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  • Putin’s ruthless power play may not preclude a revival of Ukraine grain deal | CNN Politics

    Putin’s ruthless power play may not preclude a revival of Ukraine grain deal | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Russian President Vladimir Putin just reminded the world that he has the capacity to apply pain far beyond the excruciating torment he’s inflicting on Ukraine.

    Russia’s suspension of a deal allowing the export of Ukrainian grain from a region fabled as the world’s bread basket threatens to cause severe food shortages in Africa and send prices spiraling in supermarkets in the developed world. In the United States, it represents a political risk for President Joe Biden, who is embarking on a reelection campaign and can hardly afford a rebound of the high inflation that hounded US consumers at its peak last year.

    Russia’s decision looked at first sight like a face-saving reprisal for an attack claimed by Ukraine on a bridge linking the annexed Crimean peninsula to the Russian mainland. The bridge was a vanity project for Putin and the apparent assault represented another humiliation for the Russian leader in a war that has gone badly wrong.

    The Black Sea grain deal, agreed last year and brokered by Turkey and the United Nations, was a rare diplomatic ray of light during a war that has shattered Russia’s relations with the US and its allies and has had global reverberations.

    By refusing to renew it, Putin appears again to be seeking to impose a cost on the West, in return for the sanctions strangling the Russian economy. He may reason that a food inflation crisis might help splinter political support in NATO nations for the prolonged and expensive effort to save Ukraine. And grain shortages afflicting innocent people in the developing world could exacerbate international pressure for a negotiated end to a war that has turned into a disaster for Russia.

    The United States and other Western powers reacted to Russia’s announcement that the deal had been “terminated” with outrage, mirroring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s warning that Putin was trying to “weaponize hunger.”

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Russia was trying to use food as a tool in its war on Ukraine, adding that the tactic would make “food harder to come by in places that desperately need it and have prices rise … The bottom line is, it’s unconscionable. It should not happen.”

    Singling Russia out as a moral transgressor might be understandable given the horror it has visited on Ukraine and may rally fury over Putin’s move in the West and the developing world. But humanitarian arguments won’t sway a Russian president who launched an unprovoked onslaught on a sovereign neighbor and is accused of presiding over brutal war crimes.

    Still, Russia’s rhetoric after canceling the deal and the reactions from key players elsewhere in Eurasia suggest that the agreement may not be quite as terminated as the Kremlin claims. There’s a chance Putin sees a grain showdown as a way to improve his dire position.

    In a clear sign of diplomatic maneuvering, Russia justified its cancellation of the agreement by saying that it was not getting its share of the benefits. noting that it had faced obstacles with its own food exports. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov hinted, however, that Moscow might allow the return of exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports once its objectives were achieved.

    But UN Secretary General António Guterres underscored how difficult it might be to return to the deal with a categorical repudiation of Russia’s points in a letter to Putin, arguing that under the agreement, the Russian grain trade had reached high export volumes and fertilizer markets were nearing full recovery with the return of Russian produce. Guterres said that he’d sent Russia proposals to keep the grain deal alive but that he was “deeply disappointed” that his efforts went unheeded.

    The UN chief’s comments reinforced a view that, for now, Russia sees a point of leverage in refusing to renew the Black Sea grain deal. The decision comes against a complicated geopolitical backdrop following last week’s NATO summit at which G7, nations pledged to offer Ukraine the means of its self-defense for years to come.

    It may also represent the latest chess move in a shady double game of great power geopolitics being waged by a pair of Machiavellian autocrats — Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who are due to meet in August.

    Erdogan won prestige and the gratitude of his fellow NATO leaders and developing nations for brokering the original grain deal. But he has angered Russia in recent days, despite keeping open channels with Putin during the war. It’s conceivable the Russian leader could be sending a shot across the bows of his Turkish partner by canceling out his achievement.

    Russia was infuriated last week when Turkey sent a group of captured Ukrainian military commanders back to Zelensky despite a previous agreement they would not go home until after the war. Erdogan also risked his relationship with Putin by dropping opposition to Sweden’s entry into NATO, a move that significantly weakened Russia’s strategic position in Europe.

    But it was noticeable that Erdogan, who has a reputation for cannily playing his cards to enhance his own and Turkey’s influence, referred to Putin as his “friend” on Monday and suggested that the Russian leader might want to keep the “humanitarian bridge” of grain exports open.

    If he could somehow engineer a return to the deal, Erdogan could again bolster his place at the hinge of Eurasian great power politics. He’d also boost his goal of emerging as a leader among developing world nations and do a favor for Western leaders fearing an inflationary spike.

    Michael Kimmage, who served on the policy planning staff at the State Department between 2014 and 2016 and is now a professor at Catholic University of America in Washington, argues that Turkey is in a unique position, since it possesses considerable leverage inside NATO but also has robust relationships with both Ukraine and Russia.

    “I think it’s very possible that even before the Putin-Erdogan meeting there could be a resumption of the grain deal because that keeps Russia to a degree in the good graces of the international community,” Kimmage said.

    Reviving the grain deal would show that Russia, in its isolation, retains some Turkish support, Kimmage added, but the episode also demonstrates to the rest of the world that “when Russia wants, it can turn off the grain deal and be an enormous pain in the neck in the Black Sea.”

    First video of damage to Crimean bridge surfaces after reported strike

    While the war in Ukraine has consumed Russia’s foreign policy, Moscow has also made intense efforts to carve out its own influence in Africa and elsewhere in opposition to the United States. So it may risk damaging its own priorities by triggering widespread food shortages, especially since much of Ukraine’s grain is used in World Food Programs to alleviate famine in Africa.

    While the White House is fueling a sense of moral outrage over Russia’s move, it quickly dismissed another potential response – an attempt to bust a Russian blockade in the Black Sea.

    “That’s not an option that’s being actively pursued,” John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, said Monday in a comment that was in line with Biden’s goal of avoiding any direct NATO clash with Russia, a nuclear superpower.

    While the end of the grain deal would cause significant global hardship, its worst effects may be weeks away – so there could be time for diplomacy to work.

    Nicolay Gorbachov, the President of the Ukrainian Grain Association, told Isa Soares on CNN International on Monday that exports by road, rail and river could mitigate the most damaging effects of the collapse of the deal for two or three weeks, even if such transportation methods lacked the volume of shipborne cargoes.

    But he also warned that ultimately, if Ukraine could not export its grain – “all of us, in developed countries, in developing countries, will face food inflation.”

    “In my opinion, the international community, the developed countries have to find the leverage to move grain from Ukraine to the world market,” he said.

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  • The Tennessee expulsions reveal the core divide in US politics. Here’s why. | CNN Politics

    The Tennessee expulsions reveal the core divide in US politics. Here’s why. | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Rarely have the tectonic plates of American politics collided as visibly and explosively as they did earlier this month in Tennessee.

    The procession of predominantly middle-aged or older White Republicans who rose almost two weeks ago in the Tennessee House of Representatives to castigate, and then expel, two young Black Democrats crystallized the overlapping generational and racial confrontation that underpins the competition between the political parties.

    The Republican vote to expel those Black Democratic representatives, Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, encapsulated in a single moment the struggle for control over America’s direction between the nation’s increasingly diverse younger generations and its mostly White older cohorts. While kids of color now comprise just over half of all Americans younger than 18, Whites still constitute about three-fourths of the nation’s seniors, according to Census data analyzed by William Frey, a demographer at Brookings Metro.

    That stark division – what Frey terms “the cultural generation gap” and I’ve called the competition between “the brown and the gray” – has become a central fault line in the nation’s politics. Particularly in the Donald Trump era, the Republican coalition has grown increasingly reliant on older Whites, while younger people of color are evolving into a critical component of the Democratic voting base.

    The priorities and values of these two giant cohorts often clash most explosively in red states across the South and Southwest, like Tennessee, where Republicans now control state government. In those states, Republicans are moving aggressively to lock into law the policy preferences of their older, predominantly White and largely non-urban and Christian electoral coalition. That agenda often collides directly with the views of younger generations on issues including abortion, LGBTQ rights, limits on classroom discussion of race, gender and sexual orientation, book bans, and gun control.

    Across the red states, the conditions are coalescing for years of escalating conflict between these divergent generations. From one direction, the Republicans controlling these states are applying increasingly hardball tactics to advance their policy agenda and entrench their electoral advantage. That strategy includes severe gerrymanders that dilute the influence of urban areas where younger voters often congregate, laws that create obstacles to registering and voting, and extreme legislative maneuvers such as the vote to expel Pearson and Jones. What Republicans in Tennessee and other red states “are trying to do is minimize the voices – minimize the sound, minimize the protest, and continue to oppress folks who do not agree,” says Antonio Arellano, vice president for communications at NextGen America, a group that organizes young people for liberal causes.

    From the other direction, the youngest Millennials and first representatives of Generation Z moving into elected office are throwing themselves more forcefully against these GOP fortifications – just as Jones and Pearson have done. These young, elected officials have been shaped by the past decade of heightened public protests, many of them led by young people, particularly around gun safety, climate change, and racial equity. And more of them are bringing that ethos of direct action into the political arena – as Jones and Pearson did by leading a gun control protest on the floor of the Tennessee legislature. “This generation of politicians have been socialized through the crucible of Black Lives Matter and the [Donald] Trump era and political polarization,” says Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta who studies race and politics. “So it’s not surprising that they are usually going to be confrontational.”

    In the red states, this rising wave of urgency and militancy among younger progressives is crashing headlong into the fortifications Republicans are erecting to solidify their control. Even with the ardor evident from Jones, Pearson and their supporters in Tennessee, most observers agree it will be very difficult any time soon for “the brown” to loosen the grip of “the gray” over political power in almost any of the red states. “In the short term there isn’t a risk” to the GOP’s hold on the red states, said Gillespie, “which is why you see these legislators flexing their power in the way they are.” And that could be a recipe for more tension in those places as the diverse younger generations constitute a growing share of the workforce and tax base, yet find their preferences systematically denied in the decisions of their state governments.

    Like many analysts, Melissa Deckman, chief executive officer of the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute, predicts that “what we saw in Tennessee was the first salvo” of escalating conflict as older white conservatives, especially in the red states, resist the demands for greater influence from the emerging younger generations. “An overwhelmingly White conservative legislature taking this remarkable and drastic step of expelling the two young African-Americans,” she says, “is a taste of what we are going to see in the future driven by those demographic changes.”

    Those demographic changes are rooted in the generational transition rumbling through American life. Though the tipping point has drawn little attention, Frey has calculated that a majority of the nation’s population has now been born after 1980. And those younger generations are kaleidoscopically more diverse than their older counterparts.

    The change is most visible on race. Because the US essentially shut off immigration between 1924 and 1965, nearly three-fourths of baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) are White, as are more than three-fourths of the remaining seniors from the older generations before them, according to Frey’s figures. By contrast, Frey has calculated, people of color comprise well over two-fifths of Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996), just under half of Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) and slightly more than half the youngest generation born since 2012. That youngest generation (sometimes called Generation Alpha) will be the first in American history in which racial “minorities” constitute the majority.

    The transition extends to other dimensions of personal identity. The Public Religion Research Institute has calculated that while just 17% of Americans aged 65 or older and 20% of those aged 50-64 do not identify with any organized religion, the share of those “seculars” rises to 32% among those aged 30-49 and 38% among adults 18-29. In turn, while White Christians constitute about half of all adults aged 50-64 and three-fifths of seniors, they comprise only about one-third of those aged 30-49 and only one-fourth of the youngest adults.

    Gender identity and sexual orientation follow the same tracks. Gallup has found that while less than 3% of baby boomers and only 4% of Generation X (born 1965-1980) identify as LGBTQ, that figure jumps to nearly 11% among Millennials and fully 21% among Generation Z. In all these ways, says Deckman, who is writing a book on Gen Z, “you have a younger group of Americans who are more diverse, less religious, care passionately about the rights of marginalized groups, and are watching rights taken away that they thought would always be there.”

    Though the pace and intensity varies, these changes are affecting all corners of the country. Even in states where the GOP has consistently controlled most state offices such as Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina, the share of adults younger than 45 who are unaffiliated with any religion now equals or exceeds the share who are White Christians, according to detailed results PRRI provided to CNN. By contrast, in those states’ over-45 population, White Christians are at least twice, and often three times, as large a share of the population as seculars.

    Frey has found that in every state the youth population 18 and younger is now more racially diverse than the senior population 65 and older. From 2010 to 2020, in fact, every state except Utah and North Dakota (as well as Washington, DC) saw a decline in their total population of White kids younger than 18. Kids of color now comprise a majority of the youth population in 14 states and at least 40% in another dozen, Frey has found.

    States on that list include many of the places where Republicans have been most forcefully imposing a staunchly conservative social agenda. Kids of color already represent about half or more of the youth population in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, South Carolina and Arizona and about two-fifths or more in several others, including Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas. In many of those states the share of seniors who are White is at least 20 percentage points higher than the share of young people.

    A similarly large “cultural generation gap” is also evident in many blue states, including Nevada, California, Colorado, Washington and Minnesota. The difference is that in states where Democrats are in control, the diverse younger generations are, however imperfectly, included in the political coalition setting state policy. Political analysts in both parties – from Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson to Democratic strategist Terrance Woodbury – point out that Democrats have their own problems with younger voters, who have never been enthusiastic about President Joe Biden, and are expressing disappointment that the party hasn’t made more progress on issues they care about. But in blue states the direction of policy on most key social issues, such as abortion, gun control and LGBTQ rights, aligns with the dominant views among younger generations. And in most blue states, Democrats have prioritized increasing youth turnout and, in many cases, reformed state election laws to ease registration and voting.

    But in the red states, younger voters, especially younger voters of color, are largely excluded from the ruling Republican coalitions, which revolve preponderantly around Whites, especially those who are older, Christian, non-college and non-urban. In 2022, for instance, 80% of younger non-white voters (aged 45 or less) voted against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia, 65% voted against GOP Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas, and 55% opposed Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida, according to exit poll results provided by Edison Research. Yet all three men won decisive reelections, in large part because each carried about seven-in-ten or more of Whites older than 45.

    In some ways, the generational tug of war between the brown and the gray symbolized by the Tennessee expulsions represents the classic collision between an irresistible force and an immovable object. In this case, the irresistible force is the growth in the electorate of the diverse younger generations. In 2020, for the first time, Millennials and Generation Z constituted as large a share of eligible voters nationwide as did the Baby Boom and its elders – though those older generations, because they turned out at much higher rates, still represented a larger percentage of actual voters. In 2024, Frey has projected, Millennials and Gen Z will comprise a significantly larger share of eligible voters than the boomers and their elders – enough that they will likely equal them as a share of actual voters. Already in several states, kids of color comprise a majority of those who turn 18 each year and become eligible to vote; Frey projects that will be true for the nation overall by 2024.

    The immovable object is the GOP control over the red states. That’s partly because of the changes in electoral rules Republicans have imposed that create obstacles to registration or voting, but also because of their dominance among older Whites and their inroads into culturally conservative Latino voters in some of these states, particularly Texas and Florida.

    Another challenge for Democrats is that youth turnout is often lowest in red states. Though youth turnout also lagged in some blue states including New York and Rhode Island, in an analysis released earlier this month the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University found that red states comprised all nine states where the smallest share of eligible adults aged 18-29 cast a ballot; Tennessee ranked the lowest of the states for which CIRCLE has data. Red states also have erected many of the most overt obstacles to youth participation. Eight Republican-controlled states, including Tennessee, Texas and recently Idaho, have sent a clearly discouraging signal to young voters by declaring that student IDs cannot be used as identification under state voter ID laws. A Texas Republican state legislator this year has proposed banning polling places on college campuses.

    Abby Kiesa, CIRCLE’s deputy director, says that in both blue and red states, laws and social customs act in reinforcing ways to either promote or discourage youth voting. “The infrastructure and the state laws” in states that encourage youth voting like Michigan, Oregon and Colorado “create a stronger culture of engagement,” she said. “Because more people are voting, it is more of a norm, people are talking about it more, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” In states with pronounced barriers to voting, she notes, an opposite cycle of disengagement can take hold.

    The unlikelihood of overcoming the GOP’s red state electoral defenses in the near term will probably encourage more younger progressives to emphasize public protests, like the raucous rally for gun control that began the Tennessee confrontation, predicts Nse Ufot, who formerly led the New Georgia Project launched by Stacey Abrams.

    “The young people in Tennessee … went to their legislators and said enough, and they had accountable, accessible leaders who heard what their demands were and took it to their colleagues and their colleagues didn’t like it,” says Ufot, who has now founded the New South Super PAC, designed to elect progressive candidates in the 11 states of the old confederacy.

    Ufot uses a striking analogy to express her expectation of how this struggle will unfold in the coming years across the red states. Her mother, she explained, ran a shelter for battered women, and even as a young girl, she came to recognize “that the most dangerous time for victims of abuse is when they are preparing to leave, when they have made up their minds that they are done and they are making their exits. That when we see their abusers escalate to crazy tactics.”

    Ufot sees the Tennessee expulsions, like the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and Trump’s broader effort to overturn the 2020 result, as evidence that those “who are afraid of what a diverse, reflective, democracy looks like” will likewise turn to more extreme responses as the challenge to their position grows more acute. But she also sees the movement that erupted around Pearson and Jones as a preview of how younger generations may resist that offensive. “Instead of responding with resignation like people who have come before them, [the two expelled representatives] have chosen to do something about it,” she said. “And that’s what happens when you are forged in the fire of protest and are accountable to the people [you represent].”

    As the Republicans now running the red states race to the right, and younger generations lean harder on direct protest, more forging fires across this contested terrain appear inevitable.

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  • Meta phased out Covid-19 content labels after finding they did little to combat misinformation, Oversight Board says | CNN Business

    Meta phased out Covid-19 content labels after finding they did little to combat misinformation, Oversight Board says | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Late last year, Facebook-parent Meta quietly phased out certain content labels on its platforms that for much of the pandemic had directed viewers to its central Covid-19 information page, after internal research concluded the labels may be ineffective at changing attitudes or stopping the spread of misinformation, according to a report Thursday by the company’s external oversight board.

    Facebook rolled out the labels in early 2021, after coming under criticism for the spread of Covid-19 misinformation on its platforms during the first year of the pandemic. The company applied the labels to a wide range of claims both true and untrue about vaccines, treatments and other topics related to the virus.

    But Meta’s use of the labels began slowing on Dec. 19, and ended completely soon after, the report said, following the internal research. Study results provided to the Meta Oversight Board, a quasi-judicial body, showed that the company’s labels appeared to have “no detectable effect on users’ likelihood to read, create or re-share” claims that had previously been rated as false by third-party fact-checkers or that discouraged the use of vaccines, the report said.

    The research focused on Meta’s direct labeling interventions as opposed to labels the company applies to content as part of its third-party fact-checking program. The research found that the more frequently a user was exposed to the labels, the less likely they were to visit the Covid-19 information center, which offers authoritative resources and information linked to the pandemic.

    “The company reported that initial research showed that these labels may have no effect on user knowledge and vaccine attitudes,” the report said.

    Meta’s internal research on the labels has not been previously released, and the Oversight Board on Thursday called for Meta to publish its findings as part of a broader review of the company’s handling of Covid-19 misinformation.

    The new details highlight the struggles platforms have faced in fighting misinformation and could raise broader questions about the efficacy of labeling and directing users to more accurate information. It also comes at a time when some of the biggest social media companies, including Twitter and Meta, are either rolling back their Covid-19 misinformation policies or considering doing so.

    Meta should not relax its approach to Covid-19 misinformation as the company has proposed, the Oversight Board added. Until the World Health Organization determines that the pandemic has eased, Meta should instead continue to remove misinformation that violates the company’s policies, rather than shifting toward more lenient treatments such as labeling or downranking misleading information, the board said.

    Meta said Thursday it will publicly respond to the Oversight Board’s recommendations within 60 days.

    “We thank the Oversight Board for its review and recommendations in this case,” a company spokesperson said. “As Covid-19 evolves, we will continue consulting extensively with experts on the most effective ways to help people stay safe on our platforms.”

    In the past, Meta has touted its ability to direct users to the Covid-19 information center. Last July, the company said it had connected more than 2 billion people across 189 countries to trustworthy information through the portal.

    Some of those visits occurred through labels that Meta referred to internally as “neutral inform treatments,” or NITs, and “facts about ‘X’ informed treatments,” also known as FAXITs.

    The labels were automatically applied to content that Meta’s automated tools determined were about Covid-19, the Oversight Board said. The labels never directly addressed the claims within any given post, but they provided a link to the Covid-19 information center as well as more contextual information, including messages saying that vaccines have been proven safe and effective or that unapproved Covid-19 treatments could cause bodily harm. (Meta provided examples of a NIT and a FAXIT in its July 2022 request for Oversight Board guidance on whether it should relax its Covid-19 misinformation policy.)

    The decision to begin phasing out the labels came after Meta’s product and integrity teams ran an experiment studying Meta’s global userbase, the report said. The study found that users who were shown the labels approximately once a month were more likely on average to click through to the Covid-19 information center than users who were shown the labels both more and less frequently.

    In light of the results, Meta later told the Oversight Board it would stop using the labels altogether, to ensure they could remain effective in other public health emergencies, according to the report.

    While the Oversight Board’s report Thursday did not pass judgment on Meta’s decision to stop using the labels, it urged the company to reevaluate the 80 distinct types of claims that the company considers to be Covid-19 misinformation and therefore subject to removal from its platforms.

    Meta should perform the reassessments regularly, the Oversight Board said, consulting with public health officials to determine which claims on Meta’s banned list continue to be false or misleading and worthy of removal. Meta should also publish a record of when and how it updates that list, the board added.

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  • McCarthy tells Republicans he’s ‘nowhere near’ a debt limit deal with Biden as deadline nears | CNN Politics

    McCarthy tells Republicans he’s ‘nowhere near’ a debt limit deal with Biden as deadline nears | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Republicans during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday that he’s not close to a bipartisan deal with President Joe Biden to avoid a first-ever default on the nation’s debt.

    “We are nowhere near a deal,” McCarthy told Republicans. “I need you all to hang with me.”

    As each day passes without a deal, the clock is ticking closer to a looming deadline for default – which could be catastrophic for the global economy and have financial effects on countless Americans.

    Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reaffirming in a letter to McCarthy on Monday that it is “highly likely” that the US Treasury will not be able to pay all of its bills in full and on time as soon as June 1. But several Republicans, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, have suggested that they do not believe Yellen’s estimate of June 1 as the so-called X-date for potential default and called on her to testify before Congress.

    While McCarthy has maintained that both parties could still obtain a deal by the June 1 deadline, he is also now accusing the president of trying to “disrupt” negotiations by bringing proposals involving Medicare and Social Security back “into the fold.”

    Republican Study Committee Chairman Kevin Hern said McCarthy told members during Tuesday morning’s meeting they should go home and work their districts if a deal isn’t reached by the White House and Republican negotiators by Memorial Day weekend. Members can always be called back, but Hern told reporters that this is a deal that has to be reached between a few key people.

    “The negotiations are with the speaker and his team and the White House and their team. And so the rest of us being here, just waiting around, doesn’t do any good for anyone,” Hern said.

    McCarthy’s continued optimism about securing a deal before next month follows a meeting at the White House with Biden on Monday evening, where he had underscored that both parties are united in their goal of reaching an agreement to raise the nation’s debt limit before the country defaults.

    “I felt we had a productive discussion. We don’t have an agreement yet, but I did feel the discussion was productive in areas that we have differences of opinion,” McCarthy said outside the West Wing, adding that the “tone” of Monday’s meeting was also “better than any other time we’ve had discussions.”

    Monday evening’s meeting at the White House came after negotiations hit a snag and were put on pause Friday, and representatives of each side spent most of the next two days criticizing the other while defending their own positions. But the parties appeared to smooth things over to resume negotiations when Biden and McCarthy spoke over the phone as the president was aboard Air Force One returning to Washington after a trip to Japan.

    Biden, in a statement, called Monday’s discussion in the Oval Office productive while acknowledging that areas of disagreement persist.

    “We reiterated once again that default is off the table and the only way to move forward is in good faith toward a bipartisan agreement,” Biden wrote. “While there are areas of disagreement, the Speaker and I, and his lead negotiators … and our staffs will continue to discuss the path forward.”

    On Monday evening, McCarthy maintained that both he and the president “agree we want to be able to come to an agreement.”

    McCarthy’s team and White House negotiators have been meeting daily in an effort to come to a consensus on the budget and the debt ceiling. Negotiators also met through the night on Monday and reconvened Tuesday morning.

    The speaker on Monday also acknowledged that he does not plan to waive the House’s three-day rule – which requires that legislation be posted for at least three days to allow House members to study it before it can be voted on.

    McCarthy has repeatedly warned that the White House and House GOP must reach a deal this week to avoid default. And if negotiations drag on, waiving the three-day rule could allow the legislation to pass more quickly. However, there are concerns that expediting the legislative process by waiving the rule may lead to members voting to support something they aren’t fully informed on.

    The speaker said he “would give everybody 72 hours, so everybody knows what they’re voting for.”

    Despite continued talks, House members on both sides of the aisle appear remain divided over the approach to debt ceiling discussions.

    House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Monday evening asserted that talks are moving in the “wrong direction.”

    At a hastily called news conference on the steps of the Capitol, Jeffries attacked the GOP for rejecting a White House compromise – to freeze domestic spending at the current levels. Republicans instead want to roll back spending to previous years’ levels and write into law that spending would be capped for several years.

    “They’ve rejected the fact that President Biden is willing to consider freezing spending. It will reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars. This is what the extreme MAGA Republicans say that they want. They rejected. They rejected an unwillingness to not put the country through this again,” the New York Democrat said. He also repeatedly refused to say if House Democrats would accept a spending cut, as McCarthy has demanded.

    Jeffries’ position is critical because McCarthy will almost certainly need House Democratic support to pass any deal cut with the White House.

    During Tuesday’s closed-door meeting with Republicans, at least one hardline member – Rep. Chip Roy of Texas – complained about Republicans seeking a compromise that water downs what they passed in the House, according to a source in the room. Roy said it’s about saving the country, not seeking a deal.

    Still, a number of Republicans – even some who haven’t always backed McCarthy – said they are standing by the speaker and are happy with how he’s negotiated up until this point.

    “I am very confident in Kevin McCarthy as our speaker,” Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina told CNN. “I don’t want Speaker McCarthy’s job. That’s a very tough job … he’s got the five families to deal with and a caucus of one right here. He’s doing a great job of pulling people together.”

    “I do not envy his position. I would not want it. He’s had a lot of success in bringing a lot of different factions together within the party and that is no small feat, and it’s not easy,” Mace said.

    Rep. Tim Burchett, who voted against the House’s GOP debt ceiling plan said that “McCarthy is very good at deal cutting. I trust him.”

    “If he says it’s going to start snowing in Knoxville tomorrow, I am running down … and buying a new sled,” Burchett added.

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  • Here’s what’s left for the Supreme Court’s final week of the term | CNN Politics

    Here’s what’s left for the Supreme Court’s final week of the term | CNN Politics

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    Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story ran in early June.



    CNN
     — 

    All eyes are on the Supreme Court for its final week, as the justices will release cases on issues such as affirmative action, student loan payments, election law and LGBTQ rights.

    Of the 10 cases remaining, several that most capture the public’s attention are likely to lead to fiery opinions and dissents read from the bench.

    In addition, they will come down as the court finds itself in the center of a spotlight usually reserved for members of the political branches due to allegations that the justices are not transparent enough when it comes to their ethics disclosures, most recently with Justice Samuel Alito last week.

    Here are some of the remaining cases to be decided:

    The court is considering whether colleges and universities can continue to take race into consideration as a factor in admissions, a decision that could overturn long standing precedent that has benefited Black and Latino students.

    At issue are programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina that the schools say help them to achieve diversity on campus.

    During oral arguments, the right side of the bench appeared ready to rule against the schools. Such an opinion would deliver a long-sought victory for opponents of affirmative action in higher education who have argued for decades that taking race into consideration – even in a limited manner – thwarts the goal of achieving a color-blind society.

    John Roberts skewers Harvard attorney’s comparison of race and music skills as qualities in applicants

    At the center of another case is a graphic designer, Lorie Smith, who seeks to expand her business and create custom websites to celebrate weddings – but does not want to work with gay couples out of religious objections to same-sex marriage.

    Smith has not yet moved forward with her new business venture because of Colorado’s public accommodations law. Under the law, a business may not refuse to serve individuals because of their sexual orientation. Smith, whose company is called 303 Creative LLC, said that she is willing to work with all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, but she draws the line at creating websites that celebrate same-sex marriage because expressing such a message would be inconsistent with her beliefs.

    The state and supporters of LGBTQ rights say that Smith is simply seeking a license to discriminate.

    The conservatives on the court were sympathetic at oral arguments to those put forward by Smith’s lawyer. They viewed the case through the lens of free speech and suggested that an artist or someone creating a customized product could not be forced by the government to express a message that violates her religious beliefs.

    Moore v. Harper has captured the nation’s attention because Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are asking the justices to adopt a long dormant legal theory and hold that state courts and other state entities have a limited role in reviewing election rules established by state legislatures when it comes to federal elections.

    The doctrine – called the Independent State Legislature theory – was pushed by conservatives and supporters of Trump after the 2020 presidential election.

    The North Carolina controversy arose after the state Supreme Court struck down the state’s 2022 congressional map as an illegal partisan gerrymander, replacing it with court-drawn maps that favored Democrats. GOP lawmakers appealed the decision to the US Supreme Court, arguing that the North Carolina Supreme Court had exceeded its authority.

    They relied upon the Elections Clause of the Constitution that provides that rules governing the “manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives” must be prescribed in “each state by the legislature thereof.”

    Under the independent state legislature theory, the lawmakers argued, state legislatures should be able to set rules with little to no interference from the state courts.

    The justices heard oral arguments in the case last winter and some of them appeared to express some support for a version of the doctrine. The justices could, however, ultimately dismiss the dispute due to new partisan developments in North Carolina.

    After the last election, the North Carolina Supreme Court flipped its majority to Republican. In April, the newly composed state Supreme Court reversed its earlier decision and held that the state constitution gives states no role to play in policing partisan gerrymandering. After that decision was issued, the justices signaled they may dismiss the case.

    exp juneteenth anita hill amanpour intw 061901PSEG2 cnn us_00002001.png

    Anita Hill: America “has lost confidence in the Supreme Court”

    The Supreme Court is also considering two challenges to President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, an initiative aimed at providing targeted debt relief to millions of student-loan borrowers that has so far been stalled by legal challenges.

    Republican-led states and conservatives challenging the program say it amounts to an unlawful attempt to erase an estimated $430 billion of federal student loan debt under the guise of the pandemic.

    At the heart of the case is the Department of Education’s authority to forgive the loans. Several of the conservative justices have signaled in recent years that agencies – with no direct accountability to the public – have become too powerful, upsetting the separation of powers.

    They have moved to cut back on the so-called administrative state.

    In court, Chief Justice John Roberts as well as some other conservatives seemed deeply skeptical of the Biden administration’s plan.

    A former mail carrier, an evangelical Christian, seeks to sue the US Postal Service because it failed to accommodate his request not to work on Sundays.

    A lower court had ruled against the worker, Gerald Groff, holding that his request would cause an “undue burden” on the USPS and lead to low morale at the workplace when other employees had to pick up his shifts.

    There appeared to be consensus, after almost two hours of oral arguments, that the appeals court had been too quick to rule against Groff.

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  • Prosecutors say they plan to bring felony charges against man arrested with weapons in Obama’s DC neighborhood | CNN Politics

    Prosecutors say they plan to bring felony charges against man arrested with weapons in Obama’s DC neighborhood | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Federal prosecutors on Thursday said they plan to file felony charges against the man who was arrested last week with firearms in former President Barack Obama’s Washington, DC, neighborhood and accused of threatening several politicians.

    Taylor Taranto, who had an open warrant for his arrest related to charges stemming from his involvement in the US Capitol riot, was arrested last week after claiming on an internet livestream the day before that he had a detonator.

    Taranto has been in police custody since his arrest, and during a hearing Thursday to determine whether he’ll continue to be detained pending his trial for the riot charges, federal prosecutors said they plan to add federal felony charges to the case.

    The prosecutors did not say when exactly they would bring the additional charges. Taranto is currently only facing four misdemeanor charges related to his conduct on January 6, 2021.

    Taranto will continue to remain in custody pending a decision on his detention, federal magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui ordered Thursday.

    Faruqui said he is currently in contact with pretrial services in Washington state, where Taranto is believed to have lived recently, to see if Taranto could be supervised by a third-party custodian instead of being held in detention. Pretrial services informed the judge it could take up to a week to evaluate the case.

    Taranto is set to have another detention hearing next Wednesday.

    On Wednesday, prosecutors provided fresh details on Taranto’s online activity before his arrest and threats he made toward prominent politics in recent weeks.

    The government said in a detention memo that Taranto made threats against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin. Earlier in June, Taranto and several others entered an elementary school near Raskin’s home, with Taranto live-streaming the group “walking around the school, entering the gymnasium, and using a projector to display a film related to January 6,” according to the filing.

    Taranto stated that he specifically chose the elementary school due to its proximity to Raskin’s home and that he is targeting Raskin because “he’s one of the guys that hates January 6 people, or more like Trump supporters, and it’s kind of like sending a shockwave through him because I did nothing wrong and he’s probably freaking out and saying s*** like, ‘Well he’s stalking me,’” the filing said.

    “Taranto further comments, ‘I didn’t tell anyone where he lives ‘cause I want him all to myself,’ and ‘That was Piney Branch Elementary School in Maryland…right next to where Rep. Raskin and his wife live,’” the memo said.

    On June 28, according to prosecutors, Taranto made “ominous comments” on video referencing McCarthy, saying: “Coming at you McCarthy. Can’t stop what’s coming. Nothing can stop what’s coming.”

    After seeing those “threatening comments,” law enforcement tried to locate Taranto but weren’t successful, prosecutors said.

    The following day, on June 29, “former President Donald Trump posted what he claimed was the address of Former President Barack Obama on the social media platform Truth Social,” prosecutors wrote in their memo. “Taranto used his own Truth Social account to re-post the address. On Telegram, Taranto then stated, ‘We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.’”

    “Shortly thereafter, Taranto again began live-streaming from his van on his YouTube channel. This time, Taranto was driving through the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington D.C.,” prosecutors said.

    Prosecutors said Taranto parked his van and began walking around the neighborhood and that because of the “restricted nature of the residential area where Taranto was walking, United States Secret Service uniformed officers began monitoring Taranto almost immediately as soon as he began walking around and filming.”

    Secret Service agents approached Taranto, prompting him to flee, according to the filing, but he was apprehended and arrested.

    The government told the judge that among the items found in Taranto’s van were a “Smith and Wesson M&P Shield” and a “Ceska 9mm CZ Scorpion E3.” They also found “hundreds of rounds of nine-millimeter ammunition, a steering wheel lock, and a machete,” as well as signs, a mattress and other indications Taranto was living in the van.

    This story has been updated with additional details Thursday.

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  • Twitter removes transgender protections from hateful conduct policy | CNN Business

    Twitter removes transgender protections from hateful conduct policy | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter appears to have quietly rolled back a portion of its hateful conduct policy that included specific protections for transgender people.

    The policy previously stated that Twitter prohibits “targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” But the second line was removed earlier this month, according to archived versions of the page from the WayBack Machine.

    Twitter also removed a line from the policy detailing certain groups of people often subject to disproportionate abuse online, including “women, people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual individuals, and marginalized and historically underrepresented communities.”

    The platform first introduced its policy prohibiting misgendering and deadnaming (referring to a person’s pre-transition name) of transgender people in 2018 as part of a broader overhaul of its hateful conduct policy.

    The change to the hateful conduct policy is one of a number of updates Twitter has made to its safety and content moderation practices since Elon Musk took over the company last fall. Twitter has also restored the accounts of users who had previously been banned for violating its rules, stopped enforcing its Covid-19 misinformation policy, allowed users to purchase blue verification checkmarks and applied controversial new labels to the accounts of several news organizations.

    LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD called out the hateful conduct policy change in a Tuesday statement.

    “Twitter’s decision to covertly roll back its longtime policy is the latest example of just how unsafe the company is for users and advertisers alike,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said. “This decision to roll back LGBTQ safety pulls Twitter even more out of step with TikTok, Pinterest, and Meta, which all maintain similar policies to protect their transgender users at a time when anti-transgender rhetoric online is leading to real world discrimination and violence.”

    Twitter did not respond to a request for comment about the change, although the platform did announce earlier this week some other updates to how it enforces its hateful conduct policy. The platform said it plans to start applying labels to some tweets that violate its hateful conduct policy and reduce their visibility, a similar practice to the one used under the company’s previous leadership, under which it either reduced the visibility of or removed violative tweets.

    “Restricting the reach of Tweets helps reduce binary ‘leave up versus take down’ content moderation decisions and supports our freedom of speech vs freedom of reach approach,” the company said in a tweet. Twitter also said it will not place ads next to content that has been labeled as violative.

    Musk has been in the process of trying to encourage advertisers to return to the platform, after many paused their spending over concerns about Musk’s policy changes, increased hate speech on the platform and massive cuts to the company’s workforce, threatening the company’s core business.

    The billionaire tried to assuage advertisers about Twitter’s approach to hateful conduct at a marketing conference Tuesday, saying, “If somebody has something hateful to say, it doesn’t mean you should give them a megaphone,” according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

    Musk has faced a number of criticisms from some in the transgender community, most notably from his transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson. Last year, she petitioned a court in California to change her last name to that of of her mother, Justine Wilson, Musk’s ex-wife and mother of five of his seven children, because she no longer wanted to be related to her father “in any way, shape or form.”

    Musk has also had several tweets where he mocked the idea of use of people choosing the pronouns they want to apply to them. He had one tweet in December 2020, which he later deleted, that said “when you put he/him in your bio” alongside a drawing of an 18th century soldier rubbing blood on his face in front of a pile of dead bodies and wearing a cap that read “I love to oppress.”

    And this past December, a vocal critic of many Covid restrictions and protocols, Musk tweeted, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”

    But in other tweets, Musk has insisted he had no problems with transgender people, saying that his problem is with “all these pronouns” which he called an “esthetic nightmare.” He also pointed out that his auto company Tesla

    (TSLA)     has repeatedly scored a 100% rating from the Human Rights Campaign as being one of the “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ Equality.”

    — CNN’s Chris Isidore contributed to this report

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  • Exclusive: McConnell details GOP efforts to not ‘screw this up’ in 2024 Senate battle | CNN Politics

    Exclusive: McConnell details GOP efforts to not ‘screw this up’ in 2024 Senate battle | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell should be brimming with confidence.

    Republicans are in the driver’s seat to take the Senate majority: with 23 seats held by Democrats, compared to just 11 for Republicans. There are likely just two GOP incumbents whose seats Democrats may try to flip – and both are in Republican terrain – while three Democrats hail from states that former President Donald Trump easily won in 2020.

    The Kentucky Republican just scored a prized recruit in West Virginia and expects two other top candidates to jump into races in Montana and Pennsylvania. And after tangling last cycle with Florida Sen. Rick Scott, his last chairman of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, he is now in line over strategy and tactics with the committee’s new chairman, Montana Sen. Steve Daines.

    But in an exclusive interview with CNN, McConnell made clear he knows full well that things can quickly go south. So he’s been working behind the scenes for months to find his preferred candidates in key races – including during his recent recovery from a concussion and a broken rib – in an attempt to prevent a repeat of 2022: When a highly favorable GOP landscape turned into a Republican collapse at the polls and a 51-49 Senate Democratic majority.

    “No, no – I’m not,” McConnell said with a chuckle when asked if he were confident they’d take back the majority next year. “I just spent 10 minutes explaining to you how we could screw this up, and we’re working very hard to not let that happen. Let’s put it that way.”

    In the interview, McConnell gave his most revealing assessment in months of the field forming in the battle for the Senate. He said that his main focus for now is on flipping four states: Montana, West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. He said Republicans are still assessing two swing states with Democratic incumbents: Wisconsin, where the GOP is searching for a top-tier candidate, and Nevada, where he expects to likely wait until after next year’s primary to decide whether to invest resources there.

    And in what is emerging as the most complicated state of the cycle – Arizona – McConnell said there’s a “high likelihood” that Republican leaders would wait and see first who wins the GOP primary next year before deciding whether to engage there at all. Plus he doesn’t see any chance that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema – who became an independent and left the Democratic Party last December but is still weighing a reelection bid – will join his conference.

    “I think that decision was made when she ended up continuing to caucus with the Democrats,” McConnell said when asked if trying to get Sinema to flip to the GOP was a live discussion. “We would love to have had her, but we didn’t land her.”

    While he knows the presidential race could scramble the map, he believes a potential Trump nomination could bolster Republican chances in three key Senate battlegrounds. But above all else, McConnell is making clear that his outside group, the Senate Leadership Fund, along with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, are prepared to take a much heavier hand in contested Republican primaries than the past cycle, a move that could escalate their intraparty feuding but one the GOP leader sees as essential to avoiding the pitfalls from 2022.

    “We don’t have an ideological litmus test,” McConnell said flatly. “We want to win in November.”

    “We’ll be involved in any primary where that seems to be necessary to get a high-quality candidate, and we’ll be involved in every general election where we have a legitimate shot of winning – regardless of the philosophy of the nominee,” the Kentucky Republican said.

    But McConnell and Republican leaders are treading carefully in deciding which primary races to engage in, since trying to tip the scales could generate backlash from the conservative base and help far-right candidates – something GOP leaders learned in past election cycles, like the tea party wave of 2010.

    In the 2022 cycle, Republicans also seemed to have the wind in their sails. With inflation running rampant and President Joe Biden’s poll numbers taking a nosedive, Republicans had several paths to the majority.

    But Democratic incumbents hung onto their seats as they campaigned on issues like abortion rights and took advantage of Trump’s late emergence on the campaign trail, while several GOP candidates who won messy primaries turned out to be weak general-election candidates. McConnell’s allies worked in the Missouri and Alabama primaries to defeat GOP candidates they viewed as problematic but largely steered clear of a number of other contested primaries.

    Part of the issue: Trump hand-selected candidates in key races, bolstering their chances in primaries even though they were vulnerable in general elections.

    “In other places where we did not get involved in the primaries it was because we were convinced we could not prevail, and would spend a lot of money that we would need later,” McConnell said, reflecting on 2022.

    Plus, in the last cycle, Scott’s NRSC made the strategic decision to steer clear of primaries, arguing they would let the voters choose their candidates without a heavy hand from Washington. (Scott and his allies later blamed McConnell for hurting their candidates by not embracing an election-year agenda.)

    This time around, the Daines-led NRSC is heavily involved in candidate recruiting and vetting and has already signaled its support for certain GOP candidates in Indiana and West Virginia, aligning its efforts with McConnell’s.

    “I think it’s important to go into this cycle understanding once again how hard it is to beat the incumbents, no incumbent lost last year,” McConnell told CNN on Friday. “Having said that, if you were looking for a good map, this is a good map.”

    But he later added: “We do have the possibility of screwing this up and that gets back to candidate recruitment. I think that we lost Georgia, Arizona and New Hampshire because we didn’t have competitive candidates (last cycle). And Steve Daines and I are in exactly the same place – that starts with candidate quality.”

    McConnell, who has faced incessant attacks from Trump after he blamed the former president for being “practically and morally responsible” for the 2021 Capitol attack, is not publicly letting on any concerns about the possibility that Trump could be on the top of the GOP ticket again.

    As Daines has already backed Trump for president, McConnell didn’t answer directly when asked if he’d be comfortable with him as the party’s 2024 presidential nominee.

    “Look, I’m going to support the nominee of our party for president, no matter who that may be,” he said.

    McConnell believes that Trump at the top of the ticket could help in some key states with Senate races.

    “Whether you are a Trump fan or a Trump opponent, I can’t imagine Trump if he’s the nominee not doing well in West Virginia, Montana and Ohio,” McConnell said.

    Left unmentioned: Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania, all of which Trump lost in 2020 but are key parts of the Senate map in 2024.

    “I didn’t mention Wisconsin; I think clearly you’d have to have an outstanding candidate. And I think there are some other places where with the right candidate, we might be able to compete – in Nevada, Arizona,” McConnell said. “But as of right now the day that you and I are talking, I think we know that we are going to compete in four places heavily, and that would be, Montana, West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.”

    Yet each of those have their own challenges for the GOP.

    Then-Republican Senatorial candidate David McCormick and his wife Dina Powell McCormick heads to vote at his polling location on the campus of Chatham University on May 17, 2022 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

    In Pennsylvania, McConnell and the NRSC have their eyes on David McCormick, the hedge fund executive who barely lost his primary last cycle to Mehmet Oz, the Trump-backed TV doctor who later fell short in the general election to Democrat John Fetterman.

    While McCormick is widely expected to run for the seat occupied by Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, he could face a complicated primary if the controversial candidate, Doug Mastriano, runs as well. Mastriano, who won the Trump endorsement in the 2022 gubernatorial primary and later lost by double digits in the fall, is weighing a run for Senate. But McConnell and the NRSC are expected to go all-out for McCormick, whom the GOP leader called a “high-quality candidate.”

    Asked if he were concerned about a potential Mastriano bid, McConnell said: “I think everybody is entitled to run. I’m confident the vast majority of people who met Dave McCormick are going to be fine with him.”

    While the GOP field in Ohio to take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is expected to be crowded and has yet to fully form, top Republicans are signaling they’d be comfortable with several of them as their nominee. But that’s not necessarily the case in Montana or West Virginia.

    In Montana, Rep. Matt Rosendale, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus who lost to Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in 2018, is considering another run against him in 2024, though Rosendale posted a low fundraising number last quarter. But Senate GOP leaders are looking at some other prospective candidates, including state attorney general Austin Knudsen and, in particular, businessman Tim Sheehy, whom McConnell met with in recent weeks.

    Asked if he were concerned about a Rosendale candidacy, McConnell said: “Yeah, I don’t have anything further to say about Montana. We’re going to compete in Montana and win in November.”

    And in West Virginia, McConnell and top Republicans landed Gov. Jim Justice in the battle for the seat occupied by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who has yet to decide whether to run again. But Justice is already facing a primary challenge against Rep. Alex Mooney, who is backed by the political arm of the anti-tax group, the Club for Growth.

    McConnell didn’t express any concerns about Mooney’s candidacy but said that they wouldn’t hesitate to help Justice.

    “What we do know about West Virginia is it’s very, very red, and we have an extremely popular incumbent governor who’s announced for the Senate. And we’re going to go all out to win it,” McConnell said.

    Former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference at Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center on March 4 in National Harbor, Maryland.

    McConnell pointedly declined to discuss any concerns about other controversial candidates who may emerge this cycle, including Kari Lake, who is weighing a US Senate run in Arizona after losing her bid for governor last year and then later claimed the election was stolen. Blake Masters, who lost his bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, is also among the candidates considering another run.

    Asked about Lake and other prospective GOP candidates who deny the 2020 election results, McConnell wouldn’t weigh in directly.

    “What I care about in November is winning and having an ‘R’ by your name, and I think it is way too early to start assessing various candidacies that may or may not materialize,” McConnell said.

    McConnell also indicated they may want to until after the primary to decide if Nevada is worth pouring their money into, even as GOP sources say that national Republicans are recruiting military veteran Sam Brown, who fell short in the Senate GOP primary last cycle.

    The GOP leader is signaling he has little concern about the races of two GOP incumbents – Scott in Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, even as Cruz is facing a Democratic recruit, Rep. Colin Allred who is poised to raise big sums of money.

    “Both of them are very skilled,” McConnell said of Cruz and Scott, characterizing Democratic efforts to beat them as “really long shots.” Democrats, he argued, “don’t have much hope there. I don’t think they have any opportunities for offense” in 2024, he said.

    How long the 81-year-old McConnell – the longest-serving Senate party leader in history – plans to keep his job is a lingering question as well, especially in the aftermath of his recent fall that sent him to the hospital for concussion treatment. After Scott failed to knock him off from his post after the 2022 midterms, McConnell said, “I’m not going anywhere.” And he told CNN last fall that he would “certainly” complete his term, which ends in January 2027.

    Asked on Friday if he still plans to serve his full term or run for leader again, McConnell let out a laugh and didn’t want to engage on it.

    “I thought this was not an interview about my future,” he said. “I thought it was an interview about the 2024 Senate elections.”

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  • On Trump indictment, Senate GOP leaders silent while top House Republicans vow payback | CNN Politics

    On Trump indictment, Senate GOP leaders silent while top House Republicans vow payback | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The top two Republican leaders in the Senate remain silent a day after former President Donald Trump, the current GOP 2024 presidential frontrunner, was indicted by the federal government.

    While the charges have yet to be unsealed, the top two Republicans in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Minority Whip John Thune have not put out statements, a stark contrast to the swift reaction among House GOP leaders who quickly rushed to Trump’s defense.

    “Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America. It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him. Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted Thursday night. “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

    The third ranking GOP senator, John Barrasso of Wyoming, put out a statement Friday, saying, “This indictment certainly looks like an unequal application of justice.”

    “Nobody is above the law,” Barrasso tweeted. “Yet it seems like some are.”

    House and Senate Republican leaders have diverged for years on how and whether to even respond to Donald Trump’s legal woes. During Trump’s first indictment this spring, McConnell didn’t jump in to defend Trump and when he returned in April after a fall and was asked at a news conference by CNN’s Manu Raju about the indictment, he dodged.

    “I may have hit my head, but I didn’t hit it that hard,” McConnell said at the time. “Good try.”

    For McConnell, who has not maintained a relationship with Trump since January 6, 2021, the former president could be viewed as a distraction from his ultimate goals of recapturing the Senate. But for McCarthy, an alliance to Trump is an important factor for assuaging those in his right flank, especially at a moment when the House speaker has come under fire for a deal he cut with President Joe Biden on the debt ceiling.

    There are still a number of Senate Republicans who have come out backing Trump including Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and who is backing the former president. Daines has stayed in touch with Trump, as he’s sought to recruit candidates in primaries across the country. He tweeted Friday, “The two standards of justice under Biden’s DOJ is appalling. When will Hunter Biden be charged?”

    Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, was asked multiple times during an interview on Fox News on Thursday night about the lack of response from Senate leadership. Hawley’s only response was he did not know why leadership had not weighed in yet, and, “I can’t speak for anyone else.”

    Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, also a member of the GOP Senate leadership team, tweeted Friday that the presumption of innocence in America should also apply to Trump and attacked Democrats who cheered the news.

    “It is sad to see some Democratic politicians cheering this indictment and presuming guilt for sheer political gain, despite the fact that President Biden himself is under federal investigation for mishandling classified documents,” Tillis said in his statement.

    Several Republican senators, many of whom have already endorsed Trump in the upcoming presidential election, were quick to jump to Trump’s defense and attacked the Department of Justice.

    But in stark contrast to the silence from Senate Republican leadership and staunch support from House GOP members, Republican Sens. Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski stressed the severity of the charges Friday.

    Romney of Utah, who twice voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges, said, “By all appearances, the Justice Department and special counsel have exercised due care, affording Mr. Trump the time and opportunity to avoid charges that would not generally have been afforded to others.”

    In a statement, Romney added, “These allegations are serious and if proven, would be consistent with his other actions offensive to the national interest, such as withholding defensive weapons from Ukraine for political reasons and failing to defend the Capitol from violent attack and insurrection.”

    Murkowski, who also voted to convict Trump in an impeachment trial after the insurrection, said Friday evening that the charges against the former president are “quite serious.”

    “Mishandling classified documents is a federal crime because it can expose national secrets, as well as the sources and methods they were obtained through. The unlawful retention and obstruction of justice related to classified documents are also criminal matters,” she said on Twitter.

    “Anyone found guilty – whether an analyst, a former president, or another elected or appointed official – should face the same set of consequences,” she added.

    GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, meanwhile, called the obstruction allegations against Trump “inexcusable.”

    “As a retired brigadier general who worked with classified materials my entire career, I am shocked at the callousness of how these documents were handled,” Bacon told CNN on Friday. The congressman has long been critical of Trump and represents a swing state in Nebraska.

    “The alleged obstruction to the requests of the National Archives and FBI, if true, is inexcusable,” he said in the statement, adding: “No one is above the law, and we demand due process and expect equality under the law.”

    Meanwhile, top House Republicans took swift aim at the Department of Justice, special counsel Jack Smith, the FBI and Attorney General Merrick Garland in the wake of the indictment.

    “We ought to defund and dismantle the DOJ,” ultra-conservative Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona tweeted shortly after Trump announced the news on Truth Social.

    House Majority Leader Steve Scalise immediately rushed to Trump’s defense, attacking the Justice Department over his indictment and vowing to hold the administration accountable.

    “Let’s be clear about what’s happening: Joe Biden is weaponizing his Department of Justice against his own political rival. This sham indictment is the continuation of the endless political persecution of Donald Trump,” Scalise tweeted.

    House Majority Whip Tom Emmer echoed that sentiment Friday morning, tweeting, “This is the ultimate abuse of power, and they will be held accountable.”

    Some House Republicans, going much further than the speaker, called for the impeachment of Biden, Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray before seeing the details of the indictment.

    “It is time for Congress to rein in the FBI and DOJ, and impeach President Biden, Attorney General Garland, and Director Wray,” Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins said in a statement.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Graham will support replacing Feinstein on Judiciary Committee if she resigns, following precedent | CNN Politics

    Graham will support replacing Feinstein on Judiciary Committee if she resigns, following precedent | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that he will follow precedent for replacing Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee if she resigns, signaling a willingness to vote to replace the California Democrat if she left the chamber altogether.

    “If she does resign, I would be in the camp of following the precedent of the Senate, replacing the person, consistent with what we have done in the past,” the South Carolina lawmaker told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    Feinstein was hospitalized in March for shingles and has yet to return to the Senate. She has asked to be “temporarily” replaced on the Senate Judiciary Committee while she is recovering but remains committed to returning to Washington.

    Democrats would need 60 votes to replace Feinstein on the panel, but senior Republicans in leadership and on the committee have made clear that they would not give them the votes to do that on a temporary basis.

    Senate Republicans blocked an effort last week by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to temporarily replace Feinstein on the Judiciary panel with Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin.

    But Graham – who objected to Schumer’s request – signaled Sunday that the situation would be different if Feinstein resigned.

    “If she resigned, I would make sure that whatever we did in the past when members resigned would be followed,” he said.

    “As to Sen. Feinstein, she is a wonderful person. She’s been a very effective senator. I hope she comes back,” the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee added.

    Feinstein is facing calls to resign from at least two House Democrats, though most congressional Democrats have remained largely supportive of her decision to remain in office while absent from the Capitol.

    More than 60 progressive organizations across California signed a letter Friday calling for Feinstein’s resignation.

    “For three decades, 39 million Californians counted on you to be our hardworking voice in Washington, day in and day out. We still need a daily voice, now more than ever,” the letter stated. ” We respectfully ask you to give one more gift of service to our great state by fully stepping back to allow a new appointee to carry forth and extend your legacy.”

    On the issue of abortion, Graham would not say Sunday whether he believes the procedure should be regulated at the state or federal level.

    “It’s a human rights issue, does it really matter where you’re conceived?,” Graham said. He added later: “I welcome this debate. I think the Republican Party will be in good standing to oppose late-term abortion.”

    Graham’s comments highlight the difficulty that Republicans have had navigating the abortion issue. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year has energized Democrats, with voters across the country rejecting ballot efforts to restrict abortion at the state level.

    which was once a popular GOP premise. After Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, voters overwhelmingly rejected further efforts to restrict abortion.

    The South Carolina senator introduced a bill in September that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

    “Here’s what I believe, that anybody running for president who has a snowball’s chance in hell in the 2024 primary is going to be with me, the American people, and all of Europe, saying late-term abortions should be off the table,” Graham, who has endorsed former President Donald Trump’s reelection bid, said Sunday. “I am confident, over time, that’s where our nominee will be.”

    The issue of abortion has continued to reverberate across the political landscape. The Supreme Court on Friday protected access to a widely used abortion drug as appeals play out by freezing lower-court rulings that had placed restrictions on its usage.

    Meanwhile, Graham, who recently traveled to the Middle East, said Sunday that he saw dramatic change while on the ground in Saudi Arabia.

    “The biggest prize, for lack of a better word, would be to get Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel and vice versa. And the Biden administration is trying to do that. And I want to help them. I think the Biden administration is right to want a normalize relationship with Saudi Arabia, based on the changes I see,” he said.

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  • Republican-controlled states target college students’ voting power ahead of high-stakes 2024 elections | CNN Politics

    Republican-controlled states target college students’ voting power ahead of high-stakes 2024 elections | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican-controlled legislatures around the country have moved to erect new barriers to voting for high school and college students in what state lawmakers describe as an effort to clamp down on potential voter fraud. Critics call it a blatant attempt to suppress the youth vote as young people increasingly bolster Democratic candidates and liberal causes at the ballot box.

    As turnout among young voters grows, new proposals that change photo ID requirements or impose other limits have emerged.

    Laws enacted in Idaho this year, for instance, prohibit the use of student IDs to register to vote or cast ballots. A new law in Ohio, in effect for the first time in Tuesday’s primary elections, requires voters to present government-authorized photo ID at the polls, but student IDs are not included. Identification issued by universities has not traditionally been accepted to vote in the Buckeye State, but the new law eliminates the use of utility bills, bank statements and other documents that students have used before.

    A proposal in Texas would eliminate all campus polling places in the state. Meanwhile, officials in Montana – where Democrat Jon Tester is seeking a fourth term in one of 2024’s highest-profile Senate contests – have appealed a court decision striking down additional document requirements for those using student IDs to vote.

    And voting rights advocates say a longstanding statute in Georgia, which bars the use of student IDs from private universities, has made it more difficult for students at several schools – including Spelman and Morehouse, storied HBCUs in Atlanta – to participate in Georgia’s competitive US Senate and presidential elections.

    “Republican legislatures … are pretty transparently trying to keep left-leaning groups from voting,” said Charlotte Hill, interim director of the Democracy Policy Initiative at UC-Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Rather than trying to sway young voters, lawmakers seem willing “to shrink the eligible electorate,” she added.

    Proponents say the changes are needed to protect against voter fraud and shore up public confidence in elections – battered by widespread, and false, claims of a stolen presidency in 2020. And they contend that the forms of identification provided by secondary schools and colleges vary too widely to serve as a reliable way to establish a voter’s identity and residency.

    “They are issued by colleges, universities, public and private high schools, and some have address and pictures, while some do not,” Idaho state Sen. Scott Herndon, a Republican and one of the sponsors of the new law, said in an email to CNN.

    During a legislative hearing earlier this year, Herndon said his goal was straightforward: “Make sure that people who are voting at the polls are who they say they are.”

    The efforts to clamp down on student IDs and campus voting come against a backdrop of gains for Democrats among this demographic group. Exit polls analyzed by the Brookings Institution found that people ages 18 to 29 – especially young women – made a pronounced shift toward Democrats in last year’s midterm elections, helping to blunt an expected “red wave” for Republicans.

    And voter registration among 18-24 year-olds increased in several states last year over 2018 levels – including Kansas and Michigan, where voters decided on ballot measures on abortion, following the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to data from Tufts University’s nonpartisan Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE. CIRCLE conducts research into youth civic engagement.

    An analysis by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that voting on college campuses soared in last month’s election for a state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin. In that contest, the liberal candidate who prevailed, Janet Protasiewicz, had made protecting abortion rights a central feature of her campaign.

    Among the voting wards in the city of Eau Claire, for instance, the highest turnout came from the ward that served several University of Wisconsin dorms – with nearly 900 votes cast, up from 150 in a Supreme Court race four years earlier, the paper found. Protasiewicz won 87% of those votes.

    Prominent conservatives have spotlighted these voting trends.

    “Young voters are the issue,” Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s former Republican governor, wrote in a widely noticed Twitter post following the state Supreme Court election. “It comes from years of radical indoctrination – on campus, in school, with social media, & throughout culture,” said Walker, who is president of Young America’s Foundation, which works to popularize conservative ideas among young people. “We have to counter it or conservatives will never win battleground states again.”

    In an interview with CNN this week, Walker said his group is not seeking to change the ground rules for voting among younger Americans. But, he said, conservatives have been “overlooking ways to communicate to young people sooner than a month or two before the election.”

    One longtime GOP lawyer has discussed ways to curtail youth voting.

    The Washington Post, citing a PowerPoint presentation along with an audio recording of portions of the presentation obtained by liberal journalist Lauren Windsor, reported that GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell recently urged Republicans to limit campus voting during a private gathering of Republican National Committee donors.

    Mitchell, who tried to help former President Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, did not respond to a CNN interview request through a spokesperson for her current organization.

    In Idaho, notably, the number of young people ages 18 and 19 registered to vote soared 81% between the week of the midterm elections in November 2018 and the same time period in November 2022 – the highest gain in the nation – according to data collected by CIRCLE.

    One of the new laws in the state, which will take effect in January, drops student IDs from the list of accepted identification to vote. Now only these forms of ID can be used: a driver’s license or ID issued by the state’s transportation department, a US passport or identification with a photo issued by the US government, tribal identification or a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

    Student IDs had been accepted for voting for more than a decade in the state.

    State Rep. Tina Lambert, who authored the House version of the bill, declined a CNN interview request, citing a busy schedule.

    But she said in an email that students should be able to navigate the new law. “Students of voting age are smart and able,” Lambert wrote. “They are able to get the ID needed to vote. Most of them have IDs already, that they use for all the other things that they need legal ID for.”

    The law also has the support of Idaho Republican Secretary of State Phil McGrane, who told legislators this year that the change would help “maintain confidence in our elections” – although he said that he doesn’t know of any “instances of students trying to commit voter fraud.”

    He also noted that student identification was rarely used. Just 104 of the nearly 600,000 voters who cast ballots in Idaho’s general election last year did so using student ID, McGrane said.

    “Even if one person out there can only use a student ID to vote, that still matters. That’s still a vote,” said Saumya Sarin, a freshman at the College of Idaho in Caldwell, Idaho, and a volunteer with Babe Vote, a nonpartisan group that has worked to boost youth voter registration in the state. She testified against the proposal in the state legislature earlier this year.

    Saumya Sarin addresses the media at a press briefing announcing that BABE VOTE filed suit challenging the new law that removes student IDs as acceptable identification for voting in Idaho at the Idaho Statehouse in Boise on Friday, March 17.

    Sarlin, who turns 19 this week, said she presented a US passport last year when she voted for the first time, but she noted that she had “several friends off the top of my head” who don’t have the forms of identification now required in Idaho.

    “I think the direction that the youth are going with their vote scares the people who are currently in power a little bit because it works against them,” she said.

    Sarlin said she’s become active on voting issues to take a stand against state policies she opposes, including Idaho’s limits on gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth and abortions. Idaho has a near-total ban on abortions and last month made it a crime to help a pregnant minor obtain an abortion in another state without parental consent.

    Babe Vote and the League of Women Voters of Idaho have filed a lawsuit in an effort to block the Idaho voter ID laws. The measures “were not driven by any legitimate or credible concerns about the ‘integrity’ of the state’s elections,” the groups argue in their civil complaint. “Instead, they are part of a broader effort to roll back voting rights, particularly for young voters by weaponizing imaginary threats to election integrity.”

    A separate lawsuit, brought by March for Our Lives Idaho and the Idaho Alliance for Retired Americans, in federal court also seeks to block the new laws.

    Not all proposals to restrict student voting have been successful to date.

    A bill introduced in February by GOP state Rep. Carrie Isaac in Texas to prohibit polling places on college campuses has not yet made it out of committee. Another Isaac bill would ban voting on K-12 campuses.

    She told CNN this week that the measures are needed because polling places are sites of raw emotions and high stress, and she doesn’t want that kind of environment in schools.

    “I don’t think it’s smart to invite people that would not otherwise have business on campus on our campuses,” Isaac said. “In Texas, we have two weeks of early voting that people are coming in, that would not otherwise be there. And I think we should do anything and everything to make our campuses as safe as possible.”

    She said she’s confident that college students can find ways to vote off-campus.

    In Georgia, a state that will be a key battleground in the 2024 White House contest, student IDs are accepted as a form of voter identification, but only if they are issued by public colleges in the state. Seven out of the 10 Historically Black Colleges and Universities Georgia are private, making it more difficult for students who attend those universities to cast their ballots, voting rights advocates say.

    Former state Sen. Cecil Staton, a Republican who sponsored the 2006 photo ID law, said the government can ensure consistent standards for student IDs at state schools. “We didn’t feel like we had that same ability with private schools,” he said.

    Aylon Gipson – a Morehouse student from Alabama and a fellow with the voting rights group Campus Vote Project – said he has a lot of friends who have had problems at the polls as a result of Georgia’s law, especially underclassmen who don’t have a driver’s license.

    Gipson, a junior economics major at Morehouse College, poses for a portrait in the library of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College in Atlanta on May 1.

    “I’ve seen specific instances where students will call me and say, ‘Hey, I tried to go in and vote, but I got turned around at this polling station,’ or specifically our on-campus polling station, because they didn’t have an ID or they didn’t have a valid license to be able to vote with,” Gipson said. “I think it’s disenfranchising students who attend these HBCUs simply because of the fact that we’re private.”

    And in Ohio, which will see a hotly contested US Senate race next year as Democrat Sherrod Brown seeks reelection in a state where the GOP controls the legislature and governor’s office, Tuesday’s primary election marks the first election with the new photo ID rules in place. Voting rights advocates say the new restrictions could spell problems for students who have moved to Ohio for college and are no longer allowed to provide dormitory, utility bills or other documents to establish their legal residency when voting.

    Getting the form of ID now required in Ohio, such as a state driver’s license, will invalidate identification students may possess from their home state.

    “It seems as if this specific group – out-of-state college students, who have every right to vote – have been targeted and singled out,” said Collin Marozzi, deputy policy director of the ACLU of Ohio.

    Legislators, he said, are sending a “poor signal to these college students: ‘We want your money for our colleges. We want your money for our economy. But we don’t really want you to have a voice in the future of this state.’ “

    Students in Ohio still can opt to vote absentee by mail if they don’t want to surrender their identification from the state where they used to live – provided they include the last four digits of their Social Security number on the application. (The law establishing new photo ID requirements also reduces the window to request and return absentee ballots.)

    “For that college student, they make a decision: Am I a voter in Ohio or, say, in Pennsylvania?” said Rob Nichols, a spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican. “If you want to hang on to your Pennsylvania license, you can do so, vote absentee, give the last four digits of your Social, and you are on your merry way.”

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  • Out of the spotlight, Mark Meadows wields quiet political power amid Trump legal woes | CNN Politics

    Out of the spotlight, Mark Meadows wields quiet political power amid Trump legal woes | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    In January, as Kevin McCarthy fought to win the House speakership through 15 rounds of grinding votes and late-night sessions at the Capitol, a few blocks away a group of right-wing holdouts huddled with a familiar but surprising source – former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

    A founding member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, Meadows spent years in the House agitating against GOP leadership, trying to move his party increasingly to the right. Now, Meadows was counseling a new batch of Republican rebels, advising them on specific demands to make and gaming out how McCarthy would react to their maneuvering, according to multiple GOP lawmakers who were part of the planning sessions.

    The group was so taken by Meadows, at one point they considered nominating him for speaker. Meadows ultimately rejected the suggestion, telling lawmakers he preferred to operate behind the scenes.

    “We talked to him about being speaker. We asked would he mind if we put his name up,” Rep. Ralph Norman, one of the McCarthy holdouts, confirmed to CNN. “That’s not something he thought he could win. His best use is doing what he does now. He can freelance and offer advice.”

    Sources tell CNN that in recent weeks Meadows has also been advising right-wing lawmakers on negotiations over the nation’s debt ceiling, where McCarthy’s right-flank may try to stand in the way of any concessions made in a compromise with President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats.

    The former chief’s hands-on role in both the debt fight and the speaker’s battle – details of which have not been previously reported – underscores how Meadows has managed to stay politically relevant even as he covertly navigates potential criminal exposure for his role in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

    Meadows is viewed as a critical first-hand witness to the investigations of both special counsel Jack Smith and Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. He’s been ordered to testify before the grand jury in both investigations, and to provide documents to the special counsel after a judge rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

    The special counsel’s criminal investigation into January 6 and Trump’s mishandling of classified documents appear to be barreling toward a conclusion. There’s been a flurry of grand jury activity, as anticipation builds for any sign that Meadows is cooperating.

    It is unclear whether Meadows has responded to the special counsel’s requests or appeared in front of that grand jury in Washington. In front of the grand jury in Georgia, Meadows declined to answer questions, one of the grand jurors revealed in February.

    While Meadows has faded from the public spotlight, interviews with more than a dozen Republican lawmakers and aides, Trump allies and political activists in Meadows’ home state of North Carolina show how he has quietly worked to shape conservative policy and wield influence with MAGA-aligned lawmakers — even as his relationship with Trump remains fraught.

    Meadows has maintained a lucrative perch in the conservative world as a senior partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute, the pro-Trump think tank that pays him more than $500,000 and has seen its revenues soar to $45 million since Meadows joined in 2021, according to the group’s tax filings.

    Rep. Jim Jordan, one of Meadows’ closest confidants when they served in Congress together, said he still considers Meadows one of his “best friends” and talks to him “at least” once a week. But when it comes to legal matters, Jordan said: “We make a point not to talk about that.”

    A spokesman for Meadows declined to make him available for an interview and declined comment for this story.

    A source close to Trump’s legal team said Trump’s lawyers have had no contact with Meadows and his team and are in the dark on what Meadows is doing in the investigation, fueling speculation about whether Meadows is cooperating with the special counsel’s probe – or if Meadows himself is a target of the investigation.

    The silence from Meadows has irked lawyers representing other defendants aligned with Trump who have been more open, according to several sources familiar with the Trump-aligned legal teams. In particular, they point to a $900,000 payment Trump’s Save America political action committee paid to the firm representing Meadows, McGuireWoods, at the end of last year.

    “We’ve all heard the same rumors,” one Trump adviser told CNN. “No one really knows what he’s doing though.”

    The Justice Department decided not to charge Meadows with a crime for refusing to testify before the House January 6 committee. In its final report last year, the January 6 House select committee said that Meadows appeared to be one of several participants in a criminal conspiracy as part of Trump’s attempt to delay and overturn the results of the 2020 election. The report paints Meadows as an integral part of that effort, as documented by the more than 2,000 text messages Meadows turned over to the committee before he stopped cooperating.

    Meadows was also the key point of contact for dozens of people trying to get through to the president as the attack was unfolding, and the special counsel’s investigation has been trying to comb over many of those interactions.

    A lawyer for Meadows declined to comment.

    Despite silence on the legal front, Meadows remains in touch with members of Trump’s inner circle on political matters. He was actively involved in securing Trump’s endorsement in 2021 for now-US Sen. Ted Budd ahead of what was a contentious Republican primary in North Carolina. While less-and-less frequently since Trump left office, Meadows has been known to attend fundraisers and events at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where he also helped organize a donor retreat for CPI last year.

    “[Meadows] still checks in,” said the Trump adviser, who has spoken to the former chief of staff in recent months. The adviser stressed that Meadows had not indicated any desire to join the Trump campaign team. “He still wants to talk about the politics.”

    Allies say Meadows – who fashioned himself as a savvy political operator during his time in Congress and the White House – is motivated by a desire to help steer the direction of the country. But some people who worked closely with him are more skeptical, and think Meadows is driven by a desire for power.

    “He is all about getting information so he can be seen as important to donors, other members, the media,” said a senior GOP source close to Trump world, who used to work for a Freedom Caucus member. “People don’t trust him.”

    One source close to Meadows suggested that he has not expressed interest in running for office again, but could be open to a job in a future Trump administration – an idea a source close to the former president scoffed at, hinting that Meadows’ direct relationship with the former president had run its course.

    “I think he enjoys what he’s doing,” Jordan said of Meadows’ current gig. But the Ohio Republican added: “I’m sure he misses certain aspects of the job as well. You know how involved Mark was.”

    After leaving the White House in 2021, Meadows joined CPI, a “MAGA”-centric advocacy group headquartered just blocks from the Capitol that has become a clubhouse for conservative lawmakers, staffers and activists.

    Members of the Freedom Caucus hold their weekly meetings at CPI. During the speaker’s race, CPI was home to some consequential strategy sessions involving Meadows.

    Meadows shakes hands with attendees after a forum on House and GOP conference rules for the 118th Congress at FreedomWorks, a conservative and libertarian advocacy group, in Washington, D.C., on Monday, November 14, 2022.

    Sources who attended those meetings say Meadows pushed for concessions like the ability for a single lawmaker to force a vote on ousting the sitting speaker, which McCarthy ultimately agreed to after initially calling it a red line.

    Meadows also encouraged them to push for a committee on the “weaponization” of the federal government, which Jordan now helms as chair of the Judiciary Committee.

    Five months later, some of those same Republicans say they are once again turning to Meadows as they ramp up for a brawl over the debt limit. Meadows has been encouraging the far-right flank of the House caucus to stick together in insisting on spending cuts and other demands in exchange for lifting the nation’s borrowing limit.

    “You’re talking about one of the founding members of the Freedom Caucus,” Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican, said of Meadows.

    “He obviously wants it to continue to be successful. I think it has been. And so I think his role at CPI is to make sure that occurs,” Donalds said, adding that he had not personally spoken to Meadows about the debt limit debate.

    When Meadows is in town, he will occasionally pop into Freedom Caucus meetings at CPI or huddle with members of the group beforehand. Norman said Meadows also recently helped him with a fundraiser in North Carolina. And Meadows is also known to dial up members frequently to talk shop.

    “He called me today and he said that he wanted me to convey to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that he really appreciated her working with me and others on the stock bill,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, a staunch Trump ally, said earlier this month of legislation to restrict lawmakers from trading stocks.

    Aside from outreach to lawmakers, Meadows and CPI have also helped congressional offices find and train conservative staffers, particularly when it comes to conducting oversight, multiple sources familiar with the group’s work told CNN. That issue has been a top priority for the right now that Republicans are in the majority, and it’s also an area of expertise for Meadows, who was previously the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee.

    “Mark’s in the middle of all that,” Jordan said.

    Meadows has helped usher in a groundswell of fundraising for CPI over the past two years and has been personally involved in a lot of the organizing fundraisers and courting donors, according to sources familiar with the matter.

    According to the non-profit’s tax filings, CPI’s revenues jumped from $7 million in 2020 to more than $45 million in 2021, the year Meadows was brought in as a senior partner to help run the organization with former Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who founded CPI in 2017. DeMint was previously ousted from the Heritage Foundation amid tensions with the board.

    Among the donations to CPI: $1 million from Trump’s Save America PAC in 2021.

    Sources familiar with CPI described Meadows as the working head of the advocacy group, which has spent millions of dollars purchasing several buildings just steps from the Capitol over the past two years. The goal, sources say, is to create a community for Trump-aligned “MAGA” conservatives.

    “[CPI] wants Trump conservatives to have a home in Washington,” one source familiar with the organization said, adding that the buildings would be used for a variety of purposes, including for retreats and staff trainings. “Establishment Democrats and the Mitch McConnells have that and it keeps them here. [CPI] wants to keep [Trump Republicans] here.”

    The buildings, purchased under limited liability corporations affiliated with CPI, are just down the street from the group’s current headquarters, blocks from the Capitol. Among the new real estate acquisitions, which were first reported by Grid News, are two storefronts on Pennsylvania Avenue surrounding a Heritage Foundation office, including the space of the old Capitol Lounge bar popular with congressional staffers of both parties.

    There’s even a television studio at CPI so members can do cable TV interviews from the space – Jordan recently did an interview with Fox News from the studio, where he talked about Republican-led investigations into the Biden administration.

    “There’s a real demand for what (CPI) provides to members. A lot of members like to go over there. I just wish I could get over there more,” said Donalds.

    CPI did not respond to requests for comment.

    Yet even as Meadows maintains close connections in Washington through his perch at CPI, the same can’t be said when it comes to the congressional district he once represented.

    Meadows greets supporters in front of senior aide Cassidy Hutchinson during a presidential campaign rally for President Trump in Pennsylvania, on October 31, 2020.

    In North Carolina’s 11th district, conservative political activists say the once-beloved local congressman has lost his luster and made enemies after he waded into both the primary to replace him and the contentious 2022 Republican Senate primary, where Budd defeated former North Carolina Rep. Mark Walker.

    “I used to joke it was Jesus and then Mark Meadows in the 11th. He was just a couple rungs below Jesus in western North Carolina. He would arrive and it was like Elvis,” said one Republican activist, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the political environment there. “Now I think he’s just kind of a non-factor if you were to talk to anyone in western North Carolina.”

    Meadows has also decamped from his former congressional district to a home in South Carolina, where he splits his time along with his work in Washington, DC, according to sources.

    After the 2020 election, Meadows got into hot water over his voter registration in North Carolina. The state investigated Meadows over registering to vote at a mobile home in Macon County where he had allegedly never lived or even visited, though the state’s Justice Department said in December there wasn’t sufficient evidence to pursue charges.

    Meadows is now registered to vote in South Carolina, a county election official confirmed to CNN.

    “He disconnected his 828 (area code) number,” the activist said. “Lots of us who had Mark Meadows on speed dial, that was just cut off, boom.”

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  • McCarthy attempts damage control after questioning Trump’s strength as a candidate | CNN Politics

    McCarthy attempts damage control after questioning Trump’s strength as a candidate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Speaker Kevin McCarthy has scrambled to contain the fallout after he suggested that former President Donald Trump might not be the strongest candidate in the 2024 presidential race – comments that outraged Trump allies and raised fresh questions on the right about why the speaker has yet to endorse Trump in the crowded GOP primary.

    McCarthy called Trump Tuesday morning to apologize, two sources familiar told CNN, after McCarthy said during a CNBC interview that he thinks Trump can win in 2024, but does not know if he is the “strongest” candidate.

    McCarthy explained to Trump that he misspoke on CNBC, and also claimed that some reporters took some of his comments out of context, the sources said. Allies were pleased with McCarthy’s apology, though several Trump advisers told CNN they were still wary of the speaker. The New York Times was first to report on the call.

    And the damage control didn’t end there.

    Not long after his call with Trump, McCarthy walked back his remarks and offered effusive praise of Trump in an exclusive interview with the right-wing publication Breitbart. A Trump campaign adviser told CNN, “I don’t think anyone can read his interview yesterday and not believe that he fully supports (Trump).”

    McCarthy’s campaign then also blasted out a fundraising email calling Trump the “strongest” opponent to beat President Joe Biden.

    McCarthy’s scramble to stay in Trump’s good graces and reiterate his loyalty both privately and publicly shows how much he is still beholden to the former president, who remains popular among McCarthy’s right flank. Yet McCarthy has refused to endorse in the primary so far – an example of the delicate tightrope he is walking when it comes to Trump.

    But the speaker is likely to come under increasing pressure to get off the sidelines as the race heats up, even as some senior Republicans have advised McCarthy to stay neutral, worried it could put some vulnerable House Republicans in a tough spot. Privately, there are deep misgivings among a faction of Republicans about having Trump as their presidential nominee.

    Some in Trump’s orbit say McCarthy has indicated to them that his endorsement could hurt Trump with far-right factions of the party that view McCarthy as part of the establishment. One Trump adviser did not scoff at this reasoning, pointing to how enraged with McCarthy some of Trump’s most ardent supporters were at the speaker’s comments Tuesday.

    But overall, those close to Trump expect McCarthy to ultimately endorse Trump, particularly after the former president stepped up his support for McCarthy in his speaker election earlier this year.

    Sources close to Trump believe the former president helped secure the speakership for McCarthy after urging House Republicans to vote for the embattled leader after McCarthy lost three straight speakership votes in January. Trump also made calls on McCarthy’s behalf ahead of the vote. McCarthy finally secured the gavel on the 15th ballot and immediately thanked the former president for his support.

    As of right now, however, McCarthy has no intentions of endorsing Trump – or anyone – in the primary, according to sources familiar with the speaker’s thinking, though it’s still early and his calculus could change.

    Since getting into the race, Trump has been aggressively courting endorsements from allies on Capitol Hill, which he believes will help solidify his status as the front-runner. So far, House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik is the highest-ranking House Republican to endorse Trump.

    In the past, some advisers to the former president have brushed off questions as to why McCarthy has not offered an endorsement of Trump in 2024, and instead dodged the question when asked by reporters.

    McCarthy, too, has avoided the question. When recently asked by CNN whether he plans to endorse anyone in the primary, McCarthy said: “I could, yes, very well.”

    Within Trump’s world, there have been questions about why the former president hasn’t cut McCarthy loose.

    “He could have let him go after January 6,” one Trump ally said, pointing to a recording of McCarthy, released by The New York Times, telling GOP leaders that he would push Trump to resign after the insurrection.

    Others close to Trump see a utility in the former president’s relationship with the now-speaker, specifically the ongoing investigations into Democrats by Republicans in the House.

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  • Elon Musk is the gift that keeps on giving to Mark Zuckerberg | CNN Business

    Elon Musk is the gift that keeps on giving to Mark Zuckerberg | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    At the start of last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in the hot seat.

    Revelations from hundreds of internal company documents, known as the Facebook Papers, had drawn sharp criticism from lawmakers, users and civil society groups in late 2021 and forced company executives to appear before Congress. Zuckerberg’s plan to rebrand Facebook as Meta and pivot to the so-called metaverse was met with broad skepticism. And the company’s core ad business was under significant pressure from privacy changes made by Apple.

    But then, the attention of lawmakers, media and the tech world writ large abruptly shifted to another tech billionaire: Elon Musk.

    Musk early last year criticized Twitter, then nearly joined its board, then agreed to buy the company before launching a monthslong and ultimately unsuccessful fight to get out of the deal. The saga, which only continued after Musk completed the deal and pushed through numerous controversial changes, often dominated news cycles. In the process, it seemed to make Twitter’s rivals look better managed and draw away critical attention that might otherwise have been focused on other tech giants, including Meta, as they went through painful layoffs and suffered declines on Wall Street.

    This week, however, Zuckerberg notched his biggest win from Musk yet. After years of trying and failing to capture Twitter’s audience with copycat features, Zuckerberg is now capitalizing on Twitter’s struggles with a new app called Threads. Meta’s Twitter clone launched this week to unprecedented success, despite Meta’s history of privacy violations and enabling election meddling, not to mention longstanding concerns that the company and Zuckerberg wield too much power over the social media market.

    The app’s overnight success was a direct result of the chaos under Musk’s leadership of Twitter since last October. During that time, he has managed to anger many of the platform’s users and advertisers with his erratic statements, mass layoffs and significant changes to Twitter’s policies. While Twitter users have lamented what Musk’s ownership has meant for the platform, it may be the best thing that could have happened for Zuckerberg.

    “Musk has done one thing after another to piss off his own user base,” said Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School.

    Some early Threads users even commented on the strange nature of the situation — that they would be eager to join a social network run by one billionaire whose company has faced intense public criticism simply because they were so eager to get away from another.

    “It boggles the mind,” one user posted to Threads. “I boycotted Facebook years ago and when I heard about this I joined immediately.”

    “Never used [Facebook] nor [Instagram],” another user said, adding that they had to join Instagram for the first time to gain access to Threads. “Last thing I would have EVER expected was to use any platform of Zuckerberg’s.”

    And yet, by Friday, Zuckerberg said Threads had reached 70 million user signups — amassing a user base nearly a third of the size of Twitter’s in fewer than two days for a platform that could eventually help knock out one of Facebook’s chief rivals and give a boost to Meta’s struggling ad business.

    If Musk is a boon to Zuckerberg’s fortunes, he’s an unlikely one. Zuckerberg and Musk have often been at odds over the years.

    In 2018, in the wake of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, Musk said he had deleted the Facebook pages for his companies Tesla and SpaceX because the platform “gives me the willies.” And later that year, he also deleted his Instagram account.

    More recently, Musk has claimed that Instagram “makes people depressed” and appeared to imply that Meta was complicit in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    Zuckerberg has also thrown jabs at Musk, including after a SpaceX explosion accidentally blew up a satellite that was being used by Facebook, and in a critique of his stance on artificial intelligence during a 2017 Facebook Live broadcast.

    But earlier this year, Zuckerberg also complimented Musk’s leadership of Twitter. In a podcast interview last month, Zuckerberg said that “Elon led a push early on to make Twitter a lot leaner … I think that those were generally good changes.”

    In some ways, Musk’s moves at Twitter may have given Zuckerberg and Meta — as well as other tech companies — cover to take similar actions without as much criticism. Meta announced it would eliminate more than 20,000 employees over two rounds of layoffs, marking the largest cuts in its history. But Meta came off looking responsible compared to Twitter’s mass layoffs by handling the cuts professionally and providing more robust severance.

    After Musk restored the account of former President Donald Trump following a two-year suspension that began after the January 6 attack, Twitter faced criticism from civil society civic? groups who called on advertisers to boycott the platform. But Meta, along with YouTube, followed suit several months later (although those platforms cited their own risk analyses, rather than Musk’s leadership, in explaining their decisions).

    The distraction and chaos of Musk’s Twitter takeover could hardly have come at a better time for Zuckerberg and Meta.

    The social media giant’s business had a brutal year — posting its first-ever quarterly revenue decline as a public company during the June quarter, and then again in each of the two remaining quarters of the year, as it struggled with a weak online advertising market while pouring billions into its plan for the metaverse. The company lost more than $600 billion in market value during 2022.

    Now, the launch of Threads marks a huge new opportunity for Meta and Zuckerberg. Threads could be a way of getting social media users to spend even more time on Meta’s apps, especially as Facebook increasingly struggles with the perception of being a has-been platform that’s less attractive to younger users.

    Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that he hopes to eventually have more than one billion users on Threads, far more than the 238 million active users on Twitter prior to Musk’s takeover.

    Although there are no ads on the platform yet, Threads could also ultimately supplement Meta’s core advertising business. Instagram head Adam Mosseri, who oversaw the Threads launch, told The Verge in an interview about the new platform this week that, “if we make something that lots of people love and keep using, we will, I’m sure, monetize it” through advertising.

    For Musk, losing Twitter users, or having its future growth hamstrung, thanks to Threads, could mean further harm to the $44 billion investment he made to buy the social media platform — and, perhaps more importantly, to his reputation as a genius with a knack for turning around troubled companies.

    Musk appears to be trying to push back against Zuckerberg’s turn of fortune. On Wednesday, a lawyer for Musk sent a letter to Meta threatening to sue the company over the rival app, accusing it of trade secret theft through the hiring of former Twitter employees. (Meta denied the charge.)

    The Twitter-Threads battle has raised the stakes for another fight: a cage fight that Musk and Zuckerberg have spent the past several weeks planning. Zuckerberg, a regular practitioner of Brazilian jiu jitsu, appears to have the upper hand.

    But whether or not the fight ends up going forward, Zuckerberg seems to have already won.

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  • RFK Jr. hearing encapsulates a political era when truth is upside down | CNN Politics

    RFK Jr. hearing encapsulates a political era when truth is upside down | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    In a Donald Trump-influenced era of through-the-looking-glass politics, everything seems upside down, traditional loyalties are scrambled, history can be rewritten and truth is just what anyone wants it to be.

    A Republican-run House hearing Thursday encapsulated the current political circus ahead of another tense election. In a head-spinning spectacle, a Kennedy family scion and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination was greeted as a hero by Republicans. But he was slammed by Democrats, including by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as “a living, breathing, false flag operation.”

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was given a platform by pro-Trump Republicans because his conspiracies about vaccine and Covid-19, and claims that the government has tried to censor him gel with their efforts to shield Trump by claiming that the political weaponization of government is a Democratic and not a GOP transgression.

    The marriage of convenience in a fiery hearing underscored how populism and the bending of truth pioneered on the right by Trump also has significant currency on the left. It illustrated how the character of mainstream American politics is under siege from fringe voices and extremist positions that once struggled to be heard but in recent years found a footing on social media, the campaign trail and even in Congress and the White House.

    As an example of his creation of alternative realities – a tactic frequently used by Trump – Kennedy forcibly denied that he had ever been anti-vaccine, racist or antisemitic. Yet CNN fact checks show he has repeatedly shared unfounded conspiracy theories with a false link between autism and childhood vaccines. He has also claimed that man-made chemicals could be making children gay or transgender. And just last week, he was hit by new claims of conspiracy mongering, racism and antisemitism over remarks at a dinner in New York City in which he claimed that “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

    Despite this controversy, Kennedy brazenly appeared to be inventing new truths even during the hearing. He said, for instance, “In my entire life, and while I’m under oath I have never uttered a phrase that was either racist or antisemitic.” At another moment he said: “I’ve never been anti-vaccine,” then added: “But everybody in this room probably believes that I have been because that’s the prevailing narrative.”

    Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of President John F. Kennedy, criticized his relative in a social media video Friday, calling his candidacy an “embarrassment.”

    “I’ve listened to him. I know him. I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president. What I do know is, his candidacy is an embarrassment. Let’s not be distracted, again, by somebody’s vanity project.” Schlossberg said.

    In an odd flipping of the normal political order, Democrats in the hearing effectively sought to undermine the candidacy of the son and nephew of assassinated party heroes, former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy. The top Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Virgin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett, for instance, condemned committee chair Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan for letting Kennedy air what Democrats regard as extreme views. “It’s a free country. You absolutely have a right to say what you believe,” she said, adding: “But you don’t have the right to a platform, public or private.”

    Plaskett’s comments did raise serious questions about whether there are limits – if any – on a prominent personality’s right to free speech even if they are saying things that are not true, as well as the extent to which misinformation has swamped politics and elections. But most of the hearing stayed away from such topics and was dominated by Republican attempts to score points and shield Trump and Democratic attacks on Kennedy.

    One of the ex-President’s top allies, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the fourth ranking House Republican, revived conservative claims that the Democratic-leaning officials in the federal government suppressed a story about a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden before the last election, a move she argued had been instrumental in his father beating Trump for the presidency. She cited this theory when asking Kennedy whether he believed there was censorship amounting to government interference in the 2020 election.

    Former Twitter executives admitted under oath this year that the social media network temporarily suppressed a story about the laptop but said there was no government interference in the decision. CNN has previously reported that allegations the FBI told Twitter to suppress the story are unsupported, and a half-dozen tech executives and senior staff, along with multiple federal officials familiar with the matter, denied any such directive was given.

    But the specific truth in this case isn’t necessarily important to Republicans who were using Kennedy to further create the impression of government interference to prevent Trump retaining the White House. The more public confusion there is the better it is for the ex-president politically. Of course, claims that Democrats are the ones really guilty of election interference are a direct attempt to whitewash Trump’s own behavior – since he used the tools of his office to try to subvert the 2020 election and to stay in power.

    Thursday’s hearing is not the first time political reality has seemed mixed up or traditional loyalties subverted. Just last week for instance, Republicans subjected FBI Director Christopher Wray to a fearsome grilling in a hearing while Democrats unusually defended the bureau – long regarded as one of the most conservative organs of the US government. The GOP storm was whipped up by allies of Trump who want to discredit investigations into his effort to overturn the 2020 election and his hoarding of classified documents in his Florida resort. Trump has already been indicted in the latter case and there are growing signs he will be charged in the former. He denies any wrongdoing and claims the investigations are politically motivated.

    It’s not that Republicans don’t have genuine ground for oversight. Independent government watchdog reports and internal investigations for instance have found deficiencies and mistakes in some investigations involving Trump. In the Russia probe, there were mistakes in the use of a dossier complied by a former British spy and in applications for surveillance warrants. More recently, an agreement with the Justice Department under which Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to two tax misdemeanors and struck a deal to resolve a felony gun charge is within the right of Congress to investigate. But neither case so far supports the wild claims that a corrupt liberal deep state is conducting schemes designed to suppress conservatives that are often made by Trump and his fellow Republicans.

    There is plentiful evidence that the ex-president is the one who weaponized government to go after his political enemies and to evade accountability. For instance he sacked former FBI chief James Comey and told NBC News it was because of the Russia investigation. He used his position as president and the prospect of military aid to seek to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into opening an investigation into Joe Biden and his son in a phone call that later led to his first impeachment. And Trump, by pressuring multiple officials in key swing states and by lambasting poll workers and making claims of widespread voter fraud, apparently used executive power to try to defy the will of voters in 2020.

    Voters also risked being misled by Washington’s hall of mirrors on another occasion this week. In a more frivolous, but still misleading example of the way it’s often hard to work out what is true, the Biden campaign debuted a campaign video that appeared to show one of Trump’s most fervent allies, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene praising Biden as fulfilling the historic mission of great Democratic presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. The words were those of Greene but they were selectively edited from a speech in a video that disguised her true intent, which was to condemn historic government spending by Democrats on education, health care, and social safety net programs that Republicans claim are akin to socialism.

    This example of things being not quite what they seem was more of a cheeky case of campaign trolling than the wholesale refashioning of truth evident Thursday. The hearing at one point degenerated into both Republicans and Democrats accusing each other of trying to censor their questions and witnesses.

    One veteran Democrat, Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, summed up how the session had in itself warped reality. “I never thought we’d descend to this level of Orwellian dystopia. Suddenly, the tools of the trade are not to get at the truth but to distract, distort, to deflect and dissemble,” Connolly said.

    Oddly, several members on the Republican side of the committee nodded their heads in agreement – apparently convinced the Orwellian behavior in question was on the part of what they see as a tyrannical, censoring government rather than in the obvious truths turned upside down.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Exclusive: National security officials tell special counsel Trump was repeatedly warned he did not have the authority to seize voting machines | CNN Politics

    Exclusive: National security officials tell special counsel Trump was repeatedly warned he did not have the authority to seize voting machines | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Former top national security officials have testified to a federal grand jury that they repeatedly told former President Donald Trump and his allies that the government didn’t have the authority to seize voting machines after the 2020 election, CNN has learned.

    Chad Wolf, the former acting Homeland Security secretary, and his former deputy Ken Cuccinelli were asked about discussions inside the administration around DHS seizing voting machines when they appeared before the grand jury earlier this year, according to three people familiar with the proceedings. Cuccinelli testified that he “made clear at all times” that DHS did not have the authority to take such a step, one of the sources said.

    Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, in a closed-door interview with federal prosecutors earlier this year, also recounted conversations about seizing voting machines after the 2020 election, including during a heated Oval Office meeting that Trump participated in, according to a source familiar with the matter.

    Details about the secret grand jury testimony and O’Brien’s interview, neither of which have been previously reported, illustrate how special counsel Jack Smith and his prosecutors are looking at the various ways Trump tried to overturn his electoral loss despite some of his top officials advising him against the ideas.

    Now some of those same officials, including Wolf, Cuccinelli and O’Brien, as well as others who have so far refused to testify, may have to return to the grand jury in Washington, DC, to provide additional testimony after a series of pivotal court rulings that were revealed in recent weeks rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

    Cuccinelli was spotted going back into the grand jury on Tuesday, April 4.

    Without that privilege shield, former officials must answer questions about their interactions and conversations with the former president, including what he was told about the lack of evidence for election fraud and the legal remedies he could pursue.

    That line of questioning goes to the heart of Smith’s challenge in any criminal case he might bring – to prove that Trump and his allies pursued their efforts despite knowing their fraud claims were false or their gambits weren’t lawful. To bring any potential criminal charges, prosecutors would have to overcome Trump’s public claim that he believed then and now that fraud really did cost him the election.

    “There’s lots of ways you can show that. But certainly one of them is if they were told by people who knew what they were talking about, that that there was no basis to take the actions,” said Adav Noti, an election law attorney who previously served in the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC, and at the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office.

    “I would not want to be a defense lawyer trying to argue, ‘Well, yes, my client was told that, but he never really believed it,’” Noti said.

    Inside the Trump White House after the 2020 election, the push to seize voting machines eventually led to executive orders being drafted in mid-December of that year, directing the military and DHS to carry out the task despite Wolf and Cuccinelli telling Trump and his allies their agency did not have the authority to do so.

    Those orders, which cited debunked claims about voting system irregularities in Michigan and Georgia, were presented to Trump by his former national security adviser Michael Flynn and then-lawyer Sidney Powell during a now-infamous Oval Office meeting on December 18.

    Smith’s team has asked witnesses about that meeting in front of the grand jury and during closed-door interviews, multiple sources told CNN. Among them was O’Brien, who told the January 6 House select committee that he was patched into the December 18 meeting by phone after it had already devolved into a screaming match between Flynn, Powell and White House lawyers, according to a transcript of O’Brien’s deposition that was released by the panel.

    O’Brien told the committee that at some point someone asked him if there was evidence of election fraud or foreign interference in the voting machines. “And I said, ‘No, we’ve looked into that and there’s no evidence of it,” O’Brien said he responded. “I was told we didn’t have any evidence of any voter machine fraud in the 2020 election.”

    When asked about that meeting by federal prosecutors working for Smith, O’Brien reiterated that he made clear there was no evidence of foreign interference affecting voting machines, according to the source familiar with the matter.

    O’Brien met with prosecutors earlier this year after receiving a subpoena from Smith’s team and is among the Trump officials who could be called back to discuss conversations with Trump under the judge’s recent decision on executive privilege.

    Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who personally told allies of the former president that there was no evidence of foreign election interference or widespread fraud that would justify taking extreme steps like seizing voting machines, must also testify, the judge decided.

    A spokesperson for Ratcliffe did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. Wolf declined to comment.

    Cuccinelli acknowledged to the January 6 committee last year that, after the election, he was asked several times by Trump’s then-attorney Rudy Giuliani, and on at least one occasion by Trump himself, if DHS had authority to seize voting machines. Wolf told the committee he was repeatedly asked the same question by then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

    Giuliani, who was subpoenaed by the Justice Department before Smith took over the investigation, previously acknowledged to the January 6 committee that he participated in that December 18 Oval Office meeting and other conversations about having DHS and the military seize voting machines.

    Giuliani told congressional investigators that he and his team “tried many different ways to see if we could get the machines seized,” including options involving DHS, according to the transcript of his committee interview. Giuliani also acknowledged taking part in conversations – even before the Dec. 18 Oval Office meeting – where the idea of using the military to seize voting machines was raised.

    “I can remember the issue of the military coming up much earlier and constantly saying, ‘Will you forget about it, please? Just shut up. You want to go to jail? Just shut up. We’re not using the military,’” he added.

    Robert Costello, an attorney for Giuliani, told CNN that Giuliani has not received a subpoena from Smith. Costello said that in early November, Giuliani was subpoenaed by the DC US Attorney seeking documents and testimony. Costello says he told the Justice Department Giuliani couldn’t comply with the given deadlines because they were in the middle of disciplinary proceedings at the time. That was the last time Giuliani heard from DOJ, says Costello.

    “I haven’t heard a word since November 2022,” Costello told CNN on March 30.

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  • Trump’s attendance at rape and defamation trial against him would be a ‘burden’ on the city, his lawyer says | CNN Politics

    Trump’s attendance at rape and defamation trial against him would be a ‘burden’ on the city, his lawyer says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s attorney on Wednesday said the former president “wishes” to appear at next week’s civil trial where a jury will hear columnist E. Jean Carroll’s assault and defamation claims against him – but his attendance should not be necessary because it would be a “burden” on the city and court.

    The letter to the judge, from attorney Joseph Tacopina, appears to argue that Trump shouldn’t attend his civil trial without saying he won’t.

    “Defendant Trump wishes to appear at trial,” the letter states, but adds “concern” that New York City and the court would face “logistical and financial burdens” to have a former president travel with the Secret Service and other security protections to the proceedings.

    “In order for Defendant Trump to appear, his movement would need to be coordinated preliminarily by a Secret Service advance team hours beforehand each day that he is present, so that a tactical plan may be developed,” such as locking down parts of the courthouse, Tacopina said. Tacopina raised the disruption Trump’s recent criminal arraignment caused in the state court as an example.

    “Your consideration is greatly appreciated,” Tacopina added.

    Jury selection begins next Tuesday in Carroll’s lawsuit alleging that Trump raped her in a New York dressing room in the mid-1990s and then defamed her years later when he denied it took place, said she wasn’t his “type,” and suggested she made up the story to promote a new book. Trump has denied all allegations against him.

    If he were to be called to testify, Trump would show up in person, Tacopina said. If he does not appear, his legal team asks the judge to instruct jurors that he isn’t required to attend and he wouldn’t be there because of the logistical burdens.

    Carroll plans to attend the trial, her attorney has said.

    In a response to the court on Wednesday afternoon, Carroll’s attorney criticized Trump’s reasoning, but indicated that a live appearance from the former president was not needed for the trial.

    “Either way, Ms. Carroll has a right to play Donald Trump’s deposition at trial,” the lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, wrote, “so she has no need for him to testify live.”

    “Mr. Trump has yet to answer the Court’s question, and he now asks the Court to deliver an excuse to the jury in the event he decides not to attend trial,” Kaplan wrote. “Given the gravity of the allegations at issue in this case, one might expect Mr. Trump to appear in person. But he is obviously free to choose otherwise … This Court and the City it calls home are fully equipped to handle any logistical burdens that may result from Mr. Trump’s appearance at a weeklong trial.”

    They also noted Trump has traveled for other recent events, including an Ultimate Fighting Championship event, and has a campaign appearance scheduled two days into the trial.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Rapper Meek Mill vows to ‘spread the word’ against antisemitism after Auschwitz visit | CNN Politics

    Rapper Meek Mill vows to ‘spread the word’ against antisemitism after Auschwitz visit | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Some 10,000 people from all over the world gathered last week in Poland for the annual March of the Living, a 2-mile walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau, where Nazis murdered over a million civilians – mostly Jews – during World War II.

    One of the most famous marchers was Meek Mill, a 35-year-old African American rapper from Philadelphia without any prior connection to the atrocities that happened there.

    But at a time of rising antisemitism in the US, his presence spoke volumes, and that was the point.

    “I always stand on anything that condemns racism, but now that I had an education, I’ll definitely spread the word to people in my culture about what I’ve seen and what I felt at that concentration camp today,” Mill told CNN during the march.

    Mill is a friend of New England Patriots owner and philanthropist Robert Kraft, whose Foundation to Combat Antisemitism is in the midst of a $25 million national campaign, #StandUpToJewishHate. The effort, identified by a blue square emoji, includes paid television ads that share stories of antisemitic incidents in the US, which are on an alarming rise.

    Data from the Anti-Defamation League traces a spike in recent incidents against Jews to repeated, hateful comments by rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, who is unapologetic about his pro-Hitler, anti-Jewish language.

    “We are two different artists. We represent two different things,” Mill said.

    Mill said he “wasn’t educated to even know right from wrong” when Ye was making his remarks.

    “But I know a lot of the things he was saying was wrong because it sounded like hate,” Mill said. “Now that I’m educated to a small degree, because I’m at the beginning point, just, you know, spreading the word for humanity. Pushing the cause.”

    Kraft got to know Mill during the rap artist’s 12-year legal fight stemming from an arrest on gun and drug charges when he was 19 years old.

    The two were introduced by a mutual friend, according to a Kraft spokesperson, and Meek would occasionally reach out to the Patriots owner for some friendly advice. When Meek was incarcerated, Kraft visited him in prison, and the two stayed in touch and have remained friends.

    Mill’s case helped spur activism among many high-profile figures, including Kraft, on the issue of criminal justice.

    “It’s important for me to learn humanity’s history,” Mill said. “But I think it’s also important for me to support Robert, all my Jewish friends, everyone that always supported me. Robert supported me at a very high level. When I was going through what I was going through, he learned my lifestyle. He learned my cultures, where I come from, my background.”

    Mill said he went to Auschwitz to “see this for myself and learn about it for myself,” describing what he saw there as “terror, pain, something you can’t really explain.”

    “He’s a man who’s very caring, and it’s very important to him to build bridges between people of the Jewish faith and people of color in America,” Kraft said of Mill.

    “He’s a sensitive man who has gone through some difficult situations where he wasn’t treated fairly. And I think for him to understand the culture of our people, what we’ve gone through and how many of the experiences are similar – where people, for no good reason, just stand up and hate,” added Kraft.

    Mill not only toured Auschwitz and took part in the March of the Living, but he also participated in events around the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Poland. The popular artist has nearly 25 million Instagram followers and said he now intends to use his megaphone to make sure his fans understand that all hate – whether racism against Blacks or antisemitism – is rooted in the same ignorance and cannot be tolerated.

    “Through my music, I always use my platforms. I come from the ghettos of America – from the streets. That’s what I started talking about because that was my lifestyle,” Mill said.

    “But through education and learning more and seeing more, I think I would be able to deliver some things that will touch on moments like this and be able to express and tell a story about what I witnessed and what I’ve seen.”

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  • Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters | CNN Politics

    Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, once again refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election and repeated false claims about it being stolen at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday.

    Taking questions from GOP primary voters at the town hall moderated by “CNN This Morning” anchor Kaitlan Collins, Trump remained defiant about the 2020 election as well as the myriad investigations into him – making clear that he’s sticking to the script he’s delivered over the past two years on conservative media.

    The town hall at Saint Anselm College – his first appearance on CNN since 2016 – came as unprecedented legal clouds hang over him as he seeks to become only the second commander in chief ever elected to two nonconsecutive terms. New Hampshire, home to the first-in-the-nation GOP primary, is also home to many swing voters and is a state he lost in both 2016 and 2020 after winning the primaries.

    The audience of Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the GOP primary cheered Trump throughout the evening, including when he attacked Tuesday’s jury verdict that found he sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. Trump mocked Carroll on Wednesday while downplaying the significance of the $5 million the jury awarded her for battery and defamation.

    The former president said he would pardon “a large portion” of the rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and even pulled out a printout of his own tweets from that day in an attempt to deflect blame as Collins pressed him on why he waited three hours before telling the rioters to leave the Capitol.

    “I am inclined to pardon many of them,” Trump said Wednesday night.

    When Collins pressed Trump on the Manhattan federal jury finding Trump sexually abused Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996, Trump suggested it was helping his poll numbers.

    When asked if the jury’s decision would deter women from voting for him, the former president said, “No, I don’t think so.”

    Trump insulted Carroll, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even Collins when she pressed him on a question about why he hadn’t returned classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago.

    “It’s very simple – you’re a nasty person, I’ll tell you,” Trump said on stage.

    Trump also took questions from New Hampshire voters on the economy and policy issues, such as abortion. The former president, who solidified the conservative majority on the Supreme Court that struck down Roe v. Wade, repeatedly declined to say whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if he won a second term.

    Trump suggested Republicans should refuse to raise the debt limit if the White House does not agree to spending cuts.

    “I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default, and I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave, will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen, but it’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors,” Trump said.

    When Collins asked him to clarify whether the US should default if the White House doesn’t agree to cuts, Trump said, “We might as well do it now than do it later.”

    Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump also faces potential legal peril in both Washington, DC – where a special counsel is leading a pair of investigations – and in Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney plans to announce charges this summer from the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.

    Still, the twice-impeached former president has repeatedly said that any charges will not stop him from running for president, dismissing all of the investigations as politically motivated witch hunts. That’s a view many GOP voters share, according to recent surveys. Nearly 70% of Republican primary voters in a recent NBC News poll said investigations into the former president “are politically motivated” and that “no other candidate is like him, we must support him.”

    Trump was pressed on the investigation into his handling of classified documents and why he didn’t return all of the documents in his possession after receiving a subpoena. He responded by pointing out the classified documents found at the homes of others – including President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. But they both returned the documents once they discovered they had them in their possession.

    The FBI obtained a search warrant and retrieved more than 100 classified documents from Trump’s Florida resort in August 2022, which came after he had received a subpoena to return documents in June 2022 and after his attorney had asserted that all classified material in his possession had been returned.

    Asked during the town hall whether he showed the classified documents to anyone at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said, “Not really.”

    The former president would not say whether he wants Russia or Ukraine to win the war during Wednesday’s town hall, instead saying that he wants the war to end.

    “I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people,” he said.

    When asked again whether or not the former president wants Ukraine to win, Trump did not answer directly, but instead claimed that he would be able to end the war in 24 hours.

    “Russians and Ukrainians, I want them to stop dying,” Trump said. “And I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”

    Trump said he thinks that “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin made a mistake” by invading Ukraine, but he stopped short of saying that Putin is a war criminal.

    That’s something that “should be discussed later,” Trump said.

    “If you say he’s a war criminal, it’s going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to make this thing stopped,” he said.

    While a handful of rivals have entered the Republican presidential primary – and Trump’s biggest potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has not yet officially launched a bid – Trump has maintained a healthy lead in early GOP primary polling. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday, 43% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents named Trump unprompted when asked who they would like to see the party nominate in 2024, compared with 20% naming DeSantis, and 2% or less naming any other candidate.

    Trump’s participation in the town hall was indicative of a broader campaign strategy to try to expand his appeal beyond conservative media viewers, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported earlier Wednesday. He’s surrounded himself with a more organized team and has been making smaller retail politics stops while scaling back larger rallies – signs of a more traditional campaign than his 2016 and 2020 operations. He lost that 2020 race by about 7 million votes, although he continues to falsely claim it was stolen from him – claims he stuck to on Wednesday night.

    There have been warning signs for the GOP that the obsession with the 2020 election isn’t palatable beyond the base. Many of Trump’s handpicked candidates who embraced his election lies in swing states lost in last year’s midterm elections. And his advisers acknowledge he still has work to do to engage with Republican voters outside of his loyal base of supporters, multiple sources told CNN.

    But that didn’t mean Trump was ready to acknowledge the reality that he lost the 2020 election. And if he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024, Trump said Wednesday he would not commit to accepting the results regardless of the outcome, saying that he would do so if he believes “it’s an honest election.”

    “If I think it’s an honest election, I would be honored to,” he said.

    This story has been updated with additional details from the town hall.

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  • ‘Peril to our democracy’: Chilling lines from the judge who sentenced the Oath Keepers’ leader | CNN Politics

    ‘Peril to our democracy’: Chilling lines from the judge who sentenced the Oath Keepers’ leader | CNN Politics

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     — 

    Judge Amit Mehta on Thursday handed down an 18-year prison sentence for the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election that ended with the violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

    Before announcing the sentence, however, Mehta, a nominee of former President Barack Obama, delivered a chilling address to Rhodes about the impact of his seditious conspiracy crimes on American democracy.

    The federal judges in Washington, DC, who work just blocks from the US Capitol, have served as a conscience of democracy since January 6. They have rejected defenses that downplay the seriousness of the Capitol attack, spoken out about future dangers to the peaceful transfer of power and – while they have criticized former President Donald Trump – reminded defendants they are responsible for their actions.

    Here are some of the powerful lines from the judge on Thursday:

    “I dare say, Mr. Rhodes – and I never have said this to anyone I have sentenced – you pose an ongoing threat and peril to our democracy and the fabric of this country,” Mehta said.

    “I dare say we all now hold our collective breaths when an election is approaching. Will we have another January 6 again? That remains to be seen.”

    The judge, refuting claims Rhodes made during a 20-minute rant earlier in the day, added: “You are not a political prisoner, Mr. Rhodes. That is not why you are here. It is not because of your beliefs. It is not because Joe Biden is the president right now.”

    The sentence is the first handed down in over a decade for seditious conspiracy and Mehta said he wanted to explain the offense to the public. He did not mince words.

    “A seditious conspiracy, when you take those two concepts and put it together, is among the most serious crimes an American can commit. It is an offense against the government to use force. It is an offense against the people of our country,” the judge said.

    “It is a series of acts in which you and others committed to use force, including potentially with weapons, against the government of the United States as it transitioned from one president to another. And what was the motive? You didn’t like the new guy.”

    “Let me be clear about one thing to you, Mr. Rhodes, and anybody who else that is listening. In this country we don’t paint with a broad brush, and shame on you if you do. Just because somebody supports the former president, it doesn’t mean they are a White supremacist, a White nationalist. It just means they voted for the other guy.”

    “What we absolutely cannot have is a group of citizens who – because they did not like the outcome of an election, who did not believe the law was followed as it should be – foment revolution.”

    Mehta echoed these warnings later Thursday, when addressing a second Oath Keepers defendant, Kelly Meggs.

    “You don’t take to the streets with rifles,” he said. “You don’t hope that the president invokes the insurrection act so you can start a war in the streets… You don’t rush into the US Capitol with the hope to stop the electoral vote count.”

    “It is astonishing to me how average Americans somehow transformed into criminals in the weeks before and on January 6,” the judge said.

    Mehta said Rhodes, 58, has expressed no remorse and continues to be a threat.

    “It would be one thing, Mr. Rhodes, if after January 6 you had looked at what happened that day and said … that was not a good day for our democracy. But you celebrated it, you thought it was a good thing,” the judge said.

    “Even as you have been incarcerated you have continued to allude to violence as an acceptable means to address grievances.”

    “Nothing has changed, Mr. Rhodes, nothing has changed. And the reality is as you sit here today and as we heard you speak, the moment you are released you will be prepared to take up arms against our government. And not because you are a political prisoner, not because of the 2020 election, because you think this is a valid way to address grievances.”

    “American democracy doesn’t work, Mr. Rhodes, if when you think the Constitution has not been complied with it puts you in a bad place, because from what I’m hearing, when you think you are in a bad place, the rest of us are too. We are all the objects of your plans to – and your willingness to – engage in violence.”

    Mehta granted a Justice Department request to enhance the potential sentence against Rhodes, ruling that his actions amounted to domestic terrorism.

    “He was the one giving the orders,” Mehta said. “He was the one organizing the teams that day. He was the reason they were in fact in Washington, DC. Oath Keepers wouldn’t have been there but for Stewart Rhodes, I don’t think anyone contends otherwise. He was the one who gave the order to go, and they went.”

    During the sentencing hearing of Meggs, who was also convicted of seditious conspiracy, the judge again pegged Rhodes as the ringleader.

    “It is in part because of Mr. Rhodes, frankly, that Mr. Meggs is sitting here today.”

    On Wednesday, several police officers and congressional staffers who were at the Capitol on January 6 testified about their experiences, injuries and the aftermath. Mehta said their bravery and actions are also an important legacy of the attack, as officers put their bodies on the line.

    “The other enduring legacy is what we saw yesterday,” the judge said. “It is the heroism of police officers and those working in Congress … to protect democracy as we know it. That is what they are doing.”

    Before he was sentenced, Rhodes addressed the court for 20 minutes about the charges against him, repeating falsehoods about 2020 election fraud, claiming he was a political prisoner and expressing his desire to continue fighting.

    “It’s not simply a conspiracy theory or a false narrative about fraud. It’s about the Constitution,” Rhodes said, later shouting: “I am not able to drop that under my oath. I am not able to ignore the Constitution.”

    The judge had none of that, and compared Rhodes’ comments to the heroism of police officers and others protecting the Capitol: “We want to talk about keeping oaths? There is nobody more emblematic of keeping their oaths, Mr. Rhodes.”

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