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Where the Warnock-Walker race stands with early voting underway in Georgia
Early voting is underway in Georgia in what promises to be an intense week-and-a-half of campaigning between GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker and incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock.
Walker and Warnock were forced to keep campaigning through to the Dec. 6 runoff after neither candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote in their closely watched midterm general election, and have since ramped up their campaign ads and fundraising efforts.
A Warnock win would mean Democrats increase their razor-thin majority in the Senate, while a Walker victory would keep their total to 50 seats, with the tiebreaker vote from Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Even though Senate control is not on the line, as many predicted it would be, Georgia is seeing high early voting turnout in the runoff.
Data from the Georgia Secretary of State’s website showed early Sunday that some 90,000 voters had already cast their ballots just a day after early voting opened in some Georgia counties — after the Georgia Supreme Court denied a Republican bid to block Saturday early voting.
More Georgians voted on Sunday than on any Sunday in the 2018, 2020 and 2022 general elections, or in the 2021 Senate runoff, according to Warnock’s campaign director Quentin Fulks. The Hill has reached out to the Georgia secretary of state for confirmation of that data.
Georgia boasted record voter turnout throughout the midterms, with more than 143,000 votes cast on the first day of early voting before the general election.
Warnock has urged Georgians to “show up again” to reaffirm the slim 1-point lead he saw in the general election.
As of Nov. 16, Warnock had nearly three times as much funds at the ready as his challenger, according to a report from CNBC.
On the first day of his runoff campaign, Walker reportedly raised $3.3 million for his runoff campaign. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee pledged $7 million for Warnock’s runoff effort.
The campaign rhetoric has also ramped up again as the runoff approaches.
Warnock has said the former NFL star “majors in lying” and “ain’t serious,” while Walker has called the incumbent a “hypocrite” and accused him of bending to Democratic leadership, according to the Associated Press.
Warnock touted his character in a new television ad, after Walker has defended himself against abuse allegations from his ex-wife and claims from a former girlfriend that he paid for her abortion.
“Character is what you do when nobody is watching. It’s about doing the right thing simply because it’s the right thing, and doing it over and over again,” the Democrat says in a recent ad, without naming Walker.
But the Democrat has more directly knocked Walker for his apparent contradictions regarding abortion.
Walker’s supporters, on the other hand, have released an ad accusing Warnock of mismanagement of an Atlanta apartment building with a link to his church.
Polls show the two candidates are again neck-and-neck heading into the runoff, though Walker appears to be edging slightly ahead: The latest FiveThirtyEight polling averages put Walker up 1 percentage point over Warnock, 47.8 percent to 46.8 percent.
Another poll released last week by AARP put Walker ahead by 4 percentage points, though Warnock was leading among voters aged 18-49.
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GOP prepares for House takeover: Five things to watch
House Republicans will take the reins of the lower chamber in fewer than six weeks, returning to power after four years in the minority wilderness to usher in a new era of divided government heading into the 2024 presidential election.
The shift comes after two years when President Biden enjoyed Democratic control of the House and the Senate. And it will have drastic implications for the workings of Washington, setting the stage for countless clashes between the House and the administration over everything from government spending and border security to the fight against inflation and the future of Medicare and Social Security.
Republicans are also promising to focus much of their energy on investigations, including the administration’s handling of the southern border, charges of political bias at the Justice Department, and the business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter.
Here are five things to watch as the House is poised to change hands.
McCarthy will struggle with narrow majority
Republicans charged into this month’s midterms with wide eyes for big gains — Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had predicted a 60-seat flip — that would afford them a comfortable cushion for pushing legislation through the lower chamber next year.
Instead, they squeaked out a victory, and their underperformance leaves them a slim majority — just a handful of seats — and little room for error as they bring bills to the floor.
Those dynamics play to the great advantage of the far-right Freedom Caucus, the home of McCarthy’s loudest internal detractors, where members are already angling to secure a number of conservative priorities — including a balanced budget amendment and an end to U.S. funding for Ukraine — that party leaders have been reluctant to endorse.
If Republicans had scored a larger majority, GOP leaders would have been insulated from those demands. As it stands, McCarthy might be forced to consider them, even if it puts more moderate Republicans — and the GOP’s fragile majority — in danger in 2024.
“He had predicted — what? — 60 seats? If you don’t perform the way you told people, people question it. They didn’t get exactly what they wanted,” said a former leadership aide. “A tight margin makes it very difficult.”
McCarthy is also likely to face conservative pressure in the coming battles to fund the government and lift the debt ceiling — the same debates that had fueled the Tea Party movement more than a decade ago and have created headaches for GOP leaders ever since.
“When you look at John Boehner and Paul Ryan, two previous Speakers, they got out. They got out early because they could not deal with their right-wing extremists,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told CNN on Tuesday. “I think McCarthy’s going to find the same problem.”
Winning the Speaker’s gavel
The Republicans’ slim House advantage poses another even more immediate problem for McCarthy heading into the new Congress: Whether he’ll have enough GOP support to win the Speaker’s gavel.
McCarthy easily won the Republican nomination for the post earlier this month, 188 to 31. But he needs to surpass a much higher bar — a majority of the full House — when the chamber meets on Jan. 3 to choose the next Speaker. With Republicans on track to have 222 House seats, at most, McCarthy can have far fewer than 31 defectors.
Helping him along, McCarthy has secured support from several prominent Freedom Caucus members — including Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — as well as former President Trump.
But other conservatives are vowing to oppose him, including Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who all say they’re firm nos. Reps. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) and Bob Good (R-Va.) are also voicing their resistance. Some are warning that they’re just the tip of the opposition iceberg.
McCarthy, whose Speakership bid was blocked by conservatives in 2015, is the first to acknowledge the internal challenge he’s facing.
“Look, we have our work cut out for us,” he told reporters just after winning the GOP nomination. “We’ve got to have a small majority. We’ve got to listen to everybody in our conference.”
Democrats are watching from the sidelines, wary that whatever promises McCarthy might make to win over the conservatives will make the lower chamber ungovernable.
“It’s one thing if you have a large majority, and you can sort of say, ‘Well, I can afford to ignore the crazies like Marjorie Taylor Greene,’” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told MSNBC on Monday. “It’s another if you have just a handful that are keeping you in the speaker’s chair, and they’re crazy.”
Change has come for Democrats
If the GOP leadership structure remains largely unchanged next year, the same will not be true across the aisle.
House Democrats will undergo a massive makeover in the next Congress after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her top two deputies — Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.) and Jim Clyburn (S.C.) — stepped out of the top three leadership spots after almost two decades together.
The abdications opened the floodgates for a new generation of up-and-coming Democrats to seize the reins of the party. And a trio of younger leaders — Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Katherine Clark (Mass.) and Pete Aguilar (Calif.) — wasted no time stepping into the void as candidates for the top three positions, respectively.
All three are running unopposed, and are expected to win their seats easily when House Democrats stage their leadership elections next week.
For Jeffries, ascending to the minority leader spot would be historic, making him the first Black lawmaker to lead either party, in either chamber, since the nation’s founding. It would also limit the Democrats’ regional diversity, putting a New York City lawmaker in charge of the party in both the House and the Senate, where Chuck Schumer is expected to return next year as majority leader.
The shakeup — Pelosi’s departure in particular — has raised questions about the strategic changes to come in both parties.
For Democrats, that means determining what role Pelosi and Hoyer — who are both staying in Congress — will play as rank-and-file members. It also means deciding whether to designate more power to rank-and-file members and the committee heads after decades when much of the authority was consolidated with Pelosi. And they’ll have their work cut out in trying to recreate the fundraising role Pelosi has played over the last two decades.
For Republicans, who have spent years and millions of dollars demonizing Pelosi, it means finding another Democratic foil to use on the campaign trail.
Meanwhile, the would-be relationship between the House’s likely top leaders, McCarthy and Jeffries, is off to a rough start.
Jeffries, as head of the Democratic Caucus, has attacked McCarthy relentlessly since the Republican leader cozied up to Trump in the weeks after last year’s rampage at the Capitol, calling him “embarrassing” and “pathetic.” And the two have not spoken in some time.
Last week, Jeffries acknowledged the absence of any real connection.
“I do have, I think, a much warmer relationship with Steve Scalise,” he said on CNN’s “Meet the Press.”
Impeachment is already on the table
For months, House conservatives have pressed the case for impeaching Biden and members of his cabinet if the House were to change hands — a warning to both the administration and any GOP leaders who might be reluctant to take that step.
On Tuesday, McCarthy threw those Republicans a bone, saying he would consider impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas next year if the Homeland Security secretary refused to resign beforehand. Republicans have long been critical of Mayorkas’s handling of the migrant crisis at the southern border, and Republicans in this Congress have already introduced resolutions to remove him.
“If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate, every order, every action and every failure will determine whether we can begin impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy told reporters in El Paso, Texas.
The announcement is sure to appease the GOP’s conservative wing, which is where McCarthy needs more support to win the Speaker’s gavel. But whether he follows through on the threat next year remains to be seen.
Republicans were hurt politically following their impeachment of President Clinton in 1998, and many in the GOP — including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — have warned against making the same mistake next year.
Yet there are also perils for McCarthy if he ignores the impeachment demands: It could spark an outcry from a GOP base — much of which is still loyal to Trump — that’s keen to avenge the two impeachments that targeted the former president. And conservatives will be watching closely, ready to lash out at GOP leaders deemed insufficiently aggressive in taking on the Biden White House.
McCarthy seems to be keeping his options open, promising only that Republicans will investigate Mayorkas and see where it leads.
“This investigation could lead to an impeachment inquiry,” he said in El Paso.
Other fights to watch
With Republicans taking over the House, most of Biden’s ambitious domestic agenda is likely to come to a screeching halt. But that doesn’t mean the end of high-stakes legislating.
Congress next year will still — at a minimum — have to fund the federal government in order to prevent a shutdown, and raise Washington’s borrowing limit to stave off a government default.
Both debates are expected to squeeze House GOP leaders between the more moderate forces of the Senate — where McConnell will have to sign off on any fiscal deals — and the conservative firebrands of the lower chamber who say they’re ready to risk shutdowns and defaults to rein in government spending and realize other pieces of their legislative wishlist.
Part of that debate could feature a balanced budget amendment, which was the reason Ralph Norman said he’s opposing McCarthy’s Speakership bid. There’s also likely to be a push from the right to cut the big entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — which are on autopilot and represent a huge chunk of the federal budget.
Must-pass government spending bills would also provide ready opportunity for House Republicans to attach other priority items, including provisions to build a border wall, expand domestic oil drilling and roll back environmental regulations.
A Democratic-led Senate would balk at such provisions — and Biden would likely veto any such bill that got that far — but the GOP-led House could force the issue.
Funding for Ukraine will get outsized attention next year. Under Democratic control — and with broad bipartisan support — Congress has approved tens-of-billions of dollars to help Kyiv weather the Russian assault. But a number of conservatives are vowing to oppose any new funding, saying that’s money better spent fixing problems at home.
Some Democrats are already voicing their concerns.
“It’s not hard to figure out that with a tiny, tiny majority — you know, Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene together in a room control the fate of Kevin McCarthy,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) told MSNBC on Tuesday. “And so the question is sort of, how much does he feed them?”
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Trump blames Kanye West for bringing Nick Fuentes as dinner guest
Former President Trump on Saturday said Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, is a “seriously troubled man” whom he was trying to help, but also blamed the controversial musician for a dinner in which Trump says Ye brought along a known white supremacist.
Trump said on Truth Social that Ye brought far-right activist Nick Fuentes to the dinner on Tuesday night and that he did not know who Fuentes was.
“So I help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black, Ye (Kanye West), who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else,” Trump wrote, “and who has always been good to me, by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, alone, so that I can give him very much needed ‘advice.'”
“He shows up with 3 people, two of which I didn’t know, the other a political person who I haven’t seen in years,” the former president added. “I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win. Fake News went CRAZY!”
The New York Times and Axios both reported last week that Trump dined on Tuesday night with Fuentes and Ye at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Fuentes has made widely condemned racist comments and has denied the Holocaust, while several companies have cut ties with Ye after he made antisemitic comments last month.
Adidas, one of the businesses to end its partnership with Ye, is also investigating the rapper for alleged misconduct while he worked with members of a team selling Yeezy products.
Trump received backlash over the weekend for the meeting, including from members of his own party.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R), a potential 2024 presidential candidate, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that it was “very troubling” for Trump to meet with Fuentes.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader that’s setting an example for the country or the party to meet with [an] avowed racist or antisemite,” Hutchinson said.
At the dinner, Ye reportedly asked Trump to be his running mate in 2024. The former president has already launched his White House bid.
The rapper claimed in a video shared online that Trump “started basically screaming at me at the table telling me I was gonna lose.” Ye also said Trump was “really impressed with Nick Fuentes.”
On Friday, after reports circulated about the dinner, Trump released a series of statements defending the meeting.
“Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago,” Trump wrote. “Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Manchin’s side deal on brink as GOP seeks his 2024 ouster
Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) side deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to enact permitting reform before the end of the year is on life support as Republicans look to deprive the lawmaker of a major victory that could aid his potential 2024 reelection.
Manchin is in discussions with GOP colleagues about striking a deal on permitting reform in the lame-duck session, but Republicans say it faces an uphill path as they view his West Virginia Senate seat as a top pickup opportunity in the next election.
“It’s a heavy lift but we’re still exchanging ideas,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), one of the lead Republican negotiators on permitting reform.
Passing permitting reform legislation before January, or even next year, may depend on whether Manchin runs for a fourth term. Former President Trump won West Virginia with 68.6 percent of the vote two years ago.
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Manchin, who is 75, told The Hill he’s “running every day” but declined to say when he will formally announce his decision on the 2024 election.
He said he expects a tough race if he runs again.
“I’ve never run unopposed. I’ve always been expecting rigorous” competition, he said. “I’m anxious to just watch the fireworks on the Republican primary side. I think there will be a lot of people in [the GOP Senate primary].”
Manchin said he’s going to put himself “in a position to help my state and my country the best I possibly can” but doesn’t plan to make an announcement about his political future anytime soon.
Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist, said getting the Mountain Valley Pipeline authorized, a key piece of Manchin’s permitting reform bill, would be a big win in West Virginia, where fossil fuel is the “life’s blood” of the state economy.
Manchin is already under attack from likely Republican challengers for voting for the Inflation Reduction Act. Getting permitting reform passed as a reward for that tough vote would give him political cover.
“This is an opportunity to actually win his seat in 2024,” O’Connell said, adding that “it would be political malpractice” to give Manchin a victory on permitting reform.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline would transport natural gas more than 303 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia and create an estimated 3,700 construction jobs and $1.58 billion in direct spending in West Virginia.
Brian Darling, a Republican strategist and former Senate aide, said “I don’t think Republicans should give Manchin any victories.”
“It would be a big political fumble to let a weak permitting reform bill pass and give Manchin a victory when he’s staring at a very difficult reelection,” he added.
Manchin suffered a setback last week when Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the top-ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, said there was “zero chance” of adding permitting reform to the annual defense authorization bill.
But Manchin argues that permitting reform is critical to national defense at a time when the supply of oil from Saudi Arabia and other OPEC-member countries is becoming less reliable.
Saudi Arabia said Monday that OPEC could cut output again to prop up falling oil prices.
“I think all of us agree that we need permitting reform,” Manchin said shortly before the Thanksgiving recess. “We need more pipelines, we need to be able to produce and get product to market.
“This is all about national security, energy independence,” he added. “I’m hoping everyone realizes we need to do something.”
Manchin will continue to play a pivotal role in next year’s Senate, which will be divided 50-50 or 51-49, depending on the outcome of the Dec. 6 Georgia runoff, with Democrats in control of a narrow majority either way due to Vice President Harris’s tiebreaking vote.
Mike Plante, a West Virginia-based Democratic strategist, said Manchin appears to be gearing up for another Senate run.
“My guess is he may well do that. He’s continued to raise money. When he’s home in the state, he is not phoning it in. He’s all over the place doing all kinds of things — meeting with folks, getting out at events. He certainly hasn’t slowed down any,” he said. “I hope he will run for reelection and if he does, I think he’ll win.”
Manchin reported more than $9 million in cash on hand in his campaign account at the end of September.
Schumer told reporters that he’s still hoping to get at least 10 Republican votes for Manchin’s permitting reform bill as part of the commitment he made in July to secure the West Virginia senator’s vote for a sweeping tax reform, climate spending and prescription drug reform bill.
“As you saw when we tried it last time, there weren’t enough Republican votes. I’m working with Sen. Manchin to see what we can get done,” he said last week.
Manchin agreed to pull his permitting reform proposal off the floor in late September when it became clear we could not muster enough Republican votes to overcome procedural objections to attaching it to a short-term funding bill.
A Senate Republican aide said it would take a “miracle” for Manchin’s bill to pass before January.
“I think it’s kind of a fool’s errand,” said the source, adding that Manchin hasn’t included enough Republican input into the legislation. “I would be shocked if something actually comes out on permitting.”
“[Manchin] is desperately trying to get something done because he made that agreement,” the source said, referring to Manchin’s deal with Schumer to vote for the reconciliation package this summer.
He wasn’t able to include his permitting reform bill in the package, which was protected by special rules from a GOP filibuster, because it could not get the green light from the Senate parliamentarian.
But Manchin emphasized when he announced his deal in July that President Biden, Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had “committed to advancing a suite of commonsense permitting reforms this fall” that would speed up the construction of energy infrastructure.
That deal has now been further complicated by Pelosi’s decision to step down as House Democratic leader. There’s no guarantee her expected successor, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), will uphold the bargain.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, sent a letter to Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) Monday asking them “to exclude harmful permitting provisions from must-pass legislation this year.”
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Hutchinson calls Trump meeting with Nick Fuentes 'very troubling'
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Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R), who is considering challenging former President Trump for the White House in 2024, called Trump’s recent dinner with white nationalist Nick Fuentes “very troubling” on Sunday.
During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” with co-anchor Dana Bash, Hutchinson criticized the former president after he acknowledged dining with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, and Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader that’s setting an example for the country or the party to meet with [an] avowed racist or antisemite,” Hutchinson told Bash.
“And so it’s very troubling, and it shouldn’t happen,” Hutchinson added. “And we need to avoid those kinds of empowering the extremes. And when you meet with people, you empower, and that’s what you have to avoid. You want to diminish their strength, not empower them. Stay away from them.”
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Trump has acknowledged the dinner in multiple statements on Truth Social, claiming he did not know Fuentes, who has expressed doubt about the Holocaust and was labeled a white supremacist by the Department of Justice.
The former president and Ye have publicly indicated the group discussed Ye’s aspirations to run for the presidency in 2024 during the dinner, and Trump said he told the rapper not to run.
Ye recently made a string of recent antisemitic comments, leading to immense controversy that has caused multiple brands, including Adidas, to drop their partnerships with the rapper.
Hutchinson, a frequent Trump critic, has acknowledged that he is considering running for the presidency in 2024, which would set up a direct challenge to the former president.
“I hope someday we won’t have to be responding to what former President Trump has said or done,” Hutchinson said on CNN. “The last time I met with a white supremacist, it was in an armed standoff, I had a bulletproof vest on. We arrested them, prosecuted him, sent him to prison.”
The Arkansas governor applauded other rumored 2024 GOP contenders who have criticized Trump in recent weeks, including former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
“We need more of those voices, not fewer,” Hutchinson told Bash. “And I expect those voices to increase. And it shouldn’t be in a harsh tone, it should be in a voice of reality that this is exactly where we are as a party and where we need to go to reach out to those independents and expand the base of the party and move beyond the Trump era.”
— Updated at 10:23 a.m.
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House Republican says Congress doesn’t need to pass ‘Democrat bills’ that help Ukraine
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) on Sunday said Congress does not need to pass “Democrat bills” with big price tags to help Ukraine, saying the incoming Republican majority in the House will spend less money to fund Kyiv’s war against Russia.
Turner told ABC’s “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz that he personally told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky he will have bipartisan support in the next Congress.
But Turner also said Republicans will closely look at how much is being spent.
“We don’t need to pass $40 billion, large Democrat bills … to send $8 billion dollars to Ukraine,” Turner said. “It’s been very frustrating, obviously, even to the Ukrainians, when they hear these large numbers in the United States as the result of the burgeoned Democrat bills.”
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Republicans captured control of the House in the midterm elections and will hold a slim majority in the lower chamber when the next Congress forms in January.
Because the Senate will remain in Democrats’ hands, both parties will have to work with each other to keep funding Ukraine, which is preparing for a new phase in the war over the winter months.
Republicans have scrutinized the billions of dollars Democrats have passed for Ukraine this year, saying some of the money is unrelated spending.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration asked Congress for an additional $37 billion, which President Biden is hoping that lawmakers can pass in the lame-duck session before January so Ukraine has guaranteed funding for the next few months.
Turner on Sunday said Republicans will make sure that Ukraine “gets what they need,” including critical weapons like air defenses after Russia has pounded the country with a wave of missile strikes.
“We need to make certain we work with partners and pull together an air defense system … to defend Kyiv, to defend their infrastructure,” he said.
— Updated at 10:04 a.m.
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Climate activists set to pressure Biden with Congress divided
The limited at best prospects for major climate legislation under a divided Congress has left many environmental advocacy groups hoping to amp up pressure on the Biden administration to advance regulations that are more protective of the environment.
While there are some legislative climate issues to watch with a GOP House and Democratic Senate, activists say the best chance at progress has shifted to steps that might be taken administratively.
“We do not see Congress as the avenue for major progress in the next 12 months and we think there’s a lot more ground we can cover in implementation, executive action and states,” Holly Burke, a spokesperson for the environmental group Evergreen Action, told The Hill.
“We will keep our eye on the ball with regards to Congress, but we’re not going to invest most of our time there,” she added.
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Democrats and Republicans are bitterly divided on climate change, with the GOP voting unanimously against the sweeping legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act, which represented the biggest steps taken by a U.S. Congress on the issue.
Advocates would have sought to build on that win with a Democratic Senate and House, but now see regulation and implementation of that climate and tax bill as their next frontiers.
“I don’t want to take our foot off the gas on Congress in terms of making sure we continue to make the modest progress that’s possible again through appropriations [and] through the farm bill, but in terms of the main focus of what the Sierra Club is looking to advance the climate agenda, it’s absolutely [Inflation Reduction Act] implementation, which goes hand-in-hand with executive action,” said Melinda Pierce, the Sierra Club’s legislative director.
“I’m hoping we see quite a bit from the Biden administration on administrative rules that have been slowly progressing,” she added. “I think we’re going to see a whole bunch come to fruition at the end of this year and certainly next year.”
Major regulations that the Biden administration is expected to advance are pollution and climate standards for power plants and heavy-duty vehicles, as well as limits for how much soot and smog can be in the air.
Pierce said that air quality regulations like these are “critically important” to her organization.
Burke said her organization would particularly pay attention to a set of regulations that pertain to the power sector since decarbonizing that area is key to bringing down emissions for the entire economy.
In terms of implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, Pierce said she’d be watching how federal agencies handle the scale and speed of its investments as well as making sure that states take full advantage of the bill.
Energy industry advisers say they will maintain a focus on Congress, especially with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) seeking to advance permitting reform legislation.
Manchin’s package is aimed at speeding up the approval process for energy projects, including both fossil fuels and renewable energy.
His efforts have been backed by Democratic leaders as part of a deal to get him to support the sweeping climate bill, and Manchin has been working to convince Republicans to get on board.
Several have indicated that they are interested in working with him, though it’s an issue that has a good chance of spilling into the next year from the lame-duck session.
“The slim margin, along with Republicans controlling the agenda in the House, I think, creates a better environment because they’ve had a more consistent position with Sen. Manchin already,” said Frank Maisano, who represents both fossil and renewable energy clients at Bracewell LLP.
“There’s a real opportunity to form consensus on something like permitting reform that is a must if you’re going to have a rapid and just energy transition,” Maisano said.
He added that a recent court decision that limited the scope of the EPA’s authority over power plant regulations “creates more impetus to go back and have Congress pick up the ball and run with it.”
Environmental organizations are also expected to track the permitting fight. Many have expressed opposition because of the potential to bolster pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure.
Neil Chatterjee, a senior adviser at Hogan Lovells, said that the congressional makeup can yield significant bipartisan legislation that may be “wonkier.”
He suggested that community-based solar energy, energy efficiency measures, energy storage, electricity transmission and a carbon border tax are the sorts of policies he could see a bipartisan Congress getting behind.
“I actually think in the next couple of years we could see the emergence of substantive lobbying again and not so much the political message lobbying that has really dominated the landscape,” said Chatterjee, who is the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and also a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
“I really think you might see a return of the technical experts,” he added.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Biden on 2024 conversations: 'We're not having any, we're celebrating'
President Biden said while out shopping in Nantucket, Mass., on Saturday that he wasn’t having any conversations about whether he will run for reelection.
“We’re not having any, we’re celebrating!” Biden said when asked about his 2024 conversations as he exited a clothing store in downtown Nantucket while honoring Small Business Saturday.
Biden and White House aides have repeatedly indicated the president intends to run for reelection, but he has not yet made a formal announcement.
Biden had said he would use some time over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with his family to make a final decision.
He made the latest remark as he gathered in Nantucket with much of his family for the holiday weekend.
On Saturday, the president was out shopping with his son, Hunter Biden, Hunter’s wife, Melissa Cohen, and their 2-year-old son, Beau Biden.
First lady Jill Biden and the first couple’s daughter, Ashley Biden, were also with them.
As Biden continues to mull a bid, the GOP’s 2024 nomination contest is already heating up.
Former President Trump earlier this month formally entered the race, becoming the first prominent Republican to launch a campaign.
As Biden continued shopping on Saturday, he was asked about a dinner Trump had at his Mar-a-Lago property with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and white nationalist Nick Fuentes after Trump announced his campaign.
“You don’t want to hear what I think,” Biden responded.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, like Biden, has said he will make a decision on a White House campaign with his family while they are together for the holidays.
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New wave of Hispanic lawmakers to hit House
Coverage of the 2022 midterms focused heavily on Hispanic voters, but Latino candidates also left a mark: voters will send more Hispanics to represent them in Washington than ever before.
Democrats will welcome nine new Hispanic representatives from nine different states, a sampling of the voting bloc’s geographic diversity.
The GOP will bring in at least four new Hispanics to Congress, also all from different states. They could get a fifth in businessman John Duarte if he is able to hang on to his lead in a California district.
Here are the Hispanic newcomers who will be sworn in in January:
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Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.)
Andrea Salinas, a local legislator, was the top recruit for Bold PAC, the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Salinas faced stiff opposition in her primary from an opponent bankrolled by a super PAC linked to cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried and from Democratic leadership, as well as a self-funded Republican in the general election.
Bold PAC invested heavily in Salinas — though nowhere near the $13 million spent against her in the primary — and set the tone for strong showing for Hispanic candidates nationwide.
Salinas will represent Oregon’s newly-created 6th Congressional District.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.)
Though her race received much less national attention than the Salinas race, Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s win to flip a purple Pacific Northwest district shows the GOP’s appeal in the region.
Oregon’s 5th District, now represented by Blue Dog Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader, saw two major upsets in the election cycle, first with Democratic nominee Jamie McLeod-Skinner beating Schrader in the primary, and then with Chavez-DeRemer’s general election win.
Chavez-DeRemer, a former suburban mayor who twice lost bids for the Oregon House, eked out a narrow win against McLeod-Skinner, leaving local Democrats fighting over whether Schrader would have been a better nominee.
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.)
It was the year of the Latina in the Pacific Northwest.
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez engineered perhaps the most surprising pickup of the whole election, and she will take over for another Latina, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), who lost her primary to far-right Republican Joe Kent.
Gluesenkamp Pérez was mostly overlooked as a political newcomer running in a seat that’s been in Republican hands since 2011.
But in a Bold PAC victory lap at the Democratic National Committee headquarters Friday, Gluesenkamp Perez stole the show with her story of running an uphill campaign as an auto repair shop owner.
“Almost no national organizations endorsed me in this race. Bold PAC CHC was one of the only ones that saw the opportunity, that believed in me. And I think that’s directly related to the fact that Latinos have to find opportunity, where people tell us there is none, we don’t wait for permission, we just kick the door down, we do the thing,” said Gluesenkamp Perez.
Robert Garcia (D-Calif.)
If Gluesenkamp Perez was the least expected incoming Democrat to win her election, Robert Garcia is the Democrats’ most-awaited incoming member.
As mayor of Long Beach, Calif., since 2014, Garcia has built solid political and policy credentials.
He is the first Peruvian American elected to Congress, in a redrawn district that spans the traditional Mexican American power base in Los Angeles and the pro-business port communities of Long Beach.
Garcia easily bested his primary opponents to move on to an almost procedural general election in a heavily Democratic district.
Yadira Caraveo (D-Colo.)
Like Salinas in Oregon, Yadira Caraveo won a newly created Western district with a substantial Hispanic population.
Caraveo, a pediatrician, has represented parts of her district in Colorado’s House of Representatives since 2019. She eked out a slim win in a district that election observers predicted would likely swing Republican.
State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, the GOP nominee, conceded to Caraveo on the day after the election, long before the race was officially called.
She will be the second practicing medical professional to join the CHC, after Chairman Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.).
Greg Casar (D-Texas)
Greg Casar easily bested Republican Dan McQueen to win his Texas district, which spans from Austin to San Antonio.
Casar, a young Latino progressive in Texas, will give Democrats a base of operations to push their message from the state’s liberal cities into the Rio Grande Valley.
Despite being only 33 years old, Casar has seven years of experience serving in the Austin City Council.
“My district is a majority Latino district, we ran on working people’s issues and civil rights — we won the primary with four times the votes of any other candidate, won the general election by over 40 points, because we showed that when you engage the Latino community, when you show up for working people, when you vote for Latinos and their issues, then they show up and have our backs and vote for us,” Casar said.
Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas)
Monica De La Cruz was the sole winner of a triad of GOP Latinas who challenged historical Democratic dominance in the Rio Grande Valley.
Although De La Cruz was aided by a redrawn map that turned her district toward Republicans, she faced a strong contender in Michelle Vallejo, a progressive who largely ran with scant national Democratic support.
Still, De La Cruz will embody the GOP’s pitch for the future of Hispanic representation in Texas, and she will provide a platform for future conservative plays in the region.
When she first ran against Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) in 2020, De La Cruz came within 3 points of victory before redistricting.
Gonzalez ran in former Democratic Rep. Filemon Vela’s old district, besting Rep. Mayra Flores (R), rather than face De La Cruz with the redrawn borders.
Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.)
Gabe Vasquez will take over from Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-N.M.) after winning a district that’s flipped parties three times in as many elections.
Vasquez, who was born in El Paso but grew up on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, won significant goodwill in his party for unseating Herrell, who was a top target for Democrats.
The former Las Cruces city councilman won the district with newly redrawn lines, but is quick to point out that he jumped in the race before redistricting.
“I ran because I thought we needed a change. And with Yvette Herrell, one of her very first votes in Congress being to deny the election of 2020, somebody who is anti-decisionmaking for women’s health care decisions, somebody who has not brought home a single dollar to our district, I was going to run against certain regardless of what happened,” Vasquez said.
Delia Ramírez (D-Ill.)
Delia Ramirez will represent a nearly 50 percent Hispanic district, joining Rep. Jesús García (D-Ill.) as Illinois’s second Hispanic representative.
But Ramirez might soon be the state’s sole Hispanic representative, as García – known as Chuy – has launched a bid to become mayor of Chicago.
Ramirez, the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, has served in the Illinois House of Representatives since 2018.
Rob Menendez (D-N.J.)
Rob Menendez, the son of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), will succeed fellow Cuban American Rep. Albio Sires (D) in a northern New Jersey district.
Menendez, a practicing lawyer, became the first Hispanic commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 2021.
“I’m going to represent the 8th Congressional District in New Jersey. This is where my grandparents, when they left Cuba, where they planted their American roots,” Menendez said.
“This is where people look and believe in American opportunity, the American Dream is still alive, is being fueled by people who immigrate to this country because they believe in hard work, there’s upward mobility, that is what I’m going to fight for,” he added.
George Santos (R-N.Y.)
George Santos is the first Brazilian American and the first openly gay nonincumbent Republican elected to Congress.
He also joins a crop of New York Republicans who dealt the state’s Democrats a handful of painful and unexpected losses.
Santos flipped a Long Island seat in defeating Democrat Robert Zimmerman. He will replace Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-N.Y.), who unsuccessfully challenged Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) in the Democratic primary for governor.
Both Zimmerman and Santos are gay — their race was the first ever congressional race between two openly gay people in U.S. history.
Santos, an investment banker, was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, to attend former President Trump’s speech outside the White House, but has said he was never on Capitol grounds during the insurrection, which he labeled a “dark, dark, day.”
Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.)
Maxwell Alejandro Frost will be the first Generation Z member of Congress.
To get there, Frost had to clear his path through a crowded primary field that included two former members of Congress.
Upon his nomination, Frost immediately received headlines because of his youth. He is 25 years old, though he has a decade of political organizing under his belt.
Though Frost had a relatively easy path in the general election, his experience as a candidate was marred by his grandmother’s death.
“She recently passed away during the last few weeks of the campaign. And you know, over those last few weeks I have spent a lot of time at her bedside, hearing her stories, talking with her about her hopes and dreams and things she wished she could have done,” said Frost.
Frost said his grandmother left Cuba for Florida on the Freedom Flights of the 1960s, and in Florida worked underpaid and dangerous jobs.
“For the rest of my life, I’m going to tell her story, I’m going to think about that dream that she deserved. And think about the future generations that shouldn’t have their dream proscribed for them because they’re Latino, because they’re immigrants, but that they create their own future for the world that they want to live in and what they want to do,” said Frost.
Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.)
Anna Paulina Luna, a Mexican American Air Force veteran, will join a growing group of conservative firebrand influencers in the House GOP conference.
Luna will take over the seat vacated by former Rep. Charlie Crist (D), who left the House to challenge Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
She will take over a 13th Congressional District that has been redrawn to favor Republicans.
In 2020, Luna challenged Crist and lost under the previous map.
Luna has worked as a model, as an influencer and as the Hispanic outreach director for Turning Point USA, the conservative nonprofit headed by activist Charlie Kirk.
Source: TEST FEED1