Archive by Author

Mellman: How many endorse political violence? 

“Professors Debate” is a headline that would not have merited a “breaking news” banner, even under CNN’s old regime.

But this debate is both  important and timely, given the January 6 committee hearings: How many Americans countenance political violence and what difference does that level of support make?

As with many academic debates, the differences can seem small. Professors Nathan Kalmoe of Louisiana State and Lilliana Mason of Johns Hopkins maintain that 10 percent to 20 percent of Americans support partisan political violence.  

Professors Sean Westwood of Dartmouth, Justin Grimmer and Matthew Tyler of Stanford and Clayton Nall of the University of California, Santa Barbara, claim that’s a wild exaggeration. They find only about 3 percent expressing support for political violence. 

Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago and Cornell’s Peter Enns peg the number in between, at 10 percent and 13 percent,  respectively.   

The Army’s Counterinsurgency Manual answers the “so-what” question: “active popular support often has the greatest impact on the insurgency’s long-term effectiveness. … Popular support results in safe havens, freedom of movement, logistic support, financial support, intelligence, and new personnel. … As the insurgent group gains in support, its capabilities grow.”  

Recent experiments also demonstrate that, while Americans exaggerate the inclination of their partisan opponents to endorse political violence, correcting those misimpressions reduces popular support for violence.  

So, the debate over the number may have real consequences for the future course of political violence.   

What’s behind the differences in the numbers? 

How analysts choose to add up the answers has an impact. The basic Kalmoe-Mason question asks, “How much do you feel it is justified for [respondent’s party] to use violence in advancing their political goals these days—a great deal, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, or not at all?” 

Kalmoe and Mason consider four of the five potential answers, or 80 percent, as expressions of support for political violence. That is, respondents who don’t say  “a great deal” or “a lot” or “a moderate amount,” but instead select “a little,” count as supporters of political violence just like those who say “a great deal.”

That may be a legitimate choice, given the fact that only one of the five answers offers a complete and explicit rejection of political violence. But pollsters very rarely tally responses that way.  

If Kalmoe-Mason had employed a different counting rule, including only those who picked one of the two strongest endorsements, they would have put support for political violence at 4 percent, much closer to the estimate offered by Westwood et. al.  

Second, we know different questions produce different answers. Some critique Kalmoe-Mason’s question as vague.  

What constitutes “violence?” Does it include property damage, or assault, or just murder?  

When Enns specified “physically harming others,” support was just over half of what it was for generic “violence.” 

The more serious the violence, the less support.  

Another important consideration: What’s the base rate to which we are comparing?  

We assume nearly everyone opposes violence in general, so any support for political violence is over-and-above public (non-) support for violence broadly. 

Sadly, it isn’t so. Westwood et. al. demonstrate that the number expressing support for political violence may be indistinguishable from those willing to justify nonpolitical violence.  

They offered, as a random subset of their sample, a vignette about a driver of the respondents’ own party ramming people from the other party registering to vote. Another group was told the same story cleansed of partisan references. Twenty-one percent said the politically motivated attack was justified while nearly the same number, 20.6 percent, found the apolitical attack justified.  

In other words, some people may be prone to support violence regardless of the “justification,” with political violence no more attractive than other forms.  

Whatever the precise percentage of Americans who endorse political violence, it’s a lot of people. The smallest number cited in these studies is about 3 percent, which represents nearly 8 million American adults. 

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. Mellman served as pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for over 20 years, as president of the American Association of Political Consultants, and is president of Democratic Majority for Israel.

Source: TEST FEED1

Budowsky: Rightist ‘RINO’ extremism could sink GOP in midterms

The real “Republicans in name only” (RINOs) are far-rightists who attack true Republicans who admire Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. 

Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who resigned in disgrace as governor and is now a leading candidate for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, recently released a campaign ad in which he holds a shotgun and says, “today we go RINO hunting.” One might conclude that Greitens’s ad  could incite violence against other Republicans. 

On the 50th anniversary of Watergate, we remember President Nixon and his famous “enemies list.” Today, rightist RINOs, in the image of former President Trump, are creating so many enemies lists that they make Nixon look like a civil libertarian. Except their enemies — against whom they wage political war — are often real Republicans. 

Political parties are like magnets; they can attract, but also repel. The real RINOs are extreme rightists who direct so much anger, hatred and fear against true Republicans that they aggressively violate Reagan’s “11th Commandment” that Republicans should not attack other Republicans. Their extremism could well alienate, frighten and repel so many Republicans and independents that Democrats end up maintaining control of the House and Senate, or even gain seats. 

How many Republican or independent voters want to back rightist RINOs who directly or indirectly threaten or incite political violence? 

How many Republican or independent voters want to back rightist RINOs who have made death threats against state election officials and members of Congress who defend honest elections against attempts to steal the 2020 election? 

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) is a staunchly conservative retired Navy Seal and Afghanistan war hero who was wounded in combat. I do not agree with most of Crenshaw’s political views but salute his service, admire his courage and respect his sincerity in advocating his views. 

Incredibly, and unpatriotically, he has been called “eyepatch McCain,” an insult to his war wound and the heroism of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whom I knew and consider one of the Senate’s greatest patriots. 

What have war heroes done to so many rightist RINOs to inspire such derision? Have they no honor? Have they no shame? Many Republican swing voters and veteran voters would vote against these rightist RINOs. 

At the recent Texas Republican Convention, rightist RINO delegates favored nullifying any federal law they disagreed with and held a vote on whether Texas should secede from America. 

In several states, the rightist RINO agenda attacking transgender people has become so hostile and extreme that it is deeply offensive to many voters across the political spectrum. 

On Roe v. Wade, the rightist RINO agenda aims to eliminate choice for Americans, threaten women with criminal punishment and enlist citizens as informal police to watch women closely. 

On gun violence, the rightist RINO agenda opposes critical “red flag” laws, comprehensive background checks and any assault weapons ban, even for people under 21 years old. Their policies would enable even men who violently abuse women to have assault weapons. 

Every believer in democracy should read the full text of the opening statement of retired Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig, a nationally respected conservative, before the Jan. 6 committee. He sounds the alarm in dramatic terms about how former President Trump and his supporters threaten American democracy, tried to steal the 2020 election, plan to steal the 2024 election and pose a clear and present danger to American democracy. 

Every issue raised in this column is supported by most Americans. Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Reagan would all be appalled by the rightist RINO extremism. If enough voters join them, it could lift Democrats decisively in the midterms. 

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was chief deputy majority whip of the House of Representatives. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Congress likely to reject gas tax push

Congress is likely to quash the White House effort to back a suspension of the federal gasoline tax.  The White House has flirted for weeks with the idea of temporarily halting the 18-cent tax as one way to bring relief to drivers amid record gas prices — and President Biden is expected to officially announce support for it on Wednesday.

But with skepticism spanning the ideological spectrum — from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to swing vote Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to much of the GOP — the idea is unlikely to make it across the finish line.  

Biden’s position on the gasoline tax issue had been unclear for weeks, but the president will call on Congress to suspend the federal gasoline and diesel taxes. 

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre affirmed on Tuesday, prior to the announcement, that if Biden supported the measure, he’d be looking at an act from Congress.

“The way we see it is there would be congressional action,” Jean-Pierre told reporters during a press briefing.

“The president is looking at an array of options to figure out how he is going to help give relief to the American public, especially as they are looking at gas prices at the pump,” she said. “This is a No. 1 priority for the president.” 

Doubts about pausing the federal gasoline tax are coming from both allies and foes of the White House. 

Democrats have expressed concerns that some of the savings may get passed to oil companies rather than consumers and have also raised worries about a reduction in federal highway spending that is funded by the tax. 

“We have a situation where there’s money coming out of the Highway Trust Fund, it’s going to the oil companies, they may not give it to the consumer, and it has to be paid for. … That’s the con,” Pelosi, who is among those who have expressed reservations, said during a March press conference.  

Pelosi’s office declined to comment further for this story.  

Other Democrats, such as House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (Ore.), have made similar points. 

“As discussions on possibly suspending the federal gas tax continue, I urge my colleagues to see this for what it is: a short-sighted proposal that relies on the cooperation of oil companies to pass on miniscule savings to consumers,” DeFazio said in a statement to The Hill prior to the administration’s announcement.  

“Suspending the federal gas tax will not provide meaningful relief at the pump for American families, but it will blow a multi-billion-dollar hole in the highway trust fund putting funding for future infrastructure projects at risk,” he added.   

Manchin, the Senate’s key swing vote, also expressed opposition to the idea in February. 

He said at the time that suspending the gas tax “just doesn’t make sense” because it would take money out of highway funding.  

“People want their bridges and their roads, and we have an infrastructure bill we just passed this summer, and they want to take that all away,” Manchin said. 

Manchin separately remains in talks with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) about advancing another bill containing significant pieces of Biden’s agenda for climate, drug prices and tax reform. It’s not clear whether Democrats would be willing to expend additional political capital convincing him to support something that many members of the caucus also aren’t behind. 

Even if Biden could get all of the members of his own party to back a gas tax suspension, he’d likely need to convince 10 Republicans given the Senate’s filibuster rule.

But many Republicans are also skeptical of a gas tax suspension. They meanwhile are using the high gas prices as a cudgel to go after Biden’s energy policies. 

“A potential gas tax holiday subsidizes demand,” tweeted Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Tuesday. “We don’t have a demand issue we [have] a SUPPLY issue since Pres Biden has waged war on fossil fuel production.” 

Most of the policies Biden has pursued are more likely to encourage a long-term shift from fossil fuels rather than a short-term shift towards them that would have a big effect on raising prices.  

The main reasons for higher gas prices are rising demand and changes in supply.  

 Over the past few days, the national average gasoline price has hovered around $5 per gallon, exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, reduced capacity at refineries that turn oil into gasoline and high gasoline demand amid the summer driving season. 

Swing-state Democrats have been among the loudest voices calling for a suspension of the gas tax as a way to reduce prices for consumers ahead of this year’s midterm elections.  

 Earlier this year — when gas prices were averaging around $3.50 per gallon nationwide — Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) introduced legislation in February to temporarily halt the tax.  

In a statement, Marisol Samayoa, a spokeswoman for Kelly’s office, stressed that the senator has worked on building support for the tax suspension — but didn’t directly address questions about whether the proposal currently has the votes to pass.  

“Since November, Senator Kelly has pushed Washington and the Biden administration to take immediate steps to bring down gas prices, like supporting his bill to suspend the federal gas tax through the end of the year and boosting domestic energy production,” Samayoa said.  

Morgan Chalfant contributed.

Source: TEST FEED1

Webb: A warning from Canada

Freedom is one country away from extinction. 

Once may be coincidence, twice is curious at a minimum, and a multiyear pattern of behavior is a plan. An emboldened leftist movement is pushing socialist governance and worse in the U.S., to our north in Canada, south in Mexico,  throughout South America and across the globe. They have allies in the Chinese Communist Party, the criminal cartels and other transnational bad actors, governmental or otherwise. 

For the reader, I want to give you a perspective from the Canadian side of the border. 

Canadian citizen and new activist Chris Garrah is the founder of the Adopt a Trucker movement for the Freedom Convoy volunteers, organized to pray every day and work peacefully with authorities during the Freedom Convoy 2022 protest in Ottawa.  I spoke with him at length about the group and the protest, and here are some of my questions and his answers:

Question: Chris, why did you start the Adopt a Trucker effort?  

Chris Garrah: Well, I was watching things for the last two years about COVID in Canada, and when they decided they were going to do a rally in Ottawa, I came up with the concept that we would greet them when they got to Ottawa because they were doing an amazing job. I thought, what can I do that every Canadian can be part of? Ordinary people were able to feed them, shower them, drive them around, give them places to wash their clothes and, most of all, pray for them and give them support.  

At any time did you encourage any illegal activity?  

CG: No. From Day One, convoy leaders and myself said we need to do this peacefully. We need to let the world know that Canadians are peaceful, but we do want people to hear our voices. We want to speak loud, but we don’t want to cause any type of violence. So we made sure that we had [emergency medical services], doctors, all the fire routes open and we had our own security. We raised funds for necessities like porta potties, the main stage, flights for lawyers to represent truckers, and provided a board room for police and emergency volunteers and more peaceful activities.  

During the protest, Garrah was named on a $306 million lawsuit indicating that he encouraged the honking of horns as a nuisance during the protest. Garrah denies having anything to do with that.  

What is the status of the lawsuit today?  

CG: They froze everyone’s assets, and they closed my account for 39 days. That’s been lifted because around $4.5 million had been frozen in escrow, and the fight will have to continue. 

Garrah and his wife, Joanne, their seven children and a grandmother recently traveled to the United States to attend their oldest daughter’s wedding. When returning home on June 8, at the Canadian border, they were asked for their COVID-19 PCR tests, whether they were vaccinated and a scan of the Canadian government’s Arrive Can smartphone application. Garrah and his wife politely asserted their right to return to Canada unhindered and protected according to their rights as stated in their passports.   

At first, they were told fines were only given to those 18 years old and over; then, after pointing out that their children were under 18 and were given tickets, they were told fines were given to those 16 years old and over. The Garrah family was fined $37,530 in Canadian currency. Garrah and his family plan on fighting the legitimacy of these COVID-19 tickets.  

How will you fight the COVID-19 tickets?  

CG: There’s a series of campaigns going on right now and we’ve launched the campaign on the Give Send Go site. We’re going to travel across Canada, from Ottawa to British Columbia,  raising awareness that there’s fines going on and people are getting tickets. We’re just getting ready to launch on July 3.  

If convicted, what would be the effect on your family?  

CG: I’m the father of seven children, sole breadwinner of the house, so it would be devastating that I would have to pay such outrageous fines to come back into my own country. I’m really hoping and praying that God will protect us and that they’ll find that these fines are unconstitutional. 

Do you see similarities in America to what you are experiencing in Canada? 

CG: When I was down in Florida, we ended up talking to a lot of people. You’ve been told the same things we are. The left is coming for you guys next. America needs to wake up. We’ve always looked up to you in Canada, and we need to unite as brothers and sisters. For 39 days I couldn’t put $1 on my mortgage or pay my hydro bill. It was horrible. If it wasn’t for the people I didn’t even know, coming to my home, giving me food and gas cards, my family wouldn’t have been able to eat. My message is, ‘Wake up. Say no to compliance. Be gentle, be kind, be loving and just say no.’

Our concerns are not limited to the United States and should not be. Freedom is what most people seek. We often refer to Canada as “the 51st state.” Our cultural alignment and affinity for each other is part of our combined history. For now, Garrah has said what Americans need to consider.  

Webb is host of “The David Webb Show” on SiriusXM Patriot 125, a Fox Nation host, Fox News contributor and a frequent television commentator. His column appears twice a month in The Hill.   

Source: TEST FEED1

White House seeks to quell recession anxiety

The White House is scrambling to tamp down fears of a recession as high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s attempts to rein it in boost the risks of a downturn.  President Biden and top administration officials have spent days attempting to reassure the American public that the U.S. economy is not destined to slip into recession. Despite growing alarm among consumers, business leaders and economists, the administration has signaled hopefulness in the economy’s resilience. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Tuesday that the U.S. is in a “moment of transition.” She pointed out some positive economic figures, like the low unemployment rate and strong household balance sheets and business investment.  

“We’re not in a recession right now,” Jean-Pierre said. “Right now, we’re in a transition where we are going to go into a place of stable and steady growth and that’s going to be our focus.”  

Biden also told reporters Sunday he doesn’t think a recession is “inevitable,” comments in line with remarks made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last week. The president added he had just spoken with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who asserted Saturday that inflation could not fall unless millions of Americans lose their jobs. 

Summers has been the fiercest Democratic critic of Biden’s economic policy and warned last year the president’s proposed stimulus bill would likely spur rampant inflation.  

But economists across the ideological spectrum see the risks of a recession growing as the Federal Reserve races against rising prices. 

Economists at Goldman Sachs have boosted their odds of the U.S. hitting a recession this year from 15 percent to 30 percent and the odds of a recession in 2023 from 35 percent to 48 percent.  

They said the Fed’s announcement last week of the biggest interest rate increase in almost three decades may have brought the U.S. closer to a tipping point. 

“We are increasingly concerned that the Fed will feel compelled to respond forcefully to high headline inflation and consumer inflation expectations if energy prices rise further, even if activity slows sharply,” Goldman Sachs economists David Mericle and Ronnie Walker wrote in a Monday research note.  

The Goldman economists are among a growing group of experts concerned that the Fed would need to keep boosting interest rates to fight inflation well past a point that would bring the U.S. economy to a halt. 

The Fed last week announced it would raise its baseline interest rate range by 0.75 percentage points, the first hike of that size since 1994, after a particularly alarming May inflation report. 

As the Fed raises its baseline interest rate range, borrowing costs rise and economic activity tends to slow. Consumers typically pull back spending as their credit card interest rates, auto loans and other credit products get increasingly expensive. Businesses also tend to reduce spending, investment and hiring as their sales fall and their own borrowing costs spike.  

The Fed’s previous rate hikes in March and May have taken a toll on the housing and stock markets. But prices still rose 1 percent in May and 8.6 percent over the past 12 months, according to the Labor Department’s consumer price index, a closely watched gauge of inflation. 

With inflation surging and consumer confidence falling, the Fed must strike a careful balance between assuring markets it will do whatever it takes to curb prices and keep fears of a slowdown in check. If Fed Chairman Jerome Powell shows undue allegiance to either side of the Fed’s dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment, experts say the consequences could be severe. 

David Beckworth, senior research fellow at the libertarian learning Mercatus Center think tank, called it a “delicate dance.” 

“They’ve got to make the moves and impress their partner, the public, that they’re really serious about keeping inflation reined in and they’re so serious that they’re willing to cause a recession, without actually causing a recession,” Beckworth said. “That is tough to pull off.” 

Fifty-six of respondents to a poll from The Economist and YouGov released last week believe the U.S. is already in a recession. More than 60 percent of CEOs see a recession on the horizon in 2023, according to Conference Board poll, a sign of alarm from people with the power to bring the economy to a halt with layoffs and cutbacks.  

Powell said Wednesday the Fed is not attempting to induce a recession and that he still believed it was possible — If not necessarily likely — for the bank to bring inflation down without job growth stalling and gross domestic product shrinking. Even so, he made clear that reducing inflation was the Fed’s top priority regardless of its short-term implications. 

“We never think too many people are working and fewer people need to have jobs, but we also think that you really cannot have the kind of labor market we want without price stability,” Powell said Wednesday after the Fed hiked rates. 

While the Fed’s steep rate hike shook markets, many economists agreed it was the right step for the bank to take amid uncertain and difficult circumstances. The war in Ukraine is likely to boost pressure on oil, food and commodity prices for several months, which could feed into price increases in other areas of the economy. 

Even so, some fear the Fed may have gone too far to curb inflationary pressures largely beyond its control.  

“I don’t mean to sound pollyannish, and recession risks are awfully high, no doubt about it. But I don’t think we should talk ourselves into a recession, which feels like what we’re doing,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week.  

“At the end of the day, a recession is a loss of faith.” 

Morgan Chalfant contributed. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Vote on Biden ATF pick nears as gun reform talks yield fruit

The Senate is poised to confirm President Biden’s pick to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a big moment for the White House after it had to pull its last nominee before the latest string of deadly mass shootings.

Confirming Steve Dettelbach would be a victory for Biden, who has promised to be tough on guns but has waited on the sidelines as a bipartisan group of senators nails down a package on gun violence prevention that falls far short of Democratic goals.

“The confirmation of Dettelbach will be a massive step forward on gun safety,” Nico Bocour, government affairs director of the gun control group Giffords, told The Hill. “However, this is an issue where 40,000 people are dying from gun violence every year, and there is so much more to be done. We applaud the president for this achievement, but there is still so much more that his administration can do.”

Senate negotiators finalized a bipartisan gun safety bill on Tuesday afternoon, which gives Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) a good chance of scheduling a vote before the July 4 recess.  The White House has said officials hold regular conversations with lawmakers about the talks but that it has left it up to Capitol Hill to come to an agreement.

Zeenat Yahya, director of policy at March for Our Lives, said that Dettelbach’s confirmation would be a victory for Biden but still only one piece of the puzzle in tackling gun violence.

“What advocates have been asking of the president is a comprehensive plan to tackle gun violence and for him to lead with it as one of his chief priorities. The first ATF director in seven years is great, but it’s little comfort given the scale of the crisis,” Yahya told The Hill. “This Senate bill needs to pass, where is the president’s forceful leadership on that?” 

Dettelbach has the votes to be confirmed, including from two moderate Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Jon Tester (Mont.). His nomination was advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week along party lines, but in the full Senate, the nominee cleared a key procedural hurdle with Republican support from Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Rob Portman (Ohio).

The confirmation of an ATF director is a long-awaited victory for gun violence prevention groups. The Senate has confirmed only one ATF nominee, in 2013, since the position required confirmation from the chamber.

“President Biden has made confirmation of a permanent director of ATF a priority and his confirmation is a victory for the president and a huge achievement given that we haven’t had a confirmed ATF director since 2006,” said Bocour, of Giffords.

Biden had originally nominated David Chipman, a former ATF agent, to run the bureau, but he pulled the nomination in September after Chipman did not receive enough support in the Senate. Republicans united to oppose Chipman, who had advised Giffords, and he ultimately did not receive support from enough Democrats, with Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) also expressing concerns.

The White House drew criticism from outside groups during Chipman’s nomination process for not pushing hard enough to rally support among Democrats to get him confirmed.

This time around, the White House has made a point not to disclose their outreach to specific lawmakers. Instead, they’ve highlighted endorsements from various groups who have backed Dettelbach’s nomination.

The White House has touted endorsements from the National Sheriff’s Association, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Women in Federal Law Enforcement Foundation, a group of former ATF directors and more than 100 mayors from both parties.

Dettelbach was tapped for the role in April. The 57-year-old served as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio from 2009 to 2016 and previously served in the Justice Department’s civil rights division. For the last few years, he’s worked at the law firm BakerHostetler.

Dettelbach has drawn skepticism from most Republican senators. At a hearing last month, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) raised concerns about him calling for a ban on assault weapons during a 2018 campaign for Ohio attorney general. And Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) pressed the nominee on his prosecution record on gun cases while serving as a U.S. attorney.

The White House has repeatedly cited filling the ATF vacancy as a key step to curbing gun violence in the wake of mass shootings in Colorado, Georgia, Texas, New York, Indiana and elsewhere since Biden took office, arguing that having a confirmed leader would help enforce existing laws and improve the work of new task forces focused on trafficking.

Biden is limited in what he can do on guns from the executive office, but some advocates will still be looking for more from him once Dettelbach is confirmed. 

Yahya, of March for Our Lives, said that having Dettelbach in the top ATF post doesn’t immediately mean that further action will be coming out of the administration to curb gun violence.

“Confirmation does not mean action. We expect Dettelbach to take forceful action against manufacturers, advertisers and bad actors to cut off the pipeline of gun violence at its source, but we’re waiting to see if he moves quickly on that,” she said. 

She added that Biden also personally needs to step up his work on gun violence prevention, expressing disappointment about the president’s reaction to the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, last month.

“In our view, the president has disappointed us since Uvalde. As activists, we barely heard from the White House in the week since the shooting, and the president made one prime-time speech and seemed to call it a day,” she said. “The president has been a friend to us, and we deeply appreciate his kind words of support. But we need a leader who will fight to save our lives because children are being killed.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden can​​’t escape questions on his age

President Biden can’t escape questions about his age, a fact of life that’s causing uneasy Democrats to assess whether he can realistically run for reelection in 2024, when he will be 81 years old.

Conversations that were once whispered in private are spilling out into the public amid angst over a potential drubbing for the party in this fall’s midterm elections and existential questions about its future two years later.

Biden’s approval ratings haven’t recovered from a swoon late last summer, inflation is now sky high and worries are growing about a recession. 

It’s left some Democrats questioning out loud whether the party needs a different and younger leader in the next presidential race. 

“I think that Joe will run again, and his age will be a legitimate issue for many voters,” entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who competed against Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2020 before switching to be an independent, told The Hill. 

“Joe is already the oldest president we’ve had even before his potential second term,” he said.

Polls offer more evidence of a fixation on age. 

A Harvard-Harris Poll survey out this month revealed that 62 percent of respondents said Biden is “showing he is too old to be president.” 

The Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich launched his piece last week with this opener: “Let me put this bluntly: Joe Biden should not run for reelection in 2024. He is too old.” 

On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board followed up with a stinging appraisal: “The truth is that the President demonstrated he had lost a verbal, and maybe mental, step in the first Democratic candidate debate in 2019. He hasn’t improved.” 

Other surveys don’t focus on the president’s age but offer similarly bad news for Team Biden. A poll by YouGov and Yahoo out this week found that 64 percent of those sampled said they did not want Biden to seek the highest office another time. 

“Look, it’s a problem,” one Democratic strategist acknowledged, speaking without attribution in order to discuss a sensitive topic. 

“He’s f—— old and everyone knows it, but no one wants to talk about it for fear of offending him or anyone around him.” 

One Biden ally who speaks to aides in the White House frequently said that Biden “looks old and seems old and that’s not a great look for the White House.”

In this person’s estimation, the issue that’s more important than age is stamina. 

“It all comes back to endurance and can he handle the job,” the ally said. “I still think that the answer is yes. But ask me how I feel a couple of years from now.”

The White House did not provide comment when reached on Tuesday. 

Plenty of Democrats don’t see Biden’s age as a problem and speak in interviews of his wisdom and experienced hand in government. 

The president gets applause from most supporters for how he has handled Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the coronavirus pandemic. On inflation and high gas prices, the two issues causing Democrats the greatest harm, there’s a widely shared sense that fate has delivered an unkind political hand to Biden. 

Biden’s steady hand was seen as a net positive less than two years ago when he won the Democratic primary and presidential election over former President Trump, these voices note.

“Joe Biden’s only a couple of years older than when he won,” said former Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper. “It’s not as if this is breaking news that two years after he won he’s two years older than he was.”

“This is the man who won the primary; he won it decisively, he won the White House decisively, and he’s dealing with problems that are enormous, mainly that he inherited,” he said. “The chatter about his age is not at all helpful when we’ve got major problems to deal with.”

Democrats have a few younger alternatives if they want to go in a different direction, though it’s an open question on whether any would be stronger general election candidates than Biden. They include Vice President Harris, 57; Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, 40; and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), 62. 

Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said age should be irrelevant in a discussion on Biden’s presidency,

“Presidents should be evaluated on performance, not on age,” he said. “He deserves more time to fix the country before he makes a decision on running in 2024. If the situation isn’t any better a year from now, then he should seriously consider his plans to run for reelection. Any decision now would be way too premature.”

One prominent House lawmaker expressed a strong desire for Biden to run again, with the hope there will be more accomplishments to brag about to voters. 

But other Democrats feel like it’s fair game to have an open dialogue about Biden soon entering his 80s.

“I think we are entering the period of time where if you are a presidential hopeful on the Democratic side, it’s important to know the president’s intentions,” said a second Democratic operative who has served on recent presidential campaigns. 

The GOP has made it clear it will make Biden’s age a line of attack, even though its own leading contender for the White House, Trump, just turned 76.

Biden has always said he ran for the White House in 2020 to put a stop to the Trump presidency. It is somewhat difficult to see him stepping aside if he thinks Trump might be the GOP nominee again in 2024. 

Publicly, Biden has said he will be running if his health is in good order. He’s offered the same message to former President Obama in private, as The Hill has reported.

“The argument is that it’ll be him or Trump,” Yang said of Biden. “There isn’t a clear savior for the Democrats to turn to. Who emerges from a fractious and competitive primary? No one knows. I think Democrats will opt for incumbency and unity after Trump declares.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Senators hail ‘bipartisan breakthrough’ on gun safety legislation

Senate negotiators on Tuesday reached a long-awaited deal on a bipartisan gun safety bill to take firearms away from dangerous people and provide billions of dollars in new mental health funding.     

The legislation represents a rare moment of bipartisan agreement on the charged issues of gun violence and gun control, breaking nearly 30 years of stalemate on those issues.  

The bill does not ban assault-style rifles or high-capacity magazines or significantly expand background-check requirements for gun purchases, reforms that were top Democratic priorities a decade ago.  

But it does give states more resources to take guns away from dangerous individuals, even if they haven’t been convicted of a crime, and provides billions of dollars in funding for mental health treatment.  

Lawmakers who crafted the legislation say their goal from the start was to prevent mass shootings, such as the mass-casualty events that left 10 people dead at a Buffalo supermarket and 21 dead at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.  

“I want to make sure we actually do something useful, something that is capable of becoming a law, something that will have the potential to save lives,” Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the lead Republican negotiator said on the Senate floor Tuesday.  

“I’m happy to report as a result of the hard work of a number of senators in this chamber that we’ve made some serious progress,” he said.  

Senators and staff worked through the weekend and said Tuesday afternoon they had resolved all their outstanding disagreements, giving Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) a good chance of passing a bill before the July 4 recess.   

Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the lead Democratic negotiator, hailed the bill as a major breakthrough. 

“I believe that this week we will pass legislation that will become the most significant piece of anti-gun-violence legislation Congress will have passed in 30 years. This is a breakthrough, and, more importantly, it is a bipartisan breakthrough,” he said.  

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said Tuesday the legislation is likely to pass because 10 Republican senators have already signed off on the framework of principles upon which the bill is based.  

“My assumption is that based on that fact that they had 60 votes for the framework that they’ll have enough to pass,” he said.  

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said last week that he will likely vote for the bill, giving it at least 61 votes, enough to overcome a filibuster.  

Negotiators broke through a stalemate over language to close the so-called boyfriend loophole, which bogged down the talks last week.   

Current law prohibits individuals from purchasing guns if they are convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence against someone they have been married to, lived with, or had a child with. Closing the loophole would apply that law to other romantic or intimate partners.   

Under the boyfriend loophole reform, first-time offenders of misdemeanor domestic violence would have their right to own a firearm five years after completing their sentences as long as they aren’t convicted of any other violent crime during that period.   

Lawmakers squabbled over whether to set up a similar restitution process to allow spouses, ex-spouses, co-habitants, and partners who share children convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors to regain their gun rights.  

But Democrats declined to expand the gun-rights restitution process to a broader group.  

Negotiators raced to finalize the legislative text amid signs of growing Republican opposition.   

Cornyn got booed at the Texas Republican Convention on Friday when he tried to explain his efforts to fend off Democratic calls for an assault weapons ban and universal background checks.   

But even the modest proposal to give money to states to administer red flag laws and other emergency intervention procedures is drawing strong criticism from some prominent conservatives, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson.   

“Red flag laws will not end mass shootings, but red flag laws will end due process,” Carlson warned on Fox. “Under red flag laws, the government doesn’t have to prove you did anything wrong in order to strip you of your most basic rights. All that’s required to punish you is a complaint.”  

Erick Erickson, a conservative radio host and pundit, warned this month “that such laws are going to start being used to attack people because of their political opinions.”   

The legislation would provide money to states to administer so-called red flag laws and other intervention procedures to keep guns away from people deemed dangers to themselves or others.   

Senators who drafted the language say there would be a swift adjudication process to give gun owners a chance to dispute and defeat a court order taking away their firearms.   

“Unless a person is convicted of a crime or is adjudicated mentally ill, their ability to purchase a firearm will not be impacted by this legislation,” Cornyn explained to colleagues in a floor speech.  

Cornyn emphasized that if states do not set up red flag laws with due process protections, they will not be eligible for federal grants.  

Some Republican senators, however, say they’re still leery about spending federal money to help states administer red flag laws.  

“It’s a significant issue,” said Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who said he has heard concerns from military veterans.  

Some critics of the proposal worry that veterans’ mental health records might be used to take their guns away.   

The bill would also invest more than $7 billion in mental health services, boost funding for school-based mental health and support services, and invest in programs to strengthen safety measures around primary and secondary schools.   

It would enhance the background check process for gun buyers aged 18 to 21 by allowing more access to juvenile crime records, clarify the definition of firearms dealers to include people who sell a large number of guns without a federal firearms license and crack down on the illegal gun trafficking.   

Cornyn noted that the enhanced background check process for people younger than 21 would be controlled by the states.  

The provision is scheduled to sunset after a period of 10 years, which means Congress would have to pass new legislation in 2032 to give the National Instant Criminal Background Checks System access to juvenile crime records.  

One of the last holdups within the group was over how to apply Hyde Amendment language in the bill to ensure federal funding would not pay for abortions.   

Cornyn said the debate over Hyde language was resolved by making sure it applied to the mandatory spending in the bill.  

“There was concern. Hyde already covers discretionary spending but there was a portion of this that potentially involved mandatory spending, which was not covered. But I know we’ve resolved that in a manner that maintains Hyde protections,” he said.  

This story was updated at 6:08 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

The Memo: Republican state officials, ex-election worker scorch Trump over election lies

Three Republican state officials and a former Georgia elections worker combined to deliver a coruscating indictment of former President Trump during Tuesday’s hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Each of the witnesses testified about the threats unleashed upon them as Trump and his team propagated false claims of election fraud in an effort to overturn President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

They also emphasized, again and again, the failure of Trump and his allies to produce evidence to support those claims.

Rusty Bowers (R), the Speaker of the Arizona state House, recounted a phone call with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. Bowers said Giuliani claimed, “We’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence.”

That statement seemed so damning that Bowers wondered if Giuliani had made the comment inadvertently, he testified.

Moments later, referring to separate promises by Team Trump to furnish him with evidence of fraud, Bowers said, “No one provided me — ever — with such evidence.” 

Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state in Georgia who recently survived a primary challenge from a Trump-backed opponent, was subject to a now-infamous January 2021 phone call from Trump in which the then-president demanded, “I just want to find 11,780 votes” — the exact number required to reverse Biden’s victory in the state.

“There were no votes to find,” Raffensperger testified. “Every single allegation we checked.”

Raffensperger calmly addressed what he sees as the real reason for Trump’s defeat in the Republican-leaning state: the former president’s tendency to turn off even some GOP voters.

“Twenty-eight thousand Georgians skipped the presidential race and they voted down ballot in other races,” Raffensperger said. “That’s why President Trump came up short.”

Perhaps the most emotional testimony of the day came at the hearing’s end, however, when a former elections worker in Georgia, Wandrea ArShaye Moss, testified about the impact on her life and that of her mother, also an elections worker, when Trump allies, including Giuliani, falsely claimed they were directly involved in fraud.

Moss testified that a supposed USB drive that the two were alleged to be passing between each other were actually ginger mints.

But she also referred to her shock when those allegations were made publicly, which resulted in a barrage of threatening messages on social media. 

Asked by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) whether the threats were racist, Moss, who is Black, replied, “A lot of them were racist, a lot of them were just hateful.”

A visibly emotional Moss also recounted her guilt about the threats that had been made against her mother and grandmother, which caused her to question whether she herself was at fault for volunteering to work at the polls. 

The committee, which has made frequent use of video clips of depositions and other testimony, also included a clip from Moss’s mother, Ruby Freeman, in which she said, “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you? The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American, not to target one.”

Previously, Raffensperger had recounted attacks on him, “sexualized” threats against his wife and a break-in at his daughter-in-law’s property, all of which appeared to be related to his refusal to do Trump’s bidding. 

Bowers recounted threatening protests outside his home that he said were “a pattern in our lives” that had upset his family, including his then “gravely ill daughter,” who later died.

Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer within the Georgia secretary of state’s office, said he had been moved to give an outraged press conference amid the post-election tumult when he saw a death threat featuring a noose on social media.

Together, the testimonies gave Tuesday’s hearing, the fourth, an emotional heft greater than any barring the first, which was broadcast in prime time on June 9 to an audience of around 20 million people. 

But whether it changes anything legally or politically is of course a different matter.

Views of Jan. 6 cleave deeply along partisan lines, although some polling shows the share of Americans who believe Trump should be criminally prosecuted has ticked up modestly.

From the standpoint of criminal prosecution, Raffensperger’s secret testimony to a special grand jury in a probe in Georgia might ultimately matter more than what he said on Tuesday.

One revelation from Tuesday’s hearing was centered not on Trump, but on Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). 

The committee showed texts from an aide to Johnson to an aide to then-Vice President Mike Pence, in which the Johnson aide said the senator wanted to give “alternate” slates of electors for Wisconsin and Michigan to the vice president. 

The Pence aide apparently responded, “Do not give that to him.”

A short time later Tuesday, a Johnson spokeswoman tweeted: “The senator had no involvement in the creation of an alternate slate of electors and had no foreknowledge that it was going to be delivered to our office. This was a staff-to-staff exchange.”

The Tuesday hearing might not change anyone’s mind or lead to concrete action.

But it advanced another goal of the committee: to tell a compelling story of Trump’s actions and their consequences.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

Source: TEST FEED1