions on issues like education and abortion.

In this, too, North Carolina also offers a backdrop for areas Democrats believe they have an upper hand. North Carolina Republicans passed a restrictive new law last month that would outlaw most abortions after 12 weeks, using their legislative supermajority to override a veto from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.

There are already plans by Biden’s campaign to focus on the ban as the campaign works to make inroads in the state.

Nickel said Republicans’ abortion platform was the reason he was elected last year.

“We focused almost exclusively two things. Rejecting far-right extremism and standing up for a woman’s right to choose. And that’s what folks understood our campaign was about,” he said.

For Biden, whose time as a candidate will be carefully managed as he works to confront still-significant headwinds, Nickel had this piece of advice for winning in North Carolina: “I think he needs to show up a lot.”

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June 9, 2023

Takeaways from CNN’s town hall with Mike Pence | CNN Politics

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Former Vice President Mike Pence staked out a series of clear differences with boss-turned-2024 rival Donald Trump, and needled other Republican contenders, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in a CNN town hall in Iowa on Wednesday night.

Hours after he launched his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Pence broke with the former president on immigration policy, entitlement spending, US support for Ukraine in its war against Russia and more.

He said he would not reinstate the policy of separating migrant families at the border – a widely criticized practice that Trump didn’t rule out reviving in his own CNN town hall last month.

Pence also said that other Republican rivals were wrong to put changes to Social Security off the table, telling the crowd at Grand View University in Des Moines that seriously reducing federal spending will require changes to entitlement programs.

He sharply rebuked Trump for describing Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “genius” for his invasion of Ukraine, while casting DeSantis as naive on the issue. And he continued to criticize the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Pence said he and Trump don’t just disagree about the past; the two have “a different vision for our party.”

“I’m somebody who believes in American leadership in the world. Our party needs to lead on fiscal responsibility and stand without apology for life. We’ll have those debates,” he said.

Still, Pence said, he will “support the Republican nominee in 2024,” a pledge he said he felt comfortable making because he doubted Trump would win the primary.

“Different times call for different leadership,” Pence said. “The American people don’t look backwards; they look forward. … I don’t think my old running mate is going to be the Republican nominee for president.”

Here are six takeaways from Pence’s CNN town hall:

Pence urged the Justice Department not to indict his onetime boss, saying such an indictment would fuel division inside the country and “send a terrible message to the wider world.”

While Pence said that “no one is above the law,” he said the DOJ could resolve its investigation into Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents without resorting to an indictment, just as the department informed Pence’s attorney last week that there would be no charges brought in the case of the classified documents discovered in his home.

But in Pence’s case, the former vice president immediately contacted the National Archives and the FBI to return his documents, while Trump resisted handing over his classified material and failed to return all classified documents after receiving a subpoena last May.

Pence’s response underscores the tightrope the former vice president is walking when it comes to the numerous probes into his former boss. CNN reported Wednesday that the Justice Department had informed Trump he’s a target of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents and possible obstruction, a sign that prosecutors may be moving closer to indicting the former president.

While Pence criticized Trump for his actions on January 6 at his campaign kickoff Wednesday and at the town hall, he sought to distinguish those actions from the documents probe, protesting that there were “dozens” of better ways that the FBI could have handled Trump’s case before resorting to an unprecedented search the former president’s residence.

So far, Pence’s sharpest criticism of Trump came when he was asked about the United States’ role in helping Ukraine in its efforts to repel Russia’s invasion.

After arguing that the US should accelerate its support for the Ukrainian military, Pence pointed to Trump’s description of Putin in a February 2022 radio interview as a “genius” for his invasion of Ukraine.

“I know the difference between a genius and a war criminal, and I know who needs to win the war in Ukraine,” Pence said. “And it’s the people fighting for their freedom and fighting to restore their national sovereignty in Ukraine. And America – it’s not our war, but freedom is our fight. And we need to give the people of Ukraine the ability to fight and defend their freedom.”

Pence’s comments align him with Nikki Haley, Trump’s United Nations ambassador and a 2024 rival, and against their former boss and DeSantis, who entered the GOP race last month. The former vice president echoed Haley’s veiled shot at DeSantis – who described the war as a “territorial dispute” – casting such characterizations as naive.

“Anybody that thinks Vladimir Putin will stop if he overruns Ukraine has what we say back in Indiana, another thing coming,” Pence said. “He has no intention of stopping. He’s made it clear that he wants to recreate that old Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.”

Pence participates in a CNN Republican Presidential Town Hall on Wednesday.

Pence repeatedly highlighted his support for “parents’ rights,” especially when it comes to schools. But he said the judgment of those same parents should not apply to situations when a minor is seeking gender transition care.

“I strongly support state legislation, including, as we did in Indiana, that bans all gender transition, chemical or surgical procedures, under the age of 18,” he said – even when parents support their child’s decision to go forward.

Republican presidential candidates have all railed against what Pence on Wednesday described as “radical gender ideology,” language that by definition falsely suggests there is a movement of people seeking to convince young people to change their gender identities.

“However adults want to live, they can live,” Pence said. “But for children, we’re going to protect kids from the radical gender ideology and say no chemical or surgical transition before you’re 18.”

Pressed on the age question, Pence compared gender transition to body art, saying, “There’s a reason why you don’t let kids get a tattoo before they’re 18.”

When Bash asked what he would say to children and families who feel targeted by his position and those of his ideological allies, Pence offered an olive branch of sorts.

“I’d put my arm around them and tell them I love ‘em,” he said, “but (tell them) ‘Just wait.’”

Pence speaks during a CNN Republican Presidential Town Hall moderated by CNN's Dana Bash at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 7.

Pence has been a fierce anti-abortion advocate his entire adult life. On Wednesday night, he made clear he would not deviate from that position.

“I couldn’t be more proud to be vice president in an administration that appointed three of the justices that sent Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history,” Pence said, “and gave America a new beginning for life.”

On the question of a federal ban on the procedure, Pence said he supported exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. But he did not tap dance around the fundamental question, even as voters around the country – in the midterms and in referendums – have registered their anger over the Supreme Court’s decision and the subsequent passage of state laws to sharply restrict abortion rights.

“We will not rest or relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in the country,” Pence said.

Still, the former vice president acknowledged that his side had a “long way to go to win the hearts and minds of the American people” and encouraged his allies to show both “principle and compassion.”

To that end, he offered qualified support for social spending programs to help support newborns and new parents.

“We have to care as much about newborns and mothers as we do about the unborn,” Pence said. But he stopped short of specifically endorsing paid family leave for all Americans or subsidized child care.

Pence said he would “take a step back” from the approach of the Trump-era landmark sentencing reform law, known as the First Step Act.

“We need to get serious and tough on violent crime, and we need to give our cities and our states the resources to restore law and order to our streets. And I promise you, we’ll do that, if I’m your president,” Pence told Bash.

Under the First Step Act, thousands of federal inmates, most of them serving sentences for drug offense and weapons charges, were released from prison early, either for good behavior or through participation in rehabilitation programs. The law also eased mandatory minimum sentencing for certain drug offenders.

Asked about DeSantis’ promise to repeal the First Step Act if elected president, Pence again conceded that he would take a different approach than the First Step Act.

“We ought to be thinking about how we make penalties tougher on people that are victimizing families in this country,” he said.

Pence repeated the criticism he has leveled at his former boss for more than a year, insisting that Trump was wrong to ask his second-in-command to overturn some states’ 2020 Electoral College votes in his ceremonial role presiding over Congress as it counted those votes on January 6, 2021.

Pence said he “frankly hoped the president would come around” since early 2021. Though he said he agreed that some states inappropriately changed their election procedures during the coronavirus pandemic.

“But at the end of the day, I think the Republican Party has to be the party of the Constitution,” he said.

Pence also broke with Trump over the legal fates of those who rioted at the US Capitol on January 6 – and have since faced criminal charges and convictions. Trump said he would consider pardoning many of those rioters, who he said were being treated “very unfairly.”

Pence, though, said the United States “cannot ever allow what happened on January 6 to happen again in the heart of our democracy.”

“I have no interest or no intention of pardoning those that assaulted police officers or vandalized our Capitol. They need to answer to the law,” he said.

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June 7, 2023

Republican tries to scuttle debt limit bill in House Rules Committee as pressure grows on key swing vote | CNN Politics

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Rep. Chip Roy accused House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday of cutting a deal that could complicate negotiators’ efforts to pass a bill to raise the US debt ceiling this week.

But McCarthy’s allies quickly refuted the Texas Republican, underscoring the tension ahead of a key meeting of the House Rules Committee on Tuesday – and putting new pressure on a conservative holdout, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has yet to take a position on the plan.

Roy contended that McCarthy cut a hand-shake deal in January that all nine Republicans on the powerful panel must agree to move any legislation forward, otherwise bills could not be considered by the full House for majority approval. That would essentially doom the debt ceiling bill since Roy – who sits on the panel – and another conservative committee member are trying to stop the bill from advancing.

“A reminder that during Speaker negotiations to build the coalition, that it was explicit both that nothing would pass Rules Committee without AT LEAST 7 GOP votes – AND that the Committee would not allow reporting out rules without unanimous Republican votes,” Roy tweeted.

Senior GOP sources acknowledged that there was an agreement for seven Republican committee members to agree to move forward in order to advance a bill to the floor, but they flatly dispute that there was a deal for all nine to sign off for legislation to advance.

“I have not heard that before. If those conversations took place, the rest of the conference was unaware of them,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota. “And frankly, I doubt them.”

The dispute is significant because Roy sits on the committee – which is divided between nine Republicans and four Democrats – as does GOP Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina. Both men have emerged as leading foes of the bipartisan debt limit bill to avoid a June 5 default, arguing it does little to rein in government spending.

A third conservative who sits on the panel – Massie – has been mum about how he plans to handle the rule vote in committee. McCarthy agreed to name all three men to the panel as part of the promises he made during his hard-fought speaker’s victory – all to give more power to conservatives on committees, including on Rules, which is typically stacked with the speaker’s closest allies.

If Massie were to join Roy and Norman and vote against the rule at Tuesday’s meeting, he could effectively stall the measure in committee.

But in January, Massie told CNN he was reluctant to vote against rules to stop bills in their tracks.

“I would be reluctant to try to use the rules committee to achieve a legislative outcome, particularly if it doesn’t represent a large majority of our caucus,” Massie said at the time. “So I don’t ever intend to use my position on there to like, hold somebody hostage – or hold legislation hostage.”

Democrats on the committee may also vote for the rule, sources told CNN, and that would ensure it has the votes to advance to the floor. But if Massie were to oppose the rule, only six Republicans would be in favor of it, complicating McCarthy’s efforts to bring the plan to the floor since he previously agreed to only take up bills with the backing of seven committee Republicans.

Massie’s office declined to comment on how he may vote on Tuesday, and neither Roy nor the speaker’s office responded to requests for comments on the Texan’s assertion.

But Republicans close to McCarthy refuted the notion that bills could only advance with unanimous GOP support in the committee.

“I’m a rules guy,” Johnson said. “And when I checked, there wasn’t a rule that something has to come out of Rules Committee unanimously. Now Chip is a rules guy too. So I think he’s going to understand that, that this is a majoritarian institution, and that ultimately, we’re going to serve Americans the best way that the majority of us know how – that’s going to be to pass this bill.”

Other McCarthy allies agreed.

“I don’t know what Speaker McCarthy agreed to, but that has not been something that any of us were familiar with,” Rep. Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma said. “I think that comment was that it had to be unanimous to come out of the Rules Committee to go to the floor is the tweet that I read. And I think that is inaccurate, at best, but I don’t know because I wasn’t in the room. I don’t know how you would have something like that functionally work.”

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May 29, 2023

Recep Tayyip Erdogan Fast Facts | CNN

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CNN
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Here’s a look at the life of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, current president and former prime minister of Turkey.

Birth date: February 26, 1954

Birth place: Istanbul, Turkey

Birth name: Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Father: Ahmet Erdogan, coastguard and sea captain

Mother: Tenzile Erdogan

Marriage: Emine (Gulbaran) Erdogan (July 4, 1978-present)

Children: Two daughters and two sons

Education: Marmara University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, 1981

Religion: Muslim

Active in Islamist circles in the 1970s and 1980s.

Before his political career, Erdogan was a semi-professional football (soccer) player.

Erdogan is considered a polarizing figure: supporters say he has improved the Turkish economy and introduced political reform. Critics have accused Erdogan of autocratic tendencies, corruption and extravagance.

Erdogan has also been heavily criticized for failing to protect women’s and human rights, curbing freedom of speech and attempting to curb Turkey’s secular identity.

Under Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey has lifted restrictions on public expression of religion, including ending the ban on women wearing Islamic-style headscarves.

Has called social media “the worst menace to society.”

1984 – Elected as a district head of the Welfare Party.

1985 – Elected as the Istanbul Provincial Head of the Welfare Party and becomes a member of the central executive board of the party.

1994-1998 – Mayor of Istanbul.

1998 – The Welfare Party is banned. Erdogan serves four months in prison for inciting religious hatred after reciting a controversial poem.

August 2001 – Co-founds the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP).

2002-2003 – Erdogan’s AKP wins the majority of seats in parliamentary elections, and he is appointed prime minister.

2003-2014 – Serves as prime minister.

June 2011 – AKP wins by a wide margin in the parliamentary elections, securing a third term for Erdogan.

June 2013 – Anti-government demonstrations target Erdogan’s policies, including his plan to turn a park into a mall, and call for political reforms. Thousands are reported injured in the clashes.

December 2013 – Corruption probe begins which investigates more than 50 suspects, including members of Erdogan’s inner circle. The following month, the government dismisses 350 police officers amid the investigation. Ten months later, the prosecutor drops the inquiry.

March 2014 – After Erdogan threatens to “eradicate” Twitter at a campaign rally, Turkey bans the social media site, and a two-week countrywide blackout ensues.

August 10, 2014 – Erdogan is elected president during the first-ever direct elections in Turkey.

November 2014 – At a summit hosted by a women’s group in Istanbul, Erdogan says that women and men are not equal “because their nature is different.” It’s not the first time the Turkish leader has made controversial comments about women: previously, he told Turkish university students that they shouldn’t be “picky” when choosing a husband and has called on all Turkish women to have three children.

June 7, 2015 – In Turkey’s parliamentary elections, AKP wins 41% of the vote.

July 15-16, 2016 – During an attempted coup by a faction of the military, at least 161 people are killed and 1,140 wounded. Erdogan addresses the nation via FaceTime and urges people to take to the streets to stand up to the military faction behind the uprising. He blames the coup attempt on cleric and rival Fethullah Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania.

April 16, 2017 – A vote is held on a constitutional amendment expanding Erdogan’s presidential powers. Turkish state media report that about 51% of people voted yes on the referendum, which abolishes the country’s parliamentary system and would potentially allow for Erdogan to remain in office until 2029. International election monitors question whether the election was free and fair, citing last-minute rule changes, the muzzling of opposition voices and the dominance of the “yes” campaign in the media. Opposition leaders in the Republican People’s Party say that they plan to challenge the election results in court.

May 16, 2017 – Erdogan meets US President Donald Trump at the White House. During a joint news conference, Erdogan praises Trump’s electoral victory and vows to help the United States fight terrorism. After the two men speak, demonstrators protest outside the residence of the Turkish ambassador. Nine people are injured when Turkish security guards rush into a line of protestors and kick people on the ground. Law enforcement sources tell CNN that some of the men involved in the fight were Erdogan’s bodyguards.

October 12, 2017 – Erdogan accuses the United States of sacrificing its relationship with Turkey in a speech made days after the arrest of a US consular staff member and the announcement that he refuses to recognize the authority of US Ambassador John Bass. Erdogan blames Bass and other officials left over from the Obama administration for sabotaging relations between the two countries.

December 2017 – In response to Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Erdogan declares the move to be null and void and announces Turkey’s intention to open a Turkish embassy in Jerusalem.

June 24, 2018 – Is reelected president.

November 2, 2018 – The order to kill Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi came “from the highest levels of Saudi government,” Erdogan writes in an opinion piece in the Washington Post. The friendship between Turkey and Saudi Arabia “doesn’t mean we will turn a blind eye to the premeditated murder that unfolded in front of our very eyes,” he writes.

January 8, 2019 – After backing the decision that the United States will begin pulling troops from Syria, Erdogan claims US National Security Adviser John Bolton made “a serious mistake” telling reporters that the United States would only pull out of Syria if Turkey pledged not to attack its Kurdish allies there. “Bolton’s remarks in Israel are not acceptable. It is not possible for me to swallow this,” Erdogan says during a speech in parliament. “Bolton made a serious mistake. If he thinks that way, he is in a big mistake. We will not compromise.”

January 14, 2019 – Trump and Erdogan discuss “ongoing cooperation in Syria as US forces begin to withdraw” during a phone call just one day after Trump threatened to “devastate Turkey economically” if the NATO-allied country attacks Kurds in the region.

October 9, 2019 – Turkey launches a military offensive into northeastern Syria, just days after Trump’s administration announced that US troops would leave the border area. Erdogan’s “Operation Peace Spring” is an effort to drive away Kurdish forces from the border, and use the area to resettle around two million Syrian refugees.

October 22, 2019 – Erdogan meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi and the men announce a wide-ranging agreement on Syria, announcing that Russian and Turkish troops will patrol the Turkish-Syrian border. Kurdish forces have about six days to retreat about 20 miles away from the border.

January 2, 2020 – The Turkish parliament gives Erdogan authorization for one year to deploy military to address Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar’s offensive against the UN-recognized government in Tripoli, Libya.

December 20, 2021 – Erdogan unveils a plan to prop up the Turkish lira with a raft of new unorthodox economic measures, including compensating Turkish savers worried about the tumbling value of their nest eggs by compensating them for the impact of the depreciation of the lira on their deposits. A few days before, Erdogan announced a nearly 50% hike in the country’s minimum wage, hoping it would provide relief to suffering workers.

February 5, 2022 – Erdogan announces on Twitter that he and his wife had contracted the Omicron variant of the coronavirus and were experiencing mild symptoms.

February 7, 2023 – Erdogan declares a three-month state of emergency in 10 provinces following a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6.

May 28, 2023 – Erdogan wins Turkey’s presidential election, defeating opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and stretching his rule into a third decade.

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May 29, 2023

Biden and McCarthy lean on holdouts in both parties to pass debt ceiling deal | CNN Politics

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Party leaders in Washington are waging an urgent campaign Monday to convince Democrats and Republicans to get behind compromise legislation that would avert a first-ever national default, with each side proclaiming victory following marathon talks.

Prospects for passage of the bill, based on the agreement struck between President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, grew Sunday as many centrist Democrats fell in line and Republicans maintained confidence that they would be able to carry the support of the majority of their House conference in a pivotal vote expected Wednesday.

In both parties’ sights are those in the political middle, who leaders are wagering will swallow some provisions they disagree with in order to suspend the federal borrowing limit through January 1, 2025 – after the next presidential election – and avoid default. The bill caps non-defense spending, temporarily expands work requirements for some food stamp recipients and claws back some Covid-19 relief funds.

The release of the bill text Sunday evening amounted to a consequential moment for both Biden and McCarthy, whose political futures could hinge on their ability to pass the legislation while also selling it as a victory for their respective parties.

Speaking from the White House on Sunday, Biden hailed the agreement as critical to preventing economic disaster.

“It’s a really important step forward,” he said from the Roosevelt Room. “It takes the threat of catastrophic default off the table, protects our hard-earned economic recovery, and the agreement also represents a compromise – which means no one got everything they want, but that’s the responsibility of governing.”

The president shrugged off concerns from some Democrats who worry he gave away too much in his negotiations with Republicans.

“They’ll find I didn’t,” he said.

In a private call Sunday with House Democrats, Biden’s briefers defended their dealmaking with McCarthy, going into detail about what they had prevented from being added to the bill, according to multiple sources. They argued they stopped Republicans from pushing even stiffer work requirements and beat back efforts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and gut and gut Biden’s signature 2021 infrastructure law.

After those briefings, many Democrats signaled that they were willing to support the plan simply because there’s no other viable option to avoid default, lawmakers told CNN.

“It’s not a victory, but it’s a lot better (than) what might have happened if there were default,” one Senate Democrat told CNN after an evening briefing.

Members of two major centrist groups – the New Democrat Coalition and Problem Solvers Caucus – are expected to largely support the plan, according to multiple sources. That represents roughly 100 Democrats, which could be enough to offset the losses from members of the hard-right who are furious over McCarthy’s dealmaking.

Several members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus have already harshly criticized the plan, vowing to try blocking it from passage.

McCarthy has insisted to House Republicans that Democrats “got nothing” in the negotiations, and he worked to amplify government spending caps and new work requirements for food stamps as critical wins long sought by the GOP.

But like Biden, McCarthy acknowledged the agreement required concessions from both sides.

“It doesn’t get everything everybody wanted,” McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol on Sunday. “But, in divided government, that’s where we end up. I think it’s a very positive bill.”

For McCarthy, the first big test will come Tuesday in the House Rules Committee, a panel that must adopt a rule to allow the bill to be approved by a majority of the House. To win the speakership, McCarthy agreed to name three conservative hardliners – Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Chip Roy of Texas and Thomas Massie of Kentucky – to the committee, a major concession since usually the powerful panel is stacked with close allies of the leadership.

Norman and Roy have emerged as sharp critics of the debt limit deal so far, while Massie was quiet while waiting for bill text to be released. If all three voted against the rule in committee, that would kill the bill – unless any Democrats vote to advance the rule.

McCarthy’s allies sought to play down the conservative revolt.

“When you’re saying that conservatives have concerns, it is really the most colorful conservatives,” Rep. Dusty Johnson said on “State of the Union.”

Passing the bill through the House will not be the final step. The package must also clear the Senate, where any single senator could stall progress for several days. On Sunday, a handful of powerful Senate Republicans had raised concerns about the deal’s defense spending during a Senate GOP conference call, a source on the call said.

But with the support of Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and expected backing of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, several Senate sources say there is a high likelihood there’ll be 60 votes to break a filibuster attempt. The timing of the final votes in the Senate could slip into Friday or the weekend.

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May 29, 2023

Major differences remain over spending cuts and other key issues as debt limit deadline looms | CNN Politics

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Negotiations are continuing to unfold in an attempt to reach a debt limit deal, but major differences between House Republicans and the White House have yet to be bridged, and the pressure is only intensifying as the risk of default grows ever more real with each day.

Republicans have long said that spending cuts must be paired with any increase in the debt limit – an issue that is proving to be the central sticking point as Democrats argue the cuts Republicans want are too extreme, though the White House has expressed a willingness to cut some spending.

Asked if there is any general agreements on cuts, GOP Rep. Garret Graves, who has served as a chief negotiator during the talks, said on Tuesday, “No, that’s our biggest gap.”

Graves made clear that a wide array of significant differences remain, even as the timeline to avoid default grows shorter.

“Look, there are some big bright red lines on both sides,” he said. “We do not have any of those issues closed out.”

Underscoring just how far apart the two sides are, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Republicans during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, “We are nowhere near a deal,” according to sources in the room.

The window to secure a deal is rapidly closing and the stakes are incredibly high with the Treasury Department continuing to say the US could default by June 1. A first-ever default for the US would likely trigger a global economic catastrophe.

McCarthy met with President Joe Biden at the White House on Monday, a meeting the speaker and the president both said was “productive,” but that did not yield a breakthrough in negotiations or end in a deal.

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, continue to push back against positions Republicans have staked out in negotiations and express heightened concern over the ticking clock.

House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar argued that Republicans have been pushed to take extreme positions by far-right members of the GOP conference.

“This is tough, this is not where we should be. Speaker McCarthy is being held captive by the Freedom Caucus,” Aguilar told reporters on Tuesday.

“We’re concerned that Republicans are not only moving the goalposts, but continue to hold onto the most extreme elements of their proposals,” he said.

McCarthy, despite saying the two sides are still far apart, said Tuesday he thinks it is possible to get everything done by the June 1 deadline. “We could still finish this by June 1st,” he told reporters.

But in a sign there may not be much room to maneuver in negotiations, McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju, “We’re going to raise the debt ceiling,” when asked what concessions he would make – a significant remark that indicates Republicans are not willing to give any more than raising the debt ceiling in exchange for their demands.

When Raju pressed the speaker, asking if that is his only concession, McCarthy said, “Everything we’re going to do is going to make America stronger.”

McCarthy’s comment Tuesday that raising the debt ceiling is the only concession he will make rankled a White House that just a day earlier viewed conversations with McCarthy as productive, according to two sources familiar with the negotiations.

A Democratic official slammed McCarthy for his comments, accusing him of refusing to compromise and being beholden to the most conservative members of his caucus as negotiations languish.

The official slammed McCarthy’s demand that defense spending increase while non-defense spending decrease as extreme and out of step with budget deals over the last decade.

Another significant challenge facing negotiators is that even if a deal is reached, that is far from the end of the road to prevent default.

Legislative text will need to be written, which can be arduous and complicated work as lawmakers and staff dive into nitty-gritty policy details – a part of the process toward final passage of any bill that can often lead to further issues and eleventh-hour hangups over disagreements about the fine print.

Then, leaders from both parties will need to wrangle the votes to pass a bill, no small task with narrow majorities in both chambers. After that, a deal would need to be brought to the floor, a process that can take days to play out in both chambers, though there are mechanisms available to leadership to speed things up.

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May 24, 2023

DeSantis to open presidential bid by out-Trumping Trump | CNN Politics

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Ron DeSantis’ decision to announce his 2024 White House bid in a conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter on Wednesday will make a typically blunt statement about his campaign, the unruly populism of the modern Republican Party and an accelerating conservative media revolution.

Florida’s governor will finally jump into the race by throwing down a gauntlet to ex-President Donald Trump with a launch strategy that frames him as the true anti-establishment rebel in the race who is willing to crush the conventions of traditional presidential politics.

His choice of venue on Twitter Spaces – the site’s audio platform – also exemplifies the Trump-era GOP’s transformation into a party that rewards gesture politics and whose activists respond to the unmoderated social media jungle while disdaining traditional standards of conduct and governance.

But while Twitter’s attractiveness to conservative voters under Musk, who has 141 million followers, means DeSantis may be making a shrewd move in a GOP primary, he could further damage an already questionable reputation among more moderate voters he’d need in a general election by appearing on an increasingly polarizing platform.

That’s because Twitter, which once offered a platform for democratic movements in the Arab Spring, has been transformed by its new owner into a febrile circus of untamed free speech, conspiracy theories and unverifiable information. Only this week, a fake image of an explosion near the Pentagon went viral, causing a blip on the stock market in a potential preview of a presidential campaign likely to be plagued by misinformation and AI-generated falsehoods. Musk has, meanwhile, shown a willingness to ignite his own Twitter infernos, so his increasingly prominent role suggests the 2024 presidential race could be just as turbulent as the 2016 and 2020 editions, which were marked by Trump’s extreme rhetoric and voter fraud accusations.

Another mind-bending twist to election season came on Tuesday with the former president’s virtual court appearance in a case arising out of a hush money payment to a former adult film star in which he has already pleaded not guilty. Judge Juan Merchan set a trial date for March 25, 2024 – in the middle of primary season. The timetable raises the prospect that Trump could use the trial as a stage to drive home his claim that he’s a victim of political persecution. But it also creates a risk for Trump that he could be criminally convicted while he’s still fighting for the GOP nomination – an extraordinary and unprecedented scenario.

By choosing Twitter to make his own splash, DeSantis appears to be targeting a dramatic moment that could restore a sense of momentum to GOP primary aspirations that were soaring six months ago but that have been undermined by his own missteps and Trump’s recent political rebound.

In embracing Musk, DeSantis is associating himself with a hero of conservatives who have long claimed they are being censored on social media. He’s taking a swipe at Trump, who was banned from tweeting by the company’s previous ownership and has so far preferred the home ground of his own platform, Truth Social, even after Musk restored his account. Trump’s 2016 campaign and entire presidency unfolded in a torrent of stream of consciousness tweets that he used to great effect – even if he left his nation stressed and exhausted.

DeSantis is taking an ostentatious jab at traditional media, which is reviled by many conservatives, by showing he is ready to bypass regular conventions of presidential campaigns. His launch will also create a sharp contrast with Trump’s own rambling, and even boring, campaign opening speech at Mar-a-Lago in November, which lacked any sense of political dynamism.

The Florida governor will also show how far the GOP has traveled from its roots as a bastion of tradition and the extent to which the internet and the fragmentation of the media into partisan blocks has changed presidential campaigns. In 1979, for instance, Ronald Reagan announced his presidential bid with a grandfatherly speech from a cozy study that looked like the inside of a country club. George W. Bush set off on the road to the White House 20 years later from a farm in Iowa. Now the best way to reach the most GOP voters is online.

By breaking the mold of presidential announcements, DeSantis is borrowing from Trump’s unconventional playbook. One lesson of the 45th president’s riotous political career is that anything calculated to offend liberals and mainstream media commentators is often wildly popular with grassroots GOP primary voters.

DeSantis is already running to the right of Trump by targeting what he calls “woke” measures on diversity, equity and inclusion and staking out conservative positions on social issues. Now, he’s also seeking to steal Trump’s reputation as the great disruptor.

The DeSantis announcement will also help enshrine an emerging power shift in conservative media. His choice of Twitter recognizes the importance of the social network to right-wing voters under Musk and may quicken the shift away from Fox News as the most dynamic platform for the new champions of the conservative movement. It comes after the top-rated Fox News host Tucker Carlson said he’d relaunch his show on Twitter after being ousted from Rupert Murdoch’s primetime line-up after the firm paid $787 million to settle a defamation suit linked to its promotion of election lies and misinformation after the 2020 election.

With his appearance, DeSantis is driving home his argument that social media networks have sought to oppress the speech of conservatives – a popular viewpoint on the right. In his autobiography “The Courage to be Free,” DeSantis slammed companies like Facebook and Twitter, under its previous owners, which he said made “censorship decisions that always seem to err on the side of leftist orthodoxy, they distort the American political system because so much political speech now takes place on these supposedly open platforms.”

Still, DeSantis is unlikely to turn his back on Fox, which has offered him plentiful air time – a possible sign the Murdoch family is beginning to tire of the ex-president.

The DeSantis launch strategy will not come without risks. The untamed environment of Twitter and his association with Musk threaten to undermine the case DeSantis has been implicitly making to Republican voters – that he can offer a more stable and disciplined style of leadership than that shown by Trump in his tempestuous White House term.

And by avoiding the kind of big, staged political announcement in front of a large crowd, DeSantis risks emboldening Trump’s mocking critique that the Florida governor is draining support by the day, following polls that show him falling further behind the former president, albeit ahead of candidates like South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

The virtual announcement could also fuel claims by Trump that his one-time protégé, whom he now accuses of betrayal for running for president, lacks the political skills to compete on a less controlled stage. A pro-Trump super PAC mocked DeSantis ahead of his online announcement, calling it “one of the most out-of-touch campaign launches in modern history.”

“The only thing less relatable than a niche campaign launch on Twitter, is DeSantis’ after party at the uber elite Four Seasons resort in Miami,” MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned super PAC, said in a statement Tuesday.

People familiar with the DeSantis campaign blueprint, however, indicated the Florida governor would soon launch a relentless blitz of campaign appearances in key swing states, intended to contrast his energy with that of his older rivals, Trump and President Joe Biden.

Trump’s team and his allies are planning an aggressive operation to try to drown out the DeSantis launch on Wednesday. MAGA Inc. is already slamming the Florida governor for his early support of the Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic as it seeks to undermine his credibility among conservatives who balked at government health advice.

But this is yet another sign of how head-spinning the Republican primary could get. After all, it was Trump who once claimed all the credit for developing the vaccine during his presidency. Now his supporters are condemning DeSantis for trying to save lives with it.

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May 23, 2023

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