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LINCOLN, Neb. -- Nebraska lawmakers advanced a bill Tuesday to comply with a voter ID requirement mandated by state voters in November, taking passage of the bill down to the wire amid Republican infighting on whether the measure goes far enough to combat voter fraud.
Lawmakers are scheduled to take up final debate on the bill Thursday — the same day lawmakers plan to adjourn the session.
The measure is expected to pass; it's backed by both the Republican governor and the secretary of state who oversees elections. Nebraska has no history of widespread voter fraud, but supporters of the voter ID requirement say it’s needed to prevent possible future problems.
It advanced Tuesday with only three lawmakers voting to continue a filibuster by Sen. Julie Slama, who has sought far-reaching requirements. Those include notarization of mail-in ballots, audits of witness signatures for mail-in ballots and verification of voters’ citizenship, even after they were required to show that proof at the time they registered to vote. Some election officials have said Slama's preferences would fall counter to constitutional law and could disenfranchise some voters in rural Nebraska.
The version by Sen. Tom Brewer and the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee he chairs would allow a wide array of photo identification that voters could present at the polls. IDs would include passports, driver’s licenses, military and tribal IDs and Nebraska college IDs. Even expired IDs would be allowed as long as they have the voter’s name and photo. Residents of hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living centers would be able to use patient documents that include a photo.
Sticking points for Slama were some exceptions made for those who show up at the polls without a photo ID. Voters who show up without a photo ID could cast a provisional ballot but would have to present a valid ID to election officials within a week for the vote to be counted. Some rare photo ID exceptions would also be made, such as for those with religious objections to being photographed.
She also opposes allowing those voting by mail to include the number from their driver’s license or state ID card or a copy of an accepted document. Defenders of that allowance noted it protects those counties in the state's most rural areas that hold most elections by mail. Eleven Nebraska counties currently hold elections exclusively by mail.
Slama called it “fraud-friendly."
“It's unfortunate,” Slama said Tuesday during her four-hour filibuster of the measure. “Because we really do have here a measure that does not follow through with the wishes of the voters. It's not clean.”
She continued to cast blame for the bill on Republican Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen.
Like other election officials — even Republican ones — across the country, Evnen has been a popular target among those who believe persistent conspiracy theories that the 2020 elections were rigged. Evnan has defended his office's work on the bill.
Brewer defended the bill, noting that 92 county election commissioners out of Nebraska's 93 counties signed off on it. The lone holdout was Sarpy County Election Commissioner Emily Ethington — who is also Slama's sister.
“We have a mandate from the people," he said. “And this bill does what they've asked.” | US Local Elections |
Suspect arrested for manslaughter in death of protester at California rally over Israel-Hamas war
Loay Alnaji is being charged in connection with the death of Paul Kessler.
A California man has been arrested in connection with the death of Paul Kessler at a rally in Thousand Oaks on Nov. 5, according to law enforcement.
Loay Alnaji, 50, of Moorpark, was charged on Thursday with involuntary manslaughter and battery causing serious bodily injury -- with a special allegation on both counts that the crime inflicted great bodily harm.
His bail set was set at $1 million, according to the Ventura County Sheriff's Office.
Kessler, a 69-year-old Jewish man, died from blunt-force head trauma following a confrontation with a counterprotester, amid simultaneous pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations, the Ventura County Sheriff's Office said.
The Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office said Kessler suffered from skull fractures and swelling and bruising of the brain and determined his death to be a homicide.
In the days following the incident, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said they did not have enough evidence to make an arrest in his death.
"Though an arrest has been made, we continue to encourage community members who may have information about this criminal investigation and have yet to come forward to please contact Detective Stump at (805) 384-4745," the sheriff's office said in a statement Thursday.
The sheriff's office asked that anyone who drove a vehicle with video recording equipment through the area of Westlake Boulevard and Thousand Oaks Boulevard between 3 and 4 p.m. local time on Nov. 5 to submit any footage they have.
Multiple people called the Ventura County Sheriff's Communication Center to report an incident of battery at that corner, where pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations were taking place. About 75 to 100 people total were present, according to Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff.
Among those to call 911 was the suspect in the incident, who was attending the pro-Palestinian demonstration, according to Fryhoff.
Authorities arriving on the scene located Kessler and noted he was bleeding from the head and mouth, the sheriff said.
He was transported to a local hospital for what authorities said was "advanced medical treatment," but he died from his injuries early on Nov. 6, officials said.
Fryhoff said the suspect remained at the scene and was interviewed.
"The suspect was cooperative and indicated he was involved in an altercation with Mr. Kessler," Fryhoff told reporters last week.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles said it was "grateful for the swift work" of authorities in response to Kessler's death.
"This arrest shows that violence towards our Jewish community will not be tolerated," the organization said in a statement. "We will continue to monitor the case to help ensure justice is served."
ABC News' Alex Stone contributed to this report. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
President Biden’s newly proposed budget for the 2024 fiscal year will lead to a "record" national debt, a watchdog has warned.
The Biden administration submitted the new proposal on Thursday, which outlines the president’s economic, education, climate, and healthcare goals across the next decade. But, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget warns the budget would result in the country’s debt rising from 98 percent of GDP at the end of 2023 to 106 percent by 2027 and then 110 percent by 2033.
According to their analysis, despite some attempts at deficit reduction, nominal debt would nearly double, growing from $24.6 trillion to $43.6 trillion over the next decade.
"Debt under the President’s budget would grow to a new record as a share of the economy over the next decade," the CRFB wrote in an analysis.
"This budget falls well short of the deficit reduction needed to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal path," the watchdog continued. "We are disappointed that the spending cuts in this budget – given the massive spending growth in recent years – amount to less than 1 percent of the budget and are coupled by four times as much in spending increases. We are pleased the budget begins to address Medicare but extremely disappointed it neglects Social Security, putting seniors’ benefits at risk."
President Biden repeatedly defended his budget on social media Thursday, calling it a budget "for the middle class."
"With my budget, we can reduce child poverty and increase child opportunity," he added. "To support working parents, my budget expands access to affordable, high-quality child care for millions of families. And it invests in paid family and medical leave, so we will no longer be the only major economy without national paid leave."
The CRFB report notes the deficit would also grow $17 trillion in that span as spending would reach 25.2% of GDP while revenue would top out at 20.1% by 2033. These figures eclipse the 50-year historical spending average of 21.0% of GDP and the revenue average of 17.4%.
The CRFB analysis applauded the budget’s uniquely idyllic deficit reduction of $2.8 trillion via new spending and tax breaks but said it "relies on somewhat optimistic economic assumptions" in its projected growth.
"The President deserves credit for putting forward $3 trillion of deficit reduction, which could be an achievable near-term bipartisan goal in upcoming negotiations. However, deficit reduction will ultimately need to be nearly three times that large, and it is disappointing the budget has put forward so many costly proposals without first putting the nation’s fiscal house in order," the CRFB said.
These assumptions include "stronger long-term growth, lower unemployment, and lower long-term interest rates" than those proposed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which are an assumed 0.4% growth this year, 2.1% growth next year and 2.2% growth by the end of the decade — contrasted to the CBO’s 0.1% predicted growth this year, 2.5% growth next year and 1.7% by the end of the decade.
A breakdown of the proposed budget showed most of the federal spending coming from expanding access and funding for Pre-K and child care services, totaling $600 billion over the next decade.
Other spending costs come from establishing national paid family and medical leave ($325 billion), offering "free" community college and increasing other higher education spending ($217 billion), and supporting affordable housing policies ($105 billion).
The budget also bolsters the Affordable Care Act and national healthcare services by expanding and extending ACA subsidies and coverage ($185 billion) and increasing other healthcare and long-term care spending ($309 billion).
The budget also intends to expand the Child Tax Credit (costing $435 billion) and the Earned Income Tax Credit ($156 billion).
Cost savings and spending reductions come from lower prescription drug and health costs, saving $227 billion over the next decade. It also reduces defense discretionary spending by $211 billion.
The budget also proposes increasing the corporate income tax rate, establishing a new 25% billionaire tax minimum, and reducing "the tax gap," saving $1.4 trillion, $437 billion, and $119 billion, respectively.
CRFB President Maya MacGuineas opined the budget "does not go far enough" to eliminate record levels of spending and would result in a new record-high debt.
"The President’s budget would borrow $19 trillion through 2033 and increase the debt-to-GDP ratio from 98 percent at the end of 2023 to 110 percent by 2033, past the record set in this nation just after WWII," MacGuineas said in a statement Thursday. "It would spend $10.2 trillion on interest payments on the national debt alone – more than it will spend on defense or Medicaid over the same time period."
MacGuineas added: "Most of this massive borrowing is the result of policies put in place years ago by Democratic and Republican administrations and Congresses alike, but it will require presidential leadership to enact real changes, and this budget does not go nearly far enough to make reining in our dangerous debt levels a top national priority."
Republican lawmakers have criticized the budget proposal, saying it generates "taxes, taxes, and more taxes" and offers spending increases would worsen inflation in America. | US Federal Policies |
- Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz said he intends to file a motion to vacate against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy this week.
- "By week's end he will either not be speaker or he will be speaker serving at the pleasure of Democrats," said Gaetz.
- McCarthy worked with Democrats to pass a short-term spending bill, narrowly averting a government shutdown in the final hours before last night's deadline.
- Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said she would "absolutely" vote in favor of a motion to oust McCarthy.
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida on Sunday said he will aim to file a motion to force out House Speaker Kevin McCarthy this week.
In an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union," Gaetz said, "When you host this show next week, if Kevin McCarthy is still the speaker of the House, he will be serving at the pleasure of the Democrats."
The declaration from Gaetz comes less than a day after Congress passed a 45-day stopgap spending bill with 335 votes in favor, 209 from Democrats and 126 from Republicans. The bill was passed just hours before the deadline when a government shutdown would have taken place.
McCarthy resorted to negotiating the deal with Democrats after struggling to rally the requisite votes from his fellow Republicans.
That decision is already yielding political backlash from House Republicans like Gaetz who had threatened to oust him as speaker if he worked with the Democrats to get a deal done.
Gaetz needs 218 votes in order for a motion to vacate McCarthy to pass.
"I have a requisite number of House Republicans, a sufficient number, to ensure that we don't own Kevin McCarthy anymore. By week's end, he will either not be speaker or he will be speaker serving at the pleasure of Democrats," said Gaetz.
However, McCarthy may not find a safety net among Democrats either.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday said that she would "absolutely" cast a vote to oust McCarthy.
"I think Kevin McCarthy is a very weak speaker. He clearly has lost control of his caucus. He has brought the United States and millions of Americans to the brink waiting until the final hour to keep the government open and even then only issuing a 45-day extension so we're going to be right back in this place in November," Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN's "State of the Union."
She continued to say that if McCarthy wanted to lean on Democrats to save his job, he would have to make a deal: "Unless Kevin McCarthy asks for a vote, again, I don't think we give something away for free." | US Congress |
Trump Ally Mike Johnson Elected U.S. House Speaker, Shifting GOP Further Right
Republicans installed little-known Trump ally Mike Johnson as US House speaker, cementing the party’s rightward shift and ending a messy three-week succession fight that paralyzed legislative work.
(Bloomberg) -- Republicans installed little-known Trump ally Mike Johnson as US House speaker, cementing the party’s rightward shift and ending a messy three-week succession fight that paralyzed legislative work.
His election Wednesday culminates a historic struggle among GOP factions that ousted speaker Kevin McCarthy and derailed three potential successors. The bitter infighting prevented the House from acting on emergency aid for Israel and Ukraine, and on funding to avert a US government shutdown next month.
The elevation of the 51-year-old Louisiana congressman — who was a prominent supporter of Donald Trump’s efforts to deny Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory — is a triumph for cultural and economic conservatives as the party navigates tensions between an emerging populist wing aligned with Trump and establishment Republicans.
Johnson, first elected to Congress in 2016 as Trump was swept into the White House, becomes speaker with the least Washington experience in generations. He takes on the role after the party repudiated the nominations of its second- and third-ranking leaders to succeed McCarthy.
“Democracy is messy sometimes but it is our system,” Johnson said late Tuesday after receiving the GOP nomination. “This conference that you see, this House Republican majority, is united.”
Johnson received 220 votes to House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries’ 209 votes.
He enters Washington’s ongoing budget battles as a fervent advocate of cutting spending. He once called the federal government a “monster” that should “starve” in a local radio interview and voted last month against short-term funding to prevent a government shutdown.
That deal is what McCarthy foes say launched their move to oust him on Oct. 3. Now, Johnson will be in a similar hot-seat as a Nov. 17 expiration of that temporary funding extension approaches.
In a letter this week to GOP lawmakers, however, he backed a temporary spending plan to keep the government open into next year, past a Nov. 17 deadline, in order to allow time for negotiations.
Read More: GOP Speaker Nominee Johnson Has Plan to Avoid November Shutdown
Though previously a skeptic of Ukraine aid, Johnson said he is open to talks on President Joe Biden’s request for more funding to assist the country’s counter-offensive against Russia.
Johnson objected to certification of the 2020 election results and played a key role in getting signatures for an amicus brief in the long-shot Texas lawsuit that sought to overturn election results in several states.
Trump earlier in the day threw his support behind Johnson, posting on his Truth Social platform his “strong SUGGESTION” that lawmakers elect the Louisiana Republican and ‘GET IT DONE, FAST!”
Trump on Tuesday quashed the nomination of third-ranking Republican leader Tom Emmer of Minnesota for the speaker’s post. Emmer has had a frosty relationship with the former president since voting to certify Biden’s 2020 presidential win.
Trump’s support wasn’t enough to propel hardline conservative Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan into the speakership. His nomination failed last week as moderates and traditionalists on the House Appropriations panel refused to accept him.
Jordan’s combative style antagonized adversaries within the party. But Johnson, who previously chaired Republicans’ largest ideological caucus, has a reputation as affable among colleagues.
“Mike has the least enemies in this caucus,” said Republican Ken Buck of Colorado. “He is just one of those nice people that builds coalitions and doesn’t make people unnecessarily mad.”
Johnson has strong ties to the Christian right stretching back before his entry into elective politics. He worked as a senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal advocacy group that works on behalf of “traditional family values.”
His legal work included successfully defending Louisiana’s ban on same-sex marriage before the state supreme court. The law was eventually revoked by the 2015 US Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.
A former state legislator, he drew controversy as the sponsor of a religious freedom proposal that would have blocked local governments from imposing fines or revoking tax benefits on businesses that refuse to serve gay couples because of views on same-sex marriage.
Johnson holds strong anti-abortion views he says are rooted in his life story. “I was the product of an unplanned pregnancy and teen-age parents,” he said at an April 2016 Louisiana House hearing. “I’m grateful I wasn’t aborted.”
Some Democrats said they expected little change from Republicans with Johnson as leader.
“Different waiter, same menu. Except more conservative,” offered Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee.
--With assistance from Maeve Sheehey, Jonathan Tamari and Gregory Korte.
(Updates with new graphic)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | US Congress |
Joe Biden is “totally running” for a second term, the MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart has said, just days after interviewing the US president.The oldest president ever inaugurated, Biden will turn 80 on 20 November.He told Capehart: “I can’t even say the age I’m going to be. I can’t even get it out of my mouth. You think I’m joking. I’m not joking.”Speculation about Biden’s age and ambition has become a constant in US politics. Some Democrats have avoided saying he should run again or committing to supporting him if he does. Republicans – members of a party dominated by Donald Trump, a decidedly erratic 76 – regularly claim Biden is too old.Regular Biden gaffes, this week including calling Rishi Sunak, the new British prime minister, “Rashi Sanook”, have reinforced such impressions in some quarters.Writing for the Washington Post, Capehart said he was sure Biden was ready to run.Capehart said: “After my interview … I got the same question over and over again: How is he? Each time, it was asked in that skittish way one speaks when inquiring about someone they fear is in decline.“Folks, listen to me. Biden is just fine. More than fine. In fact … I came away with two overwhelming impressions: Biden is totally going to run for reelection in 2024. And he doesn’t just like being president; he loves the job of president.”Capehart said Biden initially “gave his standard answer about not making a formal declaration” about 2024 “because of the legal implications of such an announcement” – but then gave two “nonverbal cues”.The first came when Capehart asked if Jill Biden, the first lady, supported another run.“Biden looked at me as if to say, ‘Brother, you know I’m not going there,’ which I took as my hint to end the interview. But when I started my goodbye, I saw another nonverbal cue – one that signaled he wanted to say more but wasn’t sure he should … I motioned for the president to tell me more.“‘My wife thinks that I, that we’re, that we’re doing something very important, and I shouldn’t walk away from it,’ Biden told me. Formal declaration or not, the man is totally running.”Capehart cited an NBC report in which a Jill Biden staffer said the family would support a 2024 campaign. Capehart added that Biden’s “sense of duty” had “only grown” since his son Beau died in 2015.Biden told Capehart: “There’s only one reason … to be in public life: Can you make life better for other people? And there’s no place that you have a better opportunity to do that than as president of the United States.“I have more substantive experience on the issues facing the country, both in foreign policy and in domestic policy, than any president ever, just because I have been around so long doing this.”Capehart wrote: “Sure, Biden is getting old. But the almost-octogenarian I interviewed was fit and eager to take on the decisions that land on a president’s desk. So, stop asking if Biden is OK. He very much is.”Capehart also said Democrats should stop discussing potential successors, the “kind of loose talk [that] will ramp up after the midterms if Democrats get shellacked”.Instead, he said, the party should “circle the wagons around the Democrat who already has the job. Not as a firing squad, as they are wont to do, but as a sturdy wall of support. He’s going to need it.” | US Federal Elections |
Donald Trump's ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows may have "gutted" the former president if reports he was granted immunity to testify in the federal election interference case are accurate, according to an attorney.
Neal Katyal, lawyer and former acting U.S. solicitor general, reacted to an ABC News report alleging Meadows secured an immunity deal before giving evidence under Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation, where Trump has pleaded not guilty to four charges.
The report states Meadows repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 election that there was no evidence of any widespread voter fraud which cost him the race against Joe Biden. It said Meadows told federal prosecutors that he believed Trump was being "dishonest" in the early hours of November 4, 2020, when the former president claimed in a press conference "frankly, we did win this election," when a significant number of votes across the country had not been counted yet.
The reports of Meadows speaking to Smith's team at least three times this year—including once before a federal grand jury—which have not been verified by Newsweek, could be a significant update in the federal investigation into Trump's alleged criminal attempts to overturn the 2020 election results. Meadows has long been considered a key figure in the plan to keep Trump in power after he lost the election and one of the former president's closest allies in the run-up to the January 6 Capitol attack.
While sharing an extract of the ABC News report, Katyal posted on X, formerly Twitter: "Meadows went before federal Grand Jury under an immunity arrangement, and appears to have gutted Trump in the process."
In a statement to CBS News, Meadows' lawyer George Terwilliger said the reports of an immunity deal for Trump's former chief of staff are "largely inaccurate." Terwilliger has been contacted for further comment via email.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said "I don't think" that Meadows would have testified against him for immunity under Smith's investigation.
"BUT, when you really think about it, after being hounded like a dog for three years, told you'll be going to jail for the rest of your life, your money and your family will be forever gone, and we're not at all interested in exposing those that did the RIGGING — If you say BAD THINGS about that terrible 'MONSTER,' DONALD J. TRUMP, we won't put you in prison, you can keep your family and your wealth, and, perhaps, if you can make up some really horrible 'STUFF' [about] him, we may very well erect a statue of you in the middle of our decaying and now very violent Capital, Washington, D.C," Trump wrote.
"Some people would make that deal, but they are weaklings and cowards."
The ABC News report cited sources as saying Meadows admitted to federal prosecutors that he did not believe statements he made about the 2020 election being "rigged" and "stolen" in his 2021 biography The Chief's Chief. The report said he told officials that he is yet to see any evidence of voter fraud which would have cost Trump the last election.
Meadows is also alleged to have told federal prosecutors that in December 2020—after the Supreme Court threw out the last grasp legal challenge that would have invalidated the election results in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia, which Biden won—Trump told his chief of staff something along the lines of "then that's the end," or, "So that's it."
Despite this, Trump is alleged to have continued pushing to overturn the 2020 election results based on false election fraud claims, which culminated in his supporters storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
It was previously suggested that Meadows may have flipped on Trump in the federal investigation.
Despite being charged in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' election interference probe, Meadows wasn't one of the six alleged co-conspirators mentioned in the federal 2020 election indictment against Trump, raising suspicions that Meadows may have testified against the former president in Smith's probe.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy and the courts. He joined Newsweek in February 2018 after spending several years working at the International Business Times U.K., where he predominantly reported on crime, politics and current affairs. Prior to this, he worked as a freelance copywriter after graduating from the University of Sunderland in 2010. Languages: English.
You can get in touch with Ewan by emailing [email protected].
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here. | US Political Corruption |
The remains of a Georgia woman killed 46 years ago were identified and confirmed as a victim ofknown as the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history, authorities said Thursday.
Yvonne Pless was about 20 when Little killed her in 1977, according to a news release from the Bibb County Sheriff's Office and the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. She had been dubbed "Macon Jane Doe" by The Telegraph newspaper in the city.
Little, whoin December 2020, confessed in 2018 to killing two Macon women, prompting Georgia investigators to travel to Texas in 2019 to interview him. They were able to confirm that his confessions matched the unsolved Macon cold case. They were able to notify a remaining family member of the other woman, Fredonia Smith, who was killed in 1982.
But Pless' remains hadn't been identified, so her family was not known. Last year, investigators used forensic genetic genealogy to identify Pless' remains and then identified a relative who connected them with her remaining family in Macon.
By the time of his death at nearly 80 years old, Little had confessed to killing 93 people between 1970 and 2005. Most of the slayings took place in Florida and Southern California. Georgia authorities say eight of his victims were Georgia residents, and the remains of a Tennessee woman were also found in Georgia.
Little, who was in and out of jail for decades for stealing, assault, drugs or other crimes, for years denied killing anyone.
It wasn't until he was questioned by Texas Ranger James Holland in 2018 about a killing it turned out he didn't commit that the details began to come out. Over about 700 hours of interviews, he gave details from scores of killings that only a murderer would know.
He said he started killing in 1970, on New Year's Eve in Miami.
"It was like drugs," he told Holland. "I came to like it."
His last was in 2005, he said, in Tupelo, Mississippi. He also killed people in Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Kentucky, Nevada, Arkansas and other states.
Little strangled most of his victims, usually soon after meeting them during chance encounters.
Almost all of his victims were women, and he targeted people living on the edges of society, such as prostitutes or drug addicts. They were people he believed wouldn't be looked for and wouldn't leave much evidence for police.
He wasn't wrong - police around the country initially classified many of the deaths as accidents, drug overdoses or the result of unknown causes.
Kentucky authorities finally caught up with him in 2012 after he was arrested on drug charges and his DNA linked him to three California killings.
When he began recounting the other slayings, authorities were astounded at how much he remembered. His paintings, they said, indicated he had a photographic memory.
"Nothing he's ever said has been proven to be wrong or false,"
Before he died in 2020, Little answered questions from "60 Minutes" on the phone for nearly an hour. He said there were probably innocent people in jail for some of his crimes.
"Probably be numerous people who are-- been convicted and sent to penitentiary on my behalf," he said. "I say, 'If I can help get somebody out of jail, you know, God might smile a little bit more on me.'"
Little spoke mostly about his victims.
"They was broke and homeless and they walked right into my spider web," he said.
for more features. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Column: Can’t convince Uncle MAGA he’s wrong? This Thanksgiving, let Trump’s ‘best people’ do the arguing
Last Thanksgiving, Donald Trump had just announced he was seeking reelection, yet his political stock was low. He was blamed for Republicans’ unexpectedly bad showing in the 2022 midterm elections. “Toxic Trump in MAGA Meltdown,” the Drudge Report headlined, while the front page of the Murdochs’ New York Post declared newly reelected Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida “DeFuture.”
A year later, the Thanksgiving tables have turned.
Opinion Columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Across America, Democrats and Never Trumpers have heartburn and the MAGAts are toasting: Polls have the disgraced former president romping over DeSantis and every other Republican who’s deigned to challenge him, and perhaps on his way to beating President Biden. And that despite 12 intervening months in which Trump racked up four indictments for trying to overturn his 2020 defeat and filching top-secret documents, 91 criminal charges and two trials that ended with findings of liability for sexual abuse and financial fraud.
Yet both the legal and substantive arguments against Trump 2.0 have grown stale; the true believers won’t swallow any of it. What more can anti-Trumpers say to counter the MAGA devotees at their holiday feasts?
My advice: Let others do the talking — the ones who saw him up close in the White House.
This week’s scary 2024 polls only get scarier when you contemplate what the former president and his allies have in mind for a Trump presidency 2.0.
No president in U.S. history has been so damned by so many who were part of the inner circle. Here’s a far-from-exhaustive cheat sheet of condemnations from Trump’s highest-ranking hires — “only the best people,” remember.
Mike Pence, vice president: On Jan. 6, 2021, “President Trump also demanded I choose between him and our Constitution. … Anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”
William Barr, second attorney general: “A very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country’s.” He “shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office.”
The former president used ugly Nazi-like language to foul Veterans’ Day and dishonor a long line of Americans who fought and died for their nation. It should not be brushed off as Trump being Trump.
John F. Kelly, White House chief of staff, Homeland Security secretary and retired Marine general: “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ … A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. … God help us.”
James N. Mattis, first Defense secretary, retired Marine general: “The first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people. … Instead, he tries to divide us.” He would order the military to “violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens. ”
Mark Esper, second Defense secretary: “He’s unfit for office. … His actions are all about him and not about the country. And then, of course, I believe he has integrity and character issues as well.”
Backlash in the Latino community against Univision is growing after the TV network aired an exclusive interview with former President Trump that some saw as too friendly.
Rex Tillerson, first secretary of State: “A moron.” “The president would say, ‘Well, here’s what I want to do, and here’s how I want to do it,’ and I would have to say to him, ‘Well, Mr. President, … you can’t do it that way. It violates the law. It violates treaty.’ He got really frustrated when we would have those conversations.”
Gary Cohn, first director of the White House National Economic Council: “It’s not what we did for the country. It’s what we saved him from doing.”
John Bolton, third national security advisor: “I’ve been in those rooms with him when he’s met with those [foreign] leaders. I believe they think he is a laughing fool.”
When voters hear that former President Trump’s targets must pay for protection against his followers, they shrug.
Richard Spencer, secretary of the Navy: Trump “has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.”
Thomas P. Bossert, White House homeland security and counter-terrorism advisor: Trump “undermined American democracy baselessly for months. As a result, he’s culpable for this [Jan. 6] siege, and an utter disgrace.”
Alyssa Farah Griffin, White House communications director: “We’re all saying the same thing: We worked with him, we know him and we’re telling you, America — this man is unfit to be president. And a second term would be more dangerous than the first.”
Sadly, Griffin knows something about how hard it would be to persuade the Trumpers at your table, about how cleanly the former president has sliced through families with his hateful politics. Her father boycotted her wedding because of her criticism of her former boss.
“We just have to keep trying to break through,” she has said, but do so respectfully. We must “have these challenging conversations.”
If your Thanksgiving is likely to serve up politics along with the turkey, keep this cheat sheet handy. When Uncle MAGA gets going, let him have it.
Respectfully.
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Image source, Getty ImagesElon Musk has dissolved Twitter's board of directors - cementing his control over the company.The billionaire took over the social media company last week, ending months of back and forth over the $44bn deal.He has moved quickly to put his mark on the service, used by politicians and journalists around the world.The reforms he is contemplating include changes for how Twitter verifies accounts, as well as job cuts.The Washington Post has reported that a first round of cuts is under discussion that could affect 25% of the company's staff.Twitter did not respond to a request for comment from the BBC on the report.Top executives have already been removed, as Mr Musk brings in high profile allies to the company.Among his team is tech investor Jason Calacanis who changed his Twitter bio to "chief meme officer", said he was "hanging out at Twitter a bit ... during the transition".He took to the social media site to solicit opinions on a range of topics from advertising to video.He also asked how much people would pay to be verified, amid reports that Twitter could charge people $20 per month to keep the blue ticks that indicate verified accounts. Mr Musk, who leads electric car maker Tesla, has changed his biography on the social media site to "Chief Twit".He is now the sole director of Twitter, according to a filing on Monday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.The nine ousted directors include former chairman of the board Bret Taylor and former chief executive Parag Agrawal. Baroness Martha Lane Fox, currently president of the British Chambers of Commerce, who is among the board members to be removed under the merger agreement, declined to comment when approached by the BBC.'National-security issue'Mr Musk's takeover has drawn widespread scrutiny, as he signals plans to overhaul how Twitter has moderated the spread of information on its platform, including from sources such as state media, politicians and celebrities. Mr Musk said the company would create a new council to govern those decisions and that no changes would occur yet. On Monday, Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, said that he had asked the government to review the national security implications of the deal, given the large stake in the company held by firms tied to Saudi Arabia, which has an increasingly tense relationship with the US."We should be concerned that the Saudis, who have a clear interest in repressing political speech and impacting US politics, are now the second-largest owner of a major social media platform," Mr Murphy wrote on Twitter."There is a clear national-security issue at stake and CFIUS [the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] should do a review." Mr Musk financed his takeover with his own money, a group of other investors and roughly $13bn in debt financing.Analysts say that the increase in debt is likely to constrain the firm, which has struggled to expand its user base and not turned a profit in years.Together, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and the Kingdom Holding Company are the second largest investor in the newly private company, according to a filing with the US government.Prince Alwaleed, who was a major Twitter investor prior to the Musk deal, has tweeted the stake aligns with Kingdom Holding Company's "long-term investment strategy". | US Political Corruption |
Some Republicans Worry that a Trump Nomination Could Bring Steep Down-Ballot Losses for the GOP
ATLANTA – Republicans have quietly been coming to grips with the likelihood that Donald Trump will keep winning the Republican nomination until he dies if he doesn’t retake the White House next year — and either outcome could cost the GOP down-ballot.
It’s a grim sort of arrested development for Republicans, with Trump positioned as a modern-day Adlai Stevenson, Democrats’ losing nominee in 1952 and 1956. The worry is that Trump’s baggage and bombast will disincentivize center-right and independent voters from participating in general elections, with repercussions down the ballot — reversing the old coattails rule of politics, which holds that a strong name at the top of the ticket lifts all boats in the party.
But in the inverted world operatives are bracing for, it’s Trump’s name forever sinking their boats in statewide battles by depressing voter turnout. “’24, ’28, ’32. Probably until he dies,” said one veteran Republican strategist, bearing a glum look.
Polls have repeatedly shown that a majority of voters don’t want either Trump or President Joe Biden to run in 2024. Sixty percent of respondents to a July Harris-Messenger poll said they didn’t want Trump to run, as did 70% of respondents (and 44% of Republicans) in an April poll by the Associated Press and the University of Chicago NORC.
Pollsters are still exploring this enthusiasm gap. But Mark McKinnon – a veteran of George W. Bush and John McCain’s White House bids – has identified what he called the new Trump “ghost voters” in Iowa. While Republicans in 2016 were afraid to announce their support for Trump because he was too untoward, they are now afraid to say they don’t support him for fear of being chastised in the new Trump-loyal GOP.
“There’s a lot unknown,” said one veteran conservative activist who is supporting Trump, but also has a keen sense of Trump’s weaknesses. “It’s all going to be a question of turnout.”
The veteran activist cited the ritzy suburb of Atlanta, Johns Creek, as one example where otherwise solid Republicans who soured on Trump after January 6th will probably just stay home this election. “They voted for Biden and (Georgia Gov. Brian) Kemp. They don’t like Biden, but he is less icky (than Trump). But if they don’t have Kemp (on the ballot) maybe they don’t turn out at all.”
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Conversely, the veteran conservative strategist said, Biden could suffer from a lack of fervor from his own base of supporters. Where MAGA-diehards will always show up for Trump, Biden doesn’t have a similar “fan base” on the left at his disposal.
Looking for cash to fill the gap
Conservatives and veteran Republican strategists are trying to combat this expected dip in Republican turnout by quietly pushing mega-donors who have sat out the presidential race to engage in Senate and governor’s races across the country. Their hope is to create a buttress against what they expect to be another four years of President Joe Biden, according to more than a dozen Republican operatives who spoke with The Messenger over the past month. They include people who support Trump but worry about his effects on down-ballot races.
In a side meeting at a “cattle call” of Republican candidates in Atlanta last month, one conservative leader described gathering with other top activists discussing the 2024 playing field. At the outset, nobody mentioned the name of the former president, but once one person did, the worries poured forth: Trump will depress the suburban vote for Republicans. Women will stick with Democrats. Trump’s fired-up base of diehards and populists will keep carrying him over the line in Republican primaries and “normie” Republicans will keep staying home — they won’t vote for Democrats, but they won’t vote Trump either.
All of which could crush other Republicans running, these conservative operatives say.
“We’re worried about Cruz’s re-election chances,” the conservative leader told The Messenger. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will appear on the ballot the same as Trump (most likely) in Texas. The group that gathered in Georgia is concerned that swaths of moderate and center-right voters in the state’s expansive suburbs will take a powder, leaving Cruz and other Texas Republicans hanging.
It’s the same problem Republican veterans stared down seven years ago when it became clear Trump would be their nominee — movement conservatives and quieter Midwestern evangelicals, unlike their fiery Southern Baptist cousins, wouldn’t vote for Clinton, but they wouldn’t vote for Trump either. The falloff in support would have hurt GOP chances across the board, trying to win control of the House and Senate and governor’s races across the country.
To avert that pending disaster — which many pollsters at the time saw as imminent as a Hillary Clinton win — then-campaign manager Paul Manafort and then-RNC Chairman Reince Priebus pushed Mike Pence onto the ticket. The move helped drive turnout in 2016 and produce better than expected results.
But ever since then Republicans have underperformed expectations three elections in a row now.
A “blue wave” of support in 2018 carried Democrats to power in the House, leading to Trump’s first impeachment. Two years later, just a day before Trump’s supporters sacked the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the 2020 election results, a pair of Republican senators lost in Georgia, handing control of the chamber to Senate Democrats. And in 2022, support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis built fast after Trump’s handpicked candidates lost heavily in critical swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Republicans who held their breath while Trump was in office have become increasingly exasperated, but there doesn’t seem to be any way of stopping him from winning. Trump’s strong plurality of MAGA voters appears unbeatable, and Trump’s tight-knit campaign team has been quietly rewriting the party rules in the states to make it even harder to challenge him.
“It’s a perpetual Ponzi scheme using the GOP,” said one Republican strategist working on an opposing campaign.
Glass half-full?
But not every Republican is sold on the fatalism which seems to have gripped at least half the party.
“Anyone worrying about anything but the coming cycle should get their priorities in order,” said Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary and a veteran campaign operative who helped run the RNC’s 2016 operations before joining the White House.
He pointed to hyperbole and hand-wringing ahead of the 2016 election and how Republicans did far better than expected. He also noted that Democrats have a commensurate problem with depressed support from Black voters, which could just as easily offset the voter depression on the right.
And even as Trump himself continues pushing baseless claims that he didn’t lose in 2020 and attacks on prosecutors, judges and possible witnesses, his well-disciplined juggernaut of a 2024 campaign is pushing a concurrent message claiming the economy was better when the former president was in office (LINK).
Yet the nonstop drama of the Trump era of politics seems to have whittled away at general interest in anything remotely political. Spotify podcast star Joe Rogan rebuffed Trump’s entreaties to appear on his top-rated show, even though they share many of the same views. The author behind the viral populist ballad, “Rich men north of Richmond”, hit back at Republicans after he was featured in the first Republican debate.
Donors and professional operatives have been eyeing a staid and safe alternative to Trump, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, with his aw-gosh delivery which sounds remarkably like Owen Wilson and his Silicon Valley zip-up vests, as a last-minute savior who can win back center-right voters in the suburbs.
But their white knight increasingly looks like someone who couldn’t win the nomination.
A recent poll found Youngkin trailing Trump handily in a hypothetical matchup in his own state. And Youngkin told Fox News recently that he would miss a number of filing deadlines to appear on the ballot in early voting states if he did jump in near the end of the year.
Follow the (small) money
The day after Trump was arrested in Georgia and the first criminal mugshot of a former president was posted online – which Trump’s team said they then used to raise $7.1 million from their supporters – Erick Erickson, a veteran conservative radio host and Trump critic on the right, said Trump detracts from the party’s chances writ large.
“Sure, there’s a political agenda against him with these prosecutions, but also to help him secure the Republican nomination,” Erickson wrote in his newsletter. “The Democrats know for him to win, Republicans must spend money that could otherwise be spent to secure the Senate and save the House. The return on investment to get Trump across the finish line could be so high that we can’t take the Senate or hold the House. That, then, would cost us more.”
The proxy for these concerns has been a drying up of small-dollar donations to candidates not named Trump.
The Republican National Committee has seen a downturn. Other campaigns have been unable to turn on the spigot of digital donations which used to flow like milk and honey but now has turned into a desperate trickle. And infighting in state Republican parties between Trump loyalists and veteran party members across the country has undercut efforts to win back offices in critical battleground states from Arizona to Michigan.
When the GOP suffered sweeping losses in Obama’s 2012 re-election, it commissioned an “autopsy” with recommendations for how the party could get back in the business of winning. Much attention was paid to the longterm need for the GOP to win over conservative Latino voters, but the party also built a voter-turnout juggernaut which overhauled the way Republicans got their supporters to show up at the polls.
A decade later, after Trump’s handpicked candidates lost big to Democrats in critical battleground states, the RNC commissioned another “autopsy” — but this time the report was never released publicly and didn’t mention the name of its most powerful player, Trump.
"As the party becomes Trump-ified, you see it almost like a sun when it goes nova,” Matthew Continetti, a historian of the American right, said on MTP Now Thursday. “It collapses in on itself.”
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The leaderless House was plunged deeper into chaos on Thursday after Republicans refused to coalesce around a speaker and a plan to empower an interim speaker collapsed.
Angry and exhausted, the House Republican conference left a pair of tense closed-door sessions no closer to breaking the impasse that has immobilized the House for a 17th day. The party’s embattled nominee for speaker, congressman Jim Jordan, the Donald Trump loyalist who led the congressional effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and now chairs the House judiciary committee, had vowed to press ahead with his bid to ascend to the post.
After losing two consecutive votes to secure the speakership, Jordan had reversed course and backed a novel, bipartisan proposal to expand the authority of the temporary speaker for the next several months as he worked to shore up support for his bid. But a group of hard-right conservatives revolted, calling the plan “asinine” and arguing that it would effectively cede control of the floor to Democrats.
As support for the idea crumbled, Jordan told reporters that he would continue to press ahead with his candidacy despite entrenched opposition from a widening group of members, some of whom accused the Ohio Republican of deploying intimidation tactics.
“We made the pitch to members on the resolution as a way to lower the temperature and get back to work,” Jordan told reporters on Thursday. “We decided that wasn’t where we’re gonna go. I’m still running for speaker and I plan to go the floor and get the votes and win this race.”
Jordan offered no timeline and no votes were scheduled as of Thursday afternoon. Behind closed doors, tensions boiled over. Kevin McCarthy, the ousted former speaker, clashed with Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who led the push to remove him earlier this month.
“The whole country I think would scream at Matt Gaetz right now,” McCarthy said.
“Temperatures are pretty high,” congressman Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican, told reporters as he left a conference meeting on Thursday. He said he was headed to the chapel to pray for some “divine guidance”.
The dramatic saga to elect a new speaker began earlier this month with the unprecedented ousting of McCarthy, a move backed by eight far-right Republicans and all Democrats.
In a secret ballot, the Republican conference initially nominated congressman Steve Scalise to replace McCarthy, choosing the No 2 House Republican over Jordan, a founding member of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus. But Scalise abruptly withdrew when Jordan’s far-right allies refused to coalesce around him.
Jordan, the runner-up, then emerged as the party’s second choice to be speaker. But his candidacy ran headlong into opposition from more mainstream members wary of elevating a political flamethrower and Trump loyalist to a position that is second in line to the presidency. Wars raging in Ukraine and Israel and a government funding deadline looming had Republicans desperate to move forward.
With the majority party deadlocked, a bipartisan group of lawmakers began to explore the possibility of expanding the powers of the acting speaker, the Republican congressman Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, thereby allowing the chamber to take up urgent legislation.
McHenry assumed the position of speaker pro tempore under a House rule put in place after the September 11 terrorist attacks. It requires a speaker to draw up a confidential list of lawmakers who would temporarily assume the job in the event the speaker’s chair should become vacant. When McCarthy was ousted, the House learned that McHenry, a close ally of the former speaker, was at the top of that list.
McHenry has waived off calls to expand his power, indicating that he views the role as limited to presiding over the election of the next speaker. But McCarthy told reporters on Thursday that he believes McHenry already has the authority to conduct legislative business.
“It’s about the continuity of government,” McCarthy said. “I always believed the names I was putting on the list could carry out and keep government running until you elect a new speaker.”
But several conservatives decried the effort to install a temporary speaker, preferring Jordan plow ahead with more votes. After all, they argue, it took McCarthy 15 ballots to be elected speaker in January.
“I believe it is a constitutional desecration to not elect a speaker of the House,” Gaetz, the Florida Republican, told reporters.“We need to stay here until we elect a speaker.”
The cast of rebels who oppose Jordan are a mix of political moderates and institutional pragmatists with deep reservations about the Ohio Republican’s approach to governance. Some hail from districts that Joe Biden won in 2020, where Jordan’s brand of far-right conservatism is unpopular. Several were wary of handing the gavel to a lawmaker the former Republican speaker John Boehner once called a “legislative terrorist”.
One conservative lawmaker, Colorado congressman Ken Buck, who was among the hard-right faction that voted to oust McCarthy, said he would not support Jordan because Jordan still refused to accept Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
In a frenetic effort to win over his opponents, Jordan’s allies on Capitol Hill and in conservative media waged an aggressive pressure campaign that some lawmakers said included harassing messages and threats of a primary challenge. The calculation was that Jordan’s more mainstream critics would eventually relent and fall in line behind him. But his hardball tactics backfired, those lawmakers said.
“One thing I cannot stomach or support is a bully,” said congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks, an Iowa Republican, who initially voted for Jordan and then opposed on a second ballot after she said in a statement that she had received “credible death threats and a barrage of threatening calls”.
It was a sudden role reversal for Jordan, who is far more accustomed to being an obstructor than being obstructed. Yet on Thursday he attempted a reset, huddling once again with a group of holdouts, some of whom have vowed to block him from ever claiming the gavel.
But progress eluded Jordan. After the meeting, congressman Mike Lawler, a New York Republican opposed to Jordan, called for the conference to reinstate McCarthy or empower McHenry.
“We must prove to the American people that we can govern effectively and responsibly or, in 15 months, we’ll be debating who the minority leader is and preparing for Joe Biden’s second inaugural,” he said.
Twenty-two Republicans and all Democrats opposed Jordan on Wednesday, up from 20 Republicans who voted against him on the first ballot. To claim the gavel in the narrowly divided House, Jordan would need support from nearly every member of his conference.
Democrats, who view Jordan’s involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the election that resulted in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol as disqualifying, unanimously backed their leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Democrats, however, have expressed a willingness to negotiate with Republicans to elect a consensus candidate for speaker or empower a placeholder speaker.
“I think it’s a triumph for democracy in our country that an insurrectionist was rejected by the Republicans again as their candidate for speaker,” the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday. | US Congress |
For nearly two years, believers in Donald Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud have been clamoring for an audit of elections in the Beehive State. Under a bill winding its way through the Utah Legislature, that may happen — just not entirely in the way they want.
The House Government Operations Committee unanimously approved HB269 on Tuesday afternoon, which mandates a performance audit of Utah’s elections in even-numbered years. Legislative auditors are tasked to review almost every aspect of the primary and general elections, from candidate selection to counting ballots.
The bill from House Majority Leader Rep. Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, springboards from a year-long probe of Utah’s elections instigated by Schultz in late 2021. He explained he was motivated not by unfounded fraud claims but by a desire to build confidence in Utah’s elections.
“Even though that was well after the 2020 election, everyone thought it was partisan and I was questioning the results of that election. I can’t count how many reporters asked if this was about Trump. That was ridiculous,” Schultz said.
That audit did not find any evidence of fraud but highlighted some areas for improvement. Auditors found a patchwork of election procedures that vary from county to county across the state, which includes how often voter registration records are updated and procedures for counting ballots.
Absent from the bill is a mechanism for verifying the accuracy of election results. State law requires county clerks to conduct a post-election audit to determine whether vote-counting machines are operating correctly. Legislative auditors recommended a pilot program to audit a certain percentage of ballots after the election to help ensure the results are accurate.
That absence is notable after the legislative audit discovered slight discrepancies between the number of voters and the number of ballots cast in the 2022 primary elections. Auditors concluded the difference, encompassing fewer than 2,000 ballots statewide, was likely due to clerical errors or how counties reconcile ballots during the counting process.
Schultz’s bill was met with broad support during Tuesday’s committee hearing. Ryan Cowley, Utah’s Director of Elections, welcomed increased scrutiny on how the state conducts voting.
“We truly have nothing to hide in Utah. Our elections are some of the best in the country. This gives us a good framework to work with,” Cowley said.
The legislation would also give broad discretion to legislative auditors, including the ability to unseal ballots for a limited time following an election. Currently, Utah law says all election materials must be sealed after an election is certified, then destroyed after 22 months.
Instead of having the Legislature audit Utah’s elections, Rep. Phil Lyman, R-Blanding, wants to farm that task out to an independent auditor.
Among other things, Lyman’s HB155 would require an independent audit of Utah’s elections for president, U.S. Senate, Congress and governor. The proposal still is waiting for a committee hearing.
Lyman has been one of the loudest voices in the Capitol to allege issues with the state’s elections. Last year his bill to eliminate Utah’s vote-by-mail system was killed by a House committee. In June, Lyman spoke at a Colorado election conspiracy theory event headlined by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Lyman and former Utah lawmaker Steve Christiansen attended an August 2021 cyber symposium in South Dakota put on by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell. That fall, both also spoke about election fraud at a conspiracy-fueled conference in Salt Lake City. | US Local Elections |
Donald Trump has dropped his heaviest hint yet that he will make another run for the White House telling a rally he will "very, very, very probably do it again".The former US president told a crowd in Iowa to "get ready" as he teased a comeback in 2024.
There is speculation Mr Trump could throw his hat into the ring in the coming weeks, ahead of the national Thanksgiving holiday on 24 November, as he seeks to benefit from expected Republican gains in Tuesday's midterm elections and steal a march on rivals.Democrat electoral hopes have been battered by voter concerns about high inflation, while Joe Biden's public approval rating consistently languishes below 50%.Opposition parties also historically fare better in midterm elections.
Polls indicate the Republicans are poised to take control of the US House of Representatives and possibly the Senate as well, which would give them the power to block Mr Biden's legislative plans for the next two years.Addressing Republican supporters, Mr Trump said: "And now, in order to make our country successful and safe and glorious, I will very, very, very probably do it again. More on Donald Trump The least surprising comeback in US politics is imminent '#TrumpIsDead' trends on Twitter as users test Elon Musk's approach to fake news Anger, betrayal and fear as America braces for the midterm elections "Get ready, that's all I'm telling you, very soon. Get ready."One senior adviser told the Reuters news agency: "I think like a moth to a flame, Trump will run in 2024. "I think that he wants to run and announcing before Thanksgiving gives him a great advantage over his opponents and he understands that." Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player How do midterm elections work? However, Mr Trump remains a divisive figure after his controversial four-year term that ended with the deadly assault on the US Congress by his supporters on 6 January 2021.He has also continued to falsely claim his election defeat was the result of fraud.Mr Trump currently faces a string of investigations, including an inquiry into classified documents he took from the White House after leaving office, some of which prosecutors say have not yet been recovered. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Biden: 'Democracy is at risk' Read more:Biden warns democracy at risk as midterms loomAnger, betrayal and fear as America braces for midterm electionsA poll last month showed just 41% of Americans viewed him favourably.Mr Trump has kept up a steady appearance at political rallies since leaving office, during which he has frequently signalled the possibility he would contest the presidency again.He is expected to host family and friends at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday night to celebrate expected victories among candidates he backed in the midterms. Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcastsA number of senior Republican figures are also considering whether to seek the party's presidential nomination in 2024.Florida governor Ron DeSantis, Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin and Mr Trump's former vice president Mike Pence, are seen as among the among potential challengers. | US Federal Elections |
The Biden administration is not backing down on its decision to end postponements of student debt payments in the immediate future.
The Supreme Court is expected to soon make a ruling on two cases seeking to block President Biden's proposed student loan forgiveness that would distribute up to $20,000 per borrower.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona revealed last week that the administration intends to resume normal debt repayment expectations approximately 60 days after the Supreme Court makes its ruling.
If the court does not publish a ruling promptly, the administration is prepared to resume payments 60 days after June 30.
Despite negative reactions to the news from the Democratic side of the aisle, Cardona has not budged on the White House's stance that student debt payments will need to recommence.
The secretary stuck to this position Tuesday in an exchange with Education Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, who asked him if his department would "commit to no more extensions of the repayment pause."
"We communicated that after the Supreme Court decision is made, loan repayments will start within 60 days of the decision," Cardona told the GOP congresswoman.
Cardona first revealed the administration's intentions at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, when Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., asked him why the government should forgive student loan borrowers when President Biden is demanding that Congress pay its debt obligations in arguments with Republicans over the debt limit.
Britt, a first-term senator, cited remarks about the federal debt made Monday by White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and asked if Cardona agreed.
"If you buy a car, you are expected to pay the monthly payments. If you buy a home, you are expected to pay the mortgage every month. That is the expectation," Jean-Pierre said. She added, "That same logic must apply to student loans."
"We agree, and we're preparing to restart repayment because the emergency period is over, and we're preparing our borrowers to restart," Cardona responded.
Politico reported earlier this month that the Department of Education issued guidance to student loan companies last November about collecting federal student loan payments once payments resume sometime in October this year.
Student loan servicers are reportedly required to alert borrowers of payment resumption after Aug. 31.
Fox News Digital's Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report. | SCOTUS |
Ambalika Williams is watching the first day of theon Biden's student-loan relief program with a feeling of hope, but also with a measure of anxiety. Williams has almost $10,000 in student loans, and the case will determine whether her entire debt could be erased in one swoop.
The arguments the justices are hearing Tuesday represent the culmination of a political and constitutional clash that has left 40 million student loan borrowers in limbo, including Williams, who is the national director of Organizing at Rise, a student advocacy group. If the high court strikes down the program, she worries she will need to delay plans to buy a home.
"I would have to make pretty hard financial decisions, because I would still have this debt," Williams, 33, of Washington, D.C., noted, adding that she had already whittled down her debt from its original $40,000 balance.
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The pair of cases before the Supreme Court forced a halt in the Biden administration's plan to provide up to $20,000 in student-debt relief per borrower. Before the program was frozen, the administration had approved 16 million applications out of the 26 million people who had applied for relief.
Without the legal challenges, many of those borrowers would have by now have had their debts forgiven, said Melissa Byrne, executive director of the student debt activist group WeThe45Million.
"The fact that people have to ponder what to do, it means they have to experience stress they shouldn't have to," Byrne said on Tuesday from the Supreme Court, where she is monitoring the case. "People are experiencing pain and anxiety every day" over the hiatus caused by the lawsuits.
Both Byrne and Williams expressed optimism that the Biden administration's plan will prevail, citing a belief that the plaintiffs lack standing, questions on whether the states and borrowers challenging the program have the legal right to do so. Yet the opposition against student-loan forgiveness may have not only chilled individual borrowers' plans, but could be impacting the national economy, given that millions of Americans remain in limbo about their debt, Byrne added.
"If you are trying to sell a home, you might not be able to sell it because the person who wanted to buy it can't make a decision" because of the legal challenge, Byrne noted. "It is probably impacting you, even if you don't have student loans."
"Financial disaster"
Millions of Americans could face "financial disaster" if the Biden loan-relief program is shut down, according to a new report from Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts.
Under the plan, eligible borrowers earning less than $125,000 annually can receive up to $10,000 in student debt relief, while Pell Grant recipients, who are typically lower- and middle-income students, may get up to $20,000 in debt relief.
The program, announced in August, quickly faced legal challenges from six states — Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and South Carolina — and two borrowers from Texas, who separately argued the plan exceeds the administration's authority.
On Tuesday, several of the conservative justicesof the program, while Chief Justice John Roberts repeatedly highlighted the enormous cost of the plan, among other issues.
The total of Biden's debt-forgiveness plan, according to an analysis from the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a group of economists and data scientists at the University of Pennsylvania who analyze public policy to assess its economic and fiscal impact, could mount to $519 billion. However, the Biden administration forecasts a lower cost, at about $305 billion over a decade.
If the plan is struck down, millions of borrowers could default on their student loans when the repayment pause, which began in March 2020, ends this summer, the Warren report forecasts.
About 1 in 5 Americans has an outstanding federal student loan, according to a recent study from personal finance site Credit Karma, which polled more than 1,000 adults in December. Of those, more than half say their future hinges on erasing that debt.
The Candy Land ladder
The possibility of receiving $10,000 in debt relief reminds Mitchell Petit-Frere, director of brand and marketing at the nonprofit Family Promise, of the board game Candy Land and the hope of landing on a space where players can climb a ladder, providing them with a shortcut to the end of the game.
"The reality of the student debt lingering over my head has forced me to alter my financial future," said Petit-Frere, 30, who lives in Parsippany, New Jersey.
Petit-Frere, who is living with his parents so he can pay down his remaining $40,000 in debt as well as save money to move out, said receiving debt relief would help him get one step — or ladder climb — closer to his goal of buying a multifamily home. He plans to rent out the other unit in the property so he can help his parents pay off the loans they took out to help finance his education, which he said stands in the six figures.
"All this debt lingers over my life and my parents' life," he noted.
The debt relief would certainly help both him and his parents get closer to their goals, he added, but at the same time wouldn't change their daily lives given the amount of debt they hold. But, he said, he finds it frustrating that the program has been challenged and now remains on hold.
"I don't see any fault in trying to ease the financial anxiety of millions of not only young Americans, but older Americans too, like parents," he noted.
for more features. | US Federal Policies |
Gingrich cited recent head-to-head polls showing Biden losing to former President Donald Trump, who is the GOP front-runner, while speaking on Fox News's The Ingraham Angle on Tuesday.
"And I think what you are seeing on the Left is a desperation that’s literally a survival function. We have never seen this —maybe the South in 1860 — but other than that, we have never seen this level of desperation in American politics. It’s going to get worse. They have a candidate that’s hopeless. You look at Joe Biden. No, he's not going to win and they can’t get rid of him. They have a situation where their opponent is getting stronger and better and more disciplined, and I think that leads to a very explosive moment in American history."
Gingrich cited Biden's poor performance with several key Democratic voting blocs, who he said thinks Democrats are "nuts."
"I’m not quite sure how we get to where we are today because it’s hard to understand how the modern Left somehow went through this permutation, this almost mutant behavior, where they are so radically isolated they're losing African Americans, they're losing Latinos, in the most recent poll they're losing young Americans, they're losing Asian Americans. All the groups they thought they could count on thinking these guys are nuts. And they're not going to vote for them," he said.
"They know they are nuts, because of pain. Pain in terms of fentanyl and crime, pain in terms of the price of living, pain in terms of the number of immigrants crossing the border. Every time they turn around, they see an incompetent president who is clearly beyond his due date. A reasonable Democratic Party — if it still exists and it doesn’t — would insist that Joe Biden step down. There is no Democratic Party that can do that. And he is not going to step down. And, if he did, you get Kamala Harris because in their party, in their particular universe, you cannot defeat a black woman," he added.
A New York Times/Siena College poll released earlier this month was the latest to show Trump with an outsize share of those voting groups. In the survey, Trump received 22% of the black vote when facing Biden, which would be a substantial increase from the 12% he received in 2020. The survey also showed Trump getting 42% of Hispanic voters in swing states, compared with 50% going for Biden, which would be a major increase from the 32%-65% deficit Trump had in 2020.
In a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 presidential election, Trump holds a slight lead over Biden in the RealClearPolitics national polling average but has a definitive lead in several swing states. | US Federal Elections |
The first reported victim of the convicted sex offender found dead with six others — including two missing Oklahoma teens — said the “justice system failed them” when he was released from jail after serving a 17-year sentence for her rape.
Krystle Strong was raped by Jesse McFadden, 39, in 2003 when she was just 16 years old.
He was released in 2020 despite facing separate child porn charges and on Monday, he became the prime suspect in the killings of six people found dead at his Henryetta property.
Five of the dead were teens — including missing girls Ivy Webster, 14, and Brittany Brewer, 16 — according to authorities and family members.
The victims’ relatives believe McFadden fatally shot all six people — Ivy; Brittany; his wife Holly Guess, 35; and her three children: Rylee Elizabeth Allen, 17; Michael James Mayo, 15; and Tiffany Dore Guess, 13 — before taking his own life.
Police have not released a narrative of the tragic events and the medical examiner hasn’t announced official IDs of the victims.
McFadden was due in court Monday to go on trial for the child porn case — charges stemming from alleged texts he exchanged with a victim while he was still behind bars for Strong’s rape.
Strong recounted her horrific and violent rape after learning the news about the man responsible.
“It felt like it was forever,” she told local station News on 6.
Strong said police arrived and found him with both his wrists slit at a nearby river.
Two decades later, Strong said she had wished she could have convinced authorities to have kept him in prison.
“I’m sorry that those little girls had to go through this,” Strong said of McFadden’s alleged victims. “I’m sorry that the justice system failed them.”
In 2017, McFadden was charged with using a contraband cell phone to exchange sexual messages and explicit images with a 16-year-old girl a year earlier. Despite the active charges, the convicted sex offender was released in 2020.
“I actually got ahold of the court system and said ‘You guys are gonna let him out after I just seen [sic] this flash across the news that he had a court case with another young girl? You guys are still gonna let him out? Like this shows that he has not changed…’,” Strong said, according to Fox. “I kept getting the runaround.”
About a year after his release, McFadden met Holly Guess. They got married last May and his new wife only recently found out about his criminal history — which McFadden tried to downplay, Guess’s mother Janette Mayo said.
The two missing teens found dead were friends with Guess’s children and were spending the weekend with the family when they died. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced on Monday that his legislation to force the federal government to disclose information it has on UFOs is in danger of getting shot down in Congress.
The fate of the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Disclosure Act of 2023 is now being determined as negotiators work to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the next National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in the conference process. Lawmakers aim to get the defense policy bill enacted the before the end of the year.
House Republicans are “attempting to kill another commonsense bipartisan measure passed by the Senate which I was proud to cosponsor with Sen. Rounds as the lead sponsor to increase transparency around what the government does and does not know about unidentified aerial phenomena,” Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor.
“Unidentified aerial phenomena that generated intense curiosity for many Americans and the risk for confusion and misinformation is high if the government isn’t willing to be transparent,” he continued.
— UAP News (@HighPeaks77) December 4, 2023
“The measure I championed with Sen. Rounds would create a board just like we did with the JFK assassination records to work through the declassification of many government records on UAPs. This model has been a terrific success for decades. It should be used again with UAPs. But, once again, House Republicans are ready to kill this bipartisan provision,” Schumer said.
In a follow-up post to X summarizing his remarks on the amendment, Schumer added, “We’ll keep working to get this done.”
House Republicans are trying to kill the Senate's bipartisan measure to increase transparency around UAPS.
The measure I’m championing with Sen. Rounds would create a board to work through the declassification of government records on UAPs.
We'll keep working to get this done.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) December 5, 2023
The UAP Disclosure Act, which Schumer unveiled this summer with Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) as an amendment to the Senate’s version of the NDAA, would give heads of government offices 300 days to organize records in their possession and give them to a review board, members of which would be nominated by the president and approved by the Senate, to determine whether certain documents should remain classified.
Similar to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, the president will have the ultimate authority to postpone disclosure of UAP records if there is an “identifiable harm” to national security, but otherwise calls for their release “not later than the date that is 25 years after the date of the first creation” of the documents by the originating government entities.
Among the many provisions in the UAP amendment was a section that said the federal government shall “exercise eminent domain over any and all recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence that may be controlled by private persons or entities in the interests of the public good.”
While it remains to be seen what the final NDAA will look like, the U.S. government has already started making strides in publicly addressing and studying reports of UAPs with the Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and other endeavors. Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, recently told NewsNation that he viewed the Schumer amendment as a “poorly drafted piece of legislation” even though he denied that he was “holding up” the measure.
There remain suspicions that the government has not been fully transparent about what it knows concerning UFOs, and a bipartisan group of House lawmakers who have banded together to form the House UAP Caucus have voiced support for passing the 64-page UAP Disclosure Act in conjunction with a one-and-a-half page amendment to the House version of the NDAA that would pushes Department of Defense (DoD) officials to declassify records related to publicly known sightings of UAPs in 180 days.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), the congressman who offered that amendment, told The Daily Wire last week that he had spoken to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) about the UAP issue and “got him to commit to transparency.” | US Federal Policies |
Live counters for House and Senate results This first live counter shows the make-up of the House of Representatives so far. The latest estimate from NBC News has the Republicans winning 219 House seats compared with the Democrats' 216, meaning they would still take control but with much less authority than the 40+ gains anticipated by some pollsters.A margin for error is attached to that estimate as well, so what it truly means is that either party could still win.The balance of power in the Senate was always expected to be poised more delicately than the House, and with just five seats left to declare we're not much closer to working out who will come out on top.The Democrats made a potentially crucial gain in Pennsylvania, but are still battling tight defences in Nevada and Georgia which could turn the Senate to the Republicans. The Republicans only need to make one gain in this election overall to take control.The Democrat challenge in Wisconsin, a state won by Mr Biden in 2020, also appears to be closer than expected.It may be days - or even weeks if a run-off is needed - before the Senate race becomes clear. Trump 'livid' and 'screaming at everyone' - reports Commentators have told of a "bad night" for Donald Trump, after his Republican picks failed to gain much traction. And, according to a Trump adviser, the former president is not taking it well. CNN's Jim Acosta has heard this... 'I hope you stub your toe on the corner of your bed frame': Campaign manager hits out at Democrats who doubted his candidate After Democrat John Fetterman's win in the Pennsylvania Senate race, his campaign manager has a message for Democrats who voiced concerns about him a few weeks ago. In a rant on Twitter, Brendan McPhillips wrote: "Good morning! If you were an 'unnamed Democrat' who wet the bed to the press after the debate, I hope you stub your toe on the corner of your bed frame this morning, spill coffee on your shirt and then lock your keys in your car. "But mostly, I hope you know you're a f****** loser." Mr McPhillips, who ran Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign in Pennsylvania, was referring to comments from anonymous Democrats following a debate which Mr Fetterman had struggled though. Mr Fetterman at times missed words and had a hard time finishing sentences, owing to a stroke he had back in May. While high-level officials continued to back Mr Fetterman, others privately questioned whether he should pull out of the race. One Pennsylvania Democratic official later told journalists: "I feel bad saying this, but if he does go on to lose by a very close margin, and then we lose the Senate 51-49... that decision will really be re-examined." The sun is rising over the US Capitol... and we still don't know who has control It's coming up to 7am in Washington DC and Americans are waking up to find that little has changed since last night. Both the control of the House of Representatives and the Senate hang in the balance, with some key states still yet to declare. Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Alaska and Nevada are all still waiting for votes to be counted to decide the Senate. Could Ron DeSantis be 'DeFuture' for the Republicans? Rising Republican star Ron DeSantis was re-elected as Florida governor last night in a resounding win - a sure boost to his hopes of running for president in 2024.Rival Donald Trump had warned Mr DeSantis against running in 2024, saying the base "won't like it" - but fortune favoured Mr DeSantis over Mr Trump last night. And judging by this New York Post front page, the Florida governor is proving popular among Republicans...So how well did Mr DeSantis do in Florida? According to Sky News analysis, Mr DeSantis outperformed Mr Trump's 2020 vote in all parts of the state, even in Miami-Dade - the big population centre where 65% of the voting age population is Latino and 18% is African American. Democrats tend to win Miami-Dade - Joe Biden won it by 7 points in 2020. Mr DeSantis has an 11-point advantage over Charlie Crist (his Democratic opponent) and he is 9 points up on Mr Trump's 2020 vote. Fox News pundit says results are 'searing indictment of the Republican Party' A right-leaning Fox News pundit has warned the Republican party needs to "do a really deep introspection look in the mirror" if it is to turn things around before the presidential elections. Speaking as results were coming in early this morning, Marc Thiessen said the Republicans should have done much better against their opponents."There is a broader issue, and think about this: we have the worst inflation in four decades, the worst collapse in real wages in 40 years, the worst crime wave since the 1990s, the worst border crisis in US history, we have Joe Biden, who is the least popular president since Harry Truman, since presidential polling happened, and there wasn't a red wave," he said. "That is a searing indictment of the Republican party. That is a searing indictment of the message that we have been sending to the voters. They looked at all of that, and looked at the Republican alternative, and said 'no thanks.'"He called the results an "absolute disaster" for the Republicans - although they still remain unclear.It's not known yet who will have control of the House or the Senate, but the expected "red wave" has certainly not happened. How did candidates backed by Donald Trump do? By Sky News Data and Forensics UnitOne of the biggest talking points of this year's campaign was how the army of Republican candidates backed by Trump would do. How influential the former president still is on US politics and whether his seal of approval carries weight with the electorate at large as well as with his base.Mr Trump officially endorsed 174 of the 430 Republican House candidates, and initial analysis of their results suggests he didn't help them very much.Counties with candidates backed by Trump increased Republican vote share by an average of 1.3 percentage points compared with the 2020 election, far less than the 6.9 percentage points gained by the Republicans in counties where he didn't announce support.The difference was largest in areas that had been Democrat before, but was still clear in districts that Republicans were defending as well.This analysis is based on early results from fewer than half of counties, so may not be representative of the final outcome but at least gives us a glimpse of how things are going as we look ahead to the next election in 2024.Mr Trump is yet to even announce his candidacy but he's still favourite with the bookies, or at least he was before this election. How a Republican and a Democratic strategist thought last night went We've been getting some reaction from two sides of the spectrum as more results come dripping in.Republican strategist Charmaine Yoest and Democratic strategist Tim Hogan can both agree last night's results were better than expected for the Democrats - but there's not too much else they agree on... The Republican view... Ms Yoest believes the Republicans will likely flip the House of Representatives, and her "money is on" them taking the Senate too. "In politics, a win is a win," she says. She points out the "resounding win" for Ron DeSantis in the Florida governor's vote. While she admits the Democrats did better than expected, she said they would be "really well advised to not be looking at this as a huge endorsement of their policies" as President Joe Biden remains "stunningly unpopular". The Democrat view..."A win is a win but it's also about expectations," says Mr Hogan. He points out that this is a "terrible loss" historically for the Republicans, who had needed little gains to flip either the House or the Senate. "Historically, we lose 25 seats in elections like this, we lose four Senate seats, and both chambers are still in question," he says - although it is still more likely than not that the Republicans will take the House. If the Republicans fail to flip either chamber, he says this will be "potentially the best showing for a party in power since 2002". Trump cost Republicans votes, says former aide Donald Trump has costing the Republicans valuable seats, one of his former aides has said.Sarah Matthews, former deputy White House press secretary, said Mr Trump hindered the party by "boosting poor quality candidates".As we outlined at 5.15am, candidates back by the former president fared less well than those who didn't get his endorsement.Ms Matthews said..."You have record inflation, increased fears over crime, the worst border crisis in history, an unpopular president and Republican performance was still underwhelming. And that was in large part due to the candidates that Trump backed. They weren't up to quality. I think this is lessons learned for Republicans that, a/ Trump is not a national winner, and b/ candidate quality matters." Republicans will now be questioning the power of Donald Trump Pollsters had predicted a bad night for Joe Biden - but it was Donald Trump who had a bad night instead, is how US correspondent James Matthews sums up the election results so far.He says the former president had been "looming large" over these midterms, but ultimately voters - and largely independent voters - rejected his candidates. They appeared to vote against the Trump-backed candidates in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia - which Matthews says will leave some Republicans questioning "the value of Donald Trump". It will "not have gone unnoticed" that Mr Trump's main Republican rival Ron DeSantis did well, with a landslide victory in Florida. Matthews says Republicans will now be asking why they should trust Mr Trump to win the presidential election in 2024. | US Federal Elections |
Dan Cox, an extremist pro-Trump Republican, won his party’s nomination for governor in Maryland last week thanks to “collusion between Trump and the national Democrats”, the current Republican governor said.“I don’t think there’s any chance that [Cox] can win,” Larry Hogan added, speaking to CNN’s State of the Union.Hogan previously called Cox “a QAnon whack job”.“Collusion” is a loaded word in US politics, in the long aftermath of the Russia investigation, in which the special counsel Robert Mueller scrutinised election interference by Moscow and links between Trump aides and Russia.The battle to succeed Hogan as governor of Maryland might seem small beer in comparison. But the race attracted national attention.Cox, endorsed by Donald Trump, surged past Kelly Schulz, a member of Hogan’s cabinet, to win the Republican nomination.In the Democratic race, Wes Moore, a bestselling author, beat candidates including Tom Perez, a former Democratic national committee chair and US labor secretary.In a midterm election year, Democrats have sought to boost pro-Trump Republicans in competitive states, placing the risky bet that as the January 6 committee remains in the headlines, extremists who support the former president’s lie about electoral fraud in his 2020 defeat will prove unpalatable to voters.Hogan said: “There’s no question this was a big win for the Democratic Governors Association that I think spent over $3m trying to promote this guy [Cox]. And it was basically collusion between Trump and the national Democrats, who propped this guy up and got him elected.“But he really is not a serious candidate.”The New York Times reported the sum spent by the DGA on pro-Cox TV ads at “more than $1.16m”.Hogan’s host, Jake Tapper, pointed out that 142,000 Republicans voted for Cox, a state legislator, “So it’s really Republican voters that did this.”Hogan said: “Yes, well, some of them. I mean, we only have a little over 20% of the people in Maryland are Republican, and only 20% of them showed up at the polls. So it’s about 2% of the people of our state that voted for the guy. And in the general election, I think it’s going to be a different situation.”Hogan has sought to establish himself as a figurehead for anti-Trump Republicans. Asked if he would vote for Moore, he said he would “have to make a decision about that between now and November. But I’m certainly not going to support this guy [Cox]. I said I wouldn’t. He’s not qualified to be governor.”Cox tried to impeach Hogan over his handling of the Maryland Covid response. He has used QAnon-adjacent language and attended a QAnon-linked convention.QAnon is an antisemitic conspiracy theory which among other beliefs holds that the US is run by a cabal of child-molesting cannibals which Trump will defeat.Hogan has said he is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination. He was not drawn further on the matter on Sunday. He did tell ABC’s This Week he thought a Trump 2024 announcement before November, which seems likely, would cost Republicans in the midterms.“We had discussions about that at the Republican Governors Association last week,” he said, “and I think most people are very concerned about the damage it does to the party if he announces now.“And, you know, it may help in very red states or very red districts. But in competitive places and purple battlefields, it’s going to cost us seats if he were to do that.” Larry Hogan speaks to reportes in Annapolis, Maryland. Photograph: Brian Stukes/Getty ImagesHogan said he thought Trump’s “ego probably can’t take another loss – after all he lost to Joe Biden, which is hard to do – but he likes to be the center of attention”.On CNN, Tapper cited Liz Cheney, another anti-Trump Republican and possible presidential hopeful who seems set to lose her US House seat in Wyoming, and asked if Hogan felt Trump was winning the battle for the soul of his party.“There’s no question that we lost a battle and we’re losing a few battles,” Hogan said. “But the fight is long. It’s long from being over.“I mean, we have another couple of years before the next [presidential] election. In November of ’20, I gave a speech at the Reagan Institute saying, ‘There’s going to be a long battle for the heart and soul of the Republican party and this is just the beginning.’“I think, in November, we’re going to have a different story, when a lot of these fringe candidates lose. And then we’re going to have to start thinking about, between November’s election and the election two years later, what kind of a party are we going to be? And can we get back to a more Reaganesque big tent party that appeals to more people?“Or are we going to double down on failure?” | US Political Corruption |
Congress sets precedent by expelling Rep. George Santos
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Rep. George Santos, a New York Republican who won election last fall on what was later revealed to be a largely fabricated biography, today became only the sixth member of the House of Representatives ever to be expelled from Congress.
Following the release of a damning report from the GOP-led House Ethics Committee last month, nearly half of Republicans joined with all but a handful of Democrats to oust Mr. Santos Friday. Notably, the GOP leadership, including the new House speaker, all voted against expulsion.
Why We Wrote This
In only the sixth expulsion ever from the U.S. House, the issue was not just ethical concerns around Mr. Santos’ conduct, but also how expelling someone prior to a criminal conviction could undermine Congress as an institution.
Many Republicans argued Mr. Santos should have his day in court, and that expelling him prior to conviction would set a dangerous precedent. He has been indicted on a range of charges including conspiracy, wire fraud, theft of public money, and fraudulent application for and receipt of unemployment benefits.
Mr. Santos’ conduct presented a test for his Republican colleagues, who have been struggling to govern with a narrow majority, now down to just eight seats. The audacity of his made-for-reality-TV story seemed to many a new low at a time of widespread public distrust in the institution.
“Today was a solemn day,” Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest, a Mississippi Republican who sponsored the expulsion resolution, told the Monitor. “I don’t think anyone takes any joy in having to vote to expel a fellow member.”
Rep. George Santos, a New York Republican who won election last fall on what was later revealed to be a largely fabricated biography, today became only the sixth member of the House of Representatives ever to be expelled from Congress.
He’s also the first member to be expelled who did not support the Confederacy or get convicted in court.
Following the release of a damning report from the GOP-led House Ethics committee last month, nearly half of Republicans joined with all but a handful of their Democratic colleagues to oust Mr. Santos Friday morning. Notably, all members of the Republican leadership, including the new House speaker, voted against Mr. Santos’ expulsion. It requires a two-thirds House vote to expel a member.
Why We Wrote This
In only the sixth expulsion ever from the U.S. House, the issue was not just ethical concerns around Mr. Santos’ conduct, but also how expelling someone prior to a criminal conviction could undermine Congress as an institution.
Many Republicans argued Mr. Santos should have his day in court, currently set for Sept. 9, 2024, before being removed. He has been indicted on a range of charges including conspiracy, wire fraud, theft of public money, and fraudulent application for and receipt of unemployment benefits.
Mr. Santos’ conduct presented a test for Congress, and particularly his Republican colleagues, who have been struggling to govern with a narrow majority, now down to just eight seats. The audacity of his made-for-reality-TV story seemed to many a new low at a time of widespread public distrust in the institution, concerns about government investigations becoming politicized, and a new brazenness among lawmakers who in earlier days might simply have resigned.
With the Department of Justice conducting a concurrent criminal investigation into Mr. Santos, some said the case should play out in court rather than in Congress – and that expelling him prior to conviction would set a dangerous precedent. Others argued that Mr. Santos also violated House rules and must be held accountable.
“Today was a solemn day,” Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest, a Mississippi Republican who sponsored the expulsion resolution, told the Monitor upon walking out of the House chamber. “I don’t think anyone takes any joy in having to vote to expel a fellow member of Congress.”
Mr. Santos, who went by Anthony Devolder before his recent foray into politics, won election in a district Joe Biden carried by 8 points in 2020. He anchored his campaign in a storybook American Dream journey – the son of Brazilian immigrants who worked his way up to a career at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, accumulated more than a dozen properties by his mid-30s, and ran a charity that had purportedly rescued more than 2,500 dogs and cats.
The Wall Street firms, however, denied that he ever worked there. No records could be found of such extensive real estate holdings. And the IRS denied the existence of the purported charity, according to a December 2022 New York Times report. He also revised his claim to be Jewish, clarifying that he had meant he was “Jew-ish.”
A special election to fill Mr. Santos’ seat is expected to be held in February, giving Democrats an opportunity to try to flip the seat back to their party in a district President Joe Biden won in 2020.
Spending in Atlantic City, Las Vegas
Three members of Congress were expelled in 1861 for supporting the Confederacy. Two others, in 1980 and 2022, were expelled after being convicted of bribery and other charges. All five were Democrats.
While Mr. Santos has not been convicted of any crimes, the Ethics Committee’s 56-page report argued that the scope of his violations are “highly unusual and damning,” representing “fundamental ethical failings that go to the core of the legitimacy of the electoral process.”
The report, citing bank statements and other financial records, detailed a number of transactions that raised concerns about campaign funds being used for personal expenditures. These included $6,000 worth of purchases at a luxury shoe store on the heels of a large, unreported transfer of funds from his campaign accounts, as well as thousands of dollars of charges on the campaign’s dime at Atlantic City resorts, Las Vegas hotels and various spas – including one specializing in Botox. It also detailed a pattern of “repaying” himself for personal loans to his campaign, for which the committee could find no evidence that he had ever made.
Mr. Santos has blamed his treasurer’s bookkeeping for various campaign finance violations and reporting errors. This fraudulent reporting, the Ethics Committee said, not only misled the public but also helped him to meet benchmarks set by the national GOP. The party, which was looking to diversify its ranks, then invested in the campaign of the openly gay Latino millennial, helping him to victory. However, the report details texts, emails, and staffer accounts that show he was closely tracking his campaign finances.
After failing to appear before the Ethics Committee, which said he “declined nearly every opportunity he was afforded under the Committee’s processes to provide a rebuttal to the allegations,” Mr. Santos is now accusing his colleagues of trampling due process. He says they are setting a dangerous precedent that will come back to haunt them and the institution.
“Are we to now assume that one is no longer innocent until proven guilty, and they are in fact guilty until proven innocent?” he asked in a floor speech Tuesday night.
But the standard of “innocent until proven guilty” is a threshold used in criminal law before taking away someone’s right to liberty, says Democratic Rep. Daniel Goldman, who previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York.
“No one has a right to serve in Congress,” says Representative Goldman, who represents New York’s 10th congressional district.
Many Republicans disagree, however, with some saying Mr. Santos had been unfairly targeted in a body that has seen plenty of other scandals.
In the floor debate last night, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz cited the case of GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter, who eventually pleaded guilty to misuse of campaign funds for extramarital affairs and other personal expenses, but who stayed in Congress for several years after his misdeeds were revealed before eventually resigning. He also asked why Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, who has been indicted for accepting bribes from foreign officials, not only is still serving but also is receiving classified reports.
Mr. Guest, the Republican Ethics Committee chair, argued that Mr. Santos had been afforded the due process laid out in the Constitution, but that the New York congressman had failed to appear before the committee, testify under oath, provide a written response to the allegations filed by his fellow members, or provide many of the documents requested by the committee’s investigation.
That didn’t satisfy Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, a leader within the House Freedom Caucus.
“Our members have forgotten that everybody is afforded due process under law, not due process under the Ethics Committee,” he said after the vote Friday. “What happened here today goes against the principles of our institutions.”
Mr. Santos: Done with “the circus”
Leading up to today’s vote, Mr. Santos struck a defiant tone.
“Bring it on,” he said Tuesday night on his way into the House chamber.
“I’m done playing a part for the circus,” the congressman told reporters, though he refused to answer their questions about the report’s allegations. “I’m so bored of my colleagues trying to create something when there’s no there there.”
In a three-hour conversation on X Spaces over the Thanksgiving holiday, hosted by Monica Matthews On Air, he called the report ”a political opposition hit piece at its best.”
“It was designed to smear me,” he said. The Ethics Committee is the sole House committee that is equally balanced between Democrats and Republicans, and the report was unanimous.
“You want to expel me? I’ll wear it like a badge of honor,” said Mr. Santos, adding that his decision not to run for reelection was not an admission of guilt but that he had no interest in returning to a body full of “hypocrites,” “felons galore,” and “people with all sorts of sheisty backgrounds.”
During the X Spaces conversation, Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California chimed in and asked the congressman why he wouldn’t just apologize, saying it would go “a very, very long way.”
In January, less than a month into Mr. Santos’ freshman term, a Siena poll found that 78% of his constituents – including 71% of Republicans – wanted him to resign.
“We just want to know that you feel awful for the things you have done,” said Representative Garcia. “I don’t want the apology for me, man. I think you owe the American public generally and your constituents, like, a direct apology.”
That never came, even after he was expelled Friday. He had uncharacteristically little to say as he walked out of the House chamber, got into a waiting Jaguar SUV, and was driven away. | US Congress |
Like many reporters, I’ve been operating in Casaubon mode for much of the past eight years, searching for the key to Donald Trump’s mythologies. No single explanation of Trump is fully satisfactory, although Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer came closest when he observed that the cruelty is the point. Another person who helped me unscramble the mystery of Trump was his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Early in the Trump presidency, I had lunch with Kushner in his White House office. We were meant to be discussing Middle East peace (more on that another time), but I was particularly curious to hear Kushner talk about his father-in-law’s behavior. I was not inured then—and am not inured even now—to the many rococo manifestations of Trump’s defective character. One of the first moments of real shock for me came in the summer of 2015, when Trump, then an implausible candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said of Senator John McCain, “He’s not a war hero … I like people who weren’t captured, okay?”
I did not understand how so many ostensibly patriotic voters could subsequently embrace Trump, but mainly I couldn’t understand his soul sickness: How does a person come to such a rotten, depraved thought?
That day in the White House, I mentioned to Kushner one of Trump’s more recent calumnies and told him that, in my view, his father-in-law’s incivility was damaging the country. Strangely, Kushner seemed to agree with me: “No one can go as low as the president,” he said. “You shouldn’t even try.”
I was confused at first. But then I understood: Kushner wasn’t insulting his father-in-law. He was paying him a compliment.
Perverse, of course. But revelatory as well, and more than a little prophetic. Because Trump, in the intervening years, has gone lower, and lower, and lower. If there is a bottom—no sure thing—he’s getting closer. Tom Nichols, who writes The Atlantic’s daily newsletter and is one of our in-house experts on authoritarianism, argued in mid-November that Trump has finally earned the epithet “fascist.”
“For weeks, Trump has been ramping up his rhetoric,” Nichols wrote. “Early last month, he echoed the vile and obsessively germophobic language of Adolf Hitler by describing immigrants as disease-ridden terrorists and psychiatric patients who are ‘poisoning the blood of our country.’ ” In a separate speech, Trump, Nichols wrote, “melded religious and political rhetoric to aim not at foreign nations or immigrants, but at his fellow citizens. This is when he crossed one of the last remaining lines that separated his usual authoritarian bluster from recognizable fascism.”
Trump’s rhetoric has numbed us in its hyperbole and frequency. As David A. Graham, one of our magazine’s chroniclers of the Trump era, wrote recently, “The former president continues to produce substantive ideas—which is not to say they are wise or prudent, but they are certainly more than gibberish. In fact, much of what Trump is discussing is un-American, not merely in the sense of being antithetical to some imagined national set of mores, but in that his ideas contravene basic principles of the Constitution or other bedrock bases of American government.”
There was a time when it seemed impossible to imagine that Trump would once again be a candidate for president. That moment lasted from the night of January 6, 2021, until the afternoon of January 28, 2021, when the then-leader of the House Republican caucus, Kevin McCarthy, visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago and welcomed him back into the fold.
And so here we are. It is not a sure thing that Trump will win the Republican nomination again, but as I write this, he’s the prohibitive front-runner. Which is why we felt it necessary to share with our readers our collective understanding of what could take place in a second Trump term. I encourage you to read all of the articles in this special issue carefully (though perhaps not in one sitting, for reasons of mental hygiene). Our team of brilliant writers makes a convincingly dispositive case that both Trump and Trumpism pose an existential threat to America and to the ideas that animate it. The country survived the first Trump term, though not without sustaining serious damage. A second term, if there is one, will be much worse.
The Atlantic, as our loyal readers know, is deliberately not a partisan magazine. “Of no party or clique” is our original 1857 motto, and it is true today. Our concern with Trump is not that he is a Republican, or that he embraces—when convenient—certain conservative ideas. We believe that a democracy needs, among other things, a strong liberal party and a strong conservative party in order to flourish. Our concern is that the Republican Party has mortgaged itself to an antidemocratic demagogue, one who is completely devoid of decency.
This editor’s note appears in the January/February 2024 print edition with the headline “A Warning.” | US Political Corruption |
Tiffany Campbell used to describe herself as a “hardcore, church-going Republican.” That changed back in 2006, when she was still running an in-home daycare in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and learned she was pregnant with twins. The prognosis was dire: one twin’s heart was pumping blood for both of them and, without intervention, neither would survive. She has a healthy 16-year-old son today because she was able to obtain an abortion. After that experience, she threw herself into politics; today she is working full-time for the campaign to restore pre-Dobbs abortion protections in South Dakota.
If the South Dakota measure makes it to the ballot, it has a good shot at passing. Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe in June of 2022, the reproductive rights movement has gone seven for seven at the ballot box, defeating efforts to restrict abortion in states like Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana, and enshrining protections in swing states like Michigan and Ohio. It’s hardly a wonder why Republicans are emptying their bag of dirty tricks to make sure it doesn’t work: inventing astronomical “costs,” conspiring with anti-abortion groups to change the ballot language, and fighting to ban petition collectors from public spaces, among other strategies.
In South Dakota, anti-abortion activists, with assists from GOP officials, have tried out a variety of tactics in recent months. Activists have been harassed, videotaped and repeatedly called the police on petition collectors, while local officials have sought to pass ordinances banning them from collecting signatures in public places. Most recently, the attorney general warned in a letter that he was in possession of “video and photographic evidence” that could allow opponents to challenge the signatures that have been collected so far.
“The organized opposition is more aggressive than I’ve encountered in any of these fights in the past,” says Adam Weiland, who has worked on various ballot measures in the state for years. “It’s the first time I’ve ever encountered people who don’t even want you to get on the ballot and let the voters vote. That’s the whole focus of their campaign.”
Editor’s picks
The same stories are playing out in battleground states and Republican-controlled states around the country. To get on the ballot in Arizona — a critical swing state in 2024 — canvassers must collect at least 370,000 valid signatures. But the rules are strict: if a single signature on a page of 15 is invalid, the entire page is thrown out. Anti-abortion activists have taken advantage of the rules to try to counteract the pro-choice organizers collection efforts. Amy Fitch-Heacock with Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom says she has witnessed protesters “take the petition, pretend that they are signing, but they will use false information: a fake name, fake address, or they will scribble and go outside of the lines” — setting canvassers back 15 signatures at a time.
In Florida, Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody has petitioned the state Supreme Court — now stacked with ultra-conservative DeSantis appointees — to stop the Florida Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative from moving forward. “They basically made very disingenuous legal arguments,” Hélène Barthélemy, staff attorney with the ACLU of Florida, says of the attorney general’s office. But because of the makeup of the court, it’s possible that their argument could persuade the court. “Judges do what they want to do in every single circumstance. So we will see, but we’re as prepared as possible.”
It’s clear why Republicans would want to block voters from having their say: a poll released this week found 62 percent of Floridians would support the proposed constitutional amendment — enough to meet Florida’s unusually high 60 percent threshold to amend the constitution.
In Missouri, Republican officials have dived deep into the weeds to fight the 2024 ballot measure at every procedural step. Attorney General Andrew Bailey refused to sign off on the state auditor’s estimate of how much the proposed amendment would cost taxpayers. The auditor cited an estimate that indicated the measure could cost $51,000; Bailey asserted, wildly, the cost could be closer to $51 billion. He refused to approve the fiscal note, forcing advocates to go to court, and curtailing the period in which they could collect signatures.
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That wasn’t the end of the shenanigans. After a judge twice ruled against the attorney general, Missouri’s Secretary of State, Jay Ashcroft, had a chance to propose language to appear on the ballot. His version asked voters if they favor allowing “dangerous and unregulated abortions until live birth.” (A state appeals court rejected that language, and the Missouri Supreme Court declined to hear Ashcroft’s appeal.) “The ballot initiative process in Missouri has been around for over 100 years,” says Tori Schafer with the ACLU of Missouri, which helped defeat both efforts in court. “It’s never had this issue before.”
The Republican resistance to ballot measures is new. Back when Democrats controlled a majority of state houses around the country, the GOP loved direct democracy, and spearheaded initiatives to restrict collective bargaining, enact voter ID laws, and reject health insurance mandates. That changed after the seismic 2010 midterm elections that helped install GOP majorities in legislatures and governor’s mansions ahead of a once-a-decade redistricting process. Ever since, data shows Republicans have aggressively attacked the citizen-led initiative process — particularly in states where the party holds a trifecta.
South Dakota may be a rock-ribbed Republican stronghold, but when it comes to direct democracy, voters have proven open-minded. In the last eight years, they have passed campaign finance reform, banned payday lending, legalized medical and recreational weed, and expanded Medicaid. And, on two separate occasions — first in 2006, then again in 2008 — South Dakotans have defeated abortion bans at the ballot box.
South Dakota is one of at least a dozen states where efforts to put abortion on the ballot in 2024 are in various stages of development. After a string of victories, Democrats are increasingly optimistic about the power of such measures not just to fortify access, but to drive voter turnout in a presidential election in which Democrats could really use the help.
It’s a tactic that Republicans used to their advantage in 2004, when they worked to place measures that would ban same-sex marriage on the ballot in hopes of luring conservative voters to the polls to help re-elect George W. Bush. Opposition to abortion combined, undoubtedly, with fears about the impact those ballot measures could have on the presidential race, has anti-abortion activists and their allies in government, are working furiously to prevent the proposed constitutional amendment from ever appearing before voters in the first place.
A year out from the election, it remains to be seen which tactics will be successful. In Nevada, an anti-abortion group recently convinced a Republican judge that a ballot measure that would establish the right to reproductive freedom didn’t meet the state’s standard. “Voters should be aware that anti-abortion advocates still have plenty of state government allies who are willing to help them undermine reproductive freedom,” Lindsey Harmon, president of Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, declared in response. “We will not let one judge’s misguided ruling deter us.” On Monday, the group appealed the ruling.
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The landscape, meanwhile, is dramatically different in Democrat-controlled states. In Maryland, advocates have experienced virtually no resistance whatsoever, and say they are aware of no organized opposition. “We’re expecting a disinformation campaign,” says Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause Maryland. “But outside of that we’re not hearing anything at all.”
It’s a similar story in Colorado, where a measure that would prohibit the government from denying or impeding the right to an abortion is poised to go before voters next year, a competing ballot measure that would have banned abortion in the state failed to pass procedural hurdles. “We have not really experienced any direct pushback,” says Dusti Gurule, CEO of Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights. ”Our community supports not only [keeping abortion legal], but expanding access for those who need it. So, we’re in a really good place, and frankly, really excited to get the signatures and get on the ballot.” | US Federal Elections |
Former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly is blasting his onetime boss over disparaging remarks he says the then-president repeatedly made about service members and veterans and for what he called Trump's untruthfulness about his positions on various groups as well as on abortion.
In a statement to CNN published Monday, Kelly delivered a scathing criticism of former President Donald Trump while confirming reporting in The Atlantic in 2020 that detailed the comments he made during his presidency.
"A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them,'" Kelly said of Trump. "A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family — for all Gold Star families — on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”
The Atlantic reported that Trump privately made damning statements against U.S. service and veterans, such as the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who had been a Vietnam prisoner of war, and former President George H.W. Bush, who was shot down as a Navy pilot in World War II. During a visit to France in 2018 for the centennial anniversary of the end of World War I, Trump also reportedly called Marines who died at Belleau Wood “suckers” and fallen soldiers at Aisne-Marne American Cemetery “losers.”
Kelly also slammed Trump as someone "who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women. A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about."
He continued, “A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason — in expectation that someone will take action,” an apparent reference to Trump's recent statements about Army Gen. Mark Milley, who just retired as the chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff. “A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”
“There is nothing more that can be said,” Kelly added. “God help us.”
Reached for comment by NBC News, Steven Cheung, Trump campaign spokesperson, said: "John Kelly has totally clowned himself with these debunked stories he’s made up because he didn’t serve his President well while working as Chief of Staff."
Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, left as Trump's chief of staff in 2018. His tenure had been marred by conflict, with reports at the time describing disagreements between Kelly, Trump and West Wing staff.
Kelly found himself in the crosshairs of his former boss in 2020, when Kelly came to the defense of then-Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who had reported his concerns about Trump’s July 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. During the phone call, Trump asked Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden, his son Hunter and Democrats. The phone call led to Trump’s first impeachment by the House, but the Senate later acquitted Trump on two charges, of abusing his power and obstructing Congress.
During Kelly’s time in the Trump White House, speculation grew that he was exhausted and frustrated with his role as well as with Trump’s mercurial temperament.
Kelly first served in the Trump administration as secretary of Homeland Security. Trump appointed him as chief of staff in July 2017 after his predecessor, Reince Priebus, was ousted after six months on the job. | US Political Corruption |
Tuberville: White House would rather ‘burn the Senate down’ than negotiate on military holds
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said Sunday the White House would rather “burn the Senate down” than negotiate on his blockade of more than 360 military promotions to protest the Pentagon’s new abortion policy.
“It’s typical of this place. This administration would rather burn the Senate down, and that’s what would happen … If you change the rules of the Senate then it lasts forever,” Tuberville told CNN’s Manu Raju on “Inside Politics.” “So they would rather burn down the Senate than negotiate.”
Tuberville’s comments come as Senate Democrats, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and a handful of Republicans look to pursue a rarely used procedural tactic to defeat Tuberville’s blockade as he continues to protest the Department of Defense’s abortion policies.
The tactic involves a standing order resolution that would allow the Senate to move military promotions in a group through the end of 2024, with exceptions for officers nominated to a position on the Joint Chiefs of Staff or to lead a Combatant Command.
The standing order resolution is already receiving pushback from some conservative Senate members, and it would require at least nine Republican votes in order to pass.
The resolution could be introduced this week unless Tuberville drops the holds, sources familiar with internal deliberations told The Hill. It will first move through the Senate Rules Committee.
“If they go around and, without negotiating, change the rules of the Senate, it just goes to show you they want it their way or the highway,” Tuberville said Sunday.
The policy Tuberville is protesting allows for paid leave and travel reimbursement for service members seeking an abortion, which Tuberville argues is a violation of the Hyde Amendment, a rule that prohibits federal funds from being used for abortion.
Tuberville told CNN members of the military told him the holds are not impacting readiness, an argument repeatedly made by the White House and Pentagon.
“If I thought this was happening, I wouldn’t be doing this. And I’ve told you that all along. And the people that I trust tell me that it’s not,” Tuberville told CNN.
Tuberville said there has been “no conversation” with the White House about coming to a solution.
“No conversation. Nobody wants to negotiate. You know this is not a negotiating crowd over in the White House,” Tuberville said.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Congress |
Ron DeSantis: Real Man of Political Genius
“One of the most WTF leaks in memory.”
I had hoped today to write about anything except the Florida Governor’s flatulent, failing, fumbling campaign. That sad nag has been pummeled to death.
But you really can’t avert your eyes from this can you?
Let’s take a moment to consider the position Ron DeSantis finds himself in: He’s trailing Donald Trump by 39 points, shedding donors and voters alike. He’s reset his campaign, fired staff, and had to undergo the indignity of flying commercial. His attempts at simulating a normal human being have flopped and he’s being mercilessly trolled by Trump.
Next week’s debate in Milwaukee may be his last chance to turn this around.
As chance would have it, the debate will take place the same week that his main rival for the GOP nomination will be arrested, fingerprinted, and have his mugshot taken — after his fourth criminal indictment.
His strategy?
Defend Donald Trump.
Real Man of Political Genius.
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On Thursday, the NYT reported on a cache of memos posted online by DeSantis’s super PAC that are chock-full of the sort of brilliant insights that helped inspire his shambolic campaign launch with Elon Musk.
As they began, so, apparently, do they intend to continue.
The trove of documents provides an extraordinary glimpse into the thinking of the DeSantis operation about a debate the candidate’s advisers see as crucial.
“There are four basic must-dos,” one of the memos urges Mr. DeSantis, whom the document refers to as “GRD.”
“1. Attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times. 2. State GRD’s positive vision 2-3 times. 3. Hammer Vivek Ramaswamy in a response. 4. Defend Donald Trump in absentia in response to a Chris Christie attack.”
The memo advises DeSantis to say something like: “Trump isn’t here, so let’s just leave him alone. He’s too weak to defend himself here. We’re all running against him. I don’t think we want to join forces with someone on this stage who’s auditioning for a show on MSNBC.”
It also urges DeSantis to deploy Trump-like nicknames like “Fake Vivek” or “Vivek the Fake.”
Really, this should go well, especially the part about telegraphing his plan to go after Christie (the most formidable debater on the stage) and the Hindu guy.
There are two additional memos about Ramaswamy, including one outlining his positions on marijuana legalization, mask-wearing during the covid-19 pandemic and transgender people in the military. One highlights Ramaswamy’s past statements suggesting support for a “very high” inheritance tax. And it singles out his faith and his family’s roots in India.
“Ramaswamy — a Hindu who grew up visiting relatives in India and was very much ingrained in India’s caste system — supports this as a mechanism to preserve a meritocracy in America and ensure everyone starts on a level playing field,” the memo says.
**
The meta-theory behind the memo? The subject line is “RE: Orchestra pit,” which refers to the Roger Ailes’s theory “that making mistakes and choreographing attacks are more likely to garner media coverage than articulating policy positions during a televised debate.”
“You have two guys onstage and one guy says, ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit,” Ailes once said. “Who do you think is going to be on the evening news?”
So, if things aren’t going well for Florida Man, don’t be surprised if he tries to throw himself into a mosh pit of supporters. Or something.
**
My Colleague Tim Miller quite reasonably calls this “One of the most WTF leaks in memory. Makes your candidate seem like a pathetic baby and neutralizes potential attacks. Baffling.”
“This is not normal,” he says. “The whole thing just reeks of desperation.” (Trust me, we’re going to be talking about it on today’s Bulwark Podcast.)
National Review’s Noah Rothman is also baffled: “I don't understand why DeSantis is in the race at this point if he thinks he can win the nomination by playing blocking tackle for the frontrunner. Just stop wasting everyone's time and money.”
And I regret to tell you that even as blind squirrels eventually find the nut, the thoroughly deplorable Elise Stefanik had a good point, when she called the memo “absolute malpractice.”
“As a former debate prepper, the first and most obvious rule of debate prep is don’t leak the debate prep memo,” Stefanik wrote while sharing the story from the New York Times. . . .
**
Exit take: Trump’s not showing up in Milwaukee next week. Last night he bleated:
Thumbprints on a Conspiracy?
Could Trump have been dumb enough to use Twitter DMs for his plot? Plus, the dangers of not fearing the law, the politics of four indictments, and the irony of whining about election fraud and then being indicted for conspiring to commit it. Ben Wittes and Anna Bower join me for the latest episode of The Trump Trials.
My Shocked Face
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump now says he won't be holding a news conference next week to unveil what he claims is new “evidence” of fraud in Georgia's 2020 presidential election — even though no fraud has ever been substantiated — citing the advice of lawyers as he prepares to face trial in two criminal cases that stem from his election lies.
**
But you can’t say that Trump and his legal team do not have a sense of humor.
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday proposed an April 2026 trial date in his federal Jan. 6 case as his lawyers negotiate arrangements for him to turn himself in to authorities in Atlanta along with 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case.
Trump asked U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to delay the case for more than two and a half years…
Are you not entertained?
**
The Silence of the Dems?
Not to put too fine a point on it, Donald Trump is a ridiculous human being. But he’s a bully and so no one has the courage to treat him…the way he treats other people. No one ever asks: Why is your face so orange? Or, What is that thing on top of your head? Do you really want to look like Stanley Tucci in The Hunger Games? Or, even a more restrained: “How long, Sir, does it take you to prepare your hair every morning?” Or, why didn’t you just photo-shop those pictures of your Inauguration crowd to prove you had more people than Obama? Or, did you really want to make that Texas dufus Surgeon General? Or, weren’t you pretty terrible appointing judges, since so many of them threw out your election fraud cases? Why did 63 different judges toss your lawsuits?
Treating Donald Trump with respect is not just unwarranted, it defies the law of the playground. You stand up to bullies. You expose their cowardice. You make fun of them. You say, “I’m rubber and you’re glue. Everything you say to me bounces back on you.” Jack Smith is deranged? Aha, projection! Trump is really talking about himself.
Of course, Joe Biden can’t do this. Not presidential. But his silence about this summer in Trumpland hasn’t been very effective, either. He has said nothing about the seriousness of the indictments; it is a President’s job to explain these things, to put them into perspective. He has allowed tawdry creeps like Jim Jordan to demean the authority of the Justice Department—and Biden’s surrogates are even worse: Would the Rule of Law collapse if Merrick Garland showed some righteous anger?
Would it be untoward to suggest that more Americans—especially those who associate Garland’s supine silence with weakness— might think twice about Trump if Democrats actually started to fight back in ways that people who didn’t go to law school might understand?
Quick Hits
1. Lessons for American Democracy from a Russian Prison Cell
Just days before the court was to announce his inevitable conviction, Navalny released (through associates) a strange and interesting essay. It’s about the people he hates more than Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to kill him and who has deprived him of his rights.
Navalny’s essay is worth reading because, unlike Fear No Evil, from which he quotes, it’s hardly about his imprisonment at all. It’s not a piece of prison literature—a genre that previous generations of Russian dissidents established as something of a national tradition. Instead, it’s a meditation on democracy, the rule of law, and blame. And there’s a lot of blame to go around.
2. El Salvador’s Dictator Is a Darling of the American Right. He Shouldn’t Be.
EL SALVADOR’S PRESIDENT, Nayib Bukele, is running for re-election, and with a (supposed) 90 percent approval rating, he’s overwhelmingly favored to win. He calls himself a “Philosopher King” and the “world’s coolest dictator” on Twitter. Whether he’s “cool” is a matter of opinion; that he’s a dictator is a fact.
Bukele has created one of the toughest security states in the world. To solve El Salvador’s decades-long security crisis that has left hundreds of thousands dead since 1980 and created a lucrative illicit economy, Bukele put more than 70,000 people (more than 1 percent of the country’s total population) in overcrowded, maximum-security prisons without trial. He just finished building a mega-prison that can hold up to 100 detainees per cell.
Cheap Shots
Fair warning. | US Political Corruption |
Former President Donald Trump’s decision to skip the first Republican presidential debate on Aug. 23, 2023 – and likely the others – may be a sign that candidate debates will be the next casualty of the highly polarized political environment in the United States.
“The public knows who I am & what a successful Presidency I had …,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform. “I WILL THEREFORE NOT BE DOING THE DEBATES!”
So, instead of sparring with his GOP rivals in the first of those debates, which will run on Fox News, Trump will release a recorded interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on an online platform.
For Trump, the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, refusing to participate in a debate is nothing new. In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he skipped a general election debate because it was moved online.
As is common for incumbent presidents, Joe Biden will not participate in Democratic primary debates, even though he is being challenged by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose support polls at 13%, and author Marianne Williamson. Her polling average is at 6%, just above the 5% threshold for participation in the Democratic presidential debates in 2020. The Democratic National Committee is not sponsoring presidential debates this election cycle, and Biden has ignored calls from Kennedy and Williamson to debate.
Trump and Biden aren’t the only candidates in recent years to nix debate participation. In 2022, fewer U.S. Senate and gubernatorial candidates agreed to debate their opponents than in previous election cycles. In fact, on the statewide level, the number of candidates taking part in debates has been declining since at least 2016.
Based on these trends, it’s likely that debate participation will decrease again – across the board – during the 2024 election cycle.
While presidential elections are rarely decided on the debate stage, there is strong evidence that viewers draw on the information they learn in debates to make voting decisions.
Political debates are rooted in history
Presidential debates are a historical linchpin of modern American politics. Debates put the major contenders on the same stage and allow voters the opportunity to see how candidates explain – and defend – their policy positions.
Among the earliest reported examples of candidate debates in the United States were the 1858 U.S. Senate showdowns between Republican Abraham Lincoln and Democrat Stephen Douglas. The candidates held seven, three-hour debates across Illinois, focused on whether new states should be permitted to allow slavery.
In 1956, the first televised presidential debate featured Democrat and former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson facing Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, also a Democrat, and it was a fairly restrained matchup. Each seeking their party’s nomination for president, the candidates took similar positions on school integration, atomic energy and foreign policy during the one-hour debate. They differed over whether the U.S. should discontinue hydrogen bomb testing.
After Stevenson won the primary and Democratic nomination, he selected Kefauver as his running mate.
But the initial, and perhaps most famous, general election presidential debate was in 1960. That’s when Republican nominee Richard Nixon sparred with Democratic nominee John Kennedy. This debate, the first in a series of four during that election cycle, was memorable because it highlighted the important role physical appearances play in presidential contests.
Radio listeners thought Nixon – then the sitting Republican vice president – had won. But his five-o’clock shadow and pale skin caused television viewers to proclaim Kennedy the clear winner. Decades later, nationally syndicated columnist Bruce DuMont said, “After that debate, it was not just what you said in a campaign that was important, but how you looked saying it.”
That first Nixon-Kennedy faceoff was also important because of the large television audience – more than 70 million Americans watched – and the small boost it gave Kennedy in a closely contested election. According to Gallup polling, Kennedy went from being down by 1 percentage point before the debate to being up by 3 percentage points after the debate.
But after the Kennedy-Nixon debates, there wasn’t another general election presidential debate until 1976 because some candidates refused to participate in the process. In 1964, Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, the overwhelming favorite, refused to debate the Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater. And in 1968, Nixon would not debate Democrat Hubert Humphrey because of his own dismal performance against Kennedy in 1960. Nixon also refused to debate George McGovern, a Democrat, in 1972 because he had a 39-percentage-point lead in the polls in early September.
Debates are central to political campaigns
However, since 1976, debates have been an integral part of modern presidential campaigns. In 1976, Republican incumbent Gerald Ford agreed to debate Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter because Ford was sagging in the polls after pardoning Nixon. There were three debates – the first on domestic policy, the second on international policy and the third on any topic. Carter credited the debates for his win, noting that “They established me as competent on foreign and domestic affairs and gave the viewers reason to think that Jimmy Carter had something to offer.”
In 1980, Carter skipped the first debate because independent candidate John Anderson was included. So, Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan, a Republican, faced off in just one debate, a week before the election. Polls gave Reagan a slight edge in the debate, in part because he used his famous “There you go again” line after Carter accused him of opposing Medicare.
The Commission on Presidential Debates was established in 1987 “to ensure, for the benefit of the American electorate, that general election debates between or among the leading candidates for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States are a permanent part of the electoral process,” and has sponsored all the debates since 1988.
Since the commission took the helm, there have been two or three presidential debates each cycle.
For voters, debates matter
Beyond tradition, there is considerable evidence from scholars in communication and political science that debates play important roles in our political system.
Communication scholar Steven Chaffee has shown that debates can influence an individual’s vote choice when one of the candidates is relatively unknown, when many voters are undecided, when the race appears close and when party allegiances are weak.
Communication scholars Mitchell McKinney and Benjamin Warner have empirical findings that show presidential primary debates, where less is known about the candidates, have a much greater influence on vote choice than general election debates. They analyzed surveys of general election and primary debate viewers between 2000 and 2012 and discovered that only 3.5% of general election viewers switched from one candidate to the other, but 35% of primary election viewers changed their candidate preference.
McKinney and Warner also found that debates enhance an individual’s level of confidence in their political knowledge and their tendency to vote.
In the same study, the scholars also demonstrate that debates can reduce a citizen’s political cynicism, measured in part by the levels of trust and confidence they have in politicians.
Given the rich tradition of presidential debates and the strong evidence that they help educate voters, we believe a lack of candidate participation will harm voters.
Academic research demonstrates that if citizens can see Biden and Trump – and their primary rivals – discuss their positions on the debt ceiling and whether they believe the U.S. should continue its support of Ukraine in its war against Russia, candidate answers could inform their electoral decisions, make them more confident that they have the knowledge to vote and decrease their cynicism about politics.
With front-running candidates eschewing debates to pursue friendlier formats, we believe voters – and democracy – will be worse off.
Editor’s Note: This is an updated version of an article originally published on June 29, 2023. | US Federal Elections |
The FBI and a number of law enforcement agencies searched a Georgia property for the human remains of a teen, who disappeared in 2016, following a tip.
“The search warrant was obtained based on credible information and evidence gathered during the course of the investigation,” the Porterdale Police Department said in a statement on Thursday. Police confirmed that the search is for the remains of Morgan Bauer.
The search, taking place at 2 South Broad St, so far has uncovered “items of evidentiary interest,” police added. The officials also said that the current owners of the property have been cooperating.
A number of local law enforcement agencies were conducting the search, as well as the Peoria Illinois Police Department; it was not immediately clear why this out-of-state agency was part of the search.
The Peoria Police Department told The Independent in an email: “The Peoria Police Department can only confirm that our officers assisted in the investigation. None of our officers are in Georgia helping with this investigation.”
Ms Bauer vanished in February 2016, shortly after moving to Georgia from South Dakota. She was 19 years old at the time of her disappearance.
Her last known sighting was in a video posted on social media on 26 February 2016, showing Ms Bauer walking through a park, and a man can be seen behind her.
On Thursday, the day of the FBI search, Ms Bauer’s mother, Sherri Keenan, wrote on Facebook: “At this time, my family and I are doing our best to be grateful, graceful, peaceful and prayerful.”
Kasey McClure, who has been helping Ms Keenan with the search since Morgan Bauer went missing, spoke to Fox 5 Atlanta, telling the outlet that the mother is “in shock.”
Ms McClure continued, “She’s not sure what’s going to come from this investigation, she’s not sure if that’s her daughter, she’s not sure of what they found because it’s so hush-hush.”
Ms McClure also alluded to a particular finding. Ms Bauer reportedly found a job as a dancer at The Top of Gainesville, a now defunct adult entertainment club in Georgia, according to the outlet.
“I’m actually a survivor of the sex industry,” Ms McClure said. “I worked in that lifestyle for a little over six years. Twenty years ago today I actually walked away from it.”
“There are thousands of girls in Georgia that are in the sex industry. That might mean they’re just a dancer, or they might be an escort, but every day their life is at risk,” she concluded. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
It might take a semester-long course to explain all of President Joe Biden's student loan plans.
Since the Supreme Court struck down its $400 billion student debt transfer, the Biden White House has been hard at work regrouping and attacking the issue on multiple fronts. So many, in fact, that it can be difficult even for professional loan forgiveness followers to keep up.
"I find it very hard to track what is happening and how they’re doing it," said Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. "So I imagine that the average person is unable to follow any of this. I don't know whether that is intentional or not."
Biden announced the headline-grabbing original plan in August 2022, six weeks before the midterm elections. The plan was blocked by a federal judge just days after the election and ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2023.
Biden administration officials repeatedly pledged that there was no Plan B if the high court overturned the program, yet moved swiftly following the legal setback to announce future moves.
One of the most significant is the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan, which will greatly reduce the amount that most people who take out student loans repay. In fact, most loans would be written off completely after no more than 20 years. Critics of the plan, including Brookings Institution scholar Adam Looney, say it is untargeted and provides the greatest benefit to loanees who find the least career success.
"Want a free ride to college?" Looney wrote in his analysis. "You can have one, but only if you study cosmetology, liberal arts, or drama, preferably at a for-profit school."
But that plan is for future borrowers, not current ones. For that, the Department of Education announced, beginning the week that loan payments restarted following a 3-1/2-year pause, a new series of loan forgiveness initiatives.
The new plan has identified four groups of borrowers who could see their loans partially or fully forgiven: those with loan balances that exceed their original balance, those with loans more than 25 years old, those whose college experience left them with "unreasonable debt loads or provided insufficient earnings," and those eligible for repayment plans but who have not applied for it.
A fifth group, “those who are experiencing financial hardship that the current student loan system does not currently adequately address," could be added later.
“President Biden and I are committed to helping borrowers who’ve been failed by our country’s broken and unaffordable student loan system,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a press release. “These draft proposals would build on the historic $127 billion in loan forgiveness the Biden-Harris Administration has already approved for nearly 3.6 million borrowers."
Loans said to be "forgiven" are not truly canceled but are written off as a taxpayer expense and added to the national debt.
The new plan is likely to be much smaller in scale than the original, which would have affected more than 40 million people, a fact that was news even to some of the people helping establish it.
The current forgiveness plan is based on the secretary of education's authority under the Higher Education Act of 1965, rather than the emergency legislation the original plan was based on, meaning it has to go through a lengthy negotiated rulemaking process.
That process is subject to public comment and involves six meetings by a 16-member committee. The committee consists of students and officials from a range of colleges, along with loan servicers, state officials, and advocates including the NAACP.
Committee members first met in October, with some laying out their desires for a vast reworking of the federal student loan system.
“Wiping out interest isn’t adequate,” said Yael Shavit, a committee member representing the Massachusetts attorney general's office. “We need to make sure we’re considering broad relief.”
Administration officials had to step in to clarify what was and was not on the table in negotiations.
"We’re not looking at a broad-based debt cancellation where we are going to wipe off debt in its entirety,” Tamy Abernathy, director of the policy coordination group at the Education Department’s Office of Postsecondary Education, said during the second day of meetings. “That doesn’t mean that, in some cases, there wouldn’t be cancellation.”
Nonetheless, the rulemaking process is being watched closely by advocates of transferring student debt.
"President Biden promised broad student debt cancellation, and this is a chance for him to finally deliver on it," the Student Borrower Protection Center wrote in a newsletter. "As [negotiated rulemaking] continues, we trust that those at the table who hold borrowers’ best interests at heart, will continue to expertly stand up for them and shape a final student debt cancellation rule that helps all struggling borrowers."
The convoluted rulemaking process is open to public comment, something McCluskey took advantage of by speaking ahead of the Nov. 6 committee meeting. His comments focused on the perverse incentive for colleges to raise prices, and the specter of false hope to incoming college students given the administration's fuzzy language around forgiveness.
"The promise of easy forgiveness will incentivize colleges to charge ever-higher sticker prices on the grounds that many students will feel they can accept those prices without having to actually pay them," McCluskey said. "A 2017 survey found that half of students expected at least some of their debt to be forgiven — what is being discussed by this committee could amplify that."
House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) makes a similar complaint — and points to political motivations.
“This is just more of the same garbage being spewed by this administration," Foxx told the Washington Examiner. "It’s a ploy to get votes. And it does nothing to address the underlying issue of rising college costs.”
A final rule will be released early next year, and then will be subject to public comments.
Despite the intensity of the student loans debate, particularly on the Democratic side, data from the College Board show that the average size of federal loans per student peaked in 2010 and has been falling in the years since as the burden of loan debt started to get more attention.
The data indicate that voters and students are becoming more aware of the trade-offs involved with attending college, and especially of going into debt to do so. | US Federal Policies |
The Supreme Court on Tuesday began hearing arguments in two cases challenging President Joe Biden's $400 billion student loan forgiveness program.
As supporters of the program protested outside, Chief Justice Roberts and other conservative members of the court zeroed in on the issue of executive authority and separation of powers, questioning whether Congress needed to sign off on such broad relief.
"Congress shouldn't have been surprised when half a trillion dollars is wiped off the books?" Roberts asked U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing for the Biden administration.
"We take very seriously the idea of separation of powers and that power should be divided to prevent its abuse," Roberts added, making a comparison to the Supreme Court's decision to block former President Donald Trump's unilateral attempt to dismantle the DACA program for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
Prelogar, in turn, argued that the education secretary has the authority to provide relief under the HEROES Act, a 2003 law aimed at ensuring federal student loan borrowers would not be economically devastated during a national emergency, in this case, the COVID pandemic.
"Well, of course, we think Congress did address this expressly here," Prelogar said. "And Congress directed that in the context of a national emergency -- that is the limitation of the HEROES Act -- so the secretary can't invoke this whenever he wants, there has to be that predicate: war or military operation or national emergency."
Critics of the Biden administration's plan to cancel federal student loan debt for more than 40 million Americans say it's expensive, unfair and an abuse of executive power.
"You can't just go to the court and say I don't like this, or I think this might be a problem," said David Nahmias, a staff attorney with the Berkeley Center for Consumer Law and Economic Justice. "In order to sue, you have to show that you are going to be threatened with a certain impending injury."
The states have alleged a future financial injury from lost revenue on student-loan discharges; fewer loans on the books, they say, would mean fewer taxes to collect.
The state of Missouri argues that it would be uniquely harmed by the impact of large-scale debt cancellation on Missouri's Higher Education Loan Authority, or MOHELA, which is the nation's largest loan servicer.
Nebraska Solicitor James Campbell, arguing on behalf of the states, said Tuesday that the plan would cut MOHELA's operating revenue significantly.
The Biden administration says the states' claims are highly speculative and indirect, undermining their legal standing to bring the case in the first place.
"MOHELA isn't here," said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. "It has the ability to sue and be sued; it has been set up as a separate entity. Usually we don't allow one person to step into another's shoes and say, 'I think this person suffered harm' even if that harm is very great."
Justice Amy Coney Barrett also pressed Campbell on MOEHLA's absence, asking, "Do you want to address why MOHELA's not here?"
Campbell responded that MOHELA "MOHELA isn't here because the state is asserting its interests. MOHELA doesn't need to be here because the state has the authority to speak for them."
"If MOHELA is really an arm of the state ... why didn't you just strong-arm MOHELA and say, 'You have to pursue this suit?'" Barrett asked.
"The basic threshold issue is, is Missouri, is Nebraska – are these states injured today?" said South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman.
Lower courts and legal scholars from across the ideological spectrum have divided on the question of injury, setting the stage for the justices to have the final say on whether the Biden debt relief plan inflicts clear harm on state governments.
"The answer is tricky because in recent years the states have been given latitude," said Blackman. "This might be a case of the court scaling back on that broad authority, although I'm not sure."
The U.S. Education Department last year, citing a need to protect borrowers from excessive economic hardship during the pandemic, invoked emergency powers to waive repayment terms for some federal student loans. The agency offered to absolve as much as $20,000 of federal debt for more than 40 million eligible borrowers.
The move drew an immediate legal challenge from Republican attorneys general in six states -- Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina -- who saw it as a costly bailout to college students at the expense of other American taxpayers.
"Joe Biden had no legal authority whatsoever. I think the larger issue is it's unfair to people who paid off their loans. It's unfair to people who didn't take out loans," Sen. Eric Schmitt, Missouri's Republican former attorney general who first brought the case, told ABC News in an interview.
"It's adding to our debt," Schmitt added. "I think the reason why this case is before the Supreme Court and why Missouri and the other states are ultimately going to win is because Missouri has a loan servicing organization called MOHELA that derives revenue from interest."
MOHELA, a state-created company which manages more than 5 million federal student loan accounts totaling $148 billion, is at the heart of Missouri's case and what the federal appeals court singled out as a lynchpin in their decision.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals based in St. Louis, which put the Biden debt relief plan on hold last year, cited "threatened financial harm" to Missouri explicitly because of its ties to MOHELA.
MOHELA has contributed $6 million to state student aid programs in the current fiscal year, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development told ABC.
State law also requires MOHELA to pay $350 million to help fund improvements to state colleges and universities.
"The court has identified it as a public entity that administers student loans. It provides college assistance programs for people across the state of Missouri and so the state has an interest in it," MIssouri's new attorney general Andrew Bailey told ABC in an interview.
But liberal and conservative legal scholars say financial fallout from a MOHELA-Missouri link is too weak and speculative to justify the states' Supreme Court case.
"The relationship between Missouri and MOHELA, as our research has shown, in the law that created MOHELA, is such that harm just cannot, cannot happen," said Nahmias, who filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of Missouri consumer advocates.
"MOHELA is completely separate and distinct from the state of Missouri. Its operations are distinct from Missouri. Its treasury and finances are completely walled off from the Missouri treasury," he said.
MOHELA, which did not respond to our repeated requests for comment or an interview, is notably not challenging the Biden loan forgiveness plan.
Missouri Rep. Cori Bush says the company is being used as a pawn and that allegations fewer MOHELA-serviced loans would financially harm her state is exaggerated.
"The money that [MOHELA is] supposed to be paying to the state – again, they owe over, what, about $105 million – they have not kept that up," Bush said in an interview. "So to say that you have borrowers who need to pay what they owe. Well, MOHELA does not pay what they owe."
MOHELA financial records reviewed by ABC News confirm the loan servicer has not made a payment to the state fund for higher education capital improvements since 2008 and may not make any future payments – even if the Biden debt relief plan is struck down.
"The states have shown no link between debt cancellation and the effect of debt cancellation on MOHELA's effect to even pay into the fund, even if they wanted to," said Nahmias.
Asked about MOHELA's lack of contributions, Attorney General Bailey said it's "an issue that the [Supreme] Court is going to have to sort out."
"The Fifth Circuit [U.S. Court of Appeals] sided with us on this issue, and so we're optimistic about our chances at the U.S. Supreme Court," he said.
Some top conservative legal scholars, however, have warned the justices in court filings that – while they don't like the debt cancellation plan – allowing Missouri to challenge it could set a dangerous precedent.
"If these states are granted standing here, it could lead to far broader ability of the states to haul the federal government into court," Blackman said.
It's a high-stakes decision that many say will turn on whether the justices believe debt relief for millions of Americans hurts MOHELA, which in turn hurts Missouri.
"The court may very well say, look, no money's been paid out [by MOHELA] in a very long time. This is too speculative of an injury," Blackman said. "Or, the court could say the chance that even $1 might be paid at some point in the future might be enough" to establish harm.
Meantime, many of nearly half a million Missourians with federal student loans who applied for relief under the Biden plan are watching the case with anticipation.
"I spend a lot of time worrying about how I'm going to pay that money back," said Anna Bain, a sophomore journalism major at the University of Missouri-Columbia, holding $12,000 in student debt.
"The soaring costs of higher education these days is so insane and so unacceptable for so many people," Bain said. "I think that everyone has a right to say how their taxes are being spent. But I feel like taxes are for the greater good and this is for the greater good." | SCOTUS |
DHS-funded nonprofit censoring election info also provides cybersecurity to election offices
The Center for Internet Security filed 16% of tickets to Election Integrity Partnership analysts during the 2020 election "to flag incidents or emerging narratives to be assessed" and ask for action from Big Tech, according to the partnership's after-action report.
The Facts Inside Our Reporter’s Notebook
Documents
Links
- Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center
- major role in censoring social media content during the 2020 election
- CIS filed 16% of tickets
- CIS forwarded an email
- Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center
- CrowdStrike was mentioned
- CrowdStrike announced
- CrowdStrike's webpage
- Cybersecurity Toolkit and Resources to Protect Elections
- Global Cyber Alliance's Election Toolkit
- CIS' IRS Form 990
- press release from CIS
The Center for Internet Security (CIS), which has participated in censorship of purported election "misinformation," has provided ambiguous "cybersecurity services" free of charge to various elections offices in counties across the U.S. in collaboration with other left-wing nonprofits, the Department of Homeland Security, and the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
CIS participated in censorship during both the 2020 and 2022 elections through its Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center (EI-ISAC). EI-ISAC "works closely with election officials and security and technology personnel to provide the highest standards of election security, including incident response and remediation through our team of cyber experts," the CIS website reads.
"Our 24x7x365 Security Operations Center (SOC) monitors, analyzes, and responds to cyber incidents targeting election offices and government entities," the explanation continues. "We develop and share best practices for securing election infrastructure, incorporating security into election technology procurements, and helping manage election supply chain risks."
According to an election after-action report by the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a private consortium that played a major role in censoring social media content during the 2020 election, EI-ISAC was a key node in its reporting chain. "EI-ISAC served as a singular conduit for election officials to report false or misleading information to platforms," according to the EIP report. "By serving as a one-stop reporting interface, the EI-ISAC allowed election officials to focus on detecting and countering election misinformation while CIS and its partners reported content to the proper social media platforms."
CIS filed 16% of tickets to Election Integrity Partnership analysts during the 2020 election "to flag incidents or emerging narratives to be assessed" and ask for action from Big Tech, according to the partnership's after-action report. Most of those CIS tickets, according to the report, "originated from election officials." Several of the CIS tickets involved Arizona's "Sharpiegate," with those posts being "possibly labeled or demonetized," according to an October 2022 EIP statement.
In 2022, CIS forwarded an email to Twitter from then-Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs' office regarding a Twitter account that was flagged for review over two tweets. "Both Tweets have been removed from the service," Twitter replied in an email copied to the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
CIS provides "cybersecurity services" and "Endpoint Detection & Response services" (EDR) to county election offices. The cybersecurity services are "Combined Netflow and intrusion detection system monitoring and analysis of related data, and delivery and management of associated devices, hardware and software necessary for delivery of [cybersecurity services]. Also referred to as Albert monitoring services."
EDR services include: "1. Deployment and maintenance of an EDR software agent on [the county's] identified endpoint devices, which will (a) block malicious activity at a device level if agreed to by the [county]; (b) remotely isolate compromised systems after coordination with the [county]; (c) identify threats on premise, in the cloud, or on remote systems; (d) inspect network traffic in a decrypted state on the endpoint for the limited purpose of identifying malicious activity; and (e) identify and remediate malware infections.
"2. Centralized management of EDR data to allow system administration, event analysis and reporting by CIS [Security Operation Center]. Additionally, [the county] will be able to interact with its own EDR data through the management system."
In memorandums of agreement, Lancaster County, Neb., and Hoke County, N.C., agreed to accept the EDR services from the nonprofit, while the Texas counties of Denton and Dallas accepted the cybersecurity services. The signing dates for the agreements range from 2018 to 2020.
CIS provided these services through its Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) and EI-ISAC.
MS-ISAC is "a trusted cybersecurity partner for 13,000+ U.S. State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) government organizations," according to the CIS website. The center "offer[s] members incident response and remediation support through our team of security experts and develop[s] tactical, strategic, and operational intelligence, and advisories that offer actionable information for improving cyber maturity."
The memorandums of agreement all mention that the counties must inform "its employees, contractors and other authorized internal network users" that they "have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding communications or data transiting, stored on or traveling to or from [county's] information system; and [a]ny communications or data transiting, stored on or traveling to or from the [county's] information system may be monitored, disclosed or used for any lawful government purpose."
The memos for the counties accepting cybersecurity services say that "CIS will be responsible for the correct functioning of managed devices," and "shall be responsible for the purchase of certain hardware, and shall arrange for the shipping of such hardware to a location designated by [the county]."
The memos for the counties accepting EDR services say that CIS will purchase "a commercial EDR capability provided by a third party provider" and "be responsible for the deployment, management and monitoring of the EDR Services to [county's] identified endpoint devices."
None of the memos explain what these services are specifically for as they relate to the counties' elections.
In the memorandums of agreement for Lancaster and Hoke counties, the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike is mentioned as a third party provider licensed by CIS.
CrowdStrike was mentioned by then-President Donald Trump on the July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that was central to the first impeachment, RealClearInvestigations reported. The company was also hired by the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to investigate the hacking of its servers, which was an issue related to the Trump-Russia probe.
CrowdStrike provided the FBI with images of the servers but not direct access to the servers. The company's president, Shawn Henry, initially claimed that Russia had exfiltrated data from the DNC, then later admitted in congressional testimony, "We do not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated."
In November 2021, CrowdStrike announced that it was partnering with CIS on providing services to state and county governments, specifically for MS-ISAC. It had previously worked with CIS on EI-ISAC.
CrowdStrike's webpage on election security links to an outdated webpage for the CISA "Cybersecurity Toolkit and Resources to Protect Elections," CIS' webpage on EI-ISAC, and the Global Cyber Alliance's Election Toolkit.
Global Cyber Alliance has the same address as CIS. The advisory group for Global Cyber Alliance includes employees from CISA and liberal groups such as the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Tech and Civic Life, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Facebook, and the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
CIS' IRS Form 990 from 2020 also mentions a program by the Democracy Fund, a significant bankroller of left-wing groups and causes, which "provides security focused tools and guidance for election officials and election technology providers."
Phill Kline, director of election integrity watchdog The Amistad Project, told Just the News on Sunday, "The problem with all of this is lack of transparency," adding that there's a "concern about who to rely on for information."
Deputy Director of the Election Integrity Network Ned Jones, told Just the News on Friday that his question about the CIS involvement with county elections is, "Why would the government contract with a nonprofit like CIS when we have CISA that could do the same thing?"
The counties didn't respond to requests for comment. CrowdStrike has yet to provide a comment regarding the memos of agreement with the counties of Lancaster and Hoke, but the company provided a link to a press release from CIS about its expanded partnership with the cybersecurity company.
On Tuesday, CIS referred Just the News to its website pages for the MS-ISAC, EI-ISAC and Endpoint Security Services (ESS) and said to check with states and counties for agreements and with CISA for the nonprofit's relationship with the federal agency.
A CISA spokesperson told Just the News on Wednesday, "Pursuant to direction from Congress, the Department has a cooperative agreement with the Center for Internet Security to provide cybersecurity services to state, local, tribal and territorial governments."
MS-ISAC and EI-ISAC "provide no-cost services to secure U.S. election infrastructure," according to CISA's cybersecurity toolkit. "MS-ISAC is the trusted resource for cyber threat prevention, protection, response, and recovery for U.S. State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial government entities, and the EI-ISAC supports the rapidly changing cybersecurity needs of U.S. elections offices."
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- House GOP picks first fight over bureaucratic stonewalling in Hunter Biden probe
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- 'Oops! ... I did it again!' Establishment media forced into major recent retractions | US Federal Policies |
- A former U.S. Army sergeant was arrested in San Francisco for attempting to share classified military information with China.
- Joseph Daniel Schmidt has been charged with two federal felonies, the Department of Justice said.
- He is accused of initiating efforts to provide Chinese intelligence with U.S. defense information after separating from the military in January 2020, according to DOJ.
Joseph Daniel Schmidt, 29, was taken into custody at a San Francisco airport after he arrived there from China, the DOJ said.
Schmidt allegedly initiated efforts to provide Chinese intelligence with U.S. defense information after separating from the military in January 2020, the department said.
He left the U.S. for Hong Kong in March 2020, and stayed there until this week, to continue those efforts, according to the DOJ.
Schmidt faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted of the two felony counts he faces in an indictment in Seattle federal court: attempt to deliver national defense information, and retention of such information.
He was scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in San Francisco later. He will be brought to Seattle for further court, according to the DOJ.
Schmidt's last duty post was at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.
He was part of the 109th Military Intelligence Battalion, where he had access to information classified "Secret" and "Top Secret," the DOJ said.
After leaving his service, Schmidt retained a device to allow access to secure military networks and offered it to Chinese authorities, according to the department.
He also is accused of reaching out to both the Chinese Consulate in Turkey and the Chinese security services via email to offer the information.
"Individuals entrusted with national defense information have a continuing duty to protect that information beyond their government service and certainly beyond our borders," said Matthew Olsen, assistant Attorney General for National Security, in a statement.
Tessa Gorman, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, said Schmidt broke his military oath "to defend our country and the Constitution," Gorman said.
"In that context, the alleged actions of this former military member are shocking – not only attempting to provide national defense information but also information that would assist a foreign adversary to gain access to Department of Defense secure computer networks," the prosecutor said. | US Political Corruption |
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, is forcing a vote on a resolution of disapproval of the Biden administration’s "public charge" rule regarding immigrants and welfare — a resolution that the White House announced that President Biden would veto.
Marshall will take to the Senate floor on Wednesday afternoon to make a motion to proceed, triggering a vote on his resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act — which allows lawmakers to object to rules being put forward by the administration. The resolution had been filed by lawmakers in both chambers of Congress earlier this year.
The resolution would nullify the Department of Homeland Security’s rule, introduced last year, that would codify guidance put in place during the Clinton administration and would depart significantly from a now-reversed Trump-era rule issued in 2019 that significantly expanded the forms of welfare that would consider an immigrant as a "public charge."
The "public charge" has been a long-standing concept in immigration law and refers to someone deemed likely to rely on government assistance — it is a condition for denying someone immigration status.
The Biden rule would mean that green card applicants would only be considered a public charge "if they are likely at any time to become primarily dependent on the government" for help. Officials would still consider reliance on Supplemental Security Income (SSI), cash assistance under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and state, tribal and local cash assistance for income maintenance.
However, the 2019 Trump-era rule had attempted to also make officials consider benefits including food stamps, housing vouchers and Medicaid benefits. That rule considered anyone a public charge if they received one or more designated benefits for more than 12 months within a 36-month period.
The rule would not affect illegal immigrants, and applies primarily to immigrants who have arrived in the U.S. legally and are on some form of temporary visa and are applying for permanent residency in the U.S. Public charge assessments are not made of asylum seekers, refugees and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients.
However, the rule also comes as political discussion about immigration has focused primarily on the massive illegal immigration crisis at the southern border — and as the Biden administration is massively expanding legal migration pathways as part of its effort to tackle the crisis.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Marshall noted that ongoing border crisis, which he saw in person in Brownsville, Texas last week, and cited statistics that approximately 6 million people — double the population of his state of Kansas — have crossed illegally under the Biden administration.
"Through this Administration’s public charge rule, Joe Biden signaled to those looking to become citizens of our country that they can ‘have it all’ in the U.S., lowering the standards for American citizenship while offering generous federal benefits paid for by the American taxpayers," he said in a statement.
"Striking down Joe Biden’s public charge rule sends a clear message to this Administration and migrants — potential new citizens need to be exceptional. They cannot come to our front door expecting a handout," he said.
The Biden administration has pushed back against criticism of the rule, saying it ensures fair and humane treatment of legal immigrants. In a statement of administration policy on Wednesday, the White House said that President Biden would veto the resolution if it passed.
"[The rule] is an important step towards undoing the damage that resulted from the chilling effect of the 2019 public charge rule and provides a clear, comprehensive, and fair standard for assessing whether a noncitizen is likely to become a public charge," the statement said. "If Congress were to pass this joint resolution, the President would veto it."
Fox News' Sally Persons contributed to this report. | US Federal Policies |
A Florida man who raised thousands of dollars on a GoFundMe page following the death of his husband was arrested after police said he violently killed his spouse and then staged a fake crime scene.
Herbert Swilley, 55, was taken into custody Friday, months after his husband, Timothy Smith, was found dead in their Ocala apartment on March 25, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said.
An investigation found that at the time of his death, Smith had 30 times more than the "normal therapeutic dose" of diphenhydramine, an ingredient found in Benadryl.
He also had blunt force trauma to his face and genitalia and a dark ligature mark on his neck, the sheriff's office said in a Facebook post on Friday, sharing a video of Swilley being escorted to the jail.
Swilley was charged with first-degree premeditated murder and tampering with evidence. His attorney could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Deputies were called to the couple's apartment on the morning of March 25 to conduct a welfare check after Smith, 59, failed to show up for work the day before, the sheriff's office said in a news release. His body was found inside the residence, according to authorities, who said he had "suffered a violent attack."
Investigators spent the next several months combing through video surveillance and speaking with people who knew the couple. Initially, Swilley cooperated with the investigation and gave detectives a statement.
It was later determined that his statement was "false, self-serving, or contradicted by other evidence," the sheriff's office said. Swilley stopped cooperating and his attorney told detectives that he would speak with them again if he was given immunity from prosecution in Smith's murder.
Authorities also learned that Smith was an alleged victim of domestic abuse from Swilley.
On Aug. 8, Swilley was named a suspect in the case and his daughter, Jordan Swilley, was named a person of interest. That same day, Swilley posted a Facebook tribute wishing his late husband a happy anniversary.
"I know you are up there looking down on us and taking care of us. You will always be in my heart and thoughts," the post read. "To be honest, I miss you every day and wish you were here. Life isn’t the same without you. I miss your smile and your loving spirit."
He also set up a GoFundMe and raised more than $2,200 in donations for a "celebration of life," according to NBC affiliate WFLA of Tampa. A GoFundMe spokesperson said the page has been removed and all donors were refunded.
The sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking information on whether Swilley’s daughter is still considered a person of interest in the case. She declined to comment when reached by phone on Tuesday.
As the investigation continued, authorities learned that on the night of March 23 or early in the morning on March 24, Smith was given "a large amount" of diphenhydramine "that was 30 times higher than the normal therapeutic dose," the sheriff's office said Friday.
Diphenhydramine is an antihistamine that is commonly used to treat cold and allergy symptoms and is found in Benadryl, Unisom, and over-the-counter medications including Tylenol PM, according to the National Institute of Health.
After Smith was dosed, authorities allege Swilley choked his husband to death "with an unknown ligature," fracturing his cervical spine. Swilley then used his vehicle to move the body from their home to a nearby apartment they had.
Swilley allegedly "staged a fake crime scene" inside the apartment, the sheriff's office said. He's also accused of trying to destroy evidence with household cleaning products.
Swilley drove back to their home and swapped cars, driving his husband's vehicle to the apartment, according to authorities. He then walked back to their home where he allegedly deleted footage from their Ring camera.
A few hours after the murder, Swilley drove to a landfill and discarded two carpets "before going about his day," authorities said.
The sheriff's office said that shortly before being killed, Smith had found a new job in another county and was planning on moving there without Swilley. Investigators also learned that Swilley was listed as Smith's beneficiary on his life insurance policies, which totaled $333,000.
Swilley remains jailed and is scheduled to appear in court next month. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, plans to file a motion Wednesday to elect Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., as the permanent temporary House speaker, empowering him to handle crucial business while lawmakers try to pick a new leader.
What You Need To Know
- Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, plans to file a motion Wednesday to elect Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., as the permanent temporary House speaker
- A source familiar with the plan told Spectrum News that Joyce will likely file the motion if Jordan falls short again in a second vote Wednesday
- Twenty House Republicans rejected Jordanâs nomination Tuesday
- Rep. Greg Murphy told The Hill that McHenry has conveyed to him that he does not want to become the Houseâs permanent leader
"After two weeks without a Speaker of the House and no clear candidate with 217 votes in the Republican conference, it is time to look at other viable options,â Joyce said in a statement to Spectrum News. âBy empowering Patrick McHenry as Speaker Pro Tempore we can take care of our ally Israel until a new Speaker is elected.â
The plan was first reported by Punchbowl News.
A source familiar with the plan told Spectrum News that Joyce will likely file the motion if Jordan falls short again in a second vote Wednesday.
Twenty House Republicans rejected Jordanâs nomination Tuesday. If all members vote and Democrats remain united behind Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., as they were Tuesday, Jordan, a founding member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, cannot afford to lose more than four members of his own party.
McHenry, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, became the speaker pro tempore after Speaker Kevin McCarthy was voted out of his position earlier this month. McCarthy had previously chosen McHenry to lead the chamber in the event the speakerâs seat was left vacant.
Axios reported earlier this week that Democrats are seriously entertaining the idea of voting to expand McHenryâs now-limited powers to pass critical legislation. Congress faces a Nov. 17 deadline to approve a spending package and avoid a government shutdown. The House, which is paralyzed without a speaker, also has been unable to respond to the war between Israel and Hamas.
But a source familiar with McHenry's thinking told Spectrum News that he is not interested in the role and is not involved in the talks. Rather, the source said, McHenry is focused on getting Jordan elected speaker.
Fellow North Carolina Rep. Greg Murphy told Spectrum News on Tuesday that he "has spoken with Patrick several times about this" and gauged his interest in the role. McHenry's reply, Murphy recounted, was "'Do you hate me that much?'"
Murphy separately told The Hill that McHenry has conveyed to him that he does not want to become the Houseâs permanent leader.
A moderate Republican, Joyce is a member of the House Appropriations Committee and a key leader in negotiating government funding. He voted for Jordan on Wednesday but not until the very end.
When asked about it on Wednesday, Jordan, for his part, shot down the idea of empowering McHenry, arguing that he received a significant amount of GOP support in Tuesday's vote and will keep trying to win the speaker's gavel.
"The choice is we elect a Republican speaker, get back to work for the American people, or some kind of coalition government, conference," Jordan told reporters. "I think the American people prefer that the party who has the majority elect the speaker, we got 90% of the vote."
Besides, he noted, "Patrick has said he doesnât want the job."
Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur told Spectrum News that she has an "open mind" about her fellow Ohio lawmaker's proposal.
âI have an open mind and hold great respect for David Joyce as a human being and man of the law," she said. "The clear evidence of extremism and sedition remain dangerous threats to our Republic. The House must act in the national interest. Rule by an extremist minority is unAmerican."
Joyce is not the first House Republican to make such a proposal. On Monday night, Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania announced he introduced a resolution to hold a vote to expand McHenryâs powers until Nov. 17 or until a new speaker is elected, whichever comes first.
New York Rep. Nick LaLolta on Wednesday separately told CNN that it's time to move ahead with an empowered temporary speaker. | US Congress |
You’ve probably heard that California senator Dianne Feinstein, eighty-nine, has been too ill to show up to the Senate yet hasn’t resigned. As a result of her absence, the Senate on Thursday voted to overturn a critical Biden administration effort to control truck emissions. Feinstein has been in the hospital with shingles, has missed 75 percent of the Senate votes this session, and has not indicated when (if ever) she plans to return.
Shingles aside, there are serious questions about whether she is up for this job, cognitively and physically. The vote on truck emissions was fifty to forty-nine, with Joe Manchin, coal baron and ally of the death-drive faction of US politics, joining the Republicans, who said the Biden regulations were too “burdensome” on the trucking industry.
People will die because of this vote — a disgraceful yet fitting finale to Feinstein’s career, which has been spent faithfully serving capital.
With the Democrats’ Senate majority so thin and some of the conservative Democrats at constant risk of voting with Republicans, it’s a disaster having a Senator who can’t or won’t show up. Allowing the trucking rule to die is bad enough, but Feinstein’s absence is also hindering the Senate from confirming Biden’s judicial nominees (previously a relatively effective dimension of his presidency).
Predictably, Feinstein has her defenders, all accusing the critics of various “isms.” Nancy Pelosi suggested that the calls for Feinstein to step down were sexist. New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand agreed, as did California representative Norma Torres, Michigan senator Debbie Stabenow, and even some Republican women, like Senators Marsha Blackburn and Joni Ernst of Tennessee and Iowa, respectively. Others have cried “ableism” and “ageism,” real problems but not applicable to a situation in which one person not showing up to work has such a devastating impact on the larger society.
Some of these callouts were directed at California representative Ro Khanna, who rightly blamed Feinstein for the horrible truck vote and has been insisting that it’s time for Feinstein to resign since she is “not showing up.” Said Khanna on Fox News Sunday: “Only in Washington would you get criticized for saying something so obvious.” Democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has also called for Feinstein to step down.
Thursday’s trucking vote has dire implications. Biden’s rule would have greatly eased pollution from heavy-duty trucks, especially nitrous oxides, which contribute to acid rain. It also would have reduced carbon emissions, necessary to avoid the worst effects of global warming. As well, asthma from air pollution caused by cars and trucks is a serious public health problem, especially in poor and working-class communities, which are much more likely to be exposed to heavy traffic. Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency estimated that the rule would have, by 2045, saved 2,900 people from early death and prevented eighteen thousand children from developing asthma.
Who benefits from Feinstein’s absence from the Senate? The rich. Of course, corporate interests did not want the trucking rule. The Republicans had their backs, but the Democrats complied by not forcing Feinstein to show up or quit. Capital would also prefer that Biden never got to appoint any judges, since a Republican president would shape the judiciary with an even more reactionary vision.
This whole saga seems like a logical coda for a person who has been loyally serving the plutocracy for half a century. The first woman to be mayor of San Francisco, she came into office in 1978, a distressing time when the city was still reeling from the assassination of its previous mayor, George Moscone, and Supervisor Harvey Milk, by fellow supervisor Dan White. (Feinstein had been president of the city’s board of supervisors.) Her mayoralty was characterized by intensely developer-friendly policies.
Longtime Bay Area journalist Larry Bensky, writing in the Anderson Valley Advertiser in 1994, described her time as mayor this way:
Her contributions were led by a wealthy father, an even wealthier husband and a constellation of powerful business leaders who — correctly — assumed she would be a safe vote for their interests. . . . she was an unabashed cheerleader for the easy-money game of downtown office construction. 30 million soulless square feet were added during her administration.
Bensky contrasted Feinstein’s attentiveness to the real estate titans with her neglect of the city’s working class.
As Senator, she continued this pattern of serving the rich at the expense of the rest. Feinstein opposed single-payer health care, even as it became a mainstream political priority during Bernie Sanders’s last two presidential campaigns. She has been a hawk on deficits and on defense. She was rightly criticized for praising — and (yuck) hugging — Lindsey Graham during the disgraceful Amy Coney Barrett hearings, in which California representative Katie Porter, NARAL, and other liberals pointed out that Barrett was in no way forced to explain or elaborate on her deeply reactionary antiabortion and anti-worker politics.
Feinstein was often criticized for pursuing policies that could benefit her investor husband, Richard Blum, a billionaire who died last year. The private-equity tycoon had major holdings in firms that have benefitted from hundreds of millions of defense contracting dollars; some on both the Left and Right have been vulgar enough to point out that Feinstein was, during that time, a fan of robust defense spending.
In sum, the criticisms of Dianne Feinstein are not sexist or ageist. Rather, they are long overdue. Not only is she not showing up for work — this billionaire has been serving the billionaire class for far too long. It’s past time for her to retire. | US Congress |
Trump Lawyer Warned Him Keeping Classified Documents Was a Crime: Report
Jennifer Little told Jack Smith's investigators she'd explicitly warned Trump about his legal liability and he 'absolutely' understood the stakes of not complying, according to ABC News
A lawyer who works for Donald Trump informed the former president last fall, just days after the Justice Department issued a subpoena, that failing to return classified materials to the U.S. government was a crime, according to an ABC News report published Wednesday.
The Trump lawyer, Jennifer Little, told Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigators she had explicitly warned Trump about his legal liability and that he "absolutely" understood the stakes of not complying, sources familiar with the matter told the television network.
Trump hired Little in March 2021 soon after he left the White House as Georgia authorities began their probe into the 2020 election. ABC reported that the former Georgia state prosecutor soon started working for Trump on the classified documents case, and issued the warning at Mar-a-Lago alongside lawyer Evan Corcoran.
Little's testimony is potentially one piece of evidence that led Smith to charge Trump with knowingly violating classified documents laws, ABC reported.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the 40 counts he faces in the federal criminal case, which is currently scheduled to go to trial in Fort Pierce, Fla., in May 2024. Little is currently a member of Trump's legal defense team in Georgia, where the former president is fighting 13 state felony counts connected to the 2020 election.
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- Kenneth Chesebro asked a judge to bar evidence obtained in a search of his email account from the Georgia election case against him and former President President Donald Trump.
- Chesebro, a pro-Trump lawyer, argued that the search warrant used to obtain emails from his MSN account ahead of his criminal indictment "is defective."
- Chesebro and Sidney Powell, another pro-Trump attorney who is charged in the case, are set to head trial next month in their cases, which were severed from those of their 17 co-defendants.
Lawyers for a co-defendant of former President Donald Trump in their Georgia criminal election interference case asked a judge Thursday to bar the use of evidence obtained in a search of his email account.
Attorneys for Kenneth Chesebro, a pro-Trump lawyer, argued that the search warrant used to obtain emails from his MSN email account ahead of his indictment "is defective" and the search and seizure of the emails was "illegal."
In their Fulton County Superior Court filing, Chesebro's attorneys said Georgia rules only allow the use of search warrants where there is probable cause to believe that the evidence sought would otherwise be deleted.
But there was "no such concern" in this case, they argued, "because months earlier Microsoft had archived all the e-mails in Fulton County Superior Court."
Chesebro's lawyers also argued that they were not "contacted to schedule a hearing for review of the obtained documents in order to minimize review of documents falling outside the scope of the warrant," and to make sure prosecutors would not see emails protected by attorney-client privilege.
Those two factors are "fatal to the search warrant," they argued.
In a separate filing Wednesday, Chesebro's attorneys said that five memos he wrote in late 2020 and early 2021 on behalf of the Trump campaign should be suppressed as evidence because they are "privileged communications between lawyers representing a client."
Four of those memos are "specifically relied on in the indictment," they noted, and the fifth "has been widely discussed in the press."
A spokesman for Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting Chesebro, Trump, and 17 others in the Georgia election case, declined to comment on the filings.
Chesebro is charged with seven counts in connection with efforts to advance slates of alternate electors who would vote for Trump in several swing states where the Republican incumbent lost to President Joe Biden, among them Georgia.
The charges against Chesebro include violating Georgia's racketeering act, as well as conspiracy to impersonate a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery, and conspiracy to commit false statements and documents.
He and the rest of the defendants have pleaded not guilty to the indictment accusing them of conspiring to illegally overturn Biden's electoral victory in Georgia's 2020 election because they "refused to accept that Trump lost."
Chesebro and Sidney Powell, another pro-Trump attorney who is charged in the case, were granted speedy trials. They will stand trial together starting Oct. 23. | US Political Corruption |
A day after Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that Donald Trump's eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, will testify in the civil trial centered on puffed-up financials within her family's business empire, Truth Social is yet again the sounding board for her father's grievances.
Ignoring continued warnings from judges to mind his manners on social media, and to refrain from making targeted attacks — lest he be hit with more fines, or even jail time — Trump railed against Engoron in a message rattled off on Saturday morning, calling him "grossly incompetent" and "a partisan political hack who totally disregards the Court of Appeals decisions against him."
"The New York State legal system has broken down completely, and everybody who is watching this Witch Hunt so agrees," the former president continues. "Hopefully, that will soon change. This CRAZED Judge ruled against me before the Trial even started, and said Mar-a-Lago is worth only $18,000,000. Other properties, likewise. This is a Biden Election Interference Scam! There were No Crimes & No Victims, and there is NO JURY ALLOWED. This Radical Trump Hater Must Be Taken Off This Case!" | US Political Corruption |
The Maine gunman's Army Reserve unit asked police to check on him weeks before he went on aat a bar and a bowling alley, according to an Army spokesperson. Robert Card and injured 13 others before he was Friday night of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.
In September, the gunman's unit asked the Sagadahoc County Sheriff's Office in southern Maine to perform a "health and welfare check" on the, Lt. Col. Ruth Castro, an Army spokesperson, said in a statement to CBS News.
The request was made "out of an abundance of caution after the unit became concerned for his safety," Castro said. She didn't provide additional details, citing an ongoing Army investigation.
Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry told the Associated Press a deputy couldn't find the gunman in September at his home in Bowdoin, prompting the sheriff to send an alert asking authorities throughout the state to look out for him, according to the news service. The gunman had made threats against his military base and other soldiers, according to the AP.
CBS News has reached out to the sheriff's office multiple times for comment.
The gunman was a sergeant first class in the 3rd Battalion, 304th Infantry Regiment based in Saco, Maine, according to the Army. He worked as a petroleum supply specialist and had no combat deployments.
In July, leaders of the gunman's unit said he was "behaving erratically" while training at the U.S. Military Academy in New York and asked for law enforcement to be contacted "out of concern for his safety," a spokesperson for the New York Army National Guard told CBS News. A U.S. official said he didn't participate in any training because almost within the first day, he started acting erratically.
The New York State Police took the gunman to an Army hospital at West Point for a medical evaluation, according to the National Guard spokesperson. The state police declined to comment on the incident, citing an active investigation.
According to a Maine law enforcement bulletin seen by CBS News duringfor the gunman, he had recently reported "mental health issues," including "hearing voices and threats to shoot up" a military base.
-Evan Coan contributed reporting.
for more features. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Andrew Lester, the man charged with first-degree assault in the shooting of teenager Ralph Yarl, appeared in a Kansas City, Missouri, courtroom on Thursday afternoon.
A judge on Thursday set preliminary hearing dates for Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, 2023 in Lester's case, according to ABC affiliate in Kansas City, KMBC.
The hearing came one day after a Clay County judge agreed to partially seal the case in response to a protective order filed by Lester’s attorney, Steven Salmon.
The judge ruled the discovery in the case will be available to prosecutors and the defense, but will not be shared with the public, writing in the ruling obtained by ABC News, that the “wide-ranging publicity” of the case in the national media has cast Lester “in a negative light” and has continued to “erode [his] ability [to] empanel a fair and impartial venire in his future jury trial.”
A spokesperson for Clay County prosecuting attorney Zachary Thompson told ABC News that the office is “dedicated to following the law and accepts the ruling of the Court.”
“We can assure the public that our office will continue to be as transparent as legally permitted throughout this process. Our focus remains squarely on achieving justice in this case,” the spokesperson said.
Yarl's family criticized the decision to partially seal the case in a virtual press conference on Thursday, and his father, Paul Yarl, also attended Lester's hearing.
"It's been tough," Paul Yarl said while speaking to reporters outside the courtroom about his son's recovery after suffering a traumatic brain injury from the shooting.
Yarl's family said that he has been experiencing migraines after suffering a traumatic brain injury that has restricted his ability to participate in activities he loves like playing music.
"Yes, [Ralph is] recovering, but it's still a long way to recovery," he added. "He still gets headaches and some pain and emotional scars. But he's coming along and he's not there yet. But we are thankful for the progress."
Andrew Lester, an 84-year-old white man, was charged with one count of felony assault in the first-degree and one count of armed criminal action, also a felony, in the April 13 shooting of Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager who mistakenly went to the wrong address to pick up his siblings.
Lester pleaded not guilty and was released on April 18 on a $200,000 bond.
In arguing for the protective order, Salmon said in court that Lester’s home has been defaced and he has relocated three times since the incident, according to ABC affiliate in Kansas City, KMBC. He added that Lester is in poor health and has lost 40 pounds.
Yarl's aunt Faith Spoonmore criticized the judge’s decision to partially seal the case.
“Who are we protecting by granting this ruling, who are we trying to victimize in this case? People are too focused on Andrew Lester's age when they should be focused on Ralph Yarl and his age,” Spoonmore told ABC News in a phone interview on Wednesday. “He was only 16 years old when this happened. What type of message does this send to the people who think this behavior is ok? It's just sad that the justice system is protecting them and not the victim."
Salmon also argued that Lester has been harassed and has received death threats because of the attention the case has gotten across the country and the speculation the shooting was due to a racial motive.
“Such conjecture of a racial motive in the reporting of this case negatively affects Defendant's fundamental right to a fair trial on the merits,” the judge stated in the ruling.
ABC News has reached out to Salmon for further comment.
Yarl was 16 at the time of the shooting, but celebrated his 17th birthday last month. He has not spoken publicly about the incident, but his family continues to call for justice.
He attended a walk/run event in Kansas City, Missouri, on Monday to help raise money for traumatic brain injuries.
Ahead of the event, Spoonmore told ABC News in an interview last Friday that Yarl, who was shot in the neighborhood where he lived, is not ready to go back home and has been living with her and her family.
“He is not comfortable going back to that area,” she said. “He is not comfortable going back to his house, his home … which is so unfortunate because he had a lot of great memories in that home.”
“He's not doing the things that he loves to do and it's like he's a shell,” she added. And that's the problem, is that there is something that is missing within him.” | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Not too long ago former Vice President Mike Pence was calling the possibility of a second federal indictment against Donald Trump “extremely divisive,” claiming it would send “a terrible message” and warning that the Department of Justice should only move forward with it if the case met a “high threshold.” Now that the DOJ has officially charged Trump for attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Pence— who Trump famously tried to convince to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory— appears to have shifted his tone. “Today's indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,” Pence, who testified before the Washington, D.C. grand jury in April, said on Twitter after the indictment was revealed. Pence, who is now running for president, went on to say Trump “is entitled to the presumption of innocence, but with this indictment, his candidacy means more talk about January 6th and more distractions.”
The response from the rest of the Republican primary field was more of a mixed bag. Sticking to their script from Trump’s earlier indictments, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis avoided an outright defense of the former president— and GOP presidential primary rival— and instead decried the “weaponization of Biden’s DOJ” and “weaponization of government,” respectively. Scott cited “two different tracks of justice. One for political opponents and another for the son of the current president.” DeSantis wrote that he hadn’t yet read the indictment, but called for “reforms so that Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, DC to their home districts” in order to avoid “a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality.” Continuing a pattern of circumspect reactions to Trump’s legal woes, neither Scott nor DeSantis mentioned the former president’s name in their statements.
The most blistering defense of Trump from a primary competitor came from biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy, who reiterated his commitment to pardon Trump if elected. “Donald Trump isn’t the cause of what happened on Jan 6,” Ramaswamy, who currently sits in third place in primary polling, said. “The real cause was systematic & pervasive censorship of citizens in the year leading up to it.” On Twitter Wednesday morning, Mediaite editor in chief Aidan McLaughlin noted that in his 2022 book, Ramaswamy had described January 6 as “a dark day for democracy” when “the loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, [and] raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters.”
The Republican primary’s openly anti-Trump candidates offered predictably harsh words on Tuesday. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie called the attempt to overturn the 2020 election “a stain on our country’s history & a disgrace to the people who participated,” and said the “disgrace falls the most on Donald Trump.” Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, inverting the rhetoric of Scott and DeSantis, wrote that Trump “has weaponized the American Justice system” and called on him to end his presidential bid. And former Texas congressman Will Hurd suggested that Trump’s 2024 campaign is “driven by an attempt to stay out of prison and scam his supporters into footing his legal bills.” (Immediately following the indictment, the Trump campaign began offering "I Stand with Trump" t-shirts in exchange for $47 donations to Trump’s Save America Joint Action Committee.) Christie, Hutchinson, and Hurd sit at a combined 3.6% in the polls.
Trump, despite everything, has continued to dominate in the polls among Republican voters— even among voters who believe he’s committed serious federal crimes. The party, too, has continued to coalesce around him, with some of his staunchest defenders sitting in Congress.
In a tweet, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy described the indictment as “DOJ’s attempt to distract” from news related to Hunter Biden and “attack the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, President Trump.” McCarthy, who in the immediate aftermath of January 6 said Trump “bears responsibility” for the “attack on Congress by mob rioters," pledged that House Republicans “will continue to uncover the truth about Biden Inc. and the two-tiered system of justice.” The House Judiciary Committee Twitter account (of “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” fame) tweeted, simply, “Election interference,” while the committee’s chair, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, wrote that “President Trump did nothing wrong” and attributed the indictment to “The Swamp.”
Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, wrote that the indictment will “forever go down in history as a total disgrace to the United States of America.” The congressman reiterated legislation he introduced on July 19 that would cut funding to special counsel Jack Smith, who filed the indictment. Fellow MAGA congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said she would use the Holman Rule, which allows lawmakers to amend appropriations bills to cut the salaries of specific federal employees to $1, to defund Smith’s office. “President Trump is innocent and we must end the witch hunts!” she wrote. | US Political Corruption |
A 15-year-old girl became a sexual violence victim when a man exposed himself during her Friday-morning jog.
The same happened to a pair of women in their late sixties at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday.
Bruised and scratched after escaping a suspected rapist, a 40-year-old woman filed a police report and checked into the hospital just before noon one Wednesday last September.
The women — all of whom were using the McAlpine Creek Greenway network — were just four of the 12 million who visit Charlotte’s greenway trails in a year, according to W. Lee Jones, Mecklenburg County Parks and Recreation Director.
The ratio is small, he said during a Monday morning news conference at the park, but even one assault is too many.
The reported greenway incidents happened between September 2022 and August 2023.
On Thursday, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers arrested Khalil Boler, 28, in the September 2022 assault, officials said.
While Boler is not a suspect in the other two cases, Peitrus said, DNA testing — like the familial DNA searching used in his case — could lead to answers he said.
“Those attacks were random,” he said. “They were very brazen.”
Boler is charged with attempted second-degree rape, second-degree kidnapping,interfering with emergency communication, assault on a female and sexual battery, jail records show. He was jailed with a $116,500 bond Friday but by Monday it was $300,000, according to the detention center website.
While the assault immediately prompted more police patrols near McAlpine Creek — which sits between Independence Boulevard and Margaret Wallace Road — officials are now reminding the public to take their own safety precautions when using the nearly 70 miles of trails that run through Charlotte.
Safety on Charlotte greenways
CMPD Lt. Kevin Pietrus grew up biking, walking and kicking a ball in the fields surrounding McApline Creek. He knows the layout well around the park’s central pond and remembers which parking lots were once soccer fields.
Pietrus encouraged people to take advantage of the city’s nature — especially with fall’s pending colors and cooler weather. But it’s better, and safer, to create those memories with someone, he said.
“Please don’t go out alone,” he repeated twice at the park Monday.
If that’s not possible, it’s important take a phone and share your location and expected return time — which should be before dark — with a trusted person.
Pietrus asked people to call 911 if they see suspicious activity in any county park.
The county is “being very specific and intentional” with its plan to address crime on the greenways, Jones said. It will add trail markers to help people understand their surroundings and is determining crime hotspots with CMPD’s help, he said.
Anyone with information in the greenway attacks can call the Crime Stoppers anonymous tips line at 704-334-1600. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Republicans worry key McCarthy spending promise is unraveling amid Speaker’s fight
Some House Republicans are concerned a key spending promise made by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) could be on the skids as a thorny GOP battle to elect his successor drags into its third week.
Republican fears are swirling that Congress could be on the path to jamming through another trillion-dollar omnibus spending package in the months ahead amid stalled progress in both chambers to pass all 12 annual government funding bills.
“I think we are and that’s awful. All an omnibus does is puts a lump sum of money, that the taxpayers have no idea where it’s going,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told The Hill this week, calling the idea “not right for anybody.”
When Republicans reclaimed the House majority, they criticized the passage of a $1.7 trillion omnibus as bad governance and excessive spending.
“One thing you gotta know on principle too: we’re not taking up an omnibus,” McCarthy said earlier this year. “It’s not going to happen. We gotta get back to doing the work that the American people expect us to do.”
But as the party works to unify behind a new leader in wake of McCarthy’s ouster, some worry the prospects of another omnibus bill are rising.
“It’s certainly on the horizon. Whether or not we get there, we’ll see,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) said on Thursday.
House Republicans had hoped to move their dozen annual spending bills separately through the chamber over the summer to begin laying out their starting points for eventual talks with the Democratic-led Senate.
The House has so far only passed four of their bills, and the party’s strategy for the remaining funding legislation remains up in the air as the Speakership fight continues.
“We can’t do anything until we get a Speaker,” Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), who heads the subcommittee that oversees spending for the Department of Justice (DOJ), told The Hill when asked about next steps.
Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), chair of the subcommittee that crafts the full-year funding bill for the Departments of Labor (DOL) and Health and Human Services (HHS), echoed a similar sentiment, suggesting there “could be informal talks between staff.”
“But until you know what the bills are going to look like, there’s limited what you could talk about,” he said this week.
The pair’s subcommittees are also the only two that haven’t seen their bills reported out of the larger House Appropriations Committee, as negotiators indicate further cuts could be made to those bills.
Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.), who serves on the committee and is a member of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus, said this week that he and other panel members “are continuing to press” for an overall topline spending level of $1.471 trillion for the funding legislation. The figure is in line with a spending limit that Republicans sought in an economic bill that passed earlier this year.
“And a lot of its success will be determined in a large part depending on who’s going to be the Speaker and how we move forward from there, but we don’t have much time,” Cline said of the push on Wednesday.
The race for Speaker has already eaten up a chunk of floor time this month, and with the conference’s recent vote rejecting House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) bid for Speaker on Friday afternoon, uncertainty clouds the party’s next steps.
“I think this struggle for Speaker, this is about whether you’re voting for an omnibus or 12 separate bills,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said Thursday.
Massie thought electing Jordan as Speaker would have eased GOP concerns about an omnibus given his plan for averting a shutdown, now set to begin if Congress fails to pass a new funding measure by Nov. 17.
The plan, as explained by Massie, would have kept the government funded at levels set in the previous omnibus through a medium-term stopgap that would run past April. At that point, a 1 percent cut to nondefense and defense programs could kick in if Congress still hasn’t approved its 12 appropriations bills under the Fiscal Responsibility Act signed into law by President Biden earlier this year. That bill also raised the debt ceiling.
The plan, as explained by Massie, would have kept the government funded at levels set in the previous omnibus until January. At that point, a 1 percent cut to nondefense and defense programs would kick in if Congress didn’t finish its funding work.
“That gives you enough runway to get all 12 bills out without a gun to our head and then to give [the] Senate plenty of time to respond to those 12 bills,” Massie said then.
That idea was met with concern from defense hawks in both chambers shortly after, however.
“No way. That destroys our military,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters Tuesday, calling the idea “horrible.”
While the Senate has reported all 12 of its annual funding bills out of committee with overwhelming bipartisan support, the upper chamber still has yet to clear any of the legislation on the floor.
Some had been hopeful the Senate would ramp up consideration of its first batch of funding bills this week, but negotiators say the package, also known as a “minibus,” hit a roadblock amid negotiations on amendments.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said Wednesday that the package – which covers funding for the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Food and Drug Administration – was supposed to be one of the “easier” ones to pass.
“Obviously, we tried to pick packages that had greater likelihood, more bipartisanship,” she said. But she added the holdup was not “a good indication of moving anything forward.”
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Congress |
Maryanne Trump Barry, a former judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit who was also the older sister of former president Donald Trump, has died.
Barry’s death at the age of 86 was reported by multiple outlets, indicating that she was found at her Manhattan home on Monday.
The former judge, who was first named to the US District Court for the District of New Jersey by then-president Ronald Reagan in 1983, was a graduate of Hofstra University Law School and a former federal prosecutor who rose to several senior roles in the US Attorney’s office for New Jersey when Reagan tapped her for a judgeship, reportedly at the behest of Roy Cohn, the late GOP fixer (and attorney to Donald Trump).
After 16 years on the bench as a trial court judge, Barry was elevated to the Third Circuit by then-president Bill Clinton in 1999.
Barry was widely respected and well-known in the legal community, and her reputation as a judge stood in stark contrast with the ultraconservative views her brother espoused as president. But during his 2016 campaign for the White House, he mused that she would be a “phenomenal” pick for the Supreme Court were he to be elected.
In a subsequent interview, Mr Trump walked back the suggestion and dismissed it as a joke, though he conceded that Barry was, in his estimation, “brilliant”.
Barry assumed a semi-retired senior status in 2011 and retired from the bench in 2017, shortly after her brother was sworn in as the nation’s 45th chief executive.
Her formal retirement ended a probe into whether a fraudulent tax scheme carried out by her and her siblings violated the US judicial code of conduct.
In 2020, her views on her brother’s presidency were laid bare in a series of audio recordings released by her niece, Mary Trump, during public appearances to promote her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.
In the surreptitiously-made audio tapes, Barry savaged her brother as having no concerns as president but to please his political base.
“He has no principles. None. His goddamned tweeting and lying... oh my God. I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit,” she said.
She also told her niece that Mr Trump had paid someone to take college entrance examinations for him and criticised her brother’s “phoniness” and “cruelty”.
“You can’t trust him” she added. | US Circuit and Appeals Courts |
Samuel Corum/Getty Images
© 2023 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved.
The latest New York Times poll surveying battleground states was so bad for President Joe Biden that David Axelrod is openly questioning whether Biden should drop out of the race.
What does the poll show?
Biden, according to the New York Times, is trailing former President Donald Trump in "five of the six most important battleground states one year before the 2024 election."
Those states include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Biden only holds a narrow two-point lead in Wisconsin, the poll found. The results are even more significant because Biden won all six of those states in 2020, which means he needs them to win re-election.
In sum: The poll discovered that a majority of voters believe Biden's policies have "personally hurt them," according to the Times, and found that "the multiracial and multigenerational coalition that elected Biden is fraying."
More from the Times:
Voters under 30 favor Mr. Biden by only a single percentage point, his lead among Hispanic voters is down to single digits and his advantage in urban areas is half of Mr. Trump’s edge in rural regions. And while women still favored Mr. Biden, men preferred Mr. Trump by twice as large a margin, reversing the gender advantage that had fueled so many Democratic gains in recent years.
Black voters — long a bulwark for Democrats and for Mr. Biden — are now registering 22 percent support in these states for Mr. Trump, a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times.
What was the reaction?
Axelrod, a famed Democratic strategist who led Barack Obama's winning presidential campaigns, said the poll will send "legitimate concern" through the Democratic Party about whether Biden is the right candidate for 2024.
The million-dollar question for Biden, according to Axelrod, is whether running for re-election is wise and for whose interests it is best.
"The stakes of miscalculation here are too dramatic to ignore," Axelrod reacted. "Only @JoeBiden can make this decision. If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party.
"What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it's in HIS best interest or the country's?" Axelrod asked.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, took her concerns a step farther, admitting she is concerned that the Democratic Party's control is in "great trouble."
"I think it is important to recognize that we have a very divided country, as you well know. You have said that polls really don't reflect where people are. I agree with you," Jayapal told MSNBC host Jen Psaki. "But I will tell you, this is the first time that I have felt like the 2024 election is in great trouble for the president and for our democratic control, which is essential to moving forward."
And on CNN, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) admitted, "I was concerned before these polls, and I'm concerned now."
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Chris Enloe is a staff writer for Blaze News
chrisenloe | US Federal Elections |
Donald Trump is now under indictment in four different jurisdictions over three different controversies.
He faces 91 felony charges in New York, Atlanta, Miami and Washington, DC.
He’s charged with covering up hush money to a porn star, making off with classified documents after leaving office and committing a variety of frauds on state and federal governments in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Some of these charges are bogus.
The New York case, which amounts to accusing Trump of lying to his own checkbook, is the weakest of the bunch.
Others are excessive and overzealous.
Many, if not all, are driven by partisan politics and animus towards Trump.
Even the strongest case, about the boxes of classified documents, involves charges similar to things that Hillary Clinton got away with.
If we’re judging the prosecutors and the charges, these things all matter.
But when Republican primary voters are deciding whom they should nominate to run for president against Joe Biden, the only proper response to complaints about the fairness of indicting Trump should be:
So what?
Nominating Trump again would be a disaster for Republicans.
The criminal charges are one of the biggest reasons why. Even if you think that’s unfair, it’s reality.
Criminal defendants make bad candidates.
As the old saying goes, politics ain’t beanbag. People lose elections for unfair reasons all the time.
If you want to win, you don’t just ignore problems you think are unfair.
Trump still has his strengths as a politician: He’s universally famous, he’s funny, he has devoted fans, he can run on memories of a better economy before 2020, and he’s not afraid to be unfair himself.
But even before the criminal charges, he was deeply hated by half the country and disliked by a lot more than half. He already lost to Biden once, and that was before January 6.
Opinion polls continue to show large majorities of Americans want nothing to do with what happened that day.
He’s also 77 years old, which makes it hard for him to make a case against the 80-year-old Biden’s age.
Now, on top of all that, he’s an accused felon and could be a convicted one by Election Day. He’ll be in and out of courtrooms for months, instead of campaigning.
He’s spending, by some accounts, as much as half the money he raises on legal defenses instead of on running campaign ads or getting the vote out.
That will get worse: Trials are really expensive, and Trump has at least five of them coming (if you include the New York attorney general’s civil-fraud suit).
Because Trump’s campaign is spending more than it takes in, he’d need a bailout from the Republican National Committee so his campaign doesn’t go broke.
That’s more donor money wasted, and it will hurt Republicans running for every other office.
The indictments will also keep Trump focused on talking about the 2020 election, which will keep Jan. 6 on everyone’s mind and make it harder to talk about the economy, the border, schools, China or Joe Biden’s woke social policies.
Trump’s legal problems will continue to push the Hunter Biden scandals out of the news and give Joe’s defenders an easy way to say “Trump is worse.”
American voters who aren’t committed Republicans will see all this and turn away from the guy who is always on television defending charges that he’s a criminal.
I know the response: Trump’s defenders will say that if Republicans let these indictments choose their candidate, every future campaign will feature criminal charges aimed at picking the Republican nominee.
That’s not really true — Trump did a lot to make his own messes — but even if it were, it doesn’t change the reality that Trump is damaged goods and a different candidate would have a better chance to win and put a stop to it.
In fact, nominating Trump just to get “retribution” (as he says) for these indictments still means letting the indictments decide the nomination.
And that’s what many Democrats want because they think Trump is easier to beat.
In 2022, Democrats spent more than $53 million boosting Republican candidates who ran on Trump’s claims the 2020 election was stolen.
Most of those candidates won their nominations, as Republican primary voters fell for the trap. Every single one of them lost in November.
Republican voters shouldn’t fall for it again.
Trump’s problems are only going to get worse from here. Republicans don’t need to make those problems their own. | US Federal Elections |
‘Travesty in darkness’: Trump backs drive to televise his D.C. election-subversion trial
Trump, who is facing four criminal prosecutions as well as several civil lawsuits, has been trying in recent weeks to leverage those proceedings to amplify his message to voters.
Donald Trump is endorsing an effort by news organizations to provide live television coverage of his trial on federal charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In a bombastic legal filing submitted late Friday to the judge who’s scheduled that trial to begin in March, Trump’s attorneys argued he’s the victim of political persecution by President Joe Biden’s administration and should be allowed to use the platform of TV to showcase the proceedings’ unfairness.
“The prosecution wishes to continue this travesty in darkness. President Trump calls for sunlight,” defense attorneys John Lauro and Todd Blanche wrote. “Every person in America, and beyond, should have the opportunity to study this case firsthand and watch as, if there is a trial, President Trump exonerates himself of these baseless and politically motivated charges.”
The five-page submission to U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan makes no mention of a federal court rule that has been in place for decades prohibiting broadcasting of criminal court proceedings.
Prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s team cited that rule last week in opposing the effort by an array of news outlets, including POLITICO, to win permission to cover the historic trial of a former — or current — president on criminal charges. Smith’s team also said TV coverage would present risks to the trial, potentially intimidating witnesses and jurors.
An indictment returned in August by a federal grand jury in Washington charges Trump with attempting to defraud the federal government and obstruct Congress by knowingly spreading false claims of election fraud, spurring his supporters to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and deliberately allowing the violence to play out.
Last month, news organizations filed formal motions with Chutkan seeking permission to offer live video and audio coverage of the trial. The news outlets cited the unusual degree of interest in the trial and the challenges the court is likely to face in trying to accommodate spectators in the courthouse.
Democratic lawmakers and news outlets also asked the policymaking body for the federal courts, the Judicial Conference, to grant an exception to the broadcasting ban so that the Trump D.C. trial could be televised. However, at a meeting last month, a committee of that conference said that it lacked authority to grant an exception and that changing the rule would take years.
Trump’s new filing inveighs against Smith’s team and Chutkan, accusing them both of repeatedly violating his rights and intentionally interfering in his bid to win reelection to the White House next year. He’s currently far ahead of his rivals for the GOP nomination, according to opinion polls.
“There is a high risk that proceeding behind closed doors under these circumstances would serve to further undermine confidence in the United States justice system, while continuing to prejudice President Trump’s rights,” Lauro and Blanche wrote.
Trump, who is facing four criminal prosecutions as well as several civil lawsuits, has been trying in recent weeks to leverage those proceedings to amplify his message to voters. The filing Friday night signaled that he hopes to use the Washington trial, scheduled to be the first criminal case against Trump to go to a jury, to re-air false claims that fraud caused his loss in the 2020 presidential race.
Trump’s attorneys said he favors TV coverage of the Washington trial in part because it will allow the public to “hear all the evidence regarding an election that President Trump believes was rigged and stolen.”
Trump’s submission can also be seen as confirming what many have long viewed as a symbiotic relationship between Trump and the mainstream news media, whose ratings and readership is indisputably boosted by coverage of the polarizing former president. While Trump endorsed the attempt by major TV networks, newspapers and online news outlets to carry a live video feed of the trial, his lawyers also took a passing shot at some members of the press, saying that denying such coverage would force members of the public to rely on “biased, secondhand accounts coming from the Biden Administration and its media allies.”
Chutkan has imposed a gag order on Trump and his counsel prohibiting him from using social media or other platforms to mount attacks on the prosecution, court staff and potential witnesses. The former president has denounced the order as an infringement of his First Amendment rights and an intrusion on his ongoing presidential campaign.
Video coverage of the trial could provide Trump and his lawyers with an end-run around that gag order, since it does not limit what they can say in court filings, during hearings or at the trial.
In the prosecution’s filing last week on the TV issue, government lawyers said Trump’s attorneys asked prosecutors to relay that Trump took “no position” on the media requests. Trump’s combative submission Friday night did not explain that discrepancy. | US Federal Elections |
Arizona GOP continues eating its own in defense of Kari Lake and MAGA mania
Opinion: Arizona Republican Party activists continue eating their own with a censure of Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer for daring to sue Kari Lake. Democrats must be delighted.
The Arizona Republican Party continues its ambitious campaign to win back a Senate seat, hold onto its tenuous grip on the state Legislature and maintain control of Maricopa County.
Or not.
Instead, the grassroots activists who form the backbone of the party in this swing state seem far more interested in feasting on a steady diet of their own.
It’s almost easier, at this point, to count the Republican elected officials who haven’t been censured by the far-right Kari Lake loons who have seized control of the once-Grand Old Party.
Republican lawmakers were censured
This spring, they censured the 18 Republican legislators who voted to expel then-Rep. Liz Harris, R-Chandler, from the Arizona House.
In some legislative districts, the precinct committee members even voted to expel two other Republicans who sided with Harris but found that she violated the chamber’s ethical rules.
Harris was one of the Legislature’s most ardent election deniers, ousted in April for her part in a crazy scheme to publicly accuse Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and others of secretly working for a Mexican drug cartel.
Every one of those censured GOP lawmakers is a staunch conservative, Republican voters having long ago purged the Legislature of any lingering moderates.
Suddenly, with their vote to expel Harris, they became swamp rats, one and all.
Grassroots workers in Legislative District 23 even censured their own Rep. Michelle Pena, a Yuma Republican whose unexpected win last year in a heavily Democratic district allowed Republicans to hang onto their oh-so-slim one-vote control of the House.
Now, the foot soldiers of Pena’s own party have declared that she’s unfit to serve.
Then they targeted the county attorney
As, apparently, are the four Republicans on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, all of whom have been widely censured for declining to reappoint Harris after her expulsion.
By summer, Republicans were serving up Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell.
The Maricopa County Republican Committee’s Executive Guidance Committee voted in June to censure Mitchell for daring to seek sanctions against Kari Lake — for trying to hold the failed gubernatorial candidate accountable for using the courts to further a false narrative that the election was stolen.Mitchell is a veteran law-and-order prosecutor, a conservative Republican of the increasingly rare variety who elevate fact over conspiracy theory.
In other words, she’s electable.
In fact, she won handily last year — as did several other traditional Republicans who ran statewide — while Lake and the rest of the Trump-endorsed slate went down to defeat, griping that the fix was in.
Now the party’s brain trust seems intent on ousting Mitchell in next year’s primary, leaving Democrats to salivate over the prospect of seizing control of the third largest public prosecutorial agency in the nation.
But wait, there’s more.
Next up on the plate: Stephen Richer
Now serving: Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer.
On Monday evening, the geniuses over in Legislative District 2 (north Phoenix) censured Richer for daring to become fed up with the death threats against his family after Lake’s constant, coast-to-coast cries that he engaged in criminal activity to sabotage last year’s election. (Without, of course, the evidence to back up her charge.)
As he explained when he sued her in June, “Slinging mud is fair game, but Arizona law and the First Amendment draw a line at defamation.”
On Monday, the Republican activists in LD 2 drew the line on Richer, calling for his ouster.
In one of the many whereases in their censure resolution, they justify Lake’s slander, as if it was mere criticism and not an outright accusation that he’s a criminal.
“The precedent set by Recorder Stephen Richer in filing his frivolous lawsuit is that the speech of private citizens criticizing the acts of government and officials that enabled such actions, either directly or passively, is a blatant assault on the 1st Amendment and creates more distrust from citizens in his ability to oversee elections,” they wrote.
Of course, these fine Republican activists go on to assure us that “Republican Party values condemn all acts and threats of violence.”
Kari Lake's pal orchestrated the censure
Presumably, that would include the Texas creeper who earlier this month was sent to federal prison for calling for the “mass shooting of poll workers” and threatening both Richer and Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Tom Liddy. Liddy, as chief of the civil litigation division, successfully defended the county against Lake’s election challenge.
Twice.
“Someone needs to get these people AND their children,” Frederick Francis Goltz wrote on far-right social media sites. “The children are the most important message to send.”
Another view:Another idiot faces prison for believing Lake
LD 2’s censure of Richer for daring to defend his family is just the latest boon to Democrats, who unlike the Republicans are fully focused on winning in 2024 and would dearly love to face yet another MAGA nominee.
It was masterminded by Merissa Hamilton, who pronounced the censure of Richer a win against “tyranny.”
Apparently, the First Amendment right to speak freely now also guarantees a right to be free from any consequences of your speech.
At least, in the view of Hamilton and her sponsor, Lake.
Let's purify the ranks into irrelevance
Hamilton largely disappeared from public view after she was trounced in her 2020 campaign for Phoenix mayor. But Lake elevated her to executive director of her Save Arizona Fund in May, charging her with getting out the vote in 2024.
These days, Hamilton seems to spend most of her time targeting fellow Republicans — the ones who are insufficiently supportive of Lake.Determined, along with the rest of the MAGA crowd, to purify the party’s ranks.
Even to the point of irrelevance.
Support local journalism: Subscribe to azcentral.com today. | US Political Corruption |
The amount of student loans in default dropped by three percentage points from the third to fourth quarters of 2022, according to new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
To put that into perspective: $34 billion in defaulted loans were marked current at the end of 2022, the Fed reports.
The change wasn't due to a sudden influx of borrowers rehabilitating their loans, but rather the beginning of President Joe Biden's "Fresh Start" initiative. The program, announced last April, aims to give struggling borrowers a sort of "do-over" to better manage their loans.
While the initiative won't necessarily change the balances or payments on previously defaulted loans, it will allow those borrowers a chance to seek relief that could have helped them stay out of default in the first place.
Here's how the Fresh Start program works and how borrowers can take advantage.
When you enroll in the Fresh Start program, your loans become "current" again, giving you access to student loan forgiveness and repayment programs. Record of the default will be removed from your credit report, and the Fresh Start doesn't count as a rehabilitation, which means if you default on your loans again, you'll still have the ability to rehabilitate them.
Student loan borrowers often default on their loans because they can't afford their monthly payments. But the Biden administration has highlighted that many borrowers could have avoided default by lowering those to as little as $0 through income-driven repayment plans. With the Fresh Start, they get another chance to do so.
When it announced the initiative last spring, the administration said 7.5 million borrowers stood to benefit, many of whom were Pell Grant recipients or first-generation college students.
The Fresh Start isn't automatic, though. Borrowers can visit myeddebt.ed.gov or call 1-800-621-3115 to see if their loans qualify and enroll in the program. Most borrowers will be required to make long-term payment arrangements, according to a Department of Education fact sheet.
Federal student loans generally go into default when a borrower misses payments for over 270 days. ED outlines a number of serious consequences of defaulting on your loans, including the entire balance of your debt becoming due immediately, the default reported to credit bureaus which can greatly damage your credit score, and the possibility of having your wages garnished.
Though the pandemic payment pause halted wage garnishments, along with some of these other actions, the pause is slated to end on or around June 30. Borrowers who have loans in default have until one year after the end of the payment pause to enroll in the Fresh Start program and avoid these outcomes.
Prior to Fresh Start, if you defaulted on your student loans you could either pay the balance in full or get out of default through rehabilitation or consolidation. Both options allow borrowers to become eligible for benefits such as deferment, forbearance or loan repayment programs.
Rehabilitation takes longer than consolidation, according to ED, but removes the default from your credit history. Borrowers are only allowed to rehabilitate their loans once, unless they did so during the pandemic payment pause.
You can consolidate your loans into a single Direct Consolidation Loan to get out of default faster, but the default will stay on your credit history. On the upside, consolidating through ED is free and can simplify your repayment by giving you a single loan servicer, monthly payment and interest rate.
However, any unpaid interest on your previous loans gets added to the principal balance of your newly consolidated loan. Your interest rate will be a weighted average of the rates on the previous loans.
Get CNBC's free Warren Buffett Guide to Investing, which distills the billionaire's No. 1 best piece of advice for regular investors, do's and don'ts, and three key investing principles into a clear and simple guidebook. | US Federal Policies |
The leader of the Arizona Republican Party is telling members of the party’s executive committee that it may not be legally or logistically possible to hold a meeting this week to consider canceling the state-run presidential primary election.
And with a 5 p.m. Friday deadline to opt out, that may quash any hopes by the Maricopa County Republican Committee to instead have the party run its own vote.
The email from party Chair Jeff DeWit obtained by Capitol Media Services on Thursday also contains a series of questions purportedly sent by some of the executive committee members on the proposal made by leaders of the Maricopa County GOP.
In the lengthy memo, DeWit said he was attempting to call a meeting of the executive committee to hear a presentation from county GOP Chair Craig Berland and Vice Chair Shelby Busch on how the party could run the election.
But the issues in the memo appear to give him cover to dodge the demand from the Maricopa County Republicans that he opt out of the state-run election.
The questions from committee members specifically ask how to pay for a party-run Presidential Preference Election and why the proposal was presented at the last minute without a full plan.
But the problems that were identified go deeper — and have legal implications.
These include disenfranchising Arizona Republicans serving in the military out of the country, people who normally would be able to cast ballots by mail, something the Maricopa plan would not allow. Federal law may require them to have that option.
And then there are the federal requirements for not just accessible voting devices but also polling places that meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Those issues may not apply if the party runs its own election, according to Alexander Kolodin, a Republican lawmaker who also is an election law attorney. He said he does not believe the law expressly requires political parties who run caucuses or their own elections to provide avenues for military or the disabled to participate.
“Political parties are actually private organizations,” he said. “They’re this weird creature in that they have some political status. But they’re fundamentally private.”
That said, Kolodin said the party should allow those people to vote.
“I think from a moral point of view we want to provide a way for people who are disabled or in the military and serving overseas to vote, regardless of whether the law requires it or not,” he said.
All this comes as the state party faces that 5 p.m. Friday deadline to inform Secretary of State Adrian Fontes if it intends to pull out of the state-run election set for March 19, 2024.
But the email sent by DeWit late Wednesday said he was awaiting a legal opinion from the party’s lawyers on whether and how it could address “the unprecedented move” proposed by the county party.
Even if the lawyers give DeWit a thumbs-up, he said there’s a bigger problem.
“As of now we cannot guarantee anywhere close to quorum before the deadline,” DeWit wrote.
State party bylaws say that at least a third of the 83 executive committee members must be present in-person or by proxy, and 8 of 15 county parties represented for business to be conducted.
The executive committee includes DeWit and the other elected state party officials, three members each from the nine congressional districts and three leaders of each county party plus some other party activists. Getting them to Phoenix on short notice is a problem.
DeWit wrote that some of those members may be afraid to attend the meeting.
“Disturbingly, several of our members have been doxed and are receiving threats, and some now feel afraid to show up to the meeting and vote on the resolution,” he wrote.
Doxing is the practice of publicly posting someone’s personal identifying information, like their home address and phone numbers, on the internet.
Berland said he “couldn’t help but chuckle over the doxing claim.”
“I’ve received emails calling me a freaking moron and that I should be dead,” he said. “And you know, you just delete it. Move on.”
The county party proposal seeks to remedy what some Republicans believe are major election security issues, although those questions have always been aimed at the general election and not primaries.
The resolution passed by the county contains a grab-bag of disproven allegations about election security issues with early voting and machine tallying and a host of others, all rejected repeatedly by courts in legal challenges by failed GOP governor’s candidate Kari Lake following the 2022 election.
Berland said he did not believe DeWit’s letter “brings the discussion any further forward.”
“But I’m not going to comment on the disparaging stuff,” he said. “That makes no sense to me.”
He also said he does not know how a legal review could help DeWit.
“Whether to have a meeting or not is in the bylaws, you certainly don’t need counsel to read the bylaws,” Berland said. “Whether or not he has legal right to do it, one of the things that we did before we even discussed or put the words to the resolution was contact what we believe were the preeminent election lawyers in Arizona, and we got an enthusiastic thumbs up from them.”
As to the question of waiting until the last minute, Berland said earlier this week that county party officials were preoccupied with reviewing and writing responses to the draft Elections Procedures Manual — the rules under which elections are run — through most of August and addressed the presidential primary issue as soon as they were able.
“It wasn’t that we dragged our feet,” he said.
It was not until last Saturday, though, that the county committee voted during an emergency meeting to demand that the state party pull out of the state-run election to choose the party’s nominee for president and instead run its own, with voting “on paper ballots, in a one-day, one-vote election, hand-counted at the precinct level.”
The county party proposal would bar all early voting, including mail voting used by 90% of the state’s voters. It would also be costly — exactly how much is in doubt — but the Legislature gave the secretary of state $5.9 million to help pay county costs to run next year’s election.
DeWit has estimated it will cost at least $10 million, with the higher cost due to the fact that the Maricopa plan seeks to require precinct-level voting, versus the vote centers used by many counties.
The state party has less than $200,000 in the bank right now, and DeWit noted that Maricopa County didn’t offer up cash with its proposal.
Arizona Democrats face the same Friday deadline and have not said if they plan to participate in the presidential preference election.
They could opt to cancel the election and have their delegates to the national party’s convention commit to President Joe Biden; Republicans did the same in 2020 when Donald Trump was seeking reelection.
- | US Federal Elections |
Despite having several years to learn about their quarry, most of the media never really figured out how to cover Donald Trump. Some journalists got better at it, sure: It became obvious that you couldn’t breeze past a follow-up question or forgo a fact-check; by the end of his presidency many reporters had learned to tap reserves of discipline they’d never previously plumbed. And Trump’s superhuman ability to short-circuit the news cycle had lessened—though only to a degree.
Somehow, the press pulled a silver lining out of the January 6 insurrection, in that it ended with Donald Trump going away, in numerous ways. Chief among them was the way the aftermath resulted in his most powerful tool, his Twitter account, slipping from his hands. Trump was, in many ways, in exile. Literally, he ensconced himself at Mar-a-Lago, where he Colonel Kurtzed himself among sycophants and boxes of purloined documents; metaphorically, he was increasingly at a distance from the news. And it helped that he didn’t have much in the way of new material: He has continued to utter the same bombastic lies. For most of the last two years, he has largely been ignored.
That is all starting to change, and quickly. There’s one arena that Trump never really departed from—he remained the most powerful figure in Republican Party politics even during his quasi-exile. This has helped him to finally reenter our orbit as a presidential aspirant with a commanding lead in the GOP presidential primary. None of his rivals, at this stage of the contest, seem to have any chance of defeating him. Indeed, most of them seem to be sticking around hoping that he will simply pull out of the race, leaving them the beneficiary of either some future health concern or his present role as a defendant in numerous trials.
We have seen some improvement on the slop mess the media made of his 2016 campaign: There is little of the endless, breathless coverage of Trump’s every move that defined that race, in both the primary and the general election. There are no hours-long shots of empty lecterns, no fawning coverage of his supposed “populism.” Even the reliable chatting-with-Trump-voters-at-the-diner stories have all but disappeared.
Nevertheless, it is not clear at all that the press has an understanding of how to cover Trump as what he truly is: a singular threat to American democracy. Somehow this is a fact that either evades reporters or remains something they refuse to accept. But it’s a critical thing to grasp: Even though much of the coverage of Trump can be considered “negative,” this is the missing piece that might make that coverage vital.
And while the press has shed itself of some of its worst habits, new ones have emerged. Most notably among these is the tendency to “both-sides” Trump’s many scandals—his numerous felonies, calling for the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff to be executed, a plan to destroy the federal government as we know it—as the equalizing counterpoint to a faux impeachment push from House Republicans. President Biden is only three years older than Trump, and yet his age is treated as a grave national security concern, whereas Trump’s—along with his general temperament—is largely ignored or explained away.
It’s still early in the 2024 race. Much can and will change. But on Wednesday, October 11, I’ll be sitting down with three journalists—Tara McGowan, Don Lemon, and Jay Rosen—to discuss how the press is covering Trump and how it should be covering Trump. We so hope to see you there or on the livestream. | US Campaigns & Elections |
Feehery: Conflicts that will drive US politics this decade
Here are the top nine conflicts that will drive American politics for the rest of this decade and possibly beyond.
Globalization vs. nationalism / The election of Donald Trump ushered in the collapse of the Cold War consensus, the idea shared by Republicans and Democrats that global American hegemony in the face of the Soviet Union and Communist China was a good investment of our resources and well worth the fight. Trump’s MAGA philosophy, that America should look out for America first, now dominates the Republican Party and its implications, from how we support Ukraine to trade policy to global tax treaties.
Environment vs. the economy / The fear of a rapidly changing climate is the No. 1 issue among upscale Democratic donors. For Republicans and most independent voters, the economy continues to be among the top issues, along with immigration and crime.
Independent voter vs. the base voter/ Both political parties have gotten into the habit of tailoring their campaigns to boost their respective party bases, but they have done so at the expense of voters who swing both ways. Trump can’t win independent voters, but by dragging his opponents into the political mud, he could inspire a strong third-party candidate or get voters so disgusted with their choices that they simply don’t turn out to vote (which happened in 2016).
Women vs. men / It is hard to say exactly how the gender gap played in 2020. Trump did better with white women and worse with white men than commonly assumed. In 2022, abortion politics played a significant role in some states, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, and not in others, like Georgia, Florida and Iowa. Republicans can’t win without winning white married women by a significant margin.
China vs. the United States / Both Republicans and Democrats appear to agree that it is good politics to be wary of China. But what impact will that low-boil conflict have on domestic politics? Will banning TikTok be popular with the 150 million Americans addicted to it? How about taking steps to limit companies like Shein, which sells low-cost clothing to American consumers? And what if the Biden administration does blunder us into a war over Taiwan?
The establishment vs. anti-establishment / The Democrats are now the establishment party, and while the establishment does have more than a few fellow travelers among Republican Party elite, the typical down-scale conservative voter is decidedly anti-establishment. This has had tremendous ramifications when it comes to vaccine mandates, the continuing conflict in Ukraine and the debt limit.
Young vs. old / According to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, younger voters aren’t nearly as patriotic, aren’t nearly as religious, are much more independent and are much more fixated on money than older voters. In the meantime, the biggest issue that faces older voters is the coming fiscal collapse for Social Security and Medicare. Right now, secular Democrats seem to have more of a stranglehold on this younger demographic than the more religiously observant Republican Party, but when it comes materialistic prosperity, those voters could change on a dime.
Information vs. disinformation / Who controls the flow of information to the bulk of voters? During the COVID-19 shutdowns, the legacy media, outside of a few shows on the Fox News Network, published information that differed from the preferred narrative of the government. We know that thanks to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. How will this play out in the next election? Will most voters still get their information from their local broadcasters or will they probe deeper to find alternative views that might conflict with the established narrative?
Activists vs. everyday people / Activists on the left and the right, from antifa to the Proud Boys, engage in fights that have little appeal to most voters. But activists do have an influence on political debate, which are manifested every day at local school board meetings, at drag-queen shows and with efforts to defund the police. Right now, it seems like left-wing activism, from the transgender movement to efforts to ban gas stoves, has done more to offend quote-unquote normal voters than anything that has come from the right. That is a good thing for Republicans.
Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Federal Elections |
House Republicans had a chaotic October — ousting Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, fighting bitterly about it for weeks, and then electing Mike Johnson to replace him, seemingly because no know knew him well enough to hate him. The GOP may have unanimously agreed to let a Christian nationalist election denier lead the caucus, but that doesn’t mean the infighting has stopped.
The party is now at odds over Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat whom Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to censure for participating in a Gaza ceasefire protest at the Capitol last month. Greene absurdly called the nonviolent demonstration an “insurrection,” both at the time and in her proposed censure, which 23 Republicans joined Democrats in voting to table. Greene was none too pleased, tweeting a list of her “feckless” colleagues who didn’t support the resolution.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of those colleagues, responded by calling the resolution itself “feckless,” noting that it was “deeply flawed and made legally and factually unverified claims, including the claim of leading an ‘insurrection.'”
Greene then attacked Roy for voting to kick her out of the far-right Freedom Caucus, throwing in digs at “CNN wannabe Ken Buck and vaping groping Lauren Boebert.” She also called Tlaib a “terrorist” and accused Roy of “hating Trump.”
“Tell her to go chase so-called Jewish space lasers if she wants to spend time on that sort of thing,” Roy reportedly responded Thursday morning, referencing how she once said she believed wildfires in California were started deliberately by a laser shot from a satellite owned by the Rothschild family, which has long been featured in antisemitic conspiracy theories.
“Oh shut up Colonel Sanders,” Greene tweeted back.
The dysfunction extends well beyond Greene’s grenade throwing.
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Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) — who has been criminally indicted for a wide away of alleged fraud — on Wednesday night survived an expulsion attempt brought by members of his own party. “Mr. Santos is a stain on this institution and not fit to serve his constituents in the House of Representatives,” Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.), who brought the resolution, said on the floor. Santos, meanwhile, argued that the move was political before posting — and then deleting — a meme of himself wearing a crown with the text: “If you come for me, you best not miss.”
The House GOP is paralyzed by petty feuds and clearly has no interest in actually governing, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to Speaker Johnson on Thursday morning. “I was just in our Republican conference meeting, and there is such a great feeling of esprit de corps amongst House Republicans,” he told the press. “We’re not only unified, we are energized.” | US Congress |
ALBANY — Jason T. Schofield, Rensselaer County's former Republican elections commissioner, pleaded guilty to 12 counts of voter fraud charges in U.S. District Court on Wednesday, admitting he fraudulently filed absentee ballots in 2021 using the personal information of at least eight voters without their permission. After detailing each count, U.S. District Judge Mae D’Agostino, asked Schofield how he pleaded. “Guilty,” the Troy man responded. “Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty and for no other reason?” the judge asked Schofield. “Yes, your honor,” he replied as courtroom observers, including FBI agents, looked on. The guilty plea of Schofield is part of a broader, ongoing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department that led to the earlier guilty plea of now ex-Troy City Council Member Kimberly Ashe-McPherson. The probe is examining the election activities of several top county officials. When the judge asked Neroni if her client had a viable defense, should the case have gone to trial, Neroni indicated to D’Agostino that Schofield was pleading guilty, at least to an extent, against her advice. “This is Mr. Schofield’s decision,” Neroni told D’Agostino. “He wants to go forward. This is his choice.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Barnett, in laying out the factual basis for Schofield’s guilty plea, said that on two occasions, Schofield acted on the request of Ashe-McPherson, who pleaded guilty to a federal charge in June. “If I put a few names in [a state elections] portal, would you be able to give me ballots tomorrow and not mail it?” Schofield asked an employee, whom he supervised, at one point, according to Barnett. The employee said yes, the prosecutor said. Schofield did not have the lawful authority to use the voters’ names and dates of birth in the applications for absentee ballots, Barnett told the judge. After listening to Barnett detail the charges, the judge asked Schofield: “Is that what you did and what occurred in this case?” Schofield said yes. Schofield faces 10 to 16 months behind bars under federal sentencing guidelines. It could be as low as zero to six months depending on the circumstances at the time of his sentencing, which is set for May 12. He agreed to waive an appeal on any sentence of 21 months or less. Sources have told the Times Union that he has agreed to cooperate with federal authorities. Schofield abruptly resigned from his commissioner position on Dec. 28, hours after the Times Union published a story on his decision to plead guilty to the federal charges. The newspaper also reported that he would resign and cooperate with authorities as part of that plea agreement. The change of plea notice was apparently a surprise to members of the Rensselaer County Legislature, who had voted on Dec. 13 to reappoint Schofield to the $89,041 job while his federal criminal case was pending. Schofield was arrested in September outside his residence by the FBI on charges detailed in the indictment. He initially pleaded not guilty but last month agreed to change his plea. The indictment that charged Schofield with unlawful possession and use of a means of identification alleged that Schofield violated the law when Rensselaer County had elections for county executive, county clerk, County Legislature seats, the Troy City Council and mayor of the city of Rensselaer. Schofield was named elections in commissioner in April 2018, the same month he resigned from the city of Troy's Board of Education, where he served for 15 years and was president for seven. | US Federal Elections |
- Political consequences for Democrats. A historic rise in delinquencies.
- Here's what experts predict will happen if the Supreme Court rules against Biden's student loan forgiveness plan and the relief never materializes.
It's possible that the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness plan, leading to a reversal for the millions of Americans who had been expecting the debt cancellation.
President Joe Biden in August announced that he'd forgive at least $10,000, and up to $20,000, for tens of millions of federal student loan borrowers. Within months, however, Republicans and conservative groups had brought at least six legal challenges against his plan.
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The justices have agreed to hear oral arguments over two of those lawsuits at the end of February.
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What if the Supreme Court rules against the president and the promised debt relief never materializes? Here's what experts predict.
U.S. Department of Education Undersecretary James Kvaal said in a recent court filing that if the government isn't allowed to provide debt relief, there could be a "historically large increase in the amount of federal student loan delinquency and defaults as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic."
Despite student loan borrowers being offered forbearances during previous natural disasters, Kvaal wrote, default rates still skyrocketed when payments resumed.
The pandemic-era relief policy pausing federal student loan payments has been in effect since March 2020, and payments aren't scheduled to resume until after the litigation over the president's plan is resolved or at the end of August — whichever comes sooner.
″[T]he one-time student loan debt relief program was intended to avoid" skyrocketing default rates, Kvaal added.
The borrowers most in jeopardy of defaulting are those for whom Biden's student loan forgiveness plan would have wiped out their balance entirely, Kvaal said.
The administration estimated its policy would do so for around 18 million people.
"These student loan borrowers had the reasonable expectation and belief that they would not have to make additional payments on their federal student loans," Kvaal said. "This belief may well stop them from making payments even if the Department is prevented from effectuating debt relief."
Restarting federal student loan payments without delivering forgiveness would lead to "severe" political consequences for Democrats, said Astra Taylor, co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union for debtors.
"[Biden] will be launching his 2024 reelection campaign as America's debt collector," she said.
If the "ultra-conservative U.S. Supreme Court" blocks the president's plan, Taylor said, Biden must explore other legal ways to deliver relief to borrowers.
She pointed to the possibility of the president using a different law to justify his plan, such as the Higher Education Act of 1965, which states that the Education Department can "enforce, pay, compromise, waive, or release any right, title, claim, lien" related to federal student loans.
Currently, the Biden administration is using the Heroes Act of 2003 to argue that it has the authority to cancel student debt.
That law allows the Education Department to make modifications to federal student loan programs during national emergencies. Critics accuse the administration of using the coronavirus pandemic to fulfill a campaign promise and say the relief is not targeted to those who have suffered financially because of Covid.
Another path the president could take would be to try to indefinitely extend the pandemic-era pause on federal student loan payments, said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
That move, Kantrowitz said, is "more likely to survive legal challenge."
The country's $1.7 trillion student loan crisis has hit Black Americans especially hard.
Black student loan borrowers owe $7,400 more, on average, at graduation than their white peers, a Brookings Institution report found.
That inequity only gets worse with time: Black college students owe, on average, more than $52,000 four years after graduation, compared with around $28,000 for the average white graduate.
If Biden's student loan forgiveness fell through, it would be a "disastrous blow to Black Americans," said Wisdom Cole, national director of the youth and college division at the NAACP.
"The racial wealth gap will widen, and the vicious cycle of economic inequality will continue," Cole said. "If our leaders truly believe that Black lives matter, they should understand that failure is not an option." | SCOTUS |
On May 26, 1990,was having breakfast with her son Joe Ahrens when he says a clown approached their front door carrying a basket of flowers and two balloons. Ahrens remembers his mother gleefully answering the door and accepting the apparent gifts, not expecting what she said at that moment — "how pretty" — would be her final words. Within seconds, police say, the clown lifted a gun and shot Warren in the head, ending her life and starting a decadeslong search for answers.
"It took over 30 years to make sense of it all," Joe Ahrens tells "48 Hours" correspondent Peter Van Sant.
The case — from the hours after the shooting to its surprising final twist — is investigated by "48 Hours" and Van Sant in "Murder by Clown" to be broadcast on Saturday, Oct. 28, 2023 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
"Marlene Warren was someone without any known enemies," said Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg. "This was an assassination. This was not a random act of violence."
Immediately after Marlene Warren's shooting, investigators tried to figure out who could possibly want the mother and small business owner dead. They soon focused on her husband, Michael Warren, who was also Ahrens' stepfather. Ahrens says based on what his mother had told him, there was good reason.
"She said, 'if anything does happen to me, your father did it,'" said Ahrens. "I told her "no way. He would never do anything like that.' She said, 'don't put it past him.'"
Investigators learned about a possible motive: Michael Warren appeared to bewith a colleague, Sheila Keen, who repossessed cars at the auto business he ran.
"In the hours after the murder of Marlene Warren, the suspects became clear," Aronberg said. "It was Sheila Keen, and it was Michael Warren, but Michael Warren had an alibi."
Authorities confirmed that Michael Warren was in a car with friends headed to a horse race at the time Marlene was shot, and he was ruled out as the shooter. When investigators spoke to Keen about her whereabouts, she claimed to be searching for cars to repossess, but was unable to verify her exact location. Detectives also learned a woman fitting Keen's general description was spotted buying a clown costume, as well as the balloons and flowers left by the clown, before the murder.
When detectives found a car fitting the description given by Ahrens of the assailant's getaway vehicle, they say they found a brown hair that was visually consistent with Keen's hair. Also found inside the car and in Keen's apartment were orange fibers investigators say matched the description of the wig the clown was wearing.
"Sheila Keen-Warren had the means, the motive and the opportunity to do this," said Aronberg.
Despite the circumstantial case building against her, Aronberg — who did not become the Palm Beach County state attorney until years later in 2012 — says prosecutors at the time did not believe they had enough to charge Keen with Marlene Warren's murder. And as time passed with no new evidence, the case grew cold.
"For many years … I was suffering in, in despair," Ahrens said.
By 2017, there was finally some movement in the case. A cold case unit had retested old evidence and determinedfound in the suspected getaway car. When investigators started looking for Keen, they learned she had started a new life with an old flame—Michael Warren. The couple wed in 2002, 12 years after the murder.
"Here's someone whose wife had been murdered and he just married the chief suspect," said Aronberg. "When you combine the fact that the two of them were in an affair … and then later, they got married, it did seem like mission accomplished."
The Warrens had been running a burger joint called Purple Cow for several years in Kingsport, Tennessee. According to former employees at the restaurant, there were rumors Keen-Warren had shot Michael Warren's former wife and that she had committed the crime dressed as a clown. Detectives spoke to one employee who said Keen-Warren had dressed as a clown at the restaurant one year during Halloween and even provided detectives with a picture of her appearing in clown makeup.
for Marlene Warren's murder on Sept. 26, 2017 — 27 years after the shooting.
"She probably never thought in a million years she'd be held accountable for her crimes," says Aronberg about the arrest. "She thought she got away with it."
Keen-Warren's defense attorney Greg Rosenfeld says not only is she not guilty, but her arrest was the result of the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office's reckless desire to close a notorious cold case.
"We will never know who killed Marlene Warren because the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and the State Attorney's Office did such a poor job investigating this case," said Rosenfeld. "I can tell you without question that it was not Sheila Keen."
It would be more thanand delays before the case would finally come to an unexpected conclusion.
for more features. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
GOP candidates are struggling to beat Trump. Here's some liberal advice that could help.
Wednesday's debate will feature five candidates who, frankly, should be embarrassed they’re not beating the snot out of a twice-impeached, one-term president facing 91 state and felony charges.
The former president and proud criminal defendant will once again not be in attendance, claiming he’s so far ahead in the polls that all debates should be cancelled and he should be crowned MAGA King of all Republicans, or something to that effect.
That leaves a group of at least five candidates who, frankly, should be embarrassed they’re not beating the snot out of a twice-impeached, one-term president facing 91 state and felony charges.
The five who have said they’ve qualified for the debate are: former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and rich-annoying-person Vivek Ramaswamy.
Speaker Mike Johnson says GOP is united.It's good he has a sense of humor.
The Republican primary remains Donald Trump and a pack of wannabes
As a liberal fellow, I can’t imagine these Republicans care much about my advice, but I’m going to give it to them anyway.
Here goes:
Donald Trump
You’re doing great, buddy. I’m loving the scowling courtroom appearances in your Manhattan fraud trial. Those really drive home the “I’m an angry guy in a lot of legal trouble” vibe and remind voters of your administration’s daily chaos and circus-like atmosphere.
Also, your conspiratorial, near-incoherent ramblings on social media and at rallies are going a long way toward making President Joe Biden’s age a non-issue. People are slowly recognizing they can have an 80-year-old Democrat who makes some occasional gaffes and walks a bit slower but generally acts nice enough, or they can have a babbling, foul-mouthed 77-year-old raging Republican narcissist whose omelette seems to have slid off his brunch plate. You keeping doing you, Donny!
Ron DeSantis
Hey. Listen, I don’t want to sound mean or anything, but I think it’s time to send this campaign of yours to an anti-woke farm upstate. You’ve been trying and failing to out-Trump Donald Trump for months, and you just keep tripping on your own weird boots.
This past week, one of your spokespeople shared a picture of DeSantis-branded golf balls on social media and called out people on the Trump campaign, writing: “if you ever decide to man up, you and your boss can buy a pair of balls here.” Dude, c’mon. That’s just an embarrassing way to never become president. And while I’m 100% in favor of you embarrassing yourself until the end of time because I don’t like you and think you’re a mean-spirited bully, I’m taking the high-road and suggesting you cash in your chips and go back to being an obnoxious governor who legislates via right-wing memes. It’s what you’re good at.
Tim Scott
I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
Chris Christie
I respect the New Jersey fight and the swagger, and I’d be mad too if Trump had said all those things about me. But Republican voters are more likely to vote for me than for you, and at this point you’re just making noise and burning money. To quote Bruce Springsteen, “You can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain/Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain.” But you’re still gonna lose.
Nikki Haley
Shine on you crazy diamond! With solid performances in the previous debates and a surge in the polls, you look like the GOP’s only hope for finding a candidate not named Trump, and quite possibly the only Republican candidate with a solid chance of beating Biden. While I disagree with virtually everything you say and stand for, I would honestly be glad to see you come out on top in the primary. The reason? I don’t think Trump can get elected again, but I also cannot say with certainty he won’t get elected again. Biden is absolutely going to be vulnerable, and if that’s the case, I’d rather have someone on the Republican ticket who at least seems marginally sane, given that person could wind up running the country. Again, I don’t like you politically. But I would not fear for our democracy if you became president, and that’s the current near-subterranean bar I have for Republican candidates. If you wouldn’t mind winning the primary and then losing the general election, a grateful nation would thank you.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Just … just go. I mean … you’re really … can we just not? Please. Good lord. | US Federal Elections |
A group of Russian nationals were able to donate to newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson's campaign in 2018 by funneling the money through a U.S. company.
The Texas-based American Ethane company previously donated tens of thousands of dollars to the campaigns of Louisiana Republicans including Johnson, who was voted by the House to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy as Speaker on Wednesday following three weeks of GOP chaos in the lower chamber.
While American Ethane was run in 2018 by American John Houghtaling, 88 percent of the firm was owned by three Russian nationals—Konstantin Nikolaev, Mikhail Yuriev, and Andrey Kunatbaev.
Johnson's previous Russian campaign donations have been brought up as people criticize the Republican following his election to House Speaker, a position which is second in line to the presidency behind the vice president.
Johnson's office has been contacted for comment via email.
One of the men behind the company, Nikolaev, an oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, was also found to have financially backed Maria Butina, a Russian citizen who lived in Washington D.C. Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2019 after admitting to acting as an unregistered foreign agent to infiltrate conservative political groups and influence foreign policy to Russia's benefit before and after the 2016 election.
Johnson's former campaign manager, Jason Hebert, previously told The Advocate that the campaign returned the money given to them by American Ethane in 2018 once it was "made aware of the situation."
Sharing a subpoena issued as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation in 2018, Los Angeles-based attorney Ronald Lebow posted on X (formerly Twitter): "Besides being supportive of the attempted coup, Johnson received money from Russian Oligarchs and was known to Marina Butina, the Russian spy/go between funneling money from Putin to the NRA and Republicans like Johnson."
Fellow X user @Davegreenidge57 wrote: "Putin pal Konstantin Nikolaev, who handled Russian spy Maria Butina, was also the principal stockholder in American Ethane Co. when they donated over $37,000 to Mike Johnson's election campaign. Does anyone else think that might be a problem?"
It is against federal law for a campaign to knowingly accept donations from a foreign-owned corporation, a foreign national, or any company owned or controlled by foreign nationals.
A Federal Election Commission investigation ruled in 2022 that American Ethane made political campaign contributions using funds derived from loans from foreign entities ultimately owned by Russian nationals and that American Ethane had "zero domestic funds available" to make those contributions.
In a scathing letter, two FEC commissioners, Democrats Shana M. Broussard and Ellen L. Weintraub, condemned their Republican colleagues after the agency only fined American Ethane a $9,500 civil penalty for donating to GOP candidates in Louisiana in 2018 despite being almost entirely owned by Russian nationals.
"Though American Ethane did pay a civil penalty, it was a slap on the wrist that failed to account for a violation of one the most fundamental provisions entrusted to this Commission to enforce," wrote Broussard and Weintraub.
"One can only hope that in future cases, the Commission will once again muster the political will to work together to wall off our elections from the malign influence of foreign money."
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy and the courts. He joined Newsweek in February 2018 after spending several years working at the International Business Times U.K., where he predominantly reported on crime, politics and current affairs. Prior to this, he worked as a freelance copywriter after graduating from the University of Sunderland in 2010. Languages: English.
You can get in touch with Ewan by emailing [email protected].
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy ...Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here. | US Political Corruption |
Analysis of cyberstalking research identifies factors associated with perpetration, victimization
The widespread use of digital technologies and the Internet has spurred a new type of personal intrusion, known as cyberstalking. Incidences of cyberstalking have risen, with the U.S. Department of Justice estimating that more than 1.3 million people experience this type of victimization annually. A new study has explored research to identify the factors associated with perpetration and victimization in cyberstalking. The study's findings can inform the development of efforts to prevent and address cyberstalking.
Conducted by a researcher at Sam Houston State University (SHSU), the work appears in the Journal of Criminal Justice.
"In light of both the high prevalence of cyberstalking and the harmful consequences associated with this type of victimization, it is important to understand more fully the factors that contribute to it," says Bitna Kim, professor of criminal justice at SHSU, who conducted the study. Kim is an expert whose work is promoted by the NCJA Crime and Justice Research Alliance.
Although cyberstalking does not involve physical violence like offline stalking, repeated and unwanted electronic communication can induce fear in victims and make them feel unsafe. Perpetrators are often difficult to find because of the anonymity of the Internet.
Kim identified nearly 60 studies on cyberstalking between 2002 and 2022. All the studies assessed repeated, unwanted electronic contacts that caused fear. Most of the research (76%) was conducted in the United States; studies were also done in Australia, Belgium, Spain, Turkey, Canada, Chile, Egypt, England, and Portugal. Participants included adults and adolescents.
Through a three-level meta-analytic approach, Kim assessed the relative validity of predictors associated with cyberstalking perpetration and victimization, including those related to individuals' sociodemographic factors (e.g., age, gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity), background (previous experiences of cybercrime and victimization, as well as offline experiences), risk (e.g., antisocial patterns or attitudes, family risk, attachment issues), and protective domains (e.g., protective traits, guardianship and security). In each domain, she measured subdomains to identify contributing factors. Her ultimate goal: To determine the relation between a potential risk or protective factor and cyberstalking.
The background domain had the largest effect for cyberstalking perpetration and victimization, followed by the risk domain, while sociodemographic and protective domains had no significant effect. The effect of background and risk varied depending on the age of the participants and the country, highlighting the need for studies that identify the unique factors of cyberstalking in adults from various countries. Among the study's additional findings:
- People who engage in cyber-aggressive behaviors may put themselves at risk of being cyberstalked or retaliated against by victims.
- Offending experiences, both online and offline, correlated highly with cyberstalking victimization.
- Personality and psychological traits (e.g., stress, anxiety, depression) correlated strongly with both cyberstalking perpetration and victimization, as did risky relational traits (e.g., cheating behaviors, romantic jealousy, threats).
- Cyberstalking is similar to offline stalking in several ways, including that antisocial patterns (e.g., risky behaviors, alcohol problems, tendency toward physical fighting, likelihood of carrying a weapon) were significantly associated with both cyberstalking perpetration and victimization.
- Cyberstalking differs from offline stalking in a variety of ways, including that personality and psychological traits relate strongly to cyberstalking but have little or no impact on offline stalking, and that victims of cyberstalking rarely know their stalkers.
"Providing a comprehensive picture of factors that increase and decrease the likelihood of cyberstalking perpetration and victimization can help institutions and governments create prevention strategies," explains Kim. "This is critical when allocating limited resources efficiently and targeting prevention strategies to areas with the greatest need."
In designing prevention strategies, Kim suggests that approaches targeting violence in general need to account for the overlap between offending and victimization, as well as the co-occurrence between offline violence and cyberviolence. For example, since the risk of perpetrating and suffering cyberstalking is higher among those who have been victimized online or offline, prevention efforts should consider these background factors.
More information: Bitna Kim, A multilevel meta-analysis of cyberstalking: Domains (and subdomains) of contributing factors, Journal of Criminal Justice (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2023.102084
Provided by Crime and Justice Research Alliance | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Writing code to flip votes 'very easy to do' but 'hard to stop,' programmer warns Arizona Senate
"Don't use machines, because you can never, ever trust them to give you a fair election," Clinton Eugene Curtis said.
The Facts Inside Our Reporter’s Notebook
A computer programmer testified this week to an Arizona Senate committee that voting machines are susceptible to manipulation as the panel seeks to require that voting machine components are made in the U.S. and that the source code for the machines used in the state is available to government officials.
Attorney and computer programmer Clinton Eugene Curtis told the Arizona Senate Election Committee Monday that there are multiple ways voting machines can be hacked to change election results.
Curtis, a Democrat, began his presentation with a video clip of him testifying before Congress following the 2004 presidential election about how he believed that the election in Ohio was hacked.
In the video, Curtis explained that in 2000, at the request of a Florida politician, he created a program that "would flip the votes 51-49 to whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win." He added that elections officials wouldn't be able to detect such a program.
Testifying before the Arizona Senate, Curtis said that flipping votes is "very easy to do" but "hard to stop." The only way to stop it is by not using machines, he explained.
"Don't use machines, because you can never, ever trust them to give you a fair election," Curtis warned. "There are too many ways to hack them. You can hack them at the level that I did when you first build them, you can hack them from the outside, you can hack them with programs that load themselves on the side. It's impossible to secure them.
"You will never beat the programmer. The programmer always owns the universe. And as long as you have machines — I don't care which company — as long as you have machines, they are vulnerable to this."
A losing candidate can win "not because he got more votes, but because twenty-four lines of code can change it, and there's nothing you can do," said Curtis. "You can't catch it. You can't find it. It can be a separate module, and it can erase itself right after it does it. And there's nothing you can do to stop it — nothing. It's impossible."
Following Curtis' presentation, the Arizona Senate Election Committee approved an amendment to Senate Bill 1074 to require that electronic ballot tabulation machines have all parts "manufactured in the United States," according to the text of the amendment.
"The voting machine systems in Arizona contain components that are manufactured and assembled or tested in foreign nations such as China which pose a direct threat to the United States," Senate Majority Leader Sonny Borrelli said Monday.
Borrelli said he considers it "a national security issue ... if we can have foreign actors being involved in the manufacturing or even manipulating the system."
Many microchips, which are used in voting equipment, are made in China and Taiwan.
The U.S. doesn't have the supply chain needed to ensure all voting equipment components are manufactured domestically, Arizona Association of Counties Executive Director Jennifer Marson testified at the hearing.
"All of our tabulation equipment is assembled in the United States already," Marson said, "but to have it all be manufactured here, there currently does not exist a supply chain that can accomplish that.
"Whether you're talking about electronics or plastic or whatever other thing might be part of any of that equipment, that is not all available to get here in the United States, so we're concerned if this bill were to be signed as is, there is no way we would be able to comply."
The amendment passed by the committee also requires source code for the electronic equipment to be "submitted to and maintained on file by the auditor general" and that it be made available upon request to the state legislature, elections officials, and superior courts. Currently, source codes for the equipment are not open source or publicly available for inspection.
Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who chairs the committee, told the "War Room" TV show on Tuesday that the intent behind Senate Bill 1074 is for the state to "not hav[e] machines anymore, and if we were to have machines, they would have to ascribe to the highest DOD-level standards."
The Arizona Senate Election Committee is focusing on state election integrity measures following the 2022 midterm election, in which at least 70 vote centers in Maricopa County — almost a third of the total — had voting machine problems on Election Day.
GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake argues in a lawsuit pending in a state appellate court that the machine problems effectively disenfranchised thousands of disproportionately Republican Election Day voters. | US Federal Elections |
Within the US constitutional system, the power to make laws is vested in Congress. This power includes the power to raise revenue through taxation and other means, to borrow money, and to engage in public spending. The president is then required to execute these fiscal laws as written.
There is a potential problem in this structure, which is that Congress could pass laws directing the president to spend a certain amount of money without passing laws to finance that spending. In this scenario, it is impossible for the president to follow the law. If he executes the spending by unilaterally financing it through tax hikes, bond sales, or similar, then he has usurped financing authority that is vested solely in Congress. If he unilaterally forgoes some or all of the spending mandated by Congress in order to stay within the financial constraints, then he has usurped the spending authority that is vested solely in Congress.
As far as I know, this potential problem has never arisen historically. Before 1917, Congress financed all of the spending it mandated, including by authorizing each and every bond sale. After 1917, Congress made it so that the president was always authorized to sell bonds in order to finance any spending that exceeded other revenue sources. So, in this scenario, bond sales became the residual funding mechanism used to ensure that the following equation was always in balance.
But this permanent authorization to sell bonds to balance this equation has one caveat, which is that it is subject to a debt limit. This means that when the total face value of the bonds outstanding hits a certain dollar amount, currently $31.4 trillion, the president is no longer authorized to sell bonds in order to balance this equation.
But if he can’t use bond sales to balance the equation, then how is he supposed to balance it?
As discussed already, he can’t refuse to do spending that Congress has directed him to do. He also can’t unilaterally raise taxes or sell off public assets like the United States Parcel Service or federal lands. The return on federal assets is not something that you can just dial up through executive fiat as it depends on market conditions. Lastly, the right to engage in seigniorage (i.e. money creation) is something that the Federal Reserve has, but not something the Treasury is generally regarded as having.
So, if you approach this issue conventionally, you are forced to conclude that, when the debt limit is hit, it is literally impossible for the president to follow the law, that Congress has essentially passed a set of laws that direct the president to do X and not-X at the same time.
All of the unconventional approaches to this conundrum work by finding authority for the president to do one of the financing activities that he appears to not be allowed to do. So far, this search for authority has primarily focused on the last two financing streams in the equation above: seigniorage and bond sales.
Although the Treasury is not generally regarded as having the right to engage in seigniorage, 31 USC 5112(k) gives the Treasury the authority to mint platinum coins in any denomination. On its face, this could be read as giving the Treasury unlimited authority to engage in seigniorage provided it is done through the minting of platinum coins. And logically, if such authority exists, and if the president cannot sell more bonds because of the debt limit, then the president must use this kind of seigniorage to finance the spending mandated by Congress. It is the only way for the president to not violate any laws.
Although the debt limit appears to forbid bond sales beyond $31.4 trillion, this dollar amount is arrived at by adding up the “face value” of all of the outstanding bonds. But the face value of bonds can be manipulated by changing the bond’s coupon. For example, the Treasury could issue bonds with a face value of $0 that only paid its holders a set amount of interest each year for a certain number of years. In this scenario, people would still buy the bonds in order to receive the interest, but there would be no principal and thus no face value. As with the seigniorage scenario above, if the Treasury has the authority to issue zero-principal bonds, then the president must legally do so in order to finance the spending mandated by Congress.
Beyond zero-principal bonds, there are two other approaches to engaging in bond sales despite the debt limit. The first is to point to the part of the 14th Amendment that says “the validity of the public debt of the United States . . . shall not be questioned” in order to argue that the debt limit statute is itself unconstitutional. The second is to rehearse the point above that the situation set up by the debt limit makes it literally impossible for the president to not violate the law (whether tax laws, debt laws, or spending laws) and then say that, between these lawbreaking options, violating the debt limit law is the least lawbreaking course of action.
The president could also illegally raise taxes or illegally sell off public assets to balance the equation, though so far nobody has really advocated for those lawbreaking approaches.
In the last week or so, there has been a bit of a crackup among liberal pundits on this topic, with many now suggesting that Biden can’t use any of these approaches and has to strike a deal on raising the debt limit. According to this argument, none of these alternative approaches will work because ultimately the conservative Supreme Court will rule against them.
But liberals who say this remain very unclear about what they think the Supreme Court ruling would actually be. If you keep the question abstract, you can just say something like “the Supreme Court will uphold the constitutionality of the debt limit” or something very reasonable-sounding like that. But this abstract gloss misunderstands the actual legal question that the Supreme Court would have to answer, which is not whether the debt limit is constitutional, but rather: What must the president do when Congress mandates an amount of spending that exceeds the amount of authorized financing?
Is the Supreme Court going to rule that, in that scenario, the president has the constitutional authority to unilaterally disregard some of the spending Congress has mandated the president to do? In this scenario, does the president get to choose what spending to disregard, sort of like a line-item veto, which the court has already ruled is unconstitutional even when Congress specifically passes a law giving the president line-item veto rights? Could Biden eliminate the entire Department of Defense once the debt limit is hit in order to get aggregate spending down to the levels financed by Congress?
There is no coherent way for the Supreme Court to actually resolve this kind of legal issue and the most ridiculous possible way for them to resolve it — especially within conservative jurisprudence — would be finding that the debt limit statute, without explicitly saying so, gives the president the authority to ignore whatever spending laws he wants in the event of a debt limit breach. Given these difficulties, it seems far more likely to me that the Supreme Court would just decline to rule, citing the political question doctrine.
Based on all of the above, my current thinking on the best way for Biden to deal with the debt limit is to sell zero-principal bonds. These would not count as debt under the wording of the debt limit statute because they have a $0 face value. If this was challenged, then the administration has three different defenses to the challenge: that zero-principal bonds do not contribute to the debt limit, that the debt limit is unconstitutional, and that illegally selling bonds is no more unconstitutional than illegally raising taxes, selling assets, or cutting spending.
But whichever course of action Biden chooses, we should be clear that he has other options than agreeing to crack the whip against America’s poor. | US Federal Policies |
Congress’s watchdog offers a test for Republicans
The House’s recent aversion of a government shutdown through a continuing resolution without any serious spending cuts is an unsurprising disappointment for fiscal conservatives looking to rein in our profligacy. But while it’s no surprise that the House avoided the usual radioactive spending issues, the very least that we should expect from House Republicans and their new Speaker is a greater push for commonsense, nonpartisan savings wherever possible.
A recent report from the Government Accountability Office shows a good place to start. In its performance and accountability report for FY2023, “Congress’s watchdog” once again showed both its value to the American taxpayer, and the need and opportunity to cut wasteful spending and improve governance. The willingness to act on that opportunity should serve as a test of Republicans’ credibility when they call for a more responsible, accountable government.
Each year, GAO issues thousands of recommendations to Congress and federal agencies, based on its oversight of how government funds are spent, on ways to make the government work more efficiently. These recommendations range from ways to save money by correcting waste, fraud and abuse within the federal government, to less quantifiable potential operational improvements. This year, the nonpartisan agency’s new report shows, this oversight resulted in roughly $70 billion in savings — $20 billion above its target — for a total of $1.4 trillion in savings since 2002. And GAO itself is incredibly efficient — in FY2023, every dollar invested in GAO had a return of $84, well above even last year’s return of $74 for every dollar, making funding GAO one of the best investments Congress can make.
But these savings are only realized when Congress and federal agencies act on GAO’s recommendations. GAO’s report shows that only 75 percent of its recommendations are implemented within four years — a slight decline from previous years and below its goal of 80 percent. Compounding the problem, the agency has noted that recommendations that remain open after four years are less likely to be implemented, meaning that the remaining 25 percent of recommendations likely will go nowhere.
This lag from Congress and agencies in addressing GAO’s recommendations means that they could be saving billions more each year if they just acted on the agency’s work more quickly. GAO has more than 5,000 open recommendations, including 500 “priority” recommendations, but this vital work recognizing opportunities for savings goes to waste if Congress and federal agencies ignore it. Fixing the countless problems within the federal government can appear impossibly daunting, but GAO’s list of recommendations show that there are clear, nonpartisan ways to do it, right now.
In FY2024, implementing the watchdog’s recommendations should be an easy priority for Republicans who oppose reckless government expenditures and warn about our precipitous economic conditions. GAO itself acknowledges our spending frenzy in the report, warning, “The federal government faces an unsustainable long-term fiscal future.” And given GAO’s nonpartisan nature, any lawmaker, regardless of party, should recognize GAO’s recommendations as a straightforward opportunity to improve how the government operates.
To be sure, even implementing all of GAO’s recommendations immediately wouldn’t get us out of our massive debt. A billion here and a billion there pale before the enormity of the federal government’s mandatory spending. But if fiscal conservatives within the Republican Party want to have any credibility when they bewail irresponsible spending or unaccountable bureaucrats within the administrative state, listening to GAO is the very least they need to do.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has billed himself as a staunch opponent of wasteful government excess. Using Congress’s oversight, legislative and appropriations powers to require federal agencies to heed GAO’s advice and save the American taxpayer money should be at the top of his list to prove that he means it.
Robert Bellafiore is Research Manager at the Foundation for American Innovation.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Federal Policies |
Johnson’s brewing SNAP crisis
The new speaker is a proponent of more hardline GOP efforts to overhaul the country’s largest anti-hunger program.
Mike Johnson‘s new role as House speaker heightens the chances of a major political clash next year over one of the nation’s largest welfare programs and the government’s preeminent aid package for farmers and rural America.
The fallout is likely to reverberate in countless congressional races, not to mention President Joe Biden’s attempts to win back rural voters in the 2024 presidential race.
Johnson, more so than previous Speaker Kevin McCarthy, is a proponent of more hardline GOP efforts to overhaul the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the country’s largest anti-hunger program that serves 41 million low-income Americans. As a senior member of the conservative-leaning Republican Study Committee, Johnson backed proposals to roll back food aid expansions under Biden and block states from exempting some work requirements for SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. In 2018, Johnson referred to SNAP as “our nation’s most broken and bloated welfare program.”
Now, the RSC, Freedom Caucus hardliners and other Republicans are pressing to include similar measures in the next farm bill. Such a move would upend the fragile bipartisan coalition needed to pass the legislation — a blow to House Republicans who represent the majority of rural and farm districts, including Johnson, as well as more centrist GOP members who will be fighting for their political lives in 2024.
However, time is running out before a year-end cliff for the farm bill. The massive package funds programs for the agriculture industry, food aid and rural America.
Rep. Dusty Johnson has authored one of the leading GOP bills to enact stricter SNAP work requirements. But the South Dakota Republican is urging lawmakers to pass a farm bill extension in the coming weeks, along with a new farm bill reauthorization as soon as possible.
“Failure to do that would hurt farm country and reflect poorly on Congress,” Johnson said.
As POLITICO first reported, dozens of farm-state lawmakers have been pressing the new speaker to add an extension of the current 2018 farm bill to any stop-gap government funding measure ahead of another looming federal shutdown Nov. 18. Johnson hasn’t objected to that move, according to three GOP lawmakers who’ve spoken with him and were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. As for passing a new farm bill, Johnson has told lawmakers he wants to put the House version of the package on the floor next month, an ambitious timeline amid the government funding battle.
However, if Congress pursues a shorter funding patch, it would likely push any House floor consideration of a new farm bill into 2024, according to the three GOP lawmakers. That would put the must-pass legislation — a major lift even during normal times — squarely in the crosshairs of the presidential election cycle.
Many Democrats are alarmed that Johnson’s rise to speaker will embolden GOP hardliners who are eager to target nutrition spending in the farm bill.
Already, Johnson’s conservative allies are leaning on him to maintain his past support for significant spending cuts and new restrictions on SNAP in the next farm bill, arguing the moves are popular with middle-class voters. The farm bill’s price tag is expected to top $1 trillion for the first time and is already meeting resistance among dozens of wary GOP lawmakers.
Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), who heads the Republicans Study Committee, has said his group is still pursuing new SNAP work requirements and other changes in the farm bill — even after Republicans secured new SNAP restrictions in the debt deal earlier this year.
“I can’t imagine the Mike Johnson that we know would pass up the opportunity to secure as many conservative wins as possible in this farm bill,” said one GOP aide, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. “And that means serious SNAP reforms.”
Democrats, whose votes House Republicans will likely need to get a farm bill across the finish line, vehemently dispute those GOP arguments over SNAP and work requirements.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said Johnson was “100 percent wrong on SNAP,” which McGovern described as “one of the most impactful tools we have to fight poverty.”
“Anyone who thinks the solution is more cuts is living in an alternate reality,” McGovern said.
While Johnson is a novice to major leadership struggles, he did gain brief experience navigating the politically sensitive topic of nutrition assistance within the disparate GOP ranks earlier this year.
Senior Republicans dispatched Johnson, vice chair of the House GOP conference at the time, and other colleagues to smooth over tensions that flared up among hardliners during the final debt deal negotiations with the White House, after the Congressional Budget Office projected the final agreement would actually increase federal spending on SNAP and participation.
Johnson touted the legislation’s “landmark achievements” on a later call with reporters about the bill’s new SNAP work requirements. He said those new rules “would not have passed through a Chuck Schumer-controlled Senate on their own.” Johnson also noted the SNAP changes only affected older low-income Americans without dependents and were “common sense and publicly popular and cost-cutting.”
“So we’re going to return these programs to being a life vest and not a lifestyle, a hand up and not a handout,” Johnson said on the call, adding that Republicans were “proud of these reforms.”
Johnson, who is still assembling his team, has yet to dive into detailed planning for the next farm bill, according to the three GOP lawmakers who’ve recently spoken with the new speaker.
One GOP senator said Johnson told them Wednesday that his priority for must-pass legislation is seeing what can pass the House first and then worrying about final passage and negotiating with the Democratic-majority Senate later.
But pushing steep spending cuts and new restrictions on food aid would squeeze some of the most vulnerable House GOP lawmakers, including a handful of New York Republicans who represent districts Biden won in 2020 and face tough reelection battles next year. After the bruising debt limit battle earlier this year, many at-risk members are not eager to rehash the same arguments over slashing food aid for low-income people, a politically toxic proposal in many of their districts.
“We’ve negotiated a new level of requirements on SNAP, and I think it’s time to move forward from there,” Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) said in an interview this summer, following passage of the debt deal.
Several major U.S. agriculture groups and some Republican lawmakers have also warned that drastic moves to pare back nutrition assistance would jeopardize passage of the next farm bill, entirely.
House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.), who is leading the effort to draft the House version of the bill, has made clear that he doesn’t want to pursue new work requirements or significant spending cuts across SNAP that would trigger major opposition from Democrats.
House Republicans are essentially guaranteed to need Democratic votes to pass the next farm bill, given the GOP’s narrow majority and opposition within the House GOP over the topline spending. Even some House Republicans, like Dusty Johnson, say the task ahead is significant, given there are “a number of hardliners who struggle to get to ‘yes’ on anything.”
“At the same time,” Johnson added,” You’ve got some pragmatic farm-state members who get frustrated with the political gamesmanship.” | US Federal Policies |
Donald Trump will at 9pm today make a “big announcement” – probably of another presidential campaign – at his Mar-a-Lago resort. If you’re a Republican, it will indeed be big.The former president is at the center of an array of investigations by local and federal authorities and just had a number of his handpicked candidates rejected by voters in the midterms, but a poll released today shows he’s still the most popular man in the GOP.If the primary were held today, 47% of Republicans and independents who lean towards the party would support Trump, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll. Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis, who won a resounding reelection victory on Tuesday, would get 33% support. Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence would get only 5% support. No other candidates came close.The figures underscore the durability of Trump’s appeal to Republican voters, despite all that has happened since he took over the GOP in 2016 and won the White House later that year. It also cuts into the idea that Republicans’ struggles in Tuesday’s vote are a sign of voters souring on his brand.That said, the survey reinforces the belief that voters see DeSantis as an increasingly palatable alternative to Trump. He’s jumped in popularity since the most recent Morning Consult poll, when he was at 26% support. In that survey, Trump was at 48% support, just a point from where he is now.Key events50m agoGOP on verge of claiming House majority, Trump set to enter frayShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureThe Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has more on the tensions within the Republican party over Donald Trump’s imminent announcement of a new campaign for the White House:Donald Trump is expected to announce his 2024 presidential campaign on Tuesday night as planned, according to multiple sources close to the former US president, inserting himself into the center of national politics as he attempts to box out potential rivals seeking the Republican nomination.Trump will deliver at 9pm ET a speech from the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he recently hosted a subdued midterm elections watch party, and detail several policy goals that aides hope could become central themes of the presidential campaign.Trump’s remarks were being finalized late into the night with a pair of speechwriters and his political team, the sources said, with aides keen for the former president to convey a degree of seriousness as he seeks voters to elevate him to a second term in the White House.The political team at Mar-a-Lago are aware nonetheless that Trump has a penchant for veering off script and delivering news as he pleases, often fixating on grievances over debunked election fraud claims that have historically done him no favors.Still, Trump appears to know that after the disappointing Republican results in the midterm elections, he is perhaps at his most politically vulnerable since the January 6 Capitol attack, and faces a critical moment to ensure he does not get discarded by the rest of the GOP.After years with Donald Trump as the undisputed head of their party, many Republicans are grappling with the rise of Ron DeSantis and whether to switch their support to the Florida governor. The Guardian’s Chris McGreal takes a closer look at their rivalry:Terri Burl was an early member of Women for Trump. As chair of her local Republican party branch in northern Wisconsin, she twice campaigned vigorously for his election in the key swing state. By the time Trump left office, Burl rated him the greatest president since Ronald Reagan. Maybe even better.But now Burl has had enough.She views the prospect of Trump announcing another run for the presidency – as he is expected to do in Florida on Tuesday evening – with trepidation. Burl predicts “a lot of blood on the floor” if it comes to a fight with rightwing Florida governor Ron DeSantis for the Republican nomination, and defeat in the 2024 election if the former US president is the candidate.Donald Trump will at 9pm today make a “big announcement” – probably of another presidential campaign – at his Mar-a-Lago resort. If you’re a Republican, it will indeed be big.The former president is at the center of an array of investigations by local and federal authorities and just had a number of his handpicked candidates rejected by voters in the midterms, but a poll released today shows he’s still the most popular man in the GOP.If the primary were held today, 47% of Republicans and independents who lean towards the party would support Trump, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll. Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis, who won a resounding reelection victory on Tuesday, would get 33% support. Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence would get only 5% support. No other candidates came close.The figures underscore the durability of Trump’s appeal to Republican voters, despite all that has happened since he took over the GOP in 2016 and won the White House later that year. It also cuts into the idea that Republicans’ struggles in Tuesday’s vote are a sign of voters souring on his brand.That said, the survey reinforces the belief that voters see DeSantis as an increasingly palatable alternative to Trump. He’s jumped in popularity since the most recent Morning Consult poll, when he was at 26% support. In that survey, Trump was at 48% support, just a point from where he is now.GOP on verge of claiming House majority, Trump set to enter frayGood morning, US politics blog readers. As votes were being counted over the past week, Democrats have wondered if their surprising strength among voters could deal them an against-all-odds victory in the House of Representatives. We appear to be nearing the answer to that question: no. While it will surely be smaller than they hoped for, Republicans are closing in on winning a majority in Congress’ lower chamber for the first time since 2019. Their victory could be confirmed in the hours to come. Meanwhile, at 9pm eastern time, former president Donald Trump is scheduled to make an announcement that will likely be the start of a new presidential campaign.Here’s what else is happening today: Joe Biden appears to have wrapped up his day at the G20 in Indonesia, which may weigh in on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The House and Senate are in session, with the House Homeland Security Committee holding a hearing on global terrorism threats featuring FBI director Christopher Wray and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell will speak to reporters at 10 am eastern time. | US Federal Elections |
President Biden has scored a clear political win in his argument with Republicans about Social Security and Medicare. Some Republicans want to trim these safety-net programs for seniors, which are a large portion of federal spending and growing larger. Biden skewered those budget hawks during his February 8 State of the Union speech and has continued to throw Republicans off-balance by portraying them as heartless toward seniors.
It's shrewd politics. Social Security and Medicare are among the most cherished government programs, and Biden is likely to win points with seniors by aggressively defending them. But Biden is glossing over a giant looming problem with both programs, which is that they’re unsustainably expensive and the single-largest financial problem the US government faces.
What Biden will never say is that Republicans have a point. Various Republican proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits largely seek to stop the two programs from devouring an ever-growing amount of federal tax revenue. Some are not so much programs as off-the-cuff remarks Republicans have made pointing out that the benefit programs for seniors are heading toward insolvency. A group of about 150 House Republicans has suggested raising the eligibility age for both programs to help keep them funded.
The financial vulnerability of Social Security and Medicare is not an ideological matter. It’s economic reality. Both programs are funded by dedicated taxes that will soon generate less revenue than the programs require. Government analysts think Medicare could begin to run short of money by 2028. Social Security could run short by 2034. The programs won’t die if the money runs short. But if nothing changes, there will only be enough money to cover about 80% of current benefits and that will decline over time.
The real disagreement between Democrats and Republicans is how to shore up both programs so they don’t run out of money. Biden, the man with many plans, wants to raise taxes on incomes above $400,000. Republicans oppose just about any new taxes, so their approach generally starts with reining in eligibility and trimming benefits. It’s popular to demand that the wealthy finance benefit programs for ordinary people, as Biden does. But there’s also a solid argument for reducing the spending of both programs before they devour the federal budget.
Medicare and Social Security have grown from 19% of federal spending in 1970 to 27% today, with the Congressional Budget Office forecasting that they’ll account for 40% in 2052. They’re growing ad infinitum because of an aging population requiring more expensive health care as Americans live longer. And these are programs that pay whatever the beneficiaries are due, with no regular appropriation from Congress, like most other programs. They’re basically on autopilot.
Should the United States forever devote a growing portion of federal revenue to older generations? Maybe not. Social Security and Medicare date back decades, to a time when few foresaw the portion of federal revenue they’d gobble up. Almost nobody would design a program from scratch that got unsustainably expensive over time.
“The growth of Social Security and Medicare should be slowed,” argues Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute. “Government has important jobs other than taking money from young people and giving it to old people. Americans want a national defense; roads and bridges and airports; better health coverage; security against terrorism; schools and college tuition; and countless other things that the federal government does.”
Raising taxes obviously brings in more revenue, so in theory you could keep retirement programs going with the higher taxes Biden wants. But there’s an optimal level of taxation that maximizes economic growth, which is best for everyone. More taxation is not always better. And the most effective way to fix unsustainable programs is usually a mix of tax increase and benefit reductions.
There are many sensible ideas for trimming Social Security and Medicare to help keep the programs solvent, without wrecking benefits for those who need them most. For Social Security, the eligibility age has been raised before and could be raised again, as Americans live longer and healthier. It could also be indexed to longevity, so it rises automatically with life expectancy and Congress doesn’t have to make politically difficult decisions. Benefits could be capped or even eliminated for wealthy retirees. A more extreme measure would be reducing benefits for everybody in accordance with the program’s funding.
Medicare is different, since unsubsidized health care can be ruinously expensive and competent care is obviously a life-or-death matter. But changes are still possible. Reform advocates recommend new ways for Medicare to lower payments to providers and other costs. Adopting some private-sector practices could make Medicare more efficient. Broader reforms might include new pathways for future doctors and other providers to enter the profession without taking on gargantuan amounts of debt that then require high salaries to pay off what they owe.
Biden isn’t talking about any of this. He’s only promising to protect Social Security and Medicare as they are. He’s also not debunking the myth that Americans are only getting back what they put into the two programs, through the payroll taxes everybody pays up to a certain percentage of income.
Social Security and Medicare tax revenue does not go into a bank where it’s held until needed by each individual payer. Instead, this money is an outright transfer from current workers to retirees. That’s actually a good deal for retirees, since on average a typical couple gets about 90% more from the system than they paid in, adjusted for inflation. On the current trajectory, that “bonus” is due to rise. Anybody advocating for a 1-to-1 payback on money paid in is actually calling for a huge cut in benefits.
Congress will have to grapple with Social Security and Medicare shortfalls eventually. Once the programs run short of money, the government might still be able to stall by borrowing to make up the difference or simply funding the shortfall from general revenue. But sooner or later, the funding gap will grow too large to ignore. Biden may be betting it won’t happen on his watch, and he may be right. But some future president is going to have to start telling the truth about Social Security and Medicare. | US Federal Policies |
The Beltway press' longing for a stern-but-loving Republican daddy, who will bring our naughty nation in line, has always had an erotic tinge to it. In a widely shared Atlantic piece, drawn from his upcoming biography of Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, McKay Coppins allowed the subtext to edge alarmingly close to the text. "[O]ne can't help but become a little suspicious of his handsomeness," Coppins gushes. "The jowl-free jawline. The all-seasons tan. The just-so gray at the temples of that thick black coif."
It seems Georgia politician Stacey Abrams isn't the only one moonlighting as a steamy romance author. I rolled my eyes throughout Coppins' piece, except for the parts where Romney dropped the daddy act to share bitchy gossip about his fellow senators. But, as far as mainstream pundits are concerned, Romney can totally get it. Coppins' article was released simultaneously with Romney's announcement that he's retiring from the Senate, and the reception Romney got was fawning.
"Romney bows out, leaving a legacy that would make his father proud," read the Washington Post headline of a Karen Tumulty column. She went so far as to credit Romney with "paving the way for national health-care reform," ignoring the fact that Romney ran for president in 2012 on a promise to repeal Obamacare. Tumulty's take was typical, as the press drowned Romney in words like "noble," "principled," and "courageous." The hosannas on the "liberal" MSNBC grew to deafening levels.
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All of this adulation is due mainly to the fact that Romney is the rare Republican holding elected office who is willing to state the obvious: That Donald Trump is a monster and a criminal who has no business in elected office.
But the problem with all of this Romney love is not that I personally feel sexually harassed by it. It's that it fails to account for how Romney and other "traditional" Republicans are responsible for the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement. And not just because Romney and his ilk were only too happy to play along with Trump, even as he was pushing the racist "birther" conspiracy theory during the 2012 election cycle. It's because they spent decades married to policy views that range from wildly unpopular to bat guano terrible, making it easy for a demagogue to come in with a platform of "who cares about policy, let's just be super-racist."
Romney obviously disagrees, praising himself for supposedly being the sober-minded policy guy:
But he won't acknowledge that the rampant policy failures of Republicans are why the party has no path forward, except to become a fascist cult focused on settling imaginary scores. So let's review some of the greatest hits of the pre-Trump era of traditional Republican "ideas."
All this adulation is due mainly to the fact that Romney is the rare Republican holding elected office who is willing to state the obvious: That Donald Trump is a monster and a criminal who has no business in elected office.
Cutting taxes for the rich: This has been the number one Republican priority for decades, even though the first George Bush admitted it was "voodoo economics." After decades of rising income inequality, no one believes the money will "trickle down" to everyone else. It has no real support outside of the wealthy people who benefit. Eight in 10 Americans disapprove of this policy. Even 43% of Republican voters don't like it.
"Family values." It's not just that most Americans now support abortion rights and same-sex marriage. People are souring on the religious right and even abandoning religion altogether in record numbers.
Invading Iraq: I won't belabor how terrible this was. I will just remind readers that it was the signature "achievement" of the last Republican president before Trump.
Health care: As far as I can tell, the GOP view of health care policy amounts to, "Have you considered just dying?" As with many issues, their own voters reject the party's views, and will routinely vote to give themselves Medicaid even as party leaders try to stop them.
Climate change denialism. Not talked about much in the press, but there's good reason to believe that decades of flat-out denying basic scientific facts did serious damage to the GOP in the eyes of younger voters. Trump may be a gold medal-level Olympian in the sport of lying, but he is building on a legacy of Republicans who would lie about the existence of gravity, if it pleases their corporate masters.
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One could go on forever, but the bigger picture is this: On policy, Republicans simply have nothing to offer. They won't improve people's lives or fix existing problems. They only survived as long as they did because of gerrymandering and a tilted electoral map, backed by an unbelievable amount of money spent on right-wing propaganda like Fox News.
Trump understands the power of cynicism in politics all too well, and so was able to exploit this situation. He just sidestepped the policy issue altogether and instead offered something different: Naked hatred. Bigotry. Exciting conspiracy theories. And, crucially, a desire to destroy democracy altogether. After all, debating policy only matters if you're trying to persuade people. If your goal is to crush them under your boot, there is no need to worry overmuch if they like your policies or not.
Again, Trump wouldn't have gone this far without traditional Republicans like Romney laying the groundwork for decades. Republicans have long known that their policy views are unpopular and won't win them elections, and so they've increasingly looked for ways to get power through cheating. Mainly, that was by passing laws that restricted voting access for people of color and young people, who tend to lean more Democratic. Romney is one of the guilty parties in this, even going so far as to compare President Joe Biden's efforts to protect voting rights with Trump's lies about the 2020 election.
Romney whined that voting rights advocates accuse their opponents of having "racist inclinations." But what matters here is not what is in anyone's heart. It's totally possible, likely even, that many Republicans back voter suppression not because they hate Black people, but because they hate losing elections. But the effect of these laws and this rhetoric is the same: It implanted and reinforced the idea, with Republican voters, that there is something tawdry and illegitimate about Black people voting. Trump exploited that sensibility with his Big Lie, which rested on accusations that votes from racially diverse cities are necessarily "frauds."
There were many opportunities over the years for Republicans to forge another path. They could have moderated their views on social issues. They could have gone the route of Richard Nixon, conceding that environmental concerns should trump a mindless anti-regulatory stance. They could have raised taxes on the rich with the pro-capitalist argument that it increases business investment. Considering that they still got nearly half of the votes with their unpopular policies, they really didn't have to change much at all to be successful. Just be slightly less terrible on some issue, any issue.
But they didn't do that and increasingly had nothing positive to offer to voters. That opened the door for an authoritarian demagogue, who built his power not on policy ideas, but on a promise he would hurt all the folks that conservative white people don't like. Romney doesn't deserve an ounce of credit. He may be unhappy with what his own failure of imagination helped usher in, but ultimately, this is still largely the fault of him and other "traditional" Republicans. | US Political Corruption |
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Thursday, April 13, the Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 1933, a bill that would empower the secretary of state to seize election authority from county officials. The bill passed on a party line vote, with all Republicans voting in favor and all Democrats voting against. It now heads to the Republican-controlled House.
S.B. 1933 would allow the secretary of state — in Texas, a position appointed by the governor — to take over election administration and voter registration in Texas counties. The bill would specifically authorize this “administrative oversight” if an election complaint is filed with the secretary of state’s office and the secretary of state has “good cause to believe that a recurring pattern of problems with election administration or voter registration exists in the county.” The broad categories listed as pretext for state oversight include delays in reporting election results, failure to comply with list maintenance procedures, voting equipment malfunctions and more.
If the state imposes oversight on a county, the county election office would be required to submit any voting or policy changes to the state for approval and allow staff from the secretary of state’s office to observe election proceedings. The state would also be empowered to appoint a conservator to take over election duties and recommend that a county suspend or terminate the current election administrator. “[T]he governor is trying to override voters to replace leaders he can’t control,”ACLU Texas tweeted about the legislation.
In recent years, Texas state officials have clashed with local election administrators who aim to expand voting access, especially in Democratic strongholds like Harris County, home to Houston. Other legislation moving this session would similarly wrestle control from local administrators. For example, Senate Bill 1750 would eliminate the position of election administrator in counties with a population of 3.5 million or more (Harris County is the only county with this many people) and Senate Bill 1993 would give the secretary of state the authority to order an election to be rerun in counties with a population of more than 2.7 million (again, only Harris County would qualify) under certain circumstances. S.B. 1750 and S.B. 1993 have both advanced out of committee and await a vote on the full Senate floor.
Within the past week, the Texas Senate has advanced other anti-voting bills. Several were approved by the Senate State Affairs Committee, while others passed the full Senate and moved on to the state House. Given Republican control of the legislative process in Texas, all of these bills have a good chance at being enacted into law. | US Federal Elections |
Bob Woodward’s recorded excerpts of his conversations with Donald Trump take listeners back to 2020, and make clear just how much of the White House’s fumbling response to Covid-19 came from the president himself.“I feel good. I think we’re doing a great job. I think we’ll never get credit from the fake news media no matter how good a job we do. No matter how good a job I do, I will never get credit from the media, and I’ll never get credit from Democrats who want to beat me desperately in seven months,” Trump told Woodward in an early April interview, days after the economy had shut down to unsuccessfully stop the spread of a virus that would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans that year alone.Trump’s denialism continued into July: “It’s flaring up all over the world, Bob. By the way, all over the world. That was one thing I noticed last week. You know they talk about this country. All over the world, it’s flaring up. But we have it under control.”Later that month, he insisted that he would soon release a plan to fight the virus, but appeared to tie its timing to how it would affect his election chances. “I’ve got 106 days. That’s a long time. You know, if I put out a plan now, people won’t even remember it in a hundred — I won the last election in the last week.”While Woodward agrees with many other observers of the former president that his attempts to overturn the 2020 election make him a danger to democracy, he also makes the case to listeners that Trump didn’t even fully understand how to do his job – and the nation paid the price.“Trump reminds how easy it is to break things you do not understand — democracy and the presidency,” Woodward concludes.Key events3h agoJustice department to hold press conference on 'significant national security matter'4h ago'Trump is an unparalleled danger' reporter warns after hours of interviews with ex-presidentShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureThe Democrats’ two best hopes for stemming their losses in the Senate or even expanding their majority are in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and CNN has just released a poll indicating tight races in both.The states are home to the perhaps two best pick up opportunities for Democrats this year, with Republican senator Ron Johnson defending his seat in Wisconsin, while Pennsylvania’s is vacant after GOP senator Pat Toomey opted to retire.CNN’s new poll indicates Johnson has a slight edge over Democrat Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin, where 50% of voters back his candidacy against 49% for his challenger.In Pennsylvania, Democratic lieutenant governor John Fetterman is at 51% support against Republican Mehmet Oz, who was polling at 45%.The poll otherwise confirmed dynamics that have become well-known this election cycle. The economy is far and away voters’ top issue, with abortion a distant second. President Joe Biden is also unpopular with voters in both states, the survey finds.Districts whose congressional representatives have embraced conspiracy theories about the 2020 election tend to be poorer, less educated and have experienced declines in their white population, according to an analysis published by The New York Times today.The report suggests that racial anxiety is a major factor in voters’ willingness to embrace Donald Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in Joe Biden’s election win, in addition to economic stagnation and social maladies like the opioid epidemic. The report is a sprawling look at corners of the country that have grown so alienated they’re willing to support lawmakers who object to the certification of the 2020 election, despite fears the campaign poses a mortal threat to American democracy.Here’s more from the Times:When Representative Troy Nehls of Texas voted last year to reject Donald J. Trump’s electoral defeat, many of his constituents back home in Fort Bend County were thrilled. Like the former president, they have been unhappy with the changes unfolding around them. Crime and sprawl from Houston, the big city next door, have been spilling over into their once bucolic towns. (“Build a wall,” Mr. Nehls likes to say, and make Houston pay.) The county in recent years has become one of the nation’s most diverse, where the former white majority has fallen to just 30 percent of the population. Don Demel, a 61-year-old salesman who turned out last month to pick up a signed copy of a book by Mr. Nehls about the supposedly stolen election, said his parents had raised him “colorblind.” But the reason for the discontent was clear: Other white people in Fort Bend “did not like certain people coming here,” he said. “It’s race. They are old-school.” A shrinking white share of the population is a hallmark of the congressional districts held by the House Republicans who voted to challenge Mr. Trump’s defeat, a New York Times analysis found — a pattern political scientists say shows how white fear of losing status shaped the movement to keep him in power. The portion of white residents dropped about 35 percent more over the last three decades in those districts than in territory represented by other Republicans, the analysis found, and constituents also lagged behind in income and education. Rates of so-called deaths of despair, such as suicide, drug overdose and alcohol-related liver failure, were notably higher as well.The January 6 committee is likely finished with its public hearings into the deadly attack on the Capitol, and The Guardian’s Tom Ambrose surveyed readers about whether the committee’s work changed their mind about what happened that day, and Trump’s role in it. Here’s what one had to say:I think that hearings solidified what most people thought already: that Donald Trump and his allies coordinated to assault the foundations of democracy on January 6 because they were unhappy with the result of the 2020 election. The juxtaposing of previously aired and unaired video clips helped provide clearer and fuller picture of the chaos that unfolded that day.I believe that anyone who tuned into the hearings with an open mind saw January 6 for what it was: a disgraceful attack on American democracy that amounts to treason. I believe the committee was convincing in their effort to show premeditation by the president and his followers.I am worried that those who believe January 6 was justified will use this committee as an example as of how “the Democrats/liberals” are out to get the president and his followers. They demonstrate this belief daily as they continue to call for violence against elected officials and refuse to believe the truth that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.It feels like that their position is: either we won, or we were cheated. I fear that the upcoming elections in November will only be a taste of what kinds of vitriol await during the 2024 election. Patrick, 29, public school teacher from ChicagoRepublican senator Ted Cruz was a vociferous objector to the 2020 election, but ended up hiding in a supply closet when insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on January 6, as Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:As a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol during the January 6 attack in a desperate attempt to keep him in the Oval Office, Ted Cruz hid in a closet next to a stack of chairs, but he never thought twice about continuing to sow doubt about the former president’s electoral defeat, the Republican senator from Texas has revealed.Cruz revealed his whereabouts on the day of the deadly Capitol attack – which unsuccessfully aimed to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election – in a new book. The news was first reported by Newsweek.The book – titled Justice Corrupted – recounts how Cruz was listening to his colleague James Lankford of Oklahoma speak in the Senate chamber when a terrible commotion erupted outside. Capitol police rushed in to escort Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, whom the mob wanted to hang, off the dais, and the session was paused.“In the fog of the confusion, it was difficult to tell exactly what was happening,” Cruz wrote. “We were informed that a riot had broken out and that rioters were attempting to breach the building.What would Republicans do with a majority in the House? Demand concessions in exchange for raising the debt limit, which will likely be necessary at some point next year, Politico reports.GOP lawmakers could demand that the tax cuts passed during the Trump administration are made permanent, or that Social Security and Medicare, the two massive federal benefit programs for older Americans that have long been in Republicans’ crosshairs, are overhauled. But the strategy is a risky one, because without an agreement to lift its legal ability to borrow, Washington could default on its debt – with potentially calamitous implications for the global economy. And even if Republicans took both the House and the Senate, expect tortuous negotiations with Biden to find an agreement.Here’s more from Politico:Tight Senate margins and a Democratic president would make it impossible for GOP leaders to deliver on the party’s most hardline fiscal wishes, at least with President Joe Biden still in office. The disappointment would surely prompt blowback from right-leaning Republicans already known as the sharpest thorns in the party’s side. “Spare me if you’re a Republican who puts on your frigging campaign website, ‘Trust me, I will vote for a balanced budget amendment, and I believe we should balance the budget like every family in America.’ No shit,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the pro-Trump Freedom Caucus, said in an interview. “You have two simple leverage points: when government funding comes up and when the debt ceiling is debated,” Roy reminded his fellow Republicans. “And the only question that matters is, will leadership use that leverage?”There was also new polling today for Ohio, which seems to align with broader national trends for the 8 November midterms.Once considered a swing state, Ohio has become more solidly Republican in recent elections. But that doesn’t mean JD Vance, the GOP candidate for Senate, is running away with the race. Today’s Spectrum News / Siena poll shows him tied with Democrat Tim Ryan, underscoring that for all the momentum Republicans seem to have, retaking the Senate is not a sure bet.However, notice the strong bias among Ohio voters towards Republicans on the generic congressional ballot. That matches recent nationwide polling suggesting the GOP has overtaken Democrats as the party preferred to control Congress – an outcome that may well come to pass when the midterm dust settles.There was some dire news for Democrats this morning from The Cook Political Report, which is known for its comprehensive rankings of congressional races across the country.The subject was congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, who is chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee tasked with winning elections in the House of Representatives. Cook changed their rating for his suburban New York City district to toss-up from lean Democrat:Polls indicate that Democrats are likely to lose their majority in the House in the 8 November midterms, and a loss by Maloney would make an embarrassment of their efforts to stem what appears to be a rising tide of Republican sentiment among voters.We’re 15 days away from the 8 November midterms, but early voting data from across the country indicates a surge in voter enthusiasm, Adam Gabbatt reports – though it’s not yet clear which party is set to benefit:Early voting in the midterm elections is on track to match records set in 2018, according to researchers, as voters take advantage of both in-person and mail-in voting in states across the country.More than 5.8 million people had already cast their vote by Friday evening, CNN reported, a similar total to this stage in the 2018 elections, which had the highest turnout of any midterm vote in a generation.States with closely watched elections, including Georgia, Florida and Ohio, are among those seeing high volumes, with Democrats so far casting early votes in greater numbers.Republicans, including Donald Trump, have encouraged their supporters to vote in person, citing a mishmash of debunked conspiracy theories about election security.The New York Times reported that in-person turnout is up 70% in Georgia, where the incumbent Republican governor is facing a tough challenge from Democrat Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock, the Democratic US senator, is competing with Herschel Walker. As of Friday about 520,000 people had already cast their ballots during in-person early voting, according to Fox5 Atlanta.Justice department to hold press conference on 'significant national security matter'Attorney general Merrick Garland will this afternoon hold a press conference on a “significant national security matter,” the justice department has announced.The 1:30pm eastern time speech will “discuss significant national security cases addressing malign influence schemes and alleged criminal activity by a nation-state actor in the United States,” and feature Garland along with FBI director Christopher Wray, along with other top justice department officials.The Guardian will cover the press conference on this blog as it happens.From Las Vegas, The Guardian’s Edwin Rios reports on the cost-of-living concerns that are influencing voters in the swing state crucial to the upcoming midterm elections:Claudia Lopez, 39, is worried for her children.As her curly haired seven-year-old daughter bounced around a play area inside El Mercado, a shopping center within the Boulevard Mall in Las Vegas where the smell of arepas and tacos hovers over the shops, Lopez soaked in her day off from knocking on doors and talking to residents about the upcoming election.For much of her life, Lopez, whose parents emigrated from Mexico to California, where she was born, didn’t care for politics. This year, that changed: since Lopez moved to Las Vegas seven years ago, rents have rocketed. In the first quarter of 2022, the Nevada State Apartment Association found that rent had soared, on average, more than 20% compared to the same period last year. That growth has since slowed, but the self-employed house cleaner worries about her children’s future: their safety, their schools, their shelter.“I don’t care about Democrats or Republicans,” Lopez says. “I care about change. I just want change for the better. Everything’s getting worse. You see little kids like, ‘Are they going to live to my age?’”In Nevada, the political stakes of this election are high. Latino voters are projected to account for one for every five potential voters in November, turning the state into a microcosm of the national influence voters of color will have on the election. While Nevada voted Democrat in the last election, its contests were won by slim margins. And as a voting bloc, Latinos are not monolithic: what they care about ranges from immigration to the economy and depends on where throughout the country they live.Trump isn’t alone in presenting a danger to democracy. As Adam Gabbatt reports, Doug Mastriano is copying many of the former president’s tactics in his campaign for governor of Pennsylvania, from his perpetual lying to his belief in conspiracy theories about the 2020 election:As Pennsylvanians prepare to vote for their next governor, it is no exaggeration to say the future of American democracy is at stake.Doug Mastriano, a retired army colonel who has enthusiastically indulged Donald Trump’s fantasy that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, is the Republican candidate. If he wins, he plans to deregister every single one of Pennsylvania’s 8.7 million voters. In future elections, Mastriano would choose who certifies – or doesn’t – the state’s election results.With Pennsylvania one of the few swing states in presidential elections, Mastriano could effectively have the power to decide the next president. But in a midterm election season defined by Republicans who seem to oppose democracy, there is some evidence that Mastriano, a retired army colonel, could be too fringe even for the Republican party.Mastriano is, by most measures, an extremist.Bob Woodward’s recorded excerpts of his conversations with Donald Trump take listeners back to 2020, and make clear just how much of the White House’s fumbling response to Covid-19 came from the president himself.“I feel good. I think we’re doing a great job. I think we’ll never get credit from the fake news media no matter how good a job we do. No matter how good a job I do, I will never get credit from the media, and I’ll never get credit from Democrats who want to beat me desperately in seven months,” Trump told Woodward in an early April interview, days after the economy had shut down to unsuccessfully stop the spread of a virus that would kill hundreds of thousands of Americans that year alone.Trump’s denialism continued into July: “It’s flaring up all over the world, Bob. By the way, all over the world. That was one thing I noticed last week. You know they talk about this country. All over the world, it’s flaring up. But we have it under control.”Later that month, he insisted that he would soon release a plan to fight the virus, but appeared to tie its timing to how it would affect his election chances. “I’ve got 106 days. That’s a long time. You know, if I put out a plan now, people won’t even remember it in a hundred — I won the last election in the last week.”While Woodward agrees with many other observers of the former president that his attempts to overturn the 2020 election make him a danger to democracy, he also makes the case to listeners that Trump didn’t even fully understand how to do his job – and the nation paid the price.“Trump reminds how easy it is to break things you do not understand — democracy and the presidency,” Woodward concludes.'Trump is an unparalleled danger' reporter warns after hours of interviews with ex-presidentGood morning, US politics blog readers. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has released more excerpts from his interviews with Donald Trump in 2020, and closes with this warning: “Trump is an unparalleled danger.” Describing him as “overwhelmed by the job” while in office as Covid-19 spread across the United States, Woodward warns that Trump continues to pursue “a seditious conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 election – and end democracy itself. While Woodward is far from the first person to say that, the journalist’s opinion is uniquely informed, given that the two men spoke 20 times during the last year of his presidency.Here’s a look at what’s happening today: Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis will face his Democratic challenger Charlie Crist for the only debate of the election at 7pm ET. Joe Biden will hold a rally today at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at 1pm. Poll tracker FiveThirtyEight downgraded Democrats’ chances of keeping control of the Senate over the weekend, lowering it to 55% amid a wave of polls that signal several of its candidates may be in trouble. | US Federal Elections |
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The Texas House on Friday voted to strip school vouchers from the chamber’s massive education funding bill, effectively gutting Gov. Greg Abbott’s top priority from the legislation.
The House voted 84-63 in favor of an amendment offered by Rep. John Raney of College Station, which removed the provision of the bill allowing some parents to use tax dollars to send their children to private and religious schools. Twenty-one Republicans, most of whom represent rural districts, joined all Democrats in support.
They are: Raney, Steve Allison of San Antonio, Ernest Bailes of Shepherd, Keith Bell of Forney, DeWayne Burns of Cleburne, Travis Clardy of Nacogdoches, Drew Darby of San Angelo, Jay Dean of Longview, Charlie Geren of Fort Worth, Justin Holland of Rockwall, Kyle Kacal of College Station, Ken King of Canadian, John Kuempel of Seguin, Stan Lambert of Abilene, Andrew Murr of Junction, Four Price of Amarillo, Glenn Rogers of Graford, Hugh Shine of Temple, Reggie Smith of Sherman, Ed Thompson of Pearland and Gary VanDeaver of New Boston.
The outcome was an embarrassment to Abbott, who spent seven months lobbying two dozen Republicans who signaled opposition to vouchers in a test vote during the regular legislative session in April. His various strategies included holding events at private schools in rural areas, tying vouchers to increased public school funding, calling two special sessions dedicated to education, threatening to support primary challengers to Republicans who opposed vouchers and announcing a breakthrough deal with the holdouts that did not appear to exist.
None of it worked.
Just four of the former Republican holdouts opposed the anti-voucher amendment on Friday: Trent Ashby of Lufkin, Brooks Landgraf of Odessa, Angelia Orr of Itasca and David Spiller of Jacksboro. But Thompson was a new anti-voucher vote, bringing the governor’s net gain to three.
The future of school vouchers is now in doubt; Abbott has said he will veto any education legislation that does not contain vouchers. The governor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The bill, authored by Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Killeen, is a $7 billion omnibus bill that would also boost spending for public schools. It would increase the basic allotment — the base amount allocated to districts per student — from $6,160 to $6,700 and would be adjusted for inflation starting in the 2026-27 school year. It also includes a one-time $4,000 bonus for full-time teachers, counselors, nurses and librarians.
But its key provision was school vouchers. The bill would create education savings accounts, a voucher program that would allow about 40,000 students who exit the state’s public education system to either receive $10,500 annually for private school expenses or up to $1,000 for homeschooling. The program would prioritize students from low-income families and those with disabilities, but every child would be eligible for the money as funds allow.
The governor has threatened to continue calling lawmakers back to Austin until they pass a bill. Republican opponents of the measure are facing threats of challenges in the upcoming 2024 primaries.
After four special sessions — two of which were specifically intended to pass vouchers — Abbott has failed to gain any significant support for his education priority in the Texas House, which has for decades been standing in the way of school vouchers. Even after threatening to support primary challengers for those that went against his wishes and potentially calling more special sessions, both a majority of Republicans and Democrats in the House still stand in the way.
The 84-63 vote to strip the vouchers from HB 1 was similar to a budget amendment vote that House members took in April during the regular session, which would have prohibited lawmakers from using funds for a voucher program.
That amendment during the spring, authored by Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Robstown, passed with a 86-52 vote. While the amendment was ultimately a symbolic vote, as it was stripped from the final budget bill, it signaled that Abbott had his work cut out for him. | US Local Policies |
An anonymous reader shared this report from cybersecurity blogger Brian Krebs: Domain names ending in ".US" — the top-level domain for the United States — are among the most prevalent in phishing scams, new research shows. This is noteworthy because .US is overseen by the U.S. government, which is frequently the target of phishing domains ending in .US. Also, .US domains are only supposed to be available to U.S. citizens and to those who can demonstrate that they have a physical presence in the United States... [F]ew other major countries in the world have anywhere near as many phishing domains each year as .US.
That's according to The Interisle Consulting Group, which gathers phishing data from multiple industry sources and publishes an annual report on the latest trends. Interisle's newest study examined six million phishing reports between May 1, 2022 and April 30, 2023, and found 30,000 .US phishing domains.
.US is overseen by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an executive branch agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. However, NTIA currently contracts out the management of the .US domain to GoDaddy, by far the world's largest domain registrar. Under NTIA regulations, the administrator of the .US registry must take certain steps to verify that their customers actually reside in the United States, or own organizations based in the U.S. But Interisle found that whatever GoDaddy was doing to manage that vetting process wasn't working.
That's according to The Interisle Consulting Group, which gathers phishing data from multiple industry sources and publishes an annual report on the latest trends. Interisle's newest study examined six million phishing reports between May 1, 2022 and April 30, 2023, and found 30,000 .US phishing domains.
.US is overseen by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an executive branch agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. However, NTIA currently contracts out the management of the .US domain to GoDaddy, by far the world's largest domain registrar. Under NTIA regulations, the administrator of the .US registry must take certain steps to verify that their customers actually reside in the United States, or own organizations based in the U.S. But Interisle found that whatever GoDaddy was doing to manage that vetting process wasn't working. | US Federal Policies |
"The president and first lady will pay respects to the victims of this horrific attack and grieve with families and community members, as well as meet with first responders, nurses, and others on the front lines of the response," the White House said Wednesday.
White House spokeswoman Emilie Simons told reporters earlier Wednesday on Air Force One en route to Minnesota that Office of Gun Violence Prevention Deputy Director Greg Jackson was "on the ground right now working closely with the community."
"One of the key pieces of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention is additional resources that can go to schools, go to communities in the aftermath of these tragedies," she said.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre urged Congress, particularly Republicans, to send Biden more legislation to counter this "gun violence epidemic."
"We're tired of this. You know, I'm tired of it. The president is tired of it. I'm sure all of you are tired about talking about these horrific mass shootings," she said. "We know what works. We know there are commonsense legislation that could be put forward right now that can get passed — put it on the floor, put it together — right? — get passed so that we can save lives."
U.S. Army reservist Robert Card killed 18 people at a restaurant and bowling alley last week before apparently turning one of his guns on himself. | US Federal Policies |
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made much of his crusade to lock up felons who unwittingly voted in 2020, but one registered Republican allegedly voted illegally for nearly a decade before the feds stepped in last week.
Yalemis Onasch, a 28-year-old Cuban national, cast fraudulent ballots in the past two presidential elections before finally becoming an American citizen in 2022, according to a criminal complaint first obtained by The Daily Beast.
The FBI homed in on Onasch after receiving information about her alleged crimes from a “cooperating witness,” the complaint states. And although the tipster is not identified in the filing, it seems Onasch was outed by her ex—the father of her child—with whom she has been locked in an ongoing legal battle, her attorney told The Daily Beast.
Onasch’s troubles were compounded by “den[ying] under oath having registered to vote or voting as part of her naturalization application and interview,” says the complaint.
Onasch, who is accused of unlawfully voting in the 2014 midterm elections, the 2016 general election, the 2020 primaries, and the 2020 general election, was arrested by FBI agents on May 19, and released on $25,000 bond, court records show. The federal case against her appears to be entirely separate from a bumbling statewide crackdown on voter fraud launched by the right-wing DeSantis, who is reportedly eyeing a presidential run in 2024. A Florida-focused task force created by DeSantis with much fanfare last year rounded up some 20 voters, many of them people of color, who had felony convictions that had stripped them of the right to vote. Most had been issued voter ID cards by the state, and reportedly thought their voting rights had been restored.
DeSantis claimed the effort would bolster election “integrity” after Donald Trump’s loss in 2020 to Joe Biden, and touted the initiative as a necessary tool to counter what the GOP has described as rampant ballot-stuffing by Democrats. But no evidence of widespread voter fraud, in Florida or anywhere else in the country, has ever emerged. And the prosecutions brought thus far by DeSantis’ Office of Election Crimes and Security have largely fallen apart: of the 20 cases, six have been dismissed, and five have resulted in plea deals carrying no jail time. The only defendant to actually go to trial was convicted of lying on his voter registration application, but acquitted of voting illegally.
Desperate for a victory, Florida’s GOP-led legislature earlier this year pushed through a new law handing jurisdiction over election cases from local prosecutors to a statewide prosecutor answering to Attorney General Ashley Moody, a DeSantis ally. Meanwhile, three registered Republicans in Sumter County, Florida—one of them a former county elections inspector—have all pleaded guilty in recent months to felony voter fraud charges for voting twice in the 2020 election.
The complaint against Onasch includes a copy of her most recent voter registration, in which she specifies her party affiliation as Republican.
The investigation into Onasch began in 2022, according to the complaint, which was unsealed Friday in Ft. Myers federal court. Onasch was born in Cuba, and became a legal U.S. resident of the United States in 2006, at the age of 12, the complaint says.
Six years later, Onasch made a fateful decision that would come back to haunt her.
“On or about September 21, 2012, Onasch submitted a new Florida Voter Registration Application (‘FVRA’) with the help of [an unnamed third-party voter registration organization],” the complaint goes on. “In the application, Onasch marked yes to question A, Are you a citizen of the United States of America?”
Onasch was issued a voter ID number and went on to vote in three general elections, as well as one primary, submitting a form in November 2016 to officially update her home address, the complaint says.
At some point last year, the FBI was notified by an unnamed source who claimed Onasch had been voting illegally, the complaint states. Investigators searched election records, and discovered Onasch indeed voted in-person during the 2016 general election, the complaint continues. Under Florida law, Onasch was required to present a photo ID at the polls, which she did, and her signature was verified with the one county election officials had on file, according to the complaint.
Further digging into historical voter data, the FBI discovered Onasch had voted in the 2014 midterms, as well as the 2020 primary and general elections, the complaint alleges. In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it says Onasch requested and received a mail-in ballot, listing the address of a rented mailbox at a local UPS Store as her residence.
Voting by mail was a fixation for former President Donald Trump, who claimed, entirely falsely, that the ballots were being sent to “people that didn’t ask for them,” namely Democrats, and would swing the 2020 election to Biden.
David Joffe, Onasch’s lawyer, told The Daily Beast that he “doesn’t think” his client intended to break the law, but that, “A lot of times, people don’t really pay close attention to these things.”
As a lawyer, Joffe said, he and his colleagues are trained to pay attention to detail. However, he continued, “most people just aren’t that detail-oriented.”
“When she was going to college, they had those [voter registration] tables set up,” Joffe said. “And you’re a student, and you’re doing student things, you’re going to your classes, and you stop by, ‘Hey, what’s this?’ My understanding, she said, ‘I’m a Cuban national, not yet a citizen,’ and they told her, ‘This is your right, you can vote.’ And she’s a 17-year-old kid, so she says, ‘OK,’ and she signs up to vote, and proceeds to vote in multiple elections as she’s gotten older.”
Joffe said he believed Onasch’s ex had tipped off the feds because he “has been giving her a real hard time over the years for no real apparent reason.”
“He’s pretty proactive in terms of constantly taking her to court. He’s just constantly bringing her back to court for all different kinds of things—which parents can do.”
In addition to the charge of voting illegally, Onasch is facing a second charge, of making false statements to immigration authorities. Onasch submitted her citizenship application in January 2021, which she said, under penalty of perjury, that she had never voted, claimed to be a U.S. citizen “in writing or in any other way,” submitted false or misleading documentation to government officials, or committed a crime for which she hadn’t been arrested.
This, combined with a June 27, 2022 interview before a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officer, during which Onasch reaffirmed, under oath, her answers, constituted a second crime, the feds say. She was sworn in as a U.S. citizen that same day, according to the complaint.
During the naturalization ceremony, Onasch filled out a new Florida voter registration form, the complaint states. The filing includes a copy of the form, which shows Onasch answered “yes” to the first question, “Are you a citizen of the United States of America?” She then listed, among other things, her party affiliation, the Republican Party of Florida. (The complaint does not specify which candidates Onasch allegedly voted for in the past elections. On her previous voter registration forms, the boxes for birthplace, race/ethnicity, political party, and gender were left blank.)
“Poor Yalemis is crying, she’s terrified,” Joffe told The Daily Beast. “She’s a stay-at-home mom now, she’s got her own child as well as her husband’s kids. They’re just trying to make a living as a young couple, and then this thing pops up. The [FBI] agents had come to her place and dropped off a target letter, and here we are.”
Onasch appeared before a judge following her arrest last Friday, and was released on $25,000 unsecured bond. She surrendered her Cuban passport, and was ordered not to leave Central Florida except to meet with Joffe.
If convicted on both counts, Onasch faces up to six years in prison and $350,000 in fines. | US Federal Elections |
Trump’s pileup of courtroom battles isn’t looming. It’s here.
Between court dates, depositions and gag orders, Donald Trump’s legal problems are defining how he campaigns.
Donald Trump was in a New York courtroom on Tuesday morning. Again.
But he had to duck out early for a deposition in a different legal matter. Again.
Trump’s firehose of civil and criminal encumbrances is beginning to keep him off the campaign trail — and he wants everybody to know it, reinforcing the degree to which his legal travails and his political strategy are intersecting.
“I should be in Iowa now. I should be in New Hampshire now. I should be in South Carolina now, or someplace else, campaigning,” Trump groused on his way into a Manhattan courtroom, where he and his business empire are facing a $250 million civil trial over allegations of rampant fraud.
While bouncing between his in-person court appearances, Trump was also reacting to perhaps the most consequential matter of all: the details of a federal judge’s gag order that will likely shadow him deep into 2024.
Trump isn’t obligated to attend his civil proceedings — eight of them, by his own count (though it’s not clear how he arrived at that number). But he’s appeared sporadically at the New York trial, using his presence to underscore the squeeze that his legal entanglements have put on his already jammed political schedule. Showing up to court in person also allows him to casually stroll by a phalanx of TV cameras and offer up a heaping serving of inflammatory rhetoric. And when he’s on the campaign trail, he’s taken to sniping about his many courtroom adversaries, even as his lawyers are arguing on his behalf in court.
So far, the judges in Trump’s criminal cases have afforded Trump the flexibility to skip pretrial matters — a rare perk for a felony defendant. But when those cases go to trial, Trump won’t have the option of not showing up; he’ll have to sit in court for trials that could last weeks or even months during the heart of the 2024 campaign.
Trump is now entering this new phase of his public life, one that will be marked by mad dashes between campaign cattle calls and courtrooms. He has six trials scheduled between now and May, with few breaks between cases. His civil fraud trial, for example, is expected to continue through Dec. 22, and his next trial, in a defamation lawsuit brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, is scheduled to begin just three weeks later.
Three of the six scheduled trials are criminal, not civil, meaning Trump will have to jet to courthouses in Washington, D.C., New York and Florida, even as the Republican presidential primary race enters a heated phase next spring. A fourth criminal trial he will face in Georgia has yet to be scheduled.
And even when he’s not physically in court, proceedings that center on Trump will be an ever-present split screen:
— Trump was due to sit for a two-hour deposition Tuesday afternoon in the civil lawsuits brought by former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, challenging the circumstances of their forced departures from the bureau. (Trump is not a defendant in those lawsuits, but Strzok and Page allege that Trump’s disparaging remarks about them contributed to the bureau’s decision to force them out.)
— In Atlanta, two Trump co-defendants charged with a sweeping conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election begin trial on Monday.
— Back in New York, Carroll’s defamation case is set to go to trial on Jan. 15. It will be Trump’s second time facing off against Carroll, who already won a $5 million verdict against him earlier this year.
— In Florida, Trump is fighting to postpone his criminal case, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, over obstruction of justice and alleged retention of classified documents. The case is slated for trial on May 20.
— And Trump is facing murky timetables for criminal trials in Georgia and New York brought by local prosecutors, each of which will require significant litigation. (The New York criminal trial, stemming from Trump’s hush money payments to a porn star, is scheduled for March 25, but that date may change now that Trump’s federal case on election subversion has been scheduled for next March as well.)
Trump said Tuesday, as he often does without offering specific evidence, that his legal woes are entirely the product of his political enemies, intent on derailing his reelection bid.
“That’s why they’re doing this. It is all coming out of Washington,” the former president said. “I have other trials. We’re being railroaded.”
Some of Trump’s legal obligations are of his own making. He has peppered his perceived adversaries with lawsuits that have advanced at varying speeds. One of them, against his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, had moved so quickly that Trump was slated to sit for a deposition earlier this month. At first, he argued for the deposition to be postponed, saying he wanted to attend the civil fraud trial in New York. Then, rather than submit to questioning from Cohen’s lawyer, Trump dropped the suit, vowing to refile it at a less hectic time.
During Tuesday morning’s appearance, Trump called New York Attorney General Tish James, whose office brought the civil fraud lawsuit against him and who also attended court Tuesday, a “radical lunatic” and “horrible.”
Trump has already drawn a limited gag order from the judge overseeing the civil fraud case, Justice Arthur Engoron, who barred Trump from making comments about the judge’s staff after Trump posted a social media attack on the judge’s principal law clerk. Trump posted the attack after sitting practically face-to-face with the law clerk in court for several hours.
That attack featured in a more substantial gag order imposed Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal case in which Trump is charged with orchestrating multiple conspiracies to subvert the 2020 election. Chutkan’s gag order prohibited Trump from unleashing his usual brand of invective against prosecutors, court employees or witnesses.
Over the protestations of his attorneys, who complained that Trump needs free rein to rebuke his critics amid his campaign for office, Chutkan emphasized that Trump’s status as a felony defendant would at times supersede his other role as presumptive Republican nominee for president.
As he arrived at the New York trial Tuesday, Trump railed against the new gag order, portraying it as another attempt to knee-cap him in the presidential race.
“When they take away my right to speak, I won’t be able to speak like I’m speaking to you,” the former president said, despite the fact that the gag order was already in place as he addressed the media there.
“The judge said, basically, I don’t have a right to speak. And I’m the No. 1 candidate, leading the Republicans by 55 to 60 points. … I’m being restricted. My speech has been taken away from me. I’m the candidate that’s running for office, and I’m not allowed to speak,” Trump complained. | US Political Corruption |
The Supreme Court struck down President Biden‘s student debt forgiveness plan, which would have cancelled up to $20,000 in loan debt for eligible borrowers, on the final day of the term Friday. Biden shortly after said in a statement that “this fight is not over.”
In remarks Friday afternoon, Biden touted other policies he said have helped student borrowers and laid out further plans he said are consistent with the Supreme Court ruling.
Biden said he’d ground the next effort in the Higher Education Act, which he said will allow the administration to “compromise, weigh or release loans under certain circumstances.” Biden said “it’s gonna take longer, but in my view, it’s the best path that remains[.]”
Biden also said the Department of Education won’t refer borrowers with missed payments to credit agencies for one year, calling this a temporary “on-ramp repayment program.”
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority earlier Friday that the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act, which the administration said justified its forgiveness program, allows the Education secretary “to ‘waive or modify’ existing statutory or regulatory provisions applicable to financial assistance programs under the Education Act, not to rewrite that statute from the ground up.”
Learn more about the Supreme Court decision here.
Biden first announced the plan in August of last year. In addition to court challenges, it faced pushback in Congress, which passed a measure to overturn the plan earlier this month. Biden vetoed the measure.
Biden on Friday also railed against Republicans who opposed the debt forgiveness program.
In response to a reporter’s question whether he gave borrowers false hope with his initial debt relief plan, Biden punted the blame back to Republicans.
“I didn’t give borrowers false hope. But Republicans snatched away the hope they were given, and it’s real. Real hope,” he replied. | SCOTUS |
Donald Trump's legal team has argued against an attempt to have him thrown off the presidential ballot in Colorado in 2024 by suggesting the wording of the U.S. Constitution's insurrection clause does not apply to him.
The Colorado Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal on a lawsuit filed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) watchdog group and Republican figures, who argue that Trump's actions on January 6, 2021, violated Section Three of the 14th Amendment and therefore he should be prohibited from running for the White House again.
The section states a person who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" after taking an oath of office to support the Constitution should be barred from running for office again. In a previous ruling, lower court judge Sarah B. Wallace said that Trump had "engaged in insurrection" on January 6, the day of the Capitol riot, but should remain on Colorado's primary ballot as the wording of the 14th Amendment does not specifically mention preventing people from running for the presidency.
In their appeal against the Colorado lawsuit, Trump's lawyers reiterated that the wording of Section Three does not apply to people running for president and that Trump technically did not swear an oath to "support" the Constitution. Instead, during his January 2017 inauguration, Trump swore to "preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution during his role as president.
"The framers excluded the office of President from Section Three purposefully," Trump's legal team wrote. "Section Three does not apply, because the presidency is not an office 'under the United States,' the president is not an 'officer of the United States,' and President Trump did not take an oath 'to support the Constitution of the United States.'"
Newsweek reached out to Trump's legal team via email for comment.
The argument that Trump did not support the Constitution in his oath has been criticized on social media.
"Wow in a legal proceeding Trump is now arguing he didn't violate the 14th Amendment by inciting the Jan 6 insurrection because he 'never took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States.' This treacherous criminal is head of the Republican Party," Democratic New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Tristan Snell, a lawyer and former assistant attorney general for New York state, wrote: "Donald Trump is arguing the president is not an 'officer of the United States' — and so he can't be disqualified from office under the 14th Amendment for his involvement in the January 6 insurrection. Yes, you read that correctly. This is how bad his legal arguments are."
Former federal and state prosecutor Eric Lisann posted: "Crazy as it sounds Trump made that exact same argument to the Colorado trial judge and somehow it is the only argument the judge agreed with him on."
Trump, the front-runner in the GOP presidential primary, has denied all wrongdoing in connection to the January 6 attack and has described attempts to prevent him from running for office again by citing the 14th Amendment as a "trick" to prevent him winning the 2024 election.
Geoffrey Blue, a Colorado-based attorney for Trump, previously used the same argument as to why the 14th Amendment cannot be cited to stop Trump from the presidency again in an October 9 filing to try to have the lawsuit thrown out.
"Because the framers chose to define the group of people subject to Section Three by an oath to 'support' the Constitution of the United States, and not by an oath to 'preserve, protect and defend' the Constitution, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment never intended for it to apply to the President," Blue wrote.
"If they wanted to include the President in the reach of Section Three, they could have done so by expanding the language of which type of oath would bring an 'officer under the strictures of Section Three. They did not do so, and no number of semantic arguments will change this simple fact. As such, Section Three does not apply to President Trump."
Oral arguments are scheduled to begin on December 6 after the Colorado Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal on Wallace's decision that Trump can remain on the ballot in the Centennial State.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy and the courts. He joined Newsweek in February 2018 after spending several years working at the International Business Times U.K., where he predominantly reported on crime, politics and current affairs. Prior to this, he worked as a freelance copywriter after graduating from the University of Sunderland in 2010. Languages: English.
You can get in touch with Ewan by emailing [email protected].
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, domestic policy... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here. | US Federal Elections |
What to know
- Donald Trump surrendered at an Atlanta jail tonight after being indicted in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' election interference probe.
- The former president's bond has been set at $200,000. It's the first time his release conditions in any of his indictments have included a cash bond.
- Trump faces 13 felony counts for his scheme to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, including one count of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
- Many of his 18 co-defendants have already been booked, including lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell. The rest of them have until noon tomorrow to surrender.
On tarmac, Trump trots out same old false equivalence
Speaking at Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta, after being booked in the Fulton County jail, Trump repeated what’s been the go-to defense for him and his supporters.
“When you challenge an election you should be able to challenge an election," he said, adding: "And I should have every right to do that. As you know, you have many people that you’ve been watching over the years do the same thing, whether it’s Hillary Clinton or Stacey Abrams or many others.”
Of course, neither Clinton nor Abrams nor anyone else in modern American history has sought to overturn the Electoral College. No one else has encouraged officials to create alternate slates of so-called fake electors. No one else has asked the governor of a state to “find 11,780 votes.” No one else pressured a vice president to intervene in the electoral vote count. And no one else encouraged his supporters to come to Washington the day of the count and then sat on his hands for hours after they invaded the Capitol.
Other than those and many other differences, though, it’s “the same thing.”
Here's Trump's mug shot
The Fulton County Sheriff's Office has released Trump's mug shot.
Yikes: There was a bomb threat at the Fulton County courthouse
The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office confirmed to NBC News that there was a bomb threat called in against the county courthouse this evening. It doesn’t seem like there’s been anything found, but still a major yikes given the other threats against judges and the like we’ve seen in recent weeks. (And it’s worth noting that Trump was at the county jail today, not the courthouse.)
The lack of pro-Trump trouble shows why these indictments are important
As my colleague Hayes Brown noted, once again security measures around a Trump indictment went untested (fortunately). In each instance, turnout for pro-Trump protests has fallen short of expectations. To be clear, prominent MAGA personalities have called for peaceful protests (though many did the same before Jan. 6, 2021).
But once again, pro-Trump diehards have also explained away low attendance by claiming that government agents would infiltrate pro-Trump protests in “false flag” operations to make the president’s supporters look bad.
In other words, the lack of protests has proved MSNBC columnist Frank Figliuzzi’s hypothesis from after Trump’s first indictment: "The high-profile prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters may be a deterrent to future violence.”
It’s not unreasonable to expect the indictments related to the 2020 election interference to have a similar effect — for now at least. Should Trump win in 2024, or somehow otherwise avoid conviction on any of these charges (always a possibility), then perhaps those who interfered in 2020 will be emboldened in the future. But for now, the most anti-democratic elements in American politics seem at least moderately cowed.
Once again, protests fizzle around a Trump indictment
It feels like this has become a pattern. Trump is indicted, he shows up to be processed, and outside there’s nothing but a handful of supporters to cheer him on.
His brief appearance in Georgia today has been no exception, with crowds smaller than those that turned out when he was arraigned in Florida, a much more favorable turf for him. So much for the chaos in the streets that Trump once promised should he ever be charged with a crime.
Beware of fake mug shots
It's been confirmed Trump had his mug shot taken at the Fulton County jail tonight, but it’s not the one you might be seeing online right now. The sheriff's office hasn't yet released the photo to the public.
At least one fake mug shot of Trump has already begun circulating. One possible tell is to compare his suit and tie to confirmed images of Trump en route to the jail tonight. We’ll have the official mug shot as soon as it’s released here.
Trump’s fundraising pitch around Georgia arrest is a little different
Trump has predictably already sent out a fundraising appeal based on his surrender at the Fulton County jail tonight.
Most of the email sent from the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, which raises money for both Trump's presidential campaign and his PAC, is his typical kvetching about how unfair the system is to him before trying to get his supporters to fork over more cash. A good chunk of the loot funneled to his PAC will then be spent paying for Trump and his allies’ legal defense.
But there’s one line that stood out to me in this particular email: “If you are doing poorly due to the sinister people in control of our country right now, don’t even think about donating!”
That’s interesting on two fronts. Trump has never seemed to have any qualms with milking his fans for cash before, raising millions in the aftermath of each of his indictments. Back in 2020, he sent out hundreds of fundraising emails after the election, raking in enough cash based on lies to make former prosecutors wonder if he might catch a wire fraud charge.
But in noting that some people might not be able to afford to keep on giving, he’s providing an out for those who really can’t keep sponsoring a billionaire down on his luck. And by framing any hesitancy as a consequence of Biden’s economic policies, he’s making sure that they don’t blame him for any lack of discretionary income they might have right now.
The jail where Trump just surrendered is under a civil rights investigation
As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow just mentioned on air, the jail where Trump was booked tonight is known for other not-so-laudable reasons. Last month, the Justice Department announced a civil rights investigation into the Fulton County jail.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement at the time, “We launched this investigation into the Fulton County Jail based on serious allegations of unsafe, unsanitary living conditions at the jail, excessive force and violence within the jail, discrimination against incarcerated individuals with mental health issues, and failure to provide adequate medical care to incarcerated individuals.”
“In the last few weeks alone,” reports NBC News’ Rebecca Shabad, “several inmates have died, including a 40-year-old man who was found unresponsive in his cell and another man, 66, who was also found unresponsive inside a medical unit cell.”
One incident cited by the DOJ was the death of 35-year-old Lashawn Thompson in his cell, “covered in insects and filth.”
Of course, it’s incredibly unlikely that Trump caught a glimpse of those deplorable conditions. But it’s the closest he’s ever come to a dark reality too common in America’s carceral system.
Trump mug shot was taken, NBC News reports
Trump had his mug shot taken, a source familiar with the booking process told NBC News. A historic day for America indeed.
Minutes after arriving, Trump is booked and released
And just like that, the former president has been arrested for the fourth time. Trump already paid his $200,000 bond before arriving to jail. But just minutes after arriving to the jail, he was processed and quickly released.
He was likely fingerprinted, as he was for his other indictments. But it remains unclear whether a mug shot was taken like it has been for the other defendants in this case. | US Political Corruption |
(Bloomberg) -- The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged on Monday that SolarWinds Corp. defrauded investors by downplaying security risks ahead of a hack of its software that rippled through computer systems across the US government and corporate America.
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The SEC also accused the top information security official at SolarWinds, Tim Brown, of breaking securities rules in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan. The action is the first time the regulator has sued a computer security executive for a cybersecurity-related issue.
The SolarWinds hack was among the worst cyber breaches in history, affecting hundreds of public companies and numerous government agencies. The motives behind the breach remain unclear. The US blamed Russia and sanctioned dozens of entities and officials for the hack. Russia denied any involvement.
“We are disappointed by the SEC’s unfounded charges related to a Russian cyberattack on an American company and are deeply concerned this action will put our national security at risk,” SolarWinds said in a statement. “The SEC’s determination to manufacture a claim against us and our CISO is another example of the agency’s overreach and should alarm all public companies and committed cybersecurity professionals across the country.”
A lawyer for Tim Brown said his client performed his duties “with diligence, integrity and distinction.”
“Mr. Brown has worked tirelessly and responsibly to continuously improve the Company’s cybersecurity posture throughout his time at SolarWinds, and we look forward to defending his reputation and correcting the inaccuracies in the SEC’s complaint,” wrote Alec Koch, an attorney at King & Spalding.
Texas-based SolarWinds is exploring options including a potential sale, people familiar with the matter said last week.
Although the hack was disclosed in December 2020, Russian state-sponsored hackers breached SolarWinds networks as early as January 2019, according to investigations into the hack. When customers downloaded an update to a popular piece of SolarWinds software, they inadvertently installed a digital backdoor that allowed the hackers access to their networks.
The breach was considered particularly dangerous because of the sophisticated methods used by the attackers and because they lurked in victim’s networks for weeks or months undetected. However, many questions about the hacking campaign remain unanswered, including the types of data viewed or stolen by the attackers.
The SEC alleged that SolarWinds and Brown were warned of weak cybersecurity within the company but that they painted a far rosier picture to investors. The agency said that the company and Brown were regularly alerted to security deficiencies, with Brown writing in an internal presentation in 2018 that the “current state of security leaves us in a very vulnerable state for our critical assets.”
“Rather than address these vulnerabilities, SolarWinds and Brown engaged in a campaign to paint a false picture of the company’s cyber controls environment, thereby depriving investors of accurate material information,” Gurbir Grewal, the SEC’s enforcement chief, said in a statement.
--With assistance from Andrew Martin.
(Updates with company and SEC comments starting in fourth paragraph.)
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©2023 Bloomberg L.P. | US Political Corruption |
WASHINGTON -- A Republican measure overturning President Joe Biden's student loan cancellation plan passed the Senate on Thursday and now awaits an expected veto.
The vote was 52-46, with support from Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana as well as Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent. The resolution was approved last week by the GOP-controlled House by a 218-203 vote.
Biden has pledged to keep in place his commitment to cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loans for 43 million people. The legislation adds to Republican criticism of the plan, which was halted in November in response to lawsuits from conservative opponents.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in February in a challenge to Biden's move, with the conservative majority seemingly ready to sink the plan. A decision is expected in the coming weeks.
“The president’s student loan schemes do not ‘forgive’ debt, they just shift the burden from those who chose to take out loans onto those who never went to college or already fulfilled their commitment to pay off their loans,” said Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, lead sponsor of the Senate push.
The legislation aims to revoke Biden’s cancellation plan and curtail the Education Department’s ability to cancel student loans in the future. It would rescind Biden’s latest extension of a payment pause that began early in the pandemic. It would retroactively add several months of student loan interest that was waived by Biden’s extension.
The GOP challenge invoked the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to undo recently enacted executive branch regulations. Passing a resolution requires a simple majority in both chambers, but overriding a presidential veto requires two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate, and Republicans aren't expected to have enough support to do that.
"If Republicans were to get their way and pass this bill into law, people across the country would have relief they are counting on snatched away from them,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
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The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | US Federal Policies |
January 23, 2023 10:53 AM Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen poured cold water on the idea of minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin to bypass the country’s debt limit. The United States hit its statutory debt limit on Thursday, and the Treasury began taking “extraordinary measures” to prevent the government from defaulting on its obligations. Congress must now raise the debt ceiling or turn to another solution in order to stave off a default. FEDERAL DEBT LIMIT: WHAT TO KNOW AS REPUBLICANS AND BIDEN PREPARE FOR BATTLE One such idea is a trillion-dollar platinum coin. The idea centers on an obscure law that allows the Treasury to mint a commemorative coin made of platinum in any denomination. In theory, the Treasury could mint such a coin with a $1 trillion face value and simply deposit it in the Treasury’s account at the Federal Reserve. The Treasury could then draw on the funds without having to issue new debt. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen listens during a meeting with President Joe Biden and business leaders about the debt limit in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021, in Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP) Yellen, though, said the idea is unworkable. “It truly is not by any means to be taken as a given that the Fed would do it, and I think especially with something that’s a gimmick,” she said during an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “The Fed is not required to accept it, there’s no requirement on the part of the Fed. It’s up to them what to do,” she added. While the idea has its proponents, many detractors have highlighted the risks of using an obscure law to side-step Congress. Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, recently told the Washington Examiner that the Treasury minting a platinum coin doesn’t sit right with her. “It feels like the kind of thing that a joke government would be doing,” she said. Yellen has also pushed back on the idea of debt prioritization — that is, paying some bills while allowing others to go unpaid. Prioritization by the Treasury has been contemplated before during other debt limit showdowns but has always been rejected as unworkable. Yellen warned that any form of prioritization would certainly lead to economic calamity and a recession. “Failure on the part of the United States to meet any obligation — whether its debt holders, to members of our military or to Social Security recipients — is effectively a default,” she said on Friday. Despite Yellen’s resistance, Republicans have privately been crafting a payment prioritization plan if Congress doesn’t agree to raise the debt ceiling, the Washington Post reported. House Republicans could call for the Treasury to make payments to other high-priority obligations such as Medicare, the military, Social Security, and benefits for veterans — although hundreds of other government programs would languish and such a move would undoubtedly roil markets. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER The U.S. has never defaulted on its obligations in the history of these fiscal showdowns. Republicans see the deadline as an opportunity to exact concessions from the Biden administration and Democrats. Yellen has previously said the measures would be sufficient to carry the U.S. through early June, setting up a rough and uncertain deadline for the congressional battle. | US Federal Policies |
Elitist student loan bailout turns blind eye to struggling Americans
Last Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two challenges to the Biden administration’s student debt cancellation plan, which would forgive federal student loans for 40 million Americans at a cost of $430 billion. The Court is considering whether the administration has the authority to cancel the debt and whether it followed the proper rule-making process for setting up the program.
The Court cannot address another troubling issue in play, but it should be on the mind of every American struggling in today’s economy — the elitist redistribution of wealth inherent in President Biden’s program.
A recent study published by the Brookings Institution shows that enrollment in post-secondary education is significantly higher among students from wealthier families. Nine out of 10 high school freshman from families with incomes in the top 20 percent enrolled in higher education within 18 months of graduation — compared to just half of those in the bottom 20 percent.
In other words, the college-going population disproportionately consists of people from high-income families, despite decades of attempts to create equal access to higher education. Total debt amounts follow the same pattern. According to NerdWallet, 65 percent of student loan debt is held by Americans with incomes higher than the national average. Just 12 percent of student debt is held by the poorest Americans. Any student debt forgiveness that happens today will largely go to the top half of society — at the expense of everyone else.
The White House website notes that federal aid has not kept pace with the rising cost of attending college and cites that as an argument for the new forgiveness program. But the program does nothing to rein in those costs or hold colleges accountable for the product they offer. Colleges are failing if their students can’t get a job that covers the cost of their college loans. What’s more, with retroactive and ever-increasing federal aid, which is part of President Biden’s overall plan, the customer is no longer the student but the government itself.
As the government becomes the main customer for colleges, disadvantaged Americans will not realize the promised benefits of higher education, even if it is more available. If institutions have little market incentive to make sure students obtain high-paying jobs after school, they are likely to skimp on preparing students for the workforce.
Instead, colleges seeking revenue will focus on ancillary services that attract students and the federal dollars attached to them. We are already seeing this cycle play out with excessive administrative bloat at higher education institutions with a wide range of non-academic roles like “success managers” and “student accountability” workers — which may sound enticing to young adults but don’t translate into skills that land jobs.
These services, which add little to a student’s education, don’t come cheap. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the 2021 median pay of a higher education administrator as $96,910 per year, or 136 percent of the same year’s median household income. Student loan forgiveness is also paying these salaries, at the expense of Americans producing more and earning far less.
Making it possible for more Americans to attend college is a laudable goal. But we will never be able to achieve it by spending our resources on retroactive grants to Americans who were already in the best position to afford higher education and now are most likely to have high paying jobs. Furthermore, if colleges don’t feel the pressure to prepare their graduates for the most lucrative jobs, the teaching of in-demand skills is likely to decline. Does it matter whether college is affordable if it isn’t valuable?
President Biden must have felt pressure to deliver on his campaign promise to forgive student debt, especially in the context of his dismal approval ratings. But his program that funnels money to a largely privileged group is elitist and counter to the interest of the country as a whole. It is too bad the Supreme Court won’t be delivering a verdict on that point.
Erin Norman is the Lee Family Fellow and the senior messaging strategist at State Policy Network. | SCOTUS |
When Treasury could start missing payments on social security, vet benefits and more
The country technically doesn’t miss interest payments until mid-June. But once it runs out of borrowing power, the government will likely miss checks for critical items like Social Security, veterans benefits, federal salaries and more.
The U.S. already risks economic calamity if Congress and the White House can’t pass a debt deal by June 1. The devastation actually gets worse as time goes on.
Technically, the country’s interest payments on the debt aren’t due until the 15th of each month, a full two weeks after Treasury has warned the nation’s cash could run out. But before those interest payments are due in mid-June, if the nation breaches the debt ceiling the Treasury Department would first miss critical government benefits like Social Security, federal salaries, tax refunds and more.
Once the U.S. starts missing payments, “things go from being bad, to worse, to catastrophic” in a matter of days, said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics.
While a default is predicted to be a doomsday scenario that would forever undermine the reputation of the U.S. as a dependable borrower, the leadup to that critical failure would deal its own damage, compounded each day as people potentially miss checks, investors get skittish about shouldering U.S. debt and the nation’s credit rating risks an embarrassing downgrade.
Here are our best answers to frequently asked questions about how the coming weeks could go, if President Joe Biden and congressional Republicans can’t land a bipartisan agreement.
How is the X-date different from ‘default’?
The X-date is the day the Treasury Department expects to run out of all cash on hand and fully exhaust all available “extraordinary measures,” the accounting maneuvers federal officials are allowed to deploy in order to temporarily avoid default. Secretary Janet Yellen continues to warn that it is “highly likely” that date will hit in early June if Congress doesn’t act.
With no borrowing power left to make payments of any kind, the Treasury Department would first begin to default on its promises to send out money to regular Americans, companies that do work for the government, state and local governments that get money from federal agencies.
And just like a mortgage or car loan, missing interest and principal payments on the national debt would cause the U.S. to default on its loans.
How would Treasury handle the inability to make payments?
The Biden administration has already said that delaying some payments and not others would be unfair to average Americans and likely technically impossible. Rather, the department is preparing a backup plan in which it could delay all payments for any given day, waiting to make them until there’s enough money to do so, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Such a system will compound on itself, with the economy and Americans feeling the pain as payments are potentially delayed for longer and longer periods of time.
When would the economy start to suffer?
Once Treasury is unable to pay the bills on time, markets will start to react immediately, Zandi said.
“I think at that point markets — stock market, bond market, more broadly the foreign exchange market — will start to sell off, thinking, well, a recession is dead ahead,” he said. “The economy is already very fragile.”
The situation is expected to worsen exponentially over time. “If it’s a one-day breach, it’s one thing,” Zandi said. “If it’s a week, we’re definitely in a recession. If it’s more than a few weeks, it’s a deep downturn.”
When would average Americans start to feel the pinch?
If the Treasury Department fully exhausts its borrowing power before Congress acts, billions of dollars in payments wouldn’t go out on June 1 and June 2 to people who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits, as well as pensions for military or civil service retirees.
By the second week of June, the federal government would have blown past well over $100 billion in missed payments. Those include SNAP benefits (also known as food stamps), education programs and tax refunds, plus payments to hospitals and health care providers that see people covered by Medicare and Medicaid.
Salaries for federal workers and payments to defense contractors would also be on hold. Unlike during a government shutdown, even non-emergency workers would still have to do their jobs, but their pay could get delayed for weeks.
Even before the Treasury Department misses payments, the retirement accounts and investments of regular Americans would likely take a substantial hit as markets teeter. At the same time, interest rates are expected to skyrocket, including for credit cards and mortgages.
When would credit-rating agencies ding the U.S. score?
A credit downgrade could happen before the U.S. actually runs out of cash. Fitch Ratings has already put the U.S. on notice for a potential demotion from the nation’s AAA rating as a reliable borrower, citing the “brinkmanship” around the borrowing cap, among other issues.
“We believe risks have risen that the debt limit will not be raised or suspended before the X-date and consequently that the government could begin to miss payments on some of its obligations,” the ratings service said in a statement this week.
There’s also precedent for such a downgrade before economic catastrophe actually strikes. During the 2011 debt ceiling standoff between Republicans and former President Barack Obama, Standard & Poor’s dinged the U.S. credit rating for the first time, even after both sides had struck a major budget deal to avert default, dropping it to one notch below the prized AAA rating. The ratings service similarly cited “political brinksmanship” around the debt ceiling.
But there’s a “pretty high bar” for issuing a downgrade, Zandi cautioned. Moody’s, for example, probably wouldn’t diminish the U.S. rating unless there is actually a missed payment on the federal debt, he said. | US Federal Policies |
Secret Service officer fired weapon in Georgetown amid vehicle break-in
A Secret Service agent fired a weapon in Georgetown after three individuals were seen breaking into a government vehicle late Sunday night, according to the agency.
Secret Service agents approached three individuals breaking a window on a parked and unoccupied government vehicle at about 11:58 p.m. Sunday, spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement. He said one of the federal agents discharged their weapon during the encounter but that it is believed that no one was struck.
The three suspects fled the scene immediately in a red vehicle, Guglielmi said. He added that there was no threat to any of the protectees the agents were assigned to, noting that the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and the Secret Service will continue to investigate the incident.
The Associated Press reported that the agents were assigned to protect President Biden’s granddaughter, Naomi Biden, while out in Georgetown that night, citing a law enforcement official speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The Secret Service did not say in the statement who the agents were assigned to.
This incident comes as crime, especially carjackings, has increased in D.C. over the past year. There have been more than 800 carjackings and 6,112 motor vehicle thefts in D.C. so far this year, according to D.C. crime data.
The Hill has reached out to the Metropolitan Police Department for further comment.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Americans were bombarded with political text messages in the months leading up to the midterm elections last year, even more than they were during the 2020 presidential race, something experts attribute to a Supreme Court decision that eliminated the requirement to obtain consent when sending mass texts.More than 15 billion political texts were sent in 2022 according to call-blocking service Robokiller — about 50 messages for every phone in the country. Few states have taken action that would curtail this, and congressional efforts have been unsuccessful.“We are seeing a lot more brazenness in these marketing, SMS and political messages that are not necessarily illegal, but are approaching the volumes that people are getting completely overwhelmed by,” said Giulia Porter, Robokiller’s vice president.Political texts — messages asking for donations, voting reminders and volunteer opportunities — are an increasingly important part of outreach strategy for campaigns, so much so that Americans received approximately 39 texts for every political call in 2022.Political texts spiked last fall during the run-up to November’s midterm election. But instead of falling in December, after most races were settled outside of Georgia’s Senate runoff, the number of texts actually increased, peaking at 3.7 billion messages. Republican campaigns and groups sent the bulk of political texts sent in 2022, Robokiller’s data shows. GOP campaigns sent nearly 12 billion texts, compared to 3 billion texts for Democratic campaigns and groups.Most voters don’t have to do anything to wind up on political text lists. Contact information for millions of voters has already been collected into vast databases known as data exchanges, which are managed by brokers that sell access to campaigns. The data itself, according to the brokers, is collected from public records and other sources.Political parties have long used public records as the foundation of their voter outreach efforts. But as the search for highly refined political data has escalated, campaigns have increasingly relied on national voter databases created by these brokers. America’s major political parties have an affiliated political data broker operating outside of the regulated campaign funding environment — Democratic Data Exchange for the Democratic party and Data Trust for the GOP — that collects data from state and local parties. Both Data Trust and Democratic Data Exchange declined requests for comment.Many states allow these companies to access voter registration records — including a voter’s name, residence, political party, voting history, phone numbers and dates of birth — either at no cost or for a low fee. Once the campaigns have your contact info, they don’t need your consent to contact you, as an April 2021 Supreme Court ruling loosened consent requirements for automated calls and texts. In its ruling, the court narrowed the definition of an autodialer, a category of tool used to make automated calls and text messages. In doing so, experts say the ruling exempted the most commonly used mass texting tools from the consent requirements.“The result of the ruling was that we now have unlimited automated telephone calls and texts,” said Margot Saunders, senior counsel for the National Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit that advocates for the economic well-being of low-income people.As the number of texts to voters’ phones has skyrocketed, so too have the complaints. Data from the Federal Communications Commission shows that unwanted political texts made up the largest single group of text message complaints in 2022.“I’ve definitely received more texts over calls in the last election cycle,” said Lauren Schneider, a project manager at a startup in State College, Pennsylvania. “My phone does a pretty good job of sending it to spam, but they often get through using a local number. This drives me insane because I think it’s going to be something important, and it’s someone looking to ask me for donations, or to volunteer.” Schneider said she wasn’t sure how she ended up on the text message lists. “I didn’t ever knowingly opt into this political barrage.”The potential for limitless messaging combined with a sophisticated information harvesting capabilities — one where campaigns have access to large amounts of voter contact information— has negative consequences for those on the receiving end.Porter, from Robokiller, called the sharing of data across campaigns concerning, “You think you’re donating to one party or one campaign or even just one super PAC, and then all of a sudden you’re getting so many other messages,” she said. “It has been frustrating for a lot of people who didn’t want this organization to share [their] phone number to a million other places,” she added.Even if they don’t recall consenting to political texts, voters have limited options for revoking it. Political texts are not subject to the federal Do Not Call registry, which allows consumers to opt out of telemarketing calls and text messages. Instead, those with the time and inclination may try to have their information removed from individual campaign contact lists.Since 2019, both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have introduced bills that would have reformed how data brokers request and maintain voter data. But none of these bills have been enacted, so the data broker industry is not currently regulated by any federal law. California, Nevada and Vermont have each passed laws since 2018 giving residents the right to opt out of having voter data collected by data brokers, as well as giving residents the ability to request any collected data to be deleted.Alex FordAlex Ford is an interactive journalist at NBC News. | US Federal Elections |
Americans are getting a crash course on the country’s borrowing limit, as a high-stakes standoff on Capitol Hill dominates national attention.
Last month, the Treasury Department announced it’s implementing “extraordinary measures” to keep the nation from defaulting on its debt, after it hit the roughly $31.4 trillion limit set by Congress more than a year ago.
The Treasury said the measures are expected to give Congress until at least June to reach a deal to raise the limit, which caps how much debt the government can take on fulfill its spending, and prevent what would be a first-ever default – an outcome Republicans and Democrats are hoping to avoid.
Below are just five reasons why the US can’t afford to default.
Recession is almost certain
Recession fears have already been on the rise for months, as economists and lawmakers have paid close eye to the Federal Reserve’s ongoing interest rate hikes in response to high inflation.
But the threat of a drastic slowdown would rise exponentially if the nation were to default later this year, experts say.
“It would affect lending and borrowing and financial markets,” New York University economics professor Mark Gertler explained, adding that combination of less borrowing and less spending, would trigger recession.
The U.S. economy would also crater as it loses billions of dollars in federal spending that the government can no longer follow through on, including crucial social safety net programs for millions of Americans.
Federal benefits in danger
No one is sure which obligations could fall to the wayside if the Treasury is unable to fulfill all of its financial duties.
Republicans have proposed legislation seeking to prioritize certain duties as a backup plan. Proposals floated by some would put handling Social Security benefits and Treasury bonds at the top of the list, along with military salaries and veterans benefits, according to Semafor.
But that doesn’t mean everyone would get paid—including thousands of federal employees.
“If the government could legally and technologically do that, it means that more people wouldn’t get whatever is not on that list,” Wessel said, pointing to IRS refunds that could also be impacted by a default, or even “paying the FBI.”
“Some obligation of the federal government is not going to be met,” he added. “And that would be a landmark and it would always raise the question in the future, ‘Are these guys going to do this again?’”
Interest rates spike
Multiple experts warn the nation could see higher interest rates on its debt as a result of default.
U.S. Treasury bonds are currently regarded as among the world’s safest assets, affording the government a reputation as a reliable borrower on the global stage. And that standing allows the government to borrow more money to fulfill its financial obligations.
“We benefit as Americans from the fact that our government can spend more than it takes in revenues to do all the things we want the government to do,” David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution, explained.
“We benefit from the fact that, as a society, we don’t save as much as other societies and they lend us their savings by buying Treasury bonds.”
But if the nation defaults, Wessel and other experts warn the U.S. would be seen as less trustworthy borrower, and have to pay more on its interest.
The headaches wouldn’t stop there and depend on how long a default lasts. Wessel warned that the effects would rush across the economy and even into consumers’ pockets.
“If you look at the bond market, when yields in the bond market go up, mortgage rates go up,” Wessel said. “So, everybody might have to pay a little more to borrow.”
Inflation could lower – but at a steep price
Experts say inflation could also lower, but not in the way most would hope.
Some say prices would fall as a result of a slower economy in such circumstances as demand weakens, but not if they were already hindered by shortages.
“It’s like saying, ‘Well, the good news is your arm doesn’t hurt anymore because we amputated it,’” Wessel said.
“It wouldn’t do anything to speed the semiconductors going to the auto industry or deal with the fact that hotels are raising prices because their electric bills are going up and they can’t hire workers,” he added.
Stock market takes a tumble
Stock portfolios would take a serious hit if the nation defaulted on its debt, sapping retirement accounts and draining crucial sources of revenue for major companies.
“The stock market would fall hard, credit markets would tighten up then that restricts the flow of credit,” said Greg McBride, analyst at Bankrate.com. “And that’s where the economic damage really comes into play.”
That flow of credit, McBride explained, would be restricted for other borrowers, including state and local governments, corporations and consumers, who “would be increasingly locked out in a tighter credit environment.”
Likelihood of a default?
Republicans and Democrats alike want to avoid a default, but are deeply divided over how to do it. .
GOP lawmakers have vowed not to vote to raise the debt ceiling without major spending cuts despite promising they would not let the U.S. default. Even so, Republicans have yet to unify behind any proposal to cut down the federal debt and are sparring over how much to cut defense spending, if at all.
At the same time, Democrats have instead pressed for a clean bill to raise the debt limit without conditions, accusing Republicans of holding the economy hostage for their partisan goals.
The battle is one of the most significant tests the newly-divided Congress faces this year. | US Federal Policies |
“Trump’s actions in the hours following the hearing … confirm his overriding interest in delaying both trials at any cost,” Department of Justice prosecutors wrote in a filing to Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida federal court. “This Court should [not] allow itself to be manipulated in this fashion.”
Prosecutors were referring to a Wednesday hearing before Cannon in which Trump’s lawyers argued that it would be impossible for them to simultaneously work on the Florida trial, which deals with Trump’s alleged retention of classified documents, and a D.C. trial dealing with 2020 election interference, both of which are being prosecuted by Smith’s team. As of Thursday, the D.C. trial is set to begin in early March, and the Florida case is slated to kickoff in May, both of which are in the heart of primary season.
Cannon seemed amenable to Trump’s pleas on Wednesday, saying, “I’m having a hard time seeing how this work can be accomplished in this compressed period of time.”
However, prosecutors argued in their Thursday filing that Trump’s lawyers never told Cannon that they were planning to submit a filing on Wednesday night in D.C. court asking for that trial to be delayed, as well. In the Wednesday night filing, Trump’s team insisted he shouldn’t have to face trial in D.C. while that court considers his bid to dismiss the case in its entirety.
Since Trump’s quartet of criminal indictments arrived in short succession earlier this year, the former president’s attorneys have tried a bit of everything to have trial dates pushed beyond the 2024 election, for which Trump remains the Republican frontrunner.
Their central delay tactic has been to repeatedly insist they need more time to review evidence ahead of trial—requesting delay after delay.
The latest bid by Trump’s attorneys in the D.C. case—in which Trump is accused of trying to block the transfer of power after the 2020 election—is likely a long-shot, CNN reported Thursday, because Judge Tanya Chutkan has already indicated she wants the March trial date to hold. CNN reported that Trump’s latest effort could lead to appeals, however, which could possibly push the trial back.
In Thursday’s filing, Smith’s prosecutors insisted to Cannon that a possible delay in the D.C. trial should not lead to a delay in her court.
“The trial date in the District of Columbia case should not be a determinative factor in the Court’s decision whether to modify the dates in this matter,” the filing read. | US Circuit and Appeals Courts |
Genetic testing company 23andMe announced on Friday that hackers accessed around 14,000 customer accounts in the company’s recent data breach.
In a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published Friday, the company said that, based on its investigation into the incident, it had determined that hackers had accessed 0.1% of its customer base. According to the company’s most recent annual earnings report, 23andMe has “more than 14 million customers worldwide,” which means 0.1% is around 14,000.
But the company also said that by accessing those accounts, the hackers were also able to access “a significant number of files containing profile information about other users’ ancestry that such users chose to share when opting in to 23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature.”
The company did not specify what that “significant number” of files is, nor how many of these “other users” were impacted.
23andMe did not immediately respond to a request for comment, which included questions on those numbers.
In early October, 23andMe disclosed an incident in which hackers had stolen some users’ data using a common technique known as “credential stuffing,” whereby cybercriminals hack into a victim’s account by using a known password, perhaps leaked due to a data breach on another service.
The damage, however, did not stop with the customers who had their accounts accessed. 23andMe allows users to opt into a feature called DNA Relatives. If a user opts-in to that feature, 23andMe shares some of that user’s information with others. That means that by accessing one victim’s account, hackers were also able to see the personal data of people connected to that initial victim.
23andMe said in the filing that for the initial 14,000 users, the stolen data “generally included ancestry information, and, for a subset of those accounts, health-related information based upon the user’s genetics.” For the other subset of users, 23andMe only said that the hackers stole “profile information” and then posted unspecified “certain information” online.
TechCrunch analyzed the published sets of stolen data by comparing it to known public genealogy records, including websites published by hobbyists and genealogists. Although the sets of data were formatted differently, they contained some of the same unique user and genetic information that matched genealogy records published online years earlier.
The owner of one genealogy website, for which some of their relatives’ information was exposed in 23andMe’s data breach, told TechCrunch that they have about 5,000 relatives discovered through 23andMe, and said our “correlations might take that into account.”
News of the data breach surfaced online in October when hackers advertised the alleged data of one million users of Jewish Ashkenazi descent, and 100,000 Chinese users on a well-known hacking forum. Roughly two weeks later, the same hacker who advertised the initial stolen user data advertised the alleged records of four million more people. The hacker was trying to sell the data of individual victims for $1 to $10.
TechCrunch found that another hacker on a different hacking forum had advertised even more allegedly stolen user data two months before the advertisement that was initially reported by news outlets in October. In that first advertisement, the hacker claimed to have 300 terabytes of stolen 23andMe user data, and asked for $50 million to sell the whole database, or between $1,000 and $10,000 for a subset of the data.
In response to the data breach, on October 10, 23andMe forced users to reset and change their passwords and encouraged them to turn on multi-factor authentication. And on November 6, the company required all users to use two-step verification, according to the new filing.
After the 23andMe breach, other DNA testing companies Ancestry and MyHeritage started mandating two-factor authentication. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
In the aggregate, the adjustments raise rates for borrowers with credit scores of 680 or above while lowering them for those with lower credit scores and lower down payments. In voting to scrap the rule, which went into effect May 1, House Republicans described the policy as another example of equity and socialism run amok.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), the legislation’s author, told the Washington Examiner earlier this week that the rule change was an “equity play to redistribute credit scores.”
Other Republican representatives piled on.
"President Biden’s recent mortgage rule is insane!" Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) tweeted. "This upside-down policy incentivizes people not to be financially responsible. Those with good credit scores should never be forced to subsidize those with bad credit scores."
But the president threw cold water on the effort by issuing a statement of administration policy firmly stating his opposition.
"The bill would inhibit the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s ability to respond to changing housing market conditions and diminish the agency’s ability to ensure the safety and soundness of the government-sponsored enterprises," reads the statement, which was released the same day as the House vote.
Rescinding the rule would also make it more difficult for the agency to serve low- and moderate-income households, the statement continues, though it does not include a veto threat.
The bill faces longer odds in the Senate, where Democrats hold a narrow majority, but may still be able to pass. At the beginning of this month, the upper chamber voted to repeal Biden's student loans plan, with Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) joining Republicans to pass the measure.
Along with the president, the situation also creates headaches for House Democrats who must go on record over controversial policies. Among the 14 Democrats who crossed party lines to vote against Biden's mortgage overhaul are Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), who often takes centrist positions, and Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), who narrowly won reelection in November in a swing district.
The Washington Examiner has reached out to Cuellar and Spanberger's offices for comment.
The White House denies that its mortgage rate overhaul will punish borrowers with high credit scores and especially that the adjustment will result in a subsidy for those with lower credit scores.
FHFA officials also point out that those with exceptionally high credit scores of 780 and above will mostly see their fees go down relative to the old scale.
Despite the defections, the vast majority of Democrats did vote to keep the new policy in place. They defend it as a way to increase housing affordability, especially amid rising average mortgage rates.
“My colleagues on the other side of the aisle appear to be more concerned about protecting the wealthy, even if it comes at the expense of those with less intergenerational wealth,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee.
The fight comes as Biden seeks to embrace his economic record, with the administration aggressively promoting the term "Bidenomics" as a good thing. Republicans say they're ready for that fight, pointing to Biden's low economic approval ratings.
Mortgage rates could be another area of vulnerability regardless of what happens with the rate overhaul.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the average rate for a 30-year mortgage rose from 2.77% the day Biden took office to 6.67% this month. | US Federal Policies |
The former attorney general of Arizona, Mark Brnovich, failed to release documents that showed his office’s investigation into the 2020 election did not find evidence of widespread fraud in the state’s most populous county.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Brnovich would not turn over public records that detailed his investigators’ findings. His successor, the Democratic attorney general Kris Mayes, released the records, which showed several reports that debunked rampant claims of election problems in Maricopa county.
Brnovich, a Republican, was running for US Senate in 2022 while his office oversaw an investigation into the 2020 election. He released two reports related to the work – one that showed just one example of a dead person voting and one “interim report” that made nebulous, unfounded criticisms of the county’s elections.
But the unreleased reports show Brnovich’s investigators did not agree with some assertions he made publicly, such as that the county did not follow proper signature verification procedures or that the county had not been responsive to his requests for information.
In an interview with the Guardian on Wednesday, Mayes said her office discovered a bunch of unfulfilled records requests upon taking over in January. She also wanted to find any potential final report for the 2020 investigation, which was not found.
Her office released two additional interim reports and an investigative summary, which are all publicly posted on the attorney general’s website now.
“This office has a solemn duty to be honest and transparent with the people of Arizona,” Mayes said. “The dark cloud cast over the 2020 and 2022 elections because of the insane conspiracy theories perpetrated by high-profile election deniers could have and should have been stopped, especially as it related to Maricopa county and its elections officials. I believe the people of Arizona had a right to know this information before the 2022 election. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”
The investigation is considered closed, though there are hundreds more documents going through the redaction process that will be released once the office has completed that process.
The office under Brnovich spent about 10,000 hours on the investigation and each of its 60 investigators spent at least some time on it, the Post reported.
Mayes said it is hard to put a dollar figure on how much that cost the state or taxpayers, but the whole effort was clearly a “distraction from the core mission of this office”.
“But I also want to say I’m incredibly proud of the work the agents and support staff who worked on these investigations did. They did so diligently, thoroughly and professionally, as they do all of their work here,” she said.
Mayes said she did not get any insight into why Brnovich did not release the information while he was in charge, saying Brnovich would need to answer that for himself. Brnovich did not respond to a request for comment.
“This kind of failure to release information to the people of Arizona is not how this office will operate moving forward under my leadership,” Mayes said. “My administration will be truthful and transparent.”
The Post report compelled elections officials throughout the state to comment on the revelations, especially those who Brnovich had previously criticized publicly.
Clint Hickman, the chairman of the Maricopa county board of supervisors, said he was “absolutely disgusted” that Brnovich concealed reports on the 2020 election and applauded Mayes for finally releasing the documents. He implored people who care about elections to read the reports.
“This was a gross misuse of his elected office and an appalling waste of taxpayer dollars, as well as a waste of the time and effort of professional investigators,” Hickman said in a statement.
He pointed to the onslaught of threats and harassment the board, elections officials and election workers have faced while false claims of impropriety in the 2020 election lingered for years.
“For three years, my colleagues have been called traitors, cheaters, and liars … and those are just the names I can print,” Hickman said. “It has been absolute hell on all of us, but I would do it again in a second and I believe that every member of this board would do it again because all of us stayed within the law.”
Stephen Richer, the county’s Republican recorder, noted two elements of the reports where investigators contradicted Brnovich’s interim report by saying the county had been responsive and followed signature verification procedures. Those notes from investigators “distinctly show the ways in which our office cooperated with and supported the attorney general’s office in the development of last year’s interim report,” Richer said.
Arizona’s Secretary of state Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who in 2020 was the Maricopa county recorder, said he was “deeply disappointed by the wasteful and pointless actions by a top law enforcement official who diverted thousands of hours of staff time to pursue unfounded allegations of election fraud”. | US Political Corruption |
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- The discovery of four dead women in a drainage ditch just outside Atlantic City was shocking news in 2006.
International media flocked to the seaside gambling resort. More than 100 detectives and prosecutors were assigned to investigate. Casino guests worried about safety, and the victims’ fellow sex workers began carrying hidden knives.
But as the years passed, the public’s attention and fear faded, and the case of the “Eastbound Strangler” – so named for the direction the victims’ heads were facing – remained unsolved.
The arrest earlier this month of a man charged with killing three women whose remains were found on a Long Island beach in 2010 has breathed fresh life into another long-dormant case with obvious parallels; the Gilgo Beach serial killings involve a total of 11 victims, most of whom were young, female sex workers. Yet the recent breakthrough, and the rekindling of public interest, only highlights a painful truth: Many similar cases – like the one in Atlantic City -- remain open.
The FBI would not say how many killings of sex workers in the U.S. remain unsolved. Media accounts and statements from local authorities show a long trail of open cases, from nine women whose bodies were found along highways in Massachusetts, to 11 found dead in New Mexico, and eight more found amid the crawfish farms and swamps of southern Louisiana. The killings of other sex workers in Chicago, New Haven, Connecticut and Ohio, among other places, also remain mysteries.
From the days of London’s Jack The Ripper in the 1880s, serial killers, particularly those preying on sex workers, have often gotten away with it, in part because their victims were easy targets living on the margins of society.
Gary Ridgway, the so-called Green River killer convicted of 49 killings in Washington state, said at during a 2003 court hearing in which he pleaded guilty that he chose sex workers as victims because he knew they would not be missed quickly, if at all.
“I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught,” he said.
Two women were out for an afternoon walk near Atlantic City in November 2006 when they found a body in a ditch. They called police, who quickly found three others nearby.
The $15-a-night motel in Egg Harbor Township behind which the four bodies were found is long gone. It was torn down in an attempt to clear a seedy area known for crime, drugs and disturbances – and the murders of Barbara Breidor, 42, Molly Jean Dilts, 20, Kim Raffo, 35, and Tracy Ann Roberts, 23.
Because it is near the ocean, like Gilgo Beach, the location has prompted much speculation by amateur detectives about a single killer, but some other online sleuths have pointed out that oceanside areas are often the remotest locations after hours on the densely packed East Coast. Gilgo Beach is about 3.5 hours drive from Atlantic City.
Gone in New Jersey are the four small wooden crosses someone erected on the site, along with the folded-up paper note bearing a Biblical quote promising justice that someone left there on one of the anniversaries of the discovery of the bodies.
For families left behind, each new day without word in the case of their loved one brings fresh pain.
“I kind of lost hope that anyone was even searching for the killer anymore,” said Joyce Roberts, whose daughter Tracy Ann was one of the four Atlantic City-area victims. “The first six months, the prosecutor did get on the phone with me and told me they were working on it.
“Then it just fell off the radar,” she said. “It was like nobody cared anymore.”
That is a sentiment echoed by Phoenix Calida, a former sex worker from Chicago who now advocates for them through the Sex Workers Outreach Project.
“Police departments often refer to it as an ‘NHI’ case: No humans involved,” she said. ”You feel like the only way you’ll be remembered is when they catch the serial killer who killed you, and then they’ll make five movies about him and no one will remember your name.”
Massachusetts State Police are investigating “nine unsolved homicides possibly committed by the same person,” said David Procopio, a spokesperson for the agency. He said two additional missing persons cases may be homicides related to the other nine.
Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department, said the New Mexico cases remain actively investigated, with “multiple detectives” working them. The 11 victims were all involved in drugs and prostitution, police said.
A reward of $100,000 has been offered for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case, which involved two victims who were just 15 years old.
Despite the decade-long efforts of a local, state and federal task force, Louisiana has at least eight unsolved apparent homicide cases involving sex workers between the ages of 17 and 30. Their bodies were found in marshy areas in Jennings, a small town in the area known as Cajun Country, between 2005 and 2009.
Prosecutors in New York's Suffolk County investigating the Gilgo Beach cases have been in touch with multiple law enforcement agencies, but District Attorney Ray Tierney would not say which ones.
“Everything is being examined and looked at, and this is an active investigation,” said Anthony Carter, Suffolk County's deputy police commissioner. He would not say if his agency was investigating any connection between Heuermann and the Atlantic City murders.
Atlantic County Prosecutor William Reynolds said the four cases from the drainage ditch outside Atlantic City remain active, with detectives assigned to them, but would not say how many. He declined comment on the Long Island case “as we are not involved.”
Joyce Roberts, the victim’s mother, said no one from law enforcement has called her since the arrest was made in the Long Island cases.
Police in Las Vegas, where Heuermann owns a time share, said they are investigating whether Heuermann may be involved in cases involving the killings of sex workers there.
In the months immediately after the bodies’ discovery near Atlantic City, the local prosecutor’s office and a dozen other law enforcement agencies had 140 people assigned to the cases, Ted Housel, who was prosecutor at the time, said in 2008. By the first anniversary, the total had fallen to 85, and those investigators were also working other cases.
Calida, the former sex worker from Chicago, said women involved the sex trade are frequently robbed by people who know they’re carrying cash, and are sometimes coerced into sexual activity by police in return for not being arrested.
She said an attacker “knows you can’t or won’t report it. You’re an easy target and they know it.”
Three of her friends who were also sex workers in Chicago also turned up dead.
“You see someone, you become friends with them and then one day they’re suddenly just not there,” she said. “We’d all go out asking around and looking for them, and then a few days later a body would be found. There’s always this specific fear that it’s a serial killer. Sometimes we never even get a body back to bury. And we wonder: Will law enforcement take it seriously because it’s ‘just another sex worker?’”
___
AP writers Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque; Steve LeBlanc in Boston; Julie Walker and Robert Bumsted in Suffolk County, New York; Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this story.
Follow Wayne Parry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
After the Fulton County, Georgia grand jury recommended that Sen Lindsey Graham and two former senators be charged alongside former president Donald Trump, the South Carolina Republican defended himself.
“At the end of the day, nothing happened,” Mr Graham said in the wake of the recommendations. “What I did was consistent with my job as being a United States senator, chairman of the judiciary committee. But it was just not me. Three US senators.”
Mr Graham was alluding to former Georgia Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, whom the grand jurors also voted to charge.
“We’re opening up Pandora’s box. I think the system in this country is getting off the rails. We have to be careful not to use the legal system as a political tool,” Mr Graham added, echoing a familiar complaint among Republicans of calling the judiciary “weaponised.”
The grand jury released its report on Friday about the evidence it heard in the case District Attorney Fani Willis brought against Mr Trump and 18 others for their attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
The report states that the trio were recommended to be charged over “the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election”. However, they were not ultimately charged.
Mr Trump and all 18 co-defendants, including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Mark Meadows, have all pleaded not guilty to their 14 August indictments.
The report showed that 13 of the 21 grand jurors voted in favor of Mr Graham being indicted alongside other alleged conspirators for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Washington, DC.
However, seven grand jurors voted not to charge Mr Graham and one abstained. | US Political Corruption |
Visibly worn-down House Republicans left a closed-door meeting on Monday night intent on forging ahead with a vote for speaker on Tuesday despite lingering opposition to Speaker-designate Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
"If Jim Jordan can't get through, Jesus can't. So we better figure this out," Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., told Fox News Digital after the meeting. "I think where we're at is, that we have to respect in rules in the House. If we do, then we'll get a leader."
Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., told Fox News Digital, "I don't know why people have it in their head, regardless of what faction they are in with our in our conference, why they think only one person could be a good speaker."
"People say, well, if you didn’t support my guy, I’m not gonna support your guy. That doesn’t make sense to me," Barr said.
Jordan won the House Republican nomination for speaker in a closed-door, anonymous vote on Friday, but there were at least 55 GOP lawmakers who would not commit to voting for him on the House floor at the time.
He’s managed to whittle that number down significantly. But while smaller, Jordan’s opposition became more distinct, with lawmakers publicly voicing concerns about Jordan after last week's secret ballot. These opponents could be a problem – Jordan can only lose four Republican votes to still win the speakership if all members are in attendance.
Meanwhile, the House has been paralyzed in the nearly two weeks since ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was ousted by eight members of his own party and all House Democrats.
Jordan himself told reporters on Monday night, "I felt good walking into the conference, I feel even better now."
But some members expressed frustration with how the entire process has gone and suggested it would be enough for them to oppose Jordan on Tuesday. It comes after Jordan and his allies were accused of waging a pressure campaign on holdouts through the weekend.
"I will tell you that if folks think that they can pressure me, that's where they lose me," Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., told reporters after the meeting. Diaz-Balart said he would be voting for Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., at least in a first-round vote.
Scalise had been House Republicans’ initial speaker-designate until opposition from Jordan supporters forced him to withdraw.
Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., fumed about Scalise’s treatment and said he would also be voting for the Louisiana Republican.
"When I see what's going on in that conference, and understand that we had an election, and we elected somebody to be our speaker, and because people in that conference didn't agree with the election, no, no, no, we've got a stop it all now, and we've got to have another election?" Kelly said. "The real man in that room was Steve Scalise."
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., meanwhile, said he was "inclined" to vote for McCarthy on Tuesday. Like Diaz-Balart he suggested he chafed at pressure from Jordan and his allies.
"The problem is when you have people that broke the rules, and it put us in the spot now they're saying you know, we need you to get on board. It doesn't work for some of us," Bacon said. "I think normal Americans, we believe in justice. We believe in fairness, rule of law…the majority of us have been stomped on in this. And I'm not going to take it."
Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., similarly said he would support McCarthy for speaker on Tuesday, a position he’s maintained since the California Republican’s ouster.
Meanwhile, Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., one of the eight Republicans who voted to sink McCarthy, said his reservations about Jordan’s opposition to the 2020 election results and alleged role in Jan. 6 would still have to be worked out.
"Jim is going to come visit after this meeting," Buck said. "I’m a no right now. But I told him I would be open-minded to having that conversation."
One GOP lawmaker told Fox News Digital it might "take a few" rounds for Jordan to net the majority needed to be speaker but was confident in his ability to do it.
"There are a few holdouts, but he's got tonight, tomorrow morning to work on it, and has a lot of powerful people in his corner," the lawmaker said. "It might take a few votes, it might not be done on the first on the first ballot, but I think he's okay with that." | US Congress |
She played an excerpt from Biden’s White House speech during Tuesday’s broadcast of “The Ingraham Angle.”
“This is a moment for the United States to come together, to grieve with those who are mourning,” Biden said in the clip. “Let’s be real clear: There is no place for hate in America.”
Ingraham’s take?
“If he’s really against hate, then he should call a prosecutorial cease-fire against his political adversaries like the former president, and direct his DOJ and DHS to stop making conservative Americans feel like they’re the enemy or like they’re the violent extremists out there,” she said, referring to the departments of Justice and Homeland Security.
More than 2,000 people have died across the two sides of the Middle East conflict, which erupted Saturday when Hamas militants stormed into Israel and massacred hundreds of people, including many civilians, and took scores of hostages back to Gaza.
Israel has retaliated with relentless airstrikes on Hamas-controlled Gaza, devastating the dense civilian population in the Palestinian enclave.
In his Tuesday address, Biden condemned Hamas’ attack and pledged support to Israel, while urging against seeing the militants as representative of the entire Palestinian cause.
He said there was no place for hate in the U.S. against Jews, Muslims or anybody else. “What we reject is terrorism,” he said.
Trump has been accused of 91 felonies across four indictments. They relate to his handling of classified documents, his attempted coup, his push to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results, and the alleged falsification of business records over a hush money payment to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election. | US Involvement in Foreign Conflicts |
A heavy-handed effort to convince fellow Republicans to support Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) bid for Speaker of the House did not have the effect its architects intended, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) said Tuesday on Fox News, adding that he had spoken with colleagues who felt that the pressure campaign—from the likes of Fox host Sean Hannity and others within the GOP caucus—was “not what they needed.”
Donalds, who voted for Jordan, was asked by Fox’s Sandra Smith if some representatives considered the tactics to be a “turn off.”
“I believe it was,” he replied.
Donalds made his appearance on the network shortly after 20 Republicans voted against Jordan, dooming his prospects for the gavel on the first ballot.
“I’ve talked to a couple of members where they felt that that’s just not what they needed,” Donalds added. “I don’t think that’s what we should be doing right now.”
As reported late Sunday, Hannity had been reaching out to lawmakers in an apparent attempt to shame Jordan’s opponents into voting for him. Amid criticism, the longtime Fox News host defended his actions, saying on his show Monday that some Republicans in the House are “sensitive little snowflakes.”
But several House Republicans who cast their votes for someone other than Jordan have gone on the record over their displeasure with the pressure that has been put on them.
Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, who voted for Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), told POLITICO: “The one thing that will never work with me—if you try to pressure me, if you try to threaten me, then I shut off.”
Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) said after his vote for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) that he will continue to stand his ground—“especially now, in the light of these pressure tactics.” And Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told the outlet that while Jordan himself has “been nice, one-on-one,” his “broader team has been playing hardball.”
Donalds added that while “it’s important for members to hear your voice,” some of his colleagues “want to be able to make this decision on leadership and then move forward.”
“I think some of the pressure campaigns have backfired. They have not worked,” he said.
“And so I think that right now, under the leadership of Jim Jordan, you know, I would request that people just take a break, take a pause,” he said. “Let the members work and figure this out amongst ourselves so we can elect Jim Jordan as speaker and then we can get back to the work that we have to do.”
The House has not had a speaker since McCarthy’s ouster on Oct. 3. | US Congress |
The House of Representatives is finally expected to vote on a new speaker on Tuesday at noon after the chamber ousted its previous leader in a historic majority vote earlier this month.
Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, was chosen as Republicans’ candidate for speaker last week after a tumultuous few days in which Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., the initial speaker-designate last week, was forced to drop out of the race over growing public opposition.
And despite Republicans holding the House majority, it’s not immediately clear if Jordan can win on the first ballot.
"We need to get a speaker tomorrow, the American people deserve to have their Congress, their House of Representatives, working," Jordan told reporters on Monday evening. "I felt good walking into the conference, I feel even better now."
House Republicans met behind closed doors on Monday night, where Jordan made a last appeal to the holdouts against him.
He’ll need a simple majority to win the speaker’s gavel. But with House Republicans’ razor-thin margin and at least one expected absence, he can only lose three GOP votes to still clinch the speakership if all House Democrats are present.
As of Monday evening, at least two House Republicans – Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y. and Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla. – have said they are committed to voting for ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who was ousted by a vote of eight House Republicans and all House Democrats.
But Jordan Monday appeared to have substantially reduced the number of Republicans opposed to voting for him, chipping away significantly at the 55 Republicans who refused in a secret ballot vote last week to commit to backing him on the House floor.
Jordan became the Republican nominee after Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana withdrew amid signs he could not achieve a majority on the floor.
Jordan won over a key holdout when House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., stunned political watchers on Monday morning when he said he'd back Jordan.
Rogers had strongly opposed Jordan as recently as Friday and had suggested late last week that Republicans may have to work with Democrats to find a new leader.
Meanwhile, Democrats tore into Jordan ahead of the vote, accusing Republicans of empowering an "extremist" over his closeness to former President Donald Trump and objection to the 2020 election results.
"Jim Jordan is not fit to serve as Speaker of the House," Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., wrote on social media.
"He is an extremist who led Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, forced government shutdowns, and attacked programs like Social Security and Medicare."
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., meanwhile, called on moderate Republicans to break off from their conference and join a "bipartisan" coalition.
"The extremists have broken the House of Representatives. Only a bipartisan governing coalition can fix it," Jeffries said on Monday morning. | US Congress |
Georgia state troopers who shot and killed an environmental activist at the site of awill not be charged, a prosecutor announced Friday, saying he found that their use of deadly force was "objectively reasonable."
Opponents of the center, whohad camped out at an 85-acre tract of forest that is being developed for the massive facility. It is there that Manuel Paez Terán, 26, was killed on Jan. 18.
Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney George Christian was appointed to review the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's file on the shooting. Along with the statement announcing his decision, Christian released a 31-page report detailing his analysis. He declined to release the underlying evidence, however, outraging the family.
State troopers were part of what authorities described as an "enforcement operation" at the site when they encountered Paez Terán, who was known as Tortuguita. When the activist refused to come out of a tent, the troopers fired a pepper ball launcher and Paez Terán responded by firing a handgun four times through the tent,, the release says. Six troopers fired back, killing Paez Terán.
In a statement obtained by CBS News, Brian Spears, an attorney for the family, called Christian's report "a rubber stamp of the GBI's version of events without any critical analysis."
The troopers who fired on Paez Terán were not wearing body cameras, and Paez Terán's family and other activists have expressed skepticism from the start about law enforcement statements about the shooting.
Specifically, they've pointed to the results of anthat concluded the activist was sitting at the time of the shooting. Separately, the DeKalb County Medical Examiner's Office said the activist's body had at least . The coroner also said gunpowder residue was "not seen" on Paez Terán's hands, though investigators said forensic tests later "revealed the presence of particles characteristic of gunshot primer residue."
Protesters have also singled out the comment of a responding officer who, seemingly reacting to the radio traffic, had said, "You (expletive) your own officer up." The activists have said on social media that it supports assertions some made from the beginning that the trooper was shot by friendly fire. Christian's report says the bullet that wounded the trooper came from Paez Terán's gun.
Paez Terán's killing was a galvanizing moment for the "Stop Cop City" movement, with activists across the world holding vigils and painting murals in honor of Tortuguita, who friends said was dedicated to helping others and protecting the environment. Three days after the killing, a group ofand attacked the entrance of a downtown skyscraper that houses the Atlanta Police Foundation, the nonprofit that is building the training center.
Several other acts of vandalism have since taken place, including the storming of the construction site in March, an event that led to dozens being charged with domestic terrorism. In late August, Georgia Republican Attorney General Chris Carr secured a racketeering indictment against 61 people connected to the movement.
In the report released Friday, Christian named the state troopers who fired their guns at Paez Terán: Mark Lamb, Jonathan Salcedo, Bryland Myers, Ronaldo Kegel, Royce Zah and Jerry Parrish. He identified Parrish as the trooper who was shot and wounded by Paez Terán.
The report says officers from multiple law enforcement agencies were involved in an operation to remove people who were trespassing on the property, which is owned by the city of Atlanta, and to remove campsites. Activists at the site had "disrupted and intimidated" contractors working at the site and "had committed crimes," it says.
The GBI briefed all of the officers participating before they fanned out into the wooded area, telling them that people at the site had previously been known to have guns and an officer had been confronted by a person with a rifle and pistol on one occasion. Officers were also warned about explosive devices and traps allegedly found on the property and were told that people had previously thrown rocks and fireworks at officers, the report says.
Also according to the report, when the first two troopers arrived at Paez Terán's tent, the tent door flap was open about a foot and troopers saw movement inside. A trooper identified himself as police and told Paez Terán to exit the tent. After a minute or two, it became clear the activist wasn't going to come out, and Paez Terán zipped up the tent flap.
One of the troopers radioed to ask that a pepper ball launcher be brought in, and while waiting on that continued to tell Paez Terán to come out. As more troopers arrived, Paez Terán partially unzipped the tent and told the troopers he wouldn't come out and wanted them to leave before closing the tent again. That's when one of the troopers warned Paez Terán he would use a chemical agent and began firing pepper balls into the tent.
Within seconds, Paez Terán began firing at the troopers from inside the tent, the report says. Troopers returned fire. They reported hearing a loud boom and seeing white smoke coming from the front area of the tent, causing them to believe Paez Terán had deployed an explosive device.
Troopers involved said they clearly identified themselves as police and told Paez Terán to come out multiple times. They said they told him he was trespassing and was under arrest and warned him before using the pepper balls. Other officers confirmed hearing troopers identify themselves and issue warnings.
Christian, citing Carr's ongoing racketeering case, said no other records will be released for now. Spears objected to that. He said there is "no possible reasonable justification" to not release all records given that Christian's investigation is complete.
"If there is nothing to hide, then show us the evidence. We were told that once the DA's report was released, the GBI would release all of the underlying evidence," said family attorney Jeff Filipovits, referencing materials like photographs, audio witness interviews, crime scene drawings, forensic lab reports, and body camera audio and video footage that was used in the investigation., "But now, the District Attorney has stated that his office will not produce the underlying evidence."
Paez Terán's mother, Belkis Terán, echoed that view in a written statement obtained by CBS News.
"We have waited eight months for the truth," she wrote. "We are in pain. We want to hear the interviews. We want our experts to review the lab tests. We want our questions answered. This report does not answer our questions. How long must we wait?"
"Release the file now," added Paez Terán's father, Joel Paez. "No more excuses."
for more features. | US Police Misconduct |
On July 8, 2015, the badly injured body of 19-year-old Stephen Smith was found dead in the middle of a rural road in South Carolina, just 24 kilometres from the home of the now-infamous Murdaugh family.
The death of the openly gay nursing student was initially ruled a hit and run — but his family, and others, had doubts. Seven years later, Smith’s family is getting another chance at justice.
Family lawyer Eric Bland announced late Sunday night that Smith’s body was exhumed for a second, independent autopsy, then transported back to his final resting place over the weekend. The news of Smith’s exhumation comes on the heels of a successful GoFundMe effort by his family to raise money for the autopsy.
Bland said he believes that Smith can now “rest easy” knowing that “everything possible” is being done to find out how he died. The results of the autopsy have yet to be released.
Two weeks ago, South Carolina law enforcement announced that they were looking into Smith’s death as a homicide. The announcement was seen as a major development by Smith’s family, after the case into his death was reopened in 2021 when police were investigating the deaths of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, members of a prominent local family.
Alex Murdaugh, the family patriarch, was found guilty of their deaths, his own wife and son, on March 2. Prosecutors said the disgraced lawyer killed the two family members to evoke sympathy to buy time to cover up alleged financial crimes that were about to be discovered.
The Murdaugh family murders have captured international attention — thanks in part to a Netflix documentary — and have been the subject of intense speculation, especially with regard to a series of other mysterious deaths in the family’s orbit.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) said it reopened the case of Smith’s death in 2021 due to information it gleaned during the Murdaugh investigations, though authorities have so far made no official connection between Smith’s death and the infamous family.
Buster Murdaugh, the surviving Murdaugh son, made his first public statement after his father was sentenced to life in prison for killing his mother and brother, to deny allegations that he was involved in Smith’s death.
“I have tried my best to ignore the vicious rumours about my involvement in Stephen Smith’s tragic death that continue to be published in the media as I grieve over the brutal murders of my mother and brother,” Buster said in late March. “I unequivocally deny any involvement in his death, and my heart goes out to the Smith family.”
Buster and Smith were high school classmates who reportedly graduated together in 2014. When the 19-year-old’s body was found near the Murdaugh home in 2015, investigators with South Carolina’s highway patrol said they received tips that Buster may have been connected.
Sources in the Netflix documentary Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal alleged that people in the local Hampton County community believed Smith and Buster were in a romantic relationship, and that the Murdaugh family wanted to cover it up.
When the teen’s body was found on a rural Hampton County road, he was about three to five kilometres from his car, which had run out of gas.
There was no broken glass or debris around Smith’s body to indicate a car crash or hit and run, and Smith was found still wearing loose-fitting sneakers, which would have likely fallen off his feet if he had been run down.
Smith’s family didn’t believe the hit-and-run theory posited by authorities at the time, and never stopped looking for answers about his death.
This year on March 9, in the midst of Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial, Smith’s family launched a GoFundMe campaign to cover the costs of exhuming him and conducting an independent autopsy. The campaign quickly surpassed its goal of US$15,000 and has raised over US$120,000 as of press time.
In a March 16 update posted to the GoFundMe page, Smith’s mother wrote that the campaign had surpassed its fundraising goal and the family was going to move forward with the exhumation and autopsy.
“Thank you for not allowing Stephen’s story to be swept under a rug,” she wrote. “You have made this possible, and it means the world to us. This is Stephen’s year.”
Family attorney Bland on Sunday thanked the funeral home, coroner, excavators, doctors and SLED officers who assisted in Smith’s exhumation and autopsy.
Investigators are also looking into other deaths that surrounded the Murdaugh family, including the deaths of family housekeeper Gloria Satterfield and 19-year-old Mallory Beach, who died in a 2019 boating accident that stirred allegations against slain Murdaugh son Paul.
State investigators said they will also exhume Satterfield’s body as part of their investigation. | US Crime, Violence, Terrorism & cybercrime |
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) predicted that former President Donald Trump could win back the White House in 2024 over President Joe Biden if he sticks to an optimistic message for his campaign.
While speaking at the DealBook Summit, McCarthy said that Trump would lose to Biden in a matchup between the two next fall if he makes the entire campaign about "revenge" rather than a message of hope, per the Hill.
“But this is a bigger question for Trump: If his campaign is about renew, rebuild, and restore, he’ll win. If it’s about revenge, he’ll lose,” McCarthy told New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin at the event. “The only person that’s going to determine that is — not his campaign ad — is him.”
McCarthy also predicted that if Biden won the Democratic nomination and Trump won the Republican nomination, the former president would win over the incumbent, and the GOP would "have a very big night." When pressed on his previous criticisms of Trump, McCarthy said that Trump would be better than the current commander in chief.
“I didn’t say he would be a great president,” McCarthy said. “I said he’d be a better president than what we’re having. I said the country would be in a better place.”
Trump is currently the front-runner in the Republican presidential primary, while Biden is widely expected to be the Democratic nominee, with no major challengers threatening the nomination.
In recent polls, Trump has shown leads against Biden nationally and in several key swing states, which will be vital to victory in 2024. The RealClearPolitics polling average shows Trump leading Biden nationally by 1.9%, with less than 12 months until the general election. | US Federal Elections |
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Josh Shapiro isn’t yet worried about President Joe Biden’s standing.
Rather, the governor of Pennsylvania attributes Biden’s recent polling slide behind former President Donald Trump to voter “brain fog” that he thinks will clear once the general election cycle kicks into gear.
“I’m not sure folks remember just how chaotic it was, how divisive it was, how he was just in your face in your living room every day,” Shapiro said, referring to Trump. “I don’t think people want to go back to that.”
Shapiro, who’s widely considered to be a future Democratic presidential prospect, sat with NBC News for more than 30 minutes in his office at the Pennsylvania State Capitol on Monday to discuss the 2024 race and his concerns about the contest, his first year as governor, and the war between Israel and Hamas and the tensions it has unleashed in the U.S.
Since his campaign for governor last year, Shapiro has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s most visible officials and a leading member of its next generation at a time voters are expressing concerns over Biden’s age. After he beat a Trump acolyte last year, he’s already seeking to pave the way for Democrats to win the pivotal state next year against Trump himself.
Shapiro spoke with NBC News following an address he gave about his first year in office to the Pennsylvania Press Club, in which he touted his administration’s initial accomplishments and called attention to “unfinished business” he sought to pursue in the year ahead.
Shapiro took office following a 15-point win last fall over Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, whom he painted as an extremist on democracy issues and abortion rights while running on his own platform of protecting essential freedoms. He feels a similar effort against Trump would help Democrats again win in Pennsylvania, arguably the state Biden most needs to capture next fall.
“As people are reminded of what it was like and they are forced to tune back in and listen to that during the course of a presidential race, they’re going to reject his extremism, his chaos and his danger,” he said of Trump.
But Shapiro also wants Biden to offer a clear explanation for how his record has benefited Pennsylvanians, particularly efforts to expand broadband access and other infrastructure investments. In the Senate, Biden, who spent his childhood in Pennsylvania before he moved to Delaware, touted himself as “Pennsylvania’s third senator,” and he has made more than two dozen trips to the state since he took office.
Trump has led Biden inside or outside the margin of error in national polls this month released by NBC News, Fox News, Morning Consult, Reuters/Ipsos, The Economist/YouGov and Quinnipiac University. In Pennsylvania, surveys conducted by Bloomberg/Morning Consult and The New York Times/Siena College told a similar story. Surveys also show widespread dissatisfaction with the economy across party lines, while, increasingly, some core Democratic constituencies have heavily scrutinized Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
“My expectation is that as the race joins and there’s a real competition of ideas and of approach, the president will be in a much stronger position,” he said, adding that the current polling “does speak to the worry that a lot of people feel about whether it’s the economy or safety, immigration, you name it.”
But does any of that make him think it’s time for Democrats to pass the torch to the next generation of leaders?
“I think it’s clear that this is going to be a race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump,” he said, dismissing the question. “And I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure Donald Trump is defeated.
“If Donald Trump is given the opportunity to get the keys to the White House again, he’s even more dangerous the second time around, because he and the team around him know how to operate the levers of government. He’s told us that he understands how to do it, and he’s going to use that to prosecute his enemies,” he continued. “I know what the reality is. And the reality is it’ll be the two of them, barring some unforeseen circumstance, squaring off.”
For the better part of a year, Shapiro has batted away questions about his own presidential ambitions. But he did sound open to the idea that the 2028 Democratic nominee would be a current sitting governor.
“Governors know how to get s--- done and deliver for people in really tangible, meaningful ways,” he said. “And what I hear from the good people of Pennsylvania is that they want folks to stop making noise, stop tweeting and seeking likes and love on the internet, and instead do the hard work that actually delivers concrete, tangible things for people.”
Shapiro's first year
Shapiro’s first year in office hasn’t been easy. Working with one of the last remaining split legislatures in the country, including a state House that is under the narrowest of Democratic control, Shapiro was unable to get a number of initiatives off the ground, and he was locked in tense budget negotiations for months. The episode was capped by his line-item veto of a $100 million school voucher program he and state Senate Republicans supported after House Democrats said they wouldn’t.
What’s more, Shapiro’s administration is dealing with the fallout of sexual harassment allegations against a top legislative aide — which became public after the aide, Mike Vereb, then his legislative secretary, resigned in late September. A former Vereb aide filed the complaint — which alleged both harassment and retaliation — months before he resigned. Last month, Shapiro’s office settled the claim for $295,000.
Speaking Monday at a Hilton ballroom in Harrisburg, Shapiro put focus on what his administration sees as its greatest successes from year one. Front and center among them was the rapid repairing of a collapsed section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia this year. With a sign reading “Getting Stuff Done” at his side, he also drew attention to efforts to expand a property tax rebate for seniors, provide universal free breakfast in public schools, initiate automatic voter registration and remove the college degree requirement for state employees — a change he said led to a flood of applications and 60% of the state’s new hires having no college degrees. (He said he hopes the change triggers private-sector businesses to do away with those degree requirements, too.)
He said he still wants to see a school voucher program — which cuts against much of his party — sent to his desk, as well as a minimum wage increase, a gun violence initiative and statute-of-limitations reform. He expressed interest in providing gas tax relief, as well as legalizing recreational marijuana — like neighboring Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and New York.
“I think it is an issue that makes sense if we want to remain competitive,” he said. “Our neighboring states are doing it; we’re losing out on that revenue. And we’re not getting the good people of Pennsylvania the opportunity to make that purchase if they want in a legal manner.”
During a question-and-answer session following his speech Monday, Shapiro was pressed about what he knew about the sexual harassment claims and when he knew it. He declined to discuss any specifics about the case but touted the process by which such claims are adjudicated in the state’s executive branch, and he called on lawmakers to adopt similar standards for the Legislature.
He said in the interview: “What’s clear is that in our administration, we have a thorough, robust, independent process if anyone ever raises any issues. And we’ve never deviated from that.”
Foreign conflicts hit home
Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent outbreak of war in the region have hit close to home for Shapiro, a self-described “proud American Jew” who said he and his wife have had to have a number of difficult discussions with their four children about both the war itself and an outbreak of antisemitism around the world. He has also sought to combat both antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents that have drawn attention across the commonwealth in recent weeks.
The war has split open a divide on the left between some progressives and activists and the majority of elected Democrats, including Biden, who have vociferously defended Israel’s right to retaliate after the October attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 were taken hostage. In Gaza, health officials say, the death toll has eclipsed 13,000. Surveys find larger numbers of young voters rejecting Biden’s handling of the war while older generations are more likely to be supportive. (Israel and Hamas reached a deal Tuesday, which Biden helped broker, that included a temporary pause in fighting and the release of some hostages.)
The divide has hit home in Pennsylvania, too, where Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman faces a backlash from pro-Palestinian activists and some former staffers for tightly hugging Israel. On Tuesday, a dozen Democratic state lawmakers wrote a letter to the state’s congressional delegation asking it to support calls for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Speaking to the generational divide over Israel, Shapiro said this war is unique in just how much “disturbing” imagery is being presented seemingly nonstop not just on TV but also on social media, and he doesn’t blame young people for being upset by what they’re seeing come out of Gaza.
“I don’t blame them for wanting to engage and speak out,” he said. “I think that’s really healthy. I think it’s incumbent upon them to know some history and not just enter the conversation in recent weeks but go back and understand what happened in the past. You can enter this conversation in biblical times; you can enter it in 1947 and 1967. You can also enter it on Oct. 7, if you want.”
For Shapiro, the question of how the war should be handled is “pretty cut and dry.”
“In this nation, I don’t know of another time where folks have sided with the hostage-takers over the hostages, and we’ve got 10 American hostages there,” he said. “So I stand with Israel having the right to defend itself. I stand on the side of the United States government in making sure we do everything we can to get our hostages home and free the other hostages, as well, and the belief that you cannot allow a terrorist group to not only live side by side with Israel but also to upset any prospects for peace in that region.”
Shapiro did describe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “a terrible leader” who “has driven Israel to an extreme that has been bad for Israel and bad for the stability in the Middle East.” Had Netanyahu not been in power, Shapiro said, more progress would have been made on reaching a two-state solution, as well as on the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and some Arab countries.
“The nuance when it comes to ‘how do we create a two-state solution?’ is a conversation that needs to be had right now, led by the United States,” he said. “But there should be no nuance when it comes to good vs. evil. And in this case, Hamas is pure evil, pure terrorists. And Israel, a pluralistic democracy, even with its faulty leaders, has every right to defend itself. And I stand with them in their efforts to get their hostages home and rid that region of Hamas.” | US Federal Elections |
Subsets and Splits