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Tag: U.S. Republican Party

  • Trump’s taxes: Takeaways from release of long-sought returns

    Trump’s taxes: Takeaways from release of long-sought returns

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    In one of its last acts under Democratic control, the House of Representatives on Friday released six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, dating to 2015, the year he announced his presidential bid.

    The thousands of pages of financial documents were the subject of a prolonged legal battle after Trump broke precedent in not releasing his tax returns while running for, and then occupying, the highest office in the land.

    Some takeaways from a review of the documents:

    A BANK ACCOUNT IN CHINA

    The longtime real estate and media mogul with business interests on multiple continents was asked during a 2020 presidential debate about having a bank account in China. He said he closed it before he began his 2016 campaign — a statement his tax returns show was not true.

    “The bank account was in 2013. It was closed in 2015, I believe,” Trump said during the debate. “I was thinking about doing a deal in China. Like millions of other people, I was thinking about it. I decided not to do it.”

    The tax returns, however, report that Trump had a bank account in China in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

    The returns show accounts in other foreign countries over the years, including the United Kingdom, southern Ireland and the Caribbean island nation of St. Martin. By 2018, Trump had apparently closed all his overseas accounts other than the one in the U.K., home to one of his flagship golf properties.

    The returns don’t detail the amount of money held in those accounts.

    ———

    MANY FOREIGN INVESTMENTS

    China is one of several countries where Trump reported making money over the years.

    He reported $38 million in overseas gross income in 2016 and $55 million in 2017, from countries including Azerbaijan, India, Indonesia, Panama, the Philippines, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

    This sort of information about potential conflicts of interest for the commander-in-chief of the United States are one reason presidents normally release their tax returns.

    It’s not clear what that overseas money came from. Trump claimed tens of millions of dollars in losses and expenses in his overseas investments as well, but his liabilities there sometimes were greater than those in the U.S. In 2016, for example, Trump told the Internal Revenue Service that he paid $1.2 million in foreign taxes, while he ended up paying only $750 in U.S. income taxes.

    ———

    WORKING THE SYSTEM

    It’s been long known that Trump, like many rich people, has been able to exploit the country’s complex tax code to avoid paying as large a share of his income to the federal government as working families do. When he was pressed on not paying federal taxes in a 2016 debate against Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump retorted, “That makes me smart.”

    It also highlights the two-tier tax system that allows wealthy people like Trump to take advantage of breaks and loopholes not available to regular households. In 2020, for example, Trump reported owning more than 150 private corporations that claimed losses, sometimes in the millions of dollars. Partly by claiming those losses, Trump reduced his own federal tax income liability to zero that year.

    Some of those losses were real as the coronavirus pandemic battered the economy. But others reflect special deductions that developers like Trump can take on the depreciation of buildings and equipment.

    Some losses Trump claimed may be more questionable — one of the companies he reported owning is called “Unreimbursed expenses.” The Joint Committee on Taxation noted that one of Trump’s firms claimed $438,000 in losses for gift cards redemptions and urged additional investigation of whether the losses were genuine — one of a number of deductions into which the Democratic-controlled committee called for further investigation.

    They’re the sort of deductions the typical American household, which earns $70,000 a year, can’t take.

    ———

    NO REPORTED CHARITABLE GIVING IN 2020

    In the final year of his presidency, Trump reported making no charitable donations.

    That was in contrast to the prior two years, when Trump reported making about $500,000 worth of donations. It’s unclear whether any of the figures include his pledge to donate his $400,000 presidential salary back to the U.S. government.

    Trump, who has bragged of being a billionaire, told The Associated Press in 2015 that he gives “to hundreds of charities and people in need of help.”

    He said, “It is one of the things I most like doing and one of the great reasons to have made a lot of money.”

    He reported larger donations in 2016 and 2017, donating $1.1 million in the year he won the presidency and $1.8 million in his first year in office.

    ———

    MONEY FROM THE ARTS WORLD

    Trump collected a $77,808 annual pension from the Screen Actors Guild, as well as a $6,543 pension in 2017 from another film and TV union, and reported acting residuals as high as $14,141 in 2015, according to the tax returns.

    Trump has made cameo appearances in various movies, notably “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” but his biggest on-screen success came with his reality TV shows “The Apprentice” and “The Celebrity Apprentice,” where each episode would end in a boardroom setting with Trump dismissing a contestant with his trademark phrase: “You’re fired!”

    Trump also reported paying a little more than $400,000 from 2015 to 2017 in “book writer” fees. In 2015, Trump published the book, “Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again,” with a ghostwriter.

    In 2015, Trump reporting receiving $750,000 in fees for speaking engagements.

    ———

    TRUMP VOWS PAYBACK

    Trump broke political tradition by not releasing his tax returns as president. Now Republicans warn that Democrats will pay a political price by releasing what is normally confidential tax information.

    Trump himself underscored that in a statement Friday morning after his returns were made public. “The great USA divide will now grow far worse,” Trump said. “The Radical Left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”

    Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax matters and released the Trump documents, warned that in the future the committee could release the returns of labor leaders or Supreme Court justices. Democrats countered with a proposal to require the release of tax returns by any presidential candidate — legislation that is unlikely to pass, given that Republicans take control of the House next week.

    Notably, the GOP cannot disclose President Joe Biden’s tax returns because they’re already public. Biden resumed the long-standing bipartisan tradition of releasing his tax records, disclosing 22 years’ worth of his filings during his presidential campaign.

    ———

    Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Michael R. Sisak in New York and Chris Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Biden outpacing Trump, Obama with diverse judicial nominees

    Biden outpacing Trump, Obama with diverse judicial nominees

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — For the Biden White House, a quartet of four female judges in Colorado encapsulates its mission when it comes to the federal judiciary.

    Charlotte Sweeney is the first openly LGBT woman to serve on the federal bench west of the Mississippi River and has a background in workers’ rights. Nina Wang, an immigrant from Taiwan, is the first magistrate judge in the state to be elevated to a federal district seat.

    Regina Rodriguez, who is Latina and Asian American, served in a U.S. attorney’s office. Veronica Rossman, who came from the former Soviet Union with her family as refugees, is the first former federal public defender to be a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

    With these four women, who were confirmed during the first two years of President Joe Biden’s term, there is a breadth of personal and professional diversity that the White House and Democratic senators have promoted in their push to transform the judiciary.

    “The nominations send a powerful message to the legal community that this kind of public service is open to a lot of people it wasn’t open to before,” Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, told The Associated Press. “What it says to the public at large is that if you wind up in federal court for whatever reason, you’re much more likely to have a judge who understands where you came from, who you are, and what you’ve been through.”

    Klain said that “having a more diverse federal bench in every single respect shows more respect for the American people.”

    The White House and Democratic senators are closing out the first two years of Biden’s presidency having installed more federal judges than did Biden’s two immediate predecessors. The rapid clip reflects a zeal to offset Donald Trump’s legacy of stacking the judiciary with young conservatives who often lacked in racial diversity.

    So far, 97 lifetime federal judges have been confirmed under Biden, a figure that outpaces both Trump (85) and Barack Obama (62) at this point in their presidencies, according to data from the White House and the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. D-N.Y. The 97 from the Biden presidency includes Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, that court’s first Black woman, as well as 28 circuit court judges and 68 district court judges.

    Three out of every four judges tapped by Biden and confirmed by the Senate in the past two years were women. About two-thirds were people of color. The Biden list includes 11 Black women to the powerful circuit courts, more than those installed under all previous presidents combined. There were also 11 former public defenders named to the circuit courts, also more than all of Biden’s predecessors combined.

    “It’s a story of writing a new chapter for the federal judiciary, with truly extraordinary folks representing the broadest possible types of diversity,” said Paige Herwig, a senior White House counsel.

    The White House prioritized judicial nominations from the start, with Biden transition officials soliciting names of potential picks from Democratic senators in late 2020. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, swiftly moved nominees through hearings and Schumer set aside floor time for votes.

    Particular focus was placed on nominees for the appellate courts, where the vast majority of federal cases end, and those coming from states with two Democratic senators, who could find easier consensus in a process where there’s still significant deference given to home-state officials.

    Democrats hope to speed up the tempo of confirmations next year, a goal more easily accomplished by a 51-49 Senate that will give them a slim majority on committees. In the past two years, votes on some of Biden’s more contested judicial nominees would deadlock in committee votes, requiring more procedural steps that ate up valuable Senate floor time.

    Republicans had also picked up the confirmation pace considerably in Trump’s final two years in office, after GOP senators put in place a rule change — now being used by Democrats — that significantly shortened the time required to process district court nominees.

    Schumer said he also hopes to install more judges in appeals courts that shifted rightward under Trump, an effort that the majority leader described as rebalancing those courts.

    “Trump loaded up the bench with hard right ‘MAGA’ type judges who are not only out of step with the American people, they were even out of step with the Republican Party,” Schumer said in an interview, using shorthand for Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

    Schumer added: “We had a mission, it’s not just a predilection. It was a mission to try and redress that balance.”

    Despite their limited power to actually derail Biden’s judicial picks, some Republicans have fought ferociously against many of them, arguing that their views were out of the legal mainstream despite Democratic arguments otherwise. The precarious 50-50 Senate, where Schumer’s plans were often thwarted by ailments or absences, meant several Biden nominees languished for months and were never confirmed before the Senate wrapped up its work this year.

    Democrats also say certain judicial nominees, particularly women of color, were unfairly targeted by their GOP critics, leading to tense fights in the Judiciary Committee.

    “The Republicans have just got a problem with this. Not all of them, some do,” Durbin said in an interview. “And when you call them out on it … ‘Why is it consistently women of color that are the object of your wrath?’ and they can’t answer.”

    Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., a committee member, said Biden’s picks were “very, very left, but unapologetically so.” He said Durbin’s assertions about Republicans were “absurd.”

    “I think the president made a commitment to his base that he was going to put people who shared a very left-wing worldview, who are generally quite critical of, for instance, the criminal justice system, think that it is systemically racist,” Hawley said.

    Despite the strengthened Democratic majority, the White House could nonetheless confront some challenges when it comes to nominating and confirming judges over the next two years.

    For instance, Biden has made barely a dent in the number of vacancies for district court judges in states that have two Republican senators, confirming just one such person: Stephen Locher, now a judge in the Southern District of Iowa. Senators still adhere to a practice that allows home-state senators virtual veto power over district court picks — a process known colloquially as the “blue slip” — and Democrats are facing an increased push from advocates to discard the tradition, arguing that it only allows for Republican obstructionism.

    For instance, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin earlier this year blocked action on William Pocan, nominated to serve in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, after initially recommending him as part of a bloc of nominees to the White House. Durbin has said he would reconsider the current “blue slip” practice if he sees systematic abuse by senators, especially based on a nominee’s race, gender or sexual orientation.

    But cases like Pocan’s have been rare, Durbin said, and other influential Republicans are affording some level of deference to the Biden White House when it comes to judges.

    “I can’t think of a system where Republicans get all their judges and Democrats get none of theirs,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who will be the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee next year. “That’s not a viable system.”

    One matter Biden has not been willing to address: the structure of the Supreme Court.

    Any push to change the highest court in the land, even in small ways, has found little footing at the White House, with Biden aides instead highlighting the president’s push to nominate federal judges as the best and most substantial way to secure a Democratic legacy in the judiciary.

    As Biden took office in 2021, calls for changes to the Supreme Court were growing louder, after Trump named three new justices that tilted the court’s makeup far to the right.

    In June, the 6-3 conservative majority overturned the landmark decision Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional protections for abortion that had existed for nearly 50 years. It did so despite a majority of people in the United States believing abortion should be legal. In the same term, the justices also weakened gun control and curbed the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to manage climate change.

    Polls have shown a dip in approval for the court and respect for it. A Gallup Poll found Americans had the lowest level of trust in the court in 50 years.

    Biden has spoken out about the rulings, and argued the court is more of an “advocacy group these days.” But he has not embraced calls to expand the court or even to subject justices to a code of conduct that binds other federal judges. He has not spoken publicly about a study he commissioned on the future of the Supreme Court that finished last year and suggested term limits, mandatory retirement and judicial ethics codes as ways to restore trust in the institution.

    White House officials similarly have declined to weigh in on potential changes, even as those advocating for change believe the push will grow stronger this term, as voting rights, clean water, immigration and student loan forgiveness come before the justices.

    “I wouldn’t, in any way minimize the progress and the importance of what President Biden is doing on the lower courts,” said Chris Kang of Demand Justice, an advocacy group leading the push to expand the court. “But at the same time, we need to look at the core problem, which is the Supreme Court, and what can be done to fix the issues.”

    For now, the White House’s focus will remain on the people who sit on the courts.

    It’s a particularly meaningful achievement for Biden, a former Judiciary Committee chairman himself, and for Klain, who was chief counsel for Biden on that committee and a lawyer who worked on judicial nominations in the Clinton White House.

    “With all due respect to my predecessors, I’m sure this is a higher priority for me,” said Klain, who meets weekly with the judicial nominations team. But, referring to Biden, Klain added: “The fact that he makes it such a priority, makes it a big priority for me.”

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  • Biden signs $1.7 trillion bill funding government operations

    Biden signs $1.7 trillion bill funding government operations

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    KINGSHILL, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) — President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a $1.7 trillion spending bill that will keep the federal government operating through the end of the federal budget year in September 2023, and provide tens of billions of dollars in new aid to Ukraine for its fight against the Russian military.

    Biden had until late Friday to sign the bill to avoid a partial government shutdown.

    The Democratic-controlled House passed the bill 225-201, mostly along party lines, just before Christmas. The House vote came a day after the Senate, also led by Democrats, voted 68-29 to pass the bill with significantly more Republican support.

    Biden had said passage was proof that Republicans and Democrats can work together.

    Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader who hopes to become speaker when a new session Congress opens on Jan. 3, argued during floor debate that the bill spends too much and does too little to curb illegal immigration and the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. from Mexico.

    “This is a monstrosity that is one of the most shameful acts I’ve ever seen in this body,” McCarthy said of the legislation.

    McCarthy is appealing for support from staunch conservatives in the GOP caucus, who have largely blasted the bill for its size and scope. Republicans will have a narrow House majority come Jan. 3 and several conservative members have vowed not to vote for McCarthy to become speaker.

    The funding bill includes a roughly 6% increase in spending for domestic initiatives, to $772.5 billion. Spending on defense programs will increase by about 10%, to $858 billion.

    Passage was achieved hours before financing for federal agencies was set to expire. Lawmakers had approved two short-term spending measures to keep the government operating, and a third, funding the government through Dec. 30, passed last Friday. Biden signed it to ensure services would continue until Congress sent him the full-year measure, called an omnibus bill.

    The massive bill, which topped out at more than 4,000 pages, wraps together 12 appropriations bills, aid to Ukraine and disaster relief for communities recovering from natural disasters. It also contains scores of policy changes that lawmakers worked to include in the final major bill considered by that session of Congress.

    Lawmakers provided roughly $45 billion for Ukraine and NATO allies, more than even Biden had requested, an acknowledgment that future rounds of funding are not guaranteed when Republicans take control of the House next week following the party’s gains in the midterm elections.

    Though support for Ukraine aid has largely been bipartisan, some House Republicans have opposed the spending and argued that the money would be better spent on priorities in the United States.

    McCarthy has warned that Republicans will not write a “blank check” for Ukraine in the future.

    The bill also includes about $40 billion in emergency spending, mostly to help communities across the U.S. as they recover from drought, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

    The White House said it received the bill from Congress late Wednesday afternoon. It was delivered to Biden for his signature by White House staff on a regularly scheduled commercial flight.

    Biden signed the bill Thursday in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he is spending time with his wife, Jill, and other family members on the island of St. Croix. The Bidens are staying at the home of friends Bill and Connie Neville, the White House said. Bill Neville owns US Viking, maker of ENPS, a news production software system that is sold by The Associated Press.

    Also in the bill are scores of policy changes that are largely unrelated to spending, but lawmakers worked furiously behind the scenes to get the added to the bill, which was the final piece of legislation that came out of that session of Congress. Otherwise, lawmakers sponsoring these changes would have had to start from scratch next year in a politically divided Congress in which Republicans will return to the majority in the House and Democrats will continue to control the Senate.

    One of the most notable examples was a historic revision to federal election law to prevent a future president or presidential candidate from trying to overturn an election.

    The bipartisan overhaul of the Electoral Count Act is a direct response to-then President Donald Trump’s efforts to persuade Republican lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence to object to the certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021, the day of the Trump-inspired insurrection at the Capitol.

    Among the spending increases Democrats emphasized: a $500 increase in the maximum size of Pell grants for low-income college students, a $100 million increase in block grants to states for substance abuse prevention and treatment programs, a 22% increase in spending on veterans’ medical care and $3.7 billion in emergency relief to farmers and ranchers hit by natural disasters.

    The bill also provides roughly $15.3 billion for more than 7,200 projects that lawmakers sought for their home states and districts. Under revamped rules for community project funding, also referred to as earmarks, lawmakers must post their requests online and attest they have no financial interest in the projects. Still, many fiscal conservatives criticize the earmarking as leading to unnecessary spending.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Kevin Freking in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Time of triumph for GOP turns into ‘distraction’ with Santos

    Time of triumph for GOP turns into ‘distraction’ with Santos

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — It should be a time of triumph for Republicans ready to take back control of the House in the new Congress next week, but their leaders are struggling with an embarrassing distraction about one of their own: What to do about George Santos?

    Weeks after winning a district that helped Republicans secure their razor-thin House majority, the congressman-elect is under investigation in New York after acknowledging he lied about his heritage, education and professional pedigree as he campaigned for office.

    The top House Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, and his leadership team have kept silent about Santos, who is set to take the oath of office Tuesday, even after he publicly admitted to fabricating swaths of his biography. The now-embattled Republican has shown no signs of stepping aside, punting the decision to hold him accountable to his party and to the Congress, where he could quickly face a House ethics committee investigation once sworn into office.

    Representatives for McCarthy, who is running to become the next House speaker, did not respond when asked what action he may take relating to Santos. On Tuesday, Santos was asked on Fox News about the “blatant lies” and responded that he had “made a mistake.”

    Democrats, who will be in the minority during the upcoming session, are expected to pursue several avenues against the 34-year-old Santos, including a potential complaint with the Federal Election Commission and introducing a resolution to expel him once he’s a sitting member of Congress, according to a senior Democratic aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

    “We need answers from George Santos. He appears to be a complete and utter fraud. His whole life story is made up,” the incoming House Democratic leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, told reporters last week. “He’s gonna have to answer that question: Did you perpetrate a fraud on the voters of the 3rd Congressional District of New York?”

    Questions were first raised about Santos earlier this month when The New York Times published an investigation into his resume and found a number of major discrepancies. Since then, Santos has admitted lying about having Jewish ancestry, lying about working for Wall Street banks and lying about obtaining a college degree.

    Santos has yet to address other lingering questions, including the source of a personal fortune he appears to have amassed quickly despite recent financial problems, including evictions and owing thousands in back rent.

    Santos in November won a seat in the Long Island area represented by Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi, making headlines as the first non-incumbent, openly gay Republican to be elected to Congress.

    If Santos assumes office, he could still face an investigation by the House ethics committee, which is responsible for reviewing allegations of misconduct by lawmakers. The committee, evenly decided between the parties, has the authority under the chamber’s rules to subpoena members for testimony or documents, and lawmakers are required to comply.

    Tom Rust, a committee spokesman, declined to comment this week on whether the committee can or would investigate Santos. Despite his actions occurring before joining the House, the committee has over the years held that it may investigate matters that violated laws, regulations or standards of conduct during an initial campaign for the House.

    But an ethics complaint may end up being the least of Santos’ problems.

    Federal prosecutors in New York have started to examine Santos’ background and his financial dealings, a person familiar with the matter said Thursday. The person, who cautioned the review was in its early stages, said prosecutors were specifically interested in earnings that Santos accrued and are reviewing campaign finance filings.

    The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the ongoing review and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    The district attorney in Nassau County, New York, announced on Wednesday an investigation into the fabrications Santos made while campaigning to represent the state’s 3rd district, which includes some Long Island suburbs and a small part of the New York City borough of Queens.

    Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly, a Republican, said the fabrications and inconsistencies were “nothing short of stunning.”

    “The residents of Nassau County and other parts of the third district must have an honest and accountable representative in Congress,” she said. “If a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it.”

    And on Thursday, the Queens County district attorney’s office said it was looking into whether any laws were broken by Santos.

    “We are reviewing whether Queens County has jurisdiction over any potential criminal offenses,” said a spokesperson for the agency, who did not want to be named because they were speaking about an open investigation.

    Rep.-elect Nick LaLota, a Republican whose district borders Santos’, issued a statement Wednesday calling for an ethics investigation into the allegations. “New Yorkers deserve the truth and House Republicans deserve an opportunity to govern without this distraction.”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Bobby Caina Calvan in New York and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

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  • Trump’s tax returns to be released Friday after long fight

    Trump’s tax returns to be released Friday after long fight

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    A House committee is set to release six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns on Friday, pulling back the curtain on financial records that the former president fought for years to keep secret.

    The Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee voted last week to release the returns, with some redactions of sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers and contact information. Their dissemination comes in the waning days of Democrats’ control of the House and as Trump’s fellow Republicans prepare to retake power in the chamber.

    The committee obtained six years of Trump’s personal and business tax records, from 2015 to 2020, while investigating what it said in a Dec. 20 report was the Internal Revenue Service’s failure to pursue mandatory audits of Trump on a timely basis during his presidency, as required under the tax agency’s protocol.

    The release raises the potential of new revelations about Trump’s finances, which have been shrouded in mystery and intrigue since his days as an up-and-coming Manhattan real estate developer in the 1980s. The returns could take on added significance now that Trump has launched a third campaign for the White House.

    Trump’s tax returns are likely to offer the clearest picture yet of his finances during his time in office.

    Trump, known for building skyscrapers and hosting a reality TV show before winning the White House, broke political norms by refusing to make public his returns as he sought the presidency — though he did give some limited details about his holdings and income on mandatory disclosure forms.

    Instead, Trump has touted his wealth in the annual financial statements he gives to banks to secure loans and to financial magazines to justify his place on rankings of the world’s billionaires.

    Trump’s longtime accounting firm has since disavowed the statements, and New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit alleging Trump and his Trump Organization inflated asset values on the statements as part of a yearslong fraud. Trump and his company have denied wrongdoing.

    It will not be the first time Trump’s tax returns have been under scrutiny. In October 2018, The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series based on leaked tax records that showed that Trump received a modern-day equivalent of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate holdings, with much of that money coming from what the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s.

    A second series in 2020 showed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018, as well as no income taxes at all in 10 of the past 15 years because he generally lost more money than he made.

    In its report last week, the Ways and Means Committee indicated the Trump administration may have disregarded a post-Watergate requirement mandating audits of a president’s tax filings.

    The IRS only began to audit Trump’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019 — more than two years into his presidency — when Ways and Means chair Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the agency for information related to the tax returns.

    By comparison, there were audits of President Joe Biden for the 2020 and 2021 tax years, said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson. A spokesperson for former President Barack Obama said Obama was audited in each of his eight years in office.

    An accompanying report from Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation raised multiple red flags about aspects of Trump’s tax filings, including his carryover losses, deductions tied to conservation and charitable donations, and loans to his children that could be taxable gifts.

    The House passed a bill in response that would require audits of any president’s income tax filings. Republicans strongly opposed the legislation, raising concerns that a law requiring audits would infringe on taxpayer privacy and could lead to audits being weaponized for political gain.

    Republicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power in January, and they warn that the committee’s new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people.

    The measure, approved mostly along party lines, has little chance of becoming law in the final days of this Congress. Rather, it is seen as a starting point for future efforts to bolster oversight of the presidency.

    Every president and major-party candidate since Richard Nixon has voluntarily made at least summaries of their tax information available to the public. Trump bucked that trend as a candidate and as president, repeatedly asserting that his taxes were “under audit” and couldn’t be released.

    Trump’s lawyers were repeatedly denied in their quest to keep his tax returns from the Ways and Means Committee. A three-judge federal appeals court panel in August upheld a lower-court ruling granting the committee access.

    Trump’s lawyers also tried and failed to block the Manhattan district attorney’s office from getting Trump’s tax records as part of its investigation into his business practices, losing twice in the Supreme Court.

    Trump’s longtime accountant, Donald Bender, testified at the Trump Organization’s recent Manhattan criminal trial that Trump reported losses on his tax returns every year for a decade, including nearly $700 million in 2009 and $200 million in 2010.

    Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP who spent years preparing Trump’s personal tax returns, said Trump’s reported losses from 2009 to 2018 included net operating losses from some of the many businesses he owns through the Trump Organization.

    The Trump Organization was convicted earlier this month on tax fraud charges for helping some executives dodge taxes on company-paid perks such as apartments and luxury cars.

    ———

    Associated Press writer Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Trump’s tax returns to be discussed by congressional panel

    Trump’s tax returns to be discussed by congressional panel

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    WASHINGTON — The Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to publicly release years of Donald Trump ’s tax returns, which the former president has long tried to shield.

    Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., has kept a close hold on the panel’s actions, including whether the panel will meet in a public or private session. And if lawmakers move forward with plans to release the returns, it’s unclear how quickly that would happen.

    But after a yearslong battle that ultimately resulted in the Supreme Court clearing the way last month for the Treasury Department to send the returns to Congress, Democrats are under pressure to act aggressively. The committee received six years of tax returns for Trump and some of his businesses. And with just two weeks left until Republicans formally take control of the House, Tuesday’s meeting could be the last opportunity for Democrats to disclose whatever information they have gleaned.

    Trump has long had a complicated relationship with his personal income taxes.

    As a presidential candidate in 2016, he broke decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax forms to the public. He bragged during a presidential debate that year that he was “smart” because he paid no federal taxes and later claimed he wouldn’t personally benefit from the 2017 tax cuts he signed into law that favored people with extreme wealth, asking Americans to simply take him at his word.

    Tax records would have been a useful metric for judging his success in business. The image of a savvy businessman was key to a political brand honed during his years as a tabloid magnet and star of “The Apprentice” television show. They also could reveal any financial obligations — including foreign debts — that could influence how he governed.

    But Americans were largely in the dark about Trump’s relationship with the IRS until October 2018 and September 2020, when The New York Times published two separate series based on leaked tax records.

    The Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 articles showed how Trump received a modern equivalent of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate holdings, with much of that money coming from what the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s. Trump sued the Times and his niece, Mary Trump, in 2021 for providing the records to the newspaper. In November, Mary Trump asked an appeals court to overturn a judge’s decision to reject her claims that her uncle and two of his siblings defrauded her of millions of dollars in a 2001 family settlement.

    The 2020 articles showed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018. Trump paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the past 15 years because he generally lost more money than he made.

    The articles exposed deep inequities in the U.S. tax code as Trump, a reputed multi-billionaire, paid little in federal income taxes. IRS figures indicate that the average tax filer paid roughly $12,200 in 2017, about 16 times more than the former president paid.

    Details about Trump’s income from foreign operations and debt levels were also contained in the tax filings, which the former president derided as “fake news.”

    At the time of the 2020 articles, Neal said he saw an ethical problem in Trump overseeing a federal agency that he has also battled with legal filings.

    “Now, Donald Trump is the boss of the agency he considers an adversary,” Neal said in 2020. “It is essential that the IRS’s presidential audit program remain free of interference.”

    The Manhattan district attorney’s office also obtained copies of Trump’s tax records in February 2021 after after a protracted legal fight that included two trips to the Supreme Court.

    The office, then led by District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., had subpoenaed Trump’s accounting firm in 2019, seeking access to eight years of Trump’s tax returns and related documents.

    The DA’s office issued the subpoena after Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress that Trump had misled tax officials, insurers and business associates about the value of his assets. Those allegations are the subject of a fraud lawsuit that New York Attorney General Letitia James filed against Trump and his company in September.

    Trump’s longtime accountant, Donald Bender, testified at the Trump Organization’s recent criminal trial that Trump reported losses on his tax returns every year for a decade, including nearly $700 million in 2009 and $200 million in 2010.

    Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP who spent years preparing Trump’s personal tax returns, said Trump’s reported losses from 2009 to 2018 included net operating losses from some of the many businesses he owns through his Trump Organization.

    The Trump Organization was convicted earlier this month on tax fraud charges for helping some executives dodge taxes on company-paid perks such as apartments and luxury cars.

    The current Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, told The Associated Press in an interview last week that his office’s investigation into Trump and his businesses continues.

    “We’re going to follow the facts and continue to do our job,” Bragg said.

    Trump, who refused to release his returns during his 2016 presidential campaign and his four years in the White House while claiming that he was under IRS audit, has argued there is little to be gleaned from the tax returns even as he has fought to keep them private.

    “You can’t learn much from tax returns, but it is illegal to release them if they are not yours!” he complained on his social media network last weekend.

    Republicans, meanwhile, have railed against the potential release, arguing that it would set a dangerous precedent.

    Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the Ways and Means Committee’s Republican leader, accused Democrats on the committee of “unleashing a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond President Trump, and jeopardizes the privacy of every American.”

    “Going forward, partisans in Congress have nearly unlimited power to target political enemies by obtaining and making public their private tax returns to embarrass and destroy them,” Brady said in a statement. “We urge Democrats, in their rush to target former President Trump, not to unleash this dangerous new political weapon on the American people.”

    ———

    Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak and Jill Colvin in New York contributed this report.

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  • Kari Lake will get to make case for election misconduct

    Kari Lake will get to make case for election misconduct

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    PHOENIX — A judge on Monday dismissed part of a lawsuit filed by Kari Lake, the defeated Republican candidate for Arizona governor, but will allow her to call witnesses in an attempt to prove that she lost because of misconduct by election officials.

    Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson dismissed eight of the 10 claims Lake raised in her lawsuit, which asks the judge to either declare her the winner or hold a revote in the county. Thompson took no position on the merits of Lake’s two surviving claims, but he wrote that the law allows her to make her case.

    Lake lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs by just over 17,000 votes out of 2.6 million cast. She will attempt to prove in a two-day hearing scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday that ballot printers malfunctioned in Maricopa County because of intentional interference by election officials and that ballots were improperly added at a county contractor that handles returned mail ballots.

    A representative for Lake will be allowed to examine 150 ballots on Tuesday.

    “Buckle up, America. This is far from over,” Lake wrote on Twitter after the ruling.

    She faces the extremely high bar of proving not only that misconduct occurred but that it affected the outcome of her race. Thompson will make a final decision, which will likely be appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court.

    The judge dismissed a variety of constitutional claims, including Lake’s allegation that Hobbs, in her capacity as secretary of state, and Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer engaged in censorship by flagging social media posts with election misinformation for possible removal by Twitter.

    Lake was among the most vocal 2022 Republicans promoting former President Donald Trump’s election lies, which she made the centerpiece of her campaign. While most of the other election deniers around the country conceded after losing their races, Lake has not.

    She has zeroed in on problems with ballot printers at some polling places in Maricopa County, home to more than 60% of voters. The defective printers produced ballots that were too light to be read by the on-site tabulators at polling places. Lines backed up in some areas amid the confusion.

    Affected ballots were taken to the more sophisticated counters at the elections department headquarters in downtown Phoenix. County officials say everyone had a chance to vote and all ballots were counted.

    “The judiciary has served as a bulwark against these efforts to undo our democratic system from within, and we ask this court to assume that role again,” Abha Khanna, a lawyer representing Hobbs in her capacity as the governor-elect, said in court Monday, urging the judge to dismiss Lake’s lawsuit in its entirety.

    Meanwhile, a judge in conservative Mohave County said he would rule Tuesday on a separate election challenge filed by Abraham Hamadeh, the Republican candidate for attorney general who lost by 511 votes to Democrat Kris Mayes. Hamadeh’s case raises many of the same claims as Lake’s. Mayes and Hobbs in her official capacity as secretary of state have asked Judge Lee Jantzen to dismiss the challenge.

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  • Lawmakers announce ‘framework’ on bill to keep gov’t open

    Lawmakers announce ‘framework’ on bill to keep gov’t open

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    WASHINGTON — Lawmakers leading the negotiations on a bill to fund the federal government for the current fiscal year announced late Tuesday they’ve reached agreement on a “framework” that should allow them to complete work on the bill over the next week and avoid a government shutdown.

    Congress faces a midnight Friday deadline to pass a spending bill to prevent a partial government shutdown. The two chambers are expected to pass another short-term measure before then to keep the government running through Dec. 23, which will allow negotiators time to complete work on the full-year bill.

    “Now, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees will work around the clock to negotiate the details of final 2023 spending bills that can be supported by the House and Senate and receive President Biden’s signature,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the Democratic chair of the House Appropriations Committee.

    Earlier in the day, Senate leaders said lawmakers from the two parties were nearing an agreement, but Republicans warned Democrats that lawmakers would need to complete their work by Dec. 22 or they would only support a short-term extension into early next year. That would give House Republicans more leverage over what’s in the legislation, since they will be in the majority then.

    “We intend to be on the road going home on the 23rd. We intend not to be back here between Christmas and New Year’s, and if we can’t meet that deadline, we would be happy to pass a short-term (resolution) into early next year,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader in the Senate.

    McConnell voiced confidence Republicans would be able to meet their priorities of increasing spending on defense without “having to pay a bonus above what President Biden asked for” on non-defense priorities. He said Democrats were willing to accept that because they had previously passed two bills on a party-line basis that allow for more government spending on various domestic priorities.

    Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said last week that the two parties were about $25 billion apart in what is expected to be about a $1.65 trillion package, not including mandatory spending on programs such as Social Security and Medicare. However, Democrats in their statements did not indicate what topline spending number had been reached in the framework announced Tuesday.

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  • Rural voters ‘in the trenches’ on climate, leery of Biden

    Rural voters ‘in the trenches’ on climate, leery of Biden

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    NEW YORK — Drought in California meant Raquel Krach, a rice farmer and graduate student in the Sacramento Valley, planted very little. Using groundwater, she and her husband planted 75 acres this year to maintain their markets. The rest of the 200 acres she typically sows remained empty due to an inadequate water supply.

    The 53-year-old Democrat said it’s clear to her that climate change is responsible. But she says that notion is a deeply divisive one in her community.

    “Our connections to our neighbors are pretty limited because our views are so different. Climate change is normally a topic we don’t even broach because our views are so different,” Krach said.

    The impacts of climate change hit communities across the country, including Krach’s, yet voters in rural communities are the least likely to feel Washington is in their corner on the issue. Rural Americans and experts suggest there’s a disconnect between the way leaders talk about climate change and the way these communities experience it.

    AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of the 2022 midterm electorate, shows clear differences between urban and rural communities in voter sentiment on President Joe Biden ’s handling of climate, and whether climate change is impacting their communities.

    About half of voters nationwide approve of the president’s handling of the issue, despite the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act this summer that meant historic investments aimed at reducing the emissions that cause climate change. While around 6 in 10 urban voters approve, the figure drops to about half for suburbanites and roughly 4 in 10 for rural voters.

    The urban-rural divide exists within the Republican Party, showing those differences aren’t driven solely by a partisan split between bluer cities and redder countryside. While 27% of urban Republicans approve of Biden’s leadership on climate, only 14% of small-town and rural Republicans say the same, VoteCast showed.

    Sarah Jaynes, the executive director of the Rural Democracy Initiative, which provides funding to groups that support progressive policies in rural areas, suggested the overarching urban-rural divide has a lot to do with messaging issues.

    “People in rural areas and small towns are less likely to think that Democrats are fighting for people like them, so there’s a partisan trust issue,” Jaynes said. “I think there’s an issue where people don’t want to signal that they’re supporting Democrats in rural communities right now.”

    VoteCast also shows that despite nationwide climate crises — from hurricanes to wildfires to droughts — there’s varying concern among voters about whether climate change is in their backyards. About three-quarters of urban voters are at least somewhat worried about the effects of climate change in their communities, compared to about 6 in 10 suburbanites and about half of small-town and rural voters.

    That difference isn’t necessarily explained by a lack of belief in climate change within rural communities. A September AP-NORC poll showed majorities across community types say climate change is happening.

    “If you’re speaking to climate generally, rural people can feel like ‘well, do you really care about me? Are you talking about me?’” Jaynes said. “If you ask them ‘are you concerned about flooding? Are you concerned about the water crisis? Are you concerned about the impacts of extreme weather?’ You’re going to hear a lot more positively when you meet them where they are.”

    In Krach’s community, she said “everyone is very clear on that there’s no water and that there’s a drought. Whether they attribute that to climate change is different.”

    Nationally, extreme weather has meant agriculture has taken huge hits. Krach’s experience isn’t unique: ongoing drought in California meant that Colusa and Glenn counties saw their rice acreage drop by at least three-quarters, according to an analysis by UC-Davis agricultural economist Aaron Smith. In Texas, drought and a heat wave meant a whopping near 70% of cotton crops are likely to be abandoned. In Georgia, farmers have started growing citrus, as weather warms up and becomes increasingly untenable for the peach.

    Johnathan Hladik, the policy director at the Center for Rural Affairs in Nebraska, an organization focusing on rural community development, including environmental stewardship, said the nature of much of the work rural people do makes looking at the global scale difficult – like in agriculture.

    “Farmers are experiencing climate change in a much different way than many more urban people do. It’s in every part of their job. It’s almost like it’s a day to day battle. You’re in the trenches every single day and it’s really hard to step back and look at it big-picture-size,” he said.

    Olivia Staudt, a 20-year-old junior at Iowa State University, grew up on a fourth-generation corn, bean and row crop operation in Marble Rock, Iowa. The Republican said another factor contributing to the divide on climate issues is that some rural people think urban communities assign them disproportionate blame on climate issues without looking in the mirror.

    “There always needs to be a scapegoat, and it feels like that’s what rural communities are to a lot of these urban areas,” Staudt said. “But no one has all the blame or creates all the issues.”

    Staudt knows first-hand how much farming communities think about natural resources — her family not only uses the land but maintains it for the future, and that connection to the Earth can be farther off for urban residents. When she sees new big developments in cities and smog, paired with a perception of the agriculture sector getting blamed for climate change, it feels off.

    The findings are complicated by a lack of knowledge on Biden’s climate actions. September’s AP-NORC poll found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they knew little to nothing about the Inflation Reduction Act — a law widely heralded as the largest investment in climate spending in history.

    The IRA, which Biden signed into law in August, included about $375 billion in investments in climate over 10 years. Among other things, the legislation provides around $260 billion in tax credits for renewable energy and offers consumer rebates to households for heat pumps and solar panels, and up to $7,500 in electric vehicle credits.

    Some elements of the law are geared towards the agriculture sector, too. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the law includes $20 billion to conservation programs run by the department, $3 billion in relief for distressed USDA borrowers whose operations are at financial risk, and $2 billion in financial assistance to farmers who have experienced past discrimination in USDA lending programs.

    ———

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://www.ap.org/votecast.

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  • Republicans take control of the House, NBC News projects

    Republicans take control of the House, NBC News projects

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    House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) talks to reporters during his weekly news conference in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center on March 18, 2022 in Washington, DC.

    Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images News | Getty Images

    Republicans will take majority control of the House, NBC News projects, ousting Democrats from key positions of power and complicating President Joe Biden‘s legislative hopes for the remainder of his term.

    With the Senate staying in Democrats’ hands, congressional leadership will be divided for at least the next two years.

    The outcome in the House was expected, but it didn’t happen in the way Republicans hoped it would. Democrats broadly exceeded many analysts’ expectations, dashing GOP hopes of a “red wave” that would not only net them a sweeping House majority but provide a symbolic repudiation of Democratic leadership.

    Instead, Republicans are projected to take a slim lead in the House — 221-214, according to NBC’s estimate based on the handful of races that have yet to be called. The GOP’s win in the lower chamber of Congress only became clear more than a week after Election Day.

    The results widened a rift within the party, as some conservatives quickly blamed their losses in winnable races on former President Donald Trump‘s influence over the quality and messaging of key candidates. Nearly all of Trump’s picks in the most competitive House races were defeated, as were many of his preferred candidates for Senate and in key gubernatorial and secretary of state elections.

    Trump has defended his endorsement record while lashing out at his critics, including multiple Republican leaders. Despite his weakened standing in the Republican Party, Trump on Tuesday night launched his 2024 presidential campaign.

    One day before NBC’s projection, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., won a party vote to become the GOP nominee for speaker of the House. McCarthy won in a 188-31 vote, NBC reported, signaling that the narrow Republican majority in the next Congress may grapple with internal divisions. To become speaker, McCarthy needs at least 218 votes — a majority of the chamber — when the full House votes in early January.

    Democrats’ performance cut against a persistent narrative that the party was vulnerable due to a range of factors, including Biden’s unpopularity and historical trends that disfavor the party in the White House.

    But it wasn’t enough for Democrats to keep their grip on a narrow House majority. GOP candidates up and down the ballot sought to capitalize on widespread anxieties about crime and inflation, which ranked as top issues throughout the cycle and formed the basis of many attacks on Democratic leadership in Congress and the White House.

    Biden’s low approval ratings hardly helped Democrats in tough House and Senate races, forcing some to distance themselves from the administration.

    While Democrats overcame political headwinds in major swing states, they faltered in the solid-blue stronghold of New York, where Republicans performed stronger than some analysts expected. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who came under fire from his own party after a messy New York redistricting fight, lost his race and ceded his seat to GOP challenger Mike Lawler.

    Biden said in a statement Wednesday evening, “Last week’s elections demonstrated the strength and resilience of American democracy.”

    “There was a strong rejection of election deniers, political violence, and intimidation. There was an emphatic statement that, in America, the will of the people prevails,” Biden said.

    The president congratulated McCarthy and expressed a willingness to work across the aisle. “The American people want us to get things done for them. They want us to focus on the issues that matter to them and on making their lives better,” Biden said. “And I will work with anyone – Republican or Democrat – willing to work with me to deliver results for them.”

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  • Democrats will keep control of the Senate, NBC News projects

    Democrats will keep control of the Senate, NBC News projects

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    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) gestures, walking out of the Senate Chamber, celebrating the passage of the Inflation Reduct Act at the U.S. Capitol on Sunday, Aug. 7, 2022 in Washington, DC. T

    Kent Nishimura | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

    Democrats will hold their razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate, NBC News projects, staving off a full-bore effort by Republicans to leverage economic volatility and public discontent into control of the upper chamber of Congress.

    The party will hold at least 50 seats in the Senate in the next Congress, after incumbents held their ground in key races and Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman flipped Pennsylvania’s GOP-held seat. One uncalled race, where Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia is defending his seat against Republican Herschel Walker, will be decided in a Dec. 6 runoff. Democrats currently control the Senate split 50-50 by party through Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.

    While the GOP held some key advantages over Democrats throughout the cycle, analysts considered the battle for the Senate to be a virtual toss-up heading into Election Day. Incumbent Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada both prevailed in their closely contested races, NBC projected after days of counting in both states, clinching the chamber for Democrats.

    In a tweet, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the election results “a victory and vindication for Democrats.”

    Republicans had hoped, and many had openly anticipated, a “red wave” that would wash Democrats out of their majorities in both branches of the legislature. A flip in congressional leadership would have threatened President Joe Biden‘s legislative agenda and his ability to advance key nominations for his next two years in office.

    But that wave never materialized. Democratic candidates up and down the ballot outperformed expectations from many analysts who predicted that Biden’s unpopularity, coupled with historical electoral trends and persistently high inflation, could yield a rout for the party in power.

    Senate Democrats will instead hold their majority — and could even add to it if Warnock defeats Walker. It gives the party another check against the GOP if Republicans flip control of the House.

    NBC News has not yet projected House control as states continue to count votes in tight races.

    NBC estimates Republicans could win 219 House seats once all uncalled races are settled — barely enough for a majority — while Democrats could win 216. The projection carries a margin of error of plus-or-minus four seats.

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  • Mark Kelly wins Arizona Senate race, bringing Democrats one seat away from majority, NBC News projects

    Mark Kelly wins Arizona Senate race, bringing Democrats one seat away from majority, NBC News projects

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    U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and his wife former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, daughters Charlotte, Samantha and son in law Mark Sudman wave during his election night rally at the Rialto Theatre on November 08, 2022 in Tucson, Arizona.

    Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

    Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly will hold on to his U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, pushing Democrats closer to retaining control of the Senate, NBC News projected.

    Kelly was leading Republican candidate Blake Masters, who was former President Donald Trump’s pick in the key swing state, by almost six percentage points with 85% of the votes in as of Friday night. With Kelly’s win, Democrats need just one of the two seats in Nevada or Georgia that haven’t been called yet.

    In Nevada, Republican candidate Adam Laxalt was ahead by 1 percentage point with 88% of the votes counted as of Friday morning. Georgia’s Senate race is headed to a runoff election on Dec. 6 between GOP candidate Herschel Walker and incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, who was leading by more than a percentage point.

    Kelly raised and spent vastly more than venture capitalist Masters, bringing in over $81.8 million and spending over $75.9 million through mid-October. Masters, by comparison, raised $12.3 million and spent just $9.7 million over the same time frame, according to data compiled by the Federal Election Commission.

    The Arizona Democrat campaigned on a platform of bipartisanship and promoted his willingness to work across the aisle with Republicans. He was elected to the Senate in 2020 to finish the term of Republican Sen. John McCain, who died of an aggressive form of brain cancer.

    Kelly recently distanced his stance on immigration from the Biden administration when he came out against the decision to end Title 42. The policy, which began during the Trump administration, prevented migrants from entering the country due to Covid.

    The Arizona Democrat has also pushed hard for border security. He recently referred to the influx of migrants at the southern border as “a mess” during a debate.

    “When the president decided he was going to do something dumb on this and change the rules that would create a bigger crisis, I told him he was wrong. So I pushed back on this administration multiple times,” Kelly said in October.

    But Kelly was also a chief negotiator in the CHIPS and Science Act, a key component of President Joe Biden’s economic policies that was signed into law in August.

    A former NASA astronaut and Navy pilot, Kelly is married to former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a gunshot wound to the head in 2011.

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