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  • White House escalates political pressure on GOP as McCarthy unveils debt limit proposal | CNN Politics

    White House escalates political pressure on GOP as McCarthy unveils debt limit proposal | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    White House officials have spent weeks engaged in skirmishes with House Republicans over the looming debt ceiling battle.

    Those skirmishes have now expanded into an all-out war.

    President Joe Biden’s economic speech in Maryland on Wednesday, which leveled a series of policy and political attacks at House Republicans, serves as a critical marker for a White House moving quickly to escalate the political pressure on House Republicans as the calendar moves closer to the deadline to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.

    Months of messaging and rapid response efforts to counter nascent House GOP debt limit proposals evolved this week into a full-scale effort to undercut Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s spending cut and debt ceiling proposal at the moment of its inception.

    Biden’s remarks, though planned for several weeks, provided a window into the trigger for the escalation.

    “Just two days ago the speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy went to Wall Street to describe the MAGA economic vision for American,” Biden said in reference to McCarthy’s speech Monday at the New York Stock Exchange.

    McCarthy’s high-profile remarks, which broadly outlined the Republican push for steep spending cuts in exchange for a debt ceiling increase, set in motion the House Republican push to pass a proposal and shift the entrenched political dynamics.

    “American debt is a ticking time bomb that will detonate unless we take serious, responsible action,” McCarthy said in his New York speech, which previewed a proposal that was made public Wednesday.

    Biden’s remarks, at a union hall in Maryland, served as a clear response.

    “Massive cuts in programs you count on,” Biden said of the outlines of McCarthy’s proposal. “The threat of defaulting on America’s debt for the first time in 230 years.”

    The positions of the two sides remain unchanged – and completely incompatible. Biden and his top advisers say unequivocally they will not negotiate over a debt ceiling increase and will only accept a clean proposal to raise the nation’s borrowing limit. McCarthy and House Republicans have labeled that position a non-starter and are demanding significant spending cuts in order to sign on to any increase.

    The irreconcilable positions underscore the central importance of winning the political and messaging battle that is set to dramatically intensify. With no pathway to reconcile the respective positions, both sides are pointing to the political pressure – and potentially catastrophic economic consequences that would result in a failure to a find a resolution – as critical to crack their opposition.

    Biden’s speech was crafted to crystallize a clear political contrast and detail the legislative wins of Biden’s first two years in office and his agenda’s priorities for the years ahead.

    But the speech was also tailored to directly attack McCarthy and the broad outlines of the California Republican’s forthcoming proposal at the same moment behind the scenes efforts to keep Democrats unified and escalate outside pressure.

    “Folks, it’s the same old trickle-down dressed up in MAGA clothing,” Biden said of McCarthy’s proposal in his remarks. “Only worse.”

    White House officials quietly circulated messaging and polling memos touting Biden’s budget and tax proposal earlier this week. Biden spoke by phone with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Tuesday in what people familiar with the call framed as a discussion that was equal parts ensuring total alignment and mapping out the policy and political strategy ahead.

    “President Biden, Leader Schumer, and Leader Jeffries agree that we won’t negotiate over default and Republicans should pass a clean bill like they did three times in the previous administration,” the White House said in a readout of the call Tuesday night.

    Outside advocacy groups aligned with the White House are also set to ramp up their efforts to highlight Biden’s agenda while attacking the outlines of McCarthy’s proposal.

    The tightly coordinated messaging and political escalation reflects a deadline that is growing closer, officials said. But it also underscores an understanding that McCarthy and his leadership team face their own critical intraparty moment as they attempt to coalesce around their own proposal ahead of a vote next week.

    That House Republican plan, should McCarthy whip the votes to pass it, is dead on arrival in the Senate. White House officials view the proposal less as a tangible way to shift the entrenched political dynamics and more as an opportunity to launch a whole new array of policy attacks, officials say.

    Republicans have made clear, however, they view the opposite as true. A House-passed bill should force Biden to the table and serve as a demonstration of Republican unity and resolve.

    “President Biden and Senator Schumer have no right to play politics with the debt ceiling,” McCarthy said on the House floor Wednesday, calling on Biden and Democrats to enter negotiations.

    McCarthy has insisted he can marshal the votes to pass his proposal. White House officials have privately been skeptical that’s the case given the fractious dynamics of the conference.

    But at a critical moment in a fight that is set to envelope Washington in the months ahead, White House officials are intent on making McCarthy’s job as difficult as possible.

    “The American people should know about the competing economic visions of the country that are really at stake right now,” Biden said.

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  • How Congress lost control of the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    How Congress lost control of the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

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    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 Supreme Court holds more power than it used to and, thanks to its “shadow docket,” can make consequential decisions that affect every American without so much as a written decision.

    That’s my takeaway from a fascinating and educational new book by Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas who is also a CNN contributor.

    I talked to Vladeck about “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which publishes on May 16. Excerpts of our conversation, conducted by phone, are below.

    WOLF: Can you explain to people what you mean by “shadow docket”?

    VLADECK: The term is not mine. It was coined by University of Chicago law professor Will Baude in 2015.

    Will meant it really as this umbrella term. Not as a pejorative, but just as a description of the fact that the vast majority of rulings that the Supreme Court hands down that we don’t pay attention to.

    They’re not the fancy decisions on the merits docket. They’re not the cases where the court hears oral arguments and writes these lengthy rulings with concurrences and dissents.

    The typical shadow docket ruling is an unsigned, unexplained order. And most of them are banal. But not all of them.

    Will’s insight, which I have rather shamelessly appropriated, is that there’s a lot of really important stuff that happens through unsigned, unexplained orders. Just because they’re unsigned and unexplained doesn’t mean that we ought not to care about them, talk about them, study them and try to divine broader patterns from them.

    WOLF: You write about how the court, without explaining itself, either invalidated or influenced congressional maps in the last election in three states: Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana. Right now, Republicans have a four-seat majority in the House. Do you feel like those decisions determined the outcome of who was going to control the House?

    VLADECK: I think it’s close. We’re talking about two decisions from the court in cases from Alabama and Louisiana, and then those decisions were directly followed in Georgia.

    There’s no question that, but for the court’s interventions, at least three House seats in the current Congress would likely have been controlled by Democrats as opposed to Republicans.

    What I think is really hard to say is what other effects might have followed. The New York Times has suggested that those decisions affected control of as many as seven to 10 House seats. That, I think, is a little more circumstantial.

    There’s no question that the decisions in the Alabama and Louisiana cases helped to give the Republicans the majority they currently have in the House. Whether they actually directly affected control, I think is a close call.

    WOLF: Justice Samuel Alito is unapologetic about use of the shadow docket. Chief Justice John Roberts and other conservatives dislike it. How have things changed in recent months? Has it been used more or less since you stopped writing this book?

    VLADECK: With regard to what I think is the problematic behavior on the shadow docket, I think we have seen less of that in the current term. And actually, I think we can see patterns of that go all the way down to October 2021, when Justice (Amy Coney) Barrett wrote this very, very cryptic concurrence in a case about the Covid vaccine mandate for Maine health care workers.

    It was delphic in what it said, but signaled a bit of a break between Barrett and (Brett) Kavanaugh, who joined that opinion, and Justices (Clarence) Thomas, Alito and (Neil) Gorsuch in how often they were going to be willing to vote to intervene on the shadow docket and what kinds of cases they were willing to intervene in.

    Last week, the stay in the Oklahoma death penalty case, Richard Glossip, there were no dissents from that intervention. Even the mifepristone ruling in April, there are only two public dissents.

    One of the really interesting stories here is the court really does seem to have moderated at least some of its behavior. Part of that, I think, is because to at least some degree, the median justices have become convinced that some of the court’s prior behavior is problematic.

    WOLF: Do you have thoughts on motivations behind the rise of the shadow docket, which you pegged to the seating of Justice Barrett and this new conservative supermajority? Do you think that there was some concerted effort by the more conservative justices to exploit this?

    VLADECK: I think the short answer is no. But I know that there are going to be folks who disagree.

    The book tries to unpack some of this chronologically, because I think the story makes a lot of sense when told in sequence.

    Starting in 2017, the court was confronted with an unprecedented flurry of emergency applications from the Trump administration. It reacted to those applications iteratively, one at a time, without actually stepping back and looking at the whole waterfront, so the court actually kept digging itself in deeper and deeper.

    Had the justices actually taken a step back and asked whether this was a practice they wanted to condone, they might not have said yes. And I think with each new intervention, with each successive case, what had previously been extraordinary became ordinary.

    Without there necessarily having been any deliberateness or malice, the conservative majority just routinized the types of interventions that had until 2017 been completely unroutine.

    It’s only when we get to the Covid cases in 2020 and 2021 that now it starts to look like some of this is willful, because it’s only in those cases where we see the court deciding legal questions on the shadow docket through emergency applications that were in front of the justices already on the merits docket.

    There was nothing stopping the court from using merits cases to reach these questions about religious liberty, and the court did it through the shadow docket anyway.

    I really think it started as just an unstructured off-the-cuff reaction to unusually aggressive behavior by the Trump administration and then just sort of morphed into something else as time went on.

    WOLF: You point to the Obergefell decision (legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide) to argue that the court had already spoken on same-sex marriage through years of inaction. There was a patchwork of marriage laws the court had tolerated for a number of years. Reading that made me think we’re returning to that with abortion rights. And certainly with guns. The patchwork nature of rights in this country is growing not shrinking, despite the gay marriage decision.

    VLADECK: I think it’s grown in some respects and is shrinking and others. The more that the Supreme Court constitutionalizes things, the less of a patchwork we have.

    If you look at the Second Amendment context, I think it’s actually less of a patchwork, because more and more variances in how localities regulate guns are being struck down by the courts for violating the federal Constitution. Versus contests where the court is stepping away from constitutional enforcement, like abortion. It’s more contextual than sort of categorical.

    WOLF: I’ve done a lot of writing about the filibuster, which is this custom that has evolved to be a major part of the US government and slowed or stalled legislation in Congress. Your descriptions of how the court has evolved reminded me of that. You argue the justices have essentially grabbed power from Congress over the last 100 years or so to gain more control over their docket.

    VLADECK: When we look at the court today, we see a court that controls virtually all of its docket, a court that decides not just which cases it’s going to hear, but which issues it’s going to decide within the cases it chooses to hear.

    For most of us, we’ve never known anything different. And so we just assume that that’s how the court is supposed to operate.

    The reality is totally different. Until 1891, and really in practice until 1925, virtually all of the court’s docket was mandatory – the court had to decide any case over which it had jurisdiction.

    That made it a lot harder for the justices to have an agenda. It made it a lot harder for the justices to target particular disputes and look around for cases. The rise of certiorari, of docket discretion, is actually a thoroughly untold but undeniable part of the story of why today’s Supreme Court is so powerful, despite the founders’ views that this would be the least dangerous branch.

    The court today actually has a ton of power. Some of that story is about a power grab.

    But a fair amount of the story is about acquiescence and abdication by Congress, which gave the court the certiorari power in the first instance; which never reined it in, even as the court has seemed to used it to claim more and more power; and which in 1988 took all the brakes off of certiorari and said, yep, just about all the court’s docket is going to be discretionary – and which has done absolutely nothing since then to exercise any modicum of control over the court’s docket.

    That’s why the story that the book tries to tell is not just a story about the court. It is a story about the separation of powers and how the shadow docket is in some respects just a symptom of the broader disease of separation of powers dysfunction that we’re seeing right now.

    WOLF: You come back to that 1988 law repeatedly in the book. I wonder what you think Congress should do now to change the court. There are proposals to change the number of justices, to change the terms of justices. What would be your prescription?

    VLADECK: My prescription is sort of even sillier, which is I would just start by doing something. To me, the problem is that Congress has gotten completely out of the business of exercising any leverage over the courts, so much so that when Chief Justice Roberts was invited to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he responds and says that would raise the separation of powers concern.

    No it wouldn’t! Justices testify all the time. Or at least they did historically, and no one ever thought that was unconstitutional.

    There are specific things Congress can do, but the real thing Congress needs to do is just more than nothing. Exercise more control over the court’s docket. Use the budget, if necessary, as a cudgel.

    If nationwide injunctions are a problem that’s responsible for why the court is behaving in this way, make it easier for parties to appeal nationwide injunctions directly to the court without having to go through the emergency application process.

    There are so many things Congress could do. The problem is that we’re stuck in this post-1988 mindset that it is not Congress’ job. When we look at the court today, we look at the ethics issues, the docket issues, the legitimacy debates – a lot of what’s going on here is a court that’s just not remotely checked and not worrying about being checked.

    And this is why I’m a bit more circumspect about adding seats to the court or term limits. I don’t think changing the composition of the court changes the basic problem, which is the power dynamic, the Madisonian idea in Federalist 51, that ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

    That doesn’t change just because you have different bodies in those seats. The way that changes is Congress reasserts its clear constitutional prerogatives over the court. And that’s part of the story the book tries to tell.

    WOLF: You also talked quite a bit about this idea that the court gets most of its power from the legitimacy it has in the public. What should it do to restore its legitimacy?

    VLADECK: “Restore” is a little strong. I have not given up on the court. But I think there’s a lot that the justices can do to at least give a sense that they actually care about public perception, and that they should care about public perception.

    First, I think it would be nice if the justices would stop attacking critics as seeking to delegitimize the court. If you think the criticisms are unfair, then respond on the substance as opposed to attacking the people who are criticizing.

    When it comes to the shadow docket specifically, I think the justices can commit internally to norms about writings providing some rationale whenever the court’s going to grant emergency relief and actually upset the status quo.

    I think the court can commit to taking pains to make sure in each case that it’s explaining how the relevant criteria for emergency relief are met, that it’s explaining why it disagrees with lower courts, who in many cases are writing lengthy opinions that are getting quashed in a sentence.

    More generally, the justices could emulate better behavior when it comes to emergency applications and what the court’s role is in responding to them.

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  • Harris accuses ‘so-called leaders’ of pushing propaganda and waging culture wars in fiery Florida speech | CNN Politics

    Harris accuses ‘so-called leaders’ of pushing propaganda and waging culture wars in fiery Florida speech | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Vice President Kamala Harris went headfirst into flashpoint culture war issues Friday when she slammed Florida Republicans for the state Board of Education’s newly approved set of standards for teaching Black history, accusing “so-called leaders” of pushing propaganda and willfully misleading children.

    It’s the latest example of Harris acting as a rapid response voice for the administration, quickly deploying around the country in the immediate aftermath of a controversial vote or law being passed to offer forceful pushback of moves taken by state Republicans on guns, abortion and education. On Wednesday, the Florida Board of Education approved a new set of standards for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools, sparking criticism from education and civil rights advocates who said students should be allowed to learn the “full truth” of American history.

    “We know the history. And let us not let these politicians who are trying to divide our country win” Harris said in her fiery high-profile speech. “They are creating these unnecessary debates. This is unnecessary to debate whether enslaved people benefited from slavery. Are you kidding me? Are we supposed to debate that?”

    Harris said that she was concerned Republicans want to “replace history with lies.” She highlighted new standards, which, according to a document posted to the state’s Department of Education website, require instruction for middle schoolers to include “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

    It is the latest development in the state’s ongoing debate over African American history, including the education department’s rejection of a preliminary pilot version of an Advanced Placement African American Studies course for high school students, which it claimed lacked educational value. The White House has spoken out forcefully against book bans and other steps to remove elements of American history from school curricula, and the issue was included in Biden’s reelection announcement video in April.

    The president’s advisers view the issue as one that can galvanize Democrats in next year’s elections, and Harris’ presence in the state at the epicenter of boiling culture wars seeks to present Harris and Biden as the safeguards against extremist steps that could limit freedoms and speech.

    On her eighth trip to Florida since taking office, Harris criticized the state’s governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis – though not by name – in what has become a clear strategy to increase the Biden administration’s engagement with the Republican. That strategy has been bolstered by polling and research showing Americans opposed to banning books that include information on slavery and other issues.

    DeSantis hit back Friday, accusing Harris and Democrats in a tweet of spreading lies “to cover for their agenda” and telling reporters in Utah that the vice president’s criticism of Florida’s Board of Education was “absolutely ridiculous.”

    Earlier in the day, the former California attorney general had adopted a prosecutorial cadence to shine light on the Biden administration’s efforts to stand as a safeguard against what she called a national agenda by extremists to claw back rights.

    “These extremists, so-called leaders should model what we know to be the correct and right approach if we really are invested in the well-being of our children. Instead, they dare to push propaganda to our children. This is the United States of America. We’re not supposed to do that,” she said.

    Harris made the point that American allies and enemies abroad know the history of slavery in the US but these proposals, she alleged, would leave children from the US without that same knowledge.

    “That’s building in a handicap for our children that they are going to be the ones in the room who don’t know their own history with the rest of the world,” she said.

    On the standards themselves, Harris described the atrocities of slavery in detail, reciting how children were ripped from their mothers’ arms and were treated as less than human.

    “So, in the context of that, how is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization,” Harris questioned.

    Asked by CNN about the benchmark, DeSantis deflected, saying he “wasn’t involved.”

    “You should talk to them about it. I didn’t do it. I wasn’t involved in it,” the governor said.

    Pressed further, DeSantis said: “I think that they’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into, into doing things later in life. But the reality is, all of that is rooted in whatever is factual. They listed everything out. And if you have any questions about it, just ask the Department of Education.”

    Harris has spent the summer months traveling the country to speak out in support of freedoms she and Democrats believe are under attack by Republicans, including abortion and the right to learn. The vice president has appeared in front of base Democratic voters that include Black voters, women and young people to deliver her message.

    Friday’s last-minute trip to Florida – it was only scheduled on Thursday night – marks the second time this year she’s delivered high-profile remarks in the Sunshine State meant to condemn Republican attacks on rights. Harris told the mainly Black crowd in Jacksonville’s historic LaVille neighborhood that the administration was listening and quickly responding to their concerns.

    “You are not alone,” Harris said.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Kentucky law aimed at increasing parental oversight in education takes effect | CNN Politics

    Kentucky law aimed at increasing parental oversight in education takes effect | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    A Kentucky law that aims to increase oversight in public schools by making it easier for parents to file complaints about – and, if desired, shield their children from – “harmful” materials has gone into effect after Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear declined to veto a Republican-pushed bill.

    Senate Bill 5 makes Kentucky the latest state to join a push by Republicans nationwide to champion so-called parental rights in the classroom.

    “Harmful” material, as defined in the bill, may “contain the exposure, in an obscene manner, of the unclothed or apparently unclothed human male or female genitals, pubic area, or buttocks or the female breast, or visual depictions of sexual acts or simulations of sexual acts, or explicit written descriptions of sexual acts.”

    The new law will establish a process for parents to lodge complaints. School principals will determine if the material in question is indeed inappropriate (the determinations can be appealed), and a parent may request that their child is blocked from seeing it.

    By not vetoing the bill, Beshear is allowing the law to go into effect. Michael Adams, Kentucky’s secretary of state, confirmed Monday that his office had received the bill.

    In a statement, Beshear’s office said the bill “is about creating a process that most school districts already have” and did not elaborate.

    The Kentucky chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, however, had called for Beshear to veto the bill.

    “Senate Bill 5 is part of a long history of attempted government censorship, and overrides systems already in place to review and analyze materials to determine if they are appropriate for students,” Kate Miller, the advocacy director for the ACLU of Kentucky, said. “This bill is blatant government overreach and adds additional layers of bureaucracy on already overburdened school employees, and during a massive teacher shortage.”

    Parental rights in education emerged as a significant political issue for the GOP during the Covid-19 pandemic, when school closures, along with mask and vaccine mandates, upended family routines and renewed scrutiny over school leadership. Republicans across the country, arguing that certain discussions around race, gender identity and sexuality are inappropriate for young children, have used the banner of “parental rights” to push for a curtailment of such conversations in schools, even though opinions on the matter vary widely among parents.

    Critics have broadly argued Republicans have used the issue to turn the classroom into a battleground and advance a political agenda. LGBTQ rights advocates, in particular, have argued it is a conscious effort to stigmatize a vulnerable slice of American society and could have a chilling effect on what they believe to be urgently needed discussions.

    In some states, such as Texas, Florida and Iowa, parental permission is now needed to discuss certain topics with students. Other states, such as Georgia, have put parents and school communities in charge of vetting books their children could encounter at school for signs of race-related or sexual themes, appealing to conservatives who have voiced concerns about “radical” literature.

    Last week, the GOP-led House of Representatives passed a bill requiring schools to provide parents with a list of books and reading materials available in the school library and post curriculum publicly, though the legislation is likely to fail in the Democratic-led Senate.

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  • The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2024 | CNN Politics

    The 10 Senate seats most likely to flip in 2024 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Opportunity is ripe for Republicans to win back the Senate next year – if they can land the candidates to pull it off.

    The GOP needs a net gain of one or two seats to flip the chamber, depending on which party wins the White House in 2024, and it’s Democrats who are defending the tougher seats. Democrats hold seven of the 10 seats that CNN ranks as most likely to flip party control next year – and the top three are all in states former President Donald Trump carried twice.

    But this spring’s recruitment season, coming on the heels of a midterm cycle marred by problematic GOP candidates, will likely go a long way toward determining how competitive the Senate map is next year.

    National Republicans got a top pick last week, with Gov. Jim Justice announcing his Senate bid in West Virginia – the seat most likely to flip party control in 2024. (Rankings are based on CNN’s reporting, fundraising figures and historical data about how states and candidates have performed.) But Justice appears headed for a contentious and expensive primary. And in many other top races, the GOP hasn’t yet landed any major candidates.

    Democrats, meanwhile, are thankful that most of their vulnerable incumbents are running for reelection, while a high-profile House member has largely cleared the field for one of their open Senate seats.

    Pollster asked Democrats who they like for 2024. Here’s what he found

    The unknown remains West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Responding to Justice’s candidacy, Manchin – who has said he’ll decide about running by the end of the year – had this to say to CNN about a potentially messy GOP primary: “Let the games begin.”

    The anti-tax Club for Growth’s political arm has already committed to spending $10 million to back West Virginia Rep. Alex Mooney in the GOP primary. And tensions between the club, which has turned against Trump, and more establishment Republicans could become a feature of several top Senate races this cycle, especially with the National Republican Senatorial Committee weighing more aggressive involvement in primaries to weed out candidates it doesn’t think can win general elections.

    In the 2022 cycle, most of Trump’s handpicked candidates in swing states stumbled in the general election. But the former president picked up a key endorsement this week from NRSC Chair Steve Daines. The Montana Republican has stayed close with Trump, CNN has previously reported, in a bid to ensure he’s aligned with leadership.

    Democrats defending tough seats have previously used GOP primaries to their advantage. Manchin survived in 2018 in part because his opponent was state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. That wasn’t an accident. Democrats had spent big attacking one of his primary opponents to keep him out of the general election.

    Last year’s midterms underscored that candidates really do matter after Republicans failed to harness favorable national winds in some key races. In a presidential year, the national environment is likely to loom large, especially with battleground states hosting key Senate races. It will also test whether some of the last remaining senators who represent states that back the opposite parties’ presidential nominees can hold on.

    President Joe Biden, who carried half of the states on this list in 2020, made official last week that he’s running for reelection. The GOP presidential field is slowly growing, with Trump still dominating most primary polling. It’s too early to know, however, what next year’s race for the White House will look like or which issues, whether it’s abortion or crime or the economy, will resonate.

    So for now, the parties are focused on what they can control: candidates. Even though the 2024 map is stacked in their favor, Republicans can’t win with nobody. But there’s plenty of time for would-be senators to get into these races. Some filing deadlines – in Arizona, for example – aren’t for nearly another year. And there’s an argument to be made that well-funded or high-profile names have no reason to get in early.

    Here’s where the Senate map stands 18 months from Election Day.

    Incumbent: Democrat Joe Manchin

    joe manchin 2024 senate race

    Sen. Joe Manchin isn’t one to shy away from attention – and he’s getting plenty of it by keeping everyone guessing about his reelection plans. Assuming he runs, Democrats will have a fighting chance to defend this seat in a state Trump carried by 39 points in 2020. The senator has repeatedly broken with the White House – on Biden’s first veto and the White House’s debt ceiling stance, for example.

    Without Manchin, Democrats know West Virginia is all but lost. Manchin raised only $371,000 in this year’s first fundraising quarter, which ended March 31, and Republicans are already attacking him, with One Nation – the issue advocacy group aligned with Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell – launching an ad campaign tying him to the Inflation Reduction Act. (The senator went on Fox News last week and threatened to back a repeal of his own bill.) Still, Manchin has nearly $10 million in the bank, as well as outside cover from Democratic-allied groups.

    Republicans will likely be spending quite a lot of time and money attacking each other in the primary. The Club for Growth’s political arm is backing House Freedom Caucus member Alex Mooney, while Gov. Jim Justice will likely have backup from GOP party leaders. The wealthy governor, who was first elected as a Democrat before switching parties in 2017, has high name ID and is close with Trump. Mooney also has Trumpian credentials, having won a member-on-member House primary last year with the former president’s endorsement. The congressman is already attacking the governor in an ad as “Liberal Jim Justice,” using imagery of his opponent in a face mask.

    Incumbent: Democrat Jon Tester

    jon tester 2024 senate race

    Democrats got welcome news with Sen. Jon Tester’s announcement that he’s running for a fourth term – and that he raised $5 million in the first quarter (more than a million of which came from small-dollar donors). Tester is running in Trump country – Montana backed the former president by 16 points in 2020 – but like Manchin he has a well-established brand to draw on, which includes breaking with Biden when he needs to. (Tester also voted for a GOP resolution to roll back a Biden administration ESG investing rule, which prompted the president’s first veto.) The GOP field is still taking shape. Republicans are interested in retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, a businessman with the potential to self-fund, and state Attorney General Austin Knudsen.

    Another potential candidate is Rep. Matt Rosendale, who lost to Tester in 2018 after winning the GOP nomination with the help of the Club for Growth, which has recently been at odds with Trump. Rosendale made a telling appearance at Mar-a-Lago in April for Trump’s post-indictment speech after snubbing the former president’s pick for House speaker in January when he didn’t back Kevin McCarthy. The congressman hasn’t said yet whether he’s running, but he raised only about $127,000 in the first quarter of the year – well short of what he’d need for a competitive Senate bid.

    Incumbent: Democrat Sherrod Brown

    sherrod brown 2024 senate race

    Sen. Sherrod Brown is the only Democrat to win a nonjudicial statewide race in Ohio over the past decade, so the big question for 2024 is whether he can defy expectations again in his red-trending state. Trump has twice carried the Buckeye State by 8 points, and his handpicked candidate, JD Vance, defeated Democrat Tim Ryan by about 6 points in last year’s Senate race despite the Republican’s campaign struggles.

    Brown is much more of an institution in Ohio than Ryan, and he’s built up relationships not just among White working-class communities but urban centers too. He raised $3.6 million in the first quarter of the year. Two wealthy Republicans are in the race to try to take him on – businessman Bernie Moreno, whom Trump has praised, and state Sen. Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team. Both men ran for Senate in 2022, but Moreno dropped out ahead of the primary. Dolan, who ran as a moderate conservative less than enthralled with Trump and his election lies, finished third in a crowded field. Rep. Warren Davidson and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose could also jump into this year’s GOP race.

    Incumbent: Independent Kyrsten Sinema

    kyrsten sinema 2024 senate race

    Arizona has the potential to be one of the most interesting races this cycle, but a lot depends on whether Democratic-turned-independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema runs for reelection. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, who’s running to her left, outraised the incumbent $3.8 million to $2.1 million in the first quarter. Sinema has a clear cash-on-hand advantage – nearly $10 million to Gallego’s $2.7 million.

    Earlier this month, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb became the first major Republican to enter the race, leaning into a law enforcement message. But the filing deadline isn’t until next April, so there’s still plenty of time for others to jump in. Some Republicans are anxious about the potential entry of Kari Lake, last year’s losing gubernatorial nominee, who still maintains she won. She’d likely be popular with the base in a state that’s become a hotbed of election denialism, but her candidacy could pose a serious risk for the party in a general election. The NRSC recently pushed her to move away from election conspiracy theories, CNN reported.

    Former attorney general nominee Abe Hamadeh and Karrin Taylor Robson, who lost last year’s gubernatorial primary to Lake, have also met with NRSC officials, CNN reported. Also in the mix could be Republican businessman Jim Lamon, who lost the party nod for the state’s other Senate seat last year. Republicans would like to see Sinema run because she and Gallego would likely split the vote on the left. But they’ve got their work cut out from them in landing a candidate who can appeal to the GOP base without alienating the general electorate in a state that narrowly backed Biden in 2020.

    Incumbent: Democrat Jacky Rosen

    jacky rosen 2024 senate race

    Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is, as expected, running for reelection, touting her middle-class roots and bipartisan legislative wins in an announcement video in April. “Nevada is always a battleground,” the senator says – a reminder that Democrats don’t want to take this state for granted. Rosen was first elected in 2018 – a midterm year – by 5 points. Last fall, her Democratic colleague, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, defeated former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt by less than a point.

    The state tends to get bluer in presidential years, but Biden and Hillary Clinton both carried it only by about 2 points. Republicans don’t yet have a major name in the race, but they’re watching two defeated candidates from last year – Army veteran Sam Brown, who lost the GOP Senate nod, and attorney April Becker, who lost a bid for a redrawn House seat.

    Incumbent: Democrat Tammy Baldwin

    tammy baldwin 2024 senate race

    Sen. Tammy Baldwin announced earlier this month that she’s running for a third term, giving Democrats an automatic advantage for now over Republicans, who have no declared candidates in this perennial battleground state. Baldwin raised $2.1 million in the first quarter, ending with nearly $4 million in the bank.

    Establishment Republicans have expressed strong interest in Rep. Mike Gallagher. Even Rep. Tom Tiffany, who recently bought Senate web domain names, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he thought his fellow congressman should run. But there’s little sign that Gallagher, the chair of the new House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party, is interested. Two businessmen with the ability to tap into or raise significant resources could be in the mix – Eric Hovde, who lost the GOP Senate nomination in 2012, and Scott Mayer. And then there’s controversial former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who could draw support in a GOP primary but seriously complicate a general election for Republicans.

    Democrats are feeling good about the recent state Supreme Court election, which the Democratic-backed candidate won by 10 points, flipping control of the bench to liberals. Still, the competitiveness of this state – which Biden carried by about half a point after Trump had won it by a similar margin four years earlier – shouldn’t be underestimated.

    Incumbent: Democrat Debbie Stabenow (retiring)

    debbie stabenow 2024 senate race

    Rep. Elissa Slotkin has mostly cleared the Democratic field of major rivals in the race to succeed retiring Democrat Debbie Stabenow in another Midwestern battleground state. A few less-known names are in, and actor Hill Harper – of “The Good Doctor” and “CSI: NY” – could throw his hat in the Democratic ring, but it’ll be hard to rival Slotkin’s fundraising. She brought in about $3 million in the first quarter.

    On the GOP side, State Board of Education member Nikki Snyder announced her campaign in mid-February, but she hadn’t raised much money by the end of the first quarter. Former Rep. Peter Meijer could run, but his vote to impeach Trump would likely kill his prospects of winning the nomination – unless it were a heavily splintered primary field. Other possible GOP names include businessman Kevin Rinke and former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, who finished second and sixth, respectively, in last year’s gubernatorial primary. (Craig was a write-in candidate after failing to make the ballot because of invalid signatures.)

    Michigan Democrats did well last year – retaining the top three executive offices and flipping the state legislature – and they feel optimistic about their chances in the state in a presidential year. Still, Biden only won the state by less than 3 points. And while Slotkin has experience winning tough races, a lot may depend on whom the GOP nominates and which way the national winds are blowing next year.

    Incumbent: Democrat Bob Casey

    bob casey 2024 senate race

    Democrats breathed another sigh of relief when Sen. Bob Casey, who disclosed a prostate cancer diagnosis earlier this year, announced that he was running for a fourth term. A former state auditor general and treasurer and the son of a two-term governor, Casey is well known in the Keystone State. He most recently won reelection by 13 points against a hard-line congressman who had tied himself closely to Trump.

    This year, national Republicans are eyeing former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick, who lost the GOP nomination for Senate last year, as a top-tier recruit. Upon Casey’s reelection announcement, McCormick immediately attacked him, saying in a statement that a vote for Casey was “a vote for Biden and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer.” The wealthy Republican has been on tour promoting his new book, “Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America,” and has hired staff but has yet to launch a campaign.

    And consternation remains among national Republicans that losing 2022 gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano could jump into the race. An election denier who lost by 15 points last fall, Mastriano could jeopardize the race for Republicans. His candidacy would likely inspire a concerted effort by national Republicans to defeat him in the primary.

    Incumbent: Republican Ted Cruz

    ted cruz 2024 senate race

    Texas and Florida – both in a far different category of competitiveness compared with the rest of the states on this list – are trading places this month. GOP Sen. Ted Cruz is running for reelection after passing on another presidential bid. He raised $1.3 million in the first quarter – relatively little for a massive, expensive state – and ended March with $3.3 million in the bank. He’s proved to be a compelling boogeyman for the left, with Democrat Beto O’Rourke raising millions to try to unseat him in 2018, ultimately coming up less than 3 points short.

    After a gubernatorial loss last year, O’Rourke hasn’t made any noise about this race. But Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, who raised about half a million dollars in the first quarter, is looking at it. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who represents Uvalde, is also weighing a bid, the San Antonio Express-News reported. Still, unseating Cruz in a state Trump won by nearly 6 points in 2020 will be a tall order.

    Incumbent: Republican Rick Scott

    rick scott 2024 senate race

    Sen. Rick Scott has a history of close elections – he was first elected in 2018 by a fraction of a point following two prior narrow wins for governor. But GOP Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis won commanding victories last fall, suggesting the state is getting redder.

    Democrats don’t seem to have a major candidate as yet, but whoever opposes Scott is likely to use his controversial policy proposal – released last year during his NRSC chairmanship – against him. Scott’s plan had originally proposed sunsetting all federal programs every five years, but the senator later added a carve-out for Medicare and Social Security amid backlash from his own party. His most immediate headache could come in the form of intraparty attacks along those lines – and others.

    Attorney Keith Gross has launched a primary challenge, alluding in his announcement video to Scott’s tenure as the head of a hospital chain company that the Justice Department investigated for health care fraud. While the company pleaded guilty to fraudulent Medicare billing, among other things, and paid $1.7 billion in fines, Scott wasn’t charged with a crime. It’s unclear how much of his own money Gross, who previously ran for office in Georgia as a Democrat, would put into a campaign.

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  • GOP hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy finds some fans in a very Trumpy place | CNN Politics

    GOP hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy finds some fans in a very Trumpy place | CNN Politics

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    West Palm Beach, Florida
    CNN
     — 

    They wore Trump hats and Trump T-shirts and cheered wildly when former President Donald Trump took the stage to fireworks. But at the Turning Point Action conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, some of the conservative attendees said they had a little space in their hearts for Vivek Ramaswamy – the GOP newcomer running a longshot presidential primary bid against Trump, whom he has promised to pardon if it comes to that.

    What they told CNN they liked most was the way Ramaswamy comes across on TV. The 37-year-old extremely wealthy pharmaceutical entrepreneur has never held public office, but he’s quick and assertive, and has become a frequent guest on cable news and conservative YouTube channels. He’s best known for denouncing “wokeness,” which he says has infected American corporations and investment banks that influence them.

    Karen Colby – standing next to the sequin-packed “Trump Girl Shop” booth featuring “Theresa’s Concealed Carry Handbags.” – said she’d recently seen Ramaswamy on TV. “I forget what he was actually saying, but I said, ‘Dang, I really like him. I like him a lot,’” said Colby, a Republican from Broward County, Florida. “I like his values. I like what he says. I like his no-nonsense attitude. … If he does not earn the position of president, I would love to see him as vice president. President Trump: if you’re listening, choose Vivek.”

    In Republican primary polls, Ramaswamy is competitive with seasoned politicians, though still in single figures and far behind Trump. CNN did not encounter a Turning Point attendee who had something nice to say about former Vice President Mike Pence, who many saw as having betrayed Trump by certifying the 2020 election results. The pro-Trump crowd did not like former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has been critical of the former president. And though Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was popular at the conference last year, he’s now fallen out of favor with this crowd amid his challenge to Trump, according to Turning Point spokesperson Andrew Kolvet.

    Former President Donald Trump, who took the stage as fireworks were set off, remained the clear favorite.

    But that didn’t kill their appetite for one of DeSantis’s signature issues: “wokeness.” And on that subject, they found a lot to like in Ramaswamy, who wrote a book called “Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.” His argument is that corporations make statements about liberal social values and climate change at the expense of their profits, and that that is bad for investors and consumers.

    Dolan Bair, a student at Wheaton College in Illinois, found Ramaswamy’s argument convincing. He thought a lot of big companies “push more liberal agendas,” and “maybe the government should not allow them to hold their liberal values over their consumers and their employees.”

    Dolan Bair, center, said he found liberal values too pervasive in society.

    Sure, Apple and Google were private companies, he said, but they’re so large he couldn’t avoid them. He could buy a different beer than Bud Light but there wasn’t a good option for a non-woke search engine.

    Bair believed gay people had been treated unfairly, even imprisoned, in the past. “But at what point does Pride Month go away?” he asked. “When does when does Pride Month become two months? When does it become Pride Year?” CNN asked how a Pride Year – with more rainbow merchandise at Target, for instance – would affect him personally. “They could be using their money to go into R&D for better products, or lowering their product prices,” he said, echoing an argument made by Ramaswamy.

    Sam Mathew said he agreed with Ramaswamy's call to include gender issues in his platform.

    Sam Mathew was the most ardent Ramaswamy supporter CNN found, decked out in merch bearing the campaign’s slogan, “Truth.” “I like the way Vivek delivers the message on how to bring the country together by following the truth,” Mathew said. What did he mean by truth? “Truth, basically, to me, is exposing the lies,” he said.

    Ramaswamy campaigns on “10 truths,” starting with “God is real,” and “There are only two genders.” CNN asked Mathew why the gender issue was so important, given the scale of national and global problems. “If you don’t have a base, where there’s a man and a woman – and if you’re confusing the young generation with a third gender, or a fourth gender, or a fifth gender – then the whole concept of humanity is lost,” Mathew said.

    Mathew, an Indian American like Ramaswamy, immigrated to the US in the late 80s and went to college in Michigan. Back then, he saw hardly any other Indians in his neighborhood. Mathew knew racism existed. But since the Obama administration, he said, there was too much focus on race from elites. He felt liberal social values were being “pushed” through “constant bombarding” from news media, teachers’ unions, and universities. “I don’t know much about what is being taught, but from what I hear, it’s mostly telling Black kids that White people are bad, in simple terms,” Mathew said.

    In the conference’s presidential straw poll, Trump won 86% of votes. When attendees were asked for their second choice, Ramaswamy got 51%.

    As Trump was about to take the stage at the conference, CNN got a text from Kolvet, the Turning Point spokesperson, asking if If there was interest in an interview with Ramaswamy, a man who has raised his profile with his openness to all media – from network TV to niche podcasts. Shortly before the interview began, Ramaswamy got an email from Jordan Peterson asking him to come for another podcast chat. Peterson is a Canadian psychology professor best known for his opposition to what he calls “cultural Marxism” and his advice to young men that they stand up straight and clean their rooms.

    In his interview with CNN – as he has in many, many other venues – Ramaswamy went to his central point and said wokeness was a “symptom of a cultural cancer” that was filling a hole in the hearts of people who had lost their national identity.

    “I think the way we win is by taking a long, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves who we really are as individuals – it is not just our race, it is not just our sexual identity or our gender, it is not just our political affiliation,” Ramaswamy said. “Ask ourselves, ‘Who am I as an individual?’ I’m not riding some tectonic plate of group identity. I am me. You are you,” he said.

    “I think the right way to deal with what I view as the last final burning embers of racism is to let that quietly burn out rather than trying to put that fire out by accidentally throwing kerosene on it,” Ramaswamy said.

    Images of Trump, left, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, right, covered with messages written on sticky notes at the Turning Point Action conference.

    Turning Point had set up a wall with three-foot cardboard cutouts of all the candidates’ faces, and invited conference-goers to write what they thought of each on sticky notes. On Ramaswamy’s face, most views had been positive – “the future,” “unite us plz,” “Vivek have my children,” “Trump’s VP.”

    But there was a dark side: two messages had white nationalist references. On one, a Star of David crossed out with the word “soon.” On the other, “1488,” which combines code for a slogan about protecting White children with code for “Heil Hitler.”

    Ramaswamy said he had not seen the notes or ever heard of the 1488 meme. He knew racism still existed and had experienced it. But people faced a choice, he said, whether to “wallow” in it.

    When CNN pointed out the notes to Kolvet, the Turning Point spokesperson, he took them down.

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  • Ron DeSantis is targeting the free speech protections that might save Fox News | CNN Politics

    Ron DeSantis is targeting the free speech protections that might save Fox News | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    As Fox News faces legal peril over its coverage of Donald Trump’s 2020 election lies, one of its most featured Republicans, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is trying to gut the free speech protections that may ultimately save the network from financial ruin.

    DeSantis and his GOP allies in the state legislature have proposed a sweeping overhaul to defamation laws here that would make it far easier to sue news organizations in Florida. The legislation, fashioned to punish media outlets over their coverage of conservatives, would turn the state into a battleground over the future of the First Amendment.

    But in doing so, DeSantis has sparked warnings from the right that his attempts to target the mainstream media will result in headaches for conservative outlets as well. Among the most vulnerable, opponents have said, could be the media organizations that have done the most to promote DeSantis amid his ascent in the GOP.

    “I understand the emotion behind this bill, but you cannot legislate on emotion and this bill is a sword that will cut both ways,” said Trey Radel, a former Republican colleague of DeSantis in the US House who hosts a weeknight radio show on a Florida Fox News affiliate. “This bill has the potential to stifle, if not shut down, center right media and conservative talk radio.”

    The legislation as introduced takes direct aim at the landmark US Supreme Court ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan, which created a higher barrier for public figures to sue for defamation. The decision has been a bedrock of US media law since the case was decided in 1964, protecting news outlets from expensive lawsuits for mistakes made during the course of reporting by requiring plaintiffs to prove the reporter or outlet demonstrated “actual malice” when publishing erroneous information about a public figure.

    Fox News has leaned heavily on the ruling in defending itself from Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit. Dominion in its lawsuit has alleged Fox “recklessly disregarded the truth” during its 2020 presidential election coverage by pushing various pro-Trump conspiracies about the company’s voting technology.

    Fox attorneys cited New York Times v. Sullivan five times in its March 7 court filing asking for a summary judgment. In public statements, the network has repeatedly insisted it is protected by the precedent set in that case.

    “Despite the noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” Fox News Media said in one such recent statement.

    But if Florida Republicans get their way, those protections would be eroded. House Speaker Paul Renner acknowledged last week that the bill his chamber is considering “is designed to challenge current constitutional law” and “tee up a court case.” The push comes as two of the Supreme Court’s more conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have openly expressed a willingness to revisit the high court’s ruling in Sullivan, with Thomas calling the court’s libel precedent “policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.”

    DeSantis has for years quietly eyed going after the media’s First Amendment protections, first floating legislation targeting libel laws in December 2021, according to emails obtained by CNN. Stephanie Kopelousos, the governor’s director of legislative affairs, sent draft bill language to the office of the state Senate president, though it was not filed for the 2022 legislative session.

    His intentions became public last month at an unusually staged event during which DeSantis, seated behind a studio desk like a news anchor with “TRUTH” emblazoned on a screen behind him, signaled his willingness to turn Florida into a test case to challenge Sullivan.

    “It’s our view in Florida that we want to be standing up for the little guy against some of these massive media conglomerates,” DeSantis said.

    But that was several weeks before Dominion unleashed a trove of embarrassing text messages and testimony from Fox executives and personalities that suggested they knowingly aired Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.

    Adding to the intrigue is the lengths to which the conservative network and others owned by Rupert Murdoch, have gone to promote DeSantis ahead of his likely bid for president. In between regular appearances on Fox programming, DeSantis in recent weeks has played catch with “Fox & Friends’” Brian Kilmeade, sat down with TalkTV’s Piers Morgan in the governor’s mansion, toured his hometown with the New York Post’s Salena Zito and granted a rare newspaper interview to David Charter of the Times of London – all reporters who work in Murdoch’s media empire. The New York Post declared the Republican governor “DeFUTURE” after his resounding reelection victory in November.

    Fox News declined to comment. But the Wall Street Journal, another Murdoch-owned outlet, recently published an op-ed by Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr criticizing other media outlets for their “gleeful” coverage of Fox’s “setback” instead of standing up for the protections created by Sullivan. In a plea that seemed aimed at DeSantis’ efforts, Barr urged conservatives with power not to attempt to weaken libel laws.

    “For the foreseeable future, we will likely be on the wrong side of the culture-setting consensus,” he wrote. “There are precious few conservative news outlets as it is. Why make them more vulnerable to the multitude of left-wing plaintiffs’ lawyers?”

    Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade, the sponsor of the Florida House bill, said he would “take Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch over Bill Barr every day of the week.” Andrade contended that libel laws have become so one-sided, “If you’ve been egregiously defamed by a media outlet, in 2023 you have almost no opportunity for actual recourse.”

    Andrade said he planned to tweak the bill to address some of the blowback before its next committee stop, but otherwise intended to charge ahead. The bill’s next vote is not yet scheduled.

    “The majority of the concerns are not based in reality,” Andrade said.

    Under the Florida bill, the definition of a public figure is narrowed significantly and it puts more onus on an individual to verify a defamatory allegation before publishing. Editing video in a misleading way could be considered defamation in this bill. It also allows someone to sue wherever the material is accessed – in today’s digital world, that could be anywhere in the state – which opponents say will lead to “venue shopping” for favorable judges. Courts must assume any statement made by an anonymous source is false, the bill says, which free speech advocates say would have a chilling effect on whistleblowers.

    The bill, which was also introduced in the state Senate with some modifications, has attracted an astounding array of opponents that cross the political spectrum. At a House committee hearing last week, the conservative Americans for Prosperity and the more progressive American Civil Liberties Union both testified against it. Brendon Leslie, the founder of the Florida Voice, a DeSantis-friendly conservative media outlet, warned on Twitter that progressive donors would flood conservative media with lawsuits if the bill became law. Bobby Block, executive director of the Florida First Amendment Foundation, called the bill a “blunt instrument” that has made commentary-heavy evangelical and conservative broadcast stations “incredibly nervous.” US Rep. Cory Mills, a Republican from Central Florida, wrote in a letter to state GOP legislative leaders that he was “gravely concerned that (the bills) violate free speech rights.”

    Though Sullivan is primarily known for protecting news organizations, the bill could make it easier to sue local bloggers, people who post web comments and other online speakers, opponents have warned.

    “It doesn’t just hurt … what’s been referred to as the legacy media,” said Carol LoCicero, a lawyer who has represented The Villages Daily Sun, a newspaper published by the conservative owners of The Villages retirement community. “It hurts people from all points of view. It hurts individuals. Frankly, it will hurt politicians as they’re campaigning for office and making statements about their opponents.”

    DeSantis, though, is so far undeterred. He told reporters last week that he didn’t think the bill would “cause much of a difference in terms of free speech.”

    “I do think it may cause some people to not want to put out things that are false, that are that are smearing somebody’s reputation,” he said.

    Legal experts are skeptical that the bill will be upheld even if it passes. Other Supreme Court justices have so far not shown the same enthusiasm as Thomas and Gorsuch for reviewing its precedent in Sullivan. Dave Heller, deputy director of the Media Law Resource Center, said the proposed legislation is “breathtaking in its hostility toward a free press” and Mark Lerner, an attorney who represented Newsmax in a libel dispute, called the measure “unconstitutional” and said its proponents “who think they’re championing conservative voices may be surprised that it chills them.”

    Radel, the former congressman and radio host, said conservative outlets might not survive the legal costs they could face while legal challenges move through the court system.

    “That type of scorched earth policy is going to destroy conservative talk in Florida in the meantime,” he said. “I work for a privately owned broadcasting group that will not be able to afford a barrage of lawsuits before we wait for it to go before the Supreme Court.”

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  • No. 3 House Republican defends party’s debt ceiling bill | CNN Politics

    No. 3 House Republican defends party’s debt ceiling bill | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said Sunday that President Joe Biden “doesn’t have to negotiate” over the debt ceiling, saying that “Republicans in the House, led by Kevin McCarthy, have passed the solution.”

    House Republicans last week narrowly passed their bill to raise the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt limit by an additional $1.5 trillion. But the measure faces nearly impossible odds of passing in the Democratic-led Senate. Emmer disagreed with that contention in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    “To say that it’s dead on arrival in the Senate, when you’ve got even Joe Manchin suggesting support for this type of approach, I think that’s not exactly accurate,” the Minnesota Republican said. “If you don’t like something in it, if you have ideas of your own, our speaker is more than willing, I’m sure, to listen to those.”

    The House GOP measure was aimed at boosting Republicans’ efforts to negotiate with Democrats as the country approaches its default deadline as soon as this summer. But the White House has said it will not negotiate a debt ceiling increase and will accept only a clean proposal to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.

    Following passage of the GOP bill, Biden told reporters Wednesday that he would be “happy to meet with McCarthy, but not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended. That’s not negotiable.”

    Separately on Sunday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Biden needs to come to the table to negotiate with Republicans on spending and the debt limit.

    “The White House needs to ultimately get into this negotiation. The president has been in hiding for two months,” the Louisiana Republican said on ABC’s “This Week.”

    “That’s not acceptable to Americans. They expect the president to sit in a room with Speaker McCarthy and start negotiating,” he added.

    The US hit its debt ceiling in January and can’t continue to borrow to meet its obligations unless Congress raises or suspends it. The Treasury Department is avoiding default – which would happen this summer or early fall – by using cash on hand and “extraordinary measures,” which should last at least until early June, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in January.

    A breach of the US debt ceiling could spark a 2008-style economic catastrophe, wiping out millions of jobs and setting America back for generations, Moody’s Analytics has warned.

    Emmer, when asked by Bash if he could guarantee that the US government will not default on its debts, said, “I can, assuming that our president and the (Chuck) Schumer Senate recognize the gravity of the problem. This is no longer about politics.”

    “House Republicans will not allow America to default on its debt,” he added. “We showed that last week.”

    Emmer also disputed the characterization of some of the GOP bill’s provisions to reduce spending as “cuts.”

    “These are spending reforms. And all we’re doing is going back to the Biden-Pelosi budget of last year,” he said, referring to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

    The debt ceiling legislation, dubbed the “Limit, Save, Grow Act,” proposes sizable cuts to domestic programs but would spare the Pentagon’s budget. It would return funding for federal agencies to 2022 levels while aiming to limit the growth in spending to 1% per year. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the bill would trim government deficits by $4.8 trillion over 10 years.

    As part of the 320-page bill, the GOP is also proposing to block Biden’s plan to grant student loan forgiveness, repeal green energy tax credits and kill new Internal Revenue Service funding enacted as part of the Inflation Reduction Act last year. The plan would also expedite new oil drilling projects while rescinding funding enacted to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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  • CNN projects Republican Carolyn Carluccio will advance to fall Pennsylvania Supreme Court race against Democrat Daniel McCaffery | CNN Politics

    CNN projects Republican Carolyn Carluccio will advance to fall Pennsylvania Supreme Court race against Democrat Daniel McCaffery | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican voters in Pennsylvania made a candidate supported by the GOP establishment their nominee for an open state Supreme Court seat, rejecting another Republican contender more closely aligned with former President Donald Trump’s wing of the party.

    CNN projected the victory of Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas Judge Carolyn Carluccio in Tuesday’s primary, which marks a rebound for the more traditional elements of the GOP in this presidential battleground state. She will defeat Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough, who briefly halted the certification of the state’s election results in 2020, and had the backing of a key Trump ally, Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano in this election.

    Mastriano had pushed the falsehood in his failed 2022 bid for governor that election fraud led to Trump’s 2020 loss in the state. Last year, the Trump-endorsed Mastriano bested the Republican field to win his party’s nomination in the governor’s race, only to suffer a double-digit defeat to Democrat Josh Shapiro in the general election.

    Carluccio now will face Democrat Superior Court Judge Daniel McCaffery in the fall.

    The Republican and Democratic nominees are vying for an open seat on Pennsylvania’s high court, following the death of former Chief Justice Max Baer, a Democrat, last year.

    The outcome of November’s election will not tip the partisan balance on the high court, where Democrats currently hold a 4-2 majority on the seven-member body, but it could narrow the gap and start to lay the foundation for a shift in power in future election cycles, experts say.

    “It could create a situation where, very shortly, the partisan balance on this court could be up for grabs,” said Douglas Keith, who researches judicial elections at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school.

    State supreme courts are the final arbiters on key issues, ranging from election ground rules to abortion policies. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has upheld the state’s no-excuse mail voting law, and last year selected the state’s congressional map, breaking an impasse between the then-Republican controlled legislature and the state’s Democratic governor.

    Justices on Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court serve 10-year terms. After the first election, they run in so-called retention elections without opponents.

    Much of the attention in the Pennsylvania contest centered on the GOP primary between Carluccio and McCullough, who halted certification of the 2020 results – including Joe Biden’s victory in the state – in a ruling that was swiftly overturned by the state Supreme Court.

    McCullough, who lost a 2021 bid for the Supreme Court, calls herself “a strict constitutionalist judge,” and touted her rulings against pandemic restrictions and the state’s mail-in voting law in the campaign.

    But Carluccio had the backing of the state Republican Party and a national GOP group that’s active in judicial elections, the Republican State Leadership Committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative, which has weighed in with $600,000 in advertising to boost Carluccio.

    In a statement to CNN this week, Carluccio said she would leave “personal and political opinions at the door and look at each case without bias and only determine the constitutionality of what’s before me.”

    Carluccio said she hasn’t questioned the outcome of any election, but she said she is concerned by what she called the “conflicting, and sometimes unclear,” decisions on the state’s mail-in voting law in recent years by the state Supreme Court.

    In 2019, the state legislatures passed a no-excuse mail-in voting law, known as Act 77, with bipartisan support. But it has become the target of criticism from some Republicans after it was employed in the contentious 2020 election that saw Biden flip the state. The high court has weighed in on aspects of the law multiple times. In 2020, for instance, the court ruled that ballots in two counties with missing dates on the outside of the ballot return envelope could be counted. In the 2022 election, however, the court ordered that mail ballots with missing or improper dates on the return envelopes should be kept out of the count and deadlocked on the underlying legal questions.

    “Our election laws must be applied consistently across all counties, regardless of the election year,” Carluccio said in her statement. “And, when part of our electorate has concerns about the integrity of our elections, rather than dismiss their concerns, the response should be bold transparency in the administration of our elections.”

    The modest spending in the under-the-radar Pennsylvania high court race stood sharp contrast to the record-setting spending that candidates and outside groups plowed into a Wisconsin Supreme Court election last month that, in the end, flipped control of that state’s high court to liberals. (A Kantar Media/CMAG analysis for the Brennan Center found that the ad spending for the Wisconsin high court seat hit $28.8 million as of early April, and some estimates put the likely final tally of all spending in that election even higher.)

    In an interview ahead of Tuesday’s election, Penn State political scientist Michael Nelson said the GOP primary represented a “good opportunity to get a sense of where the energy in the party is, what segment of the party is able to get their people to go on the polls on a random Tuesday in May when there hasn’t been wall-to-wall television advertising.”

    “Given that the Mastriano wing of the Republican Party was so dominant in the elections last fall, it will be interesting to see whether they can keep up that momentum or whether the standard-issue conservative wing of the party is able to rebound,” he added.

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  • Texas Republicans pass bills targeting elections administration in Houston-area county | CNN Politics

    Texas Republicans pass bills targeting elections administration in Houston-area county | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Texas Republicans have approved a pair of bills targeting the elections process in Harris County, the state’s largest and home to Houston, with voting rights activists accusing the GOP of plotting a “power grab” in an increasingly Democratic county.

    The measures, which passed the Republican-controlled state House and Senate, now head to the desk of GOP Gov. Greg Abbott.

    On Sunday, lawmakers passed legislation known as SB 1933 that would authorize the office of the Texas secretary of state – an Abbott appointee – to “order administrative oversight” of a county elections office if, for instance, a complaint is filed or there’s cause to believe there’s a recurring pattern of problems involving election administration or voter registration. The measure would affect any county that has a population of more than 4 million people – Harris County is the only county in the state that meets that criterion.

    Last week, the state House passed a measure along party lines that would eliminate the position of elections administrator in a county with a population of more than 3.5 million people – which, again, would only apply to Harris County. Under that bill, known as SB 1750, the elections administrator’s duties would be transferred to the county tax assessor-collector and county clerk. The Harris County elections administrator, a position created in 2020, is appointed by the county’s election commission, which is Democratic-controlled. The county’s tax assessor-collector and clerk are both Democrats. The measure had passed the state Senate earlier this month. If signed, the law would go into effect on September 1.

    Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, a Democrat, said last week that the county would sue the state over the two bills, which he called “clearly unconstitutional.”

    “(Our) state’s constitution bars lawmakers from passing laws that target one specific city or county, putting their personal vendettas over what’s best for Texans,” Menefee said in a statement.

    While Republicans have long had a stronghold on Texas, Harris County has leaned more Democratic in recent years. President Joe Biden won the county by double digits in 2020. And Democrat Beto O’Rourke won the county in November’s governor’s race, while losing statewide by double digits to Abbott.

    Harris County experienced election problems last year that caused the county’s former elections administrator, Isabel Longoria, to resign amid a mail-in ballot counting discrepancy during the March primary. The problems included damaged ballots that delayed the reporting of results and a vote discrepancy that left thousands of ballots out of the unofficial primary results. The county also experienced issues during the general election, paper ballot shortages, machine malfunctions and delays in opening polling places.

    “Voters should have confidence in their elections, and when they see Harris County Elections Administrators botch election after election in 2022 that confidence is shaken,” Houston-area state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, who authored both bills, said last month.

    Bettencourt has defended his legislation, saying in a statement that SB 1933 would “ensure the failures, or the fiasco of the general election never occurs again with the Texas Secretary of State oversight of the election process, if necessary.”

    But James Slattery, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, a legal advocacy group, said the bills would “open the door for the Governor and his allies to manipulate elections in the nation’s third largest county for their own partisan gain.”

    “It is the latest power grab by state officials in a Session dominated by efforts to centralize power and gut the right of local communities to govern themselves,” he said in a statement.

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  • Hurd says he won’t sign GOP presidential debate pledge | CNN Politics

    Hurd says he won’t sign GOP presidential debate pledge | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, who announced his 2024 Republican presidential campaign earlier Thursday with an anti-Donald Trump message, said he won’t sign the Republican National Committee’s pledge to back the party’s ultimate nominee in order to participate in primary debates.

    “I won’t be signing any kind of pledges, and I don’t think parties should be trying to rig who should be on a debate stage,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Thursday evening.

    “I am not in the business of lying to the American people in order to get a microphone, and I’m not going to support Donald Trump. And so I can’t honestly say I’m going to sign something even if he may or may not be the nominee,” he added.

    Hurd joins a crowded field looking to challenge Trump, the front-runner for the nomination, and he admitted it’ll be “difficult for a dark-horse candidate like me.”

    An undercover CIA officer before entering politics, Hurd has been outspoken in his criticism of Trump following his indictment on federal charges over alleged mishandling of classified documents. Asked if the former president, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, betrayed the country, Hurd said, “100% he did.”

    Hurd told Collins that if the allegations are true, “It’s slapping the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way every single night in order to keep us safe.”

    Hurd launched his campaign earlier in the day calling for “common sense.”

    “This is a decision that my wife and I decided to do because we live in complicated times and we need common sense,” he said on CBS earlier Thursday morning.

    “There are a number of generational defining challenges that we’re faced with in the United States of America – everything from the Chinese government trying to surpass us as the global superpower, the fact that inflation is persistent at a time when technologies like artificial intelligence is going to upend every single industry, and our kids, their scores in math, science and reading are the lowest they’ve ever been in this century,” the former congressman said.

    “These are the issues we should be talking about. And to be frank, I’m pissed that we’re not talking about these things,” Hurd added in the CBS interview.

    Besides Trump, Republican presidential contenders also include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and conservative talk radio host Larry Elder.

    “Too many of these candidates in this race are afraid of Donald Trump,” Hurd said on CBS of the GOP primary field.

    Hurd added that, if elected to the White House, he would not pardon Trump should the former president be convicted, adding that he thought it was “insane” that other candidates were open to the idea.

    Ramaswamy has committed to pardoning Trump if he’s elected president. Haley, Suarez and Elder have also suggested they would be inclined to do so.

    Hurd was a rare Republican critic of Trump during his time in Congress from 2015 to 2021. Representing a swing district in Texas that covered the largest stretch of the US-Mexico border of any congressional seat, he opposed Trump’s border wall and argued it was less effective than other forms of border security.

    Hurd was one of four House Republicans in 2019 to vote in support of a resolution condemning Trump’s racist tweets targeting four Democratic congresswomen of color. He also authored a New York Times op-ed in 2018 arguing that Trump was being manipulated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Despite his outspoken criticism, Hurd said in 2019 that he would vote for Trump the following year were he to be the GOP nominee.

    Hurd had been fueling speculation about a potential presidential run with trips to early-voting primary states in recent months. Hurd was in New Hampshire last week and told local station WMUR 9 he was evaluating whether his candidacy would have a path to the GOP nomination. In January, he spoke at the annual meeting of the New Hampshire Republican Party – the same event where Trump kicked off his 2024 campaigning. Hurd also visited Iowa for the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s spring event that included several other 2024 GOP hopefuls.

    Hurd was the only Black Republican in the House when he announced in 2019 that he would not seek reelection and instead pursue opportunities outside government to “solve problems at the nexus between technology and national security.” Hurd served in the CIA for almost a decade before coming to Congress. As a congressman, he served on the House Intelligence Committee, which is charged with oversight of the US intelligence community.

    Hurd first ran for Congress in 2010, losing to Quico Canseco in a runoff for the GOP nomination. Four years later, Hurd defeated Canseco, by then a former congressman, in another primary runoff before narrowly unseating Democratic Rep. Pete Gallego in the general election. He was narrowly reelected in 2016 and 2018, defeating Gallego and Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, respectively.

    This story has been updated with Hurd’s interview on CNN.

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  • GOP battle brews over defense bill as McCarthy under pressure to appease the right on social issues | CNN Politics

    GOP battle brews over defense bill as McCarthy under pressure to appease the right on social issues | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House GOP leaders are confronting a legislative landmine over a massive defense bill as right-wing lawmakers are pushing for a slew of hot button amendments that could put moderate Republicans in a complicated position and threaten Democratic support for the must-pass bill.

    The lawmakers are demanding amendment votes this week on a wide-range of controversial issues – everything ranging from abortion to transgender rights to diversity programs at the Pentagon – and are even privately warning that they could scuttle the defense bill on the first procedural vote if they don’t get their way.

    The move has once again put the focus on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as he tries to navigate the unyielding demands from members on his far-right while pushing legislation that many of his most vulnerable members are eager to tout back home. If he caters to the whims of members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, he could win over more far-right Republicans but could jeopardize support from Democrats and moderate Republicans, both of which will be essential to getting the bill through the chamber.

    Yet the votes could even put the White House in a jam as a group of lawmakers from both parties are pushing to halt President Joe Biden’s move to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine.

    Even though the House Armed Services Committee sent its bill to the floor on a bipartisan vote, the top Democrat on that panel warned that his support would be in jeopardy if the final bill includes some of these controversial amendments, particularly around abortion.

    “The committee did a good job of presenting a bipartisan bill,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the committee’s top Democrat, told CNN. “But I am worried that the full House Republicans are not going to do that, that they’re going to push this bill too far into an extreme anti-inclusion direction that makes it difficult to support.”

    The House Rules Committee will meet Tuesday afternoon to decide which of the over 1,500 amendments that have been submitted will actually be made in order, with the GOP leaders hoping to pass the final bill by the end of this week.

    But even the House Rules Committee has become a wild card for the National Defense Authorization Act. Republicans can only afford to lose two votes on the committee on a party-line vote, and McCarthy placed three far-right members on the panel in exchange for becoming speaker. At least one of the conservative lawmakers on the panel, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, told CNN he plans to oppose the rule, citing concerns that the bill does not go far enough to target “woke” Pentagon policies, and won’t receive the amendment votes to change that.

    GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, one of the other far-right members on the panel said in a statement to CNN, “While this NDAA makes some improvements, there are still glaring issues at the DOD that it needs to address in order to receive my support” when asked how he plans to vote on the rule.

    “The Department of Defense’s transformation into a social engineering experiment wrapped in a uniform is the single greatest threat to this nation’s ability to defend itself – and Republicans are complicit,” Roy added. “Year after year, Republicans pass an NDAA that propagates the cultural rot at DOD while massive defense contractors get rich.”

    Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the other conservative on the committee, has not returned a request for comment about how he plans to vote, though a Republican source said they’re not as worried about Massie breaking ranks.

    While drama isn’t new in fights over the NDAA, which has been passed by Congress every year for the last six decades, this level of acrimony is something of a departure for what is a typically bipartisan affair. After receiving heat for the debt ceiling deal, McCarthy is under increasing pressure to cater to his right flank, ratcheting up concerns about the ability for lawmakers to reach a compromise that both chambers can agree on.

    GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who represents a swing district and has long been pushing her Republican colleagues to soften their stance on abortion, told CNN, “I don’t anticipate the NDAA not passing but the GOP has an opportunity to show it can be compassionate and pro-woman, and I hope they don’t drop the ball.”

    Aside from amendments that target culture war issues, Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs of California and GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who both serve on the Armed Services Committee, are also planning to offer an amendment aimed at stopping President Joe Biden’s cluster munition transfer to Ukraine. If it comes to the floor, the vote would reveal how much support Biden’s move has in the House.

    “Cluster munitions are unpredictable weapons that maim and kill indiscriminately, wreaking havoc on civilian populations and undermining economic rebuilding and recovery for decades,” Jacobs told CNN. “This amendment sends a strong message to the world that we will stand by our values and our commitment to protect civilians.”

    Gaetz voiced a similar refrain on Twitter.

    “These cluster bombs will not end the war in Ukraine and will not build a more stable country. Children will be left without limbs and without parents because of this decision if we do not work together in a bipartisan fashion to stop it,” Gaetz tweeted Monday.

    And while the version of the NDAA that passed out of the Armed Services Committee included more funding for the war in Ukraine, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and others are pushing to roll that funding back.

    The NDAA, which outlines the policy agenda for the Department of Defense and the US military and authorizes spending in line with the Pentagon’s priorities, passed out of the House Armed Services committee with overwhelming bipartisan support, even though some controversial GOP amendments – including on banning drag shows on military bases and reinstating troops who refused to comply with the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate – were adopted.

    Some of the amendments that will take center stage on the floor this week include prohibiting gender transition surgeries and treatments from Gaetz, eliminating any offices of diversity, equity and inclusion within the armed forces and Department of Defense from a number of members including Norman, and prohibiting the Department of Defense from “purchasing and having pornographic and radical gender ideology books in their libraries” from GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado.

    While a handful of Republicans do not believe those amendments go far enough, others warned their colleagues not to jeopardize the future of this crucial legislation as the $858 billion defense package boasts measures that modernize the US military, increase its readiness to counter foreign adversaries like Russia and China, and increase support for servicemembers and their families.

    “We need to get the NDAA passed. … It’s not something to ever put at risk and national security needs to be a priority for each and every one of us. If we don’t have world peace, we have nothing,” Rep. Jen Kiggans, a freshman Republican from a Virginia swing district, told CNN. “And we do that through providing the budget that the military needs. … So, it’s a responsibility.”

    GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who serves on the Armed Services committee and represents a district Biden won in 2020, told CNN, “I hope smart, common sense amendments are passed.”

    “The committee passed a bill near unanimously with only one dissenting vote, and it will take bipartisanship to get it also through the Senate,” Bacon told CNN.

    While the markup process of the NDAA touched on hot button issues, ultimately members on the committee came together to pass a package that most could support.

    Reflecting on the markup process, one GOP staffer told CNN, “People were pushing for DoD funds to be used for supporting war fighters over wokeness.”

    Those clashes, however, have only seemed to foreshadow the floor flights to come.

    “I think in committee, we tried to craft a bipartisan bill that would be able to get through the Senate and I’m hopeful that’s what everyone will try and do on the floor as well,” Jacobs told CNN. “But I think we’re already seeing the extreme Republicans try and put some poison pills in there that will make it very hard for Democrats to vote for the bill.”

    Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who told CNN he was “proud” to be the only member to vote against NDAA in committee because he needed to see “greater investment” in the Pacific region, called out the amendments that “hurt diversity and inclusion, education, and do nothing to strengthen our national security.”

    “I plan to vote no when it comes to the floor and encourage my colleagues to do the same,” Khanna added.

    One Democratic aide claimed, “Republicans are trying to hijack NDAA to make it a culture war battle.”

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  • Biden announces new environmental justice initiatives | CNN Politics

    Biden announces new environmental justice initiatives | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden announced new environmental justice actions on Friday, including an executive order that the White House says will make environmental justice a central mission of federal agencies.

    “Under this order, environmental justice will become the responsibility of every single federal agency – I mean, every single federal agency,” Biden pledged at a White House Rose Garden signing ceremony surrounded by climate and environmental justice advocates just before Earth Day.

    He continued, “Every federal agency must take into account environmental health impacts on communities and work to prevent those negative impacts. Environmental justice will be the mission of the entire government woven directly into how we work with state, local, tribal, and territorial governments.”

    The executive order, which will still be up to agencies to implement, will create a new Office of Environmental Justice inside the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

    Friday’s move comes as as many environmental justice groups have been frustrated at the administration’s recent approval of a major Alaska oil project. CNN also reported Friday that the Biden administration is planning to roll out aggressive new rules to regulate planet-warming pollution from natural gas power plants – a move that could face fierce legal challenges.

    Friday’s move also took place as Biden is preparing to announce his reelection bid as soon as next week, CNN reported Thursday. During his last presidential campaign, he worked hard to court environmental justice activist groups.

    Biden’s new order directs agencies to work more closely with impacted communities and improve “gaps” in scientific data to try to better tackle the impacts of pollution on people’s health, a White House official said. If toxic substances were released from a federal facility in the future, the order requires federal agencies to notify nearby communities.

    The order comes a few years after Biden announced his signature “Justice40” initiative, vowing to direct 40% of federal climate and clean funding from new legislation to disadvantaged communities. On Friday, three additional agencies – the Department of Commerce, the National Science Foundation and NASA – will also join the initiative.

    Biden also took a swipe at Republicans in his speech, contrasting his action on environmental justice with the GOP’s policies.

    During his remarks on Friday, the president detailed how he’s spent much of his tenure in office surveying damage from extreme weather events, calling the threat of climate change “an existential threat to our nation” and criticizing congressional Republicans for attempting to block his legislative priorities focused on climate.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, recently unveiled provisions in his debt limit proposal that would overturn clean energy tax credits passed in the Inflation Reduction Act last year. The proposal also includes HR 1 – the GOP’s version of an energy permitting bill.

    Republicans, Biden argued, would “rather threaten to default on the US economy, or get rid of some $30 billion in taxpayer subsidies … than getting rid of $30 billion in taxpayer subsidies to an oil industry that made $200 billion last year.”

    “Imagine seeing all this happen – the wildfires, the storms, the floods – and doing nothing about it,” he continued. “Imagine taking all these clean energy jobs away from working class folks all across America. Imagine turning your back on all those moms and dads living in towns poisoned by pollution and telling them, ‘Sorry, you’re on your own.’ We can’t let that happen.”

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Prominent conservatives have spotlighted these voting trends.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • ‘You’re wrong’: McCarthy answers his critics as he faces blowback from GOP hardliners | CNN Politics

    ‘You’re wrong’: McCarthy answers his critics as he faces blowback from GOP hardliners | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in February made a bold prediction about the GOP and the debt ceiling, asserting: “We don’t believe they have a plan that can pass with Republican votes in the House.”

    He later insisted that the White House would not negotiate with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on a debt ceiling increase and that ultimately Congress would lift the borrowing limit without any conditions at all.

    “Clean, clean, clean,” he told CNN in April, referencing the push for a clean debt ceiling resolution.

    But McCarthy ultimately passed a bill in April on GOP votes alone. He then later forced President Joe Biden to negotiate a debt limit suspension with spending cuts. And Wednesday night, the House passed the McCarthy-Biden deal by a 314-177 vote, even winning the backing of 149 House Republicans, more than half of his conference, and the support of 165 Democrats. The Senate passed the bill late Thursday night, and it now goes to Biden’s desk for his signature.

    “You’re wrong,” an ebullient McCarthy said when asked about critics underestimating him.

    After one of the longest speaker’s races in history, winning the gavel after an ugly 15-ballot fight, McCarthy has managed to navigate his ideologically divided conference and bring to an end the debt limit standoff – even to the surprise of some of his sharpest critics.

    “I have been thinking about this day since before my vote for speaker because I knew the debt ceiling was coming,” McCarthy said at a news conference following the vote Wednesday night. “I wanted to make history.”

    When asked if he underestimated the speaker, Schumer didn’t answer directly.

    “No. 1, we avoided default – our number one goal, which we’ve been talking about from day one,” Schumer said. “No. 2, it is a far, far cry from where the Republicans started out.”

    Democrats say if the speaker surprised them in the fiscal fight, it’s because they didn’t think he would hold the specter of the first-ever US default over the White House until Biden agreed to negotiate on his terms.

    “I think the Republican House caucus is willing to go to default,” said Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat. “When dealing with folks like that, it’s really hard to negotiate at all.”

    But it didn’t come without a cost.

    After the debt limit deal passed, Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado told CNN that House conservatives will be having discussions about ousting McCarthy “in the next week or two,” although he didn’t commit to following through with that threat.

    A fired-up Buck, who opposed the debt limit deal, told reporters that he has received calls from constituents about removing McCarthy from the speakership. “My constituents are furious and you know what’s so interesting about the calls in the district? They are not only ‘vote against this bill,’ but they are ‘take McCarthy out.’ That’s what the calls are coming in,” he said.

    The same Republicans who held out their votes for McCarthy’s speakership bid in January hated the deal he struck, arguing that it failed to curtail spending or provide conservatives with key policy wins. Several have publicly talked about moving to oust him for the agreement.

    Rep. Chip Roy, the Texas Republican who has vocally slammed the deal, promised a “reckoning” earlier this week after the agreement was reached. And Rep. Dan Bishop, the North Carolina Republican who publicly vowed to target the speaker and potentially oust him from his job, said of his confidence in McCarthy: “None. Zero. What basis is there for confidence?”

    Still, there haven’t been signs yet that the hardline conservatives will actually move to oust the speaker.

    During a House Freedom Caucus conference call Tuesday night, when the motion to vacate was briefly brought up, Chairman Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, dismissed the idea as “premature” and the conversation quickly moved on, according to a source on the call.

    The source said that there have been private, “independent” discussions about the motion to vacate among some of McCarthy’s fiercest critics, but not among the Freedom Caucus as a whole, where there is far less appetite to go that route.

    After facing an all-consuming debt limit battle for the last several months, McCarthy is ready for the next act of his young speakership – and he’s taking steps that can win over the far-right furious at him over his debt ceiling deal with the White House.

    To win some of his critics back, he’s promising his members that he wants to set up a bipartisan commission to rein in sky-high deficits while also privately vowing to hold the line in the government funding fights to come.

    Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican who said McCarthy has lost “some trust” by cutting the debt deal, told CNN that the speaker had promised that leadership would be “actively” involved in the appropriations process, saying that’s where “the next big debate” will be.

    While the debt limit and spending has bitterly divided the GOP conference, McCarthy is now free to turn toward more unifying measures – and to go on the attack against the Biden administration instead of cutting a deal with the president. It’s one reason why McCarthy was OK with agreeing to the White House’s demand to suspend the debt limit until January 2025, ensuring the divisive issue won’t be litigated before the 2024 elections.

    Asked what’s next now that the debt crisis is behind them, McCarthy told reporters: “We’ve got a number of things.”

    “We’ve got to do appropriations,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of oversight work to do. I don’t know if you’ve followed … FBI Director Wray, not following through on our subpoena. Now he says he would let us look at the document,” McCarthy told reporters.

    The focus internally is already shifting.

    On Wednesday, House Oversight Chairman James Comer said his committee would begin contempt proceedings as early as next week against Wray, in a move that would serve up red meat to the right flank of the GOP conference.

    Comer has demanded that the FBI turn over an internal law enforcement document related to an unverified allegation against Biden, and he said Wednesday that the FBI’s proposed accommodation to allow Comer to view the document would not be sufficient to stop contempt proceedings.

    Another target for far-right Republicans is Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary whom conservatives want to impeach over problems at the border.

    Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Georgia Republican who backed McCarthy’s speakership in January, told reporters that she is willing to swallow the debt ceiling deal but said would like to see a “dessert” to go along with it – and specifically named the idea of impeaching Mayorkas or Wray.

    This story has been updated to reflect the bill’s passage in the Senate.

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  • Republican 2024 hopefuls converge on DC under the shadow of Trump | CNN Politics

    Republican 2024 hopefuls converge on DC under the shadow of Trump | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidates took turns Friday pitching themselves to a ballroom full of religious conservatives in Washington as the most viable alternative to front-runner Donald Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination.

    The specter of the former president loomed large over the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Policy Conference, a summit that marks the first time the biggest names in the GOP race are appearing on the same stage as the summer campaign season kicks into gear. Trump is slated to speak Saturday, which will mark his first in-person appearance at a large GOP gathering of presidential hopefuls since announcing his White House bid.

    The topic of abortion was a through-line at the conference Friday, which coincided with the eve of the first anniversary of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Abortion has been a politically fraught issue for Republicans, and some GOP 2024 candidates are struggling to balance appealing to the hard-line GOP base without alienating more moderate voters needed to win a general election.

    Though several GOP candidates typically skate around the issue, including what kind of federal legislation they would support, one candidate has staked out a clear position on abortion and kicked off the conference with a call to action for his GOP 2024 rivals to do the same.

    “Every Republican candidate for president should support a ban on abortions before 15 weeks as a minimum nationwide standard,” former Vice President Mike Pence told the audience, largely made up of conservative evangelical voters.

    Pence appeared to take a shot at Trump, who, like other GOP hopefuls, has wrestled with how to navigate the politics of abortion.

    The former vice president told the audience that some speakers would say “that the Supreme Court returned to the issue of abortion only to the states and nothing should be done at the federal level.”

    “Others will say that continuing the fight to life could produce state legislation is too harsh. Some have even gone on to blame the overturning of Roe v. Wade for election losses,” Pence added.

    Trump’s campaign softened its stance that abortion should be decided at the state level after receiving backlash from the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. And after the GOP had a worse-than-expected showing in the 2022 midterm elections, Trump said the “abortion issue” had been poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those who insisted on no exceptions in the case or rape, incest or life of the mother, which, he said, “lost large numbers of voters.”

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, notably, did not make abortion a main focus of his remarks and only made a quick reference to his state’s six-week abortion ban he signed into law earlier this year. (The law has yet to go into effect.)

    He spent more time during his roughly 35-minute speech leaning into cultural fights and digging in on his ongoing fight with Disney, decrying transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, touting his opposition to the teaching of gender ideology in public schools and propping up Florida as what he described as a “citadel of freedom,” particularly during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

    With the GOP field somewhat solidified, Trump remains firmly the favorite for the nomination – a fact that is apparent not only in recent polls but in the conference’s programming itself. The former president will serve as the keynote speaker for the event’s closing gala on Saturday.

    Trump allies, too, are among the conference’s speakers. Last year’s losing Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and conservative commentators Nick Adams and Judge Jeanine Pirro are scheduled to speak Saturday. Florida Rep. Byron Donalds and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham spoke Friday. The Trump-heavy lineup underscores the challenges for other candidates to break out in a party still dominated by the former president.

    “Donald Trump is arguably the strongest front-runner and in the strongest position overall of anyone in my career,” said Ralph Reed, the founder and chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

    But Reed added that Trump’s competition has a strong case to make, too, and there are paths for many of them to secure the nomination. Reed singled out DeSantis as an especially well-funded candidate who appears to pose a serious threat to the former president.

    A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS in the wake of his indictment and arrest on federal charges showed Trump remained the front-runner – 47% of Republicans and Republican-leaning registered voters say Trump is their first choice for the party’s nomination. That’s down from 53% in May. His support appears to be softening amid his legal troubles, with a greater share of Republicans now saying they will not support him under any circumstances. DeSantis’ support has held steady at 26% and no other candidate in the growing field tops double digits.

    “For the candidates that are not as high in the polls, this is an opportunity and an important moment for them to make their case,” Reed said. “If you’re not Donald Trump, it’s a very short calendar where you have to win somewhere and you have to do it quickly. If someone can win one of those first three states, and especially Iowa or New Hampshire, this race will change overnight. I think that’s part of why they’re all here.”

    In addition to Pence and DeSantis, Friday’s speakers included entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Radio show host Larry Elder and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will address the conference on Saturday.

    Christie drew boos from the crowd when he criticized Trump on Friday.

    “I’m running because he’s let us down,” the former New Jersey governor said. “He has let us down because he’s unwilling, he’s unwilling to take responsibility for any of the mistakes that were made. Any of the faults that he has and any of the things that he’s done and that is not leadership everybody. That is a failure of leadership.”

    When several people in the crowd started loudly booing, Christie said, “You can boo all you want.”

    Christie told CNN’s Dana Bash after his speech that he would continue speaking out against Trump on the campaign trail, saying the former president was “not a man of character, and they know it.”

    “There were a lot of people in that audience who were standing and cheering when I left. And there were some that were booing. But no one left wondering what I think,” Christie said.

    Christie has been sharply critical of the former president, whom he endorsed in the 2016 primary after dropping out of the presidential race and continued to advise ahead of the 2020 election. As other GOP hopefuls shy away from attacking Trump directly, hoping to avoid potentially alienating his supporters, Christie has taken direct aim at the former president and kicked off his 2024 candidacy lambasting Trump.

    Instead of drawing direct contrasts with Trump, Scott spent much of his speech attacking the Biden administration, accusing it of “weaponizing” the Justice Department against the president’s political opponents. 

    “In this radical-left Biden administration, they weaponize the Department of Justice against their political enemies. That is wrong. We deserve better in the United States of America,” Scott said.

    Scott didn’t directly reference the federal charges against Trump, but the senator’s remarks came less than two weeks after Trump pleaded not guilty in a Miami courtroom to federal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office. Trump continues to claim the DOJ has been “weaponized” against him. 

    Republican voters are increasingly getting opportunities to size up the GOP field and evaluate them in the same setting. Next weekend, Trump, DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy and Hutchinson will address a summit in Philadelphia hosted by Moms For Liberty, a relatively new but increasingly influential group of conservative women focused largely on K-12 education issues.

    The Road to Majority conference is taking place just two months before the first scheduled Republican presidential debate on August 23 in Milwaukee. Trump on Tuesday repeated his suggestion that he may not participate.

    “Why would I let these people take shots at me?” he told Fox News.

    However, Trump’s appearance on Saturday in DC marks a change in approach from similar Republican gatherings. To date, when Trump has participated, it has been via video message, just as he did at Faith and Freedom’s Iowa event earlier this year. Trump also skipped Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst’s annual “Roast and Ride” earlier this month, which drew the rest of the field that had entered at the time.

    Reed encouraged Trump to spend more time talking to voters and less time harping on his legal troubles and past elections.

    “He has a tremendous story to tell, and it’s the reason he’s doing so well among these voters now,” Reed said. “But I think it’s important for him to talk about what a second term agenda looks like.”

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • We are already in the food fight portion of the GOP primary | CNN Politics

    We are already in the food fight portion of the GOP primary | CNN Politics

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    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 2024 Republican presidential primary is not fully underway as yet and already we are in the food fight phase.

    A super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump tried to smear Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with pudding, seizing on a report, which the governor denies, about his eating habits to make a point about Social Security and Medicare.

    The ad itself is gross. And it drew a super PAC supporting DeSantis off the sidelines to air an ad of its own wondering why Trump was going after the Florida governor.

    For the record, neither DeSantis nor Trump currently say they will touch safety net benefits, but both have a past of suggesting they could.

    I talked to CNN chief national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny by email about the Trump/DeSantis dynamic, the role of deep-pocketed super PACs and what else is going on in this nascent primary campaign.

    WOLF: We are nine months away from the first primaries and not all of the top candidates have even declared their candidacies. But there’s some super PAC mudslinging. What’s happening and what do we need to take from all of this?

    ZELENY: A new season of attack ads has begun, with allies of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis firing some of the first direct shots of the young presidential campaign. Now is the time to define your opponent – whether you’re an announced candidate (Trump) or expected to be one soon (DeSantis) – and begin pointing out potential vulnerabilities. Not surprisingly, the opening volley was about Social Security and Medicare and highlighting old comments about promising to reform the entitlement programs.

    WOLF: Super PACs can’t technically coordinate with campaigns. DeSantis doesn’t technically have a campaign. How is that working exactly?

    ZELENY: The Florida governor isn’t planning on jumping into the presidential race until May or June – after the legislative session is over – so until then, a group of deep-pocketed allies are coming to his defense. The super PAC, which is called Never Back Down, is effectively a campaign in waiting, complete with pollsters and political strategists of all varieties. Federal election law prohibits coordinating with the campaign, but when there isn’t an official campaign, that formality becomes far easier.

    WOLF: Do other Republican candidates have deep pocketed super PACs? Who are the other players to watch?

    ZELENY: Not nearly as deep, no, but most major Republican candidates have at least some type of super PAC assistance. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has some support – and is seeking more – as are other potential candidates. One likely presidential contender, Sen. Tim Scott, has one financial advantage that makes him stand apart from his rivals: He has more than $20 million left over in his campaign account from last year’s Senate race, which he can use on his presidential race. That’s a head start most of his rivals can only dream of.

    WOLF: Trump and DeSantis have been shadowboxing around each other for some time. Can we assume this is a prelude to a much more bruising fight in the making? What does this say about GOP unity heading into the primaries?

    Zeleny: GOP unity? That will come later – or that’s the hope of top Republican officials – but the bruising season of define-your-opponent is underway. The Trump-DeSantis feud has long been simmering, but their springtime exchanges are almost certainly quaint, compared to what’s likely to come.

    WOLF: What do we know about where these super PAC ads are running? Are they focused on specific types of voters or is this simply an effort to get attention from us in the media?

    ZELENY: For now, most of the ads are running on cable television and sports. The Make America Great Again group, which supports Trump, has been running ads for weeks now seeking to define DeSantis in a negative light. You have likely seen some of these, which begin with the ominous: “Think you know Ron DeSantis? Think again.”

    WOLF: Are there any changes in how you think super PACs will operate this year and how they’ll be involved in the campaign?

    ZELENY: With every passing election cycle, super PACs play a more prominent role. It’s easier to raise money – without the federal limits imposed upon candidates. If the early months of the year are any indication, the 2024 campaign will push the limits even more, with outside groups far more important than political parties or, in some cases, even the candidates themselves.

    WOLF: Are there any early conclusions we can draw about how Trump’s indictment by the Manhattan DA on criminal charges has affected his campaign? Has it impacted his popularity among Republican voters? Affected his fundraising?

    ZELENY: Early conclusions are often risky ones, but the Trump campaign insists the indictment has been a fundraising boost. It certainly has rallied many Republicans around him – or at least unified them in opposition to the indictment – but it may be far too soon to say whether this will continue to be the case. He faces potential criminal action in Georgia, for his role in trying to overturn the election results, as well as at least two federal investigations.

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  • Top Republicans demand FBI document they claim describes ‘alleged criminal scheme’ related to Biden | CNN Politics

    Top Republicans demand FBI document they claim describes ‘alleged criminal scheme’ related to Biden | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Two top congressional Republicans are demanding internal FBI documents that an unnamed whistleblower claims will show then-Vice President Joe Biden was involved in a criminal scheme with a foreign national, according to a letter from the Republicans.

    The unverified allegation is the most explosive claim House Oversight Chairman James Comer and Senate Budget Committee ranking Republican member Chuck Grassley have lobbed at the now-president after both men have devoted significant time to investigating the Biden family’s business dealings.

    White House spokesman for investigations Ian Sams tweeted a link to a Fox News clip discussing the Comer and Grassley announcement, saying that Republicans “prefer trafficking in innuendo.”

    “For going on 5 years now, Republicans in Congress have been lobbing unfounded politically-motivated attacks against @POTUS without offering evidence for their claims. Or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests,” Sams tweeted. “They prefer trafficking in innuendo.”

    Comer and Grassley alleged that a whistleblower claimed the Justice Department and FBI have an unclassified document “that describes an alleged criminal scheme involving then-Vice President Biden and a foreign national relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions. It has been alleged that the document includes a precise description of how the alleged criminal scheme was employed as well as its purpose,” according to a letter to both FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

    “I guess basically we’ve got to wait to see what the document exactly says,” Grassley said in a Fox News interview. “The FBI needs to explain whether it’s accurate or not.”

    Comer fired off a corresponding subpoena to the FBI calling for “all FD-1023 forms, including within any open, closed, or restricted access case files, created or modified in June 2020, containing the term ‘Biden,’ including all accompanying attachments and documents to those FD-1023 forms.”

    The form in question, an FD-1023, is a document the FBI uses to memorialize meetings or information gathered from confidential sources. The document typically would include allegations from the source, including information not verified by the FBI.

    “We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States. What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further,” Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in a news release, adding that the situation calls for congressional oversight.

    The Department of Justice declined to comment. The FBI said it received the letter and subpoena and declined further comment.

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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  • DeSantis expected to enter 2024 presidential race next week | CNN Politics

    DeSantis expected to enter 2024 presidential race next week | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to enter the 2024 GOP presidential race next week, two Republicans familiar with the matter told CNN, initiating his much-anticipated bid to wrestle the future of the party from former President Donald Trump.

    DeSantis will file paperwork declaring his candidacy next week with the Federal Election Commission, one Republican said, with a formal announcement expected the following week in his Florida hometown of Dunedin. DeSantis is likely to soft-launch the campaign as early as Wednesday to coincide with the filing of the paperwork, according to a Republican consultant close to the governor’s political team.

    However, another source cautioned that the planning remains a moving target, and DeSantis is known to surprise even his closest allies and advisers with last-minute changes. DeSantis, who often boasts that he runs an operation free of leaks, may be further motivated to throw out the script to vex the media outlets who have preempted his announcement, the source said.

    “With him, it’s always a possibility,” the source added.

    But the machinery for a launch is already in motion as dozens of his top fundraisers and donors have been summoned to South Florida under the assumption they will be asked to begin building up a war chest for a DeSantis presidential campaign. By officially submitting his paperwork, his supporters can begin soliciting donations on his behalf.

    About 100 hotel rooms have been reserved at the Four Seasons in Miami, which will host receptions for donors, briefings with DeSantis’ political team and sessions where attendees will dial for dollars, according to two sources familiar with the details. The goal is for each fundraiser to bring in between $100,000 and $150,000.

    A spokesman for DeSantis’ political operation did not respond to a request for comment.

    An announcement around the Memorial Day weekend is on the earlier side of the timeline that the governor’s political operation had targeted six months ago when it eyed a launch after Florida’s legislative session. This suggests DeSantis is responding to donors and supporters anxious to see him get in the race and more directly challenge Trump. Polling shows the former president remains firmly in the lead while DeSantis has lost some momentum during the belabored rollout of his expected campaign, which has included a book release and tour, a dozen appearances at local GOP fundraisers, an international trip, the creation of a super PAC, a donor retreat near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and a blitz through conservative media.

    Along the way, DeSantis has stumbled at times, drawing poor reviews for his oscillating takes on the Russia-Ukraine war, prolonging his clash with Disney into a second year and getting caught flat-footed as Trump unveiled endorsements from Florida Republicans in Congress just before the governor visited Washington to build support.

    However, DeSantis’ allies believe the trajectory of the race will change significantly once he is officially a candidate and responds to Trump’s broadsides and more vigorously shares his vision for the country.

    According to The New York Times, DeSantis told donors and supporters during a call Thursday that there were only three credible candidates in the race – himself, President Joe Biden and Trump – and that only he and Biden had a chance of winning the general election.

    DeSantis said on the call, which was organized by Never Back Down, a super PAC closely aligned with the governor, that data from swing states was “not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him,” the Times reported.

    DeSantis has spent the last couple of weeks tying up loose ends – rapidly signing dozens of bills that have reached his desk, meeting with donors in Tallahassee and South Florida, and shoring up endorsements to boost his launch. He spent Saturday in Iowa, where he appeared to one-up Trump, making an unannounced visit to a BBQ joint in Des Moines – minutes from where the former president had canceled a rally due to threat of weather. While in the state, DeSantis laid the framework for his case against Trump.

    “If we make 2024 a referendum on Joe Biden and his failures and we provide a positive alternative for the future of this country, Republicans will win across the board,” DeSantis told Iowa caucus voters in Sioux Center. “If we do not do that, if we get distracted, if we focus on the election in the past or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again, and I think it will be very difficult to recover from that defeat.”

    On Friday, DeSantis will travel to another early nominating state, New Hampshire, to meet with state lawmakers – many of whom endorsed him earlier this week – for a policy round table, according to three sources familiar with the planning.

    Never Back Down has in recent weeks rolled out dozens of key endorsements for the governor in Iowa and New Hampshire. On Wednesday, the super PAC also announced endorsements from 99 Florida lawmakers – a show of force from the rank-and-file Republicans who helped push DeSantis’ agenda through the state legislature this spring.

    “Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature have worked together to achieve historic results and produce conservative victories for the people of Florida – turning the state into a beacon of freedom and the fastest growing state in the nation,” Never Back Down spokeswoman Erin Perrine said.

    Trump’s campaign dismissed the Florida endorsements as politically motivated, noting that DeSantis had not yet signed the state budget, for which he has line-item veto power over the pet projects of state lawmakers.

    “There are some brave legislators who have stood up to DeSantis’ Swamp-like behavior and resisted his intimidation tactics in order to do what is right for Florida and the country,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said. “Those who he can’t control – including almost the entirety of the Florida federal congressional delegation – have endorsed President Trump because he’s the only candidate who can beat Joe Biden and take back the White House.”

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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  • Ron DeSantis is campaigning on his record. Judges keep saying it’s unconstitutional | CNN Politics

    Ron DeSantis is campaigning on his record. Judges keep saying it’s unconstitutional | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Gov. Ron DeSantis has toured the country calling Florida the place “where woke goes to die.” But it’s still alive at the company Sara Margulis runs.

    At Honeyfund, a website for engaged couples to create gift registries that can pay for their honeymoons, Margulis’ Florida employees learn about privilege and institutional racism. Margulis, the CEO and co-founder, said the training makes her staff better suited to serve couples of any background. Planning for this fall’s employee retreat is underway, with a session scheduled on DEI – or diversity, equity and inclusion, a term DeSantis often rails against.

    DeSantis tried to ban such employee training in 2022, when the Florida Republican championed what he called the Stop WOKE Act. But Honeyfund and others sued on the grounds that the law violated their free speech. A federal judge agreed and blocked it from going into effect. The DeSantis administration then appealed – one of many of the governor’s ongoing legal battles as he pursues the presidency.

    “Companies aren’t ‘going woke’ out of allegiance to Democrats. Time after time, diversity has proven to be good for the bottom line,” Margulis said. “Valuing diversity means understanding it, understanding means training and training means having to deal with this law. We were really handed a chance to make a difference for other business owners by challenging it, and we took it.”

    In his early outreach to Republican voters as a presidential candidate, DeSantis has portrayed himself as a fighter and, crucially, a winner in the cultural battles increasingly important to conservatives. If elected to the White House, he’ll take those fights to Washington, he has said.

    “I will go on offense,” DeSantis said in Iowa last month. “I will lean into all the issues that matter.”

    But back in Florida, the agenda at the centerpiece of his pitch remains unsettled. Still ongoing are more than a dozen legal battles testing the constitutionality of many of the victories DeSantis has touted on the campaign trail. Critics say DeSantis has built his governorship around enacting laws that appeal to his conservative base but that, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, he knows are unconstitutional and not likely to take effect.

    In addition to halting parts of the Stop WOKE Act, judges have also intervened to freeze implementation of other DeSantis-led laws cracking down on protesters and Big Tech. The six-week abortion ban he signed this year – which he has called the “heartbeat bill” when speaking to conservative, and especially evangelical, audiences – won’t take effect unless the state Supreme Court determines that a privacy clause in Florida’s constitution doesn’t protect access to the procedure. Disney – the most famous of DeSantis’ political adversaries – has argued in court that the governor overstepped his power when he orchestrated a takeover of the entertainment giant’s special taxing district to punish the company for speaking out against his agenda. So did Andrew Warren, the twice-elected Tampa prosecutor whom DeSantis suspended last year in another act of political retaliation.

    DeSantis has repeatedly predicted he will ultimately prevail in these challenges. Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for his campaign, called the lawsuits “the tactics of activists who seek to impose their will on people by judicial fiat.”

    “These attempts to circumvent the will of the legislature are not indicative of anything beyond the failure of the left’s ideas at the ballot box,” Griffin said in a statement. “Governor DeSantis is a proven fighter who will bring the same temerity to the presidency.”

    Recent weeks, though, have seen a handful of reminders that several pillars of his record remain fragile even as they figure prominently in his stump speeches.

    On Friday, a federal judge blocked a new Florida law that gave the DeSantis administration the power to shut down bars or restaurants that admit children to certain “adult live performances,” widely seen as a crackdown on drag shows.

    Another federal judge said Wednesday that Florida could not restrict transgender adults on Medicaid from receiving gender-affirming care. The same judge earlier this month had stepped in to allow three transgender children to receive puberty blockers while a lawsuit seeking to overturn a state ban on the treatment proceeds. In both rulings, the judge said there was “no rational basis” to prevent the care and declared “gender identity is real,” casting doubts on the future of the state’s prohibition.

    DeSantis, as a presidential candidate, has seized on conservative concerns over such treatment, particularly for minors. His efforts to halt it – including signing a law that prohibits transgender children from receiving gender-affirming treatments and punish doctors who run afoul of it – are prominently featured in his stump speeches. Speaking to North Carolina Republicans after the ruling, the governor acknowledged the legal fight, but he assured the audience: “We are going to win.”

    “It is mutilation, and it is wrong, and it has no place in our state,” he said.

    DeSantis of late has also taken credit for the GOP’s narrow US House majority, noting the highly partisan map he pushed through his state legislature, which ultimately helped Republicans net four critical seats. But those suing Florida to invalidate the state’s congressional boundaries have new reason for optimism after the US Supreme Court ordered Alabama officials to redraw its map to allow an additional Black-majority district. The DeSantis map was similarly criticized as diminishing the power of minority voters in Florida.

    “Many of the things coming from the governor are form over function,” said Cecile Scoon, president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, one of plaintiffs in the redistricting lawsuit. “They want to get to a certain result, so they find a means to do it, whether it makes logic or legal sense or not.”

    The US District Court for the Northern District of Florida has in particular stymied DeSantis’ agenda. Two judges on the bench, Mark Walker and Robert Hinkle, have repeatedly ruled against the governor, often punctuating their opinions with harsh and colorful repudiations.

    Walker, in one ruling blocking parts of the Stop WOKE Act, compared Florida’s treatment of the First Amendment under DeSantis to the “Upside Down,” the nightmare alternative dimension from the Netflix series “Stranger Things.” In another lawsuit over the law, this one filed by college professors, Walker called the law “dystopian” and wrote that DeSantis and Florida Republicans had “declared the state has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of ‘freedom.’”

    Hinkle, in January, chided DeSantis’ suspension of Warren as political, unconstitutional and executed with “not a hint of misconduct,” though he ultimately ruled he was powerless to intervene. Warren is appealing, though he suffered another defeat when the state Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a separate request to reinstate him.

    Ruling this month against the state in the two cases dealing with transgender care prohibition, Hinkle called the law “an exercise in politics, not good medicine.”

    “Nothing could have motivated this remarkable intrusion into parental prerogatives other than opposition to transgender status itself,” he wrote.

    DeSantis has shrugged off these defeats as the work of left-leaning judges. President Barack Obama nominated Walker to his district court judgeship in 2012, and Hinkle was selected by President Bill Clinton in 1996. Neither nomination drew objection from Senate Republicans at the time.

    When Walker ruled to block Florida’s anti-riot law – comparing it to past attempts to squash dissent from Civil Rights activists in the 1950s and 60s – DeSantis dismissed it as “a foreordained conclusion in front of that court.”

    “We will win that on appeal,” DeSantis said. “I guarantee we’ll win that on appeal.”

    That assurance came 21 months ago. In the meantime, the law has yet to take effect.

    Dana Thompson Dorsey, a professor of education law, was among seven Florida college professors who sued to block the Stop WOKE Act over provisions that limited how she and her colleagues could talk about race and sex with students. She called Walker’s decision halting the law a “work of art.”

    Since then, she has continued to teach critical race studies to her doctoral students at the University of South Florida, while DeSantis has taken his fight against the concept national. But despite winning injunctive relief, she remains troubled by the new environment for higher education under DeSantis.

    “There is a lot at stake and it’s not just for those of us brave enough to be plaintiffs,” she said. “The idea of telling adults what they can and cannot learn is unfathomable. The students who become our future leaders will repeat our mistakes if they don’t understand the past.”

    While legal challenges have prevented DeSantis from fully realizing his vision for Florida, the uncertainty has not always benefited opponents and the plaintiffs suing to block his agenda.

    Abortions after 15 weeks have paused in most cases in Florida while providers await a ruling on the state’s ban. Andrew Warren remains out of office. Transgender care providers are in uncertain territory – Hinkle’s limited rulings provided relief but only for those who sued the state.

    The League of Women Voters of Florida is taking the state to court over new restrictions on third-party voter registration. Fines for violating the law could cost as much as $250,000 a year and the organization has asked for a preliminary injunction to prevent its enforcement. In the meantime, the league decided it would no longer collect and turn in voter registration forms, pausing for now a practice that has been central to its civic outreach for more than 75 years.

    “That’s a very sad and horrible result, but we cannot figure out a way to protect ourselves without that major change,” Scoon said.

    DeSantis has also managed to maneuver when legal challenges have threatened to stymie his efforts, thanks to a closely aligned Republican-led legislature.

    When a lawsuit accused the governor of breaking state law when he sent two planes carrying migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, lawmakers helped change the law to allow him to do so. His administration recently orchestrated the transport of migrants from El Paso, Texas, to California.

    After several individuals arrested last year for voter fraud by DeSantis’ new election security force had their cases dismissed, lawmakers again tweaked the law to try to make it easier for the state to secure convictions.

    DeSantis and Florida Republicans have signaled they intend to keep fighting in court, too. The budget DeSantis signed earlier this month included $16 million for legal battles underway and the ones to come.

    “We will never surrender to the woke mob,” the governor recently told an audience in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are going to leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history where it belongs.”

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