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Tag: rick scott

  • U.S. Eyes Striking Venezuelan Military Targets Used for Drug Trafficking

    The Trump administration has identified targets in Venezuela that include military facilities used to smuggle drugs, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. If President Trump decides to move forward with airstrikes, they said, the targets would send a clear message to Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro that it is time to step down.

    While the president hasn’t made a final decision on ordering land strikes, the officials said a potential air campaign would focus on targets that sit at the nexus of the drug gangs and the Maduro regime. Trump and his senior aides have been particularly focused on unsettling Maduro as the U.S. military has attacked boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean.

    Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

    [ad_2] Shelby Holliday
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  • U.S. senators ramp up Palisades fire probe but give Eaton fire short shrift

    The firestorms that broke out in January ravaged two distinctly different stretches of Los Angeles County: one with grand views of the Pacific Ocean, the other nestled against the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

    But so far, a push from congressional Republicans to investigate the Jan. 7 firestorm and response has been focused almost exclusively on the Palisades fire, which broke out in L.A.’s Pacific Palisades and went on to burn parts of Malibu and surrounding areas.

    In a letter to City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, two U.S. senators this week intensified that investigation, saying they want an enormous trove of documents on Los Angeles Fire Department staffing, wildfire preparations, the city’s water supply and many other topics surrounding the devastating blaze.

    U.S. Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked for records related to several issues raised during and after the Palisades fire, including an empty reservoir and the failure to fully extinguish a previous fire that was later identified as the cause.

    In contrast, the letter only briefly mentions the Eaton fire, which broke out in the unincorporated community of Altadena and spread to parts of Pasadena. That emergency was plagued by delayed evacuation alerts, deployment issues and allegations that electrical equipment operated by Southern California Edison sparked the blaze.

    Both fires incinerated thousands of homes. Twelve people died in the Palisades fire. In the Eaton fire, all but one of the 19 who died were found in west Altadena, where evacuation alerts came hours after flames and smoke were threatening the area.

    Scott and Johnson gave Harris-Dawson a deadline of Nov. 3 to produce records on several topics specific to the city of L.A.: “diversity, equity and inclusion” hiring policies at the city’s Fire Department; the Department of Water and Power’s oversight of its reservoirs; and the removal of Fire Chief Kristin Crowley by Mayor Karen Bass earlier this year.

    Officials in Los Angeles County said they have not received such a letter dealing with either the Palisades fire or the Eaton fire.

    A spokesperson for Johnson referred questions about the letter to Scott’s office. An aide to Scott told The Times this week that the investigation remains focused on the Palisades fire but could still expand. Some Eaton fire records were requested, the spokesperson said, because “they’re often inextricable in public reports.”

    The senators — who both sit on the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs — opened the probe after meeting with reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who lost a home in the Palisades fire and quickly became an outspoken critic of the city’s response to the fire and subsequent rebuilding efforts. At the time, the senators called the Palisades fire “an unacceptable failure of government to protect the lives and property of its citizens.”

    The investigation was initially billed as a look at the city’s emergency preparations, including the lack of water in a nearby reservoir and in neighborhood fire hydrants the night of the fire. The Times first reported that the Santa Ynez Reservoir, located in Pacific Palisades, had been closed for repairs for nearly a year.

    The letter to Harris-Dawson seeks records relating to the reservoir as well as those dealing with “wildfire preparation, suppression, and response … including but not limited to the response to the Palisades and Lachman fires.”

    Officials have said the Lachman fire, intentionally set Jan. 1, reignited six days later to become the Palisades fire. A suspect was recently arrested on suspicion of arson in the Lachman fire. Now, the senators are raising concerns about why that fire wasn’t properly contained.

    The sweeping records request also seeks communications sent to and from each of the 15 council members and or their staff that mention the Palisades and Eaton fires. At this point, it’s unclear whether the city would have a substantial number of documents on the Eaton fire, given its location outside city limits.

    Harris-Dawson did not provide comment. But Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, who serves on the council’s public safety committee, made clear that he thinks the senators are confused by Southern California’s geography — and the distinctions between city and county jurisdictions.

    “MAGA Republicans couldn’t even look at a map before launching into this ridiculous investigation,” he said. “DEI did not cause the fires, and these senators should take their witch hunts elsewhere,” he said in a statement.

    Officials in L.A. County, who have confronted their own hard questions about botched evacuation alerts and poor resource deployment during the Eaton fire, said they had not received any letters from the senators about either fire.

    Neither Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger — who currently serves as board chair — nor Supervisor Lindsey Horvath had received such a document request, according to their aides. Barger represents Altadena, while Horvath’s district includes Pacific Palisades, Malibu and unincorporated communities affected by the Palisades fire.

    Monday’s letter also seeks records “referring or relating to any reports or investigations of arson, burglary, theft, or looting” in fire-affected areas, as well as the arrest of Jonathan Rinderknecht, the Palisades fire arson suspect. It also seeks documents on the council’s efforts to “dismantle systemic racism” — and whether such efforts affected the DWP or the Fire Department.

    Alberto Retana, president and chief executive of Community Coalition, a nonprofit group based in Harris-Dawson’s district, said he too views the inquiry from the two senators as a witch hunt — one that’s targeting L.A. city elected officials while ignoring Southern California Edison.

    “There’s been reports that Edison was responsible for the Eaton fire, but there’s [nothing] that shows any concern about that,” he said.

    Residents in Altadena have previously voiced concerns about what they viewed as disparities in the Trump administration’s response to the two fires. The Palisades fire tore through the mostly wealthy neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades and Malibu — home to celebrities who have since kept the recovery in the spotlight. Meanwhile, many of Altadena’s Black and working-class residents say their communities have been left behind.

    In both areas, however, there has been growing concern that now-barren lots will be swiftly purchased by wealthy outside investors, including those who are based outside of the United States.

    Scott, in a news release issued this week, said the congressional investigation will also examine whether Chinese companies are “taking advantage” of the fire recovery. The Times has not been able to independently verify such claims.

    David Zahniser, Grace Toohey, Ana Ceballos

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  • Florida Senator Rick Scott Honored with ‘Pioneers for Prosperity’ Award

    Florida Senator Rick Scott Honored with ‘Pioneers for Prosperity’ Award

    Florida Senator Rick Scott was honored with the “Pioneers for Prosperity” award.

    According to Americans for Prosperity, the award honors distinguished lawmakers who were policy champions during the 118th Congress. According to AFP, these leaders are on the frontlines in Congress advancing principles and policies that drive the conservative movement, while proactively opposing harmful ideas that grow the size of government and take money out of taxpayers’ paychecks.

    The “Pioneers for Prosperity” stood firm against what they labeled ill-advised legislation that would have deepened the hardships felt by working families and worked closely with AFP in Washington as well as with grassroots communities in their home states.

    “I’m proud to be recognized by Americans for Prosperity, a great organization that advocates for the success of our nation’s families and businesses,” Republican Senator Rick Scott said. “For too long, families have seen their tax dollars wasted as they struggle to make ends meet under the Biden-Harris administration’s big government, big spending and inflation-fueling policies. I’m fighting every day to keep the American dream alive by bringing fiscal sanity and common sense back to Washington so it truly works for the American people.”

    U.S. Representatives Byron Donalds and Laurel Lee were also honored as “Pioneers for Prosperity.”

    Lawmakers earned recognition for supporting bills such as the Employee Rights Act, Strategic Production Response Act, Lower Energy Costs Act, Health Care Fairness for All Act, and other pieces of legislation that the groups said offer common-sense solutions that would improve Americans’ lives – although Democrats would disagree.

    “Florida is fortunate to have leaders in Washington who stand for policies that put hardworking Americans first,” AFP-FL State Legislative Affairs Director Chris Stranburg said. “We are thankful for these individuals who have voted for sensible reforms to keep our economy strong and government limited. Next year, we look forward to overcoming fiscal deadlines with the help of their voices.”

    AFP-FL recently met with congressional members in Washington to discuss major tax policies, including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, that are set to expire at the end of 2025 which are commonly referred to as the “fiscal cliff.”

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  • Your Words: ‘What has Rick Scott done to deserve our vote?’

    Your Words: ‘What has Rick Scott done to deserve our vote?’

    click to enlarge

    Photo courtesy Rick Scott/Senate.gov

    To the editor:

    Why would we want Rick Scott re-elected as our Florida Senator? What has Scott done during his tenure to deserve our vote?

    As a senator in 2022, Rick Scott proposed his “Plan to Rescue America.” Among his ideas: “All federal legislation sunsets [must be renewed] every five years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” His plan included Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ benefits. Both political parties called his rescue plan unthinkable and dangerous.

    This is a big problem. Why would Rick Scott think it’s a good idea to gamble the Social Security income and Medicare health insurance of millions of seniors on a five-year congressional renewal? We know from history partisan budget issues have shut down the government. Scott should be thinking of ways to preserve Social Security and Medicare, not end it.

    In 2020, Sen. Rick Scott served as chairman of the Senatorial Election Committee. His efforts were called “a total failure of leadership, and when things went bad Scott blamed anyone else but him” [by Ward Baker, then-leader of the National Republican Senatorial Committee]. The failure was further proven during the 2022 midterm senatorial elections, as the Republican Party severely underperformed. 

    We should be reminded of Scott’s CEO role with Columbia/HCA, one of the largest megabillion-dollar hospital and medical providers in the country. Scott led the corporation into the then-largest Medicare and Medicaid fraud in the history of the United States. The corporate result was a $1.7 billion fine and being found guilty of 14 felonies. His defense was he would have stopped the fraud if only “somebody told me something was wrong.” Scott pleaded the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination 75 times.

    Rick Scott wants to shut down the federal Department of Education. He believes education should be a state function. Under his plan there would be no agency to coordinate national education standards. One state may approve a 12-year-old student’s reading skill at a second-grade level, and another expect the 12-year-old student to read at a fifth-grade level. What if the family moves to another state? Based on reading skills, will some children of the same age be graduating high school while others are still in junior high?

    As a senator, Rick Scott stated if he was still governor he would have signed the Florida six-week abortion ban. Dr. Bruce Shephard, a retired Tampa OB/GYN who delivered over 7,500 babies over a 40-year career, stated women typically find out about abnormalities and genetic conditions at their 18-week ultrasound. The doctor called the six-week abortion ban “archaic, dangerous, and a nightmare.” 

    In June of this year, Rick Scott voted against the Right to Contraception Act, along with 38 other GOP senators. Scott led 22 of these senators in a statement they felt the bill “infringes on the parental rights and religious liberties of some Americans.” Religions have their own rules, and politics should have theirs. Contraceptives are a means of birth control, and a responsible alternative to unwanted pregnancies and abortion. 

    Sen. Scott has declared his intention to become the new leader of the Republican Senate with more power to implement his intentions. His ideas jeopardize Social Security, Medicare, public schooling, safe abortion, women’s health, birth control and more.

    At 70 years old he is one of the wealthiest members of Congress, with an estimated worth of over $260 million. Unlike many of us, Scott doesn’t rely on Social Security to pay his monthly bills. Rick Scott has failed to show reasonable, rational and responsible understanding of how to govern in our best interests. Vote NO to re-elect Rick Scott.

    — Bill Summerfield, Ocala

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  • A Democrat Could Make Rick Scott Spend It All in Florida’s Senate Race

    A Democrat Could Make Rick Scott Spend It All in Florida’s Senate Race

    Scott is sweating what should have been a pretty easy reelection.
    Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

    Back in 1980, former West Virginia Governor Arch Moore was running a hopeless campaign against his successor Jay Rockefeller, whose immense family wealth extinguished any real hope for an upset. His campaign deployed a legendary bumper sticker that read: “Make Him Spend It All, Arch!”

    That could also be the slogan for Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell’s long-shot campaign against the richest member of the U.S. Senate today, Florida’s Rick Scott. Florida is a state that has been trending sharply Republican in recent years, as my colleague Gabriel Debenedetti explained in 2023 after a notably disastrous election cycle for Democrats:

    Although Obama won it twice, no Democrat has been elected governor in the state since 1994, and recent years have seen Democrats encountering problems turning out Black Floridians. In probably the best-known shift, Democrats have also begun struggling more than ever before with Latino voters in south Florida.

    One casualty of that trend was Mucarsel-Powell, who briefly represented a Miami-Dade County congressional district before being upset in 2020. Now she’s doing a very creditable job in her first statewide race, hammering Scott for MAGA extremism generally and for reactionary views on abortion in particular. Scott has a large war chest combining $13 million in self-funding (as of the end of July) with the big donor base he developed as past chairman of the Senate Republicans’ fundraising arm. But it’s likely he’ll drop a lot more dough before it’s over: in his first Senate race in 2018 and in two previous (successful) gubernatorial runs, he spent a total of more than $150 million of his own money on his campaigns. Democrats love to remind voters that their senator made his bundle in stock and severance pay after leaving a burning building at the for-profit hospital chain he founded, Columbia/HCA, which soon got zapped with over a billion smackers in fines for Medicare fraud (Scott himself was never charged with criminal wrong-doing).

    While Scott continues to plunder his children’s inheritance, polls continue to show this race as closer than expected and perhaps getting closer. The incumbent leads in the RealClearPolitics averages by 4.3 percent, but each new poll shows Mucarsel-Powell gaining; most recently a September survey from Emerson showed the race statistically tied, as The Hill reported:

    Scott leads Mucarsel-Powell 46 percent to 45 percent among likely Florida voters, well within the survey’s plus or minus 3.4 point margin of error. Nine percent of voters said they are undecided. 

    Among independent voters, 47 percent said they back Mucarsel-Powell and 34 percent broke for Scott, while 19 percent said they are undecided. Mucarsel-Powell leads Scott by 5 points among women voters, and Scott led Mucarsel-Powell by 8 points among men. 

    The poll also found Mucarsel-Powell polling ahead of Scott with the state’s Hispanic vote by 6 points, while Scott led Mucarsel-Powell by 19 points among white voters. 

    One problem Scott has brought onto himself stems from his recent efforts to make himself a power in the Senate Republican Conference and a national MAGA star. He feuded with and unsuccessfully challenged Mitch McConnell, and he’s running again as the Trumpiest option for succeeding McConnel. Perhaps in preparation for these gambits, in 2022 he released (and then subsequently toned down slightly) a truly wild “11-Point Plan to Save America” that is to Florida Democrats what Project 2025 has become to Democrats nationally. It included a total sunsetting of federal programs every five years (he later remembered the state he represents and exempted Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. Navy from this death sentence), and minimum income taxes on working poor people whose tax liability is eliminated by tax credits.

    Like other Florida Republicans, Scott has also been wrong-footed by Ron DeSantis’s presidential-campaign-driven six-week abortion ban (which Scott initially supported, but then, like Trump, suggested was a bit too strict) and the subsequent ballot initiative to restore Roe v. Wade’s protections for pre-viability abortions as part of the State Constitution. Scott naturally opposes this amendment, which will likely win a majority of the vote in November and may top the 60 percent supermajority required for enactment. Mucarsel-Powell is criticizing Scott constantly for being on the wrong side of this issue. In another parallel to the national campaign, the Democrat is also pounding Scott for his vote against a bipartisan border deal and for having nothing constructive to offer on immigration policy (Mucarsel-Powell is herself an immigrant from Ecuador). Scott, of course, is labeling his opponent as a “socialist” who is relying on non-citizen voting for victory. Mucarsel-Powell was smart to get out in front of one issue by harshly attacking Venezuela’s Maduro regime and its recent efforts to reverse an apparent election defeat.

    The possibility that Scott could actually lose this race is manna from heaven for Democrats not just in Florida, but nationally. They are hanging onto control of the Senate by their fingernails. And with Joe Manchin’s seat already lost and Jon Tester’s in grave peril, an upset win over Scott or over his fellow MAGA bravo Ted Cruz–who’s having his own problems with Republican extremism on abortion–could produce the miracle they need (in addition, of course, to a Harris presidential win that would make Tim Walz the Senate tie-breaker). But if nothing else, maybe Mucarsel-Powell can indeed make Rick Scott spend it all.


    See All



    Ed Kilgore

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  • Senator Rick Scott: Biden and Harris Driving America’s Economy into Ground

    Senator Rick Scott: Biden and Harris Driving America’s Economy into Ground

    Florida Senator Rick Scott slammed President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, saying the Democrats are driving America’s economy into the ground.

    In a recent video, the Republican Senator called out the Biden-Harris administration’s failed economic policies that he said “are killing American businesses and economy.”

    “It’s no secret that Bidenomics and Harris price hikes are crushing our economy and making the American dream feel out of reach,” Florida Senator Rick Scott said. “We can only fix this problem if Washington politicians face the facts.”

    The Florida Republican incumbent wants to “stop the tax and spending spree” in order to get America’s fiscal house in order.

    Senator Scott also released an update on his actions to address the Biden-Harris administration’s economic crisis and skyrocketing inflation, along with his own quarterly economic snapshot.

    In the video, the Florida Senator points out “the soaring cost of breakfast,” and the national debt problem. He added that “choices made by Washington elites are directly impacting your bottom line.”

    Sen. Rick Scott also channeled Republican President Donald Trump in his political messaging.

    “As Florida’s U.S. Senator, I’m fighting like hell to make our economy great again so that every American can live their American dream,” the Republican concluded in the political video message.

     

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  • ‘Clown show’: Florida Democrats respond to Rubio, Scott and DeSantis RNC speeches

    ‘Clown show’: Florida Democrats respond to Rubio, Scott and DeSantis RNC speeches

    click to enlarge

    The Florida Democratic Party called Tuesday evening’s Republican National Convention speeches from Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio “a clown show” and a “circus.”

    “The Republican Party can preach ‘unity’ all night long but the only thing they are united on is sending America backwards,” Democrati chair Nikki Fried said in a news release Wednesday following what she called “Florida Night” at the RNC.

    The three took the stage during the second day of the convention in Milwaukee, where the party has nominated former President Donald Trump as its candidate for president.

    DeSantis took the stage that evening and expressed support for Trump, with whom he’d traded jabs before dropping out of the primaries.

    DeSantis called President Joe Biden a “figurehead” and touted his own success in boosting Republican voter registration in the state, plus his COVID-19 response, attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and support for “parental rights” in education.

    Fried said DeSantis “recycled old talking points from his failed presidential campaign.”

    She criticized the senators, too, highlighting that Scott was absent from recent votes taken in the Senate and that Rubio “limped” on stage following the announcement that he would not be Trump’s vice-presidential candidate.

    Scott spoke for just over five minutes, rounding it out with a call to voters to courageously support Trump.

    “Donald Trump has given up a lot for this country,” Scott said. “His family has been slandered, he’s been impeached, censored, treated as a criminal, all because he never backs down. This week he has shown the courage all of us should display as we rally around him to rescue our great country.”

    Scott said he had a “not far-fetched nightmare” that Biden won a second term, whereupon gas prices rose $10, only rich people could buy groceries, and Democrats rigged elections.

    All three Florida Republicans dwelled on border security and inflation, asking convention-goers to recall how much everyday items cost during the Trump compared to the Biden presidencies.

    Rubio’s speech called for an “America first” attitude, and he gave a shoutout to Trump’s pick for vice president, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, a Republican representing Ohio. Rubio said Vance reminds “us we are all descendants of ordinary people who achieve extraordinary things.”

    DeSantis called for increased border security, universal school choice, “a strong, focused” military, and lowering taxes.

    U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds made an appearance on Monday. He spent the bulk of his time advocating for school choice.

    Fried argued that electing Biden would lead to true unity.

    “These dangerous and extreme policies are the backbone of the modern Republican Party and represent a vision for America that threatens to take us back to a time when we had fewer rights,” Fried said.

    Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: [email protected]. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.

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    Jay Waagmeester, Florida Phoenix

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  • Rick Scott Celebrates Abortion Ban By Cutting Umbilical Cord Of Woman Forced To Carry Baby To Term

    Rick Scott Celebrates Abortion Ban By Cutting Umbilical Cord Of Woman Forced To Carry Baby To Term

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  • Florida Republicans oust party chairman Christian Ziegler, who is accused of rape

    Florida Republicans oust party chairman Christian Ziegler, who is accused of rape

    Florida GOP ousted chairman Christian Ziegler


    Florida GOP ousted chairman Christian Ziegler

    00:27

    The Republican Party of Florida ousted Chairman Christian Ziegler in a special vote on Monday as police investigate a rape accusation against him, a vote that came the week before Gov. Ron DeSantis competes in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation presidential caucus.

    The party suspended Ziegler last month and demanded his resignation, saying he can’t effectively lead during a critical election year with the allegations, which Ziegler denies, swirling around him. Gov. Ron DeSantis, U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, and other Republican leaders have called on Ziegler to step down, but he has refused.

    DeSantis is seeking the GOP nomination for president, but ahead of the Jan. 15 Iowa caucus he trails far behind former President Donald Trump, who also is a Floridian. Scott is running for reelection. Florida also will play a key role in determining control of the U.S. House.

    “We have to move past this and have to focus on 2024,” said state Sen. Joe Gruters, who preceded Ziegler as party chair. “Florida’s one of the most important states for the Republicans and we have to continue to bring home victories, especially for Rick Scott and the top of the ticket with Trump as our nominee, eventually.”

    Beyond the rape accusation, there is another troublesome element for the party. Under DeSantis, Florida has stripped rights away from LGBTQ+ Floridians and banned instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in schools.

    Ziegler and his wife, Bridget Ziegler, have admitted to police that they previously had a consensual sexual relationship with Christian Ziegler’s accuser. Bridget Ziegler is an elected member of the Sarasota School Board and co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a national conservative activist group that has successfully gotten members elected to school boards across the U.S. She has not been accused of a crime.

    On Monday afternoon, Derek Byrd, Ziegler’s attorney said, “I represent Mr. Ziegler in his criminal matter, but have nothing to do with his ’employment.’ I have no comment until the criminal investigation has concluded. Thanks for understanding.”

    Bridget Ziegler also was appointed by DeSantis last year to the board of the governing district for Walt Disney World. DeSantis and the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature last year took control of the district in retaliation after Disney publicly opposed a state law banning classroom lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. The law was championed by DeSantis.

    The Sarasota Police Department is investigating the woman’s accusation that Ziegler raped her at her apartment in October. Police documents say the Zieglers and the woman had planned a sexual threesome that day, but Bridget Ziegler was unable to attend. The accuser says Christian Ziegler arrived anyway and assaulted her.

    Christian Ziegler has not been charged with a crime and says he is innocent, contending the encounter was consensual.

    Bridget Ziegler is not accused of any crime. The Sarasota School Board asked her to resign last month but she refused. DeSantis-appointed board members of the Disney World governing district made no direct mention of Bridget Ziegler’s situation at their meeting last month, even though it was raised by a member of the public who said her hypocrisy should disqualify her from serving.

    The couple have been outspoken opponents of LGBTQ+ rights and their relationship with another woman has sparked criticism and accusations of hypocrisy.

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  • Could a Democrat Beat Rick Scott in Florida’s US Senate Race?

    Could a Democrat Beat Rick Scott in Florida’s US Senate Race?

    When Senator Joe Manchin announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection in West Virginia, Democrats’ uphill battle to maintain their Senate majority in 2024 became steeper. Manchin has long been viewed as the only Democrat who could win in deep red West Virginia—a state Donald Trump carried by nearly 40 points in the last presidential race. The onus on the party now? “You got to go find a state” to flip a seat in, one Democratic strategist told me, describing the new world status. More pointedly, the party needs to widen its aperture beyond states Joe Biden carried in 2020.

    Thus, Democrats seem to have shifted their focus to Florida.

    Among the political chattering class, Rick Scott is viewed as one of the more vulnerable Republicans in the Senate. Spurned by the Republican establishment and deemed one of the least popular Florida politicians among voters in the state, Scott presents as a reasonable target on paper. He’s also only won races on the margins. In the 2018 Senate race, he beat Democrat Bill Nelson with a result of just 50.1% to 49.9%. In his first gubernatorial bid, Scott won with just 48.9% of the vote to Democrat Alex Sink’s 47.7%. In seeking reelection in 2014, Scott eked out a victory for Florida governor over Democrat Charlie Crist by an even smaller margin, 48.2% to 47.1%. But a win is a win, and winning three statewide races in Florida is nothing to scoff at. “I do think Scott, to give him credit, is an underrated political figure,” Steve Schale, a Florida-based Democratic strategist who serves as CEO of the Biden-supporting PAC Unite the Country, told me. He added that while Scott is often “discounted because of his personality,” he has “proven that he’s got the discipline to stay on message.”

    Then there is the matter of Scott’s pocketbook. One of the wealthiest members of the Senate, Scott has shown that he has no qualms about dipping into his personal fortune to fund his political ambitions; in 2018, he dumped nearly $64 million of his own money into his Senate bid to eke out a razor-thin victory. And in Florida, one of the most costly states in which to run a campaign, money matters. When Michigan senator Gary Peters, who is running Senate Democrats’ campaign arm this cycle, put targets on the backs of Scott and Texas senator Ted Cruz—saying the two lawmakers were “not strong in their states”—Scott shot back defiantly. “I wouldn’t want to run against me,” he told CNN.

    Democrats insist, however, that they have found the perfect foil to Scott in former representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. “She’s probably as striking a contrast to Rick Scott as you could possibly get,” said Jim Margolis, a Democratic media consultant working on Powell’s campaign, in an interview with VF. “She is the anti–Rick Scott.” And Democrats intend to turn the campaign into an exercise in contrasts: Whereas Scott is one of the wealthiest members of the US Senate, Mucarsel-Powell is an immigrant who worked at a donut shop for minimum wage as a young teen in America; while Scott arguably made himself the face of the Republican Party’s effort to gut entitlement programs, Mucarsel-Powell wrote the bill in the US House to expand Medicare; and as Scott expressed support for federal abortion restrictions and backed Florida’s six-week ban, Mucarsel-Powell continued to be an outspoken advocate for reproductive rights.

    Democrats hope that Mucarsel-Powell is the right messenger for the moment. With the candidate being a Spanish-fluent Latina woman running for US Senate in Florida, Democrats argue that she is uniquely positioned to win back the support of the state’s Hispanic community, which the Democratic Party has bled in recent cycles. “Can Debbie find the money to be competitive, and can she change the numbers among Hispanics? I think the more that she can do [that], the more the money’s going to come,” said Schale, who worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns in Florida. “I definitely think Florida’s trended Republican—I’m not an idiot. But I don’t think it’s gone from a state that Obama won by three or four points, or a state that was basically a dead tie five years ago in the governor’s race, to a 20-point Republican state overnight. It hasn’t happened. And a lot of that top of the ticket has been impacted by the fact that we’re doing terrible with Hispanics here.” 

    Early polling shows that Mucarsel-Powell might be the right candidate to change Democrats’ luck in Florida. According to a poll of likely general election voters in the state, commissioned by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and conducted by the Global Strategy Group in July, 62% of Latino voters find Scott appealing, while 79% of Latino voters find Mucarsel-Powell appealing. Notably, Mucarsel-Powell also outperformed President Biden by six points in Florida in her 2020 run for the US House (though she ultimately lost)—suggesting that voters could split their ticket in 2024 to send her to the Senate, even if they don’t vote for the president.

    Abigail Tracy

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

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



    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

    And that’s just one state.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Rick Scott Suggests ‘Automatic Death Penalty’ For School Shooters

    Rick Scott Suggests ‘Automatic Death Penalty’ For School Shooters

    Congress ought to consider a mandatory death penalty for school shooters, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said Monday after the latest high-profile mass shooting this year claimed the lives of seven people at an elementary school in Tennessee.

    “We need to consider an automatic death penalty for school shooters,” Scott said on Twitter. “Life in prison is not enough for the deranged monsters who go into our schools to kill innocent kids & educators.”

    It’s not clear if an automatic death penalty would change the calculus for would-be mass shooters since they often die at the scene of their crimes. On Monday, for instance, police shot and killed the 28-year-old woman who allegedly murdered three children and three adults at a private school in Nashville, Tennessee.

    Scott’s suggestion showcases Republicans’ unwillingness to consider gun control measures as a way of reducing gun violence, the leading cause of death among children as of 2020.

    President Joe Biden, by contrast, almost immediately repeated his call for a ban on assault weapons.

    “The shooter in this situation reportedly had two assault weapons and a pistol,” Biden said Monday at the White House, referring to early information from Nashville police. “I call on Congress again to pass my assault weapons ban.”

    A school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last year helped motivate Congress to modestly expand the FBI’s gun background check system and provide funding for mental health services, but lawmakers never seriously entertained a ban on assault rifles, even though they’re often the weapon of choice for mass shooters.

    The 18-year-old who used an assault rifle to murder 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde was eventually killed by police.

    “Active shooter” incidents have become more frequent in recent years, according to a recent FBI report that counted 61 such incidents in 2021, up from 40 the previous year and 30 the year before that.

    Of the 61 mass shooters in 2021, 11 died by suicide, 14 were killed by police and four were killed by another civilian, according to the FBI.

    Scott’s proposal for an automatic death sentence for school shooters might not be constitutional. The Supreme Court said in 1976 that automatic death penalty punishments violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

    Scott also called for people to pray for all facing the “unimaginable” in Nashville. “This is horrible & must stop,” he said.

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

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



    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Fact check: Breaking down Biden’s exchanges with Republican senators over Social Security and Medicare | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Breaking down Biden’s exchanges with Republican senators over Social Security and Medicare | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden has gone on the attack over Social Security and Medicare.

    In speeches and tweets this week, Biden and his White House have singled out particular Republican senators – notably including Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin – over proposals from those senators that could affect the retirement and health care programs.

    The Republican senators have responded forcefully, accusing Biden of deceiving the public about where they stand. Here is a fact-check of the exchanges.

    Biden and his White House targeted Lee on Wednesday over a video clip of Lee saying, “I’m here right now to tell you one thing that you probably have never heard from a politician. It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots and get rid of it.” The clip has gone viral on Twitter this week; a second viral clip features Lee saying moments later, “Medicare and Medicaid are of the same sort and need to be pulled up.”

    The videos are authentic, though Biden didn’t tell his Wednesday speech audience in Wisconsin they are from more than 12 years ago – an event in 2010, when Lee was running for the Senate but before he was first elected. And as Lee noted in Wednesday tweets responding to Biden, Biden didn’t mention that Lee added at the same 2010 event that current Medicare beneficiaries should have their benefits “left untouched” and that “the next layer beneath them, those who will retire in the next few years, also probably have to be held harmless.”

    Still, while Biden could have included more context, he was accurate in saying Lee had called for Social Security to be phased out.

    And while Lee said in a tweeted statement on Wednesday that, during his 12 years as a senator, he has not called for “abolishing” Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits, only for “solutions to improve those programs and move them toward solvency,” he has supported benefit cuts. For example, he has endorsed various proposals over the years to raise the Social Security retirement age.

    Since last year, Biden has criticized Scott over particular components of what Scott calls his “12 Point Plan to Rescue America.”

    In the State of the Union address on Tuesday and in speeches on Wednesday and Thursday, the president referred to a part of Scott’s plan that says, “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” Biden correctly asserted that “all federal legislation” would include Social Security and Medicare, which do not currently require congressional re-approval.

    Scott responded by accusing Biden of being dishonest and confused. Scott argued on Twitter on Wednesday that while his plan does say that “all” federal legislation should sunset in five years and become subject to a new vote by Congress, “This is clearly & obviously an idea aimed at dealing with ALL the crazy new laws our Congress has been passing of late.”

    But the plan itself doesn’t say that.

    The plan’s official text, which remains online on a dedicated website, says “all federal legislation,” period, should be sunset in five years – not all recent legislation, all crazy legislation or all legislation except for the laws that created Social Security and Medicare. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected Scott’s plan last year, McConnell too said that the plan “sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”

    Last year, Biden sometimes overstated the support for Scott’s sunset proposal among congressional Republicans, which appears very limited. Biden has been more precise in his speeches this week, attributing the proposal to Scott himself or accurately saying in the State of the Union that “some” Republicans – “I’m not saying it’s a majority” – support it.

    Biden may have created an inaccurate impression, however, by mentioning the sunset proposal during the section of the State of the Union in which he discussed the battle over the debt ceiling. There is no indication that House Republicans are pushing this proposal as part of the current debt ceiling negotiations with the Biden administration, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has, more generally, said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are “off the table” in these negotiations.

    Scott, in turn, has tossed a false claim into the debate with Biden this week by repeatedly accusing the president of having cut billions from Medicare in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. The Inflation Reduction Act did not cut Medicare benefits; rather, it allowed the government and seniors to spend less money to buy prescription drugs – and, in fact, simultaneously made Medicare benefits more generous to seniors. The claim of a Medicare cut was repeatedly debunked last year, when Scott and a Republican campaign organization he chaired used it during the midterm elections.

    On Friday afternoon, the day after McConnell told a Kentucky radio station that Scott’s proposal will be a “challenge” for Scott’s own 2024 re-election campaign in a state with a large population of seniors, Scott announced he is introducing a new bill that would make it more difficult for Congress to make any cuts to Social Security and Medicare and that would send the Inflation Reduction Act’s $80 billion in Internal Revenue Service funding to Social Security and Medicare instead.

    This week and in numerous previous speeches, Biden has castigated Johnson for saying last year that Medicare and Social Security should be treated as discretionary spending, which Congress has to approve every year, rather than as permanent entitlements.

    Biden has accurately cited Johnson’s remarks this week. Here’s what Johnson told a Green Bay radio show in August: “We’ve got to turn everything into discretionary spending, so it’s all evaluated, so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt. Because, again, as long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up debt.” When Johnson faced criticism for those remarks at the time, he stood by them and said that was his consistent longtime position.

    Johnson, however, claimed Wednesday that Biden was “lying” when the president discussed Johnson’s comments shortly after saying that some Republicans want to “cut” Social Security. Johnson has repeatedly said that his proposal to require annual approval for Social Security spending, and to “fix” and “save” Social Security in light of its poor fiscal shape at present, does not mean that he wants to put the programs on the “chopping block” or even to “cut” it.

    “The Democrats have been accusing me, since the first time I ran for office, of wanting to end Social Security, wanting to cut it, wanting to gut it, wanting to – I’ve never said that. I’ve always been consistent: I want to save it,” he said in a radio interview this week.

    It’s impossible to definitively fact-check this particular dispute without Johnson specifying how he wants to “fix” and “save” the program. His office did not respond to a CNN request for comment.

    White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates noted in an email to reporters on Thursday that, though Johnson accused Biden this week of lying about his stance on Social Security, Johnson also said in interviews this week that Social Security is a “legal Ponzi scheme” and that “Social Security might be in a more stable position for younger workers” if the government had proceeded with Republican President George W. Bush’s controversial and eventually abandoned proposal in the mid-2000s to allow workers born after 1949 to divert a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts in which they could buy into the stock market and make other investments.

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

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



    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • 2024 GOP rivals court donors at big Las Vegas meeting, and some warn Trump is

    2024 GOP rivals court donors at big Las Vegas meeting, and some warn Trump is

    The Republican Party’s nascent 2024 class, emboldened as ever, openly cast Donald Trump as “a loser” over and over on Friday as they courted donors and activists fretting about the GOP’s future under the former president’s leadership.

    Trump’s vocal critics included current and former Republican governors, members of his own Cabinet and major donors who gathered along the Las Vegas strip for what organizers described as the unofficial beginning of the next presidential primary season. It was a remarkable display of defiance for a party defined almost wholly by its allegiance to Trump for the past six years.

    “Maybe there’s a little blood in the water and the sharks are circling,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican presidential prospect himself and frequent Trump critic said in an interview. “I don’t think we’ve ever gotten to this point before.”

    The gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting, which began Friday, comes just days after Trump became the first candidate to formally launch a 2024 campaign. His allies hoped his early announcement might ward off serious primary challenges, but several potential candidates said that’s not likely after Trump loyalists lost midterm contests last week in battleground states from Arizona to Pennsylvania. His political standing within the GOP, already weakening, plummeted further.

    Ahead of his Friday night address, Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State under Trump, mocked one of his former boss’ slogans: “We were told we’d get tired of winning. But I’m tired of losing.”

    “Personality, celebrity just aren’t going to get it done,” he said later from the ballroom stage.

    Trump is scheduled to address the weekend gathering by video conference on Saturday. The vast majority of the high-profile Republican officials considering a 2024 White House bid appeared in person the two-day conference, which included a series of private donor meetings and public speeches.

    The program featured DeSantis, a leading Trump rival, and Pence, whom Trump blames for not overturning the 2020 election. Other speakers included Hogan, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Florida Sen. Rick Scott.

    Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, another potential 2024 contender, canceled his appearance after a Sunday shooting at the University of Virginia that left three dead.

    House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who could become the House speaker when Republicans take over in January, is also scheduled.

    There seemed to be little sympathy for Trump’s latest legal challenges.

    Hours before Friday’s opening dinner, Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.

    Sununu, the New Hampshire governor who easily won reelection last week, said there was no sign that his party would rally to Trump’s defense this time.

    “Those are his issues to sort out,” Sununu said. “Everyone’s gonna sit back and watch the show. And that’s not just his supporters — that’s his money, that’s donors, that’s fundraisers,” said the Republican governor, who easily won reelection last week. “We’re just moving on.”

    With a loyal base of support among rank-and-file voters and a sprawling fundraising operation featuring small-dollar contributions, Trump does not need major donors or party leaders to reach for the GOP nomination a third time. But unwillingness by big-money Republicans to commit to him — at least, for now — could make his path back to the White House more difficult.

    There was little sign of enthusiasm for Trump’s 2024 presidential aspirations in the hallways and conference rooms of the weekend gathering. At Friday night’s dinner, organizers offered attendees yarmulkes bearing Trump’s name, but there were few takers.

    That’s even as Jewish Republicans continued to heap praise on Trump’s commitment to Israel while in the White House.

    “There’s no question that what President Trump accomplished over his four years in terms of strengthening the the U.S.-Israel relationship was unparalleled. He was the most pro-Israel president ever,” said Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s executive director.

    But that may not be enough to win over the coalition’s leading donors this time.

    “For a lot of people who are attending this conference, this is about the future,” Brooks said. “And for some of them, President Trump may be their answer. For others, they’re interested in what others have to say.”

    New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie leaned into Trump’s political failures during a private dinner with the group’s leading donors on Thursday. In a subsequent interview, he did not back down.

    “In my view, he’s now a loser. He’s an electoral loser,” said Christie, another 2024 prospect. “You look at a general electorate, I don’t think there’s a Democrat he can beat because he’s now toxic to suburban voters on a personal level, and he’s earned it.”

    The annual event is playing out at the Las Vegas Strip’s Venetian Hotel in a nod to the Republican Jewish Coalition’s longtime benefactor, Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate who died last year. His wife Miriam Adelson remains a fundraising force within the GOP, though her level of giving in the recent midterm election, which exceeded $20 million, was somewhat scaled back.

    The 76-year-old Israeli-born Miriam Adelson “is staying neutral” in the GOP’s 2024 presidential primary, according to the family’s longtime political gatekeeper Andy Abboud.

    She is not alone.

    Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress and heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, backed Trump’s previous campaigns but has no plans to support him in 2024, according to a Lauder spokesman.

    Longtime Trump backer Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group investment firm, told Axios this week that he would back someone from a “new generation” of Republicans. Kenneth C. Griffin, the hedge-fund billionaire, is already openly backing DeSantis.

    On Friday, aerospace CEO Phillip Friedman described himself as a “big Trump supporter,” but said he’s open to listening to others moving forward.

    “There’s a couple other people who have his policies but don’t have the baggage,” Friedman said of Trump.

    In his keynote address, Pence focused largely on the Trump administration’s accomplishments, but included a few indirect jabs at the former president.

    “To win the future,” Pence said, “we as Republicans and elected leaders must do more than criticize and complain.”

    He was more direct i n an interview this week.

    “I think we will have better choices in 2024,” Pence told The Associated Press. “And I’m very confident that Republican primary voters will choose wisely.”

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  • Senator Mitch McConnell wins reelection for Senate minority leader

    Senator Mitch McConnell wins reelection for Senate minority leader

    Senator Mitch McConnell wins reelection for Senate minority leader – CBS News


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    Senator Mitch McConnell has won reelection for Senate minority leader over challenger Rick Scott. CBS News congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane joins “Red and Blue” to discuss what McConnell is saying about the midterm elections and more.

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  • Paul Pelosi attack unleashes partisan finger-pointing and sows fresh fears of political violence | CNN Politics

    Paul Pelosi attack unleashes partisan finger-pointing and sows fresh fears of political violence | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    America’s toxic politics quickly turned the brutal attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband into the latest vicious partisan fight – even before the full facts are known.

    Police have yet to ascribe a motive to the attack on Paul Pelosi, 82, after a man broke into the couple’s home in San Francisco. They have said the alleged assailant was intentional about going to the house, and he shouted out, “Where is Nancy?” CNN has reported.

    Eight days before critical midterm elections, the intense political reaction had already outraced the investigation even before the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of California on Monday filed charges of attempted kidnapping of a US official and assault against the suspect in the case, David DePape, 42.

    Republicans, while condemning the violence, are denying they have any culpability in fostering a poisoned political environment. Some even used it to pivot to new attempts to sow doubt on the integrity of US elections.

    In another sign of an ugly time, Pelosi’s misfortune is already the subject of outrageous conspiracies – amplified for a time by the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, in a possible sign of how the social network could develop under his leadership. Ex-President Donald Trump’s son, Don Jr., also pushed false claims about the attack that were in deeply poor taste.

    Reports confirmed by CNN that the suspect posted memes and conspiracy theories on Facebook about Covid-19 vaccines, the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, insurrection renewed the debate about how much responsibility political leaders have to temper inflammatory rhetoric in order to avoid triggering violence.

    The suspect in the case has not been arraigned, but Democrats, including President Joe Biden, are warning that the attack on the Pelosi is just the latest inevitable consequence of a GOP overtaken by its extreme fringe.

    “What makes us think that one party can talk about ‘stolen elections,’ ‘Covid being a hoax,’ ‘this is all a bunch of lies,’ and it not affect people who may not be so well balanced?” Biden said on Friday.

    “What makes us think that it’s not going to corrode the political climate?”

    This was a question even before the Paul Pelosi attack given that many Republican candidates have tried to energize their base by putting Trump’s false claims about a stolen election in 2020 at the center of their midterm election campaigns.

    Trump, who’s still the de facto leader of the GOP, has yet to fully condemn the attack on Paul Pelosi. In an interview on Spanish-language Americano Media on Monday, the ex-President called the attack “a terrible thing” and then quickly connected it to Republican criticisms of rising crime in US cities.

    But dozens of Republicans – from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Vice President Mike Pence and GOP House conference chair Elise Stefanik – have offered stronger condemnations.

    At the same time, top Republicans on Sunday dodged on whether their side especially had fostered a dangerous political climate after embracing election falsehoods and blamed both sides equally for political turmoil.

    The gulf between the two parties in the aftermath of the attack underscored the nation’s internal political estrangement ahead of next week’s election. It suggested Republicans are unwilling to get crosswise with their voters by being more critical of the extremism pulsating through the GOP base. And political shock waves of the incident also showed how Democrats are keen to link rising threats against lawmakers and their families with Trump’s political movement as raging inflation threatens to deal them a heavy defeat at the ballot box.

    Yet the aftermath of the assault represents more than just another fault line between Republicans and Democrats and points to something more than rote arguments of equivalence between rival politicians.

    It took place in a time scarred by the January 6 insurrection, which established that in a festering political atmosphere cultivated and incited by Trump, individuals can be inspired to carry out acts of violence. The overwhelming majority of the ex-President’s supporters have not acted on his false claims of a stolen election. But while leading Republicans are right to argue the political attacks have targeted prominent figures on both sides, only one party features members who are excusing, downplaying, or denying the violence of January 6 and amplifying false claims of a stolen election that have been proven to incite violence.

    It was a sign of a worsening political environment that Musk gave credence to a fringe conspiracy theory about the Paul Pelosi attack. He tweeted and then deleted a link to an article on a website that purports to be a news outlet, CNN’s Oliver Darcy and Donie O’Sullivan reported. The conspiracy theory was later amplified on Twitter by Trump Jr.

    And in another troubling development this weekend that wasn’t linked to the Pelosi case but underscored worrying extremism coming to the surface of American politics, a series of antisemitic messages appeared in public spaces – including a football stadium, a highway overpass and a downtown building in Jacksonville, Florida.

    Top Republicans on Sunday condemned the Pelosi attack as a despicable crime, but they tended to see it in isolation from current political tensions, even though the GOP has long demonized the speaker in hard-hitting ad campaigns. Instead, Republicans suggested it’s symptomatic of the rising violent crime they pin on Democrats.

    “It’s disgusting. This violence is horrible,” Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who runs the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that his heart went out to Paul Pelosi and wished him a full recovery. But Scott quickly pivoted to highlight a Republican canvasser whom his fellow Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has said was attacked in Miami for political reasons. (After the incident, Rubio accused the media of not caring about violence when it targets Republicans.)

    Scott also tried to move on in the interview to tacitly raise fresh suspicions about the US electoral system in coded language. Asked by CNN’s Dana Bash whether Republicans should do more to condemn dangerous rhetoric and conspiracy theories, Scott replied: “We have to do everything we can to … make sure people feel comfortable about these elections. We have got to do everything we can to get people comfortable that this election in nine days is going to be free and fair, that people’s votes are all going to be counted fairly.”

    The reason why millions of Americans have lost confidence in elections – despite repeated court rulings rejecting Trump’s fraud claims and his own Justice Department’s statement that 2020 lacked major irregularities – is that the ex-President and many GOP allies are still falsely saying the election was stolen.

    Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, rejected the idea that the attack on Paul Pelosi was an inevitable consequence of rising Republican rhetorical attacks on Democratic politicians.

    “We don’t like this at all across the board. We don’t want to see attacks on any politician from any political background,” McDaniel said on “Fox News Sunday.”

    She also claimed that Biden had not condemned a suspect arrested near Brett Kavanaugh’s home who has been charged with attempting to murder the conservative Supreme Court justice. (After the arrest, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Biden believed any threats, violence or attempt to intimidate judges had no place in US society.)

    House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has yet to deliver a full-throated public condemnation of the assault on Paul Pelosi on camera or on his official social media accounts or to release a detailed statement. The California Republican did tell Fox on Sunday he had texted with the speaker to express concern and his hopes for her husband’s full recovery.

    “Let me be perfectly clear, violence or threat of violence has no place in our society. What happened to Paul Pelosi is wrong,” he told Fox.

    The lack of a more public reaction by McCarthy is notable since he could be speaker himself, if Republicans win the House next week, and would have the responsibility of fulfilling the institutional duties of a role that is sometimes supposed to supersede partisan politics. This will lead to questions of whether he is catering to his fervently pro-Trump conference.

    His comments also appear less direct than Speaker Pelosi’s reaction to the shooting of GOP Whip Steve Scalise at a congressional baseball practice in 2017, which she described as a “despicable and cowardly attack” on Congress itself and said at such times there were “no Democrats or Republicans.” After Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was informed that the deceased suspect in the shooting volunteered on his Democratic presidential campaign, he took to the Senate floor to condemn political violence “in the strongest possible terms.”

    The Pelosi attack is also highlighting concerns about the general tone of some Republican advertising, which sometimes features candidates wielding guns.

    Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, the chair of the GOP’s House campaign arm, denied there was anything tonally off about a video he tweeted last week that showed him firing a rifle with the hashtag #FirePelosi.

    Emmer said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the tweet was about “Exercising our Second Amendment rights, having fun.”

    Another Republican who could have a big role in a future majority is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. The pro-Trump Republican said such attacks “shouldn’t happen to Paul Pelosi. It shouldn’t happen to innocent Americans. It shouldn’t happen to me,” claiming she received death threats every day.

    In 2021, a CNN KFile review of hundreds of posts and comments on Greene’s Facebook page showed she repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019, including Pelosi, before being elected to Congress.

    Leading Democrats were quick to make a link between such extremist rhetoric and the rise of violence and intimidation that has seen threats rise against political candidates and even some groups show up to monitor drop boxes in states like Arizona in moves Democrats have criticized as attempts at voter intimidation.

    Some of them reacted to reports that the alleged assailant in the Paul Pelosi incident had asked where his wife was, and immediately drew conclusions not yet supported by details released by police. Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, for instance, tweeted that a “far right white nationalist tried to assassinate the Speaker of the House and almost killed her husband a year after violent insurrectionists tried to find her and kill her in the Capitol, and the Republican Party’s response is to either ignore it or belittle it.”

    Biden was more temperate but also made the link to far-right wing rhetoric at a fundraising event in Pennsylvania on Friday, referring to the alleged assailants’ demands of “where is Nancy?”

    “Every person of good conscience needs to clearly and unambiguously stand up against the violence in our politics regardless what your politics are,” Biden said.

    Former President Barack Obama made a wider argument about how the coarsening of political dialogue risked new eruptions of violence – and squarely put the blame on Republicans.

    “This habit of saying the worst about other people, demonizing people, that creates a dangerous climate,” the former President said at a campaign event in Wisconsin on Saturday.

    “If elected officials don’t do more explicitly to reject this kind of over-the-top crazy rhetoric, if they keep on ignoring it or tacitly supporting it or in some cases encouraging it, if they’re telling supporters, ‘you’ve got to stand outside polling places armed with guns and dressed in tactical gear,’ that’s the kind of thing that ends up getting people hurt.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Rick Scott calls attack on Paul Pelosi ‘disgusting’ but dodges questions about election conspiracies shared by alleged assailant | CNN Politics

    Rick Scott calls attack on Paul Pelosi ‘disgusting’ but dodges questions about election conspiracies shared by alleged assailant | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who chairs the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, on Sunday called the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, “disgusting” but dodged questions about election conspiracy theories that were shared by the alleged attacker on social media.

    “It’s disgusting, this violence is horrible,” Scott said on “State of the Union” in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. “We had a door-knocker in Florida that was attacked. I mean, this stuff has to stop. … And my heart goes out to Paul Pelosi, and I hope he has a full recovery.”

    Asked by Bash if Republicans should do more to reject false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, insurrection that were shared on social media by Paul Pelosi’s alleged assailant, Scott did not directly respond.

    “I think what we have to do is, one, we have to condemn the violence, and then we have to do everything we can to get people – make sure people feel comfortable about these elections,” the senator said.

    “I think what’s important is everybody do everything we can to make these elections fair,” he reiterated when Bash asked him again about it.

    An intruder, identified by police as David DePape, 42, confronted the 82-year-old Paul Pelosi with a hammer early Friday morning at his San Francisco home, shouting, “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” according to a law enforcement source. The assailant attempted to tie Pelosi up “until Nancy got home,” two sources familiar with the situation told CNN.

    The alleged assailant had posted memes and conspiracy theories on Facebook about Covid vaccines, the 2020 election and the January 6 attack, and an acquaintance told CNN that he seemed “out of touch with reality.”

    Meanwhile, Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, the chair of the House GOP campaign arm, condemned violence broadly in an interview with CBS on Sunday.

    “There’s no place for violence period in our society. Physical violence or violence against someone’s property,” Emmer, who heads the National Republican Congressional Committee, said when asked about political violence. “The incident in San Francisco, tragic as it is, I think we need some more information about it. But we should all be feeling for Paul Pelosi and his family. Hopefully, there’ll be a 100% recovery.”

    But Emmer refused to commit to pulling advertisements targeting Nancy Pelosi. Nor would he commit to taking down a recent tweet, which included a video of him firing a gun and read, “Enjoyed exercising my Second Amendment rights … Let’s #FirePelosi,” telling CBS that he disagreed that the tweet was dangerous.

    “I never saw anyone after Steve Scalise was shot by a Bernie Sanders supporter trying to equate Democrat rhetoric with those actions. Please don’t do that,” Emmer said.

    On Sunday, Bash asked Scott if his successor as Florida governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, should attend an upcoming rally in South Florida headlined by former President Donald Trump. The rally will feature Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who, like DeSantis, is also up for reelection next month, but not DeSantis, amid reports that the relationship between Trump and the governor has grown distant ahead of a possible presidential showdown in 2024.

    “That’s a choice everybody makes. I mean, I know President Trump is trying to make sure we get a majority back in the Senate,” Scott said.

    Scott, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, also predicted the GOP will control “52-plus” Senate seats after the midterm elections.

    “Herschel Walker will win Georgia. We’re going to keep all 21 of ours. (Mehmet) Oz is going to win against Fetterman in Pennsylvania. And Adam Laxalt will win in Nevada,” he said, while also expressing optimism about GOP chances in Arizona and New Hampshire and noting that Republicans “have got shots” in Washington state, Colorado and Connecticut.

    “This is our year,” Scott said.

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  • The Herschel Walker Scandals: A Guide To The Abortion And Domestic Violence Allegations That Have Roiled The Campaign

    The Herschel Walker Scandals: A Guide To The Abortion And Domestic Violence Allegations That Have Roiled The Campaign

    Topline

    Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker remains close in the polls with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) despite regular eruptions of negative stories about Walker’s past that began almost immediately upon his entering the race in August 2021.

    Timeline

    September 2, 2021A friend of Walker’s ex-wife claims he threatened and stalked her in Texas in 2002, according to a police report seen by CNN, throwing a wrench in the Senate candidate’s narrative of being a “family man” (Walker’s campaign declined to comment on the report).

    February 11, 2022A redacted police report seen by the Associated Press reveals another incident in 2001 when police in Irving, Texas, confiscated Walker’s handgun after his therapist called 911, saying he was “volatile,” armed, frightening his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, and toying with the idea of “having a shootout” with police (Walker denied he had ever been abusive toward Grossman in an interview with NBC News).

    August 27, 2022Another woman, Walker’s ex-girlfriend (whose name has not been made public), claims he threatened to kill her after she tried to break up with him in 2012, allegedly telling her that he would “blow her head off” and then kill himself, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported, citing police reports in Irving, Texas (Walker was never charged, and a campaign spokesperson told the outlet the claims are false).

    October 3, 2022In a bombshell Daily Beast report, Walker’s ex-girlfriend alleges the hardline anti-abortion candidate—who has expressed support for a nationwide abortion ban at 15 weeks with no exceptions for rape, incest or risk to the mother—paid her $700 for an abortion in 2009, allegedly telling her it wasn’t the “right time” for him to have a child (Walker fiercely denies the report in a Twitter post, arguing the claim was a “hatchet job from a Democrat activist,” and threatening to file a defamation suit against the Daily Beast for reporting it).

    October 4, 2022Later that day, one of Walker’s sons, popular conservative social media star Christian Walker, slams his dad in a video diatribe posted on Twitter, accusing him of committing “atrocities” against his mom, and arguing he was an absent father to each of his four children—Walker has previously criticized absentee fathers, particularly in African-American households (Walker tweeted in response, “I LOVE my son no matter what”).

    October 7, 2022Days after the Daily Beast report, Walker’s ex-girlfriend tells the New York Times he urged her to have a second abortion in 2011, two years after she claimed he paid for her to have the procedure, although she refused the second time around, giving birth to one of Walker’s four children (Walker’s campaign declined to comment on the allegations to Forbes).

    October 14, 2022Walker comes under fire again after briefly pulling out a “prop” police badge in a debate against incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, saying he’s “never pretended to be a police officer” and claiming the badge is real—even though there is no record of him ever working with law enforcement (Walker had attended training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, in 1989, although there is no evidence he worked with the agency, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported).

    Contra

    Walker, a former NFL running back and Heisman Award winner with the University of Georgia, has admitted to a history of domestic violence, telling Axios last December he is “accountable” for his actions, which he blamed on his mental health issues. He also told Axios he’s recovered from issues, saying he’s “better now than 99%” of Americans. He also addressed his history of mental health in a recent campaign ad, saying “by the grace of God, I’ve overcome it.”

    Surprising Fact

    Recent polling has been mixed. Walker, who was once neck-and-neck with Warnock, tumbled after the abortion scandal broke earlier this month, with a Survey USA poll released October 5 pegging him 12 points behind Warnock among likely Georgia voters (50% to 38%). Last week, however, an Emerson College poll found the two candidates within two percentage points of each other, with Warnock narrowly ahead 48% to 46%. An earlier Emerson survey released in August found Walker ahead 46% to 44%. Both parties have been keeping a close eye on the Senate race, one of a handful that could determine who controls the chamber, which is locked in a 50-50 tie, with Vice President Kamala Harris acting as the tie-breaking vote.

    Tangent

    Despite the recent scandals, major Republican officials have stood by the Trump-endorsed candidate. In a statement earlier this month, Republican Senate Committee Chair, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), said he supports Walker and “Georgians will stand with him, too.” GOP super PAC Senate Leadership Fund leader Steven Law said Walker would “make things better.”

    Further Reading

    Herschel Walker Acknowledges He Gave Ex $700 Check—But Has ‘No Idea’ What For (Forbes)

    Herschel Walker ‘Prop’ Badge: Candidate Has Long Record Of Claiming To Be A Cop (He’s Not) (Forbes)

    Herschel Walker Tumbles In Georgia Senate Poll As Scandals Mount (Forbes)

    Brian Bushard, Forbes Staff

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