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Obama mourns death of basketball great Bill Russell: ‘We lost a giant’

Former President Obama memorialized Bill Russell on Sunday in a statement on Twitter after the NBA legend’s family announced he had died at 88.

“Today, we lost a giant,” Obama wrote.

“As tall as Bill Russell stood, his legacy rises far higher—both as a player and as a person,” he continued.

The 11-time NBA champion was known not just for his skill in the sport, becoming a 12-time All Star and being named Most Valuable Player five times, but also for his record as a trailblazer.  Russell was the first Black head coach of any North American professional sports team.

He also attended Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington in 1963, and Russell supported Muhammad Ali when he refused to be inducted into the military draft during the Vietnam War.

“Perhaps more than anyone else, Bill knew what it took to win and what it took to lead,” Obama wrote. “On the court, he was the greatest champion in basketball history. Off of it, he was a civil rights trailblazer—marching with Dr. King and standing with Muhammad Ali.”

“For decades, Bill endured insults and vandalism, but never let it stop him from speaking up for what’s right,” Obama said. “I learned so much from the way he played, the way he coached and the way he lived his life. Michelle and I send our love to Bill’s family, and everyone who admired him.”

Obama awarded Russell the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.

In 2017, Russell posted a viral photo of himself kneeling while wearing the medal, saying he was taking a knee to stand against social injustice.

Russell was a first-round draft pick in 1956 by the St. Louis Hawks, and he was later traded to the Boston Celtics.

While in Boston, Russell spent 10 years as a player and three as a coach, and the Celtics won 11 championships in that time.

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Angus King highlights 'Jeopardy question': 'Immortality!!'

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) took to Instagram this week to highlight a Jeopardy question that hit close to home.

“In 1994 Angus King ran as an independent & won the governorship of this state, defeating Susan Collins,” read the question on Thursday’s episode.

“Immortality!!” King wrote in a post the next day. “A question last night on Jeopardy! The good news is that the contestants all knew the answer and buzzed simultaneously. Being a Senator is one thing, but this is a whole different level!”

The answer to the question was Maine.

King narrowly won the 1994 governor’s race as an independent, with roughly 35 percent of the vote in a four-way race. King later won reelection in 1998.

Joseph Brennan, the Democratic nominee, received 34 percent of the vote in the election. Brennan was a former governor and House member.

Collins, who now serves as King’s Maine counterpart in the Senate, was the Republican nominee and received 23 percent of the vote. 

Collins had served as Maine’s commissioner of professional and financial regulation, before then-President George H.W. Bush appointed Collins as the Small Business Administration’s New England regional director in 1992. 

Since joining the Senate, King has not officially joined any party, although he caucuses with Democrats.

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Senate Democrats say GOP roster full of 'flawed and deeply damaged candidates'

Senate Democrats believe they are in a good position for the midterm elections about 100 days out from November because Republicans are leaning on “a roster of flawed and deeply damaged candidates,” according to a campaign memo published Sunday by Politico.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) memo, sent out via email, says that while “Democrats are running strong, battle-tested incumbents and challengers,” the GOP is backing candidates who “who bring disqualifying personal and political baggage to the general election.”

“Democrats have put the GOP firmly on the defensive in Senate races, and the candidate vs. candidate dynamic in these campaigns has become a major liability for Republicans,” the memo from DSCC Executive Director Christie Roberts reads.

The Hill has reached out to the Republican Nation Committee (RNC) and National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) for comment.

The DSCC memo provides links to stories about the “flawed” candidates, including former NFL star Herschel Walker, who is running for a seat in Georgia but has been beset by allegations he embellished his business successes and fathered three children he had not previously publicly disclosed.

Another candidate in stories shared by the DSCC includes celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, whose anti-abortion stances and certain accusations now see him trailing in the polls to Democratic challenger John Fetterman in Pennsylvania.

The DSCC also pointed to J.D. Vance, who is running for a Senate seat in Ohio. Vance has received heightened scrutiny after he compared abortion to slavery in an October interview.

Democrats are eager to campaign on abortion rights following the U.S. Supreme Court’s stunning reversal of Roe V. Wade last month, as well as gun control after a spate of mass shootings rocked the nation this year.

The party is also pitching its candidates on core issues, such as efforts to to lower healthcare costs and tackle climate change, which comes after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced last week an agreement on a historic spending package that, in part, deals with climate.

The DSCC memo suggests these priorities give them a moral high ground of sorts over GOP candidates, who they say are pushing to ban abortion as well as end popular programs like medicare and social security.

Still, Republicans are seizing on economic woes like sky-high inflation, the most pressing issue for Americans, ahead of the November elections.

Last week, the second quarter gross domestic product (GDP) results showed the economy contracted negatively for the second time this year, a sign of a recession for most economists. Inflation is also at a 40-year high.

With all that in mind, a FiveThiryEight election forecast shows Democrats have a higher chance of winning the Senate, although forecasters note the GOP still has plenty of time to make gains.

Financially, Democrats are also raising records amount of money following the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion. The NRSC has about $28.5 million cash on hand compared to the DSCC, which has more than $53 million on hand.

Roberts said Democrats are “firing on all cylinders” while the GOP candidates struggle to relay their messaging and overcome controversy, predicting that it would put Democrats on the path toward victory.

“While Republicans are pledging to ban abortion nationally, raise taxes and end programs like Medicare and Social Security,” Roberts wrote, “Senate Democrats are fighting to lower costs, improve our supply chains, and are focusing on the issues that matter most to working families.”

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Murkowski gets late Rep. Don Young's 900-pound totem pole in Capitol Hill office

A 900-pound totem pole found yet another home in an Alaska lawmaker’s office on Capitol Hill on Saturday.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in a tweet that the pole, which has stood in the office of the late Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), has now been moved to her office. She said the pole was originally belonged to former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who served in his seat for 40 years.

Murkowski said she now occupies what was once Stevens’ office, so the totem pole will be returning to its home. A photo Murkowski posted along with the tweet shows more than half a dozen people Capitol Hill workers wheeling the totem pole to her office. 

“I’m honored to have this as a reminder of both my friends and their love for Alaska,” she said. 

Young, who was the longest-serving Republican in congressional history when he died in March, told E&E Daily, a news organization focused on energy and the environment, in January 2018 that the pole originally belonged to Stevens, and he received it after Stevens was defeated for reelection in 2008. 

Young said the owners of the pole told Stevens he needed to give it to the new senator when he lost reelection, but Young told Stevens to bring it to his office.

Young’s office a slew of other artifacts like a hand-carved canoe and photos of Young with multiple presidents. It also featured a host of animal head mountings that he boasted he had hunted himself, as well as the full size bear skin of one he had encountered, he told Roll Call who took a tour of his office in 2016.

KTOO, an educational radio station in Juneau, reported in April that Young’s office had largely remained as is despite his death. His office included other artifacts like a hand-carved canoe and photos of Young with multiple presidents.

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VA secretary: GOP-backed burn pit amendments would lead to 'rationing of care for vets'

Proposed amendments by Republican senators to a bill aimed at aiding veterans exposed to toxic burn pits would results in “rationing of care for vets,” Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough said on Sunday.

“I can’t in good conscience do that, because the outcome of that will be rationing of care for vets, which is something I just can’t sign up for,” McDonough told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) appeared on the show earlier Sunday morning to explain Republican opposition to the bill, which was blocked last week when it fell five votes short of the tally needed to bypass the filibuster.

All Democrats and eight Republicans backed the proposal, and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Democrats will bring the bill forward a second time on Monday.

Republicans have accused their Democratic colleagues of a “budgetary trick” in the bill’s funding. 

Toomey said Sunday that “to hide behind a veterans bill the opportunity to go on an unrelated $400 billion spending spree is wrong.”

But McDonough said the dollar amount Republicans are worried about isn’t a Trojan horse for the Democrats’ agenda.

“If you look in the bill for $400 billion that he’s talking about, you won’t see it. You would have to go deep in some — into some charts of the back of the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] report about — to find that. Why is that fund in the bill? The fund is in the bill so that we can ensure [that] all the spending for this program is for the veterans exposed to these toxins.” 

GOP-backed amendments would put a year-on-year cap on spending and do away with the funding for veterans after 10 years. 

“So the impact of that would be, if we — if his estimations are wrong about what we will spend in any given year, that means that we may have to ration care for veterans,” McDonough said.

“The CBO suggested, for one program we’re currently running, the MISSION Act, that we would be spending $14 billion a year less this year. So they’re $14 billion off. And that’s just four years out from their initial investment.”

Toomey is “asking us to take their word for it in eight or 10 years,” the secretary said. “I can’t in good conscience do that, because the outcome of that will be rationing of care for vets, which is something I just can’t sign up for.”

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Barrasso says Sinema 'not going to easily be twisted' on Manchin-Schumer deal: 'This is far from done'

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) on Sunday said the new spending deal between Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced last week is “far from done,” with suggesting possible opposition from moderate Sen. Kysrten Sinema (D-Ariz.).

Barrasso told Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures” host Maria Bartiromo that Sinema “felt blindsided” by the Inflation Reduction Act, which was announced last week and shocked Capitol Hill.

“She has a spine of steel. She’s not going to easily be twisted,” Barrasso said of Sinema. “In terms of, will this pass, they need all fifty Democrats on board and in the room. … They haven’t had fifty senators show up for work in well over a month. So, this is far from done.”

Sinema has so far remained publicly silent on the deal, which Manchin and Schumer announced just two weeks after Manchin had said he would not support any climate package or tax reform given soaring inflation.

The proposed $670 billion legislation, a scaled down version of the Build Back Better bill, includes $369 billion for clean energy programs; another $300 billion to reduce the U.S. deficit; and $64 billion for healthcare expansion.

In the evenly divided Senate, Democrats need all 50 senators on board to push the legislation through, considering every Republican will vote against it. That makes both Manchin and Sinema crucial votes.

Barrasso said he was surprised Manchin supported the legislation because it includes “shell games and smoke and mirrors and accounting gimmicks.”

If Democrats do manage to move the package forward, Barrasso argued it would inevitably hurt the American economy.

“I’m not sure what Chuck Schumer promised him, but I think he’s going to regret making this decision to sign onto this,” Barrasso said of Manchin. “Every Republican is against it, because we know it is going to burn a deeper hole into the wallets and the savings accounts of American people.”

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Arizona House Speaker doubles back, says he'll 'never' vote for Trump again

Arizona state House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) on Sunday said he’ll never vote for former President Trump again, a reversal of earlier claims that he’d back Trump in a match-up against President Biden.

“I’ll never vote for him, but I won’t have to. Because I think America’s tired and there’s some absolutely forceful, qualified, morally defensible and upright people, and that’s what I want. That’s what I want in my party and that’s what I want to see,” Bowers told moderator Jonathan Karl during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”

The Arizona lawmaker called Trump a “demagogue” who maintains hold on his base through “thuggery and intimidation.”

“I have thought, at times, someone born how he was, raised how he was — he has no idea what a hard life is. And what people have to go through in real — in the real world. He has no idea what courage is,” Bowers said.

Bowers’s comments were a reversal of his remarks in June, when he said he’d support the former president in a rematch of the 2020 election.

“If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again. Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the county. In my view it was,” Bowers told The Associated Press before testifying in June to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol.

Testifying before the House panel, Bowers rejected the former president’s claims that the two men had discussed a rigged 2020 presidential election in Arizona. 

Bowers said members of his party called him a “traitor” after his appearance before the committee. Trump lambasted the lawmaker as a “coward.”

Bowers on Sunday said he hoped Trump would never return to a position of power.

“I would certainly hope not. I certainly don’t trust that authority that he would exercise.”

Bowers is running for Arizona’s state Senate in this year’s midterms, and Trump has endorsed his challenger, David Farnsworth.

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Gottlieb predicts monkeypox will become public health failure

Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb penned an op-ed in the New York Times published on Saturday arguing that the United States lacks a federal infrastructure capable of dealing with public health emergencies like monkeypox and COVID-19.

“Our country’s response to monkeypox ‌‌has been plagued by the same shortcomings we had with Covid-19,” Gottlieb wrote in the op-ed. 

“Now if monkeypox ‌gains a permanent foothold in the U‌nited States and becomes an endemic virus that joins our circulating repertoire of pathogens, it will be one of the worst public health failures in modern times not only because of the pain and peril of the disease but also because it was so avoidable,” he said. “Our lapses extend beyond political decision making to the agencies tasked with protecting us from these threats.”

Gottlieb said the country did not test enough people for monkeypox in the early days of the outbreak, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not expand testing to large commercial labs until late June.

“Its cultural instinct is to take a deliberative approach, debating each decision,” he said of CDC. “With Covid, the virus ‌‌gained ground quickly. With ‌‌monkeypox, which spreads more slowly, typically through very close contact, the shortcomings of CDC’s cultural approach haven’t been as acute yet. But the shortfalls are the same.”

CDC has reported nearly 5,200 cases as of Sunday, and the outbreak has reached all but three states: Montana, Vermont and Wyoming.

Monkeypox spreads through close contact with an infected animal or person, generally through lesions, body fluids, contaminated materials and respiratory droplets. Those droplets can only travel up to a few feet and usually require prolonged contact for transmission.

The virus has largely been detected in men who have sex with men, leading some jurisdictions to prioritize those groups to receive the currently limited number of available monkeypox vaccine doses.

Gottlieb called for CDC to continue leading the nation’s pandemic response, but he argued that it should transfer some of its disease prevention work to other agencies.

He called for the FDA to manage smoking and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to handle cancer and heart disease.

“Focus the CDC more on its core mission of outbreak response,” Gottlieb wrote. “And imbue the agency with the national security mind-set that it had at its origins. If the CDC mission were more tightly focused on the elements required for handling contagion, Congress might be more willing to invest it with the robust authority to do that targeted mission well.”

But Gottlieb cast doubt on the feasibility of reform to equip CDC and other public health agencies with new tools and authority, citing his conversations with lawmakers and their staffs that showed what he called a “scant appetite” for such a move.

“After Covid, there’s a view among some that public health agencies used flawed analysis and miscalculated their advice,” Gottlieb wrote. “Securing a political consensus that the CDC needs to be further empowered to complete its mission ‌‌ — for example, invested with the authority to compel reporting from states ‌‌ — is politically unobtainable.”

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Trump-backed GOP Michigan governor candidate says she disagrees with DeVos on Jan. 6

Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon said Sunday that she disagrees with former education secretary Betsy DeVos, whose family has backed Dixon’s campaign, about the role former president Trump played in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol.

“The secretary knows that she and I differ on that subject. I want to make sure that political speech is always protected because that could open a can of worms for anybody on both sides of the party. But the secretary knows that I disagree with her on that point,” Dixon told Fox News Sunday host Bret Baier.

DeVos resigned from the Trump administration the day after the Jan. 6 riots, citing Trump’s involvement. 

“There’s no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me,” DeVos wrote in her resignation letter, read aloud to the Jan. 6 committee on June 28, 2022.

Dixon was also asked whether she believed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, who has continued to make false claims about his loss to President Biden.

Dixon dodged the question, but said the election was “certainly a concern” due to changes made to accommodate voting amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We have to make sure our elections are secure and what happened in 2020 doesn’t happen again,” she said.

Trump threw his endorsement behind conservative commentator Dixon on Friday. The DeVos family backed Dixon in May.

Dixon is in the primary ring with a handful of other candidates vying for the Republican party’s nomination in the August 2 election, with recent polling showing Dixon pulling ahead of the pack. 

The Republican nominee will face incumbent Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) in the general election.

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