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Manchin sidesteps questions on leaving Democratic Party: ‘I’ll let you know later’  

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Sunday sidestepped questions about whether he’d leave the Democratic Party after being asked about his comments regarding his serving in the Senate as an “independent voice.”

Manchin avoided saying outright if he’d join fellow centrist Sen. Krysten Sinema (I-Ariz.), who shocked Washington earlier this month by announcing that she would become an Independent.

The West Virginia Democrat instead criticized hyper-partisanship in Congress and said he would wait and see how the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act “plays out” before making a decision about his affiliation.  

“If people are trying to stop something from doing so much good because of politics, thinking somebody else will get credit for it, let’s see how that plays out. And then I’ll let you know later what I decide to do,” Manchin told CBS “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan. 

“They know how independent I am,” Manchin said of Democrats.

“The ‘D’ does not saddle me to ‘everything the Democrats want to do is right.’ I don’t think the Democrats have all the answers. I don’t think the Republicans are always wrong,” he said.  

Brennan was asking Manchin about a statement he released last week in which he criticized a permitting reform measure that he had championed that failed to advance in the National Defense Authorization Act.

“As frustrating as the political games of Washington are, I will not give up. As I have said from my first day in office, I serve West Virginians and the American people with an independent voice not a political party,” Manchin said in the statement.

Sinema announced earlier this month that she’d switch her party affiliation from Democrat to Independent citing that she’s “never fit neatly into any party box” and has “never really tried” or wanted to do so, a move that came just after Democrats secured a 51-49 majority in the Senate.

Manchin said last week that he didn’t intend to immediately follow Sinema in making a party switch, but didn’t rule it out for the future.  

He’d reportedly floated the idea as he sparred with those in his own party over the Biden administration’s Build Back Better agenda.  

Manchin has frustrated many fellow Democrats in the Senate’s current 50-50 split as legislation hinged on his vote.

“Why are you staying a member of this tribe if it’s so toxic?” Brennan asked Manchin on Sunday. 

“I really don’t put much validity in the identity of being a Republican or Democrat. I think we’re all Americans,” Manchin said.  

Manchin and Sinema are both up for reelection in 2024.

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How Democrats face a conundrum when it comes to Biden

President Biden is riding high in a number of ways as he closes the door on 2022.

He’s coming off a strong midterm election that saw his party gain a Senate seat and two governorships. Democrats lost the House majority but did much better than expected, ensuring the GOP’s majority in the next Congress will be slim.

The successes have strengthened Biden’s standing ahead of a widely expected 2024 reelection bid.

Talk of challenges to Biden has quieted, and the two Democratic leaders of Congress — outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) — are enthusiastically calling this week for the 80-year-old to seek a second term.

In another piece of good news for Biden, his old rival former President Trump is stumbling through controversy after controversy at the outset of his own run for the White House.

Trump’s troubles have exposed the deep divides within the GOP over its future, raising serious questions about the Republican Party’s ability to win a national election.

Yet for all the good news for Biden, many Democrats don’t want to see him run for a second term.

A CNN poll this week showed that 59 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want a new candidate to be their nominee in 2024.

It’s a confusing picture for the White House and Democrats more generally.

“President Biden’s standing with Democrats is a riddle wrapped in an enigma,” said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist. “He is very popular with Democrats and is well positioned to win the party’s nomination in 2024, but most of the party faithful don’t want him to run again.”

The CNN poll does not look like an anomaly.

A week earlier, a CNBC poll found that 57 percent of Democrats said Biden shouldn’t launch another presidential bid. The same poll showed that 70 percent of all respondents shared that sentiment — including 66 percent of independents. 

None of this necessarily makes Biden a weak candidate in 2024, but it also doesn’t suggest he’s a particularly strong candidate.

It does underline the sense that Biden won in 2020 by getting Democrats out to vote against Trump, and not because the party faithful was particularly inspired by their own candidate.

“That’s the conundrum we face,” said one Democratic Party strategist. “Because if not Biden, then who? And what if there’s an enthusiasm gap with the President?”

Biden’s age is seen as a big reason for the polls showing many Democrats don’t want him to run for a second term.

Biden turned 80 last month and would be 86 at the end of a second term.

“Voters can both like and respect him and still wish there was a younger version of him available,” a second Democratic strategist said. 

Beyond the midterm wins, Biden has pulled together a string of legislative victories this year, including the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, which boosted domestic production of semiconductors, along with a smaller gun control measure that expanded background checks. 

Some of those bills did not go as far as liberals had hoped, though they were real achievements in a Congress where Democrats held a slim majority in the House and had the Senate majority only because of Vice President Harris’s tiebreaking vote.

Biden took a victory lap this week after a consumer price index report showed inflation easing for the fifth straight month — economic news he hopes will carry him forward.

“In a world where inflation is rising in double digits in many major economies around the world, inflation is coming down in America,” Biden said at the White House on Tuesday. 

That same day, the president also signed same-sex marriage legislation into law at a White House ceremony before a crowd of thousands of supporters.

Biden’s first term has had its up and downs, and the doubts surrounding Biden were widespread among Democratic officials over the summer. But a number of strategists said they think the political class is feeling better about the president.

“I don’t get that sense so much anymore,” Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko said of the doubts about Biden. “Anyone who doesn’t think there’s been a shift over the last 30 days hasn’t been paying attention to his latest electoral and legislative victories.”

Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas, who worked as director of rapid response for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, poured cold water on the idea of a serious primary challenger to Biden — something that felt more real before the midterms.

“There is no doubt he would win hands down if there was a competitive Democratic primary,” he said.

Still, Democrats privately admit that Biden’s age will continue to be an issue for prospective voters as they look ahead to the upcoming election.

“He’s old. There’s no denying it,” the first strategist said. “That may be a huge factor in two years. Honestly, it’s too soon to say.”

Publicly, other Democrats say they don’t think Biden’s age will be that much of an issue.

“It’s not a new piece of information that the president is of advanced age,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne. “The fact that there has been so much political discourse and discussion around this probably serves as a benefit because all of the public discussion neutralizes the harm since it’s not a new data point.” 

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Schiff says Trump's political relevance may have slowed DOJ probes

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Sunday said former President Trump’s political relevance may have impacted the Justice Department’s probes involving Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, his potential mishandling of classified documents and his involvement in the Jan. 6 riot on the U.S. Capitol.

When asked by co-anchor Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether he thinks Trump should be charged, Schiff replied: “I think that he should.”

“I think he should face the same remedy, force of law, that anyone else would. I do worry that it may take until he is no longer politically relevant for justice to be served,” Schiff said.

“That’s not the way it should be in this country, but there seems to be an added evidentiary burden with someone who has a large enough following… I find it hard otherwise to explain why, almost two years from the events of January 6^th, and with the evidence that’s already in the public domain, why the Justice Department hasn’t moved more quickly than it has,” Schiff said.  

Schiff, who serves on the Jan. 6 committee investigating the circumstances of that day, made the remarks days ahead of that panel issuing its much-anticipated report and possible criminal referrals to DOJ that involve Trump as well as recommending fellow members of Congress be investigated by the Ethics Committee for ignoring subpoenas.

The Jan. 6 panel is expect to issue its report on Wednesday.

Source: TEST FEED1

Congress set to tackle crack, powder cocaine sentencing disparity before year’s end

Lawmakers are making a last-ditch push to pass legislation that seeks to reduce — but not entirely erase — sentencing disparities for crack and powder cocaine offenses before the year is finished.

Senate Democrats are expressing optimism about chances to pass legislation aimed at significantly reducing the gap in federal sentencing disparities for the offenses as part of a larger omnibus funding package leaders are hopeful will pass next week. 

“We’re making good progress on the EQUAL Act,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) told The Hill on late Thursday, referring to the Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law act, a bill the Democratic-led House passed last year that sought to erase the disparity.  

He also said lawmakers are “feeling quite good about” chances of using the omnibus, which is set to be unveiled in the coming days, as a vehicle. But the push could have a long road ahead next week amid resistance from Republicans.

Over the years, the nation has seen glaring racial disparities in how Americans convicted of crack and powder cocaine offenses are treated under the law.  

Currently, an individual can be sentenced under federal law to at least five years behind bars for possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine, and 10 years for possessing 5 kilograms. By contrast, individuals found to have possessed 28 grams of crack cocaine can be subjected to five-year sentences as a mandatory minimum under the same rulebook, and 10 years for 280 grams. 

“So, the quantity of powder cocaine that you need to trigger a mandatory minimum is 18 times higher than the amount of crack cocaine needed to trigger the same mandatory minimum,” Liz Komar, sentencing reform counsel for The Sentencing Project, told The Hill. 

The 18-to-1 ratio has stood in federal law since 2010, when Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act. The ratio had previously been 100-to-1, after then-President Reagan enacted the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 amid the nation’s so-called “War on Drugs.” Years of research since then has documented the disproportionate toll carried by Black and Hispanic Americans convicted of drug charges.  

Under the EQUAL Act, that gap would shrink from 18-to-1 to 1-to-1 — a change that advocates and officials have pushed for, while citing evidence that shows the similarities between both crack and powder cocaine. 

“I have been fighting for my entire Senate career to get to be one to one,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a key negotiator in talks who filed a Senate-version of the bill last year, told The Hill. “It is substantively the same.” 

The GOP point of view and potential changes 

The push to confront the sentencing disparities has gained bipartisan momentum, and its passage is all but guaranteed in the evenly split Senate, where lawmakers need the support of 60 members to pass most bills.

While the EQUAL Act has notched the backing of 11 GOP co-sponsors in the upper chamber, there is little time left on the legislative calendar for passage this year, and leaders have been discussing changes to the bill as they try to pass it before the next session of Congress begins.

As part of a bipartisan deal, lawmakers are planning to reduce the sentencing gap from 18-to-1 to 2.5-to-1, as some Republicans have pushed against completely eliminating differences in the mandatory sentencing minimums for cocaine offenses. 

Reuters, which first reported plans to attach the effort to the omnibus, also reported that the new deal also doesn’t include provisions to apply the new sentencing limits retroactively, unlike the House-passed bill. 

The changes come as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is also involved in talks, has pushed for the 2.5-to-1 ratio, while pressing for a separate bill his office says seeks to preserve “the ability of courts to keep those most likely to reoffend off the street.” 

In a release accompanying that bill earlier this year, the office advocated against completely flattening the differences in sentencing. The office also cited data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission it said showed individuals who committed crack cocaine offenses recidivated “at the highest rate of any drug type.” It said “powder cocaine offenders recidivate at the lowest rate of any drug type at 43.8 percent.” 

Komar said there are other factors to be considered when weighing the argument. 

“We know that those different recidivism rates are caused by disparities and enforcement. They’re caused by differences in class,” Komar said. “And when we look at the science about the actual impact of crack and powder on the brain, there’s a negligible difference.“

Where the nation stands 

Only about a dozen states have a gap in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine offenses, according to a 2011 report from The Sentencing Project.

The federal government has also shifted on the issue, including in recent guidelines announced Friday by the Justice Department. 

The agency, which has endorsed the EQUAL Act, released new rules for prosecutors in crack cocaine cases they say are designed “to promote the equivalent treatment of crack and powder cocaine offenses.” 

“At sentencing, prosecutors should advocate for a sentence consistent with the guidelines for powder cocaine rather than crack cocaine,” a memo released by Justice Department said. “Where a court concludes that the crack cocaine guidelines apply, prosecutors should generally support a variance to the guidelines range that would apply to the comparable quantity of powder cocaine.” 

The policy goes further than what Congress is pushing for, but Komar says the legislation senators are working to pass would build upon the nation’s progress addressing the sentencing disparities.

“It’s always valuable to have something in law in addition to the use of discretion,” she said. 

But time will tell how the congressional effort fares, particularly as the recent directive from the Biden administration has already garnered GOP pushback.

In a statement on Friday afternoon, Grassley called the recent guidance “baffling and misguided,” and warned “it undermines legislative efforts to address this sentencing disparity.”

“That hard-won compromise has been jeopardized because the attorney general inappropriately took lawmaking into his own hands,” he added.

Source: TEST FEED1

Why the GOP has Ducey at the top of its Senate candidate wish list

A Republican Party already bullish about its Senate chances in 2024 is smelling blood in the water following Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (Ariz.) decision to become an Independent last week, and one name is rising to the top of its candidate wish-list: Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R). 

Ducey, the outgoing two-term governor, is widely viewed among Republicans as the party’s best bet to flip a seat that has already garnered a sizable amount of attention, particularly on the left. 

“He’s not our only chance, but he’s probably our best chance,” one Arizona-based GOP operative said. “I view it as: He is a competent governor who understands how to campaign. He can raise money very effectively, and I think that makes him the best general election candidate we can get.” 

But whether he will want to take the plunge remains an open question. Ducey last week told reporters in his home state that he is “not running for the United States Senate,” adding that “it’s not something I’m considering.”

He also passed on a chance to take on Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly (D) in November after an intense lobbying effort by Republicans. A longtime executive, Ducey has maintained that he is not one for legislating.

However, that isn’t stopping Republicans from making their pitch — one they will likely make until April of 2024, the expected filing deadline in the Grand Canyon State. 

“He’s been a great governor, and I think he’s a fantastic guy,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a top ally of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “I like him a lot.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who is up for reelection in 2024, added that Ducey would be an “excellent candidate.”

“I hope that he’ll get in,” Romney told The Hill. 

Sinema has also long been viewed as a more vulnerable senator than Kelly — even before she left the Democratic Party and threw Arizona’s 2024 Senate race into the type of turmoil that some operatives think would benefit a Republican candidate even further.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said part of Ducey’s calculus for sidestepping the 2022 bid was likely related to the desire to also sidestep all things related to former President Trump. The ex-president has made clear his disdain for the outgoing governor, who was an ally until the moment he certified Arizona’s 2020 presidential election results for President Biden.

A 2024 bid could offer Ducey a better shot. Despite Trump launching his third White House bid, his standing in the GOP is falling after the party’s disastrous midterm performance.

“He was talked to [about] this last time … extensively,” Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, told The Hill with a laugh. “My assumption is that if he has an interest, there would probably be extensive conversations.”

A Ducey run would mark a big moment for the GOP as it looks to resolve candidate recruitment and “candidate quality” issues McConnell bemoaned both before and after the midterm elections. McConnell himself declined to say on Tuesday whether he planned to talk to Ducey about the contest.

The Arizona GOP operative noted that it’s possible Ducey, the outgoing chairman of the Republican Governors Association, has “bigger aspirations” than the upper chamber. Multiple sources noted that Ducey, the former CEO of Cold Stone Creamery, has been floated as a future head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Suzanne Clark continues to hold that position. 

“At the end of the day, he probably could have won in ’22. But he didn’t want to do it, and I don’t think that has changed,” said Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based GOP strategist. “Maybe he’ll get tired of being out of government.”

Thus far, there has been far more movement on the Democratic side of the race. 

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), a frequent critic of Sinema, has said in recent days that he is considering a bid and is likely to decide by next month. 

Shortly after the incumbent senator’s announcement, Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) released polling data showing a head-to-head match-up of him versus the Arizona senator. Sources also speculated that someone from the business community might take a gander at a run. 

Adding to the intrigue, Sinema on Thursday filed for a 2024 run under her new party designation. The race is considered crucial for Democrats, as they are facing a daunting map. Of the 33 seats up in 2024, they hold 23. 

If Ducey holds true and decides against a bid, other Republicans are already being floated as potential candidates. 

Arizona Rep.-elect Juan Ciscomani (R), a former Ducey adviser who won a purple district in November that was vacated by Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D), is considered a potential contender, though some cast doubt over whether he would move toward a Senate run after only being in the House for a few months. Arizona Reps. David Schweikert and Andy Biggs, and Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb are also considered as possibilities to launch bids. 

However, Republicans argue the time is right for Ducey given the ebbing Trump factor and the possibility of a three-way race with two candidates who lean left. 

“His scoop of ice cream is sitting on the slab. It’s either going to melt or he’s going to fold it into a cup and put a smile on a customer’s face,” one GOP operative said of Ducey. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump tells GOP congressional supporters to cease McCarthy opposition: Breitbart interview

Former President Donald Trump voiced his support for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif) bid for Speaker on Friday, warning the five Republican holdouts that they’re “playing a very dangerous game.”

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

As the vote on McCarthy’s nomination looms just over two weeks away, five Republican congressmen — Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) and Bob Good (R-Va.) — have continued to oppose McCarthy’s Speakership bid.

McCarthy said on Friday that the five had not moved on their stance, despite ongoing conversations. Even so, he added that he believes the group will stand down “in the end.”

However, Trump told Breitbart he has warned the congressmen about the potential consequences of their opposition.

“Now, I’m friendly with a lot of those people who are against Kevin. I think almost every one of them are very much inclined toward Trump, and me toward them,” he said. “But I have to tell them, and I have told them, you’re playing a very dangerous game.”

The former president pointed to former House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) resignation in 2015 in the face of opposition from within the Republican Party, which resulted in former Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) taking over as Speaker.

“Boehner wasn’t perfect—nobody’s perfect—but Paul Ryan was a disaster for the Republican Party,” Trump said.

Trump and Ryan frequently clashed while the two overlapped as president and Speaker, and Ryan has become a staunch opponent of the former president since leaving Congress.

Ryan said in an interview last month that he believes Trump would lose if he becomes the Republican nominee in 2024 and labeled himself a “never-again-Trumper.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Why the issue of crime didn’t deliver for Republicans in the midterms

While crime was ranked as a key issue in exit polls among voters and one that Republicans leaned on heavily during the midterms, the issue didn’t translate into the kind of wins the party expected on election night. 

Still, members of the party credit Republican messaging on crime with helping the party notch several key House races in New York and making other House, Senate and gubernatorial races closer than expected.  

At the same time, Republicans say a mix of factors, like the outsized influence of national issues, poor strategy and voter geography, influenced why the issue of crime didn’t resonate with voters as well as they’d hoped. They also say multiple issues at play can make understanding midterm dynamics especially tricky.  

“The issue of crime is — it’s like a supporting cast member. So you need to have it in your issue set, and you need to connect the importance of public safety and crime into the number one issue, which is the economy. I don’t think that Republicans effectively made that argument,” said GOP strategist John Thomas. 

Thomas said campaigns could’ve created “connective tissue” messaging that linked crime with topics on voters’ minds, for instance arguing that the economy would be impacted if business owners couldn’t ensure the safety of their businesses. 

“I rarely saw what we were just discussing where candidates for Congress were tethering the top issue sets together and explaining why everything is an economic issue, whether it’s crime, or education or inflation,” Thomas said, speaking about House races specifically. “I think by and large Republicans missed the mark, both at an individual candidate level, and … I never saw any of those arguments coming from leadership at the national level.” 

Other Republicans argue that the issue of crime was an important one for their party to focus on, but that it was drowned out by other conversations, including abortion access and former President Trump.  

“When you’re talking about House races and gubernatorial races, I think they got caught up in the same federal spin a senator would have,” said one GOP strategist who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “And so I think that’s where, in a lot of these challenging congressional districts or even in a gubernatorial race that would have had more merit to the crime discussion and debate …  I’d still think it got lost in the shuffle of Trump and abortion.” 

“The same with House races, even if you’re in a House district with a big suburban block on the edges of a large metropolitan city where crime is a real meaningful issue there, I think the issue got put into second gear, again, because the … national dialogue and debate and the animosity and vigor of that debate overshadowed crime when people showed up at the polls,” the strategist added. 

Exit polls show that crime, though not seen as the top issue generally, was still seen as a top-tier issue. Exit polling from Edison Research and published by Reuters showed that crime ranked third among both Republicans and Democrats when voters were asked which of five issues they were offered to choose from mattered the most to them in deciding how they voted. 

But the issue of crime is complicated, as data and perception tell complex stories. Just take for instance a bulletin from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics published in September showing that the rate of violent victimization — which includes simple assault, aggravated assault, rape or sexual assault and robbery — has fallen both between 1993 and 2021 and between 2012 and 2021 alone.  

Between 1993 and 2021, the Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin, which includes data taken from a self-reported survey called the National Crime Victimization Survey, found that that rate of violent victimizations fell from 79.8 victimizations per 1,000 people at least 12 years old to 16.5 victimizations per 1,000 people in that same demographic in 2021. Between 2012 and 2021, that rate fell from 26.1 victimizations per 1,000 people to 16.5 victimizations. 

But there are several other caveats. The data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics bulletin is only one data point, given that the survey it relies on is self-reported by respondents. That means it does not analyze murder, for example. Plus, local police departments keep their own datasets on crime in addition to the FBI, which has a National Incident-Based Reporting System, though it doesn’t include data from all police departments. 

Crime as an issue for voters is also shaped by personal experiences, news coverage and other perceptions, even if the data offers another story.  

One GOP official argued that the issue didn’t always perform well among voters in House races, for example, because crime wasn’t always relevant to their communities. But that official also said that candidates’ messaging on crime created tighter-than-expected races and resonated with voters in Long Island enough to flip several blue seats red. 

“As a whole, though, it was a great issue for Republicans, looking at how the success of New York as probably one of the best indicators of how crime messaging worked,” said the GOP official. “And to be honest with you, yes, Dr. [Mehmet] Oz lost that race in Pennsylvania, but where he started at and where he ended [was] a much closer race than it was over the summer. That was purely because of crime.” 

Indeed, Democrats running in House races, for example, were advised to take the issue of crime seriously. A memo from the House Democrats’ campaign arm that was sent to members and candidates earlier this year and obtained by The Hill offered guidance to candidates on how to combat Republican attacks made on “defunding the police” and highlighting their own track record on law enforcement and public safety. 

“Republicans will seek to tie every Democrat to ‘defund’ regardless of that Democrat’s record or biography. They are doing this because, sadly, these attacks can work even when they’re obviously false. While these attacks may seem too ridiculous to engage with, that is a mistake. We must respond,” the memo said in part. 

While it’s too early to say how the issue of crime will resonate with voters in 2024, some Republicans are hoping it’s not an issue they’ll have to campaign on again. But for Rep.-elect Anthony D’Esposito, a former New York Police Department detective who flipped New York’s 4th Congressional District red in a district that went for the Democrat candidate last cycle by 13 points, he’s telling Republicans to meet voters where the issues are. 

“I think the focus of anybody running for office, regardless of where you live or where you’re running is to listen to the voters and stick to the script that they give you. And when you talk to voters and when you poll voters and when you have the issues or the three biggest issues that matter, stick to them,” D’Esposito told The Hill. 

Source: TEST FEED1

The Memo: Twitter’s turmoil under Musk roils political waters

New Twitter controversies have erupted on an almost hourly basis over the past few days — and the bigger picture is one in which the future of the social media giant is in serious flux under Elon Musk’s ownership.

That, in turn, is roiling political debates around the platform which, for better or worse, has become a critical component of public discourse, particularly in the United States. 

The company claimed to have 238 million monetizable daily active users worldwide in the second quarter of 2022, a few months before Musk took the helm. More than 41 million of those users were in the United States.

Conservatives have, by and large, cheered the moves Musk has made since acquiring Twitter in a $44 billion deal that closed in late October. They see the early days of Musk’s reign as a corrective to a lean to the left they allege previously characterized decisionmaking at the company.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) praised Musk in a Fox News interview Wednesday, saying that the billionaire had taken “a very courageous stand on the First Amendment” since acquiring the company and had shown himself “tough as a pine knot.”

This paean to Musk’s supposed commitment to free speech, however, came only a day before Twitter suspended the accounts of several prominent journalists from outlets including the New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN.

Musk accused those accounts of “doxxing” him — giving away his exact location — and revealing “basically assassination coordinates.” 

It is not clear precisely what he was referring to, though several of the accounts had referenced a Twitter user who tracked the movements of Musk’s private jet using publicly available data. That account, @ElonJet, had also been suspended earlier.

Shortly after midnight Eastern Time on Saturday, Musk tweeted that the suspensions would be lifted following the outcome of the second Twitter poll he had run on the issue.

In broader terms, liberals recoil at Musk’s decisions and pronouncements, which have ranged from lifting the bans on a number of controversial right-wing accounts — the most notable being that of former President Trump — to encouraging users to vote for Republicans in the midterm elections.

The Thursday banning of the journalists’ accounts, in liberal eyes, was petty and capricious, showing the billionaire’s willingness to flex his proprietorial muscle to punish reporters whose coverage irks him — and demonstrating the falsity of his claims to be committed to free speech.

“This idea that he was trying to create an open and transparent, even-handed network is obviously not what’s happening,” said Simon Rosenberg of NDN, a center-left think tank.

“A critical part of global public discourse is in jeopardy. It’s unfortunate because it is something close to a town square and Musk obviously was misleading in his argument about what he was going to do with it. He has aligned himself with far-right interests in the United States,” Rosenberg added.

Complicating the picture is the continuing fallout from a decision made by the previous management of Twitter.

Two years ago, Twitter placed tight restrictions on the sharing of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, published in the last month of the 2020 presidential election campaign.

At the time, there were suggestions that the laptop story could have emanated from some kind of misinformation campaign. But those allegations have never been stood up, and instead the legitimacy of the original story has become more solid.

Even former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has acknowledged the company’s original response was a “mistake” — and it has become a touchstone for conservatives who contend more generally that they suffered from a liberal bias among Twitter’s workforce, and in Silicon Valley more generally.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, told The Hill earlier this week that Twitter had run a “misinformation operation on the country.” 

Jordan, who vowed investigations when the GOP takes control of the House in January, alleged that, in Twitter’s pre-Musk era, “everyone understands what they’re supposed to do here. Plus, all these people lean to the left anyway.”

Matt Mackowiak, the chairman of the Travis County Republican Party in Texas, told this column that he believed Musk was, in fact, trying to “apply even standards without partisan bias” in the management of the social media giant.

Referencing long-standing conservative complaints about arbitrary bans and de-amplification of right-leaning views, he added: “It’s pretty clear that the left now is starting to understand the complaints the right has had about Twitter for at least five years … there has been a lot of pearl-clutching on the left, but most of them are remaining on the platform.”

There are, clearly, serious challenges ahead for Twitter. 

The row over the suspension of journalists’ accounts reached as high as the United Nations, where a spokesperson complained about the “dangerous precedent” that was being set. A vice president in the European Commission warned of “sanctions, soon” on the far side of the Atlantic.

Then there is the danger of a mass migration of users to some other social media platform. In that regard, one of Musk’s big advantages is that no comparable platform has anywhere near the same reach, nor have dissenters coalesced around a single would-be rival.

Conservatives also roll their eyes at some of the reaction in the past week, noting that earlier predictions that the site would collapse under the weight of a round of sweeping layoffs proved hyperbolic.

For now, all that seems certain is that the the Musk-led shake-up of Twitter is far from over — and that the end result, whatever it may be, will have profound effects for political debate.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage. Rebecca Klar and Emily Brooks contributed.

Source: TEST FEED1

Fed, Wall Street 'in a brawl' over inflation cure

The Federal Reserve and the stock market are butting heads over the central bank’s efforts to fight inflation.

Stocks capped a steep two-day sell-off on Friday, wiping out gains from a rally earlier in the week driven by hopeful economic news. Inflation as measured by the consumer price index had fallen for the fifth straight month — and far more than analysts expected — according to data released right before the Fed was set to slow down its interest rate hikes.

While the Fed did end up boosting rates by a smaller amount than its previous four hikes, a dour forecast from officials, including Chairman Jerome Powell, shook markets out of their optimism. Instead of signs of lower interest rates ahead, the Fed warned rates would be even higher and stay that way for longer.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 281 points Friday, falling 0.9 percent on the day for its second straight week of losses. The S&P 500 index closed 1.1 percent lower, and the Nasdaq closed with a loss of 1 percent on the day, respectively. 

“The Fed and the stock market are fighting. They’re in a brawl right now,” said Callie Cox, U.S. investment analyst at online investment firm eToro, in a Friday phone interview.

“The stock market’s been itching for a pivot for months now, really since the summer, and the Fed time and time again has told us that they’re serious about inflation, they want to get inflation under control, and if that means keeping rates high for a while, so be it,” she added.

As interest rates continue to rise, businesses will face steeper borrowing costs and have less money to invest in expansion, making their stocks less appealing to investors. Households will also have less expendable income to throw in the market as interest rates on their mortgages, car payments and credit cards rise.

The stock market’s hardship, however, is an important part of the Fed’s plan.

Fed officials know their tough talk about keeping rates high and snuffing out inflation at whatever the cost alarms investors and traders. Those warnings are intended to keep Americans’ expectations in check and force businesses to feel the squeeze of high rates without rising stock prices to buffet the blow.

“The Fed knows that its words are equally as powerful in a world where social media is so pervasive and information just moves so quickly,” Cox said. “The Fed is preparing markets for what’s coming before it actually happens. This time around, though, it just feels a little bit more painful because the Fed needs to get inflation down.”

Powell said during a Wednesday press conference that the U.S. still had “a long ways to go” before inflation was down to a sustainable level. He added that the only way for the Fed to achieve that goal was to keep its foot on the brakes of the economy with high interest rates meant to boost the unemployment rate.

The November jobless rate of 3.7 percent is just 0.2 percentage point below its level in February 2020, then a five-decade record low. But the U.S. workforce has roughly 4 million fewer workers now than it did before the onset of the pandemic, while businesses are posting record numbers of open jobs.

With fewer workers available to fill open jobs, businesses have been forced to boost wages to attract candidates — and prices to compensate for that higher pay. That dynamic, Fed officials say, is the reason why inflation has remained high even as prices for almost all goods other than food have fallen.

“We have too many jobs and too few workers, so that means that wage inflation is going to be far from a sustainable average, and we’re going to have that passing through to prices. That’s what we’re working on right now,” said Mary Daly, president of the Federal Reserve of San Francisco, at a Friday event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.

“To be honest with you, I don’t quite know why markets are so optimistic about inflation,” Daly said.

On Wednesday, Fed officials boosted their projections for how high they would need to raise interest rates and how long they would keep them at levels meant to hinder the labor market.

They now expect to hike interest rates to a span of 5 to 5.25 percent by the end of 2023, up from the 4.5 to 4.75 range officials projected in September, and they don’t foresee cutting rates until 2024.

The Fed also sees its rate hikes taking a serious toll on the U.S. economy, projecting the jobless rate to increase by 0.9 percentage points to 4.6 percent by the end of 2023 and economic growth slowing to 0.5 percent. While Fed officials say it may be possible to avoid heavy job losses in that scenario, most outside economists believe such an increase in the jobless rate would mean more than 1 million Americans losing work.

“The Fed did not welcome the disinflation trends that have just started to emerge and focused on robust job gains and elevated inflation. Any hopes of a soft landing disappeared as the Fed seems like they are committed to taking rates much higher,” said Edward Moya, senior markets analyst at OANDA, in a Wednesday note to clients.

A Fed-driven recession or steep slowdown would be more bad news for the stock market as companies struggle with lower sales and fewer households have the flexibility to put money in risky assets. But higher rates in and of themselves could be a larger and longer-term damper on the stock market.

Stocks exploded in value in the years following the Great Recession as the Fed kept its baseline interest rate range near zero. The market’s stunning rally accelerated even more during the COVID-19 pandemic, when low interest rates and trillions of dollars in federal stimulus helped fuel new records across all three major indexes.

With rates likely to stay high for much longer, Cox said the days of the market smashing through record highs again are likely far away.

“When we look at 2023, we kind of see a year of purgatory,” she said.

Source: TEST FEED1