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Michigan GOP chair election underscores party's divisions ahead of 2024

The selection of a far-right election denier to lead Michigan’s state GOP is underscoring divisions within the party as Republican leaders hope to unify heading into 2024.

Kristina Karamo’s victory last weekend showed the extent to which the Republican grassroots has embraced election fraud claims, even as many in the party call for a more forward-looking message heading into 2024.

While Arizona and Massachusetts – other states where former President Trump’s preferred candidates lost high-profile elections last year – recently elected more conciliatory voices to lead their state Republican parties, Karamo’s victory in Michigan raises questions about the party’s prospects in top 2024 races.

The chair election was poised to “set the tone for the party as it tries to win back Michigan for statewide office and also for the ‘24 presidential election,” Ken Kollman, director of the University of Michigan Center for Political Studies, told The Hill ahead of the chair vote.

Kollman said a win from either Karamo or Matthew DePerno — who had Trump’s endorsement for chair and came in second — would be “a big statement and a big challenge” for the GOP in 2024.

In November, Democrats defended top statewide offices while flipping both chambers of the state legislature, possibly due in part to redistricting. Karamo was the Republican secretary of state nominee last year and hasn’t conceded that race, which she lost by 14 percentage points. DePerno was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for attorney general. Both ran with Trump’s backing.

Karamo’s vision statement for the state GOP said the party had “failed to pursue remedy for systemic election corruption” and that she’d give precinct delegates control of the party. “Authentic unity,” it said, would be achieved by “adhering to the Republican Party platform, not by expecting people to tolerate corruption.”

Michigan GOP chief of staff Paul Cordes wrote in a memo after the midterms that “we found ourselves consistently navigating the power struggle between Trump and anti-Trump factions of the Party, mostly within the donor class. … That power struggle ended with too many people on the sidelines and hurt Republicans in key races.”

Kollman echoed those remarks in his analysis of the challenges the GOP is facing.

“There’s a number of … deep-pocketed donors that are not interested in funding election denialism as a big message of the party,” he said, emphasizing that the new chair will serve as the party’s public face given the lack of high-level Republican elected officials in the state.

Michigan’s outgoing Republican Party co-chair, Meshawn Maddock, argued instead that “we haven’t moved far enough” to the right, according to The Washington Post. Maddock and chair Ron Weiser didn’t seek reelection.

Ronna McDaniel chaired the Michigan GOP before becoming Republican National Committee chairwoman in 2017, after Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to win the state in 28 years. McDaniel won a contentious reelection bid this year against candidates emphasizing themes of election integrity and 2020 voter fraud. President Biden won Michigan in 2020.

The tensions among Michigan Republicans are evident elsewhere in the country, too. In some of those states, however, Republicans have opted to change course when it comes to their state leadership.

“We really need state party leaders who can bring folks together” to win in 2024, Brian Seitchik, an Arizona-based Republican strategist who worked on Trump’s previous campaigns, told The Hill last week. Seitchik said there are divisions between “the hardcore Trump folks and the non-Trump folks” in the Arizona GOP.

The state party recently elected former state Treasurer Jeff DeWit, also a Trump campaign alum, as their new chair. Seitchik said DeWit “seems to have the ear of donors and sort of non-hardcore Trump types as well as certainly the credibility in the Trump world.”

The party vote came after Democrats in the Grand Canyon State defeated Trump-backed candidates to flip open offices of governor and attorney general. Sen. Mark Kelly (D) defeated Blake Masters (R) in the Senate race. Former GOP chairwoman Kelli Ward was active in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and didn’t seek reelection.

DeWit said he hopes shifting to a positive tone within the party will unite factions, win independent voters and bring donors back to the party.

In Massachusetts, Amy Carnevale defeated GOP chairman Jim Lyons in a 37-34 vote last month, calling the election in an interview with CommonWealth Magazine a “signal that our party is going to take a different track moving ahead.”

“We’re a divided party,” Lyons told the same publication. “The past is trying to grab on to what we took over and they don’t want to let go. I think moving forward the people of Massachusetts have to decide whether they want to see a conservative Republican Party.”

Sixty percent of Massachusetts voters are unenrolled and allowed to vote in party primaries. Nine percent are registered Republicans. The GOP now comprises around 15 percent of the state legislature. Former Gov. Charlie Baker (R), who had one of the highest approval ratings in the country, chose not to seek reelection. Trump-backed Geoff Diehl won the Republican primary and lost the general in a landslide.

Jennifer Nassour, who chaired the Massachusetts GOP from 2009 to 2011 and co-founded a nonprofit supporting center-right female candidates, attributed 2022 losses to Lyons’s contentious relationship with Baker and a focus on social issues instead of fiscal conservatism in an interview. Nassour supported Carnevale for chair.

Trump “looms large over a lot of these party apparatuses,” Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Center for Politics at Goucher College, told The Hill. In Maryland, term-limited former Gov. Larry Hogan (R), like Baker, had a high approval rating in a blue state. A Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate won the primary and lost the general by a wide margin there as well.

Former state GOP chair Dirk Haire lamented divisions between the Trump and Hogan camps, telling central committee members he hoped they would “find a way to work together to elect all of our Republican nominees, and stop with the counterproductive and petty nonsense,” The Baltimore Sun reported.

Kromer said the party’s weak fundraising and lack of a prominent standard-bearer would pose challenges to its effort to rebuild after 2022.

The party elected Nicole Beus Harris as chair in December. Harris promised a “rebranding” of the party and hired campaign professional Adam Wood as executive director, saying his work “with both the Tea Party/House Freedom Caucus conservatives and the Republican Governance Group/Tuesday Group moderate Republicans will bolster communication and unification within the party.”

Party chairs are “pretty much the general heading the army into battle,” Nassour said. The party’s direction in the states and the unification of its forces will depend partly on its newly chosen leadership.

Source: TEST FEED1

Schumer blasts McCarthy for giving Jan. 6 footage to Fox News

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday weighed in on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) move to hand footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol over to Fox News, calling it a “grave mistake” to give the footage to host Tucker Carlson. 

“The speaker is needlessly exposing the Capitol complex to one of the worst security risks since 9/11. The footage Speaker McCarthy is making available to Fox News is a treasure trove of closely held information about how the Capitol complex is protected and its public release would compromise the safety of the Legislative Branch and allow those who want to commit another attack to learn how Congress is safeguarded,” Schumer said in a letter to Senate Democrats. 

Democrats have warned of security dangers in McCarthy’s decision to transfer the 41,000 hours of footage to Carlson in particular.

“Giving someone as disingenuous as Tucker Carlson exclusive access to this type of sensitive information is a grave mistake by Speaker McCarthy that will only embolden supporters of the Big Lie and weaken faith in our democracy,” Schumer said. 

The majority leader contended that “handpicking” Carlson to receive the footage “laid bare that this sham is simply about pandering to MAGA election deniers, not the truth,” and forecasted that the Fox News host will “select only clips that he can use to twist the facts to sow doubt of what happened” during the riot. 

Schumer accused McCarthy of agreeing to release the footage “to get the votes he needed from the MAGA wing of the House Republican Conference to become speaker” of the lower chamber, and emphasized that the Senate “strongly objects” to the material release. 

“The speaker— nor any elected official— does not have the right to jeopardize the safety of senators nor Senate and Capitol staff for their own political purposes. Period. Full stop,” Schumer wrote.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday slammed the move as an “egregious security beach.” 

House Homeland Security Committee ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson (Miss.) said “it’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly.”

“If Speaker McCarthy has indeed granted Tucker Carlson — a Fox host who routinely spreads misinformation and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s poisonous propaganda — and his producers access to this sensitive footage, he owes the American people an explanation of why he has done so and what steps he has taken to address the significant security concerns at stake,” Thompson added.

Source: TEST FEED1

DC's Thursday high is forecast at 80, but NY's is 49: Here's why

It’s February, but you wouldn’t guess it by Washington’s 80-degree forecast on Thursday, which the National Weather Service (NWS) noted could “feel more like June than February.”

Just four hours north, New York City is expected to be slightly warmer than normal, but more than 30 degrees cooler than Washington.

What’s happening with this wide variation in temperatures up the East Coast?

Southeastern US sees unusually warm temperatures

A view of uptown Manhattan from the Empire State Building is seen in New York City on Tuesday, May 18, 2021. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)

Washington normally sees a high of 50 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of 33 degrees during this time of year. However, temperatures are expected to rise into the high 50s overnight on Wednesday and could reach up to 80 degrees on Thursday.

It also will be warmer than normal in New York City, but it won’t feel like the middle of summer.

The expected high of 49 degrees in New York is above the average high temperature for this time of year, which is 44 degrees. But that’s much less of a jump above average than what D.C. is expected to see.

Richard Bann, a meteorologist at NWS’s Weather Prediction Center, said the unseasonably high temperature in D.C. is the result of warm air entrenched over the southeastern United States.

Across the Mid-Atlantic and Ohio Valley, temperatures could be more than 40 degrees above average, with potentially record-breaking highs, according to the Weather Prediction Center.

Temperature gradient helping drive massive winter storm

A car slowly travels down a road after a second round of snow passed through northern Minnesota Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022, in Duluth, Minn. (Holden Law/Associated Press)

The NWS describes the warm temperatures expected in D.C. and parts of the mid-Atlantic as “significantly anomalous.”

They also are connected to the massive winter storm making headlines as it drops feet of snow in the Midwest and upper Plains, said Bann.

Minnesota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Michigan are expected to get one to two feet of snow this week, with potentially record-breaking levels of snowfall forecast for southern Minnesota.

Schools and government offices closed across the swath of northern states on Wednesday in preparation for the storm.

The warm air over the southeastern U.S. coupled with extreme cold weather in northern Minnesota and North Dakota is helping drive this winter storm, Bann said.

“It thrives on large differences in temperature over a broad area,” he said. “If everything’s really kind of uniform, there really is nothing to work with.”

“Warm air is being drawn northward ahead of the system and cold air is being pulled southward behind it,” Bann added. “So, it takes advantage of having that big temperature contrast.”

But it won’t be warmer than normal everywhere in eastern states either on Thursday.

Temperatures in the far northern city of Caribou, Maine, are expected to fall below normal, with a high of 12 degrees on Thursday, as the winter storm moves toward New England.

Source: TEST FEED1

Tesla engineering HQ leaving Texas to return to California, Musk announces

(KTLA) – Tesla is returning to California.

Elon Musk announced during a joint press conference with California Gov. Gavin Newsom that Tesla would be returning its global engineering headquarters to California, two years after a dramatic exit that saw the electric car company leave the Golden State for a facility in Austin, Texas.

Tesla will open up shop in the former home of Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto, Musk said. The facility will serve as the company’s engineering headquarters while the corporate headquarters remains in Austin.

The move returns Tesla to the world’s center of technology and innovation, and puts Musk in closer to proximity to the headquarters of Twitter, which the billionaire tech entrepreneur purchased last year in a massive social media shakeup.

Musk called the move into HP’s old building a “poetic transition from the company that founded Silicon Valley to Tesla.”

Newsom applauded the decision to return Tesla to California, saying that the state remains on the forefront of “discovery and new ideas and innovation.”

“We say about our state, the future happens here first. We are America’s coming attraction,” Newsom said.

The governor, who has known for Musk for decades, said it was a point of personal pride to have Tesla in California.

“Tesla is a California company,” Newsom said. “It started here first.”

Newsom added that California has been committed to supporting Tesla and other electric vehicle brands for years and has proven that through legislative policy and regulations.

But for Newsom, whom Musk said was one of the first people to purchase a Tesla Roadster in 2007, bringing back the electric sports car company was critical to secure California’s place as the nation’s automobile leader.

“We are able to lay claim to 44 manufacturing headquarter companies in the electric vehicle space, but none that dominate like Tesla,” Newsom said.

California is already the largest car manufacturer in America and Musk said Tesla’s Fremont plant is the busiest plant in North America with plans to produce more than 600,000 vehicles in the coming year.

Newsom has been a proponent of electric vehicles and revolutionizing America’s energy production, and said he hopes the partnership between Musk and California will allow the state to “dominate in this space and change the way we produce and consume energy in this state, and this nation and the world we are trying to build.”

Musk said he was excited for that partnership and hoped to do just that.

Tesla moved its headquarters out of California in late 2021 to set up shop in Austin. At the time of the move, Musk was in an ongoing battle with Alameda County public health officials over his desire to reopen the Fremont manufacturing plant in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.

Daniel Ives, an analyst for multibillion-dollar investment firm Wedbush, said at the time that he believed Tesla’s move would be massively beneficial for the company due to tax breaks offered by Texas and the cheaper cost of labor.

Musk moved his residence from California to Texas, where there is no state personal income tax.

Musk did not specifically address the reasoning for returning Tesla’s headquarters to Silicon Valley. It’s unclear if the state offered any incentives for the company to return, or if Musk simply wanted to be closer to the Twitter headquarters, which is located in San Francisco.

Despite the spat with public health officials more than two years ago, Newsom offered nothing but words of praise for the controversial tech figure, saying Musk and Tesla is a major reason for California’s success in the electric vehicle industry.

“We don’t take that for granted and we appreciate the investments you’re making,” Newsom said.

The two also shared a laugh when discussing their own finances over the past several years.

Musk said that Newsom likely put down a $100,000 deposit for his first Tesla in 2007. Newsom countered that that purchase was made when he “had money” and joked that both he and Musk had similar net worths at the time.

“Your [networth] went negative, and I got a pension, so eat your heart out,” Newsom said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: TEST FEED1

Putin ally fires back at Biden’s Poland speech with nuclear warning

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hit back at the U.S. on Wednesday, warning that his country reserved the right to use its nuclear arsenal to defend itself after a speech in Poland by President Biden following his surprise visit to Ukraine.

“After all, it is obvious to all reasonable forces that if the United States wants the defeat of Russia, then we are on the verge of a world conflict,” Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said in a post on the messaging platform Telegram. “If the United States wants to defeat Russia, then we have the right to defend ourselves with any weapon, including nuclear.”

The message from Medvedev — who was president from 2008 to 2018 and the country’s prime minister until 2020 — about nuclear weapons comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this week that he intended to pull Russia from the New START arms treaty, an agreement between Russia and the U.S. to limit their ability to produce and launch nuclear weapons.

After Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine on Monday, he delivered a speech in Poland in which he noted that the “United States and the nations of Europe do not seek to control or destroy Russia.”

“The West was not plotting to attack Russia, as Putin said today,” Biden said. “And millions of Russian citizens who only want to live in peace with their neighbors are not the enemy.”

He went on to lay the burden of ending the war on Putin.

“If Russia stopped invading Ukraine, it would end the war,” Biden said. “If Ukraine stopped defending itself against Russia, it would be the end of Ukraine.”

Medvedev turned the claim upside down, arguing it was actually the U.S. who was prolonging the war.

“If the US stops supplying weapons to the Kyiv regime, the war will end,” he said.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump accuses Biden administration of 'indifference and betrayal' in East Palestine

Former President Trump accused the Biden administration on Wednesday of “indifference and betrayal” in its response to a train derailment that spilled toxic chemicals in an Ohio town. 

Speaking in East Palestine, Ohio, where the disaster occurred, Trump blasted President Biden and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), saying that the president and his administration dragged their feet on providing crucial aide in the face of an environmental disaster and its effects on the community. 

“Unfortunately, as you know, in too many cases your goodness and perseverance were met with indifference and betrayal in some cases,” Trump said. “And Biden and FEMA said they would not send aid to East Palestine under any circumstance.”

“When I announced that I was coming, they changed their tune. It was an amazing phenomenon,” he continued, later adding that he “opened up the dam and we got them to move.”

Trump, who is running for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, was joined by two other top Republicans, Sen. J.D. Vance (Ohio) and Rep. Bill Johnson (Ohio). Ahead of his remarks, he helped deliver water and supplies to residents of East Palestine. 

The former president’s trip to Ohio carried deep political undertones. A longtime swing state, Ohio has lurched to the right in recent years, delivering its electoral votes to Trump in the last two presidential elections. His visit also comes as Biden returns to the U.S. after a swing through Ukraine and Poland. 

Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will travel to East Palestine on Thursday, where he’s expected to meet with community members and receive an update on the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the derailment.

While Biden and his administration have come under fire for not traveling there sooner, the disaster has also put a spotlight on Trump’s own regulatory and environmental policies. 

On Wednesday, the White House pointed to past efforts by Republicans — including Trump — to loosen regulations on railway safety and curb the federal government’s ability to respond to chemical spills.

“Congressional Republicans laid the groundwork for the Trump Administration to tear up requirements for more effective train brakes, and last year most House Republicans wanted to defund our ability to protect drinking water,” deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump attacks Georgia grand jury forewoman over media tour

Former President Trump blasted the forewoman of the Georgia grand jury investigating his efforts to interfere with the 2020 election results in the state over her “revealing” insights into the grand jury’s recommendations this week.

“This Georgia case is ridiculous, a strictly political continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time. Now you have an extremely energetic young woman, the (get this!) ‘foreperson’ of the Racist D.A.’s Special Grand Jury, going around and doing a Media Tour revealing, incredibly, the Grand Jury’s inner workings & thoughts,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

“This is not JUSTICE, this is an illegal Kangaroo Court,” he continued. “Atlanta is leading the Nation in Murder and other Violent Crimes. All I did is make TWO PERFECT PHONE CALLS!!!”

Forewoman Emily Kohrs has been interviewed by multiple media outlets to offer insight into the grand jury’s report, which was partially released last week. She told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on “Erin Burnett OutFront” that it would be a “good assumption” that more than a dozen people will be indicted as a result of the investigation.

“There may be some names on that list that you wouldn’t expect. But the big name that everyone keeps asking me about — I don’t think you will be shocked,” Kohrs said.

Speaking about the people and crimes listed in the report, she told The New York Times that “it is not a short list,” but declined to name those recommended for indictment. Trump’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani and 16 other Republicans who held a meeting to carry out a fake elector plot by voting to certify the election for Trump were among the known targets of the investigation.

The Associated Press first identified Kohrs as the forewoman.

In an interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Wednesday, reporters told Kohrs that Trump had thanked the grand jury on Truth Social, implying in the post that he had been given “total exoneration.” After hearing that from the reporters, she “rolled her eyes” and “burst out laughing,” according to the report.

New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman, who has frequently covered Trump over the years, critiqued Kohrs’s media appearances, saying on CNN’s “This Morning,” on Wednesday that the interviews are “not helpful” for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) who led the investigation.

“I’ve covered courts on and off for the last 20 years, more than that, I’ve never heard of a grand jury foreperson speaking this way,” Haberman said. “Now, this is a fact-finding grand jury. This is not a charging grand jury. But even still, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“If I’m the prosecutor, I’m not sure that I want this media tour taking place, because I’m confident that Donald Trump’s lawyers are going to use this, just based on what I was hearing last night from people, to try to argue that this is prejudicial in terms of what she is saying,” she continued.

Source: TEST FEED1

Putin says Xi will visit Russia amid US warnings over Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Moscow, just days after the U.S. warned that Beijing may increase support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“We are expecting the President of the People’s Republic of China in Russia,” Putin said during a visit from China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, on Wednesday.

“We know [Xi] has a domestic political agenda to attend to, but we assume that once the issues on that agenda are dealt with … we will proceed with our plans for personal meetings, which will give additional impetus to our relations,” Putin added.

On Saturday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused China of “strongly considering” providing Russia with “lethal assistance” for its war in Ukraine, which is set to reach the one-year mark on Friday. 

Blinken reportedly warned Wang against such a move when the two met in Munich over the weekend, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield noted on Sunday that China would face “consequences” for making that “unfortunate decision.”

However, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin hit back at the U.S. on Monday, noting the U.S. “has been pouring weapons into the battlefield.”

“The U.S. is in no position to tell China what to do,” Wenbin said at a press briefing. “We would never stand for finger-pointing, or even coercion and pressurizing from the U.S. on our relations with Russia.”

Wang on Wednesday said China’s relationship with Russia would “not subject to pressure from third parties,” in an apparent retort to the U.S.

Source: TEST FEED1

Buttigieg to travel to East Palestine on Thursday amid criticism Biden administration isn't doing enough

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is set to travel to East Palestine, Ohio, on Thursday in the wake of the hazardous train derailment earlier this month.

The secretary will meet with community members affected by the derailment, receive an update on the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) investigation and hear from investigators on the ground, according to the Transportation Department.

The NTSB is expected to issue its initial findings from the investigation into the derailment on Thursday.

The secretary’s trip comes as the Biden administration has faced criticism for not heading to East Palestine sooner.

The Department of Transportation defended the timing of the trip, saying in a statement on Wednesday that Buttigieg wanted to “go when it is appropriate and wouldn’t detract from the emergency response efforts.”

A spokesperson for the department added that Buttigieg is going now since the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “is moving out of the emergency response phase and transitioning to the long-term remediation phase” and noted that the visit aligns with the NTSB issuing its findings of the investigation. 

East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway said on Monday that President Biden’s trip to Ukraine was the “biggest slap in the face,” that it showed the president “doesn’t care about us” and that he was “furious” Biden was supporting Ukraine and not his town.

Former President Trump, who has suggested that the town was abandoned by the Biden administration, is slated to visit East Palestine on Wednesday. Biden was in Poland until Wednesday afternoon and is heading back to Washington.

A Transportation Department spokesperson said on Wednesday that the EPA is leading the federal response to hold Norfolk Southern accountable, but that the Transportation Department will help “get to the bottom of what caused the derailment and implementing rail safety measures.”

Buttigieg said on Tuesday in an interview with ABC that he plans to visit East Palestine, saying “when I go, the focus is going to be on action.” 

Others on the trip with Buttigieg will include Federal Railroad Administration Administrator Amit Bose and Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration Deputy Administrator Tristan Brown.

Buttigieg on Tuesday unveiled a series of proposal rail reforms. He also called on Norfolk Southern and other rail companies to improve safeguards and called on Congress to increase the fines that the Transportation Department can issue against rail companies for safety violations, which currently stand at $225,455 for the maximum fine.

Source: TEST FEED1