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Tag: us senate

  • Congress passes first legislative response to January 6 Capitol attack | CNN Politics

    Congress passes first legislative response to January 6 Capitol attack | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Congress has passed a measure aimed at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election, a major moment that marks the first legislative response to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and then-President Donald Trump’s relentless pressure campaign to stay in power despite his 2020 loss.

    The legislation, which would overhaul the 1887 Electoral Count Act, was included as part of a massive $1.7 trillion government funding bill that the Senate passed on Thursday and the House passed on Friday. It will now go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

    The measure to overhaul the Electoral Count Act would clarify that the vice president’s role in overseeing the electoral result certification in Congress is strictly ceremonial. It would raise the threshold to make it harder for lawmakers to force votes attempting to overturn a state’s certified result. Additionally, it includes provisions that would prevent efforts to pass along fake electors to Congress.

    The bill is the result of intense bipartisan negotiations that won over the support of top Republicans, including Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. But a number of House Republicans have pushed back on efforts to overhaul the election law. So with Republicans set to soon take control of the House, lawmakers pressed to send the bill to Biden’s desk, knowing it was likely to be doomed in the next Congress.

    Sens. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, and Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, announced on Tuesday that the bill had been included as part of the broader government funding package.

    “We are pleased that our legislation has been included in the omnibus appropriations bill and are grateful to have the support of so many of our colleagues. We look forward to seeing this bill signed into law,” the senators said in a joint statement.

    The Electoral Count Act is an 1887 law that Trump has sought to exploit and create confusion over how Congress counts Electoral College votes from each state in a presidential election. Constitutional experts say the vice president currently can’t disregard a state-certified electoral result, but Trump pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct the Electoral College certification in Congress as part of his pressure campaign. Pence refused to do so and, as a result, became a target of the former president and his mob of supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6.

    The new legislation seeks to make clear that the vice president only has a ceremonial role in overseeing the certification of the electoral results – and does not have the power to unilaterally accept, reject or settle disputes over electors.

    It would also make it more difficult for members of Congress to attempt to overturn an election by increasing the threshold for the number of House and Senate members required to raise an objection to election results when a joint session of Congress meets to certify them.

    The legislation “raises the threshold to lodge an objection to electors to at least one-fifth of the duly chosen and sworn members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate,” according to a fact sheet. Under current law, just one senator can join one House member in forcing each side to vote on whether to throw out results subject to an objection.

    The bill also includes changes intended to prevent efforts to install fake electors. For example, each state’s governor would be responsible for submission of a certificate that identifies electors – and Congress would not be able to accept a slate of electors submitted by any other official. “This reform would address the potential for multiple state officials to send Congress competing slates,” the fact sheet states.

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  • Purdue University Northwest faculty demand chancellor resign after racist remarks | CNN

    Purdue University Northwest faculty demand chancellor resign after racist remarks | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The Faculty Senate Executive Committee at Purdue University Northwest (PNW) released a letter demanding Chancellor Thomas L. Keon resign after making an offensive statement during a commencement ceremony earlier this month, the committee tells CNN.

    A video posted to PNW’s official YouTube page shows Keon taking the podium on December 10 following a speech from a commencement speaker and then uttering some apparently made-up words. As the crowd laughed, he said “that’s sort of my Asian version of his….” seemingly referring to the prior speaker.

    On December 14 Keon made a public apology posted to PNW’s Twitter page. “I made a comment that was offensive and insensitive. I am truly sorry for my unplanned, off-the-cuff response to another speaker,” Keon said “I assure you I did not intend to be hurtful, and my comments do not reflect my personal or our institutional values.”

    On December 16 though, the university’s Faculty Senate Executive Committee came to a unanimous decision demanding Keon’s resignation after a discussion.

    According to Dave Nalbone, who’s a psychology professor at the university and the Vice Chair of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, the committee sent the chancellor a letter that same day demanding he resign from his post.

    “We asked him then, and later, for a response to our demand for his resignation; to date, we have heard nothing from him,” Nalbone said in a statement to CNN.

    In the letter that was delivered to Keon the committee noted that Keon made offensive statements that insulted the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and caused national and international outrage.

    The committee also wrote that Keon’s behavior does “does not reflect the diversity and inclusiveness that Purdue faculty, staff, and students value.”

    The committee plans to follow through with a no-confidence vote and results should be in by Tuesday night, Nalbone said. The outcome of the vote doesn’t necessarily have immediate repercussions. Unless he decides to resign, the only people with removal power would be the board of trustees or president, Nalbone said.

    CNN has reached out to Chancellor Keon and Purdue’s Board of Trustees for comment.

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  • Here’s what’s in the $1.7 trillion federal spending bill | CNN Politics

    Here’s what’s in the $1.7 trillion federal spending bill | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senate leaders unveiled a $1.7 trillion year-long federal government funding bill early Tuesday morning.

    The legislation includes $772.5 billion for non-defense discretionary programs and $858 billion in defense funding, according to a bill summary from Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

    The sweeping package includes roughly $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies, boosts in spending for disaster aid, college access, child care, mental health and food assistance, more support for the military and veterans and additional funds for the US Capitol Police, according to Leahy’s summary and one from Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

    However, the bill, which runs more than 4,000 pages, left out several measures that some lawmakers had fought to include. An expansion of the child tax credit, as well as multiple other corporate and individual tax breaks, did not make it into the final bill. Neither did legislation to allow cannabis companies to bank their cash reserves – known as the Safe Banking Act. Also, there was also no final resolution on where the new FBI headquarters will be located.

    The spending bill is the product of lengthy negotiations between top congressional Democrats and Republicans. Lawmakers reached a “bipartisan, bicameral framework” last week following a dispute between the two parties over how much money should be spent on non-defense domestic priorities. They worked through the weekend to craft the legislation.

    The Senate is expected to vote first to approve the deal this week and then send it to the House for approval before government funding runs out on December 23. The bill would keep the government operating through September, the end of the fiscal year.

    Congress originally passed a continuing resolution on September 30 to temporarily fund the government in fiscal year 2023, which began October 1.

    More aid for Ukraine: The spending bill would provide roughly $45 billion to help support Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against Russia’s attack.

    About $9 billion of the funding would go to Ukraine’s military to pay for a variety of things including training, weapons, logistics support and salaries. Nearly $12 billion would be used to replenish US stocks of equipment sent to Ukraine through presidential drawdown authority.

    Also, it would provide $13 billion for economic support to the Ukrainian government.

    Other funds would address humanitarian and infrastructure needs, as well as support European Command operations.

    Emergency disaster assistance: The bill would appropriate more than $38 billion in emergency funding to help Americans in the west and southeast affected by recent natural disasters, including tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding and wildfires. It would aid farmers, provide economic development assistance for communities, repair and reconstruct federal facilities and direct money to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund, among other initiatives.

    Overhaul of the electoral vote counting law: A provision in the legislation aims at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election, in a direct response to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

    The changes would overhaul the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which then-President Donald Trump tried to use to overturn the 2020 election.

    The legislation would clarify the vice president’s role while overseeing the certification of the electoral result to be completely ceremonial. It also would create a set of stipulations designed to make it harder for there to be any confusion over the accurate slate of electors from each state.

    Higher maximum Pell grant awards: The bill would increase the maximum Pell grant award by $500 to $7,395 for the coming school year. This would be the largest boost since the 2009-2010 school year. About 7 million students, many from lower-income families, receive Pell grants every year to help them afford college.

    Increased support for the military and veterans: The package would fund a 4.6% pay raise for troops and a 22.4% increase in support for Veteran Administration medical care, which provides health services for 7.3 million veterans.

    It would include nearly $53 billion to address higher inflation and $2.7 billion – a 25% increase – to support critical services and housing assistance for veterans and their families.

    The bill also would allocate $5 billion for the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund, which provides additional funding to implement the landmark PACT Act that expands eligibility for health care services and benefits to veterans with conditions related to toxic exposure during their service.

    Beefing up nutrition assistance: The legislation would establish a permanent nationwide Summer EBT program, starting in the summer of 2024, according to Share Our Strength, an anti-hunger advocacy group. It would provide families whose children are eligible for free or reduced-price school meal with a $40 grocery benefit per child per month, indexed to inflation.

    It would also change the rules governing summer meals programs in rural areas. Children would be able to take home or receive delivery of up to 10 days worth of meals, rather than have to consume the food at a specific site and time.

    The bill would also help families who have had their food stamp benefits stolen since October 1 through what’s known as “SNAP skimming.” It would provide them with retroactive federal reimbursement of the funds, which criminals steal by attaching devices to point-of-sale machines or PIN pads to get card numbers and other information from electronic benefits transfer cards.

    More money for child care: The legislation would provide $8 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, a 30% increase in funding. The grant gives financial assistance to low-income families to afford child care.

    Also, Head Start would receive nearly $12 billion, an 8.6% boost. The program helps young children from low-income families prepare for school.

    Help to pay utility bills: The bill would provide $5 billion for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Combined with the $1 billion contained in the earlier continuing resolution, this would be the largest regular appropriation for the program, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. Home heating and cooling costs – and the applications for federal aid in paying the bills – have soared this year.

    Enhance retirement savings: The bill contains new retirement rules that could make it easier for Americans to accumulate retirement savings – and less costly to withdraw them. Among other things, the provisions would allow penalty-free withdrawals for some emergency expenses, let employers offer matching retirement contributions for a worker’s student loan payments and increase how much older workers may save in employer retirement plans.

    More support for the environment: The package would provide an additional $576 million for the Environmental Protection Agency, bringing its funding up to $10.1 billion. It would increase support for enforcement and compliance, as well as clean air, water and toxic chemical programs, after years of flat funding.

    It also would boost funding for the National Park Service by 6.4%, restoring 500 of the 3,000 staff positions lost over the past decade. This would be intended to help the agency handle substantial increases in visitation.

    Plus, the legislation would provide an additional 14% in funding for wildland firefighting.

    Additional funding for the US Capitol Police: The bill would provide an additional $132 million for the Capitol Police for a total of nearly $735 million. It would allow the department to hire up to 137 sworn officers and 123 support and civilian personnel, bringing the force to a projected level of 2,126 sworn officers and 567 civilians.

    It would also give $2 million to provide off-campus security for lawmakers in response to evolving and growing threats.

    Investments in homelessness prevention and affordable housing: The legislation would provide $3.6 billion for homeless assistance grants, a 13% increase. It would serve more than 1 million people experiencing homelessness.

    The package also would funnel nearly $6.4 billion to the Community Development Block Grant formula program and related local economic and community development projects that benefit low- and moderate income areas and people, an increase of almost $1.6 billion.

    Plus, it would provide $1.5 billion for the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which would lead to the construction of nearly 10,000 new rental and homebuyer units and maintain the record investment from the last fiscal year.

    Increased health care funding: The package would provide more money for National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. The funds are intended to speed the development of new therapies, diagnostics and preventive measures, beef up public health activities and strengthen the nation’s biosecurity by accelerating development of medical countermeasures for pandemic threats and fortifying stockpiles and supply chains for drugs, masks and other supplies.

    More resources for children’s mental health and for substance abuse: The bill would provide more funds to increase access to mental health services for children and schools. It also would invest more money to address the opioid epidemic and substance use disorder.

    Tiktok ban from federal devices: The legislation would ban TikTok, the Chinese-owned short-form video app, from federal government devices.

    Some lawmakers have raised bipartisan concerns that China’s national security laws could force TikTok – or its parent, ByteDance – to hand over the personal data of its US users. Recently, a wave of states led by Republican governors have introduced state-level restrictions on the use of TikTok on government-owned devices.

    Enhanced child tax credit: A coalition of Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates pushed hard to extend at least one provision of the enhanced child tax credit, which was in effect last year thanks to the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Their priority was to make the credit more refundable so more of the lowest-income families can qualify. Nearly 19 million kids won’t receive the full $2,000 benefit this year because their parents earn too little, according to a Tax Policy Center estimate.

    New cannabis banking rules: Lawmakers considered including a provision in the spending bill that would make it easier for licensed cannabis businesses to accept credit cards – but it was left out of the legislation. Known as the Safe Banking Act, which previously passed the House, the provision would prohibit federal regulators from taking punitive measures against banks for providing services to legitimate cannabis businesses.

    Even though 47 states have legalized some form of marijuana, cannabis remains illegal on the federal level. That means financial institutions providing banking services to cannabis businesses are subject to criminal prosecution – leaving many legal growers and sellers locked out of the banking system.

    FBI headquarters: There was also no final resolution on where the new FBI headquarters will be located, a major point of contention as lawmakers from Maryland – namely House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer – pushed to bring the law enforcement agency into their state. In a deal worked through by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the General Services Administration would be required to conduct “separate and detailed consultations” with Maryland and Virginia representatives about potential sites in each of the states, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    RELATED: See how your votes aren’t equal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Congress has so much to do before Christmas | CNN Politics

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



    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But already, the field appears to be taking shape.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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

    Kyrsten Sinema’s defection without a difference | 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 recent history of party-switching senators includes stories of moderates feeling abandoned, longtime politicians unwilling to face primary voters or thrown out in primaries, and secret campaigns by one party to pick the other’s pocket.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    But there are and more independents in Arizona.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Runoffs also are costly affairs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • US lawmakers want answers from FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried | CNN Business

    US lawmakers want answers from FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Lawmakers are demanding that Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the failed crypto exchange FTX, appear before the Senate Banking Committee next week over “significant unanswered questions ” surrounding the collapse of his companies.

    In a letter to Bankman-Fried and his lawyer, the committee’s Democratic chairman, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania wrote that the American people need answers about Bankman-Fried’s “misconduct” leading to the collapse of FTX and its sister hedge fund, Alameda, both of which filed for bankruptcy on November 11.

    “You must answer for the failure of both entities that was caused, at least in part, by the clear misuse of client funds and wiped out billions of dollars owed to over a million creditors,” the senators wrote.

    It wasn’t clear whether Bankman-Fried would comply. A representative for his attorney referred to Bankman-Fried’s tweet on Sunday in which he told Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, that he couldn’t commit to testifying at a hearing scheduled for December 13, one day before the Senate committee’s hearing. “Once I have finished learning and reviewing what happened, I would feel like it was my duty to appear before the committee and explain,” Bankman-Fried wrote. “I’m not sure that will happen by the 13th.”

    Brown and Toomey said in their letter that the committee would “consider further action if he does not comply.”

    “There are still significant unanswered questions about how client funds were misappropriated, how clients were blocked from withdrawing their own money, and how you orchestrated a cover up.”

    Separately, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tina Smith of Minnesota, both Democrats, sent letters to three regulators – the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency – asking them to assess the traditional banking system’s exposure to turmoil in the crypto space, a largely unregulated, parallel financial system.

    “Crypto firms may have closer ties to the banking system than previously understood,” Warren and Smith wrote. “Banks’ relationships with crypto firms raise questions about the safety and soundness of our banking system and highlight potential loopholes that crypto firms may try to exploit to gain further access.” 

    Federal prosecutors are investigating the collapse of FTX, an exchange that marketed itself as a beginner-friendly way to get involved in what was, until recently, a booming if highly volatile market for digital assets. FTX also facilitated high-risk leveraged trading that wasn’t allowed inside the United States. (The firm was based in The Bahamas.)

    FTX was one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world until last month, when it faced a sudden wave of customer withdrawals that it couldn’t cover. One of the key questions prosecutors are likely to probe is whether FTX misappropriated customer funds when it made loans to Alameda.

    Bankman-Fried has denied accusations of misusing customer deposits. “I didn’t knowingly commingle funds,” he told The New York Times last week. “I was frankly surprised by how big Alameda’s position was.”

    Federal prosecutors are also investigating whether Bankman-Fried played a role in the collapse this spring of two interlinked cryptocurrencies, Terra and Luna, according to the New York Times, which cited two people familiar with the matter.

    The Times said the issue is part of a broadening inquiry into the collapse of FTX, and it’s not clear whether prosecutors have determined any wrongdoing by Bankman-Fried.

    In a statement to the paper, Bankman-Fried said he was “not aware of any market manipulation and certainly never intended to engage in market manipulation.”

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  • The most shocking Senate result: Every incumbent won | CNN Politics

    The most shocking Senate result: Every incumbent won | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    One of the most common refrains in politics is voters hate Washington and want outsiders to be elected to office. But Sen. Raphael Warnock’s victory in Georgia’s Senate runoff on Tuesday is part of a trend that suggests that, at least in 2022, that wasn’t true.

    Each of the 29 Senate incumbents who ran for reelection won. This year’s Senate elections marked the first time in at least a century in which no incumbent senator up for reelection lost.

    So what just happened? Bad challenger quality, a map without a lot of competitive races taking place in an era of high polarization and an unusually tight national environment combined to create history.

    Let’s start with the fact that Republicans were not able to take advantage of the typical midterm headwinds that move against the president’s party. That happened in part because of bad candidate quality.

    Think about the challengers in the highest profile Senate races (Arizona, Georgia and Nevada) where Republicans hoped to knock off Democratic incumbents. All of the challengers had negative net favorability (favorable – unfavorable) ratings. All the senators up for reelection in these states had positive net favorability ratings.

    You’ll also note that all of these states are ones in which President Joe Biden won in 2020. This brings up a second important point: The list of competitive races on this Senate map was quite small.

    Most of these same Senate seats were last up in 2016. That year, the party that won the presidential race in a state won the Senate race, too. Two of these Senate seats changed parties in special elections in 2020, but both of those changes occurred in states (Arizona and Georgia) that flipped on the presidential level that year as well.

    In fact, Wisconsin was the one state on the Senate map this year where the incumbent running was not of the same party that won the state in the 2020 presidential election. Biden won that state by less than a point.

    In an era in which polarization is high, and pretty much all the incumbents were from states that their party carried in the previous presidential election, one of two things needed to happen for the incumbents to lose: Either the challengers had to be much better liked than the incumbents or the national environment needed to be strongly in favor of one of the two parties.

    We already mentioned that Republican challengers in the most competitive races with Democratic incumbents were not more popular than the incumbents. That was true as well in Wisconsin, where the Democratic challenger had a negative net favorability rating, too.

    This meant that the national environment had to lean strongly toward one party to make it likely that an incumbent would lose. This didn’t happen. Instead, the Democratic and Republican candidates for Senate got about the same share of the vote nationwide when you tally up all of the races.

    Indeed, it was a historically close election nationally. The cumulative nationwide Senate vote margin will be the closest since at least 1990.

    Interestingly, the fact that not a single Senate incumbent lost seems to be in line with other history made in the 2022 election.

    Like in the Senate, incumbent governors across the board seemed to do historically well. There was just one governor who lost reelection (Steve Sisolak of Nevada). That one loss marks the fewest losses by sitting governors in cycles in which at least 10 of them ran since at least 1948.

    And as in the Senate races, the cumulative vote in gubernatorial races was closer than in any midterm or presidential year since at least 1990 as well.

    It turns out that few voters seemed to want to “throw the bums out” in 2022. Voters actually seemed ready to have a steady hand in government in which incumbency and minimal change was favored. In an era dominated by the presence of former President Donald Trump, that’s certainly notable.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

    This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.

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

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

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    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Sam Bankman-Fried could face years in prison over FTX’s $32 billion meltdown — if the U.S. ever gets around to arresting him

    Sam Bankman-Fried could face years in prison over FTX’s $32 billion meltdown — if the U.S. ever gets around to arresting him

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    FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried attends a press conference at the FTX Arena in downtown Miami on Friday, June 4, 2021.

    Matias J. Ocner | Miami Herald | Tribune News Service | Getty Images

    Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced former CEO of FTX — the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange that was worth $32 billion a few weeks ago — has a real knack for self-promotional PR. For years, he cast himself in the likeness of a young boy genius turned business titan, capable of miraculously growing his crypto empire as other players got wiped out. Everyone from Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists to A-list celebrities bought the act.

    But during Bankman-Fried’s press junket of the last few weeks, the onetime wunderkind has spun a new narrative – one in which he was simply an inexperienced and novice businessman who was out of his depth, didn’t know what he was doing, and crucially, didn’t know what was happening at the businesses he founded.

    It is quite the departure from the image he had carefully cultivated since launching his first crypto firm in 2017 – and according to former federal prosecutors, trial attorneys and legal experts speaking to CNBC, it recalls a classic legal defense dubbed the “bad businessman strategy.”

    At least $8 billion in customer funds are missing, reportedly used to backstop billions in losses at Alameda Research, the hedge fund he also founded. Both of his companies are now bankrupt with billions of dollars worth of debt on the books. The CEO tapped to take over, John Ray III, said that “in his 40 years of legal and restructuring experience,” he had never seen “such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.” This is the same Ray who presided over Enron’s liquidation in the 2000s.

    In America, it is not a crime to be a lousy or careless CEO with poor judgement. During his recent press tour from a remote location in the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried really leaned into his own ineptitude, largely blaming FTX’s collapse on poor risk management.

    At least a dozen times in a conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin, he appeared to deflect blame to Caroline Ellison, his counterpart (and one-time girlfriend) at Alameda. He says didn’t know how extremely leveraged Alameda was, and that he just didn’t know about a lot of things going on at his vast empire.

    Bankman-Fried admitted he had a “bad month,” but denied committing fraud at his crypto exchange.

    Fraud is the kind of criminal charge that can put you behind bars for life. With Bankman-Fried, the question is whether he misled FTX customers to believe their money was available, and not being used as collateral for loans or for other purposes, according to Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor and trial attorney who has represented clients in derivative-related claims and securities class actions.

    “It sure looks like there’s a chargeable fraud case here,” said Mariotti. “If I represented Mr. Bankman-Fried, I would tell him he should be very concerned about prison time. That it should be an overriding concern for him.”

    But for the moment, Bankman-Fried appears unconcerned with his personal legal exposure. When Sorkin asked him if he was concerned about criminal liability, he demurred.

    “I don’t think that — obviously, I don’t personally think that I have — I think the real answer is it’s not — it sounds weird to say it, but I think the real answer is it’s not what I’m focusing on,” Bankman-Fried told Sorkin. “It’s — there’s going to be a time and a place for me to think about myself and my own future. But I don’t think this is it.”

    Comments such as these, paired with the lack of apparent action by regulators or authorities, have helped inspire fury among many in the industry – not just those who lost their money. The spectacular collapse of FTX and SBF blindsided investors, customers, venture capitalists and Wall Street alike.

    Bankman-Fried did not respond to a request for comment. Representatives for his former law firm, Paul, Weiss, did not immediately respond to comment. Semafor reported earlier that Bankman-Fried’s new attorney was Greg Joseph, a partner at Joseph Hage Aaronson.

    Both of Bankman-Fried’s parents are highly respected Stanford Law School professors. Semafor also reported that another Stanford Law professor, David Mills, was advising Bankman-Fried.

    Mills, Joseph and Bankman-Fried’s parents did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    The risk of an FTX crypto contagion

    What kind of legal trouble could he be in?

    Bankman-Fried could face a host of potential charges – civil and criminal – as well as private lawsuits from millions of FTX creditors, legal experts told CNBC.

    For now, this is all purely hypothetical. Bankman-Fried has not been charged, tried, nor convicted of any crime yet.

    Richard Levin is a partner at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, where he chairs the fintech and regulation practice. He’s been involved in the fintech industry since the early 1990s, and has represented clients before the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Congress. All three of those entities have begun probing Bankman-Fried.

    There are three different, possibly simultaneous legal threats that Bankman-Fried faces in the United States alone, Levin told CNBC.

    First is criminal action from the U.S. Department of Justice, for potential “criminal violations of securities laws, bank fraud laws, and wire fraud laws,” Levin said.

    A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.

    Securing a conviction is always challenging in a criminal case.

    Mariotti, the former federal prosecutor is intricately familiar with how the government would build a case. He told CNBC, “prosecutors would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bankman-Fried or his associates committed criminal fraud.”

    “The argument would be that Alameda was tricking these people into getting their money so they could use it to prop up a different business,” Mariotti said.

    “If you’re a hedge fund and you’re accepting customer funds, you actually have a fiduciary duty [to the customer],” Mariotti said.

    Prosecutors could argue that FTX breached that fiduciary duty by allegedly using customer funds to artificially stabilize the price of FTX’s own FTT coin, Mariotti said.

    But intent is also a factor in fraud cases, and Bankman-Fried insists he didn’t know about potentially fraudulent activity. He told Sorkin that he “didn’t knowingly commingle funds.”

    “I didn’t ever try to commit fraud,” Bankman-Fried said.

    Beyond criminal charges, Bankman-Fried could also be facing civil enforcement action. “That could be brought by the Securities Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and by state banking and securities regulators,” Levin continued.

    “On a third level, there’s also plenty of class actions that can be brought, so there are multiple levels of potential exposure for […] the executives involved with FTX,” Levin concluded.

    Members of Congress try to distance themselves from FTX campaign contributions

    Who is likely to go after him?

    The Department of Justice is most likely to pursue criminal charges in the U.S. The Wall Street Journal reported that the DOJ and the SEC were both probing FTX’s collapse, and were in close contact with each other.

    That kind of cooperation allows for criminal and civil probes to proceed simultaneously, and allows regulators and law enforcement to gather information more effectively.

    But it isn’t clear whether the SEC or the CFTC will take the lead in securing civil damages.

    An SEC spokesperson said the agency does not comment on the existence or nonexistence of a possible investigation. The CFTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    “The question of who would be taking the lead there, whether it be the SEC or CFTC, depends on whether or not there were securities involved,” Mariotti, the former federal prosecutor, told CNBC.

    SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, who met with Bankman-Fried and FTX executives in spring 2022, has said publicly that “many crypto tokens are securities,” which would make his agency the primary regulator. But many exchanges, including FTX, have crypto derivatives platforms that sell financial products like futures and options, which fall under the CFTC’s jurisdiction.

    “For selling unregistered securities without a registration or an exemption, you could be looking at the Securities Exchange Commission suing for disgorgement — monetary penalties,” said Levin, who’s represented clients before both agencies.

    “They can also sue, possibly, claiming that FTX was operating an unregistered securities market,” Levin said.

    Then there are the overseas regulators that oversaw any of the myriad FTX subsidiaries.

    The Securities Commission of The Bahamas believes it has jurisdiction, and went as far as to file a separate case in New York bankruptcy court. That case has since been folded into FTX’s main bankruptcy protection proceedings, but Bahamian regulators continue to investigate FTX’s activities.

    Court filings allege that Bahamian regulators have moved customer digital assets from FTX custody into their own. Bahamian regulators insist that they’re proceeding by the book, under the country’s groundbreaking crypto regulations — unlike many nations, the Bahamas has a robust legal framework for digital assets.

    I didn't ever try to commit fraud on anyone: Sam Bankman-Fried

    But crypto investors aren’t sold on their competence.

    “The Bahamas clearly lack the institutional infrastructure to tackle a fraud this complex and have been completely derelict in their duty,” Castle Island Ventures partner Nic Carter told CNBC. (Carter was not an FTX investor, and told CNBC that his fund passed on early FTX rounds.)

    “There is no question of standing. U.S. courts have obvious access points here and numerous parts of Sam’s empire touched the U.S. Every day the U.S. leaves this in the hands of the Bahamas is a lost opportunity,” he continued.

    Investors who have lost their savings aren’t waiting. Class-action suits have already been filed against FTX endorsers, like comedian Larry David and football superstar Tom Brady. One suit excoriated the celebrity endorsers for allegedly failing to do their “due diligence prior to marketing [FTX] to the public.”

    FTX’s industry peers are also filing suit against Bankman-Fried. BlockFi sued Bankman-Fried in November, seeking unnamed collateral that the former billionaire provided for the crypto lending firm.

    FTX and Bankman-Fried had previously rescued BlockFi from insolvency in June, but when FTX failed, BlockFi was left with a similar liquidity problem and filed for bankruptcy protection in New Jersey.

    Bankman-Fried has also been sued in Florida and California federal courts. He faces class-action suits in both states over “one of the great frauds in history,” a California court filing said.

    The largest securities class-action settlement was for $7.2 billion in the Enron accounting fraud case, according to Stanford research. The possibility of a multibillion-dollar settlement would come on top of civil and criminal fines that Bankman-Fried faces.

    But the onus should be on the U.S. government to pursue Bankman-Fried, Carter told CNBC, not on private investors or overseas regulators.

    “The U.S. isn’t shy about using foreign proxies to go after Assange — why in this case have they suddenly found their restraint?”

    What penalties could he face?

    Wire fraud is the most likely criminal charge Bankman-Fried would face. If the DOJ were able to secure a conviction, a judge would look to several factors to determine how long to sentence him.

    Braden Perry was once a senior trial lawyer for the CFTC, FTX’s only official U.S. regulator. He’s now a partner at Kennyhertz Perry, where he advises clients on anti-money laundering, compliance and enforcement issues.

    Based on the size of the losses, if Bankman-Fried is convicted of fraud or other charges, he could be behind bars for years — potentially for the rest of his life, Perry said. But the length of any potential sentence is hard to predict.

    “In the federal system, each crime always has a starting point,” Perry told CNBC.

    Federal sentencing guidelines follow a numeric system to determine the maximum and minimum allowable sentence, but the system can be esoteric. The scale, or “offense level,” starts at one, and maxes out at 43.

    A wire fraud conviction rates as a seven on the scale, with a minimum sentence ranging from zero to six months.

    But mitigating factors and enhancements can alter that rating, Perry told CNBC.

    “The dollar value of loss plays a significant role. Under the guidelines, any loss above $550 million adds 30 points to the base level offense,” Perry said. FTX customers have lost billions.

    “Having 25 or more victims adds 6 points, [and] use of certain regulated markets adds 4,” Perry continued.

    In this hypothetical scenario, Bankman-Fried would max out the scale at 43, based on those enhancements. That means Bankman-Fried could be facing life in federal prison, without the possibility of supervised release, if he’s convicted on a single wire fraud offense.

    But that sentence can be reduced by mitigating factors – circumstances that would lessen the severity of any alleged crimes.

    “In practice, many white-collar defendants are sentenced to lesser sentences than what the guidelines dictate,” Perry told CNBC, Even in large fraud cases, that 30-point enhancement previously mentioned can be considered punitive.

    By way of comparison, Stefan Qin, the Australian founder of a $90 million cryptocurrency hedge fund, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison after he pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud. Roger Nils-Jonas Karlsson, a Swedish national accused by the United States of defrauding over 3,500 victims of more than $16 million was sentenced to 15 years in prison for securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.

    Bankman-Fried could also face massive civil fines. Bankman-Fried was once a multibillionaire, but claimed he was down to his last $100,000 in a conversation with CNBC’s Sorkin at the DealBook Summit last week.

    “Depending on what is discovered as part of the investigations by law enforcement and the civil authorities, you could be looking at both heavy monetary penalties and potential incarceration for decades,” Levin told CNBC.

    FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried is a 'pathological liar' and a 'con man,' says Jim Cramer

    How long will it take?

    Whatever happens won’t happen quickly.

    In the most famous fraud case in recent years, Bernie Madoff was arrested within 24 hours of federal authorities learning of his multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. But Madoff was in New York and admitted to his crime on the spot.

    The FTX founder is in the Bahamas and hasn’t admitted wrongdoing. Short of a voluntary return, any efforts to apprehend him would require extradition.

    With hundreds of subsidiaries and bank accounts, and thousands of creditors, it’ll take prosecutors and regulators time to work through everything.

    Similar cases “took years to put together,” said Mariotti. At FTX, where record keeping was spotty at best, collecting enough data to prosecute could be much harder. Expenses were reportedly handled through messaging software, for example, making it difficult to pinpoint how and when money flowed out for legitimate expenses.

    In Enron’s bankruptcy, senior executives weren’t charged until nearly three years after the company went under. That kind of timeline infuriates some in the crypto community.

    “The fact that Sam is still walking free and unencumbered, presumably able to cover his tracks and destroy evidence, is a travesty,” said Carter.

    But just because law enforcement is tight-lipped, that doesn’t mean they’re standing down.

    “People should not jump to the conclusion that something is not happening just because it has not been publicly disclosed,” Levin told CNBC.

    Could he just disappear?

    “That’s always a possibility with the money that someone has,” Perry said, although Bankman-Fried claims he’s down to one working credit card. But Perry doesn’t think it’s likely. “I believe that there has been likely some negotiation with his attorneys, and the prosecutors and other regulators that are looking into this, to ensure them that when the time comes […] he’s not fleeing somewhere,” Perry told CNBC.

    In the meantime, Bankman-Fried won’t be resting easy as he waits for the hammer to drop. Rep. Maxine Waters extended a Twitter invitation for him to appear before a Dec. 13 hearing.

    Bankman-Fried responded on Twitter, telling Waters that if he understands what happened at FTX by then, he’d appear.

    Correction: Caroline Ellison is Bankman-Fried’s counterpart at Alameda. An earlier version misspelled her name.

    FTX heads to a Delaware courtroom as the biggest crypto bankruptcy case yet gets underway

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

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

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    Atlanta
    CNN
     — 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Young said Warnock’s story is inspiring.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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  • Sen. Sherrod Brown says Ohio is still a swing state ahead of 2024 election | CNN Politics

    Sen. Sherrod Brown says Ohio is still a swing state ahead of 2024 election | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio said Sunday that “of course” the Buckeye State was still a swing state, brushing off concerns about a 2024 reelection bid after Republican J.D. Vance won the state’s other Senate seat last month.

    “I’m not worried. … I know it’s a challenge always, but I’m going about doing my job,” Brown told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

    Vance’s Senate win over Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan continued a long line of Republican victories in a state that has tilted toward the party in recent years. Other than Brown, no Democrat has won a nonjudicial statewide office in the state since 2008, and former President Barack Obama was the last Democratic presidential nominee to win the state, doing so in 2012.

    But Brown, a liberal populist, has found success in Ohio with a progressive message. In 2019, he explored a presidential bid through a “listening tour” that included stops in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, the four key early-voting states in the 2020 primary, before deciding against a run. He is expected to seek a fourth term next year.

    “Not many people thinking about the 2024 election. I’ll do my job,” Brown said Sunday. “We’ll see how that goes.”

    Brown, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, also said he believed the US is on the “right track” to bring inflation down, and he defended Congress’ role in protecting Americans investing in cryptocurrency following the implosion of FTX, the multi-billion-dollar crypto exchange.

    Soon after FTX went down, crypto firms were inundated by requests from customers seeking to claw their money back – the crypto equivalent of a run on the bank. Several firms have been forced to suspend withdrawals while they sort out their liquidity problems.

    “To say Congress has done nothing is not quite accurate. We’ve done a series of hearings exposing the problems with crypto, the problems for consumers, the problems for our economy here and the problems internationally for their national security,” Brown said. “We will continue that.”

    “I would love to do something legislatively. I don’t know that Congress is capable of that because of crypto’s hold on one political party in the Senate and the House,” he added, referring to the GOP.

    “But we’re trying every day.”

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  • The fine print of the Respect for Marriage Act | CNN Politics

    The fine print of the Respect for Marriage Act | CNN Politics

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



    CNN
     — 

    Let’s start with the positive: Republicans and Democrats are coming together to protect same-sex marriage from the Supreme Court. The Respect for Marriage Act, which safeguards the right to same-sex marriage nationwide, passed the House with bipartisan support earlier this week and now awaits a Senate vote.

    The Respect for Marriage Act codifies marriages and came about amid worries among Democrats that the same conservative majority on the Supreme Court that took away the right to abortion will target same-sex marriage in the future.

    The version that overcame a filibuster in the Senate passed the Senate Tuesday. A dozen Republican senators from across the country voted with Democrats before Thanksgiving to limit debate and move toward a final vote.

    RELATED: Meet the 12 Republicans who voted to consider the Respect for Marriage Act

    It next goes to the House for approval before President Joe Biden can sign it into law.

    But there is a fair amount of fine print.

    First, the bill does not require all states to allow same-sex marriage, even though that is the current reality under the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Rather, if the Supreme Court overturned Obergefell and previous state prohibitions on same-sex marriage came back into effect, the Respect for Marriage Act would require states and the federal government to respect marriages conducted in places where it is legal.

    There are religious exceptions. Republican supporters have emphasized the elements in this Senate version that protect nonprofit and religious organizations from having to provide support for same-sex marriages.

    “I will be supporting the substitute amendment because it will ensure our religious freedoms are upheld and protected, one of the bedrocks of our democracy,” said West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito in a statement after helping break the filibuster.

    It took months of behind-the-scenes effort to bring 10-plus Republicans on board.

    This is all academic right now. The bill is only being passed in case the now-solidly conservative Supreme Court, which has taken delight in upending precedent, were to revisit the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that created a national right to marriage for same-sex couples.

    Two of the justices who voted in favor of that ruling have been replaced by Republican-appointed conservatives, which means that if the case were heard today, there’s a real likelihood it would be decided differently.

    While Justice Samuel Alito seemed to want to wall off the abortion rights precedent upended by the Supreme Court earlier this year, CNN’s Ariane de Vogue has written about how the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization could affect issues like marriage. Read her story.

    Here’s a brief history of marriage equality playing a role in prior election years:

    Today, it’s Republicans and Democrats, along with a Democratic president, working together to protect same-sex marriage from a government institution.

    During that time, public support for same-sex marriage grew from about a quarter of the public in the year the Defense of Marriage Act was enacted to 71% in Gallup polling this year.

    The issue has played a role in multiple US elections, including, arguably, the one that just took place.

    Here’s a brief history of marriage equality playing a role in prior election years:

    In 1996, Republican majorities in the House and Senate sensed a political opening after then-President Bill Clinton failed to allow gay people to openly serve in the military.

    They were also trying to get ahead of a Hawaii court decision that could have legalized same-sex marriage in that state. Fearing every state might have to recognize same-sex unions, Republicans pushed the Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA.

    It declared marriage as between one man and one woman and allowed states to refuse to recognize marriages. It also withheld federal benefits from married same-sex couples. In 2013, a part of DOMA was found to be unconstitutional.

    DOMA had broad approval. Democrats like then-Sen. Joe Biden voted for the bill. Current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and many other Democrats whose names you’d recognize, were among the 342 who voted for the bill in the House.

    Current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among the 67 members to vote “no,” along with Rep. Steve Gunderson, who at the time was the House’s only openly gay Republican.

    In 2004, placing anti-gay-marriage amendments on ballots in key states like Ohio was smart politics. It helped George W. Bush win reelection to the White House and the GOP gain seats in the US Senate.

    Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The Democratic candidate, John Kerry, also opposed same-sex marriage at the time.

    In 2008, even as more in his party began to publicly support marriage equality, Obama continued his opposition.

    He has more recently said and written that he always personally supported same-sex marriage rights. His campaign aide David Axelrod has written that Obama made a calculated decision to oppose gay marriage.

    “He grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’” Axelrod wrote in a memoir.

    In 2012, following the lead of then-Vice President Biden, Obama officially evolved on the issue and said he now supported marriage equality. It was a big moment.

    A few years later, in 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide.

    “I’m fine with it,” Trump said in 2016 during an interview with “60 Minutes.”

    He’d go on to brag about being a champion for gay rights, although many LGBTQ activists would disagree.

    The politicians of the ’90s have largely evolved with the country.

    But one of the Supreme Court’s relics from the ’90s, Justice Clarence Thomas, recently questioned the 2015 marriage decision he opposed. As a result, Republicans and Democrats are coming together again, in less than a generation, to undo what they did in 1996, and try to guarantee marriage as a right for all Americans.

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  • Biden ‘confident’ rail strike will be avoided though congressional hurdles loom | CNN Politics

    Biden ‘confident’ rail strike will be avoided though congressional hurdles loom | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden said Tuesday he is “confident” a rail strike will be avoided while meeting with the top four congressional leaders, though any one senator could slow down the process of approving legislation that would avert such a strike – and at least one said he was planning to do so.

    “I asked the four top leaders in Congress to ask whether they’d be willing to come in and talk about what we’re gonna do between now and Christmas in terms of legislation and there’s a lot to do, including resolving the train strike,” Biden said while meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

    “It’s not an easy call but I think we have to do it,” Biden said. “The economy is at risk.”

    On Monday, Biden called on Congress to “immediately” pass legislation to avert a railroad shutdown by officially adopting a September tentative agreement approved by labor and management leaders. Rank-and-file members of four unions have rejected the agreement and are prepared to go on a railroad strike on December 9 without either a new labor agreement or congressional action.

    Biden, a longtime labor ally, along with Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and other administration officials helped unions and management reach a tentative deal averting a freight railroad strike in September.

    A railroad strike could clog supply chains and lead to a spike in prices on necessities such as gasoline and food – dampening an economy that many fear is heading toward a recession. It could also cost could cost the US economy $1 billion in its first week alone, according to an analysis from the Anderson Economic Group.

    Michael Baldwin, president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, one of the four unions whose members voted no on the deal, said Tuesday that Biden has let the union and its members down.

    “We’re trying to address an issue here of sick time. It’s very important,” Michael Baldwin, the president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on “Newsroom.” “This action prevents us from reaching the end of our process. It takes away the strength and the abilities that we have to force bargaining or force the railroads into a situation to actually do the right thing.”

    Pelosi said Tuesday the chamber could vote as soon as Wednesday on legislation to adopt the September tentative agreement and avert a possible rail strike. Once passed, Senate action could occur later this week or next, several Senate sources have told CNN. The Senate is expected to have the votes to break a filibuster on the bill to avert a potential railway strike, the Senate sources also said. There are likely to be at least 10 Republicans who will vote with most Senate Democrats to overcome a 60-vote threshold.

    After the meeting, McConnell expressed openness to backing the legislation, and told reporters “We’re gonna need to pass a bill.”

    But any one senator can slow the process down as timing agreements to move along legislation typically require unanimous consent from all 100 members of the chamber. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, criticized the proposed deal to avert a rail strike on Tuesday. Sanders reiterated his threat to slow down rail measure unless he gets sick-leave amendment vote in a tweet Tuesday afternoon.

    “At a time of record profits in the rail industry, it’s unacceptable that rail workers have ZERO guaranteed paid sick days. It’s my intention to block consideration of the rail legislation until a roll call vote occurs on guaranteeing 7 paid sick days to rail workers in America,” he wrote.

    Any one member can delay a quick vote and potentially put off final action until after the December 9 deadline to avert a strike.

    Some Republicans are still skeptical of congressional intervention, arguing they would rather the issue be dealt with administratively.

    Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a frequent swing vote, told CNN that the measure “deserves careful consideration.”

    “I’m going to wait and listen to the debate at lunch today before reaching any kind of conclusion,” she said.

    Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, a member of GOP leadership, also told CNN she was still evaluating the plan.

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  • These are the end-of-year political showdowns that will help decide America’s future | CNN Politics

    These are the end-of-year political showdowns that will help decide America’s future | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    America is heading for a year-end political collision that will set the stage for showdowns between the new Republican-led House and the Democrats who still wield power in the Senate and White House.

    A fraught coda to the political battles of 2022 will decide who holds the government purse strings and how far the US will go in funding Ukraine’s war with Russia. It will showcase extremism in the incoming GOP-run House and the size of the Democratic Senate majority. And the 2024 presidential campaign is grinding into gear with ex-President Donald Trump stirring controversy on multiple fronts and President Joe Biden pondering a reelection bid.

    In Congress, a lame-duck session will see standoffs that could risk a government shutdown and over the must-lift US government borrowing limit, with grave implications for the economy.

    Meanwhile, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is scrambling to solidify support in his bid to become speaker in January, with a smaller-than-expected incoming majority giving his extreme pro-Trump colleagues extra power.

    And the House January 6 committee is poised to soon unveil its final report on Trump’s negligence and incitement leading up to the US Capitol insurrection. The findings, amid signs of acrimony inside the panel, could further color sentiment towards the ex-president as he seeks to build momentum after an underwhelming 2024 campaign launch – and as powerful donors, as well as prominent Republicans considering their own White House ambitions, are openly castigating Trump for hosting and then failing to disavow White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. The special counsel probe into his hoarding of classified documents and 2020 election chicanery is also gathering pace.

    Trump is also one of the factors playing into the Georgia Senate runoff election on December 6 that could give Democrats slender breathing room in the chamber or extend the 50-50 split broken only by Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote that made Biden’s agenda so precarious for the last two years.

    These next few weeks will show the country has failed to fully process the trauma of the Trump presidency or to arrive at the sense of normality that Biden promised during the 2020 campaign – even as the two rivals maneuver ahead of a possible rematch in 2024. They will also stress the near impossibility of governing at a time when America is deeply split between two political poles since big questions are likely to get pushed down the road.

    Big issues not solved this December will be pitched into an even more volatile atmosphere by an aggressive GOP-controlled House primed to slam the White House with partisan investigations.

    There’s also the renewed threat of a freight rail strike that could again clog supply lines and fresh Democratic calls for more action on gun control after a tragic new spate of mass shootings. The Democrats have a massive agenda before relinquishing the House but have little political room or time to accomplish it.

    Still, Congress is expected to mark one milestone in the coming weeks. The Senate is expected to vote to codify rights to same-sex and interracial marriage after a procedural vote on the measure earlier in November demonstrated strong bipartisan support.

    Here is what to look out for in the coming weeks.

    Congress must pass a bill to fund the government by December 16 or risk a partial government shutdown. The administration has asked for $37.7 billion in aid for Ukraine, $10 billion for extended efforts to combat Covid-19 and an unspecified amount for disaster relief after hurricanes hit Florida and Puerto Rico.

    Democrats will remain in control of the House until the new Congress in 2023, but a major spending package will also still likely require agreement from 10 Republicans to beat a Senate filibuster. GOP senators are especially skeptical about the administration’s warnings that the US will suffer a relapse in its exit from the pandemic without billions more dollars in funding. And even getting a Democratic majority in the chamber to sign on could be a challenge since West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin could make another stand against another spurt of government spending, especially since he would face a tough race if he decides to run for reelection in 2024.

    There is likely sufficient support for new aid to Ukraine in the Senate, but funding President Volodymyr Zelensky’s war for democracy against Russia is set to become far less routine next year as pro-Trump House members, like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, are vowing to halt aid needed for vital weapons and ammunition. They want the cash sent to reinforce the southern US border instead.

    The most serious showdown of the new Congress could come over raising the government’s borrowing limit that is due to be reached sometime next year. Failure to do so could trash faith in America’s willingness to pay its bills and send shockwaves through the US and global economy.

    McCarthy has already warned he will require spending concessions on key programs in return for allowing the government to borrow more money – a scenario that triggered several damaging fiscal showdowns during the Obama administration.

    To avoid a repeat, Democrats could use the waning days of their control of both chambers to raise the debt ceiling themselves, using a budgetary process known as reconciliation that could bypass a Senate filibuster. But the process is hugely complex, in terms of congressional choreography and time.

    Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said before Thanksgiving that the “best way to get it done, the way it’s been done the last two or three times is bipartisan.” But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell didn’t express much interest in Schumer’s invitation sit down to sort out the issue, saying “I don’t think the debt limit issue is until sometime next year.”

    The House Republican leader has a big problem – finding the votes in the new GOP majority to fulfill his dream of becoming speaker.

    McCarthy staked out a series of hardline positions heading into the holiday in an apparent effort to appease pro-Trump lawmakers after several declared they won’t vote for him. The California lawmaker can afford to lose only a few GOP votes if he wants to be speaker.

    During a trip to the border last week, he warned Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign or face possible impeachment next year. And he said he’ll follow through on a threat to throw high-profile Democrats, such as Reps. Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar, off of top committees next year.

    Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Schiff accused McCarthy of adopting extremist positions for his own naked political gain.

    “Kevin McCarthy has no ideology, has no core set of beliefs,” Schiff told CNN’s Dana Bash, saying the top House Republican will do “whatever he needs to do to get the votes of the QAnon caucus within his conference.”

    McCarthy’s struggle to confirm his speakership lies partly in the smaller-than-expected GOP majority following the lack of an expected “red wave” in this month’s election. And it could be a preview of a volatile majority and the extent to which his tenure, if he does win the speakership, will be hostage to the whims of the far-right Freedom Caucus and pro-Trump lawyers who want to use their majority as a weapon against Biden. But McCarthy also has to worry that two years of relentless, partisan investigations could turn off voters and lead them to snatch away the party’s fragile edge in the House in the 2024 election.

    But before the 2024 election gets into full swing, there’s unfinished business from 2022. Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker go head-to-head in a runoff on December 6 after neither broke the 50 percent threshold the first time around.

    Former President Barack Obama, who was the most effective Democratic messenger in the midterms, is due to campaign for Warnock on Thursday. Walker’s chances could depend on whether he is able to win over a significant block of Republican voters who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him despite backing Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Walker’s problem is that he’s a protégé of Trump, from whom Kemp kept a good distance.

    After Trump announced his 2024 campaign days after the midterms, Warnock and his supporters started framing the runoff as the first chance for Democrats to stop Trump’s bid to return to the White House. Their argument recalled complaints by many Republicans that Trump’s intervention in two 2020 Senate runoffs in Georgia cost the GOP the chance to control the Senate.

    This might all be about one seat. But holding the Senate 51-49 rather than 50-50 would be huge for Democrats because it would insulate them from the incapacitation of one of their members and could diminish the power of Manchin, who has been a stubborn brake on Biden’s aspirations for two years.

    The former president finds himself under unusual political pressure inside the Republican Party he has dominated since 2015. His backing of several losing, election-denying and unpolished candidates in the midterms angered many key figures in the party. His hosting of Fuentes at the same time as rapper Kanye West at his Mar-a-Lago estate worried Republicans who fear that while he may be a formidable candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, Trump’s empathy for the far-right will again doom him before a national electorate.

    Another potential Republican presidential candidate, outgoing Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, condemned the incident as “very troubling” on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

    “I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader that’s setting an example for the country or the party to meet with (an) avowed racist or anti-Semite,” Hutchinson said. “You want to diminish their strength, not empower them. Stay away from it.”

    Trump acknowledged the meeting in a Truth Social post, but claimed he knew nothing about Fuentes. He also did not disavow him or his views.

    This latest storm comes as the new special counsel Jack Smith, blasted by Trump as a “political hitman,” gets up to speed on the serious legal challenges facing the ex-president, who’s suffered several recent defeats in court in his bid to delay accountability. Trump’s early declaration of a campaign – apparently to quell the buzz around possible alternative Republican candidates like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – leaves the former president needing a way to create some traction in December and in the early months of the year when he might find it hardest to win political exposure.

    The opening stages of the campaign will begin to answer the central question of Trump’s 2024 run – whether his so far rock solid appeal to the GOP base will counter concerns in the wider party about his broader viability.

    Trump’s decision to jump in the race has also increased scrutiny of whether Biden, who turned 80 earlier this month, will decide to run for reelection. The president was asked by CNN’s Betsy Klein during his holiday vacation in Nantucket how his conversations about 2024 were going with his family.

    “We’re not having any. We’re celebrating,” Biden replied.

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