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Groups file ethics complaint over Sinema’s alleged use of staff

More than a dozen activist groups, including several based in Arizona, have filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee asking for an investigation into media reports that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) required her Senate staff to run personal errands such as grocery shopping and getting her home internet fixed.  

Sinema’s spokeswoman has denied the allegations, which stem from a 37-page document that The Daily Beast reported about in December, was intended to guide aides who personally staff Sinema and set her schedule.  

The document, which emerged shortly before Christmas, is now getting attention from an array of advocacy groups such as the Revolving Door Project, a government watchdog group that scrutinizes executive branch appointees; Common Defense, a veterans-led grassroots organization; and For All, a grassroots organizing group founding by progressive activist Kai Newkirk. 

They want the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate. 

The ethics complaint is an early sign of the bruising battle that Sinema faces with progressive groups and donors if she runs for reelection after leaving the Democratic Party to register as an Independent.  

Groups that may line up behind candidate Rep. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) or another Democrat who runs for Sinema’s seat are already calling for the Ethics Committee to take a close look at her use of taxpayer-funded resources while in office.   

“It has been reported — and is apparently substantiated by both written evidence and personal testimony — that the senator has enlisted staff to conduct a wide variety of activities unrelated to their job responsibilities,” the groups wrote in a Feb. 2 letter to Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), the panel’s vice chairman. 

“The activities that the senator has allegedly required of staff appear to be unambiguous violations of the Senate Ethics Committee guidelines that interpret the rules adopted by the Senate,” they wrote.

They cited reports that the memo allegedly instructed Sinema’s executive assistant to contact the senator at the beginning of the work week in Washington to “ask if she needs groceries” and states Sinema would reimburse the aide through CashApp.  

The memo reported on by The Daily Beast also allegedly instructs Sinema’s staff to “call Verizon to schedule a repair” if the internet stops working at her apartment and to wait there to let the technician in to fix it.

Sinema’s spokeswoman Hannah Hurley told The Daily Beast in December that “the alleged information — sourced from anonymous quotes and a purported document I can’t verify — is not in line with official guidance from Sen. Sinema’s office and does not represent official policies of Sen. Sinema’s office.”  

The Daily Beast didn’t provide the document containing the alleged staff guidelines to Sinema’s office to avoid revealing the identity of the source who shared it. 

Sinema’s office in response to questions from The Hill about the new letter to the Ethics panel pointed to Hurley’s statement from December.

Signatories to the letter include Arizona AANHPI Advocates, the Arizona Democracy Resource Center, Arizona Students Association, Fuente Arts Collective, Patriotic Millionaires, Presente.org/Alianza Americas, Progress AZ, Progressives for Democracy in America – Arizona, Sunrise Movement Tempe and Vets Forward.  

Ethics complaints against senators are considered by their colleagues, and punishments are often minimal.

A Democratic strategist called the ethics complaint “a pretty transparent political move by dark money groups that will go nowhere.”  

Yet the letter is also an indication of Sinema’s new vulnerability.

Many Senate Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and Democratic Senatorial Committee Chairman Gary Peters (Mich.) won’t say whether they’ll back her against a Democratic challenger. 

Sinema had come under attack from the left before she became a political independent as she broke from progressives on issues such as ending the filibuster, raising the minimum wage and key elements of President Biden’s sweeping climate, tax and health care agenda known as the Build Back Better.

The advocacy groups say that the “most troubling” language in the alleged guidelines instructs staff on how to schedule coffee meetings with lobbyists and donors and to schedule fundraisers within regular work hours. 

They say raises possible violations of Senate Ethics guidelines and want the Ethics Committee to review the document and whether any of its guidelines were implemented.   

“Your committee’s guideline clearly states that ‘Senate staff are compensated for the purpose of assisting senators in their official legislative and representational duties, and not for the purpose of performing personal or other non-official activities for themselves or on behalf of others,’” they wrote.  

“The Senate ethics manual recommends staffers keep time logs of their congressional duties if they also engage in campaign activity to avoid attacks or the perception of impropriety. We urge the committee to seek these records and investigate whether Sen. Sinema is directing staffers to perform political tasks while on Senate duty,” they wrote.

Coons and Lankford, the chairman and vice chairman of the Ethics panel, confirmed Thursday that the committee accepts complaints filed by outside groups but cited their standing policy of not commenting on any specific allegations. 

“Anybody can file complaints,” Lankford said, explaining the committee only responds to complaints and doesn’t conduct prospective investigations of senators. 

No one outside a small circle will know when or if the committee reviews the matter.  

“We work very quietly,” he added. “We don’t talk about cases at all.” 

Aaron Marquez, the executive director of Vets Forward, a group that organizes veterans to mobilize voters, said high-ranking military officers have received disciplinary action in the past for using staff for personal business.  

“In 2018, the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy faced allegations of similar violations, resulting in his sudden retirement amid ongoing investigation of a toxic work environment,” he said. “Sinema’s oath says that she’ll well and faithfully discharge the office of U.S. senator. These reports in the press seem like a clear violation of her oath and the ethics of U.S. Senate that warrant a formal investigation.” 

Craig Holman, a congressional ethics expert at Public Citizen, a government watchdog group, said the allegations if proved true would amount to a violation of Senate rules.  

“If those are actual policies that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema introduced on her staff that would violate the rule against using official resources and staff for personal purposes. Now Sen. Sinema has denied she did any of that,” he said.  

“It certainly deserves an investigation,” he added. “The Ethics Committee could subpoena and ask her.” 

But he predicted it won’t take any public action, citing its history of secrecy and infrequent doling out of punishments.   

“The Ethics Committee has a long history of burying these types of complaints,” he said. 

Source: TEST FEED1

House GOP struggles over budget ideas 

House Republicans are struggling to unify as the party tries to hash out a cost-cutting budget strategy, creating headaches for Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as he launches high-stakes talks with President Biden over raising the debt limit. 

Republicans charged into the year newly energized with their House majority, and all factions of the conference say they want to take concrete steps to rein in federal spending.  

But that’s about where the agreement ends. 

Defense hawks are fighting to maintain — or even increase — military spending, putting pressure on GOP leaders to slash other domestic programs, including the major entitlements.  

Moderate Republicans are wary of cutting Medicare and Social Security, shifting pressure back on the Pentagon and other discretionary programs. 

And the staunchest budget hawks are demanding that GOP leaders balance the budget within a decade, which is virtually impossible without steep spending reductions in defense, entitlements or both.  

The clashing priorities have forced GOP leaders into a high-gear campaign to iron out the internal differences and rally the disparate groups into a unified front as the negotiations with Biden and the Democrats begin to heat up.  

“We’re gonna have to talk our way through this,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chairman of the House Rules Committee. 

Asked about the months ahead as Republicans gird for the debt-limit fight, Cole said one of the biggest challenges the party faces is itself. 

“Coming together as a conference and what’s a very small majority,” he said, adding it will take some time “coming to a common proposal and sticking together and, frankly, not pointing fingers at one another.” 

“I can assure you that the right wing of our conference won’t be comfortable with everything in any agreement, and the left wing won’t be happy about what they have to give up,” he said.  

Launching the bipartisan talks, McCarthy and Biden huddled Wednesday at the White House. Afterwards, the Speaker downplayed any internal GOP divisions, saying Republicans are “very united” as they dig in their heels for the budget fight.  

But the conference has shown otherwise, forcing an early leadership scramble to coalesce the various factions.  

McCarthy, as a concession to conservatives who initially opposed his Speakership bid, had promised a budget that would eliminate all deficit spending within a decade, beginning with the effort to reduce 2024 discretionary spending to 2022 levels. And conservatives are ready to hold him to his promise. 

“My position is pretty simple. Go to ’22 levels,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who has been among the most vocal conservatives pushing for spending cuts.  

But those calls have raised concerns among defense hawks wary of how the Pentagon budget, which is largely discretionary, might fare. 

“I won’t vote for a bill that cuts defense spending, and I think most of the conference agrees with me,” said Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), a member of the Armed Services Committee who is running for Senate.  

Roy said he’s sympathetic to those concerns. But if the Pentagon hawks want to preserve defense programs, he warned, they’ll have to agree to even steeper cuts elsewhere.  

“What I want to say …  to my hawk friends: We can fund defense at the levels you just funded in ’23, but you’ve got to ratchet back nondefense to 2019,” Roy said. “If you’re not comfortable doing that, well then you better start getting a little religion with holding defense in check.” 

“You want to go find waste over there [at the Pentagon]?” he added. “Find that.” 

Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), chairman of the Budget Committee, is pointing to the spike in nondefense discretionary spending in recent years — including spending on the COVID-19 response — as an opportunity to cut “bloat” without affecting the Pentagon.  

“There are plenty of things outside of defense, and that’s what we aim to focus on,” he told Fox Business Network on Thursday. 

The debate surrounding entitlement programs is proving to be equally as charged.  

Historically, Republicans have opposed the very concept of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, characterizing them as “socialist” programs that should be replaced by private enterprise. But the programs are enormously popular across party lines, and a long list of Republicans are now vowing to preserve those benefits as they seek ways to slash deficits.  

“We take Social Security and Medicare off the table,” McCarthy said this week on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. 

That sentiment has run afoul of more conservative voices warning that the entitlements are doomed to insolvency if Congress doesn’t step in with changes. The specifics have gone largely unmentioned, but Republicans in the past have pushed proposals to raise the age for Social Security benefits and apply means-testing to Medicare — concepts that Democrats flatly oppose. 

“We’ll never negotiate on that,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said this week of Medicare and Social Security. 

Given the thorny politics surrounding the entitlements, more and more Republicans are, like McCarthy, signaling their support to keep those benefits intact. Yet others warn that, as the last of the baby boomers reach retirement age, the programs will be squeezed further, requiring Congress to intervene.  

“The real drivers here are [that] we have an aging population that’s retiring very rapidly and living a lot longer than any other generation before it. … It’s not fiscally sustainable right now. To me, that’s the underlying problem,” Cole said. 

“Discretionary stuff, again, we can come to a decision. But you got to recognize, when we achieved balance in the ’90s, it really was a huge peace dividend,” he said. “People forget how much we cut out of defense back then.” 

During his CBS appearance, McCarthy said that, outside of the entitlements, every program will be scrutinized for potential cuts, including defense.  

“I want to make sure we’re protected in our defense spending, but I want to make sure it’s effective and efficient,” McCarthy said Sunday. “I want to look at every single dollar we are spending, no matter where it is being spent.” 

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has signaled his intention to cut defense spending by weeding out waste and eliminating so-called woke programs. But economists warn that it will require more than the elimination of “waste, fraud and abuse” for Congress to cut into a deficit that came in at $1.4 trillion in 2022.  

As the debate evolves, top Republicans are scrambling to get the conference on the same page, particularly as the party tries to shrug off its dramatic start to the year following McCarthy’s chaotic bid for Speaker last month.   

Republicans huddled in the Capitol on Wednesday, just hours before McCarthy’s meeting with Biden, to get members up to speed around the debt limit and its stakes. 

McCarthy characterized the meeting as an “education,” particularly for the conference’s large freshman class, while also noting that the bulk of the party consists of members “who’ve never been in the majority.” 

“Part of this is a process to get it unified,” Cole said. “Educate all the people, get everybody’s input, make sure the Speaker has the broadest set of ideas and advice before he goes in.” 

But in the absence of specific proposals for deficit reduction, rank-and-file Republicans are getting antsy — and starting to ask questions.  

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said lawmakers understand the leaderships’ reticence — “They want room to negotiate,” he said — but he added that members “are pushing them for more specifics.” 

“My stance is there is no negotiation unless you have things you’re asking for,” Crenshaw said. “Every member has proposals, I have pages of proposals. Our leadership doesn’t.” 

Brad Dress contributed. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Memphis police chief ran aggressive force similar to Scorpion unit while in Atlanta: report

Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis reportedly oversaw a street crime unit in Atlanta that, similar to the now defunct Scorpion unit implicated in the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols, was eventually disbanded amid public backlash over its aggressive tactics, according to reports.

The “Red Dog” unit was a group of about 30 officers at the Atlanta Police Department that was meant to flood high crime areas of the city. The unit, which Davis oversaw from 2006 to 2007, was disbanded in 2011, NBC News reported.

The city of Atlanta settled at least 10 lawsuits related to the Red Dog unit throughout its existence, although none were related to misconduct that occurred under Davis’ management, per NBC.

One lawsuit accused the unit of employing “unconstitutional policies, customs, and practices,” including performing strip searches and body cavity searches in public and stopping and frisking individuals without “reasonable suspicion or probable cause.”

A 2013 affidavit from a former Atlanta police officer, who was a member of the Red Dog unit, noted that their supervisors were aware of their “aggressive attitude” and did not appear bothered until it “resulted in political backlash for the administration and politicians.”

The revelations about Davis’ background with the Atlanta unit come in the wake of Nichols’ death last month. The Memphis Police Department’s Scorpion unit — which took a similar approach of targeting high crime areas — arrested Nichols on suspicion of reckless driving on Jan. 7.

In video footage of the traffic stop released last week, officers can be seen pepper-spraying, tasing and beating the 29-year-old. Nichols died several days later from his injuries.

The controversial Scorpion unit was officially deactivated on Saturday amid public backlash over Nichols’ death. Five police officers in the unit that were involved in Nichols’ arrest were fired and have since been charged with second-degree murder.

A sixth officer was also “relieved of duty” at the beginning of the Memphis Police Department’s investigation into the incident. A seventh officer has since been suspended, and two emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and one lieutenant with the Memphis Fire Department have been fired.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden, Harris to announce funding for lead pipe removal in Philadelphia

President Biden and Vice President Harris on Friday will announce $500 million in federal funding for the Philadelphia to upgrade its water system as part of a broader government effort to remove and replace lead pipes.

Biden and Harris will visit the Belmont Water Treatment Plant to detail the new investments, a White House official said. They will announce $160 million will be allocated from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law to upgrade water facilities and replace 20 miles of lead service lines, with an additional $340 million coming through a loan from the Environmental Protection Agency for the city to upgrade its water system.

The Biden administration has set out a goal to replace all lead water service lines in the next decade.

Biden and Harris will be joined at the lead pipe event by EPA Administrator Michael Regan, Sens. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D).

Harris last week hosted a summit at the White House focused on lead pipe replacement, where she announced a partnership made up of more than 100 state and local officials, labor unions, water utilities and other organizations to help accelerate the administration’s efforts.

Following the lead pipe event in Philadelphia, Biden and Harris will attend the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting. The party is expected this weekend to approve a new primary calendar that would put South Carolina first, a break with decades of tradition. 

The Philadelphia trip is the third time this week Biden is hitting the road to tout projects that will benefit from the bipartisan infrastructure law, underscoring how the White House is hoping to elevate the tangible benefits Americans will see from the president’s legislative accomplishments.

Biden earlier this week made stops in Baltimore and New York City to highlight how funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law would go toward projects to improve railway tunnels at key bottlenecks in each area.

Source: TEST FEED1

McCarthy notches win with hard-fought vote to oust Omar

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) chalked up a big victory on Thursday when Republicans rallied to expel Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from her seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Omar, a frequent critic of Israel and its human rights record, has been a target of Republicans since her arrival on Capitol Hill in 2019, and McCarthy has vowed for years to remove her from the Foreign Affairs panel if Republicans flipped control of the House. 

Following through was tougher than he initially thought.

With Republicans controlling just a slim majority in the lower chamber — and a handful of GOP lawmakers balking at the notion that one party would control the other’s committee posts — party leaders had delayed the vote indefinitely. As recently as Wednesday, the resolution appeared to be dead in the water. 

Undeterred, McCarthy spoke with each of the holdouts one-by-one — some by phone, some in person in his office — in a methodical effort to alleviate their concerns and flip their votes. 

When the bill hit the floor Thursday afternoon, the results of his lobbying became clear: Every GOP lawmaker supported the measure, except for Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio), who voted present. 

The expulsion prompted accusations from Democrats that Omar, one of just three Muslims in Congress, was targeted as “political revenge” for the two Republicans — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.) — who were booted from their committees in the last Congress. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said the move was “blatantly Islamophobic.” 

For McCarthy, however, it marked a major triumph, demonstrating that he can unite a restive and discordant conference behind controversial proposals even after he was bruised, just weeks ago, by the humiliating balloting process that nearly denied him the Speaker’s gavel. 

But he is sure to face much tougher legislative fights in the months ahead, including a high-stakes battle with President Biden over raising the debt ceiling and preventing a government default. 

 After Thursday’s expulsion vote, McCarthy did not dwell on the process that led to it, but amplified his argument that Omar’s past comments — some of which were deemed antisemitic by members of both parties — made her a national security risk on a committee with jurisdiction over U.S. foreign policy. 

“It puts America in jeopardy, and I’m not going to do that under my watch,” McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol.

The win lends McCarthy and Republicans some momentum after a rocky start to the year. After predicting a huge red wave heading into November’s midterms, only to eke out a tiny majority, they then stumbled through a marathon, five-day Speaker’s vote — the longest since before the Civil War — that exposed deep divisions between the various factions of the conference.

Since then, Republicans have struggled to move some of their most prominent agenda items to the floor, including a proposal designed to curb migration at the southern border, which they hoped would be among their first victories under their new majority. Instead, internal disagreements between two Texas Republicans — Reps. Chip Roy and Tony Gonzales — have left the bill languishing in committee. 

“When we deal with immigration, a lot of members have a lot of different positions. Both of those members from Texas have a lot to say,” McCarthy acknowledged Thursday. “I know members are working together to try to find a place to get there.”

Amid the difficult month, securing Omar’s expulsion from Foreign Affairs was a bright spot for McCarthy and the GOP. But it didn’t come easily.

When GOP leaders first made moves to bring the resolution to the floor in late January, Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) announced her opposition in no uncertain terms, while Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) — who had declared her clear objections in December — also expressed misgivings. 

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) added to McCarthy’s headaches on Friday, when he announced that he would also vote to keep Omar on the committee. 

The message from the three dissenters was virtually identical: They had all opposed the Democrats’ effort to boot Greene and Gosar from their committees, and they would extend their principled objection to the Omar vote. 

“Two wrongs do not make a right,” Spartz said last week.

McCarthy got to work, signaling he was ready to “add due process language” to the resolution, according to Spartz. It was enough to flip the vote of the Indiana holdout, and she announced her support for the resolution on Tuesday. 

McCarthy then spoke with Buck by phone on Wednesday morning, when the Speaker promised the Colorado Republican that he’d work to reform the process governing committee dismissals, according to Buck. He, too, flipped to yes. 

Mace huddled with McCarthy in the Speaker’s office on Thursday morning and emerged with the same message: McCarthy had vowed a “commitment,” she said, to reforms that would ensure members would be referred to the House Ethics Committee before there are any floor votes to strip them of their committee seats. She, too, was on board. 

The vote Thursday was 218 to 211, along strict party lines. 

Afterwards, McCarthy announced, in vague terms, that he was ready to reform the process, saying he’ll form a bipartisan group to “clarify the rules” surrounding committee evictions, for this Congress and those to follow. 

“I don’t know the definition exactly what all that’s going to mean,” he said. “I think that should be clear.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Nikki Haley — Five questions as she prepares to enter the presidential race

Nikki Haley will soon become the second major candidate, after former President Trump, to enter the race for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former governor of South Carolina, is expected to make her campaign official at a February 15 event in Charleston.

Haley is clearly a serious candidate — but she faces big challenges.

Here are five big questions around her candidacy.

What’s her appeal?

There is a lane for Haley to run in. Whether it could take her to victory is a whole other question.

In short, Haley offers a more inclusive, less abrasive version of conservatism than either Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who is widely expected to make his own run.

Part of the difference stems from Haley’s biography — the daughter of Indian immigrants, she was South Carolina’s first female governor. She would become the GOP’s first female presidential nominee if she won.

She also has shown a capacity to address sensitive issues in a more nuanced way than Trump or DeSantis tend to do. 

Perhaps her most high-profile moment on the national stage came when she backed the removal of a Confederate flag from the South Carolina statehouse grounds in 2015. She came to that position after a racist attack on a historic Black church in Charleston in which nine people were killed.

At the same time, Haley is more conservative than figures like former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) or New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R), both of whom are mulling runs but whose centrism gives them an extremely slim chance of success in today’s GOP.

How strongly will she and Trump attack each other?

Trump offered new criticisms of Haley on Thursday.

“Nikki suffers from something that’s a very tough thing to suffer from — she’s overly ambitious,” the former president told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Trump also noted in the same interview that Haley had at one stage pledged not to run in 2024 if he did so. She has clearly broken that promise.

The dynamic between Trump and Haley is a complicated one.

She had been highly reluctant to board the ‘Trump Train’ in 2016, initially backing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in his presidential bid and later switching to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

Haley accepted Trump’s offer to be United Nations ambassador and served without any public sign of dissent for almost two years. She left her post voluntarily but somewhat abruptly in late 2018 — adding to distrust of her among Trump’s inner circle.

On Thursday, although Trump’s criticisms were somewhat mild by his standards, his allies in the Make America Great Again PAC emailed reporters a compilation of criticisms of Haley from conservative political and media figures including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson of Fox News.

The other question is whether Haley will bore in on Trump. 

In recent months, her criticisms of Trump have been mostly implied rather than direct. At a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition shortly after last fall’s midterm elections, Haley lamented that “Republicans spent as much time fighting each other as we did the Democrats.”

She added, “The truth is, Americans were not trusting the state of our party. They don’t want chaos. They want strength and stability and unity.”

What does her decision mean for other yet-to-declare candidates?

Haley has stolen a march on the rest of the field with her decision.

That won’t matter much at all to DeSantis, who is clearly the most serious challenger to Trump based upon early polling.

Similarly, the most moderate potential candidates won’t feel crowded by Haley’s arrival on the scene either, as they are running in a different lane.

Her entrance into the race does make life a bit more complicated for figures like Pence and Pompeo, however. 

Their appeal is broadly similar to Haley’s — Trump administration veterans who are nevertheless seeking to thwart his bid for a third presidential nomination.

Haley’s campaign launch doesn’t at all rule Pence or Pompeo out — but it certainly doesn’t help.

What if another South Carolina candidate, Sen. Tim Scott, runs?

Scott is one of the more intriguing possible 2024 contenders. Well-liked by his Senate colleagues, some Republicans think he is among the best-placed figures to unite the pro-Trump and Trump-skeptical wings of the party.

There are some doubts about whether Scott really wants the Oval Office but he is certainly stoking speculation, most recently with the announcement that he will attend a GOP event in Iowa on February 22.

Given South Carolina’s own important position toward the start of the primary calendar, a Palmetto State contest featuring Trump, Haley and Scott among the candidates would be a spectacular battle.

Does she have a real shot?

Haley has real political skills. As she is fond of noting, she has never lost an election, beginning her career in the South Carolina statehouse and then winning twice in gubernatorial contests.

Skeptics who would minimize those achievements by noting the conservative lean of the state miss the point that she has also had to win against the odds in competitive primaries — the same task that now awaits her on a national level.

That being said, Haley begins, like everyone else in the field, way behind both Trump and DeSantis in the polls. An Economist/YouGov survey last month gave her just five percent support with Trump on 44 percent and DeSantis on 29 percent.

Haley has been underestimated in the past. 

But she faces a serious uphill climb to the nomination.

Source: TEST FEED1

Pentagon: Suspected Chinese spy balloon flying over northern US

The U.S. government is monitoring a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been flying over the northern part of the country since earlier this week but has held off on shooting it out of the sky, senior defense officials confirmed Thursday. 

“The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now,” Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters. “The U.S. government . . . continues to track and monitor it closely.” 

Ryder stressed that the balloon is currently traveling in the atmospat at an altitude “well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground,” and noted that after the balloon was detected the government “acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.” 

The balloon, first reported by NBC News, was first spotted over Montana on Wednesday. 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, traveling in the Philippines at the time, quickly convened a meeting of top military leaders, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, and U.S. Northern Command head Gen. Glen VanHerck, a senior defense official told reporters 

President Biden was briefed on the balloon and asked for military options, with Milley and VanHerck recommending he “not to take kinetic action due to the risk to safety and security of people on the ground from the possible debris field.” 

“We had been looking at whether there was an option yesterday” to down the balloon “over some sparsely populated areas in Montana, but we just couldn’t buy down the risk enough to feel comfortable recommending shooting it down yesterday,” the official said.  

They declined to detail the exact size of the aerial object but said it was “large enough to cause damage” if downed. 

The official also said the balloon is still over the U.S. but declined to say where it is currently. 

The U.S. government is very confident the balloon belongs to China, as instances of such surveillance have been observed over the past several years, including prior to the Biden administration.  

But while it is not unprecedented for Beijing to fly similar stratospheric balloons over or near U.S. airspace, the aerial object is staying over the country longer than usual this time around, the official said.  

They stressed that, though the balloon’s current flight path carries it over “a number of sensitive sites,” it’s assessed as having “limited additive value from an intelligence collective collection perspective.” 

The officials also said the U.S. has communicated the “seriousness with which we take this issue,” to the Chinese government “through multiple channels” both in Washington, D.C. and in Beijing. 

“We have made clear we will do whatever is necessary to protect our people and our homeland,” they said.  

Tensions between the United States and China are particularly strained after the Pentagon earlier Thursday announced it would ramp up the U.S. military presence in the Philippines. 

China views the bolstered U.S. presence as an encroaching threat to its claims on the South China Sea as well as the nearby independent island of Taiwan.  

Source: TEST FEED1

McCarthy says he’s forming bipartisan group to write lawmaker code of conduct following Omar vote

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Thursday said he is tasking a bipartisan group of lawmakers with writing a code of conduct for House members, after representatives of both parties expressed concerns about removing members from congressional committees.

His announcement came minutes after House Republicans voted to kick Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) off the Foreign Affairs panel as a rebuke for previous comments that were labeled by some Republicans as antisemitic. The vote was 218-211 along party lines with one lawmaker, Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), voting “present.”

“I’m going to put a group of Democrats that [House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)] will select and a group of Republicans, and we’ll work to come and clarify the rules and pass something for not only this Congress but future Congresses as well,” McCarthy told reporters during a press conference.

The House already has a code of conduct included in its rules, though the terms are vague, largely focusing on financial regulations. It also says members must “behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.”

The terms do not, however, cover areas like antisemitism or threats of violence against colleagues, which were the focus of previous efforts to strip members of committee assignments.

Thursday’s vote was the third time in two years that the House opted to strip lawmakers of committee assignments — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) lost their assignments in 2021 after promoting violence against Democrats. And last week, McCarthy unilaterally blocked Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff (Calif.) and Eric Swalwell (Calif.) from serving on the House Intelligence Committee.

Unlike the Foreign Affairs Committee, which required a vote from the whole House to boot Omar, McCarthy as Speaker has the ability to block members from the Intelligence Committee.

In the lead-up to the vote on Omar, both Democrats and Republicans said they were opposed to the practice of stripping members of their committee assignments. A number of lawmakers accused McCarthy of engaging in a “tit-for-tat” by moving to kick Omar off the Foreign Affairs panel just because Democrats did the same to Greene and Gosar in 2021.

Three Republican lawmakers — Reps. Victoria Spartz (Ind.), Nancy Mace (S.C.) and Ken Buck (Colo.) — initially came out against the effort for various reasons, but McCarthy got them on board after offering them commitments regarding the process of booting lawmakers from panels.

Spartz pointed to added due process language in the resolution, Buck said McCarthy suggested he was willing to reform the process for kicking members off committees and Mace said the Speaker offered her a “commitment” that there would be a fix to rules that would refer members to the House Ethics Committee before a resolution is drawn up to strip them of their committee assignments.

McCarthy on Thursday said two of those lawmakers — Mace and Buck — will be part of the bipartisan group tasked with writing a code of conduct. The Speaker also said he asked Jeffries to “select a couple of members along with himself” for the group.

“I don’t know the definition exactly what all that’s going to mean. I think that should be clear. So if there is a concern, it’s not tit for tat. But I think in moving forward, every single member of Congress has a responsibility to how they carry themselves,” McCarthy said.

Source: TEST FEED1

House passes resolution denouncing socialism, vote splits Democrats

The House on Thursday approved a resolution denouncing socialism in a bipartisan vote that fractured the Democratic caucus.

The resolution overwhelmingly cleared the chamber in a 328-86-14 vote. The majority of Democrats — 109 of them — voted with all Republicans for the resolution, while 86 voted against it and 14 voted “present.”

The measure, which runs three pages, says “socialist ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has time and time again collapsed into Communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and brutal dictatorships.”

It argues that “many of the greatest crimes in history were committed by socialist ideologues” — mentioning Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro — and it lists atrocities committed under socialist regimes.

“Congress denounces socialism in all its forms, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States of America,” the resolution reads.

When introducing the measure, the office of Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) — a sponsor of the resolution — said passing it “would make a bold statement that the People’s House unequivocally denounces this cruel and unjust ideology.”

“It would also ensure the United States commits to never begin or normalize the implementation of socialist policies that inevitably lead to economic ruin and political authoritarianism,” Salazar’s office added in a statement.

Several Democrats who voted against the resolution expressed concerns regarding the future of Social Security and Medicare. They noted that Republicans on the Rules Committee rejected an amendment proposed by Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) which sought to clarify that opposition to the implementation of socialist policies in the U.S. does not include federal programs like Medicare and Social Security.

Republicans are pushing for spending cuts to be linked to a debt ceiling increase and some have floated cuts to entitlement programs. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), however, has said cuts to the two federal programs are “off the table.”

“Here’s what this is really about: More and more members on the other side of the aisle are calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and many have referred to these programs as socialism throughout their existence,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said on the House floor during debate. “The other night in the Rules Committee, they showed their cards. Republicans refused an amendment to declare that Social Security and Medicare is not socialism.”

“This resolution is little about intelligent discourse and everything to do about laying the groundwork to cut Social Security and Medicare,” he added.

Additionally, some Democrats who voted against the measure have been described as democratic socialists. Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) were all endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America in the 2022 cycle.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who supported the resolution, condemned socialist autocrats during a speech on the House floor before taking aim U.S. leaders who attack democratic elections and other American programs.

“I rise to condemn all socialist autocrats who place power and wealth over their own citizens. Yet this resolution ignores some of their worst evils, then falls silent while American leaders mimic their cruel tactics,” she said.

“Let’s condemn socialist abuses, yes, but leaders on this very floor seek to overturn democratic elections, confiscate long-held rights and gut programs our families, veterans and service members need,” she added.

Rep. Theresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.), who voted “present,” denounced socialism on the House floor, but criticized House Republicans for spending time on that resolution and not other matters.

“i absolutely denounce the brutal and communist regimes of Castro, Maduro, Stalin and other dictators in the whereas clauses of this resolution. But sadly, instead of spending our precious moments in the People’s House expanding opportunity for hard-working Americans, supporting ranchers, farmers, and rural communities, lowering health care costs and strengthening Social Security and Medicare, we’re spending hours — actually days — in pure political theater,” she said.

Source: TEST FEED1