ReportWire

Tag: us political parties

  • Republicans won the popular vote, but they’re not used to this feeling | CNN Politics

    Republicans won the popular vote, but they’re not used to this feeling | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]

    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    The cruel truth of American democracy, usually experienced by Democrats, is that a political party can get more votes than the other without winning much power.

    This year, however, it’s Republicans who got more votes – more than 3 million more votes for GOP House candidates – and don’t have as much to show for it.

    Republicans actually lost ground in the Senate, where Democrats will have a slim 51-49 majority. The GOP House majority, while an important check on the White House, is small and spread across a broad enough ideological spectrum that it will be difficult for potential House speaker Kevin McCarthy, or whoever is ultimately able to win that position, to use the majority to act decisively.

    “Simply put, Republicans picked up the votes they needed, just not where they needed them most. Clearly something or someone intervened, affecting the outcome of the election in the places that mattered,” Cook Political Report founder Charlie Cook wrote in November.

    Votes at that time were still trickling in from California and Washington, and the margins have thinned, but Cook argued that Republicans’ edge should have gained them 20-30 seats and a larger majority than the 222-212 margin they’re going to have in the House in January. There will be one House vacancy.

    Instead of suffering massive losses, Democrats lost a net of nine seats. It cost them the House majority, but at the same time made President Joe Biden appear strong. Presidents usually lose scores of seats in the House.

    Republicans’ failure in the Senate has been attributed to poor statewide candidates who were sidetracked by personal issues and former President Donald Trump’s election fantasies.

    The GOP frequently, in recent years, gets more power even with fewer votes.

    Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in 2000 both won the White House with fewer votes than their Democratic opponents. Democrats won substantially more votes than Republicans in 2012, when they reelected then-President Barack Obama, but Republicans kept the House majority.

    The 2022 midterm is the first election in which Republican candidates got more votes than Democrats since 2014, when the GOP picked up House seats and the Senate majority.

    Not everyone in a congressional district can vote, and not everyone did.

    There was extremely good turnout in certain states, like Georgia, which featured hotly contested Senate and governor’s races and set records for midterm turnout, according to the state’s top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

    Turnout was down in places like California, which featured statewide races that were not so hotly contested. The California Secretary of State’s office pegs turnout at 50.8% of voters, far below the more than 64% turnout it reported in the last midterm in 2018, but above the 42% turnout in 2014.

    RELATED: See how your votes aren’t equal

    Republicans can also be frustrated that they failed to gain control of any new state legislatures.

    On the one hand, it’s a historic failure by Republicans – the first midterm election since 1900 when the party out of power nationally did not gain control of at least one state chamber, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

    On the other hand, Republicans still control a majority of state houses after focusing on making gains in state politics for the past decade-plus. Republicans will still control both legislative houses in 27 states, compared with Democrats, who will control both houses in 19.

    The overall US turnout rate for the 2022 midterm was 46.8% of the voting eligible population, according to the US Elections Project, which is run by the political scientist Michael McDonald at the University of Florida.

    That’s down from more than 50% in 2018, but well above the 36.7% recorded by the project in 2014.

    There is going to be a lot of debate about how controversial voting laws in key states like Georgia and Texas may have kept some people from voting. Read more on that from CNN’s Fredreka Schouten, who covers voting rights.

    In a separate report, CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere notes that Black voter turnout was down in 2022, which has alarmed Democratic operatives as they look ahead to the coming presidential election.

    The New York Times analyst Nate Cohn wrote this week that turnout was much higher in predominantly White areas than it was in predominantly Black and Hispanic areas. This could explain how Republicans got so many more votes without getting many more House seats. In many states, redistricting can clump like voters together, creating safe districts.

    It’s also important to note here that while American voters have gotten more tribal in recent years, split-ticket voting is an important feature of the system.

    More voters chose Republicans in House races, but a lot of voters supported both parties on their ballots.

    Georgia, most notably, picked a Republican governor and a Democratic senator. But it wasn’t the only state to do so – Vermont, New Hampshire and Nevada also chose Democratic senators and a Republican governor.

    Maryland and Massachusetts went the other direction in 2022, replacing Republican governors with Democrats to match their senators. Kansas and Wisconsin chose Republican senators and Democratic governors.

    The national popular vote is an interesting side note, but doesn’t mean much, as Republicans will tell you this year.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump calls on his supporters to stand down on McCarthy opposition | CNN Politics

    Trump calls on his supporters to stand down on McCarthy opposition | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump has weighed in on the contentious battle confronting GOP leader Kevin McCarthy in his bid to be the chamber’s next speaker, with the former president calling on his supporters in Congress to halt their opposition tactics against McCarthy and stop “playing a very dangerous game.”

    “Look, I think this: Kevin has worked very hard. I think he deserves the shot,” Trump said Friday in an interview with Breitbart News. “Hopefully he’s going to be very strong and going to be very good and he’s going to do what everybody wants.”

    The former president cited the scenario from 2015, when then-House Speaker John Boehner resigned after clashes with conservative GOP hard-liners and was then replaced by Paul Ryan.

    “It’s a very dangerous game. Some bad things could happen. Look, we had Boehner and he was a strange person but we ended up with Paul Ryan who was ten times worse,” Trump told Breitbart. “Paul Ryan was an incompetent speaker. I think he goes down as the worst speaker in history.”

    McCarthy is in a fight for the speakership with five hardline Republicans opposing him. With House Republicans holding 222 seats in the next Congress, such opposition would deny him the 218 votes he’d need to be elected speaker.

    McCarthy has negotiated behind closed doors over chamber rules that his detractors want to weaken the speakership, including allowing an individual member to call for a vote to oust the speaker. That’s something the California Republican has resisted so far.

    McCarthy and Trump had a brief falling out following the January 6, 2021, insurrection, with McCarthy even suggesting on a private phone call that was recorded that Trump should resign. But the two quickly made amends with McCarthy traveling to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida just a few weeks later.

    In his interview with Breitbart, Trump didn’t name those lawmakers who oppose McCarthy’s speakership bid but said he is “friendly” with many of them and they are supporters of his.

    “I’m friendly with a lot of those people who are against Kevin. I think almost every one of them are very much inclined toward Trump, and me toward them. But I have to tell them, and I have told them, you’re playing a very dangerous game,” Trump said. “You could end up with some very bad situations. I use the Boehner to Paul Ryan example. You understand what I’m saying? It could be a doomsday scenario.”

    McCarthy said Friday that the five conservative holdouts – Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – have not budged in their opposition to him and offered dire warnings that House Republicans’ hard-fought narrow majority could be derailed if they don’t bend.

    “We’re still continuing to talk, but they have not moved,” McCarthy told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, taking to the airwaves to argue that the detractors threaten to put the entire House Republican agenda in peril and that basic decisions on legislating and investigating will be “all in jeopardy.”

    McCarthy’s comments represent a sharp escalation in his public pressure campaign against critics, including Biggs, who last week announced his own bid for the speaker’s gavel.

    And Trump isn’t the only one signaling to House Republicans to get in order. The conservative-leaning editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote Saturday that those looking to take down McCarthy “don’t seem to have any constructive reason to oppose Mr. McCarthy beyond a desire to grab the media spotlight or blow everything up.”

    Delving into “GOP dysfunction since Election Day,” the editorial board said, “Republicans are the gang that couldn’t shoot straight – except at one another.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • McCarthy says hardliners ‘have not moved’ in opposition to speaker’s bid and could put GOP agenda ‘in jeopardy’ | CNN Politics

    McCarthy says hardliners ‘have not moved’ in opposition to speaker’s bid and could put GOP agenda ‘in jeopardy’ | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy said Friday that five conservative hardliners have not budged in their opposition to his speaker’s bid, offering dire warnings that their hard-fought Republican majority could be derailed if they don’t bend.

    “Well, we’re still continuing to talk, but they have not moved,” McCarthy told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “And the difficulty here is that you know, we are the only Republican entity stopping the Biden administration. But we’re also going to be the only ones that can move forward. But it would delay everything, getting committees up and running, being able to do the things that you know we need to get done from the very beginning.”

    McCarthy’s comments represent a sharp escalation in his public pressure campaign against the five members who have signaled they plan to deny him the 218 votes he needs to become speaker when the new Congress convenes in January. McCarthy has spent hours behind closed doors negotiating a series of rules that the hardline faction wants in order to weaken the speakership and empower their members.

    McCarthy has signaled a willingness to bend on some of their key requests, but he has yet to agree to allow an individual member to call for a vote ousting a sitting speaker – a centerpiece of the hardliners’ demands that the California Republican has so far resisted.

    McCarthy and his allies believe that they will be able to win over the detractors before the January 3 vote, but the critics say they are determined to derail his speaker’s bid and find a new candidate to run the narrow House GOP majority.

    “I think the person who is ultimately going to be the speaker isn’t even the candidate yet,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican and one of the five Republicans who publicly oppose McCarthy’s bid, told CNN.

    On Friday, McCarthy took to the airwaves to argue the detractors threaten to put the entire House Republican agenda in peril, warning that basic decisions on legislating and investigating will be “all in jeopardy” – such as getting a new select committee on China up and running. McCarthy can only afford to lose four GOP votes on January 3, assuming all members are in attendance and vote for a specific member.

    “I just believe this is a win for the Democrats,” McCarthy said of GOP opposition to his bid. “They’re sitting back, and we can’t allow that to happen. We are the only individuals standing in the way of stopping more Democratic bad policy.”

    McCarthy argued that their refusal to get on board is also hurting his ability to begin recruiting new House candidates for the 2024 election cycle, suggesting a speaker’s fight could hurt GOP chances at keeping their narrow majority and 222 seats.

    “It’s not only delaying that,” McCarthy said of recruiting GOP candidates. “It’s being prepared to not only defend the majority, but grow the majority.”

    McCarthy’s dire warning comes as the five GOP members – Gaetz, Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – have warned they may vote as a bloc on January 3, meaning they’ll all vote the same way.

    Biggs, who secured 31 votes when he lost the GOP nomination for speaker against McCarthy last month, has told CNN he’s “not bluffing” and plans to run for speaker when the full House votes next month. The critics say there are far more than five Republicans who oppose McCarthy’s bid and have yet to make their position known publicly.

    If McCarthy doesn’t get 218 votes on January 3, the House will keep voting until someone gets the votes – something that hasn’t happened since 1923.

    “Remember, this is a presidential year, so you only have so many months to really get out there and govern,” McCarthy said. “And you want to hit the ground running. Every day you lose, if you lose a quarter, you don’t start strong. So you don’t get new, stronger candidates. You don’t get more resources to be able to supply those candidates to get the message out.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • US intel agencies likely missed chances to investigate Covid pandemic’s origin, House Democrats’ report says | CNN Politics

    US intel agencies likely missed chances to investigate Covid pandemic’s origin, House Democrats’ report says | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democratic investigators on the House Intelligence Committee have alleged that US intelligence agencies may have lost a critical opportunity to gather useful information on the Covid-19 pandemic’s origins by failing to pivot its collection resources earlier. In a report released on Thursday morning, the Democrats also laid out perhaps the most detailed timeline to date of the litany of warnings the intelligence community offered the Trump administration in the early days of the pandemic.

    The Democratic report comes just 24 hours after committee Republicans released their own report on the intelligence community’s examination of the pandemic’s origins in what has become an indirect battle for the narrative surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic just weeks before Republicans are poised to claim control of the House.

    The Democratic investigators’ report says that the intelligence community was slow to pivot its clandestine resources to the growing crisis – in ways that have likely undermined its efforts to understand how or where the virus emerged.

    “It’s a hypothetical – no one could say with certainty, yes or no,” said one committee investigator. “But hypothetically speaking, if you have more information from clandestine sources from the very earliest days of the virus – perhaps before Chinese authorities entirely know what’s going on – you may be better positioned to answer some of those questions [about the virus’s origins] that are I think still open questions.”

    Investigators declined to offer specifics about what resources should have been trained on the problem. But according to the report, “the first valuable piece of clandestine collection on the virus” was disseminated only in late January 2020. Analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency unit that provided the intelligence community’s first warning of the pandemic told the House committee that by then, they had grown “frustrated at the lack of clandestine collection to inform their analysis.”

    “The lack of clandestine collection was a reflection of the Intelligence Community’s overall lack of preparedness to face an emerging pandemic,” the report found. “The first significant dissemination of intelligence this late in the development of the crisis demonstrates how the IC was underserving expert policymakers and analysts.”

    According to the Democrats’ report, the first warning the intelligence community offered to the Trump administration came from a little-known Defense Intelligence Agency unit in Fort Detrick, Maryland, which on December 31, 2019, published an open-source warning of an undiagnosed pneumonia in China, labeling it a “possible pandemic warning update.”

    By the end of January, the Office of the National Director of Intelligence had issued a memo directing the intelligence community to direct more resources at gathering information on the burgeoning crisis, calling it “the top intelligence concern in East Asia,” and warnings began to ripple out through the senior levels of government.

    On January 24, the same DIA unit warned that there was a “roughly even” chance of a global pandemic. President Donald Trump received what Democratic investigators believe was likely his first formal Presidential Daily Briefing on the virus the day before, and another on January 28.

    According to a witness who spoke to the committee about the January 28 PDB briefing, deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger “was ‘losing it’ when talking about the disease’s severity and trying to convince the President and those assembled that ‘this will be a really big thing.’”

    The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff received a warning about the virus in an intelligence briefing on January 29, 2020, and the next day, the CIA began to produce what are known as “executive updates” on the virus – “shorter intelligence products that demonstrate the CIA’s taking a potential crisis serious,” according to the report.

    Still, Democratic investigators allege, despite the drumbeat of warnings from the IC, “White House messaging” failed to effectively inform the public of the risk from the virus. Trump’s rhetoric diverged “striking[ly]” from the intelligence communities late January conclusions, they said, demonstrating “an executive branch that was informed, but failed to warn the American people.”

    The report notes that on January 30 – two days after the January 28 briefing in which Pottinger was allegedly “losing it” – Trump told an audience in Michigan that, “We think we have it very well under control.”

    CNN has reached out to the Trump campaign. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the reports.

    “There has been a lot of focus on the first warning to the President on January 28,” the committee investigator said. “There has been much less focus on the rhythm of warnings following that, and what we what we find with a pretty consistent rhythm of warnings starting in late January and then really dialing up the volume throughout February.”

    The committee did not receive access to the original PDBs given to Trump but based its conclusions on draft materials and interviews with different intelligence agencies who contributed to the final product, according to investigators.

    By February, according to the report, PDB staff “pivoted from ‘warning’ of the emerging virus to assessing what the virus would mean for the world as it continued to spread.” The report goes on to list reporting from the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services throughout the month, as well as what appears to be two additional warnings provided on February 11 and February 13 that are completely redacted.

    “For six weeks, the President’s message – that the virus was not a significant threat – was flatly inconsistent with what the Intelligence Community was reporting,” the report found.

    On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

    Committee Democrats say that despite some improvements, the intelligence community remains unprepared for the next pandemic. In a series of recommendations, the report calls for the intelligence community to develop the ability to pivot collection faster, better coordinate with health security agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and leverage open-source data more aggressively.

    Although House Republicans have made clear that investigations of the government’s handling of the pandemic – including the investigation into its origins – are a key target next year, it’s not clear how aggressively the Intelligence Committee specifically will move to pursue the issue when Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio takes the chairman’s gavel. Notably, the GOP report was authored by Rep. Brad Wenstrup, who will not be on the committee next year unless he receives a waiver from the incoming House speaker to serve.

    Republicans in their report, released on Wednesday night, are accusing the intelligence community of “downplay[ing] the possibility” that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, “was connected to China’s bioweapons program” – an assertion that directly challenges the intelligence community’s own declassified report, released earlier this year, that said that there was “broad agreement” that the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. The GOP report provides no details to back up its claims, citing classification concerns. CNN is unable to verify the GOP report’s claims.

    The Republican’s report also alleges that the classified version of the intelligence community’s report on the pandemic’s origins “omits additional vital information and dismisses important intelligence in a cursory manner.”

    “Although our unclassified summary cannot reveal details, we can state that the classified Updated Assessment claimed the IC lacked information regarding one key classified issue,” the report states. “However, the Committee otherwise found that very information in other intelligence reporting, and this information is particularly relevant to determining SARS-CoV-2’s potential links to China’s bioweapons program.”

    Wenstrup in a call with reporters on Thursday said that while “I can’t reveal it now because there’s a classification status… what we’re wanting to do is let America know that we have found some discrepancy between the two reports.”

    Panel Republicans also allege that the intelligence community’s unclassified report “likely skewed the public’s understanding” of the question of whether SARS-CoV-2 was created as part of a bioweapons program because it did not disclose the technical “confidence level” that it had in that assessment, as it did with some other assessments.

    When pressed by CNN to detail the discrepancies between the classified and unclassified versions of the report, Republican staff investigators noted that the classified version included the confidence level for the bioweapons assessment and suggested that this was part of why they were “making a big deal of it,” but declined to go into further detail.

    The intelligence community’s declassified report said that it has not reached a conclusion on the origins of Covid-19, instead confirming that officials were split about whether the virus originated naturally or escaped from a lab.

    The GOP report also claims, without evidence, that the unclassified report “omitted other key information that was in the classified version in a manner that likely skewed the public’s understanding of key issues” and stonewalled efforts by Congress to provide further oversight over the government’s investigation and its findings.

    Turner, in an interview with CNN earlier this week, also declined to offer any specifics about how he felt that the unclassified report did not accurately represent information in the classified record.

    “I personally do not believe that the unclassified version adequately reflects the assertions or conclusions in the classified version,” Turner said. “That discrepancy is one of great interest to us.”

    Wenstrup in the report and his remarks to reporters said that Republicans will move to subpoena the intelligence community for more information if officials do not testify voluntarily.

    “We’re not vindictive in our approach,” Wenstrup said. “We just want to get to the truth.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Pelosi honored with official portrait and emotional tributes at unveiling ceremony | CNN Politics

    Pelosi honored with official portrait and emotional tributes at unveiling ceremony | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s official portrait was unveiled in a ceremony Wednesday at the US Capitol, with speeches from old allies and political sparring-mates who reminisced on her historic tenure.

    The painting, which depicts Pelosi standing before the speaker’s chair in the House chamber and holding a gavel, will hang in the Speaker’s Lobby just off the House floor.

    “This program was wonderful to me. It was like seeing the story of my political life revealed in front of me, not in terms of believing all the accolades, but in identifying with the persons who were presenting,” Pelosi said, thanking fellow California Democratic Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Lucille Roybal-Allard, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, and former Republican House Speaker John Boehner.

    Boehner, who handed off the gavel to Pelosi in 2007 when she became the first and only female speaker, praised her as “one tough cookie.”

    “You know the younger generation today has a saying, game recognizes game,” Boehner said. “And the fact of the matter is, no other speaker of the House in modern era – Republican or Democrat – has wielded the gavel with such authority or such consistent results.”

    “You’ve been a fierce warrior for your party, but when the stakes were highest, you were willing to put the interest of the nation first and take the heat for it. Now that’s leadership. Leaders lead, Madame Speaker, and you Madame Speaker, have led,” he said. “And I’m here to say thank you for that.”

    Pelosi and Boehner, who have long maintained a friendly rapport despite disagreeing on policy, embraced following his remarks.

    “I would have been a little disappointed if he hadn’t gotten emotional,” Pelosi said of Boehner, who served as both her predecessor and her successor, and who teared up at times during his remarks. “He gave me the gavel. I gave him the gavel. I was present at his unveiling and he’s here today.”

    Former President Barack Obama recorded a message thanking Pelosi and saying that “she will go down as one of the most accomplished legislators in the country.”

    “Just last week, she helped keep marriage equality, the law of the land and even after insurrectionists literally broke into her office. She never stopped defending democracy here at home and around the world,” he said in the tribute. “While you won’t be in leadership anymore, I’ll still feel better knowing that your portrait will be looking down from these walls, fighting everyone who sees it to keep up the fight.”

    Pelosi, who was designated “Speaker Emerita” in a unanimous vote by the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee last month, announced in mid-November that she would be stepping down as speaker after leading House Democrats for two decades.

    The announcement came just weeks after her husband, Paul, was violently attacked in the couple’s San Francisco home. He was present, wearing a fedora and a glove that he has donned since suffering injuries in the attack, along with the couple’s children at the unveiling.

    Pelosi has thrown her support behind a new group of Democratic leaders, headed up by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries from New York, who who will become the first Black person to lead either major party in either chamber of Congress when he assumes the role next year.

    Jeffries, 52, will represent a generational change from the current triumvirate of House Democratic leaders, who are three decades older than him.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • ‘Shame on you’: Club Q survivors blame GOP rhetoric for mass violence | CNN Politics

    ‘Shame on you’: Club Q survivors blame GOP rhetoric for mass violence | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Survivors of the Club Q mass shooting directly tied Republicans’ rhetoric to the massacre at the Colorado LGBTQ nightclub and detailed their experiences on the night of the shooting, in prepared testimony read before the House Oversight and Reform committee Wednesday.

    “To the politicians and activists who accuse LGBTQ people of grooming children and being abusers: shame on you,” said Michael Anderson, who survived the shooting. “As leaders of our country, it is your obligation to represent all of us, not just the ones you happen to agree with. Hate speech turns into hate action, and actions based on hate almost took my life from me, at 25 years old.”

    Survivor James Slaugh gave emotional testimony, describing getting shot and watching his loved ones bleed. He also placed direct blame on lawmakers’ hateful rhetoric, saying it was “the direct cause” of the Club Q massacre. He also warned of the damage caused by hateful rhetoric that does not explicitly call for violence, including rhetoric on which bathrooms LGBTQ people can use and whether they can join certain sports teams.

    “Hate rhetoric from politicians, religious leaders, and media outlets is at the root of the attacks like at Club Q, and it needs to stop now. Rhetoric that seeks to silence what sports we can play, what bathrooms we can use, how we define our family and who I can marry,” Slaugh said.”The hateful rhetoric you have heard from elected leaders is the direct cause of the horrific shooting at Club Q. We need elected leaders to demonstrate language that reflects love and understanding, not hate and fear.”

    In her opening remarks, Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, said, “My heart breaks for those who endured this ruthless act of violence. The Club Q shooting represents an attack on all sacred places for LGBTQI+ people across the country that offer the promise of community and refuge from rampant bigotry,” adding, “The attack on Club Q and the LGBTQI community is not an isolated incident, but part of a broader trend of violence and intimidation across our country.”

    Maloney told the survivors that “Their testimony will serve as a tremendous public service for their community and for our nation. Thank you. Let us honor them by recommitting to the bold action necessary to ensure that every person in the United States can experience to live authentically and safely regardless of who they love or how they identify.”

    Ranking Republican member James Comer – who is expected to takeover the committee when Republicans retake the majority next year – sharply pushed back on those remarks and defended Republicans against claims they were contributing to any violence.

    Comer said his “thoughts and prayers” are with survivors, victims and their families, and said, “No one should have to experience what you all have experienced. Let me state clearly, as we have consistently said, Republicans condemn violence in all forms. Unfortunately, Democrats are using committee time and resources today to blame Republicans for this horrendous crime. This is not an oversight hearing. This is a ‘blame Republicans so we don’t have to take responsibility for our own defund the police and soft on crime policies.’”

    “On this committee, we should be using our time and resources to conduct oversight into the rise of violent crimes committed against all Americans and organizations. Every day, Americans no matter what the, what side of the aisle, are living in a high-crime environment,” Comer said.

    When Club Q owner and survivor Matthew Haynes read his prepared remarks, he seemed to push back directly at Comer, saying, “I know that we, our Club Q community, are in the thoughts and prayers of so many of you. Unfortunately these thoughts and prayers alone are not saving lives. They’re not changing the rhetoric of hate.”

    “We need safe places like Club Q more than ever. And we need you, our leaders, to support and protect us.” Haynes said, before reading some of the hate messages he received celebrating the deaths of gay people.

    Haynes blasted Republicans for voting against the Respect for Marriage Act, saying by doing so they were sending a message that it “is OK to disrespect and not support our marriages. We are being slaughtered and dehumanized across this country in communities you took oaths to protect,” Haynes said directly toward lawmakers. “LGBTQ issues are not political issues. They are not lifestyles. They are not beliefs. They are not choices. They are basic human rights.”

    “And so I ask you today, not simply what are you doing to safeguard LGBTQ Americans; but rather, what are you or other leaders doing to make America unsafe for LGBTQ people,” he said.

    President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law on Tuesday, after Congress passed it last month. The House vote was 258 to 169 with 39 Republicans joining the Democrats voting in favor. The bill passed the Senate with support of all members of the Senate Democratic caucus and 12 Republicans.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Congress has so much to do before Christmas | CNN Politics

    Congress has so much to do before Christmas | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]

    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    It is the most productive time of year on Capitol Hill – after the election and before Republicans take over the House of Representatives – when the current Congress tries to cram some of its most vital work into a few short weeks.

    The US government is up against some hard deadlines, a narrow timeline and a whole lot of unfinished business.

    Lawmakers need to avert a government shutdown, authorize Pentagon policy, decide what to do with former President Donald Trump’s tax returns and wrap up the work of the House January 6, 2021, committee.

    If they can find the time, lawmakers could also raise the debt ceiling and safeguard future elections.

    Here’s what to watch for in the twilight of 2022:

    First, the government runs out of authority to spend money on Friday, December 16. The House and Senate will have to act before then to avert a government shutdown.

    Second, the newly elected Congress will be sworn in on January 3. Republicans will then be in charge of the House, and Democrats will have a narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate. Everything resets in the new Congress, and lawmakers will have to start from scratch on anything they don’t finish up this month.

    Rather than pass a dozen funding bills in turn, lawmakers are poised to roll all the spending bills for the massive federal government into one bill that could approach or exceed $1.5 trillion.

    The problem is that they’re still negotiating, and Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have not reached an agreement on how much the government can spend, much less the specifics. They’re still $26 billion apart, according to Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama. The most likely current scenario is the House and Senate each pass short-term, one-week funding bills to keep the lights on while they continue to hash out the larger funding bill.

    While officials have emphasized a government shutdown is unlikely, federal agencies have been warned to prepare for one per standard procedure.

    One major looming question is whether Senate Republicans and Democrats can agree on a bill to fund the government for a full year or whether they have to punt to the next Congress. Democrats will want to avoid that fate since the GOP-controlled House will likely insist on spending cuts as soon as it can. Read more in CNN’s full report that includes reporting from Capitol Hill and the White House.

    It’s not yet clear who will lead Republicans in the House next year, much less how they would react to an immediate funding fight if only a short-term spending bill can get through by January.

    The current GOP leader, Kevin McCarthy, does not yet have the votes of many of the most conservative Freedom Caucus Republicans, and he’s being encouraged to take more concrete stands against spending. Finding a funding agreement that can pass through the House and the Senate and get President Joe Biden’s signature gets much more difficult starting January 3.

    In addition to writing checks, Congress authorizes government activity through policy bills, including the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes $858 billion in annual defense spending.

    It’s a sprawling endeavor, and this year’s version passed by the House gives members of the military a 4.6% pay raise, gives new support to Ukraine and NATO, and retools US air power and land defense efforts. It also rescinds a Covid-19 vaccine requirement for service members, a move that Biden has opposed.

    Senators are expected to take up the bill this week. It should get bipartisan support, but will also eat up valuable time on the Senate floor, where Democrats also want to push through judicial nominees. Read more about the defense bill.

    One thing Democrats would like to do – but probably, at this point, cannot – is raise the debt ceiling.

    Republicans, particularly in the House, plan to use the nation’s borrowing limit as a bargaining chip to force spending cuts next year. The current debt ceiling of $31.4 trillion will likely be reached in the coming weeks, which means raising it will be a major fight early in 2023.

    How much more does the government spend than it takes in? This is from a CNN Business report Monday: “For fiscal year 2023, which started in October, the government is running a deficit of $336 billion, which is $20 billion narrower than the comparable year-ago period.”

    Republicans will shut down the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection when they take control in January. GOP lawmakers plan to flip the script and investigate the committee’s activity.

    But first, the committee, which features Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans, will issue its much-anticipated report on December 21. Also look for the committee to recommend the Department of Justice prosecute Trump or members of his inner circle.

    Meanwhile, Jack Smith, the newly appointed special counsel, has been busy ramping up a pair of criminal probes involving the former president, all of which could explode into public view if charges are ultimately brought. Read the latest on Smith’s work.

    Now that the House Ways and Means Committee has six years of Trump’s tax returns, it must figure out what to do with them in just a few weeks.

    There’s probably no time for a thorough review, and Republicans will have little appetite for a Trump tax investigation when they take control of the House.

    Democrats could move to make some of Trump’s tax information public – on top of what was already published by The New York Times in 2020. But there could be a political cost to simply releasing the returns since Democrats obtained them in order to scrutinize IRS audit policy. Read more about Trump’s taxes.

    It’s a bipartisan idea to make some major clarifications to election law and cut down on the possibility of another January 6, 2021. Read here about what’s in the bill, which is specifically designed to guard against Insurrection 2.0.

    But there may be no time to pass the proposal – there are similar but competing versions in the House and Senate. The Senate version, in particular, has bipartisan support. Republicans in the House may not be interested in the legislation once they take control in January.

    If the Electoral Count Act can pass, it could be slipped into that massive spending bill. It hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, but this could be a good example of lawmakers working together.

    But that’s a very open question, since that massive spending bill has not yet been put together.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Kyrsten Sinema’s potential 2024 run creates anxiety in Senate Democratic ranks | CNN Politics

    Kyrsten Sinema’s potential 2024 run creates anxiety in Senate Democratic ranks | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s surprise decision to become an independent has Democratic leaders struggling to answer a basic question: How should they deal with her if she runs for reelection in Arizona?

    In interviews with top party leaders and rank-and-file members on Monday, Democrats were sidestepping the sensitive question and handling the politically fraught situation delicately, knowing that a misstep could backfire and have serious ramifications for their party.

    “When they call me for advice, I’ll give it in confidence,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, told CNN when asked if party leaders should stay out of the race.

    Durbin added: “I plan to stay out of Arizona politics.”

    If Sinema runs for a second term but party leaders put their muscle behind a Democratic candidate instead, the electorate could splinter in the purple state and help Republicans win back a critical seat. Plus, backing a Democrat in the race could risk alienating Sinema whose decision to continue to align with her former party on her committee assignments essentially solidifies their 51-49 majority.

    But if they get behind Sinema or stay neutral in the race, as they’ve done with other independents who caucus with them, they would infuriate progressives eager to knock off the moderate Sinema over her refusal to gut the Senate filibuster and approve many of their priorities over the last two years.

    And no matter how they handle the mercurial senator, they could be left with a messy, three-way race in 2024 at a time when they will be battling to defend 23 seats compared to 11 for the GOP – all of which has caused anxiety in the Democratic ranks.

    For now, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his top deputies said they are in a wait-and-see mode, planning to see how the field forms and whether Sinema will indeed run as an independent in the 2024 cycle. Then, they said, they will begin to make some critical decisions.

    “When she says she’s gonna run, you come back to me,” Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington state and a member of her party’s leadership, told reporters.

    But already, the field appears to be taking shape.

    Rep. Ruben Gallego, a member of the Arizona House delegation, told CNN that “We’re already putting the team together,” and he’d make a decision about a run sometime next year. He said he would soon reach out to Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – and he dismissed the possibility that Sinema could win as a third-party candidate or that a Republican could pull off a victory in a three-way race. He contended that a Sinema candidacy “assures a Democrat wins.”

    “They could do what they want,” Gallego said when asked about party leaders’ decision on how to handle the race. “But it’s going be a waste of money to try to prop up a third-party candidate because it’s just not going to happen. Not in Arizona.”

    But Gallego could have a challenge in the primary – potentially from Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton, who won reelection in his swing district in the fall.

    Stanton told CNN on Monday he is “taking a serious look” at the race.

    “My focus until recently has been winning my 2022 frontline reelection,” Stanton said. “Sen. Sinema’s recent decision to leave the Democratic Party has no bearing on my thinking.”

    But it’s a decision that has Republicans and Democrats alike weighing what comes next.

    Sen. Gary Peters, the current chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, plans to step aside from that post in the 2024 cycle, and no new senator has announced plans to take that position as of yet.

    “At this moment, I’m really happy to say that’s the job of the next DSCC chair to make that determination,” the Michigan Democrat said when asked how the party committee should handle an independent run, given that it typically backs Democratic incumbents.

    Sinema, who has a sizable war chest with nearly $8 million in cash, has not tipped her hand about whether she will run again, though many suspect she left the party in order to spare herself a grueling primary fight in 2024.

    “I’m just not worried about folks who may not like this approach,” Sinema told CNN on Thursday. “What I am worried about is continuing to do what’s right for my state. And there are folks who certainly don’t like my approach, we hear about it a lot. But the proof is in the pudding.”

    On Monday, Sinema made a brief appearance on the Senate floor, casting a vote for a Biden judicial nominee before she headed out and ignored reporters’ questions.

    But in the halls of the Capitol, the two sides were assessing how her move could scramble the 2024 map.

    “It’s going to be a competitive state in 2024,” said Sen. Steve Daines, a Montana Republican who will chair the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the coming cycle.

    Republicans are hopeful that the progressive push to oust Sinema will only bolster their chances to take the seat.

    Indeed, Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, attacked Sinema as a “corporate Democrat” who “helped sabotage” the Biden agenda.

    On Monday, he wouldn’t say if he believes Democratic leaders should try to knock her off in 2024.

    “I think that decision rests with the people of Arizona,” Sanders said Monday.

    A like-minded liberal, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, also punted on the question.

    “I am just not focused on that,” Warren said. “I am focused on what we need to do in the next two weeks. That’s my responsibility.”

    For the last two years, Sinema has been a complicated and polarizing figure for Democrats. The newly independent senator has helped clinch victories for the Biden administration on a major infrastructure package, prescription drug pricing, same-sex marriage legislation and the first gun violence law in a generation. But she also rebuffed Democratic efforts to raise tax rates on corporations and individuals – and she, along with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, stood their ground against Democratic efforts to gut the filibuster and pass a voting rights bill, saying the 60-vote threshold is essential to preserving the rights of the minority to shape legislation.

    Like Sinema, party leaders are now watching Manchin closely as he weighs whether to run in 2024. On Monday, he would not ruling out joining Sinema and spurning his Democratic Party label and becoming an independent.

    “I’ll look at all of these things,” Manchin told CNN. “I’ve always looked at all those things, but I have no intention of doing anything right now. Whether I do something later, I can’t tell you what the future is going to bring.”

    In private meetings, Schumer has been careful not to criticize Sinema, according to senators who have spoken to him. In the White House and Schumer statements Friday, both praised Sinema’s record in the Senate and made clear they’d continue to work with her. It’s a message several senior Democrats also echoed on Monday.

    Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, a member of party leadership, said she and Sinema have worked together on mental health provisions central to the gun legislation, among other issues.

    And when asked if she will get behind Sinema, Stabenow wouldn’t say.

    “That’s something that that you know I’m sure will be talked about down the road.”

    “That’s a call for somebody else,” Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, added when asked about the party backing Sinema in 2024.

    Even Sen. Mark Kelly, the newly reelected Arizona Democrat, steered clear of the sensitive topic on Monday.

    “I worked very closely with Sen. Sinema – two years now to get stuff done,” Kelly said. “The DSCC, and what that they do over there, is outside my area of expertise.”

    Kelly would not say he would support her if she ran.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Congress faces looming government shutdown deadline at end of the week | CNN Politics

    Congress faces looming government shutdown deadline at end of the week | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Lawmakers face a Friday at midnight deadline when government funding is set to expire – and the House and Senate will likely have to pass a short-term extension to avert a shutdown at the end of the week, which would give negotiators more time to try to secure a broader full-year funding deal.

    The other major legislative item lawmakers are working to wrap up before the end of the year is the National Defense Authorization Act, the massive annual must-pass defense policy bill. The NDAA is expected to get a vote in the Senate this week and be approved with bipartisan support.

    The House has already approved the measure so once the Senate votes to pass it, the bill can go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

    The approaching deadline had members of Congress and their staffers from both parties, as well as Biden administration officials, continuing to slog through negotiations over the weekend to try to get to an agreement on a spending package.

    “This is the time of the year when there’s no weekends for folks who work on appropriations,” one administration official closely involved in the talks told CNN.

    Over the weekend, both Democrats and Republicans were sharing with one another their “bottom lines” on various fronts, and the White House remained publicly optimistic that an agreement could be reached on an omnibus: “There is absolutely still a path and time for a deal.”

    But if Biden administration officials are still keeping their eyes on the ball on Congress ultimately reaching a deal on a government spending deal, there is also real recognition that lawmakers will need an extra few days – perhaps even a week – of cushion to buy themselves more time. That would be achieved through passing a short-term stop-gap measure called a continuing resolution, or a CR.

    Particularly with that in mind, administration officials also continue to maintain that they do not see any real likelihood of a government shutdown.

    Congressional aides acknowledged to CNN that the weekend talks went better than days prior, which is why Democrats have announced they will not introduce their own Democratic-only omnibus plan on Monday. Republicans on Capitol Hill had been reading a threat for Democrats to introduce their own bills as a messaging exercise that would only further divide negotiators, and by avoiding that messaging exercise, Republicans see a sign that Democrats are serious about trying to get to yes.

    For now, a bipartisan deal on government funding remains elusive. Lawmakers have not yet been able to reach a negotiated agreement for a comprehensive, full-year funding package – known on Capitol Hill as an omnibus – amid a dispute between the two parties over how much money should be spent on non-defense, domestic priorities. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, has told reporters the two sides are roughly $26 billion apart.

    Republicans are critical of recent domestic spending by Democrats and argue that measures Democrats have passed while they have been in control both chambers of Congress, like the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill and the sweeping health care and climate bill, are wasteful and will worsen inflation. Democrats counter by saying those measures were necessary to help the country recover from the devastating impact of the pandemic as well as to tackle other critical priorities. And Democrats said that money to respond to Covid, health care and climate should not mean there should be less money next year for government operations and non-defense, domestic spending.

    The impasse over a broader funding deal is likely to force both sides to agree to pass a short-term funding extension – known as a continuing resolution, or CR – before the fast-approaching Friday deadline on Friday.

    The key question will be how long such an extension would last. It could be as short as one week, a timeframe that would keep the pressure dialed up for lawmakers to reach a broader deal, while still allowing more time for negotiations. Or it could extend the shutdown deadline into the next Congress, which will convene on January 3, and when Republicans take control of the House.

    That change in majority in the House would dramatically alter the dynamic for negotiations and likely make it far harder to reach a broader funding deal. Lawmakers could pass a full-year CR if it looks like a bipartisan funding deal can’t be reached, but leaders in both parties hope to avoid that scenario since it would keep spending flat for the Pentagon as well as domestic priorities.

    Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell laid out the GOP position in remarks on the Senate floor Thursday. “Our commander-in-chief and his party have spent huge sums on domestic priorities outside the normal appropriations process without a penny for the Defense Department. Obviously, we won’t allow them to now hijack the government funding process, too, and take our troops hostage for even more liberal spending,” McConnell said.

    Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, outlined the argument for his party in his own floor remarks on Thursday. Republicans, Leahy said, are “demanding steep cuts to programs the American people rely on.”

    Referring to Democratic-passed legislation that Republicans have criticized, Leahy said, “Those bills were meant to get us out of the pandemic, get the nation healthy, and get our economy back on track, and I believe they are accomplishing that goal. They were not meant to fund the basic functions of the American government in fiscal year 2023.”

    While lawmakers continue to negotiate, the federal government has begun the process of preparing for a potential shutdown, participating in the mandatory but standard process of releasing shutdown guidance to agencies ahead of Friday’s funding deadline.

    Officials have emphasized that there is no real likelihood of a government shutdown, but the standard procedure laying out the steps toward bringing non-essential government functions to a halt is underway.

    “One week prior to the expiration of appropriations bills, regardless of whether the enactment of appropriations appears imminent, OMB will communicate with agency senior officials to remind agencies of their responsibilities to review and update orderly shutdown plans, and will share a draft communication template to notify employees of the status of appropriations,” a document from the Office of Management and Budget stated.

    That standard guidance was circulated last Friday, marking seven days before a shutdown could occur absent Congressional action.

    Every department and agency has its own set of plans and procedures. Those plans include information on how many employees would get furloughed, what employees are essential and would work without pay (for example, air traffic controllers, Secret Service agents, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory staff), how long it would take to wind down operations in the hours before a shutdown, and what activities would come to a halt.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Kyrsten Sinema’s defection without a difference | CNN Politics

    Kyrsten Sinema’s defection without a difference | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]

    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    The recent history of party-switching senators includes stories of moderates feeling abandoned, longtime politicians unwilling to face primary voters or thrown out in primaries, and secret campaigns by one party to pick the other’s pocket.

    President Joe Biden knows this history, since as a senator and then vice president he was instrumental in drawing then-Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania across the aisle in 2009. Specter’s switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party briefly gave Democrats a filibuster-proof majority and allowed them to pass the Affordable Care Act. Specter left the GOP after realizing he wasn’t going to be able to win a primary.

    Joe Lieberman, the moderate Democrat and former longtime senator, lost a Democratic primary in Connecticut in 2006, largely over his support for the Iraq war. He would go on to win reelection as an independent. The corollary to Lieberman is Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who lost a primary but won reelection, incredibly, as a write-in candidate, in 2010. She remained in the GOP.

    Earlier, in 2001, Democrats executed what CNN at the time referred to as a Cold War era defection operation to turn then-Sen. Jim Jeffords, the Vermont Republican, into a Vermont independent and briefly give Democrats control of the Senate. Jeffords was angry that Republicans wouldn’t spend more money on education.

    Other defections, like those of Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama and then-Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, had to do with Southern Democrats realizing they’d be more at home as Republicans. Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire left the GOP only to quickly return for a plum committee chairmanship.

    Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema appears to be different as she becomes the 22nd senator to change party affiliation while in office.

    She’s not leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent because of a pressure campaign, although she has faced fierce criticism from Democrats for opposing elements of Biden’s agenda. She’s not going to give Republicans a majority. She’s simply exerting independence, as she told CNN’s Jake Tapper in announcing her departure from the Democrats.

    “When I come to work each day, it’ll be the same,” Sinema said. Read more about her decision.

    She doesn’t want to change the balance of power – she dismissed Tapper’s question about such things as a Washington, DC, obsession – and it appears she will maintain the committee assignments she has as a Democrat.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer endorsed the arrangement and agreed to let Sinema keep her committee assignments. He said Democrats would maintain their functional majority.

    Certainly a sure-thing primary challenge when she’s up for reelection in 2024 must have crossed Sinema’s mind.

    But she argued that she’s making space in the middle.

    “Removing myself from the partisan structure – not only is it true to who I am and how I operate, I also think it’ll provide a place of belonging for many folks across the state and the country, who also are tired of the partisanship,” she told Tapper.

    The other lawmaker who has frequently frustrated the party is Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who is the last Democrat standing in a state that during his lifetime was full of them.

    Manchin has turned his moderating effect on national Democrats into a potent political brand in West Virginia.

    Sinema’s political evolution has taken her from anti-war supporter of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader to senator in the mold of the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.

    It’s hard to pin down exactly what Sinema’s ideology is – she said it’s hard to put her in a box. She rejected Democrats’ attempts to raise the minimum wage and raise corporate tax rates. She opposed a voting rights bill. But she hasn’t exactly sided with Republicans on social issues.

    Independence and bipartisanship are her entire brand at this point, and she’s used it to play pivotal roles in bipartisan efforts on infrastructure, guns and marriage.

    Much of Nader’s politics in the early 2000s, when he arguably spoiled Democrat Al Gore’s presidential run, was about breaking up what he referred to as the two-party “duopoly.”

    McCain tried to fashion himself as a “maverick” who could buck the party system. Some of his most awkward political moments came when he had to appeal to primary voters, such as in 2010 when the Arizona primary dragged him to the right. He stayed a Republican even after former President Donald Trump demonized and insulted him.

    Sinema will be the first independent senator who isn’t from New England in more than a generation. Among sitting senators, she’ll join Sens. Angus King of Maine, a former Democrat, and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a democratic socialist, as lawmakers who aren’t technically Democrats but give Democrats their majority.

    Sanders and his influence in the party he doesn’t technically belong to, dragging Democrats to the left during successive presidential campaigns, is perhaps part of what makes Sinema seem out of place as a Democrat.

    Sanders’ previous decision to run for president as a Democrat is evidence of how hard it is to be in national politics without a party. It will be interesting to see how and whether Sinema can maintain support in her state and how and whether she can mount a bid as an independent without help from the party that put her in office.

    While Arizona is frequently referred to as the home of modern conservatism, it’s been a long time since Barry Goldwater, the former Republican senator, ran for president from there – and the state’s political makeup has changed at lightning speed.

    Until Sinema was elected, Arizona had two Republican senators and a Republican governor.

    Now it has two elected Democratic senators (Sinema was elected as a Democrat in 2018) and a governor-elect who is a Democrat.

    But there are and more independents in Arizona.

    In the recent midterm election, just 22% of Arizona voters described themselves as liberal and 36% said they were conservatives. The largest portion, 42%, said they were moderates.

    About a third of voters said they were Republicans, 27% said they were Democrats and 40% said they were independents.

    Four years ago when Sinema was elected, a smaller portion, 31%, described themselves as independents.

    Nationwide, in 2022, voters had a similar ideological split to Arizona in the exit polls – 24% liberal, 40% moderate and 36% conservative.

    But across the country, more identified with the two major parties and less than a third said they were independents, the same portion as in 2018.

    It can be hard to maintain political shape-shifting. Charlie Crist, a moderate who felt out of place in the GOP, went from being a Republican governor in Florida to Democratic congressman. He recently lost a bid to rewin the governor’s mansion as a Democrat.

    The most complete political evolution may be that of Lincoln Chafee, the Rhode Island politician who was a Republican senator, independent governor and failed Democratic and Libertarian presidential candidate.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Strong midterm turnout in Georgia sparks new debate about a controversial election law | CNN Politics

    Strong midterm turnout in Georgia sparks new debate about a controversial election law | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The strong turnout in Georgia’s runoff election that cemented Democrats’ control of the US Senate is sparking fresh debate about the impact of the state’s controversial 2021 election law and could trigger a new round of election rule changes next year in the Republican-led state legislature.

    Voters showed up in droves for the midterms, with more than 3.5 million casting ballots in the December 6 runoff – or some 90% of the general election turnout, a far higher rate than typical runoffs. And top Republicans in Georgia, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, argued those numbers refute claims that the 2021 law was designed to suppress votes in this increasingly competitive state.

    “There’s no truth to voter suppression,” Raffensperger said in an interview this week with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, a day after Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock secured reelection in the first federal election cycle since Georgia voting law took effect.

    Georgia Democrats and voting rights groups, however, continue to criticize the 2021 law – enacted in the wake of Democratic gains two years ago – as erecting multiple barriers to voting. And the surging turnout, they said, masked extraordinary efforts by voters and activists to overcome both new and longstanding obstacles to the franchise in this once deep-red state.

    “Just because people endured long lines that wrapped around buildings, some blocks long … doesn’t mean that voter suppression does not exist,” Warnock said during his victory speech Tuesday – echoing a theme he made repeatedly on the campaign trail. “It simply means that you, the people, have decided that your voices will not be silenced.”

    Warnock’s victory Tuesday solidified Georgia’s standing as a battleground state and comes after Warnock and fellow Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff won runoffs in the 2020 election cycle. In that election, President Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential nominee to win the Peach State in nearly three decades.

    Voting rights activists said the 2021 law made it harder to cast a ballot in myriad ways: It limited the number and location of ballot drop boxes, instituted new ID requirements to vote by mail and shortened the window for a runoff from the nine weeks in the 2020 election to four weeks, contributing to long lines during the early voting period.

    Additionally, the voter registration deadline fell on November 7 – the day before the general election and before Georgians knew for certain that the contest would advance to a runoff because neither Warnock nor his Republican challenger Herschel Walker had surpassed the 50% threshold to win outright in the general election.

    In the 2020 election cycle, at least 23,000 people who registered after Election Day went on to vote in the Senate runoff in January 2021, according to an analysis of Georgia’s Secretary of State data by Catalist, a company that provides data, analytics and other services to Democrats, academics and nonprofit issue-advocacy organizations.

    And only an 11th hour court victory for Warnock and Democrats paved the way for counties to hold early in-person voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. State election officials had opposed casting ballots on that date, saying Georgia law prohibited voting on a Saturday if there is a state holiday on the Thursday or Friday before.

    “It’s death by a thousand cuts,” Kendra Cotton, CEO of the voting rights group New Georgia Project Action Fund, said of the new restrictions. “They are not trying to hit the jugular, so you bleed out at once. It’s these little nicks, so you slowly become anemic before you pass out.”

    “It’s a margins game,” she added. “I wish folks would stop acting like the purpose of SB202 was to disenfranchise the masses. Joe Biden won this state by a little less than 12,000 votes. I can guarantee you that there are more than 12,000 people across this state who were eligible to vote in this election and they could not.”

    Even Cotton’s 21-year-old daughter, Jarah Cotton, became ensnared.

    The younger Cotton, a Harvard University senior, said she had planned to vote absentee in November’s general election – but misunderstood a new requirement of Georgia’s law: that she print out her online application for absentee ballot, sign it “with a pen and ink” and then upload it.

    In the runoff, Jarah Cotton said she successfully completed her application for an absentee ballot but did not receive it before she returned home to Powder Springs, Georgia, for the Thanksgiving holiday.

    The court ruling permitting voting the Saturday after Thanksgiving allowed her to cast an in-person ballot in the runoff – but only after her family paid $180 to delay her return flight to Boston by a day.

    “I don’t think it should be this hard,” Jarah Cotton said of her experience. “It should be more straightforward, but I think that’s reflective of the voting process in Georgia.”

    Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer in the secretary of state’s office, said too many critics of the state’s voting process are comparing the 2022 election with the ease of voting during the height of the pandemic in the 2020 election cycle when election officials across the state “moved heaven and earth” to guarantee the franchise.

    That so many people voted in a four-week runoff shows “the system works really well,” he told CNN in an interview Friday. “The problem now is that it that is has become so politicized. I’ve been saying now, for 24 months, that both sides have to stop weaponizing election administration.”

    Voting rights activists say the state’s runoff system, first enacted in 1964, itself is a vestige of voter-suppression efforts from the state’s dark past. Its original sponsor sought to guarantee that candidates backed by Black Georgians could not win outright with a plurality of the vote.

    Most states decide general election winners based on which candidate gets the most votes, unlike Georgia, where candidates must win more than 50% of the votes cast to avoid a runoff.

    Runoffs also are costly affairs.

    A recent study by researchers at Kennesaw State University estimated that the Senate runoffs in the 2020 election cycle had a $75 million price tag for taxpayers.

    In the CNN interview earlier this week, Raffensperger suggested that the Republican-controlled General Assembly might revisit some of the state’s election rules, including potentially lowering to 45% the threshold needed to win a general election outright.

    He also said he wanted to work with counties to guarantee more polling places are available to ease the long lines voters endured during the early voting window in the runoff.

    And Raffensperger said lawmakers might weigh a ranked-choice instant runoff system. In so-called instant runoffs, voters rank candidates by order of preference. If one candidate doesn’t receive more than 50% of the vote, voters’ second choices would be used to determine the winner, without the need to hold a second election.

    Given the shortened runoff schedule in Georgia, state lawmakers instituted the instant runoff for a narrow slice of voters – those in the military and overseas – in this year’s midterms.

    “There will be a push for this in the upcoming legislative session,” said Daniel Baggerman, president of Better Ballot Georgia, a group advocating for the instant runoff.

    “It’s asking a lot from voters” to show up again for a runoff “when there’s a simple way that achieves the same outcome,” he said.

    Sterling agreed that there “needs to be a discussion about general election runoffs,” but he said he worries that moving to an instant runoff system risks disenfranchising a wide swath of Georgians who might not understand the process without “a tremendous amount of voter education.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • House Republicans brace for doomsday scenario if McCarthy falls short of 218 votes for speaker | CNN Politics

    House Republicans brace for doomsday scenario if McCarthy falls short of 218 votes for speaker | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    As a right-wing faction threatens to tank his speakership ambitions, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy delivered a promise: “I’ll never leave,” making clear he has no plans to drop out of the race even if the fight goes to many ballots on the floor.

    “I’ll get 218,” McCarthy told CNN, referring to the votes he’d need to become House speaker.

    But Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, a conservative hardliner who is challenging McCarthy to be the most powerful member of Congress, doubled down on his commitment to stop the California Republican’s ascension.

    “I’m not bluffing,” Biggs told CNN on Thursday when asked if he would drop out.

    With the increasing likelihood that the speaker’s race could go to multiple ballots – something that hasn’t happened since 1923 – McCarthy’s allies and foes alike are starting to quietly game out the next steps if he can’t get the necessary 218 votes on the first round and they move into uncharted territory.

    Bash asks Pelosi if McCarthy has what it takes to be House Speaker. See her response

    McCarthy’s supporters are vowing to keep voting for him on multiple ballots, and GOP sources said there are early discussions about a floor strategy for that potential scenario, including whether to recess the House or let the votes keep rolling – no matter how long it takes.

    To prevent that from happening, McCarthy and his team have been engaged in serious talks with a group of conservatives, including over potentially giving them influential committee assignments and more power to drive the legislative process. GOP sources said those negotiations are still early in the process and could ultimately end up giving the group some aspect of what the hardliners desperately want: additional power to seek a sitting speaker’s ouster with a vote on the floor.

    Asked if he would drop out of the race if he doesn’t get 218 votes on the first ballot, Biggs refused to say.

    “I’m not going to talk about hypotheticals,” said Biggs, who lost his conference’s nomination to become speaker last month after securing 31 votes.

    But in the case of a doomsday scenario – where neither McCarthy nor Biggs can get 218 votes on January 3 and neither drops out – some pro-McCarthy Republicans are signaling support for a different approach. Some said they would be willing to work with Democrats to find a moderate Republican who can get the 218 votes to clinch the gavel – a long-shot idea that underscores the uncertainty looming over the speaker’s race.

    “Our initial plan is vote for Kevin and let him fight this out repeatedly. … But if they think they’re going to use this to infinity to drive him out, well, we’re not going to bend to their will,” said Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican.

    Bacon added if GOP hardliners don’t bend, then he would be willing to work with Democrats to find another more moderate Republican to secure the 218 votes to become speaker.

    “If a small group refuses to play ball and be part of the team, then we’ll work across the aisle to find an agreeable Republican,” Bacon said. “But I hope we don’t get there.”

    McCarthy’s detractors don’t buy it.

    “There are very significant rules, changes being discussed that would open the House up, that would be transformative, that would give us the ability to actually legislate and represent our constituents,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Florida who said he’s a “hard no” on McCarthy. “And whoever is speaker is going to have to agree to those rules, I think. And I don’t think that person will be Kevin McCarthy because Kevin McCarthy won’t have 218 votes.”

    Gaetz added: “I think the person who is ultimately going to be the speaker isn’t even the candidate yet.”

    Indeed, the small group of Republicans known as the “Never Kevin” movement – confident that Biggs could not win a majority of the House – has been trying to recruit a viable alternative, and claim “several” Republicans have privately told them they would be interested in running if McCarthy drops out. Their goal with voting for Biggs is to show that McCarthy is weak on the first ballot, which they hope would inspire other candidates to jump in.

    “How many members vote for someone else will show the strength (of the anti-McCarthy group),” Rep. Bob Good, a Virginia Republican who is a “hard no” on McCarthy, told CNN. “I think the second ballot is going to have more candidates. … There are already Republicans letting us know they’d like to be considered.”

    Even House Republicans who are supporting McCarthy predicted that a number of lawmakers would run if McCarthy withdrew his name, with some saying that House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, McCarthy’s top deputy, would emerge as the front runner in that case.

    “If at some point, if Kevin did take his name out, then you would have good people (running). Scalise would probably be the guy,” one GOP lawmaker said.

    Scalise has repeatedly vowed to support McCarthy and refused to speculate on whether he would jump into the race if the GOP leader can’t get the votes.

    “No, I’m not going to get into speculation,” Scalise told CNN. “Obviously, our focus is on getting it resolved by January 3. And there’s a lot of conversations that everybody has been having, Kevin, surely, with the members who have expressed concerns.”

    Rep. Jim Jordan, the conservative set to become the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, went even further, ruling out jumping into the race even though Gaetz and other hardliners have urged him to seek the speakership.

    “No,” Jordan said when asked if he’d run if McCarthy couldn’t get the votes. “I want to chair the Judiciary Committee.”

    With 222 GOP seats next year, McCarthy can only afford to lose four Republican votes and still win the speakership. But he and his team are still hopeful he can win on the first round as he has been working both publicly and privately to win over holdouts. So far, at least five Republicans have promised to oppose him on the floor – but in a positive sign for McCarthy, one of them has shown he’s gettable.

    “I will vote for Andy for speaker, subject to what we’re discussing,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican after leaving a meeting in McCarthy’s office on Wednesday. He later added: “All this is positive. We’re having good change, regardless of what happens. And you’ll see more of it.”

    In addition to those five, a new group of seven Republican hardliners on Thursday laid out a list of conditions to earn their vote, although they did not specifically threaten to vote against McCarthy if their demands aren’t met.

    WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 15: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) talks briefly with reporters before heading into House Republican caucus leadership elections in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center on November 15, 2022 in Washington, DC. McCarthy is expected to be elected leader of the caucus, paving the way for his election to Speaker of the House if the GOP wins control of the House of Representatives. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    GOP lawmaker explains why he won’t vote for McCarthy to become House Speaker

    Their list of demands – which shows the work McCarthy needs to do to get to 218 – includes a promise that leaders won’t play in primaries, restoring the motion to vacate the speaker’s chair, placing more conservatives on key committees, giving members at least 72 hours to read bill text before a vote, and committing to using the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip to demand more spending cuts, according to a copy of the letter obtained by CNN.

    McCarthy has already begun brokering some rules changes to empower rank-and-file members, created a new select committee on China, vowed to boot some Democratic lawmakers from their committees, and sketched out in greater detail his investigative plans – including a potential impeachment inquiry into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

    But McCarthy still has additional levers he could pull. Conservative hardliners are pushing for more representation on the powerful House Rules Committee, a leadership-aligned panel that decides how and when bills come to the floor. In one private meeting with a member of the House Freedom Caucus, McCarthy was urged to take a harder public stance on the coming policy issues for next year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

    And the anti-McCarthy group is also still pressing for a process that would allow any single member to hold a floor vote on ousting the sitting speaker, which was wielded over former Speaker John Boehner before he was forced out of the job by the far right in 2015.

    McCarthy has been adamantly opposed to restoring the “motion to vacate the chair,” and a majority of the House GOP voted against the idea during a during a closed-door meeting last month. When asked by CNN on Thursday if he would visit the issue, McCarthy laughed and refused to answer.

    But McCarthy’s detractors said it’s an issue very much still on the table and think he may end up needing to embrace it if he still doesn’t have the speaker votes by January 3. GOP sources told CNN there’s potential room to negotiate to give members more power to call for a vote to oust the speaker – perhaps by allowing the vote to occur if a certain number of members call for one, rather than allowing a single lawmaker to call for a vote as the hardliners want.

    “A competent secure leader is not threatened by (the motion to vacate),” Good said. “And so, yeah, that I think that’s central to many members.”

    Yet others said what Good and his allies are seeking is a recipe for chaos — and are calling on their colleagues to fall in line.

    “I think that’s one of the reasons that we didn’t see a red wave … the idea that people are sick and tired of the noise, and they’re sick and tired of the fighting,” Rep. David Joyce, an Ohio Republican, said of the impact of a January 3 floor fight. “And I know I get that wherever I go in my district is, ‘why can’t you guys just get things done?’”

    As McCarthy scrambles to lock down speaker’s votes, he also delayed the GOP’s internal elections for committee chairmanships. There was some speculation that one of the members competing for a gavel, Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida, may retire early if he doesn’t win, which would make McCarthy’s math problem even tougher. But Buchanan vehemently disputed the notion.

    “It’s ridiculous, laughable,” he told reporters. “I’m doing everything I can to help get Kevin to 218.”

    McCarthy could also try to convince Democrats or his GOP detractors to vote present or not show up to the floor proceedings, which would lower the threshold he needs to become speaker. But McCarthy promised his GOP colleagues he would not court Democratic votes.

    In recent weeks, part of McCarthy’s pitch to his critics has been warning that if they don’t unify, then Democrats could theoretically band together and peel off a few Republicans to elect the next speaker.

    Some Democrats have said they would entertain the idea, including Rep. Henry Cuellar, a moderate Democrat from Texas who told CNN some of his GOP colleagues have approached him “informally” about it.

    Joyce also said some members have reached out to him about potentially running, but he dismissed it. “At the end of the day, Kevin’s going to be the new speaker.”

    New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the next House Democratic leader, said, “there are no behind-the-scenes conversations” that he has had with Republicans to put up an alternative candidate. But he refused to rule out a scenario where his caucus would help elect the next speaker if McCarthy couldn’t get the votes.

    Hakeem Jeffries Kevin McCarthy split

    Hear if Hakeem Jeffries would be willing to help Kevin McCarthy

    “Democrats are in the process of organizing the Democratic Conference,” Jeffries told CNN on Thursday. “Republicans are in the process of organizing the Republican Conference. Let’s see what happens on January 3.”

    Some of the potential consensus picks that have been floated included retiring Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and John Katko of New York, who both voted to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the Capitol insurrection; Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus; and Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a veteran lawmaker and incoming head of the House Rules Committee.

    But that would require agreement from every single Democrat and the help of five Republicans – no easy feat. Upton said he has no plans to be in Washington that day, telling CNN: “I’ll be skiing.”

    And progressives like Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York said they would never vote for a GOP speaker candidate, no matter how moderate.

    “No,” Bowman said, indicating he’d be voting for Jeffries on every ballot on January 3. “It’s going to be Hakeem.”

    But Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman said this has happened before – nearly a decade ago in his state where minority Democrats in the Arkansas legislature joined forces with a handful of Republicans to elect a GOP speaker of their choice. Westerman privately made this case to his colleagues at a closed-door meeting this week.

    “I’m concerned about January 3 getting here and us not being able to form a Congress and organize committees and getting delayed in pushing the policy objectives that we want to push,” Westerman said.

    Westerman added that the discussion over changing House rules is good for the party. But he added: “I’m not really excited about any type of destructive movement.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Sinema leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent | CNN Politics

    Sinema leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is leaving the Democratic Party and registering as a political independent, she told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an exclusive TV interview.

    “I’ve registered as an Arizona independent. I know some people might be a little bit surprised by this, but actually, I think it makes a lot of sense,” Sinema said in a Thursday interview with Tapper in her Senate office.

    “I’ve never fit neatly into any party box. I’ve never really tried. I don’t want to,” she added. “Removing myself from the partisan structure – not only is it true to who I am and how I operate, I also think it’ll provide a place of belonging for many folks across the state and the country, who also are tired of the partisanship.”

    Sinema’s move away from the Democratic Party is unlikely to change the power balance in the next Senate. Democrats will have a narrow 51-49 majority that includes two independents who caucus with them: Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine.

    While Sanders and King formally caucus with Democrats, Sinema declined to explicitly say that she would do the same. She did note, however, that she expects to keep her committee assignments – a signal that she doesn’t plan to upend the Senate composition, since Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer controls committee rosters for Democrats.

    “When I come to work each day, it’ll be the same,” Sinema said. “I’m going to still come to work and hopefully serve on the same committees I’ve been serving on and continue to work well with my colleagues at both political parties.”

    But Sinema’s decision to become a political independent makes official what’s long been an independent streak for the Arizona senator, who began her political career as a member of the Green Party before being elected as a Democrat to the US House in 2012 and US Senate in 2018. Sinema has prided herself on being a thorn in the side of Democratic leaders, and her new nonpartisan affiliation will further free her to embrace an against-the-grain status in the Senate, though it raises new questions about how she – and Senate Democrats – will approach her reelection in 2024 with liberals already mulling a challenge.

    Sinema wrote an op-ed in the Arizona Republic released Friday explaining her decision, noting that her approach in the Senate has “upset partisans in both parties.”

    “When politicians are more focused on denying the opposition party a victory than they are on improving Americans’ lives, the people who lose are everyday Americans,” Sinema wrote.

    “That’s why I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington.”

    Sinema is up for reelection in 2024 and liberals in Arizona are already floating potential challengers, including Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, who said earlier this year that some Democratic senators have urged him to run against Sinema.

    “Unfortunately, Senator Sinema is once again putting her own interests ahead of getting things done for Arizonans,” Gallego said in a statement following Sinema’s announcement.

    Sinema declined to address questions about her reelection bid in the interview with Tapper, saying that simply isn’t her focus right now.

    She also brushed aside criticism she may face for the decision to leave the Democratic Party.

    “I’m just not worried about folks who may not like this approach,” Sinema said. “What I am worried about is continuing to do what’s right for my state. And there are folks who certainly don’t like my approach, we hear about it a lot. But the proof is in the pudding.”

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Sinema a “key partner” following her decision and said the White House has “every reason to expect that we will continue to work successfully with her.”

    Sources familiar with the matter tell CNN that Sinema gave the White House a heads up that she was leaving the Democratic Party. Schumer said in a statement he also was aware of Sinema’s bombshell announcement ahead of Friday morning.

    “She asked me to keep her committee assignments and I agreed,” Schumer said. “Kyrsten is independent; that’s how she’s always been. I believe she’s a good and effective Senator and am looking forward to a productive session in the new Democratic majority Senate.”

    Schumer also outlined how he did not expect Sinema’s decision to impact Democrats’ plans for next year, saying in his statement, “We will maintain our new majority on committees, exercise our subpoena power, and be able to clear nominees without discharge votes.”

    The Biden White House is offering a muted reaction Friday morning and insisting that they expect to continue having a productive working relationship with the senator.

    One White House official tells CNN that the move “doesn’t change much” other than Sinema’s own reelection calculations.

    “We’ve worked with her effectively on a lot of major legislation from CHIPS to the bipartisan infrastructure law,” the official said. The White House, for now, has “every reason to expect that will continue,” they added.

    Sinema has long been the source of a complex convergence of possibility, frustration and confusion inside the White House.

    “Rubik’s cube, I guess?” was how one former senior White House official described the Arizona senator who has played a central role in President Joe Biden’s largest legislative wins and also some of his biggest agenda disappointments.

    There was no major push to get Sinema to change her mind, a White House official said, noting that it wouldn’t have made a difference.

    “Nothing about the last two years indicates a major effort would’ve made helped – the exact opposite actually,” a White House official said.

    The most urgent near-term effort was to quietly find out what it meant for their newly expanded Senate majority, officials said.

    While there were still clear details to figure out about process, “I think people exhaled when we had a better understanding of what she meant,” one source familiar with the discussion said.

    Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota told “CNN This Morning” that “Senator Sinema has always had an independent streak,” adding that “I don’t believe this is going to shake things up quite like everyone thinks.”

    She added, “Senator Sinema has been an independent in all intents and purposes.”

    Sinema and West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin have infuriated liberals at various points over the past two years, standing in the way of Biden’s agenda at a time when Democrats controlled the House, Senate and White House.

    Sinema and Manchin used their sway in the current 50-50 Senate – where any single Democrat could derail a bill – to influence a host of legislation, especially the massive $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill that Biden proposed last year. Sinema’s objections to increasing the corporate tax rate during the initial round of negotiations over the legislation last year particularly rankled liberals.

    While Sinema was blindsided by the surprise deal that Manchin cut with Schumer in July on major health care and energy legislation, she ultimately backed the smaller spending package that Biden signed into law before the election.

    Both Manchin and Sinema also opposed changes to the Senate’s filibuster rules despite pressure from their Senate colleagues and Biden to change them. After a vote against filibuster changes in January, the Arizona Democratic Party’s executive board censured Sinema.

    Sinema has been in the middle of several significant bipartisan bills that were passed since Biden took office. She pointed to that record as evidence that her approach has been an effective one.

    “I’ve been honored to lead historic efforts, from infrastructure, to gun violence prevention, to protecting religious liberty and helping LGBT families feel secure, to the CHIPs and science bill to the work we’ve done on veterans’ issues,” she told CNN. “The list is really long. And so I think that the results speak for themselves. It’s OK if some people aren’t comfortable with that approach.”

    Sinema’s announcement comes just days after Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock won reelection in Georgia, securing Democrats a 51st Senate seat that frees them from reliance on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.

    Sinema declined to address questions about whether she would support Biden for president in 2024, and she also said she’s not thinking about whether a strong third party should emerge in the US.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What a 51-49 Senate majority means for Democrats | CNN Politics

    What a 51-49 Senate majority means for Democrats | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock will win Georgia’s Senate runoff, CNN projects, allowing Democrats to secure a slim 51-49 majority over Republicans in the chamber. Democrats will have significant governing advantages compared to the 50-50 split in the current Congress, during which a power-sharing agreement gives Republicans considerable leverage over Democrats despite being in the minority.

    • Democrats will hold majorities in each committee, allowing them to process legislation and nominations much faster. Democrats will also enjoy bigger staffs and budgets, giving them more ability to carry out committee work. Committees are currently evenly split – as are the resources – allowing Republicans to slow the pace of nominees they oppose. When a choice deadlocks in committee, Democrats must take time-consuming steps to discharge that person from committee and allow a floor vote. In one instance earlier this year, Republicans used Banking Committee rules to prevent a vote from even taking place by boycotting committee sessions, ultimately forcing President Joe Biden to withdraw a nominee for the Federal Reserve. Tuesday’s result will also free up additional floor time for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to use toward other nominees and Democratic priorities.
    • Democrats will have stronger power to issue subpoenas. They will no longer need bipartisan support to issue subpoenas so they can bypass GOP opposition to using these key tools. This could increase the power and number of Democratic-led investigations.
    • Centrist Democrats may not hold as much power over Democrats’ agenda. A two-seat majority margin gives Schumer more breathing room to pass legislation without needing support from all members of his caucus – like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, moderates who will both be up for reelection in 2024. The two held enormous power in the 50-50 Senate.
    • Filling a Supreme Court vacancy could be easier. The two-seat margin could also become critical if there were to be a Supreme Court vacancy as only a majority is needed to confirm a justice to that post, allowing Schumer to lose one vote.
    • Harris might not be needed as often on the Hill. Democrats likely won’t have to rely as heavily on Vice President Kamala Harris to break tie votes on nominations and legislation, something she’s done 26 times so far in the current 50-50 Senate, the most by any vice president in modern times.

    This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Congress faces time crunch on government funding and sweeping defense policy bill | CNN Politics

    Congress faces time crunch on government funding and sweeping defense policy bill | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are scrambling to try to fund the government and pass a sweeping defense policy bill before a new Congress is sworn in, but there are signs that both sides have struggled to reach agreement over these key outstanding issues.

    Government funding expires at the end of next week on December 16 – and it appears all but certain that lawmakers will have to pass a short-term extension as they try to reach a broader full-year funding agreement.

    Separately, the House has been expected to take up the National Defense Authorization bill for fiscal year 2023 this week, but it’s not yet clear when a vote will take place amid questions over whether certain controversial policy provisions will be included in the legislation – like eliminating a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for the military. Once the House has passed the bill, it would next have be taken up by the Senate.

    Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell warned on Tuesday that rather than passing a full-year funding bill, lawmakers may have to pass a short-term stop-gap measure to kick the can into early next year. This would set up a huge funding fight and create fears of a government shutdown early in the new Congress, when Republicans will take control of the House and would have to cut a deal with Democrats who run the Senate.

    On government funding legislation, McConnell said: “We don’t have agreement to do virtually anything, which can only leave us with the option of a short-term CR into early next year,” referring to a short-term bill known as a continuing resolution.

    He added: “We don’t even have an overall agreement on how much we’re going to spend, and we’re running out of time.”

    Despite the threat of a stop-gap, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer reiterated on Tuesday that senators are “working very hard” to reach a deal to fully fund the government before the upcoming deadline, but acknowledged that “there’s a lot of negotiating left to do.”

    Senate Republican Whip John Thune signaled Tuesday that he doesn’t have a “high level of confidence” both parties will be able to reach a deal on an omnibus government funding bill, as time is running short to pass that massive bill.

    “I don’t have a high level of confidence because I’m looking at the calendar,” the South Dakota Republican said. “It’ll be a very heavy lift, but who knows? I guess I would say is, you know, bring your Yuletide carols and all that stuff here because we may be singing to each other.”

    McConnell complained Tuesday that Democrats were preventing quick passage of the National Defense Authorization Act by trying to add unrelated items at the last minute that Republicans oppose.

    “Senate Democrats are still obstructing efforts to close out the NDAA by trying to jam in unrelated items with no relationship whatsoever to defense. We’re talking about a grab bag of miscellaneous pet priorities,” McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor.

    “My colleagues across the aisle need to cut their unrelated hostage taking and put a bipartisan NDAA on the floor,” he added.

    Lawmakers released text of an agreement for the NDAA Tuesday night.

    The summary, released by the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it “requires the Secretary of Defense to rescind the mandate that members of the Armed Forces be vaccinated against COVID-19.”

    CNN reported earlier this week that the mandate was likely to be rescinded as part of the defense policy bill.

    In a tweeted statement Tuesday night, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said that “the end of President Biden’s military COVID vaccine mandate is a victory for our military and for common sense.”

    House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said earlier Tuesday that the House was considering eliminating the Covid-19 vaccine mandate for military members in order to gather enough Republican votes to pass the annual defense authorization. Republicans have said they will not support the NDAA with the vaccine mandate in place.

    Hoyer said at his weekly pen and pad with reporters that Democrats were not “willing” to give up the mandate, but that a compromise is required to get the NDAA across the finish line.

    “We’re not willing to give it up. This is not a question of will; it’s a question of how can we get something done? We have a very close vote in the Senate, very close vote in the House. And you just don’t get everything you want,” he said.

    Thune said of the defense policy bill, “I think the ransom the Democrats wanted for stripping the vaccine mandate is a whole bunch of things to include the permitting reform, but also some other things that are just going to be non-starters on our side, and I don’t think we’re going to get in the business of, you know, allowing them to hold us hostage.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump’s slow 2024 start worries allies | CNN Politics

    Trump’s slow 2024 start worries allies | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Back in 2015, Donald Trump’s first campaign rally in Iowa as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination came just 10 hours after he declared his candidacy in New York. The following day, he was across the country in New Hampshire, with plans to visit South Carolina before the end of his first week.

    But seven years later – and nearly three weeks into his 2024 presidential campaign – Trump has yet to leave his home state or hold a public campaign event in an early voting state.

    Trump’s disengaged posture has baffled former and current allies, many of whom experienced firsthand the frenetic pace of his two previous White House bids, and who now say he’s missed the window to make a splash with his 2024 rollout. The uninspiring launch of his supposed political comeback comes as his campaign appears to be operating on auto pilot, with few signs of momentum or enthusiastic support from donors or party heavyweights.

    “I don’t know why he rushed this. It doesn’t make sense,” one Trump adviser said of his lackluster announcement speech last month, which came one week after Republicans delivered an underwhelming performance in the midterm elections and as the rest of the party turned its attention to the Senate runoff contest in Georgia.

    Trump’s announcement was roundly panned for lacking zest, so much so that some audience members attempted an early exit, and his recent hosting of Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and embattled rapper Kanye “Ye” West at Mar-a-Lago only further galvanized GOP opposition against him. A person familiar with the matter said Trump spent the Sunday after Thanksgiving asking people around him if they thought the backlash to his private dinner with Ye and Fuentes was truly damaging.

    “So far, he has gone down from his bedroom, made an announcement, gone back up to his bedroom and hasn’t been seen since except to have dinner with a White supremacist,” said a 2020 Trump campaign adviser.

    “It’s 1000% a ho-hum campaign,” the adviser added.

    The only other notable event to occur since Trump announced he was running again was both unintended and dreaded for weeks by the former president’s attorneys. Just three days after Trump launched his campaign, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee two ongoing criminal investigations into the 45th president and his associates.

    While some Republicans long speculated that Trump entered the presidential race early to inoculate himself from further legal peril, his candidate status instead appeared to serve as the catalyst for Garland’s announcement.

    A Trump campaign spokesman said the former president has held “multiple events since he announced,” noting his remote appearance at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition summit last month, video remarks to a conference for conservative activists in Mexico, a Patriots Freedom Fund event, his remarks at two separate political events held at Mar-a-Lago, and a tele-rally Monday night for Georgia Republican Senate hopeful Herschel Walker. None of these events were billed as campaign events.

    Trump’s current campaign trajectory has left both allies and Republican opponents wondering if he will flip a switch in 2023 or fail to adapt to a different political environment. Even as the GOP’s undisputed 2024 frontrunner, some of his closest allies say he simply cannot afford to take his position for granted at a moment when influential Republicans appear exceedingly interested in dislodging him from his influential perch.

    “If Trump was working in a lush jungle environment in 2016, he is in a desert today,” said a Republican close to the former president. “The political landscape has totally changed. He was irresistible because no one understood him but now everybody knows how to deal with him, so the question is, can he recalibrate?”

    Some sources said Trump’s first-out-of-the-gate strategy, which was said to be partly aimed at clearing the GOP primary field, already looks poised to fail.

    “You know what it’s done to dissuade people from getting in? Nothing. He hasn’t hired anyone. He hasn’t been to the early states,” said the 2020 campaign adviser.

    Trump’s lack of impact was on display a week after his announcement, as other 2024 Republican hopefuls took the stage in Las Vegas for the annual RJC summit. Some attacked the former President, while others, once allies of Trump, indicated they were ready to take him on in 2024.

    Just days before the event, Trump’s team announced plans for him to address the group remotely. Two people familiar with the matter said his virtual address was organized by aides at the last minute after he grew agitated upon realizing the event was a cattle call for Republican presidential prospects and he was not on its original list of speakers. The Trump campaign spokesman disputed this account, saying Trump’s remote remarks were planned “many weeks prior to the event.”

    Other sources who for months harbored concerns that Trump wasn’t as enthusiastic about running as he was letting on in public appearances now say his inactivity has increased their worry. Apart from a planned fundraising appearance for a classical education group in Naples last weekend, the former president has yet to announce any events before the end of the year. A person familiar with the matter said Trump’s team is toying with a pre-Christmas event of some kind, though his campaign has not yet finalized any travel. In a statement last week panning a move by Democratic officials to put South Carolina first on the party’s primary calendar, Trump appeared to tease a visit to Iowa, currently the first state to cast votes in both parties’ presidential nominating contests, “in the very near future.”

    “I can’t wait to be back in Iowa,” he said.

    Inside Trump’s campaign, sources said his current approach is entirely intentional, dismissing concerns that he has forfeited the spotlight at a critical time but acknowledging that Trump is currently working with a bare-bones staff.

    The campaign “is doing exactly what everyone always accuses [them] of not doing – taking a breather, planning and forming a strategy for the next two years,” said one source familiar with Trump’s operation said.

    Senior staff are holed up working on a plan,” this person added, noting that Trump’s campaign travel is expected to begin early in the new year, right as possible rivals who have taken the holidays to mull their own political futures may start launching their own campaigns or exploratory committees.

    And while some Trump allies have been surprised by his lack of a hiring spree right out of the gate, his campaign has been content to maintain a lean operation while he’s the only candidate in the field. The former president is not expected to tap a formal campaign manager, instead elevating three trusted advisers – Susie Wiles, Brian Jack and Chris LaCivita – to senior roles, but allies said he will likely need to build out his on-the-ground staff in early voting states in the months to come, as well as a robust communications operation if he finds himself in a competitive primary.

    While those hires don’t need to happen immediately, people close to Trump said his early entry into the 2024 race does raise questions about how he will sustain campaign-related costs over a longer period than other candidates who declare later, including chief potential rival Ron DeSantis. CNN has previously reported that the Florida governor, should he decide to take on Trump, would announce next May or June, after the conclusion of his state’s legislative session and just months before the Republican party could host its first primary debate, according to a party official involved in debate planning.

    “The question a lot of us have is can Trump sustain a campaign for two years. That’s the real difficulty here. The pacing we’re seeing right now is designed to do that,” said a person close to Trump.

    In addition to planning rallies and events and building momentum around the former President, the campaign staff is also looking at how to best insulate Trump after many were caught off guard learning of Trump’s dinner with Fuentes and West. The event, and the days of fallout and negative coverage, has expedited some of the campaign’s long-term plans, including ensuring a senior campaign staffer is always with the former president, a source familiar with the campaign said.

    Trump’s White House staff worked with resort staff during his presidency in a similar fashion to protect Trump from potentially “unsavory” guests of members, the source said. Those close to Trump blamed “low level staffers” for allowing Fuentes to slip into the resort without any flags being raised.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Sky-high Black turnout fueled Warnock’s previous win. Will Georgia do it again? | CNN Politics

    Sky-high Black turnout fueled Warnock’s previous win. Will Georgia do it again? | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Atlanta
    CNN
     — 

    Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young rode his scooter alongside Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, Martin Luther King III and a fervent crowd of marchers on a recent Sunday through a southwest Atlanta neighborhood. The group stopped at an early polling location to vote, forming a line with some waiting as long as one hour to cast their ballots.

    At the age of 90, Young says he is selective about public appearances but felt the “Souls to the Polls” event was one where he could motivate Black voters in Tuesday’s hotly contested US Senate runoff between Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker – a historic matchup between two Black men.

    Community leaders and political observers say the Black vote has consistently played a pivotal role in high-stakes races for Democrats, including in 2021, when Warnock defeated then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a runoff. Black voters likely to cast a ballot are near unanimous in their support for the Democrat (96% Warnock to 3% Walker), according to a CNN poll released last week that showed Warnock with a narrow lead.

    A second runoff victory for Warnock could once again hinge on Black voter turnout in a consequential race. If Warnock wins, it would give Democrats a clean Senate majority – one that doesn’t rely on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote and allows Majority Leader Chuck Schumer more control of key committees and some slack in potentially divisive judicial and administrative confirmation fights.

    Voting, Young said, is the “path to prosperity” for the Black community. He noted that Atlanta’s mass transit system and economic growth have been made possible by voters.

    “Where we have voted we have prospered,” Young said.

    The rally led by Young, King and Warnock seems to have set the tone for many Black voters in Georgia. Early voting surged across the state last week with long lines reported across the greater Atlanta area. As of Sunday, more than 1.85 million votes had already been cast, with Black voters accounting for nearly 32% of the turnout, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. The early voting period, which was significantly condensed from 2021, ended on Friday.

    Billy Honor, director of organizing for the New Georgia Project Action Fund, said the Black turnout so far looks promising for Democrats.

    “When we get Black voter turnout in any election statewide that’s between 31 and 33%, that’s usually good for Democrats,” Honor said. “If it’s between 27 and 30%, that’s usually good for Republicans.”

    Honor added: “This has an impact on elections because we know that if you’re a Democratic candidate, the coalition you have to put together is a certain amount of college-educated White folks, a certain amount of women overall, as many young people as you can get to turn out – and Black voters. That’s the coalition. (Former president) Barack Obama was able to smash that coalition in 2008 in ways we hadn’t seen.”

    Young said he believes that Black voters are more likely to show up for runoff elections, which historically have lower turnout than general elections, when the candidate is likeable and relatable.

    Warnock is a beloved figure in Atlanta’s Black community who pastored the church once led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He grew up in public housing and relied on student loans to get through college.

    Young said Warnock’s story is inspiring.

    “He is an exciting personality, he’s a great preacher,” Young said. “He speaks from his heart and he speaks about how he and his family have come up in the deep South and developed a wonderful life.”

    Young said some Black voters may also be voting against Walker, who has made a series of public gaffes, has no political experience and has a history of accusations of violent and threatening behavior.

    Last week’s CNN poll showed that Walker faces widespread questions about his honesty and suffers from a negative favorability rating, while nearly half of those who back him say their vote is more about opposition to Warnock than support for Walker.

    Views of Warnock tilt narrowly positive, with 50% of likely voters holding a favorable opinion, 45% unfavorable, while far more likely Georgia voters have a negative view of Walker (52%) than a positive one (39%).

    Still, Walker is famous as a Heisman Trophy-winning football star from the University of Georgia. And among the majority of likely voters in the CNN poll who said issues are a more important factor to their vote than character or integrity, 64% favor Walker.

    He campaigned on Sunday with, among others, GOP Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, one of just three Black senators currently serving in the chamber. Scott tried to tie Warnock to President Joe Biden – who, like former President Donald Trump, has steered clear of the Peach State – and reminded voters in Loganville of the GOP’s losses in the 2021 runoffs.

    At the event, which began with prayers in Creole, Spanish and Swahili from speakers with Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, Walker encouraged getting out to vote more than he typically does.

    “If you don’t have a friend, make a friend and get them out to vote,” Walker said.

    Back at the “Souls to Polls” march, some Black voters said they were excited to show up and cast their early votes in the runoff race.

    Travie Leslie said she feels it is her “civic duty” to vote after all the work civil rights leaders in Atlanta did to ensure Black people had the right to vote. Leslie she does not mind standing in line or voting in multiple elections to ensure that a quality candidate gets in office.

    “I will come 12 times if I must and I encourage other people to do the same thing,” Leslie said Thursday while at the Metropolitan Library polling location in Atlanta. “Just stay dedicated to this because it truly is the best time to be a part of the decision making particularly for Georgia.”

    Martin Luther King III credited grassroots organizations for registering more Black and brown voters since 2020, when Biden carried the state, and mobilizing Georgians to participate in elections.

    Their work has led to the long lines of voters in midterm and runoff races, King said.

    King said he believes Warnock also appeals to Black voters in a way that Walker does not.

    “Rev. Warnock distinguishes himself quite well,” King said. “He stayed above the fray and defined what he has done.”

    The Black vote, he said, is likely to make a difference in which candidate wins the runoff.

    “Black voters, if we come out in massive numbers, then I believe that on December 6 we (Democrats) are going to have a massive victory,” King said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Trump’s call to terminate the Constitution is a fantasy, but it’s still dangerous | CNN Politics

    Trump’s call to terminate the Constitution is a fantasy, but it’s still dangerous | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump’s call for the termination of the Constitution is his most extreme anti-democratic statement yet and seems oblivious to the sentiments of voters who rejected election deniers in the midterm elections.

    It may also reflect desperation on the part of the former president to whip up controversy and fury among his core supporters in order to inject some energy into a so-far lackluster 2024 White House bid.

    Trump’s comments on his Truth Social network – which should be easy for anyone to condemn – are exposing the familiar moral timidity of top Republicans who won’t disown the former president. But his latest tirade also plays into the arguments of some Republicans now saying that it’s time to move on from Trump’s fixation with the 2020 election.

    And while it is far too early to write off his chances in the 2024 GOP nominating contest, Trump’s behavior since announcing his third presidential bid also suggests his never-ending quest to shock and to fire up his base now means going so far right he ends up on the extremist fringe and almost in self-parody. In the short time he’s been a candidate, he’s expressed support for rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and dined with a White nationalist Holocaust denier.

    Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for Georgia’s Secretary of State Office, chuckled at the incredulity of Trump’s claim about the Constitution when it was described by CNN’s Pam Brown on Saturday.

    “It’s ridiculous, it’s insane, to suspend the Constitution. Come on man, seriously?” said Sterling, a Republican who helped oversee Georgia’s election in 2020, when President Joe Biden carried the state. “I think more and more Republicans, Americans are saying, ‘Ok I am good, I am done with this now, I’m going to move on to the next thing.’”

    The most immediate question raised by Trump’s latest controversy is what it says about a presidential campaign that has been swallowed up by one far-right authoritarian sideshow after another.

    Far from barnstorming the nation, making a case on the economy, health care and immigration or outlining a program for the future, Trump has given comfort to zealots and insurrectionists.

    He hosted Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago last month, at a time when the rapper now known as Ye is in the middle of a vile streak of antisemitism and praising Adolf Hitler. The far-right Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes was at also at that dinner. Trump claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was but the former president still hasn’t criticized his ideology. Last week, Trump, in a fundraising video, praised the mob that invaded the Capitol in the worst attack on US democracy in modern times, again promoting violence as an acceptable response to political grievances.

    His social media assault on the Constitution appears to be proving the point of the House select committee probing January 6, which has portrayed him as a clear and present danger to American democracy and met on Friday to consider criminal referrals to the Justice Department.

    Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the committee, tweeted on Sunday: “No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution.” Trump’s latest wild social media post could even deepen his legal exposure as the Justice Department seeks evidence of his mindset as it investigates his conduct before the attack on the Capitol.

    Trump’s doubling down on authoritarianism also follows a moment when much of the country, at least in crucial swing states, rejected his 2020 election denialism and anti-democratic chaos candidates he picked for the midterms – with a final test on Tuesday in Georgia’s Senate runoff. It appears to make it even more unlikely that the ex-president, even if he wins the Republican nomination, will be the kind of candidate who could win among the broader national electorate. After all, his message failed in two consecutive elections in 2020 and 2022. And even in the wilder reaches of the GOP, which Trump has dominated since 2015, a call to simply trash the Constitution might seem a stretch – and reflect the former president’s increasing distance from reality.

    One could argue that the most prudent response to Trump’s latest radical rhetoric might be to ignore it and his bid for publicity.

    But even if his idea of crushing the Constitution looks far-fetched, his behavior needs to be taken seriously because of its possible future consequences.

    That’s because Trump remains an extraordinarily influential force in the Republican Party. His acolytes hold outsized power in the new House majority set to take over in January, which they plan to use as a political weapon to promote his restoration in the White House. GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is appeasing this group in an increasingly troubled campaign for speaker. The California Republican also last week shielded Trump over criticism of the Fuentes dinner, saying that while such a person had no place in the party, Trump had condemned him four times – a false claim.

    Furthermore, in an electoral sense, the theory that Republican voters may be willing to move on from Trump – and to find a candidate who may reflect “America First” populism but not dine with antisemites – has not yet been tested. Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen are still broadly accepted among GOP voters – only 24% of whom believe that Biden legitimately won in 2020, according to midterm election exit polls.

    And a GOP primary that includes multiple candidates competing with Trump for the presidential nomination could yet again splinter the vote against the former president and allow him to emerge at the top of a mostly winner-take-all delegate race, a vote that would put a prospective authoritarian who has already tried to dismantle the US system of democracy one step from a return to power.

    Ignoring or downplaying public evidence of extremism and incitement only allows it to become normalized. There is already proof that the ex-president’s rhetoric can cause violence – after he told his supporters to “fight like hell” to save their country on January 6. And the rhetoric of people like West and Fuentes, with whom Trump has associated, risks normalizing odious forces in society that will grow if they are not challenged. Fuentes, after all, has appeared with Republican lawmakers like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – an increasingly influential voice in the House GOP conference.

    Years of norm crushing and acceptance of extremists by the twice-impeached former president never convinced the party to purge him or his views. Were it not for principled, conservative Republicans like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Trump’s election-stealing effort might have worked in 2020.

    As they work through an intense lame-duck session of Congress, Republican lawmakers are, for the umpteenth time, going to be asked this week about the tyrannical attitudes of the front-runner for their party’s presidential nod.

    One newly elected Republican, Michael Lawler – who picked up a Democratic-held House seat critical to the slim GOP majority – stood up for the Constitution on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

    “The Constitution is set for a reason, to protect the rights of every American. And so I certainly don’t endorse that language or that sentiment,” Lawler told Jake Tapper. “I think the former president would be well-advised to focus on the future, if he is going to run for president again.”

    Republican Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, said he “vehemently” disagreed with Trump’s statement and said his dinner with West and Fuentes was “atrocious” and that voters would take both incidents into consideration.

    But a fellow Ohio Republican, Rep. David Joyce, demonstrated the characteristic reluctance of members of his party to confront an ex-president who remains hugely popular among its grassroots. Regarding the threat to the Constitution, Joyce said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, “You know he says a lot of things but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen,” adding that it was important to separate “fact from fantasy.”

    Joyce didn’t directly condemn Trump’s rhetoric and said he would support whomever the Republican Party nominates in 2024. The fact that Republicans are open to a potential president – who would be called upon to swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution but who has already called for its termination – speaks volumes about how much the GOP is still in Trump’s shadow.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Opinion: How the Democrats’ Iowa caucuses self-destructed | CNN

    Opinion: How the Democrats’ Iowa caucuses self-destructed | CNN

    [ad_1]

    Editor’s Note: Laura Belin is the primary author at the website Bleeding Heartland. She has been covering Iowa politics since 2007. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    The Democratic National Committee’s overhaul of the presidential nominating calendar will create many challenges for Iowa Democrats, who are already at a low point following another disappointing election cycle.

    The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted Friday to recommend a schedule that removes Iowa from the small group of early primary states. The full DNC will vote on the calendar in January; while some tweaks are possible, it’s nearly certain the Iowa caucuses won’t be in the mix.

    I grew up in Iowa with the luxury of seeing presidential candidates up close and have enjoyed attending precinct caucuses since I was 18 years old in 1988. But as painful as it is for fans of the caucuses to accept, the DNC has valid reasons to start the presidential campaign elsewhere.

    Although Iowa was a bellwether state for six straight presidential elections and voted twice to elect Barack Obama, five of the last seven general elections have been Republican landslides here.

    It’s one thing to experience a red wave when the same thing is happening nationwide, as in 2010 and 2014. It’s another for Iowa Democrats to lose up and down the ballot last month — including in many onetime strongholds — when the party’s candidates exceeded expectations in many other states.

    Next year, Iowa will have no Democrats in our congressional delegation for the first time since 1956, only one Democratic statewide elected official for the first time since 1982 and the smallest Democratic state legislative caucuses in decades.

    Granted, South Carolina (which would supplant Iowa on the DNC’s new calendar) is not a swing state either. But moving that state ahead will give Black Democrats a bigger role in choosing a nominee, which is overdue.

    As critics of the current calendar have noted for years, the electorates of Iowa and New Hampshire are much less diverse than the US population and bear little resemblance to the Democratic Party’s base.

    Moreover, President Joe Biden and others, notably former presidential candidate Julián Castro, have rightly pointed out that it is much more difficult to participate in a caucus than a primary election.

    Iowa Democrats didn’t do enough to make our caucus system more accessible and transparent before the last couple of presidential election cycles. Party leaders dismissed most calls for serious reform, instead choosing a united front with New Hampshire.

    The party altered the system in 2020, creating a paper trail and reporting raw supporter totals for the first time. But Iowans who wanted to help select a presidential nominee still needed to be in a specific place and time for an hour or more on a cold winter night. No early voting, no absentee voting, no proxy voting.

    The massive problems with reporting the 2020 caucus results after a mobile app malfunctioned further damaged Iowa’s case for remaining first.

    Iowa Democratic leaders proposed bigger changes this year, including “presidential preference cards” that could be mailed before caucus night. The complicated “realignment” process, which sometimes produced screwy delegate math, would have been eliminated as each caucusgoer selected one presidential contender. It was too little, too late.

    Losing the early state slot will make it harder for Iowa Democrats to rebuild. For decades, presidential candidates have helped the party identify supporters and recruit volunteers. Old-timers will tell you Tom Harkin’s first US Senate campaign in 1984 got a big boost from the organizing that preceded that year’s Democratic caucuses.

    Presidential candidates have headlined fundraisers for numerous down-ballot candidates and local party groups in the early states. Their campaigns have paid large sums directly to the Iowa Democratic Party for access to the voter file or tickets to large “cattle call” events. All of that is going away now.

    Financial considerations aside, Iowa’s 2024 Democratic candidates will find it harder to qualify for the ballot without thousands of caucusgoers signing their nominating petitions as they attend their neighborhood caucuses.

    Meanwhile, Iowa GOP candidates and party organizations will continue to enjoy the old ways as presidential hopefuls generate local enthusiasm and boost attendance at events throughout the coming year.

    Republicans, including Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, already are portraying the DNC’s decision as an insult not only to all Iowans but also to all Americans outside urban areas. Gov. Kim Reynolds tweeted, “Democrats have abandoned rural America and denied everyday Iowans a voice in the presidential nominating process.”

    Iowa law requires our state’s precinct caucuses to take place “at least eight days earlier” than the scheduled date for any other state’s caucus or primary in the presidential nominating process. Republicans who control the Iowa Legislature have no interest in changing that law, especially since the GOP is preserving our state’s first-in-the-nation status.

    Iowa Democratic Party Chair Ross Wilburn confirmed last week that Democrats will follow state law “and address compliance with DNC rules” later. So the party will hold caucuses in early 2024 to select delegates to county conventions and members of various party committees.

    But those caucuses will have no broader significance. While more than 100,000 Republicans show up to support their favorite presidential candidate, only hard-core Democratic activists will attend.

    Serious presidential candidates will avoid campaigning here, so as not to lose delegates under the DNC’s new rules, which would penalize contenders who have staff, run ads or give speeches in unsanctioned early states. Iowa will lose half the state’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention as well.

    As Iowa Democrats prepare for life after the caucuses as we know them, they should seek inspiration from state parties that never received the money and attention that comes with being first.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Incoming GOP congressman says party won’t be ‘held hostage’ by McCarthy detractors | CNN Politics

    Incoming GOP congressman says party won’t be ‘held hostage’ by McCarthy detractors | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Republican Rep.-elect Mike Lawler of New York on Sunday offered his full support for House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s speakership bid, saying the party won’t be “held hostage by a handful of members” seeking to place a different Republican atop the chamber.

    “Kevin is the only person that I will be voting for, for speaker, if it’s one vote or multiple votes. And I think there’s many of my colleagues who feel the same way,” Lawler said on “State of the Union” in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. “And frankly, we’re not going to be held hostage by a handful of members, when the overwhelming majority of the conference is in full support of Kevin.”

    Lawler, a state assemblyman, made headlines last month after he unseated New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of House Democrats’ campaign arm, in a Lower Hudson Valley district.

    McCarthy and his critics are gearing up for a potential floor fight over the speakership in January, raising the possibility of a messy intraparty showdown that could bring uncertainty and chaos just as Republicans prepare to enter their new majority.

    While McCarthy insists he will have the 218 votes needed to secure the speaker’s gavel, the conservative hard-liners seeking to plot the California Republican’s ouster say otherwise.

    It’s still not known what would happen on January 3 if McCarthy cannot get 218 votes to be elected speaker. Republicans will only have a narrow majority in the new Congress, with 222 House seats, so McCarthy can only afford to lose four GOP votes. But there’s an expectation that any number of Republicans could throw their hat into the ring if McCarthy stumbles or drops out.

    “I do think cooler heads will prevail. And I do think, on January 3, Kevin will have the necessary votes to become speaker,” Lawler said Sunday, noting, “A month is a long time in politics.”

    In recent weeks, part of McCarthy’s pitch to his critics has been that if they don’t unify, then Democrats could theoretically band together and peel off a few Republicans to elect the next speaker on the floor. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, McCarthy tied his bid for speaker to a number of GOP priorities and warned Republicans against “squandering this majority.”

    “If people don’t come along, that’s going to delay our ability to secure the border. That’s going to delay our ability to become energy independent, that’s going to delay our ability to repeal 87,000 IRS agents, that’s going to delay our ability to hold government accountable,” he said.

    “There’s no subpoena that can go out until that gets done. And right now, it’s actually delaying our ability to govern as we go. So I’m hopeful that everybody comes together, finds a way to govern together,” McCarthy said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link