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'Liberal' may finally be shedding its political stigma

More than half of Democrats now identify as liberal, suggesting that the long-vilified “L-word” may be losing its potency as political kryptonite. 

A generation of Democratic presidential contenders, from Michael Dukakis to Bill Clinton, ducked the liberal brand. Republicans disparaged liberals as weak-willed softies. Democratic candidates faced perennial accusations of closet liberalism.  

In the millennial era, the L-word seems to be shedding its stigma. The share of avowed Democrats who describe themselves as liberal has more than doubled since 1994, reaching 54 percent in 2022, according to Gallup polling.  

“When you look at the way conservatives brand Democrats, they’ve gone way past ‘liberal,’” said Marc Hetherington, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “Now, it’s ‘socialist.’” 

Presidents Obama and Biden both fended off the socialist tag. In 2021, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and other conservatives mockingly referred to Biden’s economic recovery plan as “Build Back Socialist.”  

The L-word has taken a circuitous journey through the annals of American politics. From FDR through JFK, liberalism “was a positive term, politically,” said Matt Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management.  

Liberals and liberalism “helped save the country from the Great Depression,” Dallek said. “Liberal internationalists helped save the world from Nazi fascism.” 

In the 1960s, conservatives William F. Buckley Jr. and Barry Goldwater helped redefine liberalism as a philosophy of big government and overspending. By the Reagan 1980s, Republican strategists had painted the liberal as “a lover of bureaucracy and criminals, whose hobbies are raising taxes, flag burning and gay marriage,” Michael Kinsley wrote in a 1992 column.  

In the 1988 campaign, Republican candidate George H.W. Bush branded his Democratic opponent, Dukakis, a “card-carrying liberal,” clearly implying that was bad. Dukakis waved off the label until the final days of the election, which he lost. 

In the Republican revolution of the 1990s, Newt Gingrich and GOPAC instructed conservative candidates to wield “liberal,” “welfare” and “taxes” as defining terms against their opponents.  

“He had this list of words: ‘These are the words that you should use to describe Democrats,’” said Alan Abramowitz, professor emeritus of political science at Emory University.  

In the 1992 campaign, Clinton deflected the L-word by portraying himself as a centrist. Many rank-and-file Democrats followed suit. Gallup polls from that era show more than 40 percent of Democrats identifying as moderate, with smaller groups claiming to be conservative or liberal.  

Over the next two decades, liberals gradually supplanted moderates as the largest group of Democrats. The conservative camp shrank away: 10 percent of all Democrats identified as conservative in 2022. 

Both parties, it seems, have drifted toward the ideological poles. The share of Republicans identifying as conservative rose from 58 percent in 1994 to 72 percent in 2022. Most of that increase has come at the expense of moderates, who dwindled from 33 percent to 22 percent of Republicans in those years.   

For Democratic politicians, some of the L-word stigma endures. Older pols may never forget the once-ubiquitous putdowns “bleeding-heart liberal,” “tax-and-spend liberal” and “limousine liberal” that invoke liberal clichés.  

“If you reviewed most of the advertising running from Democrats in the midterm elections or Joe Biden’s campaign, I don’t think you’d find any touting themselves as liberal,” Dallek said.  

Left-leaning Democrats of the Biden era populate the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group formed in 1991, near the high-water mark of Republican attacks on liberalism. 

“It’s the Progressive Caucus,” Abramowitz said. “It’s not the liberal caucus.” 

The term “progressive” carries mostly positive connotations, at least to the Left, political scientists say. Bernie Sanders, the Independent Vermont senator, famously denies being a liberal but embraces the progressive label.

“I would say most Democrats who fall more on the left end of the spectrum probably describe themselves as progressives now,” said Mike Freiberg, a Democratic state representative in Minnesota. “There are Democrats who self-identify as socialist now.” 

Research by Pew has uncovered an ideological split within the left. One group, “Establishment Liberals,” makes up roughly 23 percent of the Democratic tribe. Another group, the “Progressive Left,” represents 12 percent.  

The groups agree on nearly every issue, from gun control to climate change to racial justice to abortion. But progressives “support far-reaching changes” to the establishment to effect those policies, Pew reports. Establishment liberals do not.

“The term ‘liberal’ is still associated kind of with ‘the Establishment,’ in quotation marks,” said Dru Dunn, 19, a sophomore at American University and president of the College Democrats.  

“The ‘Establishment Liberal’: It means you’re kind of OK with how things are running right now.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Senators eye Social Security reforms as some in House GOP consider cuts 

Some senators are eyeing a divided Congress as an opportunity to tackle reforms to Social Security, as the program faces significant solvency issues in little more than a decade. 

Changes to Social Security are a perpetually heavy lift for Congress, but they’ve gained traction as some House Republicans float cuts to it as part of debt ceiling negotiations. 

“A wise senator said that whenever you see reforms shore up those kinds of programs, it usually takes a divided Congress,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told The Hill this week. 

“So, maybe that historically bodes well for something that would make sure that Americans have a secure retirement system,” he added. 

Senate Republicans are generally leaving debt ceiling negotiations to the GOP-controlled House. 

But separately, there has been growing chatter from both parties in the upper chamber about potential ways to help protect Social Security, which some estimates say is on track to becoming insolvent in about 12 years. 

Reports surfaced last week that Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Angus King (I-Maine) are working toward a bipartisan compromise to help protect the program, unrelated to debt ceiling negotiations. Semafor, which broke the news, reported the effort could lead to an investment fund specifically to help shore up Social Security. 

The senators’ offices confirmed to The Hill last week that both Cassidy and King “have been working on a legislative solution,” but said the “plan is not finalized.”  

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) told The Hill on Monday that she plans to meet with Cassidy later this week about a proposal, when asked about the prospects of a bipartisan compromise to protect the program. 

“He’s got a proposal, and I don’t know how many senators he has vetted his proposal, but I’m anxious to learn about it,” she told The Hill, adding she thinks “he’s making the rounds.” 

On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a key centrist, recently suggested raising the taxable wage cap for the program.  

“If you want to have a quick fix, you have enough cash so people can continue to get the benefits that they’ve earned and worked for, the easiest ways to raise the cap,” he told The Hill, though he wouldn’t say whether the idea would be able to pass in the divided Congress.  

The proposals in the Senate come as House lawmakers and the White House spar over whether to include Social Security and other entitlement programs like Medicare in negotiations over raising the debt limit. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified congressional leaders last week that her office will begin to implement “extraordinary measures” to keep the U.S. government from defaulting on its debt, which recently surpassed the roughly $31.4 trillion threshold set by Congress more than a year ago. 

Yellen said the steps should buy Congress until early June to hash out a bipartisan plan, setting off a high-stakes battle in Washington. 

Raising the debt limit would allow the government to pay for programs it has already approved, not authorize any new spending. But House Republicans have pressed for any action on the debt ceiling to be paired with significant fiscal reform, but the party is still working out its strategy mapping out demands for the months ahead.   

There are divisions over whether those reforms should include entitlement programs, which eat up large chunks of federal spending — federal data showed Social Security alone accounted for about 20 percent of government spending in fiscal 2022, while Medicare made up 12 percent. 

Democrats, by contrast, have instead insisted on a clean bill to address the debt ceiling, while demanding Republicans provide specifics about the areas they want to cut.  

“If Republicans are talking about draconian cuts, they have an obligation to show Americans what those cuts are and let the public react. … Does that mean cuts to Social Security or Medicare or child care or Pell Grants?” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said from the Senate floor on Monday. 

But despite some support in the Senate for taking on entitlement funding reforms sooner rather than later, there is doubt among lawmakers and experts of the chances of Congress being able to move legislation to help protect either Social Security or Medicare in the current session.  

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said “ideally” reforms for the programs would be on the table for debt limit talks, but added the debt ceiling “has proved to be very poor leverage for those kinds of fights, primarily because there’s very little interest in defaulting on debt.” 

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also cast doubt on the likelihood of Congress reaching a bipartisan compromise, sizing up some hopes from lawmakers as “whistling past the graveyard.” 

“I was on the Simpson-Bowles commission,” he said. “We spent a year laboring to put together a bipartisan bill and the Republicans walked out at the end of it. So, I’m not very encouraged.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Why the IRS says to expect smaller tax refunds this year

The IRS is warning taxpayers at the opening of the 2023 tax filing season that they should expect smaller refunds due to pandemic relief measures that have been allowed to expire. 

A big reason is that there were no stimulus payments from the government to people to help get them through the pandemic in 2022. The last stimulus payments went out in 2021. 

Millions received those stimulus payments as a recovery rebate credit that was effectively given as a tax refund. 

Millions more received help through the pandemic through an expanded child tax credit (CTC) that many progressives saw as an effective and important social safety net. That credit was allowed to expire by Congress at the end of 2021. 

“Due to tax law changes such as the elimination of the Advance Child Tax Credit and no Recovery Rebate Credit this year to claim pandemic-related stimulus payments, many taxpayers may find their refunds somewhat lower this year,” the IRS said in a news release on Monday.

A tax break for charitable deductions was also allowed to expire, which could affect more taxpayers. 

“The reason people’s returns are changing this year is that they’re no longer accounting for stimulus payments and other credits,” tax expert Howard Gleckman of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center said in an interview with The Hill. 

An IRS official told The Hill that not all refunds for tax year 2022 will be lower than previous years, and individual tax situations can vary.

One of the biggest changes in tax liability will result from the expiration of the expanded CTC.

The Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan increased the CTC for families making up to $150,000 a year from $2,000 per child to $3,000 per child for children older than 6, and from $2,000 to $3,600 for children younger than 6. It also raised the age limit for getting the credit from 16 to 17.

The legislation resulted in many families getting thousands of dollars more in their refunds. It also dramatically cut into U.S. child poverty rates, reducing them by about 26 percent per month — or a decline of about 3 million children living below the poverty line, according to studies by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

“The monthly anti-poverty impacts of the Child Tax Credit grew over time, as the IRS reached more eligible children as the months progressed,” Columbia researchers wrote in a paper in November. “By December 2021, the [CTC], on its own, had reduced the monthly child poverty rate by close to 30 percent, compared to what it would have been in the program’s absence.”

Critics of the CTC say it was too expensive to maintain indefinitely and was only a temporary relief measure made necessary by the coronavirus pandemic. 

Making the expanded child tax credit permanent would cost $1.6 trillion over the 10-year congressional budget window, according to an estimate by the Tax Foundation, a Washington think tank.

Other lapsed credits include an expansion of the earned income tax credit (EITC), which had its maximum amount nearly tripled in 2021 and was made to apply to both senior citizens and younger workers.

Taxpayers claiming the EITC with no children who received roughly $1,500 in 2021 will get around $500 in 2022.

“That credit provided a wage subsidy to lower income earners that phased in with earned income. So when they got a dollar of income, that was matched with extra tax credit,” tax analyst Erica York of the Tax Foundation said in an interview with The Hill. 

The child and dependent care tax credit will also dip back down this year to a maximum of $2,100 instead of the $8,000 that could be claimed last year.

For higher-income earners who own mutual funds or other common types of investment vehicles, ups and downs in the stock market may also have resulted in a higher tax liability for tax year 2022.

Declines in the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average forced many portfolio managers to sell off stocks, incurring capital gains taxes at the time of sale even if those positions lost money over the course of 2022.

“If a stock was down $50 from its high but up $100 from when somebody bought it, a mutual fund would have to pay capital gains and they’d have to pass that on to you, as a shareholder,” Gleckman said.

Source: TEST FEED1

McCarthy says Santos will be removed from office if Ethics panel finds he broke law

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday said Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) will be removed from office if the House Ethics Committee finds that the embattled congressman broke the law.

The remark is McCarthy’s most extensive comment yet on potential punishments Santos could face amid the mounting controversies and accusations against him.

“If for some way when we go through Ethics that he has broken the law, then we will remove him,” McCarthy told reporters during a press conference just outside his office.

“The American public in his district voted for him. He has a responsibility to uphold what they voted for, to work and have their voice here, but at any time if it rises to a legal level we will deal with it then,” he added.

Democratic Reps. Ritchie Torres (N.Y.) and Daniel Goldman (N.Y.) filed a complaint with the Ethics Committee earlier this month, calling on the panel to investigate Santos for failing to file timely, accurate and complete financial disclosure reports. The congressman has come under intense scrutiny over his finances amid questions that he may have violated campaign finance laws.

It is unclear, however, if the Ethics Committee is looking into the complaint. McCarthy on Monday appointed Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.) to serve as chairman of the panel, but he has not yet named other members to the group. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) nominated five Democrats to the committee earlier this month.

The Ethics Committee is known for saying little publicly about its investigations. Santos is also under investigation by prosecutors in New York, and he is the focus of a case in Brazil.

Santos, who represents part of Long Island, has come under intense scrutiny amid revelations that he fabricated parts of his biography and questions about his finances. The New York Republican has admitted to embellishing his resume but is vowing to remain in Congress, arguing that his constituents sent him to Washington to serve.

A number of Republican lawmakers have called on Santos to resign. McCarthy, however, stopped short of asking the freshman congressman to step down, instead deferring to the Ethics panel.

McCarthy deferred to the voters in New York’s third congressional district on Tuesday when asked if he is only standing by Santos because losing him in Congress would cost Republicans a seat.

“No,” McCarthy responded to the question. “You know why I’m standing by him? Because his constituents voted for him.”

“I do not have the power simply because if I disagreed with somebody or what they have said that I remove them from elected office. Now I will hold him to the same standard I hold anyone else elected to Congress,” he added.

The House Republican Steering Committee last week recommended that Santos serve on the House Small Business Committee and the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, giving the congressman a semblance of normalcy amid the growing scrutiny.

Source: TEST FEED1

McCarthy formally blocks Schiff, Swalwell from Intel panel

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday formally rejected two Democrats — Reps. Adam Schiff (Calif.) and Eric Swalwell (Calif.) — from serving on the Intelligence Committee, escalating the two-year, tit-for-tat battle between the parties over who is qualified for certain positions on Capitol Hill. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) had written to McCarthy on Saturday asking that both Schiff and Swalwell be seated on the Intel panel, where membership assignments come solely at the discretion of the Speaker. 

McCarthy rejected the request, saying Schiff and Swalwell’s previous actions make them unfit to serve on a panel with jurisdiction over and access to sensitive issues of national security.

“In order to maintain a standard worthy of this committee’s responsibilities, I am hereby rejecting the appointments of Representative Adam Schiff and Representative Eric Swalwell to serve on the Intelligence Committee,” he wrote in a letter to Jeffries.

The move was no surprise. 

Republicans have been up in arms over the issue since 2021, when Democrats staged votes to remove GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.) from their committees following revelations that they had promoted violence against some of their Democratic colleagues. The eviction votes came after McCarthy declined to punish either lawmaker internally within the GOP conference, which is typically where such disciplinary actions are meted out.

Still, McCarthy on Tuesday denied that his decision regarding Schiff and Swalwell was retribution for Greene and Gosar.

“This is not not anything political. This is not similar to what the Democrats did,” McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday evening just outside his office in the Capitol.

DEVELOPING.

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Pence documents complicate GOP attack lines on Biden

The discovery of classified documents at former Vice President Mike Pence’s home is complicating efforts by congressional Republicans to coordinate their lines of attack on President Biden’s handling of similar materials from his time as second-in-command. 

Pence’s team disclosed Tuesday that his attorneys conducted a search of his Indiana home out of an abundance of caution following news that classified documents were found at Biden’s home and a former Washington, D.C., office he used after leaving the White House in 2017.

The revelation came just as Republicans in Congress were digging in on Biden, painting the president as careless and possibly jeopardizing sensitive information.

But similarities between how Pence and Biden each handled their respective cases, with lawyers quickly notifying the Justice Department and National Archives, could blunt some of those GOP attacks against the White House. 

“The bottom line is, I don’t know how this happened. We need to get to the bottom of it,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters Tuesday. “I don’t believe for a minute that Mike Pence is trying to intentionally compromise national security.”

“And so what became a political problem for Republicans is now a national security problem for the country,” Graham said.

Greg Jacob, an attorney representing Pence, wrote to the National Archives on Jan. 18 to notify them that Pence had directed a search two days earlier that turned up two boxes with some materials with classified markings.

FBI officials took possession of those two boxes on Jan. 19, as well as two other boxes with copies of administration records, Jacob said.

“The additional records appear to be a small number of documents bearing classified markings that were inadvertently boxed and transported to the personal home of the former Vice President at the end of the last Administration,” Jacob wrote. “Vice President Pence was unaware of the existence of sensitive or classified documents at his personal residence.”

It seemed on Tuesday that both Democrats and Republicans embraced the revelation.

The development was welcome news for the White House, which for the past two weeks has been revealing additional information little by little about additional documents being found at Biden’s Delaware home. 

And it’s fended off mounting criticism about why the administration didn’t disclose the matter to the public when documents were first discovered months ago, citing an ongoing investigation.

Pence had in recent months repeatedly insisted he did not take any classified materials with him upon leaving office. On Jan. 12, three days after the first Biden discovery was made public in a CBS News report, Pence spoke on Fox Business about how he knew from personal experience “the attention that ought to be paid to those materials when you’re in office and after you leave office.”

White House officials declined to comment on the Pence disclosures on Tuesday. But Democrats will now be able to favorably compare the Biden and Pence cases, noting that both men appeared caught off guard by the discoveries and had lawyers cooperate with the Justice Department and National Archives.

“Politically, this makes it difficult if not impossible for the GOP to criticize Biden, w/out damaging Pence; the situations look very similar,” tweeted Joyce White Vance, a law professor and legal analyst on MSNBC.

Some Republicans as of Tuesday appeared unlikely to relent in their criticism of Biden, signaling they would press forward with their investigations.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said Pence had reached out to the panel on Tuesday about the documents found at his home and “agreed to fully cooperate with congressional oversight and any questions we have about the matter.”

Comer has requested the documents discovered by Biden’s team, communications about the documents between the Biden White House and the Justice Department and a list of visitors to Biden’s Delaware home who were screened by the Secret Service.

The White House in a letter Monday said it would review Comer’s requests and seek to accommodate “legitimate oversight interests.”

“Former Vice President Pence’s transparency stands in stark contrast to Biden White House staff who continue to withhold information from Congress and the American people,” Comer said in a statement.

Former President Trump, who is under Justice Department investigation involving the potential mishandling of classified documents after he left office, also sought to absolve Pence on Tuesday.

“Mike Pence is an innocent man. He never did anything knowingly dishonest in his life. Leave him alone!!!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

The FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in August after he and his team failed to voluntarily turn over sensitive government files following an initial review in January. The January search had turned up dozens of files marked “classified,” “secret” and “top secret.”

The August search then led to a legal fight between Trump attorneys and the federal government, with the former president’s team trying to block prosecutors from reviewing the documents they took from Mar-a-Lago.

But in the case of Pence, even Democrats appeared less interested in attacking Trump’s vice president than in emphasizing the differences between how Pence and Biden handled the discovery of classified materials in their homes compared to Trump.

“This discovery by Pence’s attorney is a very interesting reinforcement of the contrast between how Biden & Pence are properly cooperating and returning documents versus Trump stealing them, hiding them, and obstructing justice into their return,” said David Brock, president of Facts First USA.

That Biden, Pence and Trump have now all had classified documents found in their residences could mean that three of the most recognizable names running and potentially for president in 2024 are now dealing with the same controversy. 

Separate special counsels are reviewing Biden’s and Trump’s handling of classified documents.

And while Democrats are hoping to make Trump’s failure to cooperate with federal officials stick, the Pence revelations may ultimately force lawmakers to focus more broadly on process.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said Tuesday he was struck by Pence’s Fox Business interview, where Pence detailed every step of the process that was involved in his viewing of classified documents during his time as vice president, which included Pence telling the cable host that some materials were put in a burn bag after he viewed them.

“It sounded like a very nice routine for making sure that you don’t hang on to things. … A nice routine would be a good way to avoid problems like this,” Cramer said, noting that “clearly” this wasn’t enough.

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These Republicans will serve on panels to probe COVID-19, 'weaponization' of government

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has released the names of the Republicans who will serve on a pair of subcommittees as part of the GOP’s promise to launch investigations into the Biden administration. 

McCarthy in a tweet Tuesday announced the GOP membership of two select subcommittees on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government” and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The House voted along party lines to establish the “weaponization” committee earlier this month to probe ongoing investigations from the Justice Department (DOJ). The subcommittee was part of a list of demands that hardline GOP House members had for McCarthy to win their support to become speaker. 

McCarthy later promised to create both the weaponization and COVID-19 subcommittees a couple days ahead of the speaker vote. Republicans have described the weaponization subcommittee as “Church-style,” referring to a Senate select committee led by former Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) that looked into intelligence agencies. 

McCarthy said in a letter to his Republican colleagues that the subcommittee will expose the “weaponization of government against our citizenry, writ large.” 

The subcommittee will be led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who was a close supporter of McCarthy during his speaker bid and who serves as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. McCarthy previously said earlier this month that Jordan will chair the subcommittee. 

The other GOP members of the committee will be Reps. Darrell Issa (Calif.), Thomas Massie (Ky.), Chris Stewart (Utah), Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), Mike Johnson (La.), Chip Roy (Texas), Kelly Armstrong (N.D.), Greg Steube (Fla.), Dan Bishop (N.C.), Kat Cammack (Fla.) and Harriet Hageman (Wyo.).  

Roy and Bishop held out their support from McCarthy through more than 10 ballots of the speaker vote before switching to back him after McCarthy agreed to additional concessions. 

McCarthy previously announced last week that Steube will serve on the weaponization subcommittee following Steube’s hospitalization from falling off a 25-foot ladder and receiving multiple “severe” injuries. 

Steube was released from the hospital on Saturday, but he said he will be “sidelined” from Washington, D.C., at his home in Sarasota, Fla., for several weeks. He said he is “eager” to rejoin his colleagues in D.C. “as soon as possible.” 

The subcommittee will also include five Democratic members. 

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) will serve as the chair of the COVID-19 committee. 

The other members rounding out the GOP membership will be Reps. Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa), Debbie Lesko (Ariz.), Michael Cloud (Texas), John Joyce (Pa.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Ronny Jackson (Texas) and Rich McCormick (Ga.). 

Cloud was also opposed to McCarthy through most of the speakership votes until throwing his support behind him for the last few ballots. 

Greene has repeatedly voiced misinformation surrounding the pandemic since its start in 2020. Her personal Twitter account was suspended for violating the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policies last January, but it was restored in November as part of several accounts that CEO Elon Musk reinstated after he took over the company. 

A Democratic-led House subcommittee released a report on the pandemic last month toward the end of the past session of Congress, blaming the Trump administration for harming the country’s response to the virus.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden set to make U-turn on tanks to Ukraine amid mounting pressure

The Biden administration is poised to approve the transfer of M1 Abrams main battle tanks to Ukraine amid growing pressure to equip Kyiv with the heavy combat vehicles. 

An announcement on the transfer could come as soon as Wednesday, according to U.S. officials who spoke to the Associated Press and other outlets.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle cheered Biden’s apparent U-turn, coming after a standoff between the U.S. and Germany over who would take the first step. 

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a former Marine, told The Hill that an announcement sending over Abrams tanks would be a “great first step,” but the decision should have been made last week.

“We always seem to do the right thing at the end of the day, but I don’t understand why it takes so long to do it,” he said. “I think this is pretty straightforward.”

The Abrams tanks would likely not arrive in Ukraine for months, although details are still being discussed, including how many of the tanks would be sent. At a press briefing on Tuesday, the Pentagon declined to discuss the reports.

A transfer of the battle tanks is likely to open up a direct channel for Germany to supply Kyiv with its more manageable Leopard 2 tanks. Berlin has also been under intense pressure to ship its Leopards to Kyiv or approve a transfer of the tanks from several European allies requesting the go-ahead.

Germany is also prepared to approve the transfer of Poland’s Leopard tanks to Ukraine on Wednesday, timed with the U.S. announcement, according to the officials who spoke to the AP.

The apparent breakthrough comes as calls to send over the M1 Abrams tanks increased this week on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) joined Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) at a press conference on Tuesday calling for the transfer of the Abrams tanks.

“The fact that the tanks are going to flow from Germany, and hopefully from America, to me is something to celebrate,” Graham said. “It’s an acknowledgement that the goal is now to be with Ukraine until every last Russian soldier is evicted from Ukrainian soil.”

Ukraine, which is expecting a Russian offensive in the coming months, has requested heavier combat vehicles and modern tanks for months. Kyiv has only used Soviet-era tanks in the war.

Blumenthal, who recently returned from a trip to Ukraine, said he witnessed firsthand the devastation caused by Russian strikes.

But the senator also praised Kyiv for its successes on the battlefield and said the “Ukrainians can win if they have the tools that are necessary.”

“It is more than just tanks,” he said. “It’s also long-range artillery as well as more HIMARS. It is defensive weaponry like the Patriots. … [Ukraine] needs everything it needs to win now. There is an urgency to now. Time is not on our side.”

After the U.K. announced it would ship Challenger 2 tanks earlier this month, speculation mounted over whether Washington and Berlin would follow suit.

The U.S. announced last week a $2.5 billion package of security assistance for Ukraine, but chose not to include the prized M1 Abrams battle tanks. On Friday, a meeting of about 50 defense leaders from across the world ended without an agreement to send over tanks.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said last week the Abrams, which require jet fuel, would be difficult to maintain on the battlefield. 

But some lawmakers this week began pushing for Biden to send at least a few tanks to clear the way for Germany, after Chancellor Olaf Scholz said his country would not “go it alone.”

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that “NATO has to share the burden” on supplying Kyiv with the weapons it needs.

“All we have to do is send enough to unleash what Germany has and what the ten other countries in NATO have,” McCaul said.

That was echoed by Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who said he supported “sending some Abrams tanks in order to unlock” the Leopard tanks on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

“I respect that our military leaders think the Abrams is too sophisticated, too expensive a platform to be as useful as the Leopards,” he said. “But we need to continue to work with our close allies and to move forward in lock step.”

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Senators bewildered by Pence classified document revelation

Senators on both sides of the aisle were caught off guard Tuesday by the news that classified documents were found at the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence, materials that were ultimately turned over to the FBI.

An attorney for Pence told the National Archives that the former vice president used outside counsel to review records stored at his personal home after several classified documents were found at the home and a former office of President Biden. The Pence news left some Senate lawmakers floored over yet another discovery of classified documents belonging to a former vice president.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on around here. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Hill. “I have no reason to believe it’s nefarious in any way, but clearly at the executive branch they’re just packing boxes.”

Rubio told reporters that he expects the subject to come up on Wednesday when Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines is set to appear before the committee to discuss unrelated topics. The Wednesday afternoon briefing is closed to the public. 

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.), along with Rubio, has requested information from Haines following an FBI search in August of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property that turned up more than 100 documents with various classified markings.

Their requests, however, have not yielded much due to the appointment of a special counsel in the Trump case. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a separate counsel to review the documents that were found in the Biden locations, which date back to his time as vice president and as a senator. 

“So far, we’ve really had no reaction or response or any more information,” Rubio noted. “But we will have answers to these, one way or another, they will have to give us answers.”

There are, however, major differences between how lawmakers on Capitol Hill and executive branch figures view such documents, at least in the minds of members of Congress. Senators and representatives may only view classified documents in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, in the basement of the Capitol, and documents are not allowed to leave with lawmakers. 

That same sort of process does not appear to be used at the White House under administrations of multiple stripes, lawmakers said.

“I don’t get it,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters. “Anybody that deals with classified materials knows that they have to be maintained in a secure place and not available to our adversaries by putting them in a place that’s easy to penetrate. So — that’s not good.”

“I don’t know how this happens, but obviously it’s something that needs to be corrected,” Cornyn added.

Pence has repeatedly said in interviews that he did not have any such documents in his possession upon leaving office. Still, he decided to have his home searched after news reports revealed what was discovered from Biden.

Warner expressed shock at the latest development before pressing for ex-presidents and vice presidents to probably “check their closets” to ensure they, too, did not have any classified documents in their possession. 

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) added that it seems as though there is a “cavalier attitude” at the White House generally when it comes to the handling of such materials. 

A number of senators initially argued that the over-classification of documents is an issue, which Rubio noted is a separate issue, especially of information that might become dated over time. 

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) was particularly struck because during a recent appearance on Larry Kudlow’s Fox Business show, Pence appeared before him and detailed every step of the process that was involved in his viewing of classified documents during his time as vice president which included Pence telling the host that some materials were put in a burn bag after he viewed them.

“It sounded like a very nice routine for making sure that you don’t hang onto things. … A nice routine would be a good way to avoid problems like this,” Cramer said, noting that “clearly” this wasn’t enough.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) noted that Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is working on legislation aimed at maintaining and preserving presidential and federal agency records. 

Some senators, however, couldn’t help but be bemused by the situation. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told reporters that his attorney went through his files and “found Jimmy Hoffa’s remains.” Others wondered whether other former presidents and vice presidents would similarly scour their homes for classified papers. 

“Is Dan Quayle suddenly going through his golf bag to find out if he accidentally took something? I don’t know,” Cramer quipped to reporters.

Source: TEST FEED1