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  • Key senators torn over retirement decisions as party leaders try to fortify 2024 standing | CNN Politics

    Key senators torn over retirement decisions as party leaders try to fortify 2024 standing | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Sen. Joe Manchin, torn over whether to run for reelection, says he’s “given everything I possibly can” over four decades of holding public office. Sen. Jon Tester is close to making his final decision on a 2024 bid and concedes there’s a risk of his seat flipping next year.

    “It’s a commitment,” the Montana Democrat said of another run.

    They’re not the only ones in a tough spot.

    Sen. Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, is weighing health considerations after treatment for prostate cancer. Sen. Bernie Sanders, 81, says he’ll make a decision about whether to run for a fourth Senate term in Vermont “at the appropriate time.”

    And Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who has gone to battle with former President Donald Trump, says he’ll decide whether to run for a second term by mid-April, sounding ready to take on his party’s MAGA wing if he runs again.

    “People understand that every action has a consequence, and you accept the consequences for the actions that you think are right,” Romney, 75, said of potentially facing a stiff challenge from the right. He then added bullishly: “If I run, I’ll win.”

    As the 2024 landscape begins to take shape, the senators’ decisions about their political futures will dramatically alter the map and hold major ramifications for the makeup of the institution itself.

    For Democrats, the concern is the most acute. They already have a difficult road to maintain their slim 51-49 majority, with 23 seats to defend compared to just 11 for the GOP.

    Plus they’ll have to hold onto Democratic seats in GOP terrain, such as in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia – not to mention keep their seats in swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada. The map provides them with scant pickup opportunities, since Republican incumbents are mostly running in ruby-red states or states that have trended to the GOP, like Florida.

    Then there’s the complicated dance for both parties in Arizona, if Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, now an independent, decides to run again for a seat that would put her up against a Republican and Democrat in a messy, three-way race. For Republicans, fear is growing that the hard-right Kari Lake may mount a bid and put their hopes for a pickup in jeopardy.

    And with few pickup chances, Senate Democrats recognize they’ll have to limit losses – and prevent retirements – in order to cling to power.

    “I’m doing everything I can to help Manchin in West Virginia,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told CNN when asked if he were concerned that the conservative Democrat might hang it up, referring to legislative actions.

    After Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow announced she’d retire, Schumer and his top deputies are hoping to prevent others from following suit, recognizing that an open seat would give Republicans an even better chance of seizing control of the chamber they lost in the 2020 elections. The exception is California, where the 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein announced her retirement this week, something widely expected, as Democrats are expected to keep the seat in their control in the blue state.

    In particular, Democratic leaders are urging Tester and Manchin to run again, knowing full well that finding another Democrat to win in those conservative battlegrounds will be an extremely tall order in 2024.

    “Clearly, it’s important for them to run,” said Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Democratic campaign arm, when asked about Tester and Manchin. “I don’t know where they are. I’ve talked to them, but they’re just working through issues, personal issues for themselves as to what they want to do. So we just have to give them time to think that through and I look forward to their answers.”

    Peters acknowledged that his party’s effort to keep the Senate will grow bleaker if either or both men retire.

    “Those are states that are very Republican,” Peters told CNN, referring to Montana and West Virginia. “And I know they can win again, but they’re without question the strongest candidates in those states. It’d be more difficult without them running.”

    Democrats acknowledge they have close to no backup plans in Montana or West Virginia. But they have been heartened by the polls that are being released publicly by Republican groups in those states, showing their numbers have been better than expected – and perhaps encouraging – for the incumbents.

    But neither Manchin nor Tester seem concerned that the seat could turn red if they retire.

    “That’s not my factor,” Manchin said in the interview. “I’m not weighing that because of my, what it might do to the numbers as far as up here. No, I’ve been at this for quite some time. This term being up, there’ll be 42 years I’ve been in public service so I’ve given everything I possibly can.”

    Several Democratic operatives involved in planning for Senate races tell CNN they expect that ultimately, Tester will run and that Casey will as well after his successful surgery this week. Manchin has them more on edge, and they anticipate that’s how they’ll remain for almost a year: the West Virginia filing deadline isn’t until next January.

    That, after all, is what he did in 2018.

    Manchin, a former governor and state legislator who has served in the Senate since 2010, insists he’s not concerned about the prospects that the GOP governor, Jim Justice, is strongly considering a run against him, though Justice would have to escape a difficult primary against Rep. Alex Mooney and potentially the state’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, who may run as well. He has acknowledged that Justice would be the toughest candidate to face, though he insists he could still pull off a victory.

    Manchin, 75, just doesn’t know if he wants to do it again as he looks back at the last several years – especially in the 50-50 Senate in the last Congress where he was at the peak of his power in the chamber and played a central role shaping major laws. The question Manchin is weighing: whether he’ll have the same kind of impact with another six years.

    “I make a decision based on if I’ve been able to deliver for the state, have I been able to support the Constitution and the oath I’ve taken, I think I have,” Manchin said, confirming he’s been urged by Biden and Schumer both to run. “Is there more I can do in different, other areas? I don’t know.”

    Tester, who also said Schumer has been urging him to run, conceded that his seat could flip if he bows out.

    “Oh, absolutely there’s a risk of flipping there’s no doubt about that but so are all of them,” Tester said.

    But he contended other Democrats could mount a vigorous challenge for the seat.

    “Actually, we’ve got some really good folks in the wings that can run,” Tester, 66, said before he noted that things have gotten dire for Democrats in recent cycles. “We haven’t had the best of luck the last few cycles in Montana but I think that’s as much self-inflicted as it is the state turning red.”

    But Tester pointed to key positions he holds – chairing a subcommittee on Pentagon spending and running the veterans panel – as he weighs another run.

    “I’m at a point and time where we can get a lot of good things done because of my position on Veterans Affairs and defense chairman but it’s just something where I think you just need to take the time to think over,” he said.

    Yet Democrats could benefit from a potentially divisive GOP primary in Montana – with the possibility of candidacies from two House members, the governor and the state attorney general. That will put the other Montana senator, Republican Steve Daines, to the test as he plans to use his National Republican Senatorial Committee to be more assertive in GOP primaries to root out lackluster general election candidates, though it’s unclear how he would handle his home state.

    In an interview, Daines was noncommittal when asked about one candidate in particular – Rep. Matt Rosendale – a hard-right Republican who lost to Tester in 2018 and is considering running again. He said “it’s early” since candidates have yet to declare and that the field will get “sorted out,” contending the race is “winnable.”

    “These are three red states where the only statewide elected official left that’s a Democrat is a US Senator. That’s Montana, it’s West Virginia, it’s Ohio,” Daines said. “These are going to be spirited races.”

    And after last cycle’s GOP debacle, where several Donald Trump-aligned candidates petered out in the general election and effectively cost them winning the majority, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell is determined not to allow that to happen again.

    “I just think we need to focus on candidates who can win in the general election,” said Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas and close McConnell ally. “We had some great primary candidates, but that won’t get the job done. You got to have somebody who can have a broader appeal than just the base. That was one of the most important lessons of this last cycle.”

    Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, at left, is challenging Sinema, at right, for her US Senate seat in 2024.

    Senate leaders in both parties see Arizona as the biggest wildcard – depending on what Sinema decides to do and which Republican decides to run.

    Lake, the Trump-aligned Republican who lost one of the nation’s premier governor’s races last fall, recently met with officials at NRSC headquarters – even though many Republicans are nervous about her potential candidacy and one GOP strategist called the potential of a Lake Senate run “disastrous.”

    As she made the rounds in Washington, Daines told CNN that he spoke with Lake.

    “I want to see a candidate who can not only win a primary, but can win a general election,” Daines said when asked about that visit, not commenting on Lake directly.

    Other top Republicans are unnerved about Lake – and her evidence-free claims of widespread election fraud – and are pushing for other candidates to jump into the race.

    “I’ve just said to any of our candidates or potential candidates in 2024, that you got to talk about the future, not the past,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican. “And I think if you’re building your campaign around the theme of a stolen election, that’s not a winning strategy. We’ve seen that. So if she does decide to do it again, I think she’s gonna have to talk about the things that are on the hearts and minds of American people.”

    Schumer and Democratic leaders, themselves, are in a bind in the state, refusing to say if they’ll back their party’s nominee with Sinema still undecided on a run. The reason: They need Sinema to continue to organize with them in order to maintain their 51-49 majority and are in no mood to alienate her.

    But some Democrats are angry at their leaders for refusing to say if they’ll back their nominee, especially backers of Rep. Ruben Gallego, the party’s leading candidate in the race.

    “At some point, they’re going to have to endorse a Democrat,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, a fellow Arizona Democrat who backs Gallego, noting it would be “problematic” if party leaders didn’t dump huge resources to help their party’s nominee win a general election.

    “If they don’t, that would be an insult at many levels,” Grijavla said.

    While some Democrats are nervous that Gallego and Sinema would split the vote and give Republicans a victory, Gallego dismisses the possibility and says only a “strong Democrat” can win.

    “No matter what happens, Kyrsten Sinema is always going to be in third place,” Gallego said. “I also doubt she fully runs.”

    As she’s grown more alienated from her former party, Sinema has grown closer to Republicans, including one – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – who told CNN she would endorse the senator if she ran again.

    “I absolutely support Sen. Sinema,” Murkowski said, noting she’s also backing Manchin. “She’s not afraid to take on hard things, and I’m gonna be supporting her too.”

    Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan speaks to members of the media at the U.S. Capitol on August 03, 2022 in Washington, DC.

    Even in safe Democratic seats, there’s the potential for a shakeup that could bring more diversity and younger members into the ranks, including in Maryland and Delaware where Sens. Ben Cardin and Tom Carper, respectively, have not made a final decision to run yet.

    Cardin, 79, who hasn’t spent much time fundraising yet, said he would make his decision sometime in the spring, while Carper, 76, said he’d be ready to run but noted that campaigns are “way too long.”

    In Hawaii, Sen. Mazie Hirono said she plans to run again, as did Maine’s Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

    “There’s only two ways to run: Scared or unopposed,” King said.

    In more contested states, Nevada’s Jacky Rosen said she is running, as did Ohio’s Sherrod Brown. And in Wisconsin, Sen. Tammy Baldwin said she’d make her announcement about her plans in the spring after upcoming elections in the state.

    In Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz has announced plans to run for a third Senate term, and Democrats are weighing whether to mount a serious effort to try to unseat him in the red state – with a focus on whether Democratic Rep. Colin Allred will try to mount an upset bid against the conservative senator.

    In Michigan, where Stabenow’s retirement is leaving Democrats with an open seat in a swing state, Rep. Elissa Slotkin is eying a run and could get some implicit help from the outgoing senator herself. Stabenow has spoken by phone with several prominent Michigan Democrats, and while some have perceived that as dissuading some weaker candidates from running, a Stabenow spokesperson says she’s just been giving everyone advice on the challenges of running statewide in Michigan and not trying to clear the field.

    Republican recruitment efforts in the state are also up in the air, with a push for newly elected Rep. John James, who has lost two previous bids for the Senate. If he passes, GOP leaders believe other contenders will emerge, potentially former Rep. Peter Meijer and even some current members of the House delegation or local officials.

    While several potential Democratic candidates have decided not to run, other political players in the state remain unsure about Slotkin’s statewide strength and have continued talking privately about finding an alternative.

    Given how much Democrats in the state rely on high turnout in heavily African-American Detroit, finding a candidate who could run strong there has been a major topic in those discussions. Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, who got his start in Detroit politics is “very seriously thinking about making a run” and is expected to make a decision over the next month, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

    Meanwhile, several Democrats in Michigan tell CNN they have been surprised by outreach they’re getting from “The Good Doctor” actor Hill Harper, whose political experience mostly relates to being Barack Obama’s law school roommate, but who owns a coffee shop in Detroit and has gotten involved with the local business community there. Harper did not return a request for comment.

    Stabenow said she’s not endorsing any candidate in the primary to replace her.

    “What I’m saying to folks is that I want somebody that is strong, effective, who can raise money, who can win,” Stabenow said. “But I’m talking to everybody.”

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  • Joe Biden hates when people talk about his age. A looming reelection run is making it ‘omnipresent.’ | CNN Politics

    Joe Biden hates when people talk about his age. A looming reelection run is making it ‘omnipresent.’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    When President Joe Biden sets out for his annual physical at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Thursday morning, he’ll be setting a new record – as he does every morning – as the oldest US president ever.

    Biden’s age is “omnipresent” in nearly every conversation, one person involved told CNN, at a time when he’s preparing for a reelection announcement that would try to extend his time in the Oval Office until he is 86 years old.

    Biden hasn’t officially decided to run again, though he’s said he intends to and his campaign infrastructure is largely in place. Even though aides say the president has told them that his age will not be the determining factor in his final decision about running for reelection, conversations about it are shaping everything from planning anticipated campaign schedule logistics to calibrating Vice President Kamala Harris’ role as his running mate. White House spokesman Andrew Bates disputes how much of a factor the president’s age is in conversations: “That’s simply not true, and makes one think they aren’t involved in many conversations here.”

    That is leading to a focus on events that try to play up the president’s vitality, while trying to strike a balance in the schedule of a man who tends to make more blunders when tired.

    It also underscored the importance of a State of the Union address advisers viewed as Biden at his best, from cadence and delivery to his off-script sparring with Republicans in the House chamber. The speech served as a prime-time moment, in front of tens of millions of viewers, to lay out for the country the scale of his accomplishments and vision for the path ahead.

    And, at least implicitly, it also represented a window into why his age shouldn’t be viewed as detriment to his efforts to lead the country down that path.

    The effect was immediate with at least one group watching: quietly anxious Democratic officials. More than a dozen of acknowledged after the fact it was a night that either put to rest or went a long way in assuaging their lingering concerns about the party’s leader.

    That Biden repeatedly went back to the phrase “finish the job” roughly a dozen times during the speech “wasn’t exactly subtle,” one of those Democrats said.

    Though advisers say Biden would keep to the standard of not starting daily campaigning for at least a year, just as President Barack Obama did in 2011, they’re already looking for low impact ways to maximize keeping him in the public eye. To some extent it would track and build on the oft-criticized formula deployed in the lead up to the midterms, where Biden eschewed a road warrior, rally heavy strategy and tailored and targeted events – and smaller crowds – instead.

    “Funny that we didn’t hear much from the critics about that strategy after November 8,” one adviser said sarcastically of the Democrats’ precedent-busting performance on Election Day last year.

    Among the possible strategies are having him keep up the kind of news-making appearances he’s been doing in and around Washington and preparing for what they’re hoping will be the most extensive digital effort of a presidential campaign ever.

    Top surrogates deployed at a regular clip would include a roster populated by a younger generation of politicians, people familiar with the matter say, even as one pointed out that given Biden’s age, that’s to some degree an inevitability.

    “Like we did in 2020, if he runs in 2024 there will be a range of surrogates that show the diversity of the party, across all ages, from Maxwell Frost to Bernie Sanders,” a Biden adviser said, referencing the 26-year-old freshman congressman from Florida and the independent Vermont senator.

    To many top Democratic operatives and officials looking ahead, Biden’s age is the top issue of his reelection campaign – in essence, what he’s running against, at least until a Republican nominee emerges, according to CNN’s conversations with three dozen White House aides, elected officials, leading Democratic operatives and others beginning to prepare for the race ahead.

    “It’s part of who he is – as much a part as his record of legislative accomplishments in the last two years, as much a part as his empathy and his connection with people,” said a senior Biden adviser.

    The adviser went on to spell out a theory of the case Biden’s team believes will outweigh any concerns, no matter how persistent they appear in public polling.

    “At the end of the day, people are going to say, ‘Who’s on my side?’” the adviser said. “‘Who’s fighting for me? Who’s getting things done and making a material difference in my life?’”

    That’s how Mitch Landrieu, the White House infrastructure coordinator, made the case to the antsy Democratic mayors he joined for a political meeting in January at a hotel a few blocks from the White House.

    “People want to focus on one number – the president’s age, 80,” he said, and let the words linger for just a moment.

    The mayors looked around uncomfortably, according to two people in the room. They’d been thinking about Biden’s age themselves, constantly hearing doubts he could or would run constantly from back home. They were startled to hear it said out loud by a White House official.

    “But,” Landrieu said, as he started to tick through stats around Covid-19 shots, jobs created, unemployment rates, “there are a whole lot more important numbers out there.”

    Still, voters bring Biden’s age up constantly in focus groups. Many veer toward assuming he must be ineffective or being puppeteered: “‘brain dead,’ ‘mush’ – ‘dementia’ is a word that comes up all the time,” said one person who observed multiple focus group sessions during campaigns last year.

    More than a dozen Democratic operatives and officials told CNN they’re worried that Donald Trump – himself a septuagenarian who is facing calls for new leadership from younger politicians in his party – or another much younger Republican who may emerge as the nominee could make a show of seeming more energetic just by keeping a pace of two or three events each day. A number of prominent figures in the Democratic Party are privately questioning the president’s ability to keep up an active travel schedule.

    A handful of ambitious Democrats have already quietly prepared rudimentary contingency plans in case Biden has a change of heart and decides against running for reelection, people familiar with the efforts told CNN. Those plans span everything from thinking through top donors to eyeing potential core campaign staff, should Biden reassess his ability to serve another four years or has an unexpected health problem, sparking a short fuse primary.

    And while top White House aides bristle at any suggestion that the president’s age is a liability, others in the building quietly worry that this may be actively underplaying underplaying the concerns that they’re hearing from their own friends and family members.

    Other Democratic operatives preparing for a campaign worry about letting suspicions fester, comparing them to the conspiracies about hidden conditions that trailed Hillary Clinton throughout 2016.

    “They’re going to be talking about it,” said one top Democrat working on planning ahead for the reelection campaign. “So, we’ve got to talk about it.”

    The president’s opponents are talking about it. Right-wing media coverage of the classified documents found in Biden’s former office and garage made him out to be either senile – to explain why he hadn’t remembered what happened to the documents – or at the center of a conspiracy theory about a controversy manufactured by Democrats to ease him into retirement.

    Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told CNN with a sorrowful tone in an interview last month, “He’s plainly diminished, far below the threshold needed to be a functioning and effective president.” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ Republican response to Biden’s State of the Union used the line, “At 80, he’s the oldest president in American history.”

    “They attacked him over age before he beat them in 2020. They attacked him over age as he built the best legislative record in modern history,” said Bates. “They did the same before he beat them 2022. I’m not sure what they think they’re accomplishing. The trend is not good for them. Maybe they forgot?”

    It’s not just them. Voters young and old often say they can’t really believe he’s going to run. Mocking him as ancient or asleep has become an easy joke for late night comedians. Many prominent Democrats privately say some panicky version of what Robert Reich, the 76-year-old former secretary of labor, wrote recently: Biden’s age is “deeply worrying, given what we know about the natural decline of the human brain and body.”

    Biden advisers argue that most of the people making those kinds of comments are partisan Republicans, and that this is just another instance of a hyperpolarization in politics. They point to Biden’s previous physicals and assessments by outside experts who say that he has no physical or mental competence issues at all.

    Sure, there has been a noticeably increased stiffness to his walk since he’s been in office, aides say, so much so that the White House physician, brought in a team to assess Biden’s gait during his last physical in 2021. They concluded it was the result of normal “wear and tear” of his spine.

    They acknowledge there are days where his energy levels at public events can appear less vigorous. But they are unequivocal about their view that Biden wouldn’t green light another run if he didn’t think he could do it – and they wouldn’t support one either.

    And they say these doubts are just the latest way of underestimating the president, pointing out that age concerns also dogged his 2020 campaign – even though some of those same advisers confided to others at the time that they believed his age was his biggest liability when he was four years younger.

    Asked what the argument will be for a 2024 campaign, the Biden senior adviser snapped: “I’ve got two words for you: Wisdom and experience.”

    Those words, and an overall emphasis on Biden as an embodiment of reassuring routine and normalcy, pop up repeatedly among aides who are starting to look ahead.

    They are also quietly reframing a key moment at the end of the 2020 primary campaign, when Biden was endorsed in March 2020 by the much younger Harris, Booker and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and described himself “as a bridge” to the next generation.

    Many at the time took that to mean a four-year bridge, an implicit one-term promise that acknowledged his age. Advisers point out he’d previously rejected a one-term pledge.

    But people around Biden suggest, what he was talking about was not just getting Donald Trump out of the White House but getting past Trump and Trumpism. Advisers say that is what the logic around a 2024 run boils down to: Making the case that the only thing worse than an 82-year-old president is a Republican one.

    Biden advisers also argue that the president’s persona as an elder statesman could help Democrats hold onto voters who see the party as changing too quickly and veering too far left.

    “People feel like it’s a turbulent world that we’re living in, and it is a strength for Joe Biden to be able to point to not just years of experience in government up to this point, but more immediately his last two years in the White House being able to get things done, despite the turbulence,” said a second Biden adviser. “And what we’re seeing from Republicans in the House in terms of chaos and extremism is an incredibly powerful contrast too, that underscores the idea that his experience – and yes, age – is a benefit.”

    Although there are clear moments when Biden is visibly slower physically than he was, dozens of aides, administration officials and members of Congress who’ve actually spent time with him have relayed stories to CNN about how thorough and demanding he is in meeting after meeting.

    “There’s a confidence that comes from knowing what you’re doing,” Ted Kaufman, one of Biden’s closest friends and advisers since his first campaign, told CNN late last year.

    Biden likes to talk and keep talking, but he did spend 36 years in the Senate. He sometimes rambles, but he rambled long before his hair went gray.

    He often gets stuck on, or mispronounces, names on his teleprompter, but that’s far more connected to a convergence of wanting to get the name correct while not encountering a block tied to the childhood stutter he worked intensively and successfully to overcome, but still surfaces in certain moments.

    Several prominent Democratic officials told CNN that they worry even so, every stumble now will be viewed through the prism of age. Biden’s advisers are keenly aware of what they view as a perception – or in some cases, in the words of one person close to Biden, “the bull— caricature” – that they say doesn’t match the reality they see.

    They say he’s the one constantly adding to his schedule, pushing for photo lines with local politicians and extra time to greet crowds after his events, or making meetings run over by peppering policy aides with questions.

    “The energy is higher now than maybe when I first met him, and I really believe that that’s inspired by the work,” said Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who as a Delaware Democrat has known and worked with Biden much of her life.

    There is perhaps no better window into the public perception versus private reality advisers try to convey than a 15-hour stretch in Bali, Indonesia, at the Group of 20 meeting last November.

    Nearing the end of a grueling six-day, three-country trip to Asia that also included his first face-to-face meeting as president with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Biden chose to skip the gala dinner and went back to his hotel. Whispers went around that Biden was too tired, unable to keep going.

    Just a few hours later, he was sitting across from national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken trying to head off a spiraling international crisis.

    Biden, wearing khakis and a gray T-shirt from a Delaware-based tractor and garden supply center, was on the phone with the Polish president over the missile that had landed in Polish territory and killed two people, raising the possibility that Russia’s unrelenting attacks on Ukraine had finally spilled into a NATO ally.

    There were calls with the NATO secretary general and constant communication with his military leadership. Aides discussed an emergency call with G7 and NATO leaders. Biden said that wasn’t enough.

    “We’re all here,” Biden told his senior team of the leaders scattered across nearby hotels. “Bring them here.”

    An hour later, Biden himself walked the 10 leaders who came to the Grand Hyatt through early intelligence that the missile likely was not of Russian origin. Fears of dramatic escalation quickly dissipated. Thirty minutes later, Biden was walking through mangrove trees telling French President Emmanuel Macron and other leaders stories from his Senate days.

    Aides said Biden didn’t skip the gala because he was tired, though they never explained further. The truth, two people familiar with the matter said, was he wanted some time to focus on preparation for his granddaughter’s wedding that weekend at the White House, rather than have more generic conversations with counterparts over another meal. He was ready, however, when a crisis moment arrived, they said. And he drove the response.

    White House aides clock mentions of Biden’s age in the media – with particular attention to those that happen to leave out the ages of similarly aged politicians like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is a year older, and Trump, who is 76.

    They quickly shoot down what they see as sneering insinuations, like when reporters ask why the president has a light public schedule on the days back from overseas trips – though that has been standard practice for multiple recent presidents, including Obama. They insist that his midterm travel schedule proves how robust a presence he can be on the road, even though Biden rarely appeared at more than a few events each week through the fall.

    Biden hated people talking about how old he was when he was younger. He hates it even more now.

    “Do I wish he was 10 years younger? Yeah. So does he!” said one Biden donor. “But there is nothing to me, beyond his chronological age, that would lend itself to the argument he shouldn’t seek reelection.”

    Aides laugh at how often his reaction to seeing news mentions of his age is to do a little jog in or out of his next public event. Friends say he’s taken to making sarcastic references to his age, even as he speaks proudly about all he’s been able to accomplish.

    Or there was his move three weeks ago in the State Dining Room, when he pretended to wobble as he got back up from taking a knee for a photo with the NBA champion Golden State Warriors, taking a moment to make fun of the crowd’s shock.

    “I wanted to get up there and actually give him an arm and help him up, but I didn’t know if I’d get in trouble for that, so I just kinda stood back,” star forward Draymond Green told CNN afterward. “To see him in that physical condition at his age, to get up and down like that, was absolutely incredible.”

    A number of younger Democratic politicians and operatives tell CNN they’re ready to embrace the idea of Biden as a grandfatherly figure, continuing to be a source of comfort and calm for a battered nation, even capitalizing on a specific sort of nostalgia for a pre-Trump time in politics. and the news.

    Of course, that would take Biden himself buying in. Even his grandkids don’t call him grandpa – they call him Pop.

    “He doesn’t want to be a grandpa,” said one person who knows him. “He wants to be a bro.”

    Aftab Pureval, the Cincinnati mayor who just turned 40 in September, said a visit from the president last month left him with the impression that Biden has more than enough left in the tank.

    Pureval saw a man who laughed hard when the mayor deliberately used a famous Biden interjection – one that contains a four-letter word that starts with F – to describe what a big deal the bipartisan infrastructure money was in helping rebuild the local Brent Spence Bridge.

    There were the fist bumps with the crowd at the barbecue spot in town they went to afterward. There was the way the president immediately flashed the fraternity hand sign when a young black man mentioned that he was a member of Phi Beta Sigma.

    “When you’re with him, age was never really on my mind. What was on my mind was the president provided the single biggest grant in our nation’s history to our bridge,” Pureval said.

    “His age is his age, but you can’t argue with the results.”

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  • Here are the Republicans considering 2024 presidential runs | CNN Politics

    Here are the Republicans considering 2024 presidential runs | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United States ambassador to the United Nations, launched her bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination Tuesday.

    But the primary is still in its early stages, and it could take months before the field fully rounds into form and candidates make more than occasional visits to states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina that will kick off the GOP’s nominating process.

    Haley could stand alone for weeks or even months as the party’s only official rival to former President Donald Trump.

    Here’s a look at who’s in and who is considering a 2024 run for the Republican nomination:

    Donald Trump: The former president officially launched his campaign in November, days after the midterm elections. And he never really stopped running after 2020, continuing to hold campaign-style rallies with supporters.

    Nikki Haley: Haley launched her presidential campaign Tuesday. It was a shift from her previous insistence she would not run against Trump. “It’s time for a new generation of leadership to rediscover fiscal responsibility, secure our border and strengthen our country, our pride and our purpose,” she said in a video announcing her bid.

    Ron DeSantis: The Florida governor emerged as the top alternative to Trump in many conservatives’ eyes after his dominant reelection victory. A DeSantis announcement is likely months away, with Florida currently in the middle of its legislative session. But his memoir, accompanied by a media blitz, will drop at the end of February, and top advisers are building a political infrastructure.

    Mike Pence: The former vice president’s split with Trump over the events of January 6, 2021, kicked off a consistent return to political travel. He has made clear that he believes the GOP will move on from Trump. “I think we’re going to have new leadership in this party and in this country,” Pence told CBS in January.

    Tim Scott: The South Carolina senator would make a second Palmetto State Republican in the 2024 field if, as expected, he enters the race in the near future. Scott is building a political infrastructure, including hiring for a super PAC, and is set to visit Iowa for an event his team billed as focused on “faith in America.”

    Ted Cruz: The Texas senator and 2016 GOP contender has not ruled out another presidential bid. But he is also seeking reelection in 2024. “I think there will be plenty of time to discuss the 2024 presidential race. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” he told the CBS affiliate in Dallas in February.

    Glenn Youngkin: The Virginia governor’s 2021 victory offered Republicans a new playbook focused on parental power in education. His political travel, including stops for a series of Republican gubernatorial candidates last year, makes clear Youngkin has ambitions beyond Virginia. He faced a setback to his push for a 15-week abortion ban when Democrats won a state senate special election earlier this year, expanding their narrow majority.

    Chris Sununu: The New Hampshire governor’s timeline isn’t clear, but he recently established a political action committee that borrowed his state’s motto: “Live Free or Die.” He has positioned himself as a strong Trump opponent and alternative within the GOP. He would also start with the advantage of being universally known in an early-voting state. “I think America as a whole is looking for results-driven leadership that calls the balls and strikes like they see them and is super transparent,” Sununu told Axios this week.

    Kristi Noem: The South Dakota governor who won reelection in November has certainly cultivated a national profile, becoming a regular at conservative gatherings and donor confabs. But she hasn’t committed to a presidential run. “I’m not convinced that I need to run for president,” she told CBS in January.

    Greg Abbott: The Texas governor who cruised past a 2020 presidential contender, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, to win his third term in November is unlikely to make any official 2024 moves until his state’s legislative session wraps up at the end of May. He told Fox News in January that a 2024 run “is it’s not something I’m ruling in right now. I’m focused on Texas, period.”

    Larry Hogan: The former Maryland governor is another Trump opponent. He told Fox News he is giving a 2024 run “very serious consideration.”

    Chris Christie: The former New Jersey governor is one of several 2024 GOP prospects headed to Texas for a private donor gathering in late February, along with Pence, Haley, Scott, Sununu and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Christie said on ABC earlier this year he doesn’t believe Trump could beat President Joe Biden in 2024.

    Asa Hutchinson: The former Arkansas governor is a rare Republican from a deep-red state who has been willing to criticize Trump. Now weeks removed from office, he also doesn’t have the at-home responsibilities facing other governors. He told CBS that he’ll decide on a 2024 by “probably April.” He said he believes voters are “looking for someone that is not going to be creating chaos, but also has got the record of being a governor, of lowering taxes.”

    Mike Pompeo: Trump’s secretary of state and the former Kansas congressman said during a tour for his new book, “Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love,” that he would decide on a presidential run in the coming months. He’s been among the Republicans most openly considering a run, traveling to early-voting states for more than a year.

    Liz Cheney: The former Wyoming congresswoman who emerged as the foremost GOP critic of Trump’s lies about widespread election fraud lost her House seat to a Trump-backed primary challenger. She launched a political action committee last year and made clear she intends to try to purge the GOP of Trump’s influence. But what that means in the context of a potential 2024 bid is not yet clear.

    Will Hurd: The former Texas congressman who represented a border district recently traveled to New Hampshire, an early-voting state, though it’s not clear whether or when he would enter the race. “I always have an open mind about how to serve my country,” he told Fox News.

    Others to keep an eye on: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who fended off a Trump-backed primary challenge on the way to reelection last year, has added political staffers and is sometimes mentioned as a vice presidential prospect. Florida Sen. Rick Scott and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley have both said they will not run for president in 2024 – but things can change, and both had also taken steps to build their national profiles. Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has teased a run as a Trump foil.

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  • Ron DeSantis can now make his agenda a reality ahead of a possible 2024 announcement | CNN Politics

    Ron DeSantis can now make his agenda a reality ahead of a possible 2024 announcement | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will soon have new authority over Disney’s iconic Florida theme parks, leeway to transport migrants from anywhere in the country and fewer hurdles to put people behind bars for voting errors – all top priorities that have animated conservatives who may decide the next Republican nominee for president.

    And he amassed this power in less than a week.

    DeSantis possesses a unique asset as he lays the groundwork for a potential presidential campaign: A subservient state party that is eager to hand victories to the Republican leader. The special session in Florida that ended Friday – during which his priorities sailed through the GOP-legislature in a matter of days and with minimal resistance – was a public demonstration of his total control over an ostensibly separate branch of government.

    It’s a tool he is expected to wield often in the coming months as he eschews an early entrance into the race in favor of building up a record of decisive actions that could be appealing to future primary voters.

    DeSantis has already laid out several legislative targets when lawmakers meet again next month, including fewer restrictions on firearms, more restrictions on abortion, weaker legal protections for the media industry and more public funding to attend private schools. With Republicans holding a super majority in both the state House and Senate, there is little expectation that DeSantis will not get his way.

    DeSantis isn’t expected to jump into the race for president until after lawmakers conclude their legislative business in May – a sign of how important that agenda is to his platform for president and the narrative around his candidacy.

    “Everyone is just waiting to take their cues from the governor,” one longtime Florida lobbyist said. “He is setting the agenda and it’s all red meat for 2024 voters.”

    So far DeSantis isn’t missing out on a crowded nomination battle. Former President Donald Trump remains the only declared candidate, but more appear not far behind. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is expected to announce her campaign on Wednesday. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu formed a new political organization as he inches toward a decision. Others, like former Vice President Mike Pence, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have openly acknowledged their interest in the office.

    Behind-the-scenes, DeSantis is also readying a political operation for a presidential campaign, with an eye toward making a campaign announcement in late May or early June, two people close to the governor said.

    His top advisers are in the early stages of launching an organization that could become a super PAC to support his 2024 bid. His memoir “The Courage to be Free” will drop at the end of February, leading into a national book tour and media blitz. The decision for DeSantis to invite top Republican fundraisers to a retreat and policy conference later this month in Palm Beach – the former president’s backyard – is the latest sign of how the governor is ramping up his operation in hopes of sending a signal to donors that he is serious about jumping into the race and he won’t be deterred by Trump.

    But DeSantis has otherwise dismissed speculation around his political ambitions. Even as he becomes the focus of attacks from the prospective field – most notably by Trump, but also Sununu and Hogan – DeSantis has avoided counterattacks that might distract from his focus on stacking legislative wins and culture war victories that his political advisers believe will give him a platform to take to voters, especially in a field full of candidates who are no longer in office.

    “It’s awkward for many of us who genuinely like President Trump, but believe Governor DeSantis should be our party’s nominee,” said a major donor who talks often with DeSantis. “Trump can’t beat Biden. We’ve seen that already.”

    While no president in American history has come from Florida, the prospect of the state having two 2024 GOP candidates – DeSantis and Trump – has added another layer of intrigue and questions of loyalty among many Republican donors, strategists and officials.

    For weeks, Trump has steadily intensified his criticism of DeSantis. For his part, DeSantis has largely ignored the attacks and responded by either declining to attack fellow Republicans or pointing to his 19-point victory in the midterm elections last fall.

    As the Republican field begins taking shape, DeSantis is sending clear signals to donors and prospective campaign staff that he intends to run. But he feels no urgency or pressure to accelerate his timeline.

    “I spend my time delivering results for the people of Florida and fighting against Joe Biden,” DeSantis said when asked about recent Trump attacks on social media. “That’s how I spend my time. I don’t spend my time trying to smear other Republicans.”

    DeSantis has pushed the limits of his executive authority to hold the spotlight and amass a record tailor-made for a primary battle against Trump. He recently stacked the board of New College, a small liberal arts school, with political allies and like-minded conservatives who have already shaken up the progressive university. Under his watch, transgender children can no longer access certain treatments, and he used his veto powers to eliminate funding for LGBTQ mental health programs. He ousted a twice-elected local prosecutor for simply promising not to use office resources to go after abortion providers.

    But it’s through the legislature that DeSantis has built the bulk of his political resume, and where he has demonstrated his command of his party. On Monday, DeSantis launched his latest salvo against the financial industry, announcing a proposal to block banks from lending or investing based on environmental, social and governance factors.

    “Why is it always someone has to try to jam their agenda down our throats?” DeSantis said at a news conference to unveil his plan to take on so-called “woke” banks.

    The special session last week was the sixth time lawmakers were called back to Tallahassee in two and a half years to take on DeSantis’ priorities outside of their regularly scheduled meeting. This time they assembled largely to clean up existing measures taken by DeSantis that earned the governor considerable praise in conservative media but also legal headaches for the state.

    Lawmakers during the five-day special session voted to give the statewide prosecutor jurisdiction to go after Floridians for violating election and voting crimes. The measure comes after DeSantis initiated a crackdown on voter fraud that resulted in the arrest of 20 individuals accused of voting illegally in 2020. However, the move hit a legal snag in some cases, including in Miami-Dade County, where a judge dismissed a case against a Miami defendant on the grounds that the state prosecutor had acted beyond its authority.

    Similarly, the Republican controlled-legislature gave DeSantis the power to transport migrants from anywhere in the country after a legal challenge arose when the governor last year sent two planes of migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, despite a state law that the state’s authority was limited to relocating “unauthorized aliens from this state.”

    The move last week to give DeSantis the power to pick the board members for Disney’s special taxing district was also a step to avoid a potential financial catastrophe after DeSantis last year demanded lawmakers vote to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District without a plan for its existing debt and contracts. Republican lawmakers, though, were happy to oblige.

    “As the governor says, there’s a new sheriff in town,” state House Speaker Paul Renner said as lawmakers prepared to hand control of Disney’s special taxing district over to DeSantis.

    Democrats in Florida, powerless to stop DeSantis and his allies, have mostly used the bully pulpit to criticize their GOP colleagues for ceding so much control to the executive branch.

    “I don’t understand why we just give away this ultimate power to one individual who should live up to the consequences of breaking the law,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, an Orlando Democrat. “The reality is that we have a governor who’s setting up a presidential bid. And this is basically his attempt to get earned media time on Fox News.”

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  • Washington Post: Trump campaign commissioned research that failed to prove 2020 election fraud claims | CNN Politics

    Washington Post: Trump campaign commissioned research that failed to prove 2020 election fraud claims | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A research firm commissioned by former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign team to prove his electoral fraud claims instead failed to substantiate his theories, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

    The Berkeley Research Group was commissioned to look into voting data from six states, according to the Post, and a source told the publication that the campaign team wanted about a dozen claims tested. People familiar with the matter told the publication that the findings did not match what the team had hoped for, and the findings were never released.

    While some anomalies and “unusual data patterns” were found, the Post reported, they wouldn’t have made a difference to President Joe Biden’s victory.

    The firm’s findings also refuted some of Trump’s voting conspiracies, including the identities of dead people used to vote and Dominion voting systems used to manipulate the outcome, the paper reported.

    The research was conducted in the last weeks of 2020 and before the January 6 US Capitol attack, according to the Post. Two sources told CNN that the House January 6 committee looking into the role Trump played in inciting the insurrection did not know about the firm’s work.
    Trump has continued to repeat his election lies as he focuses on his 2024 White House bid.

    CNN previously reported that following two years of advice from allies and advisers to stop exhaustively relitigating the 2020 election, his first rally late last month showed an attempted forward-driven message of what he would aim to accomplish with a second term.

    The former president has often pushed back on that advice, arguing that his message is strong enough as it is, and one source close to him told CNN his proclivity for focusing on the 2020 election will be tough to break because he still regularly hears from members of his base who believe so-called election integrity is an important talking point as he seeks reelection.

    Another adviser said that despite the defeat of several Trump-backed midterm candidates who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, Trump has said he does not believe their losses were tied to their election lies.

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  • Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Trump | CNN Politics

    Pence subpoenaed by special counsel investigating Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating Donald Trump and his role in January 6, 2021, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

    Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is seeking documents and testimony related to January 6, the source said. They want the former vice president to testify about his interactions with Trump leading up to the 2020 election and the day of the attack on the US Capitol.

    The subpoena marks an important milestone in the Justice Department’s two-year criminal investigation, now led by the special counsel, into the efforts by Trump and allies to impede the transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election. Pence is an important witness who has detailed in a memoir some of his interactions with Trump in the weeks after the election, a move that likely opens the door for the Justice Department to override at least some of Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

    Pence’s attorney Emmet Flood is known as a hawk on executive privilege, and people familiar with the discussions have said Pence was expected to claim at least some limits on providing details of his direct conversations with Trump. Depending on his responses, prosecutors have the option to ask a judge to compel him to answer additional questions and override Trump’s executive privilege claims.

    ABC News first reported on the subpoena.

    Pence’s office declined to confirm he had been subpoenaed. A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment to CNN on the matter.

    Months of negotiations preceded the subpoena to the former vice president, CNN has reported.

    Justice Department prosecutors had reached out to Pence’s representatives to seek his testimony in the criminal investigation, according to people familiar with the matter. Pence’s team had indicated he was open to discussing a possible agreement with DOJ to provide some testimony, one person said.

    That request occurred before the department appointed Smith to oversee two Trump-related investigations, the January 6-related probe and another into alleged mishandling of classified materials found at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

    In November, Pence published his memoir that detailed some of his interactions with Trump as the former president sought to overturn the results of his election loss to President Joe Biden. Pence and his team knew that the book’s publication would raise the prospect that the Justice Department would likely seek information about those interactions as part of its criminal investigation, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

    Pence rebuffed an interview request from the House select committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection, but allowed top aides to provide testimony in the House’s probe, as well as in the Justice Department’s criminal investigation. The DOJ successfully secured answers from top Pence advisers Greg Jacob and Marc Short in significant court victories that could make it more likely the criminal investigation reaches further into Trump’s inner circle.

    There are no plans for Trump’s team to challenge the grand jury subpoena of Pence at this time, according to a source familiar with its thinking. But it would still be possible for Trump to attempt to assert executive privilege over some conversations they had, if Pence declines to detail those conversations to the grand jury.

    So far, Trump’s team has lost those challenges when Pence’s deputies and two White House counsel’s office attorneys testified, following Chief Judge Beryl Howell’s rulings that they must answer questions they initially refused to because of confidentiality around the presidency.

    Howell’s tenure as chief judge of the DC District Court ends in mid-March, meaning a different federal judge, James Boasberg, could be the one to field privilege disputes in the continuing grand jury investigation.

    CNN reported earlier Thursday that Smith had also subpoenaed former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien in both of the Trump-related probes, according to a source familiar with the matter. O’Brien has been asserting executive privilege in declining to provide some of the information that prosecutors are seeking from him, the source said.

    Trump’s former acting Department of Homeland Security secretary was separately interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in recent weeks as part of the probe into 2020 election interference, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

    Rather than appearing before a federal grand jury, former acting secretary Chad Wolf was interviewed under oath by Justice Department lawyers and FBI officials, something one of the sources characterized as a “standard” first step for prosecutors.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Chinese spy balloons under Trump not discovered until after Biden took office | CNN Politics

    Chinese spy balloons under Trump not discovered until after Biden took office | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The transiting of three suspected Chinese spy balloons over the continental US during the Trump administration was only discovered after President Joe Biden took office, a senior administration official told CNN on Sunday.

    The official did not say how or when those incidents were discovered.

    The official said that the intelligence community is prepared to offer briefings to key Trump administration officials about the Chinese surveillance program, which the Biden administration believes has been deployed in countries across five continents over the last several years.

    Hear what Biden said after suspected Chinese spy balloon was shot down

    After the Biden administration disclosed last week that a suspected Chinese spy balloon was hovering over Montana, the Pentagon said that similar balloon incidents had occurred during the Trump administration. In response, former Trump administration Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CNN on Friday that he was “surprised” by that statement.

    “I don’t ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States,” he said.

    Former President Donald Trump also said on Truth Social this week that reports of Chinese balloons transiting the US during his administration were “fake disinformation.”

    John Bolton, a former national security adviser under Trump, also pushed back on the assertion that balloons surveilled the US during the former president’s tenure, asking, “Did the Biden administration invent a time machine? What is the basis of this new detection?” but added he would take a briefing from the current administration on the Trump-era balloon discoveries if it was offered to him.

    “The very fact, if it is a fact, that the Chinese tried this before, should have alerted us and should have caused us to take action before the balloon crossed into American sovereign territory,” Bolton said Monday on “CNN This Morning.”

    The Biden administration official now says the incidents were not discovered until after the Trump administration had already left. But the official did not say how those incidents were discovered or when.

    CNN reported on Sunday that the Pentagon had briefed Congress of previous Chinese surveillance balloons during the Trump administration that flew near Texas and Florida.

    Rep. Michael Waltz confirmed in a statement to CNN that “currently, we understand there were incursions near Florida and Texas, but we don’t have clarity on what kind of systems were on these balloons or if these incursions occurred in territorial waters or overflew land.”

    Another Chinese spy balloon also transited the continental US briefly at the beginning of the Biden administration, the senior administration official said. But the balloon that was shot down by the US military on Saturday was unique in both the path it took, down from Alaska and Canada into the US, and the length of time it spent loitering over sensitive missile sites in Montana, officials said.

    The senior administration official said that with regard to the balloon shot down on Saturday, the analysis into its capabilities is ongoing. But, the official added, “closely observing the balloon in flight has allowed us to better understand this Chinese program and further confirmed its mission was surveillance.”

    Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for not shooting the balloon down earlier after it was first noticed over Alaska on January 28. House Republicans are weighing the passage of a resolution this week condemning the Biden administration for its handling the balloon, CNN reported Sunday

    Over the weekend, Biden revealed he ordered the Pentagon to shoot the balloon down last Wednesday when he was first briefed on it hovering over Montana, but that he was advised by his military team to wait until the balloon was over water to minimize the risk posed to civilians and infrastructure. Shooting it down over water also maximized the possibility of recovering the payload – the equipment carried by the balloon that the US says was being used for surveillance – intact and able to be examined further by the US intelligence community, officials said.

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  • House Oversight chairman and former Twitter employees strike deal on subpoenas in exchange for testimony | CNN Politics

    House Oversight chairman and former Twitter employees strike deal on subpoenas in exchange for testimony | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has subpoenaed three former Twitter employees who will testify before the panel in relation to their investigation into Twitter’s decision to temporarily suppress a New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop, three sources familiar with the documents tell CNN.

    Twitter’s former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, former Deputy General Counsel James Baker and former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth requested they be subpoenaed in order to compel their testimony, the sources told CNN, given the legal complications of publicly sharing privileged information from Twitter before the committee.

    The hearing comes after Twitter’s CEO, Elon Musk, released some internal communications from Twitter staff about the decision to censor the New York Post story in the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential election campaign season.

    Comer, who met privately with Musk last month when the billionaire visited the Capitol, told CNN last week that the hearing may “incorporate some private conversations with some high-level people at Twitter” who support the belief that the US government may have played a role in the suppression of the New York Post story.

    When asked specifically if Musk has conveyed this sentiment to him, the Kentucky Republican told CNN: “I cannot answer that but that may come out in the hearing.”

    Comer’s belief that the government may have been involved in the suppression of the story is rooted in the so-called “Twitter files” that Musk made publicly available. Comer added his panel so far has only had access to the files that have been released publicly.

    “Americans deserve answers about this attack on the First Amendment and why Big Tech and the Swamp colluded to censor this information about the Biden family selling access for profit. Accountability is coming,” Comer said in a statement regarding the hearing.

    CNN has previously reported that allegations the FBI told Twitter to suppress the story are unsupported, and a half a dozen tech executives and senior staff, along with multiple federal officials familiar with the matter, all denied any such directive was given in interviews with CNN.

    Republicans on the panel are especially eager to grill Baker, who previously served as general counsel at the FBI during the investigation into whether former President Donald Trump had colluded with Russia. Baker joined Twitter just five months before the 2020 election.

    Gadde, Baker and Roth did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Buttigieg says he won’t seek US Senate seat in Michigan in 2024 | CNN Politics

    Buttigieg says he won’t seek US Senate seat in Michigan in 2024 | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Sunday he will not run for the open US Senate seat in Michigan in 2024, in his most direct answer to date ruling out a potential bid.

    “No,” Buttigieg said when asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” if he would seek to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

    Buttigieg had previously indicated he would not pursue the seat, citing his current focus on his job in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, but had stopped short of ruling it out altogether.

    “I’m planning to vote in that election as a resident of Michigan, but look, the job that I have is, first of all, I think, the best job in the federal government,” he told Tapper on Sunday.

    “This job is taking 110% of my time, and obviously I serve at the pleasure of the president. But as long as he is willing to have me continue doing this work, I’m proud to be part of this team,” Buttigieg added.

    Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, moved last year to Michigan, where the parents of his husband, Chasten, live.

    Democrats are defending 23 of the 34 Senate seats on the ballot next year, including three seats in states that backed former President Donald Trump by at least 8 points in 2020: West Virginia, Montana and Ohio.

    Besides Michigan, the party is also defending seats in other battleground states such as Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

    Potential Democratic candidates for Stabenow’s seat include Reps. Elissa Slotkin and Debbie Dingell, and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who drew national attention last year in a floor speech pushing back against anti-LGBTQ attacks from a Republican colleague.

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  • Opinion: Biden doesn’t throw away his shot | CNN

    Opinion: Biden doesn’t throw away his shot | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.



    CNN
     — 

    In Lord Byron’s satirical epic poem, “Don Juan,” the main character marvels at “the whole earth, of man the wonderful, and of the stars … of air-balloons, and of the many bars to perfect knowledge of the boundless skies — and then he thought of Donna Julia’s eyes.”

    The balloon from China floating eastward over the United States last week riveted the nation’s attention for a lot longer.

    At first, the enormous balloon, carrying a smaller substructure roughly the length of three city buses, seemed to symbolize America’s wide-open vulnerability to what the Pentagon described as surveillance from a rising power.

    But the downing of the balloon off the Carolinas Saturday gave President Joe Biden’s administration a way to unleash its fighter jets without any loss of life.

    “I told them to shoot it down,” said Biden, peering at reporters through his Ray-Ban aviators at a Maryland airport. Referring to his national security team, Biden added, “They said to me let’s wait till the safest place to do it.”

    The incident led to the abrupt postponement of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to China and an apologetic statement from Beijing calling it a “civilian airship” that had “deviated far from its planned course.” The US Navy and Coast Guard are taking part in an effort to recover the aircraft. which may yield evidence of its true purpose.

    Some Republicans criticized the President for not shooting it down sooner. China called the downing of the balloon an “obvious overreaction” and said it “reserves the right” to act on “similar situations.”

    In May 1937, the golden age of transcontinental passenger airships came to a catastrophic end in roughly 30 seconds after a spark set the hydrogen fuel on the Hindenburg ablaze, killing 36. But balloons for other uses survived, and they remain a tool of surveillance, even in the era of spy satellites.

    “The question is whether China carefully considered the consequences of its actions,” wrote David A. Andelman. “Intentional or otherwise, if it was indeed monitoring air flows, their engineers might have suspected these weather phenomena would eventually take these balloons over the United States.”

    He pointed out that China has an enormous fleet of satellites which can surveil other nations. “Between 2019 and 2021, China doubled the number of its satellites in orbit from 250 to 499.”

    In the Washington Post, Sebastian Mallaby observed, “To understand how a balloon — at once menacing and farcically Zeppelin-retro — might become a defining image of the new cold war, consider how this alleged Chinese spy contraption captures both sides of the present moment. It is provocative enough to cause Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a much-anticipated trip to Beijing. It is clumsy enough to symbolize China’s immense capacity to blunder — a tendency that President Biden’s team has lately exploited, to devastating effect.”

    05 opinion cartoons 020423

    02 Marie Kondo tidying

    “It is not hard to tidy up perfectly and completely in one fell swoop,” Marie Kondo wrote in the 2011 book that sold more than 13 million copies worldwide and launched her career as a Netflix star and curator of “joy.”

    “In fact, anyone can do it.”

    It was an apt sentiment at a time when striving for perfection at home and at work was the norm, despite it being a sometimes soul-crushing aspiration — and one that began to vanish with the arrival of the pandemic in 2020.

    So it was understandable that people took notice when Kondo, who gave birth to her third child in 2021, recently said, “My home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this time at this stage of my life.”

    As Holly Thomas wrote, “Her benign comment, while welcomed with relief in some circles, prompted a surprisingly febrile reaction in others. … Kondo’s success was built on tidying, and encouraging us to tidy in turn. Where was her loyalty to tidying? How dare she pivot out of her well-ordered lane after selling us a way to live?”

    But that’s the wrong way to look at it, Thomas added. “The discomfort … with Kondo’s personal rebrand demonstrates a rigidity that’s reflected across many areas of life. … On a more sinister level, there can be an implicit sense that once you’ve established a particular trait or activity as inherent to your identity, it is somehow greedy or unfaithful to try your hand at something new.”

    Jura Koncius wrote in the Washington Post, “Kondo, 38, has caught up with the rest of us, trying to corral the doom piles on our kitchen counters while on hold with the plumber and trying not to burn dinner. The multitasker seems somewhat humbled by her growing family and her business success, maybe realizing that you can find peace in some matcha even if you drink it in a favorite cracked mug rather than a porcelain cup.”

    The new Kondo might welcome a bill in Maryland that would provide tax breaks to companies that switch to four-day work weeks as a pilot project. “We are three years into a pandemic that upended work life (and life-life) as many of us knew it,” wrote Jill Filipovic. “We are living in an era in which out-of-work demands, most especially parenting and other forms of caregiving, are more extreme than ever. And we are living in a country that, unlike other nations, provides meager support as its people strive to balance it all…”

    “No wonder so many workers report being fed up and burned out. No wonder so many women, who continue to do the lion’s share of the nation’s parenting, drop out of the workforce.”

    03 opinion cartoons 020423

    The 2024 presidential campaign is just starting to come into focus. Former President Donald Trump has locked on to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the biggest threat to his campaign for the GOP nomination.

    Trump “mercilessly slammed DeSantis again … first at a South Carolina campaign rally and then in remarks to the media,” Dean Obeidallah noted. “On his campaign plane, Trump berated DeSantis as ‘very disloyal’ and accused him of ‘trying to rewrite history’ in recent pronouncements about Covid-19 policy in Florida.”

    If DeSantis enters the race, Obeidallah observed, “he’ll need to show the red meat-loving GOP base that he can punch back against Trump.”

    Yet Trump’s derisive nicknames for DeSantis haven’t stuck, as SE Cupp said. “I know we’re just getting started, but this Trump doesn’t seem to pack the punch that 2016 Trump did. … Maybe he’s lost his touch as he’s faced one political storm after the other.”

    Some other potential rivals are queueing up, with Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, planning to announce her candidacy on February 15 and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mulling a possible run.

    “Haley is a formidable candidate who brings the executive experience from her days as governor as well as the foreign policy experience from her time as ambassador,” wrote Gavin J. Smith, who worked in both the Trump administration and Haley’s executive office in South Carolina. “This experience, paired with her ability to bring people together, her background as a mom and a military spouse, and her track record of fighting the uphill battle of running against old White men — is exactly why she is the right candidate, at the right moment, for Republicans to rally behind as we look to win back the White House in 2024.”

    Mike Pompeo has lost 90 pounds on a diet and exercise regimen. He has a new book out that attacks the media and lambastes some of his Trump administration colleagues. “Based on a close reading of his book,” Peter Bergen wrote, “I bet he will take the plunge. Pompeo could be looking to benefit as Trump loses altitude among some Republicans, and at 59, Pompeo is a spring chicken compared with President Joe Biden and Trump, so if it doesn’t work out well this time around, he sets himself up for other runs down the road.”

    When Biden sums up the State of the Union Tuesday evening, the camera will reveal one change from last year, reflecting divided party control of Congress: Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy — rather than Nancy Pelosi — will be in the backdrop, alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, as Biden speaks from the House podium.

    David Axelrod, who served as a strategist and adviser to former President Barack Obama, has some advice for Biden: “Acknowledge the stress people feel, explain how you’ve tried to help but don’t tell them how great things are. Or worse, how great YOU are. You can’t persuade people of what they don’t feel — and will lose them if you try.”

    “Rather than claim his place in history, the President should paint the picture of where we’ve been and, even more important, where we’re going…”

    Biden met with McCarthy last week, as each staked out their positions on the coming battle over America’s debt limit.

    In 2011, Obama and GOP leaders in Congress narrowly averted a default in US debt payments. Republican Lanhee J. Chen pointed out that one of the people “who facilitated the 2011 deal was none other than Joe Biden. Now, many in Washington are trying to predict what might unfold over the next several months as the once-and-future dealmaker approaches yet another debt ceiling crisis — but this time as commander in chief.”

    “The current crisis presents an opportunity for moderates in both parties to unite around the need both to raise the debt ceiling but also to put in place lasting changes that will fundamentally improve America’s fiscal trajectory.”

    01 opinion cartoons 020423

    For CNN Politics, Zachary B. Wolf spoke with Robert Hockett, a Cornell University law professor, who argues that the President would have legal grounds to ignore the debt ceiling entirely. Moreover, Hockett disputed the notion that US government debt is on an unsustainable path: “When we measure a national debt, we look at it as a percentage of GDP. It’s much, much lower than the Japanese national debt is, for example, relative to Japanese GDP. And you don’t see anybody worrying about the integrity or the worthiness of the Japanese national debt or whether Japan’s economy can sustain its debt.”

    Following Biden’s speech on Tuesday, the new Arkansas governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, will give the GOP response. “The 40-year-old certainly provides a contrast to the 76-year-old former President Donald Trump by virtue of her age and gender,” wrote Julian Zelizer.

    But the Trump approach is still in the background, he added. “Sanders represents a new generation of Republicans eager to weaponize the same outrage machine with familiar talking points about the threats of immigration, the so-called radical left’s attacks on education, and an economy in shambles under Biden — while showing that they can govern without the self-defeating chaos and tumult that rocked the nation from 2017 to 2021.”

    For more on politics:

    Elliot Williams: I had a security clearance. It’s easier to lose classified documents than you think

    Frida Ghitis: The most important of George Santos’ secrets

    06 opinion cartoons 020423

    The death of a young man after a traffic stop and brutal police beating in Memphis cries out for a response to a national problem, wrote Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Tyre Nichols, who was laid to rest on Wednesday, was killed for driving while Black,” she wrote. “The former Memphis police officers fired for his killing will get an opportunity to defend themselves in court against the criminal charges, as they should. Nichols got no such opportunity…”

    “The question we should be asking now is, why are Black people stopped so often for traffic violations? Why are so many across the United States dying at the hands, or tasers or guns of police officers during these stops? And what can be done to change this horrific situation?”

    “Here’s one thing we know: Body cameras are not the answer. Body camera footage is not prevention; there was body camera footage of Nichols’ killing. It is evidence, not a prophylactic.”

    In the summer of 1966, when the young civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael “climbed onto the back of a truck with generator-powered lights below, he looked as though he had stepped onto a floodlit stage.” Carmichael lamented that after six years of shouting for freedom, “We ain’t got nothing. What we’re going to start saying now is ‘Black Power!’”

    Mark Whitaker, who wrote about that moment for CNN Opinion, is the author of a forthcoming book, “Saying It Loud: 1966 – The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement.”

    The day after Carmichael spoke, “a short Associated Press story describing the scene was picked up by more than 200 newspapers across America. Overnight, the Black Power Movement was born. … In 1966, the Black Power pioneers established the principle that all Black lives deserve to matter.”

    Florida’s governor is engaging in a bad faith attack on the College Board’s “proposed Advanced Placement African American Studies course, citing concerns about six topics of study, including the Movement for Black Lives, Black feminism and reparations,” wrote Leslie Kay Jones, assistant professor in the sociology department at Rutgers University. “Gov. Ron DeSantis said the course violates the so-called Stop WOKE Act, which he signed last year, and the state criticized the inclusion in the course of work by a number of scholars, including me.”

    “By villainizing CRT (critical race theory) and then representing African American Studies as synonymous with CRT, the DeSantis administration paved the way to convince the public that the accurate teaching of African American Studies as a field of research was a Trojan horse for teaching students ‘to hate.’ … I must ask where ‘hate’ is being stoked in African American Studies? Is it in the factual teaching that enslaved Black people were considered 3/5ths of a human being?”

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    Manish Khanduri: ‘Blisters inside my blisters.’ Why we walked the entire length of India

    Lev Golinkin: Germany’s quiet betrayal of victims of the Holocaust

    Darren Foster: After 15 years of reporting on opioids, I know this to be true

    Joyce Davis: How Russia outmaneuvered the US in Africa

    AND…

    Judy Blume

    Young adult author Judy Blume is the subject of a new documentary, set to air in April on Amazon Prime. One of her books, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is the basis for a new film, also aimed for an April release.

    “To say Blume is widely loved would be an understatement, as the documentary shows,” wrote Sara Stewart. “It features interviews with some of the author’s more famous adoring fans, including Molly Ringwald, Samantha Bee and Lena Dunham. It also showcases her correspondence with now-adult women who wrote to Blume, initially, as teenagers — and she wrote back, beginning friendships that would last decades.”

    “All of these women speak about the ways Blume’s books changed them, made them feel seen and understood in a way that their parents often did not.” At a time when books touching the topics she covers are increasingly being banned in schools, Blume’s voice rings out.

    At 84, she “is still fighting the good fight,” wrote Stewart. At the Key West, Florida, bookstore Blume co-founded, “the shelves bear signs proclaiming, ‘We Sell Banned Books.’”

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  • Republicans elevate ‘parental rights’ as top issue while looking to outflank each other heading into 2024 | CNN Politics

    Republicans elevate ‘parental rights’ as top issue while looking to outflank each other heading into 2024 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential hopefuls have begun casting themselves as impassioned defenders of “parental rights,” turning schoolbooks and curricula, doctors’ offices, and sports leagues into a new political battleground as they work to distinguish themselves ahead of the 2024 GOP primary.

    The issue had already emerged as a major vein in the GOP bloodstream, emanating partly from the coronavirus pandemic, when school closures and vaccine mandates upended family routines and rankled vaccine-hesitant parents. But it took off after Republicans watched Glenn Youngkin defeat Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election following a campaign that placed “parents’ rights” at its center.

    While critics have denounced the theme of parents’ rights as oppressive, 2024 Republicans have nevertheless plowed ahead, seeking to one-up each other with provocative campaign pledges and legislative actions – the most obvious moves in recent weeks coming from former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    Several Republican governors – many with presidential ambitions – responded to Youngkin’s success by championing parental rights in their states, enacting bills that give parents and guardians unfettered access to school curricula, books and learning materials, and, in some instances, requiring school principals to review parental complaints about textbooks and lesson plans before they can proceed with using the material in classrooms. In some states, such as Texas, Florida and Iowa, parental permission is now needed to discuss certain topics with students. Other states, such as Georgia, have put parents and school communities in charge of vetting books their children could encounter at school for signs of race-related or sexual themes, appealing to conservatives who have voiced concerns about “radical” literature.

    But Republicans have also since turned parents’ rights into an umbrella term for a host of cultural issues. Declaring that parents deserve a say in what their children are taught, some GOP power players have pushed to end diversity and equity programs in public schools. Others have sought to restrict lessons about sexual orientation or gender identity. And some have looked to prevent schools from using a child’s preferred pronouns without parental permission.

    “We saw it with Youngkin’s race, and [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis has been playing it up for the last year. The issue has been building from Covid and extended to where we are now,” said Jennifer Williams, who in 2016 became the first openly transgender delegate to the Republican National Convention. Both DeSantis and Youngkin are said to be eyeing 2024 presidential campaigns.

    The sprint to get ahead on the issue is likely to play out over a combative presidential primary, while allies and advisers see it as an opportunity to appeal to a broader electorate if their candidate becomes the next GOP presidential nominee.

    “There are more parents than teachers, so it’s an easy equation. If you’re on the side of parents, that’s going to win you at the local level, and it’s going to win you at the national level,” said Keith Naughton, a longtime Republican consultant. Still, he also cautioned Republicans against “moving too far away from the consensus.”

    But public opinion around parental rights remains murky.

    A Quinnipiac poll released in February 2022 found that nearly 8 in 10 Americans considered efforts to ban books in schools and libraries purely political, versus 15 percent who said the efforts stemmed from content concerns. And as Republicans confront sensitive issues such as transgender rights while championing what they describe as parental empowerment, they could face similar political peril. A separate November poll by Marquette University Law School found that while a majority of Republicans (82%-18%) believed transgender athletes should be prohibited from participating in sports competitions – a topic the GOP has devoted much attention to in recent years – independent voters were nearly evenly split on the matter. The same survey showed that Republicans favored the 2020 Supreme Court decision that the 1964 Civil Rights Act bars employers from discriminating against gay and transgender workers by a 47-point margin, underscoring the political risks 2024 GOP hopefuls could encounter as they link LGBTQ rights to their parental rights push.

    Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, said Republicans are using the guise of parental rights “to eliminate people, history books and marginalized communities.”

    “This is not about parents. It’s a tactic that DeSantis found really whipped up his base in Florida and so [Republicans] are taking it out for a run to see how it does. Their goal, it seems, is that these politicians are trying to turn parents against each other and make classrooms a battleground so they can further their political ambitions,” Ellis said.

    GLAAD is expected to launch a messaging campaign in March that Ellis said will “fill the knowledge gap” that Republicans have “exploited.”

    “They tap into the worst anxieties of any parent,” said Ellis, a parent herself.

    Trump, currently the only declared candidate in the GOP presidential field, is one of several 2024 hopefuls who have elevated “parents’ rights” to new prominence as they work to curry favor with the party’s base.

    Trump pushed to create a “patriotic education” commission and ordered the federal government to end diversity trainings during his term in office, though much of his focus over the past two years has been on relitigating the 2020 election. Recently, though, he has refocused his attention on the kinds of cultural battles that have enabled some of his likeliest rivals – most notably DeSantis – to gain considerable popularity among Republican voters.

    In two straight-to-camera videos this week, Trump suggested that parents should select school principals through a “direct election” process and threatened to end federal funding for schools that teach “a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body” if he were to win another term.

    Even those who agreed with Trump’s proposals suggested he was playing catch-up with his fellow culture warriors – especially as he also went on the attack against DeSantis recently, calling the Florida governor “disloyal” and a “globalist RINO” in separate broadsides.

    “Obviously, DeSantis taking on Disney has shown a lot of leadership on this issue and frankly, I think it’s why Trump came out with his statements this week because in a lot of ways he sees himself running against DeSantis,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a social conservative activist who runs the Iowa-based Family Leader coalition. Vander Plaats was referring to the Florida governor’s push to strip the Walt Disney Company of its special governing powers after the company criticized his legislative efforts to restrict lessons on LGBTQ rights and gender identity in Florida classrooms.

    “Trump is saying, ‘How do I get to the right of DeSantis on this issue?’” Vander Plaats added.

    Allies of the former president rebuffed suggestions that he is taking cues from rivals rather than setting the agenda. They pointed to actions Trump took during his term in office to develop a counter-curriculum to the 1619 Project, an initiative launched by The New York Times to teach American students about slavery but which conservatives have decried as “propaganda.” And they cite the many instances in which Trump has condemned the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports, a topic he first weaved into his stump speech at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference and one that tends to draw some of the biggest applause lines at his campaign rallies.

    “This isn’t anything new,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. “On the school education stuff and critical race theory, he’s been talking about it since 2019 and 2020. And when he talks about gender ideology, he’s been mentioning that in his rallies, too.”

    “He’s a candidate now, and he’s focused on forward-looking policy proposals,” Cheung added.

    Some conservative activists who are still waiting to see how the 2024 primary field takes shape said Trump appears to be taking steps to ensure he isn’t outflanked by opponents on the issues that currently animate Republican base voters. Terry Schilling, executive director of the socially conservative American Principles Project, said Trump is “trying to play catch-up, but it’s good.”

    Referring specifically to Trump’s recently unveiled plan to curtail transgender rights, including ending medical treatments for transgender teens, Schilling suggested the former president was “making sure he’s the most conservative candidate on this issue.”

    “I think he’s just trying to ensure he doesn’t lose any ground or get outflanked. … It’s tough because DeSantis and Youngkin have actually been changing the policies on it, which is why I think he is going above and beyond … to kind of get a leg up,” Schilling said.

    A spokesman for DeSantis’ political operation declined to comment, but the Republican governor’s actions suggest he will not cede the issue by any stretch as he marches toward a potential campaign for president. This week, DeSantis released a 2023 budget framework that repeatedly emphasized the importance of “protecting parents’ fundamental rights,” nearly a year after he signed a “Parents Bill of Rights” into law that banned instructions on sexual orientation and gender identity to K-3 grade students.

    During the 2022 midterms, DeSantis took the unprecedented step of vetting, endorsing and campaigning for school board candidates, generating a wave of like-minded conservatives to carry out his agenda in districts across the state. Meanwhile, at DeSantis’ urging, a state medical board stacked with his appointees has effectively banned medication and surgeries for minors seeking gender transitions. DeSantis has decried such interventions as “chemical castration.”

    In leading these cultural clashes, DeSantis has become a superstar among highly engaged conservatives. He and his wife, Casey, were treated like rock stars at last year’s Tampa summit of Moms for Liberty, a group that mobilizes conservative matriarchs across the country, where he was heralded onstage as an “American hero” and a “shining light” for parents across the country who wish that “Ron would be their governor.” The Florida Republican was reelected to a second term in November by a 19-point margin, a victory he touted at a news conference earlier this week following a fresh round of attacks from Trump.

    Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, said parental rights weren’t on the forefront of minds during Trump’s first campaign in 2016 or when DeSantis first ran for governor in 2018. But DeSantis was among the first to recognize during the pandemic the parental angst around closed schools, mask mandates and an apprehension to ideological creep into the classroom, she said, and it has him well positioned when parental rights becomes “a litmus test for all candidates in 2024.”

    “He’s being rewarded already by having his colleagues and peers watching what he is doing and emulating him across the country,” Justice said. “Ron DeSantis stood up for parents when no one else was. I think he’s a leader that way, and parents across the country have recognized him for that.”

    Indeed, DeSantis’ actions have spawned copycat bills in statehouses across the country this year. The National Center for Transgender Equality is tracking 231 bills in state legislatures across the country that seek to curb transgender rights – 86 of which would restrict access to transgender care. In a sign of how swiftly Republicans have pivoted to this issue, as recently as 2019, not a single state legislature in the country was debating cutting off access to gender affirmation treatment or surgeries, said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the center.

    “If you rewind to 2018, this was not a political matter. There were no bills in statehouses. There were no presidential candidates talking about it. Transgender people were getting health care without a problem, and it was universally recognized as essential care by leading medical institutions,” Heng-Lehtinen said. “It was almost literally overnight we saw these bills pop up.”

    “And the places where we’ve seen the most aggressive actions against transgender people,” he added, “are in states where there’s a governor with all points suggesting they are seeking higher office.”

    Among those governors is Texas Republican Greg Abbott, whose administration has investigated parents of transgender teens for child abuse. In Iowa, where GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds already signed a bill to give parents and guardians more access to their children’s educational lives, lawmakers are now considering whether to ban instruction of sexual orientation or gender identity through eighth grade. Another potential 2024 Republican candidate, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, authored and signed a bill in 2022 that banned transgender women and girls from female scholastic sports, and in December her administration canceled a transgender advocacy group’s contract with the state’s Department of Health. There is also Youngkin, the term-limited Virginia governor who held a donor summit last fall to explore a possible presidential campaign and who recently rolled out a series of policy changes aimed at transgender students, one of which seeks to require parental sign-off for students who wish to use names or pronouns that diverge from what is listed on their official record.

    But not every Republican agrees with the policy fights being waged by the party’s potential presidential contenders as they aim to give parents more control over their childrens’ education.

    “When Youngkin and DeSantis do things like this, they aren’t taking into account the discrimination that can result,” said Williams, the former RNC delegate. “If parental rights are constantly about gender identity and critical race theory, it doesn’t seem to be about education. It seems to me it’s about making sure I can shield my kid from anything other than what I want them to know.”

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  • Democrats approve shake-up of 2024 calendar but it’s far from a done deal | CNN Politics

    Democrats approve shake-up of 2024 calendar but it’s far from a done deal | CNN Politics

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    Philadelphia
    CNN
     — 

    The Democratic National Committee on Saturday approved a plan to shake up the 2024 presidential primary calendar and demote longtime early voting states Iowa and New Hampshire, but significant questions remain about how the new order will be implemented.

    The new calendar upends decades of tradition in which Iowa and New Hampshire were the first two states to hold nominating contests and moves up South Carolina, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan. President Joe Biden has argued the new nominating order would better reflect the diversity of the nation and the Democratic Party.

    But the party’s early nomination calendar, which was approved Saturday at the DNC’s winter meeting in Philadelphia, is facing opposition from some impacted states and could remain unsettled for months.

    Under the new calendar, South Carolina would hold the first primary on February 3, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada on February 6, Georgia on February 13, and Michigan on February 27. Any state can hold a nomination contest starting March 5.

    The changes reflect longstanding concerns from party leaders that the previous calendar, which featured Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina in early voting, prioritized two states that are largely White and don’t represent the diversity of the party. Iowa has gone first in the nominating process since 1972, while New Hampshire has held the first primary in the process since 1920.

    “This calendar reflects the best of who we are as a nation, and it sends a powerful message all across the country,” DNC Chair Jaime Harrison said Saturday. 

    The calendar passed with overwhelming support. However, while the DNC sets the rules for the party’s nominating process, state governments (or state parties) ultimately set the dates of their contests, and New Hampshire and Georgia likely won’t be able to comply with the assigned dates.

    The chairs of the Iowa and New Hampshire Democratic parties objected to the calendar at Saturday’s meeting, noting that Democrats did not have the power in those states to unilaterally change their state laws. Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire control the office of the governor and both chambers of the state legislature.

    Rita Hart, the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, argued, “Iowa has been put in a position that makes it impossible to comply with both DNC rules and our own state law, which has exactly zero chance of being changed by the Republican legislature.”

    Hart said, “Democrats cannot forget about entire groups of voters in our part of the Midwest without doing significant damage to the party.”

    Ray Buckley, the chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said the DNC rules committee “knew that Republican leaders in the state would not bend to their will, and even knowing this, the RBC still decided that New Hampshire Democrats should be set up for failure,” referring to the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee.

    “Every vote matters in New Hampshire,” Buckley said. “Victories are determined by a small number of independent swing voters. Those voters are already being bombarded by the Republicans, who are saying that Democrats have abandoned New Hampshire.”

    New Hampshire has a state law that protects its first-in-the-nation primary status, while Georgia’s primary date is set by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and an early primary would open Peach State Republicans up to sanctions from their own national party.

    New Hampshire and Georgia now have until June to take steps toward scheduling their contests on the assigned dates. If they don’t, they won’t be able to hold primaries before March 5 without being penalized by the DNC.

    While Georgia would likely just hold its primary once any state is allowed to do so, a New Hampshire primary scheduled for “7 days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election,” as state law requires, could lead to delegate penalties for the state party.

    Additionally, any candidate who campaigns in or even has their name on the ballot in a noncompliant primary would be unable to receive delegates from that state and could face other penalties.

    Despite the implementation hurdles ahead, the calendar passed with overwhelming support, and several officials spoke in support of the new order. Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell, who has been a leading advocate for her state to join the early-voting calendar, gave a fiery speech Saturday in support of the proposal, saying it would reflect the diversity of the country.

    “We are overdue in changing this primary calendar to ensure it reflects the range of ideas, thoughts and hopes of Americans throughout this country,” Dingell said.

    While the Democratic rules drop New Hampshire from the second contest (and first primary) into a tie for the second primary, fellow longtime early state Iowa has been removed from the early set entirely.

    Like New Hampshire, Iowa is largely White, but it’s also far less politically competitive – then-President Donald Trump won it by 8 points in 2020 – and uses a complex and less accessible caucus format.

    Iowa’s early caucuses are also protected by state law, and then-Iowa Democratic Party Chair Ross Wilburn said in December that the party would follow that law when planning its contest while also pledging to reform the process.

    The other three early states shouldn’t have a problem complying with the new schedule. In South Carolina, each state party chair has the ability to set the date of their presidential primary. Nevada’s new date matches the one set by state law in 2021, and Michigan this week enacted a law to schedule their primary for February 27 (although the state legislature will have to end its session a few weeks early for it take effect in time).

    The calendar approved Saturday applies only to the Democratic party’s nominating process. Republican early-voting states will be unchanged from recent years, with Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

    “The [Republican National Committee] unanimously passed its rules over a year ago and solidified the traditional nominating process the American people know and understand,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement Saturday. “The DNC has decided to break a half-century precedent and cause chaos by altering their primary process, and ultimately abandoning millions of Americans in Iowa and New Hampshire.”

    The DNC changes could affect Republicans, especially in Michigan, where the new primary date violates national GOP rules. To avoid a delegate penalty, Michigan Republicans could use a party-run process at a later date.

    Ultimately, if Biden seeks a second term, he’s unlikely to face serious opposition, and the order of states would be largely irrelevant. However, the changes demonstrate that the party won’t be permanently attached to the traditional set of early states, and party leaders have already started to prepare to reexamine the schedule again after the 2024 election.

    In her speech, Dingell backed that idea: “No one state should have a lock. We do need to revisit this every four years.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Comparing the classified document discoveries plaguing Biden, Trump and Pence | CNN Politics

    Comparing the classified document discoveries plaguing Biden, Trump and Pence | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Washington – President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence are all facing scrutiny regarding their potential mishandling of classified documents.

    In all three cases, sensitive government materials were found in places where they shouldn’t have ended up. But there are key distinctions that differentiate each situation, including how Biden, Trump and Pence responded to the discovery of documents and how aggressively the Justice Department is currently investigating.

    Here’s a breakdown of the similarities and differences between the Biden, Trump and Pence cases.

    The Biden and Pence situations are similar – their lawyers discovered the classified documents, alerted the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and turned over the papers. In Biden’s case, FBI agents later found additional documents when they searched his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

    Trump followed a different path. After he left the White House, NARA realized that materials were missing. In May 2021, they reached out to Trump’s lawyers who negotiated for months over the voluntary return of several boxes of important documents.

    The Justice Department obtained a subpoena in May 2022, a year after NARA’s initial flag, after suspecting that Trump was still holding onto some classified records. Trump gave back more files but didn’t return everything in his possession. The FBI later executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort in August, where more documents were found. The search was the first time in American history that a former president’s home was searched as part of a criminal investigation.

    The exact number is unknown in Biden’s case. Approximately 20 classified documents had been recovered before the FBI searched Biden’s home in Wilmington. The FBI uncovered even more classified files during that search, but neither side has publicly disclosed the specific number of additional documents found.

    For Trump, more than 325 classified records have been recovered. This includes documents returned voluntarily to NARA, turned over to the Justice Department under subpoena, and found by the FBI.

    With Pence’s situation, CNN has reported that his team found about a dozen documents at his Indiana home.

    Some of Biden’s documents were marked “top secret,” which is the highest level of classification. Some of those documents had an “SCI” designation, which stands for “sensitive compartmented information” and refers to extremely sensitive material gleaned from US intelligence sources.

    At least 60 of the Trump documents were labeled “top secret,” including some files with SCI markings. There were also some documents with “SAP” designation, which stands for “special access programs” and is used for documents that are closely held with special protocols for who can access the material.

    A source who was briefed on some of the Pence documents previously told CNN that the government papers recovered from his home were “lower level” classification, without any SCI or SAP markings.

    Attorney General Merrick Garland brought on special prosecutors to investigate Biden and Trump. The Trump matter is being investigated by special counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed in November. And the Biden matter is being investigated by special counsel Robert Hur, who was appointed in January.

    CNN has previously reported that the FBI and Justice Department are conducting a review of the Pence documents and how they ended up at his home. This is less than a full-blown criminal probe.

    The Trump investigation has progressed the farthest. Federal prosecutors got a subpoena, demanded the return of all classified documents and tried to hold Trump in contempt when he didn’t fully comply. Investigators also got a judge to approve a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago and CNN has reported that there is an active grand jury based in Washington, DC, that recently heard testimony from witnesses.

    In this file image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30, 2022, and redacted by in part by the FBI, shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 search by the FBI of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

    There haven’t been any known subpoenas or search warrants in the Biden inquiry, though the FBI has conducted voluntary interviews with some of the people on Biden’s team who handled documents.

    There aren’t any known subpoenas, search warrants or FBI interviews in the Pence-related review.

    Biden and Pence both maintain that they engaged early with NARA to return missing documents and are cooperating fully with the Justice Department.

    Whether it was intentional or not, Trump repeatedly missed opportunities to return the documents to the government. Criminal prosecutors eventually concluded that there might have been intentional efforts to hold onto the documents, and Trump is now under investigation for potential obstruction.

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  • Trump struggles to fundraise in early weeks of 2024 campaign | CNN Politics

    Trump struggles to fundraise in early weeks of 2024 campaign | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump’s political operation brought in $9.5 million in the roughly six weeks after he announced his latest White House bid, according to a source familiar with the fundraising numbers.

    The haul is smaller than the nearly $11.8 million raised by Trump entities in the six weeks before the Republican’s November 15 campaign announcement, underscoring the challenges Trump faces as he attempts a political comeback.

    In an effort to boost donations, Trump’s team has hired marketing agency Campaign Inbox to bolster its digital fundraising operation, the source confirmed to CNN.

    Trump’s team said the former president, who is the first major declared candidate of the 2024 presidential race, would have the funds to compete.

    Campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said on Tuesday that, in all, the political operation raised a total of $21.3 million in the final quarter of last year. He said that proves the former president is “an unstoppable force that continues to dominate politics.”

    Cheung said Trump would carry out “an aggressive and fully-funded campaign.”

    NBC first reported Trump’s year-end campaign figures.

    New reports filed Tuesday night with the Federal Election Commission show that Trump’s main campaign committee started the year with a little more than $3 million in available cash.

    But his political operation has many arms and a mountain of cash.

    In all, five Trump-aligned committees reported having a total cash stockpile of more than $81 million.

    Two-thirds of that sum – or more than $54 million – sits in the coffers of MAGA Inc., a super PAC established last year and run by former Trump campaign aide Taylor Budowich that must operate independently of the campaign. It can spend heavily, however, to boost the former president and strike out at his rivals.

    A potential 2024 candidate who has faced early attacks from Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has also built a substantial war chest.

    DeSantis’ political operation – split between two Florida-based committees – had more than $75 million remaining in its coffers after the 2022 midterm elections, according to the most recent filings with the state. The Florida Republican shattered fundraising records on his way to winning a second term last year, raising more than $163 million for his state political committee, Friends of Ron DeSantis, and another $50 million through his campaign.

    DeSantis has yet to announce a White House bid, but CNN has previously reported that DeSantis’ political operation was exploring how to shift money from a state political committee into a federal committee that could potentially support a presidential campaign.

    In Trump’s first major campaign swing – weekend visits to the early voting states of New Hampshire and South Carolina – he took aim at DeSantis, describing him as “disloyal” for weighing a presidential run and criticizing the governor’s pandemic response.

    DeSantis responded by touting the margin of his reelection victory last year. He won by 1.5 million votes, the largest margin in state history.

    Other potential 2024 contenders also have more modest sources of funds that they could tap for campaigns-in-waiting, including several former Trump administration officials. Former Vice President Mike Pence’s PAC, Great America Committee, reported just $80,000 in cash on hand at the end of 2022.

    And former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who is expected to announce a presidential bid on February 15, has about $2 million in cash on hand in her PAC, Stand for America.

    South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who is set to travel to Iowa in February, has amassed an impressive stockpile of over $21 million, according to his latest FEC report, which he could put toward a White House bid.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Biden zeroes in on the newly powerful House GOP as a threat to the rebounding economy | CNN Politics

    Biden zeroes in on the newly powerful House GOP as a threat to the rebounding economy | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden is fine-tuning his argument for reelection in an intensive stretch of travel and fundraising, homing in on the newly powerful House GOP as a threat to the rebounding economy as the pieces of his expected campaign come together.

    With several weeks to go before Biden is expected to announce his intention to run again, White House officials have crafted a travel schedule and series of speeches that will see the president opening infrastructure projects, promoting union jobs and laying out the progress he believes the American economy has made under his watch.

    “It’s about good jobs. It’s about the dignity of work,” Biden said Tuesday in front of a tunnel on the West Side of Manhattan that will be improved with the help of the $1 trillion infrastructure law he signed in 2021. “It’s about respect and self-worth. And folks, it’s about damn time.”

    In a string of events along the eastern seaboard, from northern Virginia to Baltimore to Philadelphia to New York City, Biden is setting a multiple-days-per-week travel schedule that aides expect will continue as the presidential contest begins in earnest.

    Last week, he told a steamfitters union hall in Virginia that his agenda was about “seeing communities all over America, not just on the coasts, but all over America, reborn.” He stood at another tunnel on Monday, this time in Baltimore, where improvements will help Amtrak trains triple their speed on one of the busiest rail corridors in the nation.

    He also headlined a high-dollar Democratic fundraiser in Manhattan, kicking off what is expected to be a campaign cash blitz. Donors have been made aware of potential events over the coming months in multiple states, including traditional fundraising enclaves in California and Florida.

    “There’s two things that I think we have to run on: What we stand for – what we did – and what we need to do more of,” Biden told the donors, offering a tacit preview of his 2024 message. Recalling that he ran in 2020 to restore the soul of the country, rebuild the middle class, and unite the country, Biden suggested his work wasn’t finished.

    “The third is turning out to be the hardest thing to do, but we’re getting there,” he said.

    On Friday, Biden will tout lead removal efforts in Philadelphia before addressing the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting – a gathering where his likely reelection bid is top of mind.

    Speaking ahead of Biden in New York on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer underscored the progress Biden has made in implementing his infrastructure bill, readying a message that Biden has accomplished what his predecessor – and currently his only Republican challenger – Donald Trump could not.

    “For four years, the former president was shoveling you know what. And now, we’re gonna put real shovels in the ground, wielded by real American workers,” Schumer said.

    Biden’s aides and other Democrats have been working for months to put in place a campaign infrastructure that will be ready when he decides to make his intentions known. The campaign is expected to draw some staff from the DNC and the White House, and will need to coordinate with both.

    Already, Biden’s West Wing team is reorienting with the upcoming departure of chief of staff Ron Klain. Klain’s replacement, Jeff Zients, is expected to focus on managing the White House and implementing Biden’s legislative and policy agenda, while other top advisers – namely senior adviser Anita Dunn and deputy White House chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon, who managed Biden’s successful 2020 campaign – will take the lead on Biden’s political operation.

    Other political hires are also expected as the likely reelection campaign takes shape, according to a White House official.

    Casting a shadow over Biden’s preparations is the special counsel investigation into his handling of classified material, which is expected to formally get underway this week. Biden has denied any wrongdoing after documents with classified markings were found at his private office and home, but the specter of the probe will hang over the White House for at least the coming months.

    White House aides have felt vindicated by polls showing the documents controversy hasn’t weighed down Biden’s overall approval ratings. And Biden himself shrugged off a question Monday about whether he would sit for an interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

    “I don’t even know about the special counsel,” Biden told reporters at the White House, moving quickly to another question.

    For now, Biden’s principal focus is next week’s State of the Union address, a speech his team has been crafting to act as a launchpad to his reelection run. His string of policy speeches this week have foreshadowed the expected themes of Tuesday night’s address.

    Afterward, Biden is expected to continue traveling the country – including potential stops in Michigan and Wisconsin, two battleground states – as he prepares for his formal campaign announcement.

    Officials said the yearly speech will continue to evolve as Biden and his advisers work on writing it. The text is not expected to be finalized until the final moments before he delivers it in the House chamber next week. The team working on the address, including senior advisers Mike Donilon and Bruce Reed, have held lengthy writing and preparation sessions with Biden over the last several days.

    White House officials said the president’s recent speeches touting the bipartisan infrastructure law that he signed into law in 2021 are designed to signal a shift: whereas much of Biden’s first two years in office was focused on what he hoped to accomplish, officials said now is the time to tout what he has achieved.

    The US jobs market is robust, GDP growth continues to be strong, wages are up, and critically, inflation finally seems to be moderating – all points Biden has made in his public remarks recently. In contrast, the president has warned that lawmakers who he calls “MAGA Republicans” are trying to reverse some of that very progress by proposing ideas like a national sales tax.

    He’s also offered sharp warnings to Republicans looking to use the national debt ceiling as leverage to negotiate spending cuts – setting up a battle that will play out in the opening weeks of his campaign.

    As Biden was speaking in Virginia last week, new Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wrote on Twitter that if Biden was “so eager to speak on the economy, then he should set a date to discuss a responsible debt ceiling increase.”

    He’ll get that date this week, when Biden and McCarthy sit down at the White House for their first one-on-one since McCarthy was elevated to the role earlier this month.

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  • Developments in Trump documents probe foretell a 2024 campaign clouded by legal tangles | CNN Politics

    Developments in Trump documents probe foretell a 2024 campaign clouded by legal tangles | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    There’s never been a presidential campaign like it.

    Donald Trump is taking every step of his bid for a third consecutive Republican nomination amid a darkening storm of legal uncertainty.

    The twice-impeached former president, who tried to steal an election and is accused of fomenting an insurrection, launched his first two-state campaign swing on Saturday as he seeks a stunning political comeback.

    Then on Monday, Trump’s potential exposure – in two of his multiple strands of legal peril – appeared to grow, foreshadowing a campaign likely to be repeatedly punctuated by distractions from criminal investigations.

    In a new twist to his classified material saga, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Katelyn Polantz reported that two people who found two classified documents in a Trump storage facility in Florida testified before a federal grand jury. Federal prosecutors are also pushing to look at files on a laptop of at least one staff member around Trump at Mar-a-Lago, CNN reported. The former president has not been charged with a crime, but these developments are the latest sign of an aggressive approach by special counsel Jack Smith in probing the matter. And it shows how a regular drumbeat of legal problems could detract from the former president’s attempts to inject energy into a so-far tepid campaign – especially given the multiple criminal threats he may face.

    On another front, The New York Times reported that a district attorney in Manhattan is presenting evidence to another grand jury probing Trump’s alleged role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Last week, a district attorney in Georgia said decisions are imminent on charges related to Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. It is not known whether the ex-president is directly targeted by the investigation. This all comes as Smith is also probing Trump’s role in the US Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.

    The unique and extraordinary legal tangle surrounding Trump means that a third straight US election will be tainted by controversies that will drag the FBI and the Justice Department further into a political morass. (President Joe Biden is also facing a special counsel investigation over his handling of documents from his time as vice president, and former Vice President Mike Pence, who’s eying a 2024 bid, is under DOJ review for similar issues.) This follows the Hillary Clinton email flap in 2016 and investigations into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia during that White House bid, as well as Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in 2020.

    The fact that Trump is seeking the presidency again, under an extraordinary legal cloud, could have significant consequences for the wider 2024 campaign. Some of his potential Republican rivals, wary of trying to take him down, might hope that his legal troubles will do the job for them. Perceptions that Trump is caught in a web of criminal investigation might also further tarnish his personal political brand, which has already contributed to some Republican loses in national elections in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

    Still, Trump is a master of leveraging attempts to call him to account, legally and politically. He’s already built a central foundation of his new presidential quest around the idea that he’s being political persecuted by Justice Department investigations and what he claims are rogue Democratic prosecutors.

    “We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. It’s all investigation, investigation,” the ex-president said on the trail over the weekend.

    This is a message that may be attractive to some of Trump’s base voters who themselves feel alienated from the federal government and previously bought into his claims about a “deep state” conspiracy against him. It’s also a technique, in which a strongman leader argues that he is taking the heat so his followers don’t have to, that is a familiar page in the authority playbooks of demagogues throughout history.

    As is normal, it is not known what the people who found the classified documents at the Florida storage facility may have said to the grand jury. But the ex-president is being investigated not just for possible violations of the Espionage Act, but also for potential obstruction of justice related to the documents.

    The two individuals, who were hired to search four of Trump’s properties last fall months after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort over the summer, were each interviewed for about three hours in separate appearances last week. The extent of information they offered the grand jury remains unclear, though they didn’t decline to answer any questions, one of the sources familiar with the investigation said.

    Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel at the Department of Defense, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday that the latest development was a sign of an advanced special counsel investigation and could indicate that Smith was leaning toward indictments.

    “It sounds like he is trying to lock in their testimony, to understand how they would testify at trial, whether it is incriminating evidence against Trump or exculpatory evidence that the prosecutors would then have that and have it solidified.”

    The simple, politically charged act of investigating an ex-president was always bound to create a political furor. The fact that Trump is running for the White House again multiplies the stakes and means profound decisions are ahead for Attorney General Merrick Garland if evidence suggests Trump should be charged.

    On a more granular level, the report about the grand jury underscores that for all the political noise, the investigation into Trump’s haul of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is taking place inside its own legal bubble.

    This remains the case, despite the political gift handed to Trump with the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home and at a Washington office he once used that should have been handed back when he left the vice presidency. Some classified material was also found at Pence’s Indiana home.

    Those discoveries allowed Trump to claim that he was being unfairly singled out, even if the cases have significant differences. Any Trump attempt to argue that he, like Biden and Pence, inadvertently took documents to his home will be undermined by the fact that he claimed the material belonged to him, and not the government, and what appears to be repeated refusals to give it back.

    Fresh indications of the momentum in the Trump documents special counsel probe followed the latest sign of a lopsided approach to the controversy over classified material by House Republicans, who are hammering Biden over documents but giving Trump a free pass.

    House Oversight Chairman James Comer was, for example, asked by CNN’s Pamela Brown this weekend why he had no interest in the more than 325 documents found at Trump’s home but was fixated upon the approximately 20 classified documents uncovered in Biden’s premises by lawyers and an unknown number also found during an FBI search of the president’s home this month.

    “If someone can show me evidence that there was influence peddling with those classified documents that were in the possession of President Trump, then we would certainly expand it,” the Kentucky Republican said. He went on to accuse Biden and his family of being “very cozy” with people from the Chinese Communist party but offered no evidence of such links or that they had anything to do with classified documents. His remarks left the impression that his committee is seeking to find evidence to condemn Biden but is treating Trump differently – exactly the kind of double standard the GOP has claimed the DOJ is employing toward Trump.

    The two special counsel investigations probing Trump and Biden’s retention of secret documents are unfolding independently. In a legal sense, there is no overlap between them. But they will both be subject to the same political inferno if findings are made public.

    Were Trump, for instance, to be prosecuted – over what so far appears to be a larger haul of documents and conduct that may add up to obstruction – and Biden is not, the ex-president would incite a firestorm of protest among his supporters. Even though the sitting president enjoys protections from prosecution because of historic Justice Department guidance, it’s hard to see how the political ground for prosecuting just one of them could hold firm – especially if Biden and Trump are rival presidential candidates in 2024.

    From the outside, it appears as if Biden and Pence were far more cooperative with the DOJ and the FBI after some classified documents were found at their properties than Trump has been. It took a search warrant for FBI agents to get into Mar-a-Lago, and the ex-president claimed that presidential documents that belonged to the federal government when he left office belonged to him. But voters might find it hard to understand nuanced legal differences between the two cases – a factor the House Republican counter-attack based on Biden’s documents made more likely.

    As the political fallout from the classified documents furor deepened on Monday, the country got a reminder of the treatment that can await lower-ranking members of the federal workforce when secret material is taken home.

    CNN’s Holmes Lybrand reported that court documents show that a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, who stored files with classified information at his Florida home, will plead guilty in February to one count of unlawful retention of national defense information.

    Robert Birchum served in the Air Force for more than 30 years and previously held top secret clearance. According to his plea agreement, he stored hundreds of files that contained information marked as top secret, secret or confidential classified outside of authorized locations. A plea agreement stated that “the defendant’s residence was not a location authorized to store classified information, and the defendant knew as much.”

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  • Biden and his team ramp up travel to highlight effects of infrastructure law ahead of State of the Union | CNN Politics

    Biden and his team ramp up travel to highlight effects of infrastructure law ahead of State of the Union | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and senior administration officials are embarking on a travel swing this week, showcasing what they see as successful measures to rebuild America’s ailing infrastructure.

    In what’s been described as a preview of some of the messaging for next week’s State of the Union address, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Cabinet secretaries are all hitting the road to highlight the implementation of the landmark legislation signed into law during the president’s first two years in office. Among those accomplishments are the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Chips and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act.

    The president traveled to Baltimore on Monday to showcase the implementation of his policies, and later this week, he’ll head to New York City and Philadelphia for similar remarks.

    The trips are taking place in the lead up to Biden’s State of the Union speech in Washington next week – a national platform where he’s expected to illustrate how his policies are successfully going into effect – and a prospective reelection announcement in the coming months. Biden’s approach is expected to be focused on touting the rebound of the American economy and taking aim at Republican proposals – while still underscoring his desire to work across the aisle.

    In Baltimore on Monday, he discussed how the infrastructure law will fund replace the 150-year-old Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, addressing the largest bottleneck for commuters on the Northeast Corridor between Washington, D C, and New Jersey. The new tunnel will be named in honor of civil rights leader and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

    Speaking from a presidential podium set to the backdrop of an American flag and an Amtrak train on the tracks, Biden recalled that he’d made a thousand trips through the tunnel and walked through it in the 1980s.

    “When folks talk about how badly the Baltimore tunnel needs an upgrade, you don’t need me to tell you. I’ve been there and you’ve been there, too,” Biden said.

    “You ought to get inside and see,” he remarked, discussing his tour of the tunnel decades ago. “This is a 150-year-old tunnel. I wonder how in the hell it’s still standing.”

    “The structure is deteriorating. The roof is leaking. The floor is sinking. This is the United States of America, for God’s sake. We know better than that,” he continued.

    When the project is done, Biden said, trains will roll through the tunnel at 110 mph instead of 30 mph, shortening regional MARC train commutes from Baltimore to Washington to 30 minutes.

    At Monday’s project kickoff, the president announced an agreement between the state of Maryland and Amtrak, which includes a $450 million commitment for the tunnel replacement project, according to the White House. A project labor agreement between Amtrak and the Baltimore-DC Building and Construction Trades Council was unveiled to cover the first phase of the project. And he also announced an agreement between Amtrak and the North American Builders’ Trade Union “that ensures Amtrak’s large civil engineering construction projects controlled by Amtrak will be performed under union agreements,” according to the White House.

    The program is expected to cost approximately $6 billion, of which Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding could contribute up to $4.7 billion, the White House said. Biden was joined by labor leaders, state and local officials, as well as members of Congress and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

    On Tuesday, Biden travels to New York City to discuss how Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding will improve the Hudson River Tunnel, which sees 200,000 passengers passing through each weekday on Amtrak and New Jersey Transit.

    On Friday, Biden and Harris are scheduled to travel to Philadelphia to discuss how Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding is removing lead pipes and ensuring clean water across Philadelphia and the country, the official told CNN.

    According to the White House, the pair “will discuss the progress we have made and their work implementing the Biden-Harris economic agenda that continues to deliver results for the American people.”

    Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge will also travel to Chicago to discuss progress made to address homelessness as a result of provisions within the American Rescue Plan, according to the official.

    While Biden has often embarked on domestic trips to highlight his policies in action, these stops have served as a significant messaging platform since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives this year.

    In a speech at a union hall in Virginia, Biden, for example, sought to contrast his economic policies with House Republicans’ effort in the debt limit standoff.

    He asked the crowd, “(Why) in God’s name would Americans give up the progress we’ve made for the chaos they’re suggesting?”

    “MAGA Republicans,” he added, “are literally choosing to inflict this pain on the American people.”

    Despite that heavy emphasis on his warnings about GOP plans, Biden this week is expected to hone in on his ability to work across the aisle to push legislation into law. Specifically, in a preview of the travel, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre underscored Biden’s “success (in) bringing Republicans and independents and Democrats together to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.”

    In Baltimore on Monday, the president brought up his recent trip to Kentucky, where he stood alongside Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to herald the implementation of the massive $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that McConnell and 18 other Senate Republicans supported.

    The policy messaging trips also carry more weight as the prospect of a presidential reelection campaign looms large over the White House.

    Biden has been working intensively on his State of the Union Speech speech – including over the weekend – which his team views as a launching pad for the reelection bid. His speeches around the East Coast week will offer a preview of his message as he touts new infrastructure projects.

    Behind the scenes, aides are building up a campaign infrastructure and the West Wing is in the process of restructuring for a politically intense two years.

    Peppered in between stops to visit projects funded though the proposals which were the bedrock of his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden will participate in events that are part of an intense fundraising push ahead of the campaign announcement.

    The travel comes as Biden also contends with a number of simmering issues in Washington – House Republican probes, investigations into classified documents found at his residence and former office and the debt ceiling standoff. The US Treasury is already taking extraordinary measures to keep the government paying its bills after the US hit the debt ceiling set by Congress.

    While the president is in Washington on Wednesday in between travel stops, he’s scheduled to meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

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  • DOJ tells senators it is working to satisfy Trump and Biden document demands without harming special counsel probes | CNN Politics

    DOJ tells senators it is working to satisfy Trump and Biden document demands without harming special counsel probes | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department has told lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee that it is working to satisfy their demands for information about classified documents found at properties of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump without harming ongoing special counsel investigations into both matters, according to a new letter obtained by CNN.

    The DOJ letter, dated Saturday, responds to the committee’s August request for information about the documents recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and follow-up inquiries by the panel about classified material found at the Penn Biden Center as well as Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home.

    “We are working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to support the provision of information that will satisfy the Committee’s responsibilities without harming the ongoing Special Counsel investigations,” Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote to Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, the Intelligence panel’s top lawmakers.

    “Although one of the Special Counsels was appointed only on January 12, prosecutors on both matters are actively working to enable sharing information with the Committee,” Uriarte said.

    The letter also notes that the DOJ “worked in good faith to schedule a briefing in September 2022,” but since that time, there have been “significant developments, including the appointment of two separate Special Counsels to handle the respective matters.”

    “The Department looks forward to continuing to engage with the Committee to meet its needs while protecting the Department’s interests,” the letter states.

    The DOJ’s response, which was also sent to the top lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, comes with Warner and Rubio reiterating their call for department to share the classified documents obtained from the properties of Biden and Trump.

    In an interview Sunday with “Face the Nation” on CBS, Warner and Rubio objected to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s policy to withhold the documents until the special counsels handling each investigation give authorization. Warner said the DOJ policy “doesn’t hold water.”

    “Our job is to make sure there’s not an intelligence compromise, and while the Director of National Intelligence had been willing to brief us earlier, now that you’ve got the special counsel, the notion that we’re going to be left in limbo, and we can’t do our job, that just cannot stand,” the Virginia Democrat said.

    Rubio called into question the logic behind the Justice Department’s position to not share the documents with the committee, arguing that as members of the Senate Intelligence panel, it’s likely they already have the proper clearance to view the documents.

    “I don’t know how congressional oversight on the document, actually knowing what they are, in any way impedes an investigation,” the Florida Republican said. “These are probably materials we already have access to. We just don’t know which ones they are.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • New Hampshire GOP governor says he’s considering 2024 White House bid | CNN Politics

    New Hampshire GOP governor says he’s considering 2024 White House bid | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    GOP Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire said Sunday he is considering a White House bid in 2024, citing the Granite State’s “live free or die” spirit as a model for the Republican Party.

    “Yes,” Sununu said when asked by CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” whether he was considering a presidential run.

    “I really don’t have a timeline. I’m spending a lot of time naturally trying to grow the party as Republicans, talk to independents, talk to the next generation of potential Republican voters that right now no one is really reaching out to,” he said.

    So far, former President Donald Trump is the only high-profile Republican to have officially filed for a 2024 White House run, but several others, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are considering challenging him for the nomination.

    Sununu, who won a fourth two-year term as governor by more than 15 points last fall, acknowledged Sunday that DeSantis “would probably win New Hampshire right now, without a doubt.” He said Trump, who spoke at a meeting of the New Hampshire GOP on Saturday, could win the state again but added that the former president was “not really bringing that fire, that energy, I think, that a lot of folks saw … in ’16.”

    “He’s also going to have to earn it,” Sununu said of Trump. “And that’s New Hampshire. Even if you’re the former president, you got to come and earn it, person to person.”

    Support for another Trump bid for the presidency among GOP-aligned voters declined across three CNN polls on the topic last year. In January 2022, the poll found a near-even split: 50% said they hoped Trump would be the nominee and 49% wanted someone else. By July, 44% wanted Trump to be the party’s nominee, and by December, 38% said the same.

    Sununu was asked Sunday about a recent University of New Hampshire poll that showed DeSantis leading Trump 42% to 30% among likely state GOP primary voters, with all other polled candidates, including the Granite State governor, in single digits.

    “I’m surprised other candidates, I think a lot of us, aren’t doing better,” Sununu said. “I’m surprised I’m on that poll at all, frankly.”

    Whether or not he seeks the presidential nomination, Sununu said candidates should also know when to exit the race.

    “I think there’s a lot of hope and opportunity for good candidates to get in, drive the message where it needs to be,” he said. “But the discipline is getting out too. The discipline and saying, ‘Look, you’re only polling at 5%, you got to get out.’ We don’t want a crowded field here.”

    Sununu on Sunday outlined the values that would anchor a potential White House bid as he called for Republicans to return to “believing in individual responsibility” rather than wading into cultural fights.

    “I think a lot of Republican leadership is getting behind this idea that we have to fight. And I get it, as, in a leadership position, you have to be willing to have the fight. But we cannot have leadership that is only about the fight,” he said.

    Politics runs in Sununu’s family: He is the 82nd governor of New Hampshire, while his father, John H. Sununu, was the 75th governor, serving from 1983 to 1989, before becoming President George H.W. Bush’s White House chief of staff. His older brother, John E. Sununu, represented the state in the House and Senate from 1997 to 2009.

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  • Trump hits the trail in New Hampshire and South Carolina as he looks to rejuvenate 2024 campaign | CNN Politics

    Trump hits the trail in New Hampshire and South Carolina as he looks to rejuvenate 2024 campaign | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump on Saturday will deliver the keynote address at the New Hampshire Republican Party’s annual meeting as he returns to the trail looking to ramp up his 2024 presidential campaign.

    Trump will address hundreds of Republican leaders and grassroots activists at the meeting in Salem before headlining a second campaign event in South Carolina – also an early voting state – later in the day.

    The pair of events offers Trump an opportunity to reinvigorate his campaign, which has been slow-moving since he announced his candidacy in November. The former president remains the only declared major 2024 candidate, but several Republicans have been either publicly weighing or fueling speculation about potential bids.

    In New Hampshire, Trump is expected to formally announce that outgoing state GOP Chairman Stephen Stepanek will be added to his campaign operation in the Granite State as a senior adviser, a source familiar with the hire told CNN.

    Stepanek co-chaired Trump’s first presidential campaign before becoming the top GOP official in New Hampshire, serving two terms. He joins Trump’s team as the three-time presidential contender looks to repeat his 2016 victory in the first-in-the-nation primary, a task potentially complicated by waning support among state officials who are looking for a fresh face to top their party’s ticket.

    Trump’s decision to tap Stepanek was first reported by Politico.

    Stepanek had previously expressed enthusiasm about the former president’s upcoming address, saying in a statement, “President Trump has long been a strong defender of New Hampshire’s First in the Nation Primary Status and we are excited that he will join us to deliver remarks to our Members.”

    Trump’s visit comes days before the Democratic National Committee is set to meet to vote on a new proposed 2024 presidential primary calendar put forward by President Joe Biden that would strip New Hampshire of it’s first-in-the-nation primary status – a move strongly opposed by New Hampshire Democrats. Republicans have already locked in their early state lineup of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada – the same lineup Democrats previously had.

    New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, seen as a potential contender for the 2024 GOP nomination, has been sharply critical of Trump. He argued in December that Trump is “not the influence he thinks he is” and said that the Republican Party was “moving on” from him.

    After the New Hampshire event, Trump will fly to South Carolina, a state that helped pave his way to becoming the GOP nominee in 2016 and where he is expected to unveil a leadership team and a handful of endorsements. Among the top South Carolina Republicans scheduled to attend the event at the Statehouse in Columbia in support of the former president are Sen. Lindsey Graham, Gov. Henry McMaster and US Rep. Russell Fry, who won a primary last year over a GOP incumbent who had voted to impeach Trump.

    Trump continues to be investigated by the Department of Justice, and special counsel Jack Smith is overseeing the criminal probes into the retention of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and into parts of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. Both investigations implicate the conduct of Trump.

    Trump’s Saturday campaign events come in the wake of recent revelations that classified documents were also found at locations tied to both Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a separate special counsel to take over the investigation into the Obama-era classified documents found at Biden’s home and former private office.

    Earlier this week, Facebook parent company Meta announced it would restore Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 attack.

    This story and headline have been updated.

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