Archive by Author

The Memo: DeSantis fires culture-war barrages with eye on 2024 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has been firing barrage after barrage in the culture wars — a strategy that many Republicans see as an effort to raise his profile and differentiate himself from former President Trump in advance of a 2024 run for the White House. 

Virtually everyone in political circles expects DeSantis to make a presidential run. 

Some of the incendiary issues he is embracing — especially around race — could pose challenges in a general election. But DeSantis, fresh off a big reelection win in Florida, seems happy to take that chance for the moment. 

On Monday, he defended the decision, announced last week by the state’s Department of Education, to reject a proposed advanced placement course on African American studies.  

To critics, the move amounted to Orwellian race-baiting. But DeSantis placed the ban in the context of his general opposition to what he derides as “wokeness,” insisting “education is about the pursuit of truth, not the imposition of ideology or the advancement of a political agenda.” 

That followed on the heels of a several moves catering to populist conservatives. 

DeSantis has recently sought to make bans on COVID-19-related mandates permanent — and make it harder for medical boards to reprimand dissenting doctors who are accused of spreading misinformation. 

He has requested, and last week received, an accounting from Florida’s public universities of the money they spend on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. 

He has also sought aggregate data from those same colleges about gender dysphoria treatment of students. And, last month, the Florida Supreme Court accepted his request to set up a grand jury to investigate any alleged wrongdoing relating to COVID-19 vaccines. 

Every one of those moves has drawn media attention and liberal outrage — and that, of course, is part of the point. 

“It really boils down to picking a fight with the right perceived opponents,” said GOP strategist Kevin Madden. “And if you are in the earliest stage of a 2024 primary, that can be picking a fight with the media, or the education establishment, or picking a fight with liberals driven by ‘political correctness.’ ” 

Madden continued: “There is some risk involved in that. Some of the issues play differently in a general election and with suburban voters and more moderate voters. But when you are trying to make a name for yourself and at the break-out stage, you are not thinking of that.” 

DeSantis is clearly the most serious challenger to Trump for the GOP nomination. Even though the former president leads most surveys, the Florida governor is way out ahead of every other alternative. 

In an Economist/YouGov poll earlier this month, for example, Trump received 44 percent support from registered voters in a hypothetical GOP primary with DeSantis on 32 percent. The next best-placed candidate, former Vice President Mike Pence, registered a mere 5 percent. 

DeSantis and his advocates are rumored to see a vulnerability for Trump on COVID-19, particularly given the skepticism expressed by many Republican voters about vaccines, masks, mandates and public health advice in general during the pandemic. 

Trump has boasted about his administration’s role in speeding the development of the COVID-19 vaccines. But he was booed by an otherwise supportive crowd in late 2021 when he acknowledged having received a booster shot. 

DeSantis has acknowledged getting an initial vaccination but does not appear to have ever said whether he got a booster. 

Republicans sympathetic to Trump have little patience for what they see as DeSantis’s posturing on the issue. They note that DeSantis was at one time a strong advocate for vaccinations, and that Trump was himself opposed to mandates. 

“There has been a lot of whitewashing of DeSantis’s record on COVID, which in a lot of ways is pretty similar to Trump’s record. DeSantis’s entire policy on vaccines was no different than Trump’s at all,” said one GOP operative supportive of Trump. 

The pro-Trump operative, granted anonymity to speak candidly, also contended that DeSantis’s strength could wilt under the heat of a full-on presidential campaign. 

“Everybody in the country knows what they think about Donald Trump and their views are not going to change. Trump has a very concrete floor of support,” this source said. “Conversely, voters — including those that currently like him — do not have as concrete a view of DeSantis. He’s never proven he can take a punch in the face, and he has a lot more room to fall than Trump does.” 

But DeSantis has one big advantage right now that Trump does not: he holds office. That means he can wield actual power and prove to conservative activists that he can put his money where his mouth is. 

“He has got to solidify himself with that base Republican vote and these cultural issues matter a lot. They are very emotional and emotion drives a lot of voting, especially in primaries,” said GOP strategist Keith Naughton. 

By using the levers of power, Naughton added, DeSantis gets to play one of his best cards — the argument that that he brings competence in contrast to Trump’s chaos. 

“Trump is struck with his record from his administration,” Naughton said. DeSantis “is trying to one-up Trump on the competence issue.”   

Whether that works remains to be seen. But the first shots of the 2024 primary are already being fired.   

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Democrats itch for fight with GOP on expelling lawmakers from committees

House Democrats are itching for a fight with the new GOP majority over who should qualify for committee assignments, tapping Reps. Adam Schiff (Calif.) and Eric Swalwell (Calif.) to sit on the Intelligence Committee in the face of Republican vows to keep them off of the powerful panel.

A similar collision is likely to play out in a separate arena over Rep. Ilhan Omar, the third-term Minnesota lawmaker who is expected to be named by Democrats this week to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, despite GOP promises to boot her from the panel.

The Democrats’ moves — and the imminent clashes they’re certain to spark — indicate party leaders are confident the public battle over what constitutes disqualifying behavior will play to their political advantage, particularly after Republicans granted a pair of committee seats to Rep. George Santos, the embattled New York freshman who is under fire over lies about his background and questions about his finances.

In nominating Schiff and Swalwell to the Intelligence Committee, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) made sure to name-check Santos, emphasizing his new committee posts and hammering GOP leaders for elevating a “serial fraudster” to the panels.  

“The apparent double standard risks undermining the spirit of bipartisan cooperation that is so desperately needed in Congress,” Jeffries wrote in a Jan. 21 letter to Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

The debate arrives as the controversy surrounding Santos has shifted from one focused on resume fabrications to more serious questions about his campaign finances — allegations that have led some Republicans to call for Santos to resign from Congress altogether. Dismissing those concerns, party leaders last week nominated Santos for two committee assignments, on the House Small Business panel and the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

McCarthy himself has defended Santos, saying he was fairly elected by Long Island voters who now deserve his representation in Washington. He’s deferring questions of potential misconduct to the House Ethics Committee. 

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, unlike most other panels, has special rules empowering the Speaker to assign every member. The selections are to be made in consultation with the minority leader, but the final roster requires the endorsement of the Speaker alone, granting McCarthy the unilateral authority to block Jeffries’s recommendations.

Traditionally, that biennial process has been a routine rubber stamp, and the minority party’s picks have been seated without controversy. 

But those dynamics have shifted since 2021, when Democrats staged successful votes to strip two Republicans — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Paul Gosar (Ariz.) — of their committee assignments. 

That feud was exacerbated when former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vetoed two of then-Minority Leader McCarthy’s picks for the select panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — a move that prompted McCarthy to boycott the probe altogether.

Since then, McCarthy has vowed to keep Schiff and Swalwell from returning to the Intelligence panel — a pledge he amplified on Capitol Hill this month, when he accused the pair of politicizing the committee. 

“I’m doing exactly what we’re supposed to do,” McCarthy said.

The accusations Republicans are leveling against Schiff and Swalwell are unique to each lawmaker. 

Schiff, as former chairman of the Intelligence Committee, had led the investigations into former President Trump’s ties to Russia, and he was the lead manager in Trump’s first impeachment, which centered around charges that Trump had leveraged U.S. military aid to pressure Ukrainian leaders to investigate his political rivals. Republicans have accused Schiff of lying to the public during the course of those probes. 

In Swalwell’s case, Republicans are pointing to his association with a suspected Chinese spy who had helped fundraise for Swalwell’s 2014 reelection campaign — an episode first revealed publicly in 2020. After the FBI informed Swalwell of their concern, he cut ties with the Chinese national, who fled to Beijing. But that’s done nothing to temper the attacks from Republicans accusing Swalwell of being a national security risk.  

“If you got the briefing I got from the FBI, you wouldn’t have Swalwell on any committee,” McCarthy told reporters this month.

Fact-checkers have repeatedly found the GOP accusations to be false. And Democrats maintain that McCarthy’s threats are just another of the many concessions he had to make to the conservative detractors who fought to deny him the gavel earlier in the month. 

“This is Kevin McCarthy once again catering to the most right-wing elements of his conference and doing the will of the former president as well,” Schiff said Monday in an interview with MSNBC. “It’s just a further destruction of our norms and, I think, deterioration of our democracy.”

Jeffries, in his letter to McCarthy, sought to distinguish between each party’s standards when it comes to committee evictions, noting that both Greene and Gosar were removed by a vote of the full House after revelations that they had promoted violence against Democrats. Both votes, Jeffries emphasized, had some Republican support.  

“This action was taken by both Democrats and Republicans given the seriousness of the conduct involved, particularly in the aftermath of a violent insurrection and attack on the Capitol,” Jeffries wrote. “It does not serve as precedent or justification for the removal of Representatives Schiff and Swalwell, given that they have never exhibited violent thoughts or behavior.”

In nominating the California Democrats, Jeffries went out of his way to force McCarthy’s hand. 

Under Intelligence Committee rules, rank-and-file members are limited to four cycles — a cap Swalwell has hit — meaning that Jeffries could have simply replaced Swalwell with a less controversial Democrat. Instead, he waived the term limit in order to force McCarthy to take the aggressive step of intervening to block Swalwell from the panel. Schiff, as ranking member, is exempt from the cap. 

It’s unclear when McCarthy will announce the expected decision to block the pair. The Speaker was in Florida on Monday for an annual gathering of GOP leaders. A spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. 

Separately, the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee is scheduled to meet this week to finalize the party’s committee rosters, including the expected move to put Omar, one of three Muslim lawmakers in Congress, on the Foreign Affairs panel, according to several sources familiar with the Democrats’ plans. 

The Minnesota Democrat, a Somali refugee, has been highly critical of the Israeli government and its supporters, particularly on issues related to human rights in Palestine, leading to charges of antisemitism. In one 2019 episode, Omar was forced to apologize after suggesting wealthy Jews are buying congressional support for Israel.

Unlike the Intelligence panel, the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee are chosen by each party and ratified by the full House, meaning McCarthy cannot unilaterally block Omar from taking her seat. Instead, GOP leaders are expected to remove her from the panel on the House floor, as was the case with Greene and Gosar.

Source: TEST FEED1

Here's what you need to know about the GOP bill to abolish the tax code

House conservatives are breathing new life into an old proposal to do away with income taxes, payroll taxes, estate taxes and even the IRS itself in favor of a supersized sales tax that would account for nearly all government revenues. 

Versions of the far-reaching plan have been around for decades, and with Democrats controlling both the White House and Senate, the proposal has little chance of making it into law. But frustration over the $80 billion funding boost for the IRS passed by Democrats last year has Republicans wanting to make bold statements about changing the tax code — including scrapping it altogether.

The Fair Tax Act introduced by Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) and supported by 30 other Republicans would institute a massive 30 percent sales tax on all purchases in exchange for doing away with income, Social Security and Medicare taxes.  

That means workers would get to keep the entirety of their paychecks without having to pay out anything to the government. But it also means that buying everything from groceries to automobiles would be hugely more expensive. 

Critics of the proposal say it’s impractical and unfairly benefits the rich, while its proponents say it would provide a much-needed simplification of the U.S. tax code, the pages of which numbers in the tens of thousands.  

Here are four major things to know about the GOP proposal:

The plan would increase the tax burden on the middle class 

Having a sales tax as the only source of public revenue would put a higher tax burden on people making less money. That’s because those with lower incomes tend to spend more of what they make while richer people tend to save more of their incomes, investing in retirement accounts, securities and other types of assets. 

“Let’s say you’re a family of four. You need at least $50,000 a year to live before you can save a dime. Under this proposal, every dollar of that income is going to be taxed. On the other hand, if you’re making $1 million a year and you’re saving a portion of that, not all of that income is going to end up being taxed as a sales tax,” Frank Clemente, director of tax advocacy organization Americans for Tax Fairness, said in an interview. 

The advantage to higher earners is so pronounced that the legislation includes a “prebate,” a cash transfer program in which taxpayers get regular checks equal to the amount that people at the poverty level would owe in taxes. 

The result is a smaller tax burden for the highest and lowest earners and a bigger one for people in the middle. 

A 2006 study by the House Small Business Committee on a similar proposal found that the tax burden for people making more than $200,000 and less than $15,000 a year would go down, while the burden for people making something in between would go up. 

Moreover, the largest drop in overall tax liability would happen for the top 20 percent of earners, whose share of the federal tax burden would fall from 84.2 percent down to 65.1 percent. People in the middle of the earning spectrum would see their share rise from 3.8 percent to 10.5 percent.

“Basically, a big challenge with the Fair Tax is … you end up with higher taxes paid by incomes on the low and middle parts of the income scale under consumption taxes than higher earners,” policy analyst Garrett Watson of the Tax Foundation said in an interview. 

The IRS would cease to exist in its current form 

Supporters of the bill are cheering on the fact that it would drastically curtail the role of the IRS in collecting taxes. Instead, it would be the responsibility of state governments to collect the sales tax and then remit it to the Treasury. 

Republicans have long railed against the IRS, attacks that have ramped up in the wake of the $80 billion funding boost for the agency passed by Democrats as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which will upgrade the agency’s budget from roughly $12 billion a year to $20 billion. Most of the new money is going to additional enforcement measures, such as audits. 

“This administration tried to hire 87,000 new IRS agents,” Carter, the bill’s lead sponsor, said in an interview with The Hill. “I think that brought attention to the fact that Democrats want control. They want to have control over you and your paycheck, and this takes that control away from them.” 

The Georgia Republican said he’s been hearing that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) intends to bring the Fair Tax Act to the House floor for a vote as part of the deal with more conservative Republicans that eventually allowed McCarthy to win the Speakership after numerous rounds of voting. 

“I’ve been hearing that this was part of the negotiations, that it would be brought to the floor for a vote,” he said, qualifying that McCarthy “made no promises to me, and I don’t know that he made promises to anyone.” 

While the IRS would be sidelined, if not altogether scrapped, under Carter’s proposal, the bill would still require tax enforcement and compliance, as well as the costs that come along with it. 

“If we optimistically assume that the Fair Tax brings in roughly the same amount of revenue (as a share of the economy) as the current tax code, annual collection fees per year for states would approach $10 billion. By comparison, the IRS spent about $13 billion per year over the last decade,” John Buhl, an analyst with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington, wrote in an analysis of the measure.

Some conservatives are worried about the message the bill sends 

The Fair Tax Act is just one of many bills now being considered in the Republican-led House that have little chance of getting President Biden’s signature but are designed to send a message to voters about Republican priorities. 

Despite sharing in the frustration about Democrats’ IRS funding, some Republican strategists are worried that the Fair Tax proposal is sending a message that runs counter to traditional conservative stances on taxation. 

Specifically, they’re worried that the change resembles a European-style value-added tax and that the bill’s prebate cash transfer program could lay the groundwork for a universal basic income. 

“This creates a universal basic income, and luckily the left has not figured this out yet,” low-tax advocate Grover Norquist said in an interview. “Everybody gets a check, and so you’ve got the basis for the modern definition of European socialism, which is that everybody gets a basic income and work is an option.” 

They also worry that the sticker shock of a 30 percent sales tax encountered by voters on a daily basis will overshadow the discussion of canceling an annually levied income tax. 

“The ads you can run are that so-and-so wants to add a 30 percent sales tax on top of [prices], which will be devastating to middle-income people. That’s a pretty rough ad,” Norquist said. 

He also criticized the bill on the grounds that it would sap the life savings of retirees, who would have had their incomes taxed as they accumulated savings only to find in retirement that their spending was now being heavily taxed. 

“There is no perfect system, and I understand that,” Carter said in response. “But at the same time, this is as close to perfect as we’re going to get because this gives people the opportunity to control their own paychecks.”

The bill would represent an enormous change to the tax system

Doing away with income and payroll taxes in favor of a large and pervasive sales tax would be a fundamental shift in the way the American tax system works and would likely have unforeseen economic consequences. 

Some of those may be positive. Getting rid of income taxes would likely make it harder for rich tax cheats to stow their money in places where the IRS can’t find it. Instead, that dark money would be automatically taxed every time it was used to make a purchase. 

Other knock-on effects might be more problematic, such as the effect of a large sales tax on consumption and spending patterns that have already been altered by the pandemic and the ensuing period of increased inflation. 

“Having that high of a rate would actually change behaviors in ways that proponents aren’t really thinking about. It’s going to change behavior in ways that you wouldn’t see if you spread out the burden differently,” Buhl, of the Tax Policy Center, said. 

“The proponents of the bill are saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to abolish the IRS.’ But I look at it more as they’re actually just outsourcing tax enforcement and compliance to the state level, and so it’s not going to go away,” he said.

Source: TEST FEED1

Gallego Senate campaign launch sparks progressive hopes — and awkward questions

Rep. Ruben Gallego’s (D-Ariz.) entrance into the Arizona Senate race has supercharged many Democrats’ hopes of ousting Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) while putting others in a tough position.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Democratic senators and the party’s aligned campaign arm will need to decide how to handle what could be a three-party race with Gallego, Sinema — a newly-minted Independent — and an unknown Republican. 

Either they endorse Sinema, who often stalls their agenda and late last year bucked their party but still caucuses with them, or they back Gallego, who skews progressive against a sitting senator. Either decision risks splitting their base’s vote and handing a purple state seat to a Republican.

So far, very few want to take the bait. 

“I am no longer the chair of the DSCC,” said Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), referencing the party’s Senate campaign committee, when asked by reporters about the endorsement predicament. 

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the campaign committee’s current chairman, called Sinema a friend but noted that “it’s still real early.”

“I don’t know what her intentions are. We’ll have to wait and see what happens,” he added.

Sinema’s fellow Arizona senator, Mark Kelly (D), told The Hill, “I’m not going to get ahead of anything. … I’ve worked very closely with Sen. Sinema for a long period of time very effectively. She’s a very effective member, but I’m not going to get ahead of her on 2024.”

“It’s a long way to the election in 2024,” he said.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) used the word “premature” four times when asked to choose a lane. 

“We don’t know who’s running,” she reiterated. 

Even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who aligns with Gallego ideologically, hedged. He hasn’t “asked me to back him yet,” the Vermont senator said.

When Gallego announced his candidacy on Monday, he drew instant interest from Democrats who had long eyed 2024 as a potentially change-making year.

Even before Sinema officially left the Democratic Party, some progressives had urged Gallego to challenge her as a way to usher in a senator who more closely aligns with President Biden’s policies and vision. 

“I’m most excited about Gallego drawing contrasts with Sinema on who the seat should serve,” Angelo Greco, a progressive campaign operative who worked for Sanders, said Monday. “He’s going to have so many examples of when Sinema hid behind the filibuster to protect corporate power or gave her famous thumbs down on the Senate floor, denying hundreds of thousands of Arizonans a raise.”

The enthusiasm on the left is palpable, and the Gallego camp is plowing ahead. 

“The rich and the powerful, they don’t need more advocates,” Gallego said in a campaign video announcement. “It’s the people that are still trying to decide between groceries and utilities that need a fighter for them.”

Allies close to the congressman say his appeal is far-reaching: a young, working class Latino close with both mainstream Democrats and activists. 

They also say the 43-year-old embodies much of what Democrats want in a future senator. He’s a military veteran who works to advance the president’s agenda and pushes it further to the left. A new face who represents fresh leadership. A team blue player as Democrats look to retain the White House and Senate and recapture the House. 

In other words, not Sinema. 

“Other than [Sen. Joe] Manchin (D-W.Va.), there’s been no one as responsible for lessening the pro-worker elements of the president’s agenda,” Greco said.    

But less than 24 hours into Gallego’s kickoff, it’s clear that his bid comes with some immediate political challenges.

Sinema has been coy about her plans, declining to say whether she’ll seek a second term as an Independent and throwing a degree of uncertainty into the race that could have hefty ramifications for the party’s direction and control of the upper chamber. 

She made only a vague reference to her thinking Monday afternoon.

“I’m continuing to do what I’ve done for the last 20 years – deliver results for AZ,” she wrote on Twitter. “Last Congress we delivered landmark laws to make Arizonans’ lives better. I’m excited to keep up the momentum in the 118th Congress and secure even more wins for our state.”

And she declined to answer any further questions while leaving the Capitol in the evening.

Still, progressives have been waiting to take down Sinema for a long time. They view her as politically meddlesome, always working the angles. To her more fervent detractors, she’s an impediment to both their ideology and Biden’s priorities, particularly when big ticket items like voting rights come up. 

Gallego, they say, is their best shot at taking hold of her seat. 

“The thing about Ruben is he knows exactly who he is,” said Joe Sanberg, a prominent Democratic donor and activist who’s close friends with Gallego. “This campaign isn’t about any individual personality.”

But a blue win in swingy Arizona is far from certain. Biden narrowly won the state against former President Trump in 2020 after a campaign-long investment. And while Democrats got more good news recently when Democrat Katie Hobbs won the midterm governor’s race against Trump-aligned Kari Lake and Kelly won a second term, it’s still very much a battleground. 

Where Gallego, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is to the left of many in his party, Sinema is a known entity to voters, and usually falls more in the middle. She was first elected to the House, then the Senate, as a Democrat before changing her party registration late last year. She has since presented herself as an independent-minded lawmaker in the state where voters liked the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)’s maverick style. 

And while she’s no longer technically with the party, she still votes with the majority, which could factor into some calculations when up against the eventual GOP nominee. 

While most Democrats skirted the question of their support into the evening, she did find a reliable ally in her fellow Senate nonconformist.

“Whatever she wants to do, I support her,” Manchin said in a gaggle. 

“I’m not going to tell them what to do but they should support someone who brings basically some peace, if you will, or some rational thinking on some of this stuff without being pushed far left,” he added about who leadership should embrace. 

“I trust her,” he went on. “I understand where she’s coming from, and she’s always going to try to find the middle, and that’s all I can ask for.”

Republicans were also assessing their options on Monday.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said on Capitol Hill when asked by a reporter about whether he would endorse a GOP challenger to Sinema.

“Obviously, we’d love to have her become Republican,” he said. “Or at least caucus with Republicans.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Thune urges Sinema to caucus with GOP to avoid three-way re-election race 

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), one of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (Ariz.) best friends in the chamber, is urging the newly declared independent lawmaker to caucus with Senate Republicans, which he suggested could help avoid a three-way race for her seat in 2024.  

“We’ll see, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said when asked whether he would support an Arizona Republican who runs against Sinema, noting that “a lot of Republicans [are] talking about it.”   

“Obviously we’d love to have her become a Republican or at least caucus [with] Republicans. That would make things a little more clear,” he said.  

Thune and other Republicans have urged Sinema, who has worked closely with GOP colleagues on issues ranging from infrastructure to taxes and gun violence, on prior occasions to join their conference but without success.  

Sinema made it clear when she announced in December that she would register as an independent that she would not caucus with Republicans.  She hasn’t said if she’ll run for a second term.  

Thune made his comments Monday afternoon when pressed by reporters about whether he would support the Republican nominee in next year’s Arizona Senate race if his good friend Sinema is also on the ballot.  

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) earlier on Monday formally announced his intention to run for the Democratic nomination for Sinema’s Senate seat, which would set up a three-way general election race if Sinema runs as an independent and Republicans also put up a nominee.  

Sinema opened the door to a three-way race in December when she decided to leave the Democratic Party, declaring that Washington has become too divided by partisan politics.  

Senate Democrats on Monday also dodged questions about whether they would support Sinema’s re-election bid if she winds up in a race against Gallego or another Democratic nominee.  

“Too soon, too soon,” said Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.).  

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Gary Peters (Mich.) on Monday acknowledged that Gallego is running but did not say whether he would endorse him or another Democrat against Sinema.

Source: TEST FEED1

Democrats express alarm over Biden classified docs: 'I'm very concerned'

Democrats are expressing alarm over President Biden’s classified documents controversy, with some criticizing the president as diminished in stature and his staff as irresponsible.

“I’m very concerned,” said Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.), one of several incumbent Democrats who face potentially difficult reelection races next year in reliably GOP states in presidential elections.

“We have to get to the bottom of it to find out what the hell happened, why it happened,” he said.

“This is about national security,” Tester added, saying investigators need to find out if “it put our national security at risk.”

Biden’s January has been submerged in revelation after revelation of classified documents found at his former office and home. Most recently, 11 more documents were found during a search at Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home on Friday.

The drip-drip-drip nature of the findings has left Democrats and Republicans alike wondering whether there will be more documents found and have left the White House looking off-balance at times.

Biden emerged from the 2022 midterms in a stronger position after Democrats gained a seat in the Senate and held down their losses in the House. Democrats still see Biden as their most likely standard-bearer, and lawmakers in his party have been quick to contrast his handling of classified documents with former President Trump — who is dealing with his own controversy.

At the same time, there’s little doubt the issue has raised some questions for Biden and the White House just as his team prepared to move forward with an expected presidential announcement later this year.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who like Tester is up for reelection next year in a state that Trump won easily in 2020, blasted the lax handling of secret information as “unbelievable” and “totally irresponsible.”

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., on Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)

Biden’s attempt to dismiss the building scandal last week by asserting “there’s no there there” also drew a barb from Manchin.

He told CNN on Monday “that’s just not a good statement,” adding “we just don’t know” what secrets may have been compromised.

Criticism from Manchin is hardly unheard of, but Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who represents a safer state for Democrats, was also somewhat critical on Sunday. He said the controversy “diminishes” Biden and noted the president rightly felt “embarrassed by the situation.”

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) on November 15, 2022. (Greg Nash)

Durbin on Monday said of the White House: “They were not careful in handling classified documents.”

“When I think of how we deal with them in the Capitol in comparison, whoever was responsible for it didn’t follow the basic rules,” Durbin said of the handling of classified documents.

Durbin said he never took a classified document out of his office, “let alone out of the building.”

Yet Durbin, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stopped short of speculating whether Biden committed a potential crime, telling reporters: “I wouldn’t go that far.”

House Republicans are saber-rattling over the issue, signaling they intend to use their newly won oversight powers to look into the Biden documents story in a more aggressive way than they looked into Trump’s controversy.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the new chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, has requested that the Secret Service hand over all the information it has on visitors to Biden’s Delaware home in the time since he served as vice president.

The request — made to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Monday — came after Comer demanded that visitor logs for the residence be turned over. The White House said last week that such records do not exist.

Later on Monday, White House counsel Stuart Delery wrote to Comer that the administration does not have possession of the documents the National Archives and Department of Justice have taken as part of the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials.

Delery pledged to “accommodate legitimate oversight interests” in response to Comer’s request.

One GOP strategist said Republicans will go after Biden aggressively given the Trump controversy.

“The House is going to have a field day with investigations because of the fact that the Biden administration has been so outspoken criticizing Trump for the exact thing,” said Brian Darling, a former Senate aide.

Darling said the House could vote on articles of impeachment if the special prosecutor or House investigators find Biden broken the law or jeopardized national security.

“It’s possible. It depends on how the hearings go in the House. I think it’s quite possible that there will be discussion about impeachment because Democrats seemed so open to the idea of impeachment against President Trump and we’ve seen a lot of the payback from many of the things that happened when Democrats controlled the House, like kicking members off committees,” he said.

Durbin told reporters he expects House Republicans to go overboard in trying to tear down Biden, just as they did when they tried to blame former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the death of four Americans at a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said Biden’s possession of classified documents now effectively “completely neutralizes” Democratic attacks against Trump for holding sensitive material in Florida.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) on Tuesday, November 29, 2022. (Greg Nash)

“I’m not sure I understand all the laws that pertain to classified documents. I know the procedures that apply, but it seems to me the Justice Department is going to have to sort all that out and I think right now it’s still an evolving situation,” he said.

Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), a senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the careful handling of classified documents should always be a top priority and declared: “All of the circumstances are going to be examined …. So there’s a message that nobody is above the law.” 

“The rule that I follow scrupulously is you don’t take documents out of the room,” he said. “Obviously there’s a lot of information coming out and I want to wait and see what the facts are. 

But Wyden also gave Biden some political cover by drawing a distinction with Trump.  

“One point that I don’t believe is in contention is President Biden has voluntarily cooperated and the former president did not,” he said. 

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who faces a competitive re-election in a Republican-leaning state, urged the administration to be as transparent as possible.  

“There’s nothing that’s betrayal of national interest, there’s nothing he’s trying to hide but they need to come out with all of it,” he said. “He’s got to deal with it and get it over with.” 

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) expressed frustration that the media attention surrounding the classified documents scandal threatens to eclipse the congressional agenda.  

“It’s being looked at to the nth degree,” he said. “I’m concerned that I think we’re wasting an awful lot of effort on something that has a special prosecutor look[ing] into it and at the end of the day it looks like all you’re going to find is some sloppiness. We have real problems to work on,” he said. 

Source: TEST FEED1

White House offers response to key Republican on classified documents

The White House on Monday pledged to “accommodate legitimate oversight interests” in response to House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer’s (R-Ky.) request for materials related to classified documents found at President Biden’s old office and Delaware home.

White House counsel Stuart Delery wrote to Comer that the administration does not have possession of the documents the National Archives and Department of Justice (DOJ) have taken as part of the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials.

Delery noted any cooperation with House Republican oversight requests would have to be balanced with disclosures that could affect the integrity of the ongoing investigation.

“The Biden Administration takes seriously the security and protection of government records, particularly classified information,” Delery wrote. “We look forward to engaging in good faith with you and your staff regarding your requests. To that end, White House staff will reach out to Committee staff to arrange a time to discuss this matter.”

Delery’s response comes after Comer sent letters to the White House on Jan. 10 and Jan. 13. The first letter sought information about materials found at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., during a November 2022 search.

The Jan. 13 letter from Comer asked for “all classified documents retrieved by Biden aides or lawyers at any location,” communications between White House and DOJ officials about classified documents retrieved from Biden’s old office or home, and a list of aides or lawyers who had searched for documents and where they looked.

The Delery letter is the first White House response to the GOP since the House Oversight and Accountability Committee signaled it would investigate Biden’s handling of classified materials, which has come under intense scrutiny after a steady drip of new information in recent weeks.

The White House first confirmed a CBS News report on Jan. 10 that lawyers for the president had found classified materials in his old Penn Biden Center office days before the midterm elections.

Since then, the White House has disclosed that additional documents with classified markings were found at Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home in mid-December and in mid-January. 

On Saturday, the White House confirmed that FBI agents had conducted a search a day earlier with the permission of the president’s legal team that turned up six more items with classified markings.

The White House has stressed that Biden takes the handling of classified documents seriously and has emphasized that the administration is fully cooperating with the Department of Justice and the National Archives throughout the process.

But the slow drip of new discoveries has put the White House in a difficult position, particularly after Biden said he was surprised by the discoveries at his office and after the press office had said the search of his home was completed earlier this month.

Some Senate Democrats on Sunday were critical of Biden’s handling of the situation and suggested the controversy has been embarrassing for the president.

Source: TEST FEED1

Schumer calls on House GOP to unveil proposed spending cuts in debt ceiling negotiations

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on House Republicans on Monday to lay out the spending cuts they’re proposing as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling and decried what he called their strategy of “brinkmanship” and “hostage taking” to open negotiations. 

Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor that Democrats are prepared to “move quickly” and “well in advance of default” to raise the country’s borrowing authority, which is likely set to expire sometime in the first half of this year. Last week, the U.S. reached the $31.4 trillion ceiling, forcing the Treasury Department to resort to “extraordinary measures” to avoid a default. 

“Unfortunately, House Republicans have kicked off their new majority by saying ‘yes’ to brinkmanship, ‘yes’ to hostage taking, ‘yes’ even to risking default, all because of draconian spending cuts being pushed by the hard right,” Schumer said. “House Republicans’ approach to the debt ceiling is dangerous, destabilizing, and the only thing it accomplishes is making a bipartisan solution less likely.”

“The new rules that they adopted require them to bring a proposal to the floor of the House and show the American people precisely what kind of cuts they want to make,” Schumer continued. “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?”

The Democratic leader repeatedly noted that the ramifications stemming from a default are “not some esoteric issue that’s abstract and way up there in the clouds.” 

The comments come days after President Biden indicated he plans to meet with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to discuss raising the debt ceiling. The White House, however, said later that day he will not entertain policy changes such as spending cuts as part of any negotiation.

McCarthy and conservative Republicans are expected to push for cuts to Social Security and Medicare in any deal, and some national defense spending could also be on the chopping block.

The Treasury Department has yet to lay out an “X date” that the ceiling needs to be lifted by to avoid default. As Schumer noted, Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling on three occasions during former President Trump’s tenure, including when Democrats were in the minority in both chambers.

“Of course we could have done what MAGA Republicans want: threatening to block debt ceiling extensions unless we got our way,” Schumer said. “This time should be no different.”

Source: TEST FEED1

DeSantis defends rejection of African American studies class

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is defending his administration’s decision to ban an Advanced Placement African American studies pilot program in Florida schools after nationwide backlash. 

Speaking at a press conference unveiling his 2023 education platform on Monday, DeSantis said the state wants “education, not indoctrination.”

“In the state of Florida, our education standards not only don’t prevent but they require teaching Black history, all the important things, that’s part of our core curriculum,” DeSantis said.

“This was a separate course on top of that for Advanced Placement credit and the issue is we have guidelines and standards in Florida,” he continued. “We want education, not indoctrination. If you fall on the side of indoctrination, we’re going to decline. If it’s education, then we will do.”

DeSantis said when he first heard the course didn’t meet standards, he thought the course must be teaching critical race theory — an academic theory that argues systemic racism is ingrained in the U.S. that DeSantis has, in the past, called “a bunch of horse manure.”

Upon reading the course description, DeSantis said, he saw “it’s way more than that.”

“What’s one of the lessons about? Queer theory,” said DeSantis. “Now who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory? That is somebody pushing an agenda on our kids. And so when you look to see they have stuff about intersectionality, abolishing prisons, that’s a political agenda. And so we’re on — that’s the wrong side of the line for Florida standards. We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them. When you try to use Black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes.”

DeSantis’s administration sent a letter to the College Board on Jan. 12 rejecting the new A.P. African American Studies course, stating “the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” 

In a statement to The Hill last week, DeSantis’s office identified the Department of Education’s key concerns with the course included the topics of intersectionality, Black Queer Studies, the Black Lives Matter movement, Black Feminist Literary Thought, the reparations movement and the Black Study and Black Struggle in the 21st Century. 

Key readings by Kimberlé Crenshaw, the “founder” of intersectionality, Angela Davis, a “self-avowed Communist and Marxist,” Roderick Ferguson, Leslie Kay Jones, bell hooks and Robin D.G. Kelly also were reportedly cause for concern.

DeSantis’s decision has caused outrage from Democrats around the country. On Friday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the decision “incomprehensible.”

“If you think about the study of Black Americans, that is what he wants to block,” Jean-Pierre said. “These types of actions aren’t new. They are not new from what we’re seeing, especially from Florida. Sadly, Florida currently bans teachers from talking about who they are and who they love.”

“They didn’t block AP European history. They didn’t block our music history. They didn’t block our art history. But the state chooses to block a course that is meant for high achieving high school students to learn about their history of arts and culture. It is incomprehensible,” she continued.

Source: TEST FEED1