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Colorado shooting suspect faces murder, hate crime charges

The man suspected of killing five people and injuring 25 others at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., is facing murder and hate crimes charges, according to Monday reports.

The 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, who allegedly fired an AR-15-style weapon in the Club Q nightclub, was hit with five murder charges and five charges of committing a bias-motivated crime that caused injury, according to the Associated Press. 

Local authorities haven’t said more about the suspect’s motive, but the attack coincided with Transgender Day of Remembrance and targeted what a bartender said was one of only two gay clubs in the city.

Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers (R) said Monday that the incident “has all the trappings” of a hate crime, and President Biden drew parallels to the anti-LGBTQ Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla. in 2016, when 49 people were killed.

Aldrich’s arrest warrant was sealed by a judge in Colorado’s El Paso County to protect the ongoing investigation, according to USA Today.

Police said Sunday that Aldrich was injured in the attack and had been transported to a hospital for treatment.

The charges may change ahead of Aldrich’s first court appearance, according to the Colorado Springs’ The Gazette.

The Hill has reached out to the El Paso County District Attorney’s Office for more.

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Here's how many hours Americans need to work to make rent: Zillow

Story at a glance

• A new report revealed that American workers making an average hourly wage must work more hours than before the pandemic to cover the typical monthly rent.

•   Workers need to work close to six hours more each month to pay their rents.

•  The typical monthly rent in the U.S. is $2,040.

American workers earning average wages need to put in more hours than before the pandemic to afford rent as monthly rental costs have far outstripped earnings. 

A new report from the real estate company Zillow revealed that workers nationwide making an average hourly wage must work close to 63 hours before earning enough to cover typical monthly rents that average $2,040. This is about six hours more than was needed prior to the pandemic. 

Over the past five years rents have increased by 39 percent while wages have grown by 23 percent over the same period. And although rental growth has slowed recently after rising each month for two years, renters have yet to feel real relief as prices are still higher than last year, according to Jeff Tucker, a senior economist at Zillow. 

“Rents were growing at a record pace for much of 2021, squeezing budgets for renters moving or renewing leases,” Tucker said in a media release. 

“Now, it appears more people are opting to double up with roommates or family, which means more vacancies and pressure on landlords to price their units competitively, offering some hope of relief on the horizon,” Tucker added. 

The Sun Belt, where workers flocked during the pandemic, have been hit particularly hard by rent growth. Workers in Miami now need to clock 24 hours more to pay rent than before the pandemic. And in Tampa, workers need an extra 20 hours. 

But the report found that rents in three markets are now easier to pay than in 2019 – San Jose, Boston and San Francisco. Still, rents in these metros are among the highest in the country. 

Rent growth slowed for the first time in October, falling by 0.1 percent after years of massive growth. Yet rents have risen by 9.6 percent since last year.

“Rents fell last month for the first time in two years, possibly the start of more price drops to come, or at least a signal that we are back to the usual seasonal rhythms of the rental market,” Tucker added.

America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

A separate report from Realtor.com shows that renters are struggling to pay their housing costs, despite the price slowdown. And landlords, who are also dealing with price hikes, are planning to increase rents in the coming months. 

“High inflation and the cost of upkeep and repairs are hitting landlords, who have had to raise rents to cover their higher cost of owning the properties and making it unlikely that they’ll be open to negotiating with new tenants,” Ryan Coon, vice president of rentals at Realtor.com, said in a media release. 

Yet landlords are more likely to negotiate rent costs with those renewing leasing than with new renters. About 22 percent said they would consider negotiating with tenants who are renewing a lease.

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Omar fires back after McCarthy vows to remove her from committees

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) fired back at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) after he vowed to remove Omar from her committee posts if elected Speaker.

“From the moment I was elected, the Republican Party has made it their mission to use fear, xenophobia, Islamophobia and racism to target me on the House Floor and through millions of dollars of campaign ads,” Omar said in a statement.

“Whether it is Marjorie Taylor Greene holding a gun next to my head in campaign ads or Donald Trump threatening to ‘send me back’ to my country (despite the fact that I have been a proud citizen of the United States for more than 20 years), this constant stream of hate has led to hundreds of death threats and credible plots against me and my family,” she added.

McCarthy during an appearance on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News reiterated his pledge to remove Omar, as well as Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), from their committees.

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“Congresswoman Omar, her antisemitic comments that have gone forward, we’re not going to allow her to be on Foreign Affairs,” McCarthy told host Maria Bartiromo, referring to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Omar has long been critical of Israel and its actions in the occupied Palestinian territories, at times drawing rebuke from other House Democrats.

Republicans are set to take control of the House in January and last week voted to nominate him as Speaker, although 31 Republicans voted against him. In January, McCarthy will need 218 votes to ascend to the role, assuming every House seat has a sworn-in member who votes, meaning he can only afford to lose a few GOP votes.

“McCarthy’s effort to repeatedly single me out for scorn and hatred — including threatening to strip me from my committee — does nothing to address the issues our constituents deal with,” Omar said. “It does nothing to address inflation, health care or solve the climate crisis.”

“What it does is gin up fear and hate against Somali Americans and anyone who shares my identity, and further divide us along racial and ethnic lines,” she added. “It is a continuation of a sustained campaign against Muslim and African voices, people his party have been trying to ban since Donald Trump first ran for office.”

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The Hill's Morning Report — The countdown to 2024 starts now

Editor’s note: The Hill’s Morning Report is our daily newsletter that dives deep into Washington’s agenda. To subscribe, click here or fill out the box below.

The vote tallies remain incomplete for the 2022 midterms, but party operatives on both sides of the aisle are already moving on — to the 2024 presidential election.

First to officially declare his candidacy was former President Trump, who last Tuesday announced his 2024 bid at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. But the erstwhile head of the Republican Party has become a polarizing figure for GOP leaders after a disappointing midterm showing.

Only one Republican senator has announced publicly that he will support Trump’s 2024 reelection bid, a sign of the uphill battle Trump faces in his quest to win the Republican presidential nomination and a second term in the White House, writes The Hill’s Alexander Bolton. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told reporters last week that he will support Trump’s candidacy for president and praised his track record in the Oval Office. 

The rest of the Senate GOP conference is holding back, skeptical he can win the 2024 presidential election or even beat rising star Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the primary. Most Republicans are staying neutral for the time being, waiting to see who else jumps into the primary — and whether Trump gets hit with a criminal indictment from the Justice Department after Friday’s appointment of a special counsel.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith, the head of the department’s criminal division, as the special counsel, who will oversee a pair of criminal investigations involving Trump (The New York Times).

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Sunday said the appointment of a special counsel indicates the department still believes it has a “viable potential case” against him. Rosenstein, who appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he can’t “second guess” the decision from the outside (The Hill).

“I think what it indicates is that, despite the fact that the department has been at this for some time, almost two years on the Jan. 6 investigation, close to a year on the Mar-a-Lago investigation, that they still believe that they have a viable potential case,” Rosenstein said. “It doesn’t mean they made a decision to go forward. But it certainly is an indication they believe it’s a possibility.”

And former Attorney General William Barr said Friday on PBS that the department probably has a “basis for legitimately indicting” Trump over the classified and sensitive documents law enforcement says were taken to Mar-a-Lago (The Hill).

Politico: New Trump special counsel launches investigation in Mueller’s shadow.

Two reports analyzing two different criminal investigations into Trump have reached a singular conclusion: there is enough evidence to bring charges against the former president, writes The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch. Veteran prosecutors and top legal minds this week banded together to offer an assessment of two ongoing probes — one in Georgia examining Trump’s actions in the state leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, the other led by the Justice Department as it explores the mishandling of sensitive government documents at Mar-a-Lago. In each, the attorneys found robust cases and significant legal risk for Trump, who is facing mounting legal trouble as he launches his early bid in the 2024 presidential race. 

▪ The Hill: Trump faces potential fundraising problem as megadonors jump ship.

▪ The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calls himself a “never-again-Trumper” and says Republicans will lose in 2024 with Trump on the ticket.

▪ The Hill: Trump says he has no interest in returning to Twitter after reinstatement.

Trump’s candidacy could instantly jeopardize both the presidential race and control of Congress for Republicans, based on exit polls and midterm results. As Axios reports, if Trump is the nominee on a presidential ticket, he will turn out GOP supporters but also mobilize Democrats and turn off independent voters.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, meanwhile, is back in the spotlight promoting his new memoir. The Hill’s Brett Samuels has compiled five takeaways about his potential political future.

Business Insider: Pence says former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows “did not serve the president well.”

Meanwhile, at this weekend’s Republican Jewish Coalition conference, a number of lawmakers hit all the notes that would set up future campaigns for the White House. While their tones and messages varied, they collectively made clear they are not going to back down to the former president after a third consecutive poor election with him at the helm (Politico).

DeSantis remains the de facto front-runner for the GOP, despite not having announced plans to run in 2024. The Hill’s Max Greenwood and Amie Parnes report the governor is thus far shrugging off any mentions of Trump — a longtime ally.

“In Florida, everyone kind of knows and has a sense of what Ron DeSantis has done,” one Florida Republican operative said. “The MAGA donors know what Ron DeSantis has done, the activists know what he’s done. But a lot of voters don’t. And Trump recognizes he has a chance to define DeSantis before DeSantis has a chance to get out and tell his story.”

▪ Bloomberg News: DeSantis pitches Republicans looking to move from Trump.

▪ The New York Times: A crowd of possible Trump rivals renews GOP fears of a divided field.

▪ The Washington Post: GOP 2024 hopefuls chart paths to run against or around Trump.

Across the aisle, President Biden, who on Sunday turned 80, has not publicly announced whether he’ll seek a 2024 bid and has said a decision can wait until early the new year. The question of the president’s age is increasingly relevant, critics say, as Biden considers reelection, though his supporters say the age-based attacks are markedly unfair (The Hill).

During a recent news conference, when he was asked about whether he had it in him to run for reelection, Biden replied, “watch me.”

The Wall Street Journal: Biden faces Democrats who see age as an issue for a potential 2024 bid. As the oldest president to assume office, Biden, if reelected, would be older than former President Reagan, who was 73 at his 1985 swearing-in for a second term.

Related Articles

▪ Alaska Beacon and KTOO: In the Alaska Senate race, where incumbent Lisa Murkowski (R) is projected to win, all absentee ballots will be counted by Wednesday and vote tallies from the additional rounds of ranked-choice voting will be published then. 

▪ The New York Times: The Trump family’s newest partners: Middle Eastern governments. The former president last week signed a real estate deal backed by the government of Oman.

▪ The Hill: “When a population is not counted, it is erased”: Data gaps on transgender, nonbinary people prove costly. 

▪ The Hill: Democrats look to make inroads with rural voters after glimmers of hope in 2022. 

LEADING THE DAY

➤ CONGRESS

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who last week captured his GOP colleagues’ nomination to be Speaker next year, must clear a high bar to achieve that role on Jan. 3 when all members of the House cast their votes. Conservative detractors, including GOP Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Matt Gaetz (Fla.), say they will vote against McCarthy, reports The Hill’s Emily Brooks. McCarthy’s first test involves math: How many GOP critics can he pull into his camp? What do they want in return? And is the aim to weaken McCarthy or to promote a viable alternative?

The Hill: McCarthy vows to remove three Democrats from committee posts.

Before a divided government gets underway in 2023, Republicans are stepping carefully around the administration’s $37 billion request for additional military and other assistance for Ukraine for its defenses against Russia. Some GOP lawmakers predict the debate will not be resolved during the lame duck period and will linger into the new year (The Hill).

“It’s a lot of money. I think we’ll have to have an open discussion on it,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, said last week.

“There’s strong bipartisan support for supporting Ukraine, but I think there’s also an interest in accounting for the dollars that have already been spent,” said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), a member of the GOP leadership.

“I think we’re going to have to resolve that issue,” Thune added. “It’ll get worked out one way or the other. But a lot of this stuff, I think right now, it’s probably going to get punted to the next Congress would be my guess.”

The Wall Street Journal: The GOP House majority could shield industries from new taxes and regulations. “Gridlock in Washington is pretty good for American business,” says one strategist.

House Democrats are campaigning among their colleagues ahead of leadership elections later this month. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), who is expected to lead the caucus in the next term, expressed optimism on Sunday that Democrats will maintain unity in the face of a GOP majority.

With Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stepping away from leadership and ushering in a younger generation of progressives as she becomes a backbencher who represents San Francisco, Jeffries downplayed predictions of impending friction and disarray as Democrats regroup.

“The thing about us,” he told CNN during a Sunday interview, “is that while we can have some noisy conversations at times about how we can make progress for the American people, what we’ve seen is that under the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, [Majority Leader] Steny Hoyer, [Majority Whip] Jim Clyburn, we’ve constantly been able to come together.”

Maryland Democrat Hoyer also is stepping down from leadership, but South Carolina’s Clyburn, the most powerful Black House lawmaker and a close Biden ally, said Friday that he is running to stay in leadership in the No. 4 spot as “assistant minority leader” rather than bow out or accept an emeritus or other ceremonial role (NBC News).

The Hill: Slavery is still legal in most states. Congress is trying to change that.

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL   

More than a dozen powerful explosions have been recorded near a Russian-occupied nuclear power plant in south Ukraine since Saturday evening. Rafael Grossi, the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, made an urgent appeal for a stop to the fighting at the Zaporizhzhia plant — Europe’s largest (BBC).

“Whoever is behind this, it must stop immediately,” he said. “You’re playing with fire!”

Reuters: “Close call” in shelling near nuclear reactor on Ukraine’s frontline.

Meanwhile, snowfall across Ukraine means winter, setting up a dangerous chapter in the war with Russia, writes The Hill’s Laura Kelly. More than nine months since the initial invasion, Moscow has turned toward a strategy that targets Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and electricity supplies in an effort to destroy the country and break the will of the people. 

“This is a deliberate tactic by [Russian President Vladimir Putin],” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said during a meeting of the Security Council last week. “He seems to have decided that if he can’t seize Ukraine by force, he will try to freeze the country into submission. It is hard to overstate how horrific these attacks are.”

Russia launched its largest barrage of missile attacks across Ukraine last week — deploying at least 96 missiles in one day — including explosive drones provided by Iran that targeted civilian infrastructure and temporarily disconnected 10 million people from power sources as temperatures began to drop. 

▪ The New York Times: Ukraine will help Kherson residents depart as winter arrives.

▪ Politico: Give war a chance: Democracy conference pushes weapons, not talks, for Ukraine.

▪ The Guardian: In eastern Poland, Putin’s war has turned former enemies into friends.

The United Nations COP27 climate conference wrapped up over the weekend in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, after a tentative deal was reached for a “loss and damage” fund for nations on the front lines of climate change. Approved without opposition, the agreement would create a fund to help developing nations face climate change. It’s a precedent-setting deal that’s been three decades in the making.

Despite the historic draft agreement, negotiators at the conference failed to secure commitments for more ambitious cuts on greenhouse gas emissions (Bloomberg News and The Hill).

▪ CNN: COP27 summit agrees to help climate victims. But it does nothing to stop fossil fuels. 

▪ The Economist: What happened at COP27?

▪ Reuters: Key takeaways from the COP27 climate summit. 

⚽ One good read this morning if you’re watching the World Cup. How to pronounce “Qatar”? Read HERE by The New York Times.

OPINION

■ Trump may not make it to the primaries, by Keith Naughton, opinion contributor, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3TMwtJb 

■ Democracy defenders have many reasons to be grateful this Thanksgiving, by Jennifer Rubin, columnist, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3EKzPrO

WHERE AND WHEN

👉 The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.

The House convenes for a pro forma session on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. ​​

The Senate will reconvene for a pro-forma session on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. 

The president will pardon the National Thanksgiving Turkey, which was raised near Monroe, N.C., during a South Lawn ceremony at 11:15 a.m. Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel this afternoon to North Carolina’s Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point to participate in a 6 p.m. dinner with service members and military families as part of the White House’s Joining Forces Initiative. The Bidens will return to the White House tonight.

Vice President Harris today is in Manila, the Philippines, where she will meet with Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio at Aguada House at noon local time. Harris will meet at 1:10 p.m. local time with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at Malacañang Palace. The vice president will be part of a moderated conversation at Sofitel Manila hotel with a group of young women at 4:35 p.m. local time on the subject of empowering women and girls (Reuters).

Secretary Blinken is in Qatar where he will hold a sports diplomacy event with Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard and Canadian Development Minister Harjit Sajjan in Doha at 4:30 p.m. local time. The secretary will attend the U.S. men’s national team’s opening FIFA World Cup soccer competition against Wales in Qatar at 10 p.m. local time. 

🎄The first lady will receive the official 2022 White House Christmas tree at 3 p.m. at the White House. Volunteers will decorate during the Thanksgiving holiday in preparation for annual seasonal tours.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff at 8 a.m. local time in the Philippines will join Department of Health Officer in Charge Maria Rosario Vergeire at Gregoria de Jesus Elementary School in Manila to discuss the safe reopening of schools and international COVID-19 vaccine efforts. Emhoff will speak in the morning at a Filipino and American Emerging Leaders reception. In the afternoon, he will visit the National Museum of Fine Arts in Manila.

ELSEWHERE

➤ TECH

Twitter continues to undergo hour-by-hour changes under Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who bought the social media platform late last month. After Musk reduced the company’s workforce to about 33 percent of its original staff levels and a large number of key executives quit, many wonder what the site’s future will look like — or if it even has one.

Musk told a Delaware court last Wednesday that his reorganization of Twitter is almost done, and he’ll spend less time on the company by the end of the week (Bloomberg News). But the many departures at the site have set off a wave of worry about whether the site can continue to operate well (The New York Times).

▪ The Hill: What Twitter knows about you — and what you can do about it.

▪ Fortune: Ex-Twitter employees are horrified by Musk reinstating Trump’s account: “Incredibly upsetting.”

▪ NPR: Sensing an imminent breakdown, communities mourn a bygone Twitter.

▪ The Washington Post: Disabled people fear Twitter changes under Musk will leave them behind.

➤ MASS SHOOTING

Colorado Springs, Colo., police arrested Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, as the suspected gunman in a mass shooting Saturday at an LGBTQ nightclub at which five people were killed and 25 wounded (NewsNation). The shooter was subdued when a patron grabbed a handgun from the suspect, who was armed with a long gun and wore body armor, then hit him with the weapon before pinning the suspect to the ground, according to Mayor John Suthers (The New York Times). Here’s what’s known about Saturday’s attack (NPR). 

“Club Q has been a safe haven for the LGBTQ community in an area where it hasn’t always been easy,” said Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D), who in 2018 became the first openly gay U.S. governor. “It’s a place where we can gather, dance and share the joy,” he commented during a Sunday church service.

➤ PANDEMIC & HEALTH 

The combination of a swarm of respiratory illnesses (respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), COVID-19, flu), staffing shortages and nursing home closures has left hospitals across the United States overwhelmed — and experts believe the problem will deteriorate further in coming months. More than 500,000 people in the health care and social services sectors quit their positions in September — proof, in part, of burnout associated with the COVID-19 pandemic — and the American Medical Association says 1 in 5 doctors plan on leaving the field within two years (The Washington Post).

“This is not just an issue. This is a crisis,” Anne Klibanski, president and CEO of Mass General Brigham in Boston, told the Post. “We are caring for patients in the hallways of our emergency departments. There is a huge capacity crisis, and it’s becoming more and more impossible to take care of patients correctly and provide the best care that we all need to be providing.”

As winter approaches and people increasingly gather indoors without masks or social distancing, a number of new COVID-19 variants are seeding a rise in cases and hospitalizations across the country. The White House’s plan for preventing a national surge depends heavily on persuading Americans to get updated booster shots of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — but The New York Times reports that some scientists are raising doubts about this one-pronged strategy.

Immunocompromised people, older adults and pregnant women should get the booster shots, because they offer extra protection against severe disease and death, John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, told the Times. But for healthy people who are middle-aged and younger, the picture is less clear. Moore said at this point most have built immunity through multiple vaccine doses, infections or both. The newer variants are spreading quickly and are excellent evaders of immunity.

“If you’re at medical risk, you should get boosted, or if you’re at psychological risk and worrying yourself to death, go and get boosted,” Moore said. “But don’t believe that will give you some kind of amazing protection against infection, and then go out and party like there’s no tomorrow.”

▪ The Washington Post: Holiday travelers face “tridemic” as RSV, flu spike in the DMV.

▪ ABC News: China announces first COVID-19 death in almost six months.

▪ The Los Angeles Times: Pfizer booster spurs immune response to new omicron subvariants.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,077,031. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 2,222 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)

THE CLOSER

And finally … 🐆 An ambitious conservation project in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is pulling jaguars back from the brink, reports The New York Times.

The Mexican Alliance for Jaguar Conservation, based in Mexico City and founded in 2005, uses comprehensive studies of jaguar behavior in the wild, including tracking with cameras and GPS collars, to develop conservation strategies for a species that once ranged across the Americas and has a mythical importance in Mayan culture. Urban expansion, deforestation and hunting have greatly reduced jaguars’ range, but in Mexico, the number of animals has grown in recent years in response to conservation efforts (see detailed data, video and map HERE).

“The jaguar is an umbrella species, so by protecting the jaguar, you are protecting everything else,” said ecologist and conservationist Gerardo Ceballos, who founded the jaguar conservation alliance in Mexico.

Stay Engaged

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Trump White House bid has hardly any Senate GOP support

Only one Republican senator has announced publicly that he will support former-President Trump’s 2024 reelection bid, a sign of the uphill battle Trump faces in his quest to win the Republican presidential nomination and a second term in the White House.  

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told reporters this week that he will support Trump’s candidacy for president and praised his track record in the Oval Office.  

The rest of the Senate GOP conference is holding back, skeptical he can win the 2024 presidential election or even beat Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the primary.  

Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), perhaps Trump’s closest ally in the Senate, hasn’t endorsed Trump’s candidacy, though he praised the former president’s campaign kickoff speech and says he will be “hard to beat.”  

The vast majority of Senate Republicans are staying neutral for the time being, waiting to see who else jumps into the primary, whether Trump gets hit with a criminal indictment from the Justice Department after Friday’s appointment of a special counsel and how events play out before the 2024 Iowa caucuses.  

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), an outspoken critic of Trump, said almost the entire Senate Republican conference did not want him to announce his presidential campaign on Tuesday, fearing it would create a major distraction ahead of the Georgia Senate runoff.  

“One senator in a meeting we had this week said, ‘How many in this room want to see President Trump announce he’s running for president today?’ Not one hand up,” Romney said, describing the scene at a closed-door Republican meeting on Tuesday.

A second Republican senator confirmed Romney’s anecdote.  

“I think we’re going to be looking at the other people who may run,” Romney added.

“I’m one who believes we have a much stronger bench than bringing out the retired war horse that has lost three in a row,” he said, referring to the GOP’s loss of the House majority in 2018, the White House and Senate in 2020 and their failure to win back the Senate in 2022.  

Romney called Trump the “900-lb gorilla when it comes to the Republican Party” after Trump lost the 2020 election to President Biden and predicted at the time he would maintain his grip on the GOP.  

He says that’s no longer the case. 

“Maybe he’s 400 lbs at this stage,” Romney quipped.   

Even so, Trump remains a formidable political force, with a following among roughly 30 to 40 percent of Republican voters, GOP senators estimate.  

“He has an avid following, just like anyone who has built as strong an organization as he has. Many people love him, want to see him succeed. I don’t think it’s the majority of the party, but it may be the plurality, and that’s what he’s counting on,” Romney said.  

Tuberville, who was elected to the Senate in 2020 and enthusiastically embraced Trump’s attacks on Democrats, is the senator most bullish about Trump’s prospects.  

“I might be his campaign manager,” Tuberville joked when asked about the lack of support for Trump among other GOP senators.  

He acknowledged that Trump will face a tough race. 

“There will be more people running, and it will be a battle for two years,” he said. “I support his policies. We all understand sometimes the rhetoric behind it turns people off but, hey, I’ve been a football coach, I understand all that. Sometimes you got to stand up for what you believe in.” 

Tuberville said Trump’s biggest advantage over DeSantis is his experience serving as commander in chief and managing an economy where the unemployment rate dropped down to 3.6 percent before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March of 2020.  

He said DeSantis “has been good following the same trajectory as Donald Trump,” but added, “He’s run a state, he ain’t run a country.” 

Other GOP senators who were staunch Trump allies when he was in the Oval Office are keeping their powder dry ahead of the 2024 primary.  

“At this point it’s too early,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “He’s not an incumbent and I’d like to see who else gets in the race. I hope some others do. I just think we need to have choices, debates and hold people to some promises.” 

Cramer noted there’s growing political momentum behind DeSantis. 

“I almost don’t know how he couldn’t” get in the race “given just how high the demand for him is within the party,” he added.  

“I’ve always kind of liked Mike Pompeo, actually, as a candidate. I wouldn’t endorse him right out of the chute,” Cramer said, providing a glimpse in his own thinking about the 2024 primary.

Pompeo, who served as CIA director and secretary of State under Trump, is viewed as a top-tier prospective presidential candidate. 

He took a swing at Trump on Friday tweeting: “We were told we’d get tired of winning. But I’m tired of losing. And so are most Republicans.”   

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) made a splash last week when she identified DeSantis, not Trump, as the de facto leader of the Republican Party.  

But she was reluctant to double down on her pronouncement, refusing to talk about Trump or DeSantis to a crowd of reporters and television cameras outside a Banking Committee hearing later in the week.  

And while Republican senators see Trump as weakened, they are being careful not to say something that could make them a target of the former president’s wrath.  

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who essentially blamed Trump and MAGA-allied candidates for turning off independent and moderate GOP voters, was careful not to say his name in briefing reporters about what went wrong for Senate Republicans on Election Day.  

He also made it clear that he will not oppose Trump in a 2024 presidential primary.  

“The way I’m going to go into this presidential primary season is to stay out of it. I don’t have a dog in that fight. I think it’s going to be a highly contested nomination fight with other candidates entering,” McConnell told reporters.  

McConnell’s deputies, including Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), who has criticized Trump’s relentless claims of fraud in the 2020 election, also says he’ll stay neutral.  

Trump’s support within the Senate GOP conference is likely to grow once the presidential primary season gets further underway, lawmakers and aides predict.  

Sen.-elect J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) praised Trump during his winning Senate campaign as “the best president in my lifetime,” for example. Trump’s endorsement was crucial to Vance winning a crowded Republican primary in May.   

A senior Senate GOP aide agreed with Romney’s analysis that even though Trump’s support among Republican voters is the lowest it’s been since he won the nomination in 2016, he could be tough to beat in a primary if he can consistently win between 30 and 40 percent of the vote and his rivals split the anti-Trump vote.  

Trump didn’t start winning more than 50 percent of the primary vote until April 19 of that year, when he carried New York, Connecticut and Delaware with 59 percent, 58 percent and 61 percent of the vote, respectively.  

“You had the whole anti-Trump contingent split up between [Sen. Ted] Cruz [R-Texas], [Sen. Marco] Rubio [R-Fla.] and [former Fla. Gov. Jeb] Bush,” the aide noted, referring to the 2016 primary.  

“In 2024, it really is going to be a choice of Trump or not-Trump,” the source said. “If there are eight people splitting 75 percent [of the anti-Trump] vote, they don’t win.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Lawmakers seek to end slavery for the incarcerated, which is legal in most states

When the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865, it abolished slavery or, involuntary servitude, in the United States, with one exception: when used as punishment for a crime.  

On Nov. 8, voters in four states – Tennessee, Alabama, Oregon and Vermont – cast their ballots to eliminate language that allowed involuntary servitude in prisons.  

These states join only three others in taking that step to completely abolishing involuntary servitude. Colorado was the first to approve removal of the language from the state constitution in 2018, followed by Nebraska and Utah in 2020. 

The midterm votes followed legislation co-sponsored by Rep. Nikema Williams (D-Ga.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) called the Abolition Amendment. This legislation would amend the 13th Amendment to eliminate “the slavery clause.” 

“This horrific loophole in our Constitution is a moral abomination that launched the mass incarceration we see continuing to this day,” Merkley said in a statement to The Hill.  

He added that voters in November “came together across party lines to say this stain must be removed from state constitutions.” 

“Now, it is time for all Americans to come together and say that it must be struck from the U.S. Constitution,” Merkley said. “There should be no exceptions to a ban on slavery, and we need to enact the Abolition Amendment that Rep. Nikema Williams and I have put forward.” 

In a statement to The Hill, Williams said that “closing the slavery loophole” would be an accomplishment of a lifetime.  

“After seeing voters in four more states decide there should be no exception to the ban on slavery, I am more motivated than ever to work on passing the Abolition Amendment at the Federal level,” she said.  

The history of the slavery loophole goes back to the days after the Civil War.

After the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865, southern jurisdictions targeted Black Americans under “Black Codes,” arresting them for minor crimes like loitering or vagrancy.  

Under the “Slavery Clause,” sheriffs would then lease out imprisoned individuals to work in fields — sometimes the very plantations where prisoners had been previously enslaved.  

By 1898, this practice had become so widespread that 73 percent of Alabama’s state revenue came from the forced rental labor of imprisoned Black Americans. 

The Slavery Clause incentivized minor crime convictions and drove the over-incarceration of Black Americans throughout the Jim Crow era.  

Today, Black residents are still incarcerated at three and a half times the rate of whites, according to the Bureau of Justice.  

Incarcerated workers make well below a liveable wage.  

Despite prison workers producing more than $2 billion in goods and more than $9 billion in services to maintain the prisons where they are incarcerated, incarcerated workers earn, on average, between 13 cents and 52 cents an hour.  

The government then takes up to 80 percent of those wages for room and board, court costs, restitution and other fees for building and sustaining prisons. 

Incarcerated workers have also been forced to work under conditions that have left some mutilated and maimed, and there are no protections for workers or workman’s compensation if they are injured.  

In a survey by the American Civil Liberties Union in June, 64 percent of incarcerated workers said they fear for their safety while working. 

Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises, a prison reform advocacy group, said that imprisonment looks a lot like slavery did 150 years ago. 

“Today, people who are incarcerated are forced [to work] under the threat of punishment, which can include beatings, solitary confinement, the loss of visits and contact with families, and even the denial of parole for not working,” Tylek said.  

“These are punishments that actually date back to antebellum slavery,” Tylek continued. 

“Mothers were separated from their children and promised unification if they were obedient. People were placed in what was called ‘a hole’ or ‘the box’ in isolation and darkness without light or any interaction and this is still happening today. Colloquially, solitary confinement is still referred to as the hole or the box in prison.” 

Work for incarcerated people can range from janitorial and maintenance jobs — some states even use prison labor to clean governor’s mansions and other governmental buildings — to kitchen or laundry services to working on farms that used to be plantations. 

“Throughout the pandemic, many incarcerated workers were responsible for manufacturing PPE such as hospital gowns, masks and hand sanitizer, and in some of those cases, they actually weren’t even afforded the PPE that they were manufacturing for others,” Tylek added. 

Once the slavery loophole is closed, though, Tylek and others believe it will force the country to take a closer look at the criminal justice system — including offering restorative justice programs over incarceration in some cases.  

“The Abolition Amendment is a pivotal step in our journey to true justice,” Tylek said in a press release last year. “By challenging these six words in the 13th Amendment, we can take a step back to examine this system and begin to propose even more transformative solutions as alternatives to incarceration.” 

Tylek told The Hill that the victories from the midterm elections were important — but Worth Rises and others want the abolition to be enacted in all 50 states, not just a handful.  

Still, she acknowledged this won’t be an easy task, even with the Abolition Amendment already introduced.  

She also believes that if the amendment is ratified, there will be court challenges to the changes. 

Tylek compared the Abolition Amendment to the 14th Amendment — nothing changed right away once it was ratified, and there are still debates over what “equal protection” means. 

“Abolishing slavery doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve even defined what slavery means,” she said. “It will be on the courts, with pressure from the public to define what is slavery and whether prison labor in whatever forms it is currently existing across the country constitutes as slavery.” 

But before it even gets that far, it will take three-quarters of both chambers and three-quarters of states to ratify an amendment. That means there needs to be robust bipartisan support for the Abolition Amendment to pass.  

Thus far, that bipartisanship has started to come together.

In the House, a bipartisan group of 172 members have co-sponsored the amendment, so Tylek is optimistic the Slavery Clause will eventually be eradicated and re-entry to everyday life for formerly incarcerated people will become a more positive experience.  

“This fight is for the humanity of people who are incarcerated and the dignity for incarcerated workers,” said Tylek. “Ninety-five percent of people in prisons are coming to our communities. It doesn’t serve anyone for us to exploit them [or] dehumanize them. We want people to come back healed and whole, not angry and resentful.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Inside Kevin McCarthy's math problem to becoming Speaker

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has a math problem. 

He won the House GOP’s nomination to be speaker of the House this week in a 188 to 31 vote. 

But far more GOP members voted against him than he can afford to lose on the floor Jan. 3 in a vote that would officially elect him Speaker. A vocal faction of Republicans who have the potential to make or break his Speakership continue to withhold support. 

Recent 2022 election projections put Republicans on track to win up to 222 seats, a much slimmer majority than they were expecting before Election Day. Just a handful of Republican defectors could sink McCarthy. 

“The hard thing for Kevin, realistically, is there are a fair number of people who have said very publicly they’re ‘Never Kevin.’ Like, there’s nothing that Kevin can do to get their vote,” said Rep. Warren Davison (R-Ohio), who declined to share his own thinking on McCarthy.   

Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), the former chair of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus who challenged McCarthy for the Speaker nomination, have outright pledged not to vote for McCarthy on the House floor. 

But other critics of McCarthy aren’t going quite that far.  

The questions are, how many skeptics can he sway to his side? What they want in return? And, who could the alternative be? 

McCarthy has projected confidence that he will win the votes he needs by January. He noted that former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was nominated 200 to 43 in 2015 before winning 236 votes the next day on the floor, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was nominated 203 to 32 before winning 220 on the House floor in 2019. Both Pelosi and Ryan, however, had more substantial majorities. 

“Look, we have our work cut out for us. We’ve got to have a small majority. We’ve got to listen to everybody in our conference,” McCarthy said in a press conference after clinching the closed-door nomination.  

His supporters also note that some who voted against McCarthy via secret ballot will not want to be on the record publicly opposing him in January. But skeptics are pushing back. 

“The Leader does not have 218 votes,” said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), the current chair of the Freedom Caucus. “It is becoming increasingly perilous as we move forward.” 

The magic number 

McCarthy does not necessarily need 218 Floor votes to win the Speakership, however. It is a technical point that may affect his road to the gavel with such a narrow margin. 

A House Speaker needs to win a majority of votes of those casting a ballot for a candidate. That means unforeseen circumstances on everything from the coronavirus pandemic to the weather can make the difference.  

Pelosi won the Speakership last year with 216 votes, due to vacancies and absences. Former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) also won the Speakership with just 216 votes in 2015, when 25 members did not vote. Snowy weather kept some members away, and many Democrats were attending a funeral for the late New York Gov. Mario Cuomo (D). 

A Congressional Research Service report also notes that “present” votes also lower the final number needed to win, with current House practice dictating that the Speaker needs to win a majority “voting by surname.”  

Some House Republicans, then, could opt to vote “present” rather than for either McCarthy or an alternative candidate without jeopardizing McCarthy’s path to the gavel. 

But there is no guarantee that members opposed to McCarthy will give him that leeway. Gaetz has said he will vote for someone else in January. 

Demands for rules and vision 

The House Freedom Caucus over the summer released a list of rule change demands for both the House GOP Conference and the House as a whole that aim to reduce the power of leadership and distribute more of it to individual members. 

“I refuse to elect the same people utilizing the same rules that keep us from – members like me from participating,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) said on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” show. 

House Republicans began considering changes to their internal rules last week, and in a response to the push to decentralize power, McCarthy said after the meeting that the conference increased the number of representative regions from 13 to 19. The move affects the power in the House GOP steering committee, the body of members that control committee assignments and chairmanships. 

“The regional maps we just did, pushing the power further down to more regions, more to the conference itself,” McCarthy said, which “dilutes the power greater to the members” on the steering committee. 

The House GOP also passed an amendment from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) that prohibits members of the House Republican Conference steering committee from sitting on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s executive committee — with an exception for elected members of the House GOP conference. 

But other proposals from Freedom Caucus members were shot down, and some did not leave the session happy. 

“I was disappointed about how the rules meeting was conducted,” Perry said, adding that other members and representatives-elect were “aghast at how that meeting was conducted and the product that came out of it.” 

“Unless something changes, they should get used to that, because the tenor of that meeting was exactly what I’ve experienced throughout my time in Congress,” Perry added. 

And for some members still withholding support from McCarthy, the rules are not the only factor in their decision. 

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said he wants commitments on a federal budget. Biggs has expressed disappointment that McCarthy will not commit to impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Others stress the need for strong leadership and vision without offering many specifics. 

If not McCarthy, then who? 

As the saying goes in politics, you can’t beat somebody with nobody, and those opposed to McCarthy lack a viable alternative. 

Biggs imagines that by Jan. 3, there will be more of a consensus candidate, and that it might not be him. 

“I can think of probably 20 people who nobody’s mad at ever,” Biggs said, throwing out Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) as a suggestion. “I don’t think people get mad at him too often.” 

Johnson was reelected to be vice chair of the House GOP and has shown no interest in being an alternative Speaker candidate. 

Some conservatives have suggested Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a founding Freedom Caucus member who challenged McCarthy for GOP Leader in 2018. But Jordan, who is likely to chair the House Judiciary Committee, has thrown his support behind McCarthy. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), once a doubter of McCarthy’s ability to become Speaker, has become one of his most vocal supporters for the post.  

She has warned that moderate Republicans could join Democrats and elect a compromise moderate Speaker. McCarthy skeptics have dismissed that prospect as a “red herring.” McCarthy has also said he will not seek Democratic votes to be Speaker. 

Greene said she would lobby her right-wing colleagues to support McCarthy, and on Friday, she said that the number of members not supporting McCarthy are “going down some, which is a good sign.” 

“I really feel like our conference needs to be unified. We need to support Kevin McCarthy and we need to lead in such a way that we show the American people that the Republicans have their act together,” Greene said. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Juan Williams: McConnell wins Round One over Trump

Let’s get ready to rumble. 

The fight for the future of the broken Republican Party now comes down to a cage match between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former President Trump.

Well, last week McConnell won Round One. 

That was good news.

Don’t get me wrong. 

I’ve seen McConnell do serious harm to American democracy. In fact, the damage he has done is second only to Trump. 

In my mind, McConnell will go down as one of the great villains of American history for stealing a Supreme Court nomination from then-President Obama by blocking Merrick Garland in 2016. 

McConnell’s partisan obstinance undermined public trust in the Supreme Court as well as the Senate.

That corruption was followed by his brazen hypocrisy in ramming through Trump’s last-minute Supreme Court nomination of an anti-abortion zealot, Amy Coney Barrett, in 2020.

But last week McConnell stood tall by beating back Trump’s acolytes as they tried to oust him and hang a gold Trump sign over the Republican conference in the U.S. Senate.

If McConnell’s brand of hardball, pragmatic Republican Senate politics had lost out to Trump’s stew of rage and racial division, it would have sealed the destruction of a major party. The GOP majority in the House is already under the control of extremists mimicking Trump.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a Trump proxy, led the mutiny against McConnell, having already defied the Senate leader in the run-up to the midterms. 

As head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Scott burned through millions backing Trump-supported candidates of questionable “quality,” as McConnell put it. 

McConnell preferred mainstream conservatives with a better chance of winning because they could not be attacked as sycophants caught in Trump’s radical orbit.

McConnell proved to be right. 

Voters rejected many of the Trump-imitators backed by Scott as extremists. Their defeats cost Republicans the opportunity to gain majority control of the Senate.

But Trump, again acting through Scott, kept the fight going after the election by trying to oust McConnell as leader of the GOP Senate minority. 

Trump’s wants total control of the Republican Party, and a key step is relegating McConnell to a back bench instead of his current standing as the major anti-Trump voice in the party.

Scott lost the fight to oust McConnell by a vote of 37-10 inside the Senate GOP. But the war is not over. Those ten votes to depose McConnell have cemented a sizable pro-Trump faction in the Senate.

Open disregard for McConnell by so many prominent Senate Republicans left blood on the floor. Well-known Republicans such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) embraced Scott’s effort to unseat McConnell. Scott also enlisted Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.), Josh Hawley (Mo.) and Ted Cruz (Texas).

Such open rebellion revealed a lack of fear of McConnell’s power. And even though he remains at the helm, McConnell is now commander of a divided caucus. 

“We had a double-digit vote against the current leader and that’s never happened in the time I’ve been here,” Cruz bragged after the vote.

Meanwhile, Trump kept up his end of the fight to control the future of the Republican brand by announcing that he is again running for president.

Trump will continue to berate McConnell at every campaign stop, seeking to further isolate the Senate leader within the party. 

Even as the winner of last week’s vote, McConnell remains the target of Trump’s efforts to bleed him of power. Trump has demeaned McConnell as “The Old Crow,” and even disparaged McConnell’s wife, mocking her Asian heritage.

McConnell is the heir to the brand of Republican politics established by Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and both the elder and younger President Bush. 

They backed big business and the military while making deals with Democrats to build highways, protect voting rights, and limit — but not kill — spending on social safety net programs, such as Social Security. 

Trump’s brand of Republican ideology sees that kind of steady conservatism as out of touch with right-wing populist rage. Trump’s faction has no problem creating huge deficits. His most ardent backers in Congress have consistently voted against U.S. aid to counter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

McConnell’s response to Trump’s allies is to point to the midterms and a steady stream of losses by Trump-endorsed candidates.

“We underperformed among independents and moderates because their impression of many of the people in our party, in leadership roles, is that they’re involved in chaos, negativity, excessive attacks,” McConnell said after surviving the challenge to his Senate leadership. 

Without mentioning the former president by name, McConnell said Trump’s preferred politics of rage, grievance, conspiracies, and division “frightened independent and moderate Republican voters.” 

McConnell further brushed away Trump-inspired criticism by saying he wants to work with President Biden on bipartisan goals.

But Trump landed blows on McConnell even before the challenge to his leadership.

Trump’s earlier assaults on mainstream Republican politics led several McConnell loyalists to leave the Senate, including Sens. Rob Portman (Ohio), Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Richard Burr (N.C.).

Trump doesn’t want Congress to function. He abhors bipartisan deals. He prefers broken government which allows him to claim in the style of dictators that he has all the answers. 

He certainly does not want Democrats and Republicans to share credit for solving national problems.

But for one week McConnell succeeded in defeating Trump’s dystopian vision.

Go Mitch.

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump’s record in governor races: a near-even split

Former President Trump’s nearly two dozen endorsements in gubernatorial races this election season showed a near dead-even split in wins and losses in races across the U.S.

Of the 21 gubernatorial candidates who ran in the general election with Trump’s backing, nine won their races while 11 lost, following a tally of the latest governor’s race to be called in Arizona late Monday that saw Democrat Katie Hobbs defeat Republican nominee Kari Lake, a Trump-backed election denier. One governor’s race remains outstanding in Alaska, where Republican incumbent Mike Dunleavy, who the former president also endorsed, currently leads Les Gara (D) by more than 27 points. 

There was also a sharp divide between incumbents and nonincumbents backed by Trump. 

Seven of the eight incumbents endorsed by Trump won reelection, while the race in Alaska is still ongoing. All eight incumbents endorsed by Trump ran in what are considered to be red-safe states.

Nonincumbents backed by Trump only won two out of 13 races, a record well below incumbents but on par with nonincumbents who were not backed by Trump. Only one out of eight GOP nonincumbents without Trump’s backing won their races.

Some high-profile losses for Trump-backed candidates racing for a governor’s mansion were in Pennsylvania where Republican Doug Mastriano was unable to overcome Democrat Josh Shapiro. That was also a state where Democrat John Fetterman beat back another Trump-endorsed candidate, GOP nominee Mehmet Oz, for a coveted Senate seat.

In total, 36 states held gubernatorial races in 2022.

Despite some high-profile losses in key states, a couple of Trump-backed candidates who were not incumbents were able to prevail in their races. 

They are Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s former White House press secretary who is slated to become the next governor of Arkansas, and Joe Lombardo, the GOP gubernatorial nominee in Nevada who defeated incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak.

GOP strategist Doug Heye noted that most of Trump’s endorsements were in lower-stakes races where he could take credit for wins and potentially dodge responsibility for losses. 

“There were only a handful of races really where you could see that he was sticking his neck out,” Heye said.  

GOP candidates backed by Trump in races considered by the Cook Political Report to be toss-ups in Arizona, Kansas, Nevada and Wisconsin didn’t fare well. In these races, only Lombardo in Nevada was able to notch a victory. 

Governorships following the midterm elections will be near evenly split across the U.S., with 24 Democrats holding office compared to 25 Republicans, and the Alaska race hanging in the balance.

Just before midterm results rolled in, Trump told NewsNation (which is owned by Nexstar, the company that also owns The Hill) in an interview that he encouraged many candidates to run and that his responsibility would depend on the outcome.

“When they do well I won’t be given any credit, and if they do badly they will blame everything on me so I’m prepared for anything, but we’ll defend ourselves,” Trump said.

Trump hasn’t weighed in on some of the higher-profile losses such as those in Michigan, where Republican Tudor Dixon lost to incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, or that of Lee Zeldin’s (R) loss in New York to current Gov. Kathy Hochul (D). 

Incumbency alone proved to be a significant determining factor of the governor’s races, according to Harvard government professor Stephen Ansolabehere. But so did other statewide factors such as responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, making it somewhat unclear how much the Trump factor weighed in.

Ansolabehere said that incumbency is a built-in advantage in a governor race.

“It’s really hard to beat an incumbent governor of either party, because it’s like you add four or five points to their vote margin,” said Ansolabehere.

Other factors that make governor’s races different from congressional contests include economic factors, crime and schools, he added. 

“Governors are held accountable for all these indicators,” Ansolabehere said. “In that setting, I think it was more about whether people thought the governor did a good job rather than whether the challenger was kind of a desirable candidate.”  

Heye reiterated the idea that the effect of Trump’s endorsement for candidates running in the general was unclear.

“Republicans are supposed to win in red states and Democrats are supposed to win in blue, and so it’s not about Donald Trump” Heye, the GOP strategist. said. “Where candidates that he backed lost, he can say, well, it was a tough state.” 

Despite Trump’s support being an unclear factor in many races, Heye said it still remains valuable in Republican primaries noting the race for governor in blue-state Maryland where Dan Cox, a far-right candidate and 2020 election denier, won the GOP primary over moderate Kelly Schulz.

“The role in the primary is important. The role in the general is sort of a nonfactor where he’s just trying to claim credit,” Heye said. 

Source: TEST FEED1