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McCarthy says he thinks Biden knew his office had classified documents

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Thursday argued President Biden knew his private office had classified documents, or he wouldn’t have had his attorneys remove things from his office.

“I think if you call a lawyer to remove something for your office, he must have known ahead of time,” McCarthy said. “So, I think he has a lot of answers to the American public. The good thing about that is the American public has a Congress that can get the answers.”

The remarks came at McCarthy’s first press conference as Speaker in response to a question from the conservative One America News Network about whether McCarthy had ever used a lawyer or an attorney to clean out his office.

“No, I used my hands on my own,” McCarthy said.

Republicans have seized on the discovery of classified documents at Biden’s office and his Wilmington residence garage to argue there’s been a double standard over how former President Trump’s classified documents controversy has been handled.

Biden has expressed surprise at the fact that classified documents were found at his private office. He has also emphasized that his team has worked to get the found documents to the appropriate parties.

Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said in a statement on Monday that a “Obama-Biden Administration records, small number of documents with classified markings” were found on Nov. 2, 2022, while preparing for a move.

“The documents were discovered when the President’s personal attorneys were packing files housed in a locked closed to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.,” Sauber said in a statement on Monday.

“The discovery of these documents was made by the President’s attorneys. The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives,” Sauber said. 

The documents were turned over to the National Archives the next day, and White House is cooperating with the Archives and the Department of Justice, Sauber said.

On Thursday, Sauber said that “additional Obama-Biden Administration records with classified markings” were found in the garage at Biden’s Wilmington, Del. residence, as part of a “process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in possession of the Archives.”

Democrats have said Trump did not cooperate to return classified documents to the National Archives. The FBI ultimately conducted a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence last year.

McCarthy on Thursday dismissed Trump’s resistance to returning the documents to the National Archives, as had been documented in legal filings.

“They knew the documents were there. They actually asked President Trump to put another lock on so they were locked in. You look at President Biden, he wasn’t president. He was vice president, held these in different locations right out in the open,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy asked why there are no publicly released photos of the documents found in Biden’s files, in reference to a photo of top secret documents found in Mar-a-Lago that was included in a Justice Department filing. And he criticized Biden for not publicly disclosing discovery of the documents before the midterm elections.

“He knowingly knew this happened going into [the] election, going into interviews. This is what makes America not trust their government,” McCarthy said. “You cannot have one form of law because somebody philosophically has a different opinion than you. And you can’t use the Justice Department to go after people that are politically different, as well. It has to be equal across.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about McCarthy suggesting that Biden may have known about the documents.

Source: TEST FEED1

Garland to make statement amid special counsel speculation on Biden docs

Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to make an announcement Thursday afternoon, addressing the public the same day the White House confirmed the discovery of a second batch of classified documents from President Biden’s tenure as vice president.

The announcement comes as the Justice Department is under pressure to appoint a special counsel to oversee an investigation into the potential mishandling of the records.

Biden’s team in November discovered about 10 classified records in a center where he worked after leaving office in 2016. That resulted in a subsequent search, revealing an additional batch of records at Biden’s Delaware home.

The matter comes as the Justice Department has appointed a special counsel to oversee the investigation into former President Trump’s potential mishandling of records after some 300 records bearing classified markings were discovered at Mar-a-Lago. 

Biden’s team alerted both the National Archives and the Justice Department of the matter shortly after their discovery, differing from Trump’s interaction with officials, who requested the documents multiple times, including through a subpoena and eventually a warrant to search his home.

But the appearance of the classified records has prompted calls for oversight from both Democrats and Republicans. While Senate Intelligence Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) requested a briefing on the matter, numerous Republicans have suggested that it should prompt the appointment of a special counsel.

“I think if you believe a special counsel is necessary to assure the public about the handling of classified documents by Donald Trump, you should apply a special counsel to the mishandling of classified documents by President Biden when he was vice president,” Graham said during an interview with Martha MacCallum on Fox News. 

The White House on Thursday again stressed their cooperation with authorities.

“We are fully cooperating with the National Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives,” attorney Richard Sauber said in a statement.

Updated 11:47 a.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden lawyers find additional classified documents at Wilmington residence

Lawyers for President Biden have discovered additional classified documents from his time as vice president at Biden’s Wilmington, Del., residence, the White House confirmed Thursday.

Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said in a statement that attorneys for Biden searched the president’s Delaware residences in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach after 10 classified documents were found at Biden’s old office in Washington, D.C. The search was completed on Wednesday night  and turned up a “small number of additional Obama-Biden Administration records with classified markings.”

“All but one of these documents were found in storage space in the President’s Wilmington residence garage,” Sauber said. “One document consisting of one page was discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room. No documents were found in the Rehoboth Beach residence.”

Lawyers immediately notified the Justice Department of the discovery, Sauber said, and arranged for the documents to be turned over to the department.

“The White House will continue to cooperate with the review by the Department of Justice,” Sauber said.

Speaking to reporters a short time after the statement went out, Biden said his lawyers discovered a small number of documents with classified markings in file cabinets in his home, indicating at least one of the documents was in his personal library. He also indicated the documents were found in a garage that had been locked, which also housed his corvette.

“As I said earlier this week, people know I take classified documents and classified materials seriously,” Biden told reporters on Thursday. “I also said we’re cooperating fully and completely with the Justice Department’s review.”

“We’re going to see all of this unfold. I’m confident,” Biden said, stopping as reporters began shouting additional questions.

The disclosure of additional classified documents found at Biden’s home comes three days after the White House acknowledged lawyers found roughly a dozen sensitive government documents at an office Biden used in Washington, D.C., while working as an honorary professor for the University of Pennsylvania.

Biden’s team found those documents on Nov. 2, 2022, six days before the midterm elections, but the discovery was only made public this week through news reports. The classified documents reportedly included materials related to Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Iran, and they were mixed in with boxes containing personal items such as information about Beau Biden’s funeral.

The president has said he was surprised to learn that lawyers found the documents and that he did not know what was in them. He emphasized that he takes the handling of classified documents seriously.

But the revelation that additional documents were found at a separate location is certain to fuel criticism from Republicans, who in recent days suggested there was a double standard over the intense scrutiny former President Trump is facing over his handling of classified documents.

The FBI searched Trump’s Florida residence last August, finding hundreds of sensitive government documents, including some marked “top secret.”

Trump repeatedly stymied attempts by the National Archives to retrieve the documents, which he took with him upon leaving the White House in January 2021. The Presidential Records Act requires presidents and vice presidents to maintain documents and turn them over to the National Archives for preservation.

Biden’s team has emphasized their cooperation with the National Archives and Justice Department following the discovery of the classified documents, and the president’s allies have noted the number of classified documents found in Biden’s office was much smaller than the amount recovered by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel last year to handle investigations into Trump, including one focused on his handling of classified materials.

Garland is scheduled to make an announcement later Thursday afternoon.

—Updated at 11:02 a.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Former Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts tapped to fill Sasse's Senate seat

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) on Thursday tapped former Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts (R) to fill the Senate seat vacated by former Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) earlier this month. 

The move has been widely expected since October, when Sasse became a finalist to become president of the University of Florida. The two-term senator officially resigned his seat on Sunday, creating the immediate vacancy. He is set to become the university’s president next month. 

Ricketts will now serve until January 2025. Under Nebraska state law, Rickets will have to run in a special election in 2024 to fill the remaining two years of Sasse’s term. He would then have to run again in 2026 in order to win a full six-year term.

Pillen said there had been 11 applicants for the role and his team interviewed nine candidates, but pointed to the election schedule and Ricketts’s ability to win statewide as key factors in his decision.

“My job in this process is really, really simple: to find the best person to represent us Nebraskans,” Pillen said while introducing Ricketts, noting that there were 111 applicants for the seat and that his team interviewed nine candidates. 

“Ultimately, the timing of this is very, very rigorous, and my belief in not [selecting] a placeholder and my belief in seniority being really, really important, and running statewide elections and winning statewide elections in ’24 and ’26 is rigorous and demanding, and ultimately that was a big separator,” Pillen said.

Pillen also noted that Ricketts has committed to running in 2024 and 2026 and that he would not accept a nomination to the Cabinet if asked by a future Republican president.

“Past performance is a pretty good indicator of future performance,” Pillen added.

The former two-term governor, who also co-chaired the Republican Governors Association during the 2022 campaign cycle, was among those who officially applied for the vacancy with Pillen, the newly minted governor.

Pillen was elected in November in part because of support from Ricketts, having turned away a primary challenge from Charles Herbster, who was backed by former President Trump, in May. The former governor gave more than $100,000 to Pillen’s campaign and donated nearly $1.3 million to a political action committee that ran a series of attack ads against Herbster. 

Ricketts on Thursday said he is excited to take on the “unexpected opportunity.” 

“There’s a fallacy in Washington, D.C., that government can’t work and we have to expect failure, but that’s not true. We proved that’s not true here in Nebraska,” Ricketts said. “We need to hold Washington, D.C., accountable for making sure they’re providing the same level of high service that we do in state government.”

Ricketts immediately becomes one of the richest members of Congress, which also helps give him a leg up ahead of what could be two elections in the next four years, as he could self-fund to an extent. Ricketts’s family owns the Chicago Cubs.

Additionally, this is not Ricketts first attempt at joining the Senate. In 2006, Ricketts lost to then-Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) by a margin of more than 27 percentage points despite spending $12 million of his own money on the contest.

Ricketts joining the upper chamber is a big win for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Republicans, as it would be considered a safe bet that the party will hold the seat, likely taking the state off the map in the 2024 general election.

The GOP leader on Thursday said he’s “thrilled to hear” Ricketts is heading to the Senate.

“Governor Pillen could not have found a more capable leader to take the baton from our colleague Senator Sasse and fight for the Cornhusker State,” McConnell said in a statement.

The only potential wrench would be a challenge from pro-Trump forces after Ricketts helped Pillen to defeat Herbster. However, Ricketts has not been outwardly critical of the former president like Sasse, his predecessor, had been. Sasse was among the seven Senate Republicans to vote to convict Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. 

The appointment also brings the Senate back to capacity with 100 senators.

Updated at 10:48 a.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Inflation slowed to 6.5 percent in December: CPI

Consumer prices slowed further in December, boosting hopes that the worst of red-hot inflation is behind the U.S.

The annual inflation rate fell from 7.1 percent in November to 6.5 percent in December, according to the consumer price index, released Thursday morning. Prices fell 0.1 percent last month after rising 0.1 percent in November.

Those figures — which are in line with analyst predictions — mark six straight months of receding annual price growth. 

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, inflation rose 5.7 percent over the last 12 months ending in December and 0.3 percent on a month-to-month basis. 

“Inflation is on its back heels. Consumer price inflation for December couldn’t have been much better,” Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi tweeted.

Food prices rose 0.3 percent, down from 0.5 percent in November. Energy prices fell 4.5 percent in December after falling 1.6 percent in November.

But not everything was slowed: Shelter, meanwhile, rose 0.8 percent month-to-month, up from 0.6 percent in November.

The report is good news for consumers and Wall Street, which is hoping that falling prices will prompt the Federal Reserve to slow down its interest rate hikes. 

Economists have warned that the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes could send the U.S. economy into a recession. But Fed officials have insisted that they will continue measures to bring down inflation to their target 2 percent rate.

“It’s important to keep in mind that there are costs and risks to tightening policy to lower inflation, but I see the costs and risks of allowing inflation to persist as far greater,” Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman said Tuesday. 

Source: TEST FEED1

The Hill's Morning Report — GOP presses Biden, DOJ after more classified documents found

Editor’s note: The Hill’s Morning Report is our daily newsletter that dives deep into Washington’s agenda. To subscribe, click here or fill out the box below.

Weeks away from the annual State of the Union address and his expected reelection announcement, President Biden is tangled in a classified paper chase.

A batch of classified documents discovered Nov. 2 at a Washington office Biden once used after he was vice president and made public for the first time on Monday in a report by CBS News mushroomed into a foggier narrative involving a second batch of classified documents, also uncovered by unnamed members of Biden’s team, this time at a different location, according to NBC News on Wednesday.

The list of unanswered questions has expanded, including the dates and contents of recovered classified documents, whether the National Archives knew any classified materials were missing and the scope of the Justice Department’s review, which began quietly a week before the midterm elections and became publicly known for the first time on Monday.

The Hill: White House spars with reporters over Biden classified documents, declining to answer questions while a Justice Department review continues.

House Republicans on Wednesday said the retention of classified documents by one or more individuals in Biden’s orbit, apparently spanning years, would be part of a menu of investigations planned by lawmakers involving the president and his family.

The Hill: Democrats want Biden to run against the House GOP.

The president told reporters Tuesday he was “surprised” when he learned that his former think tank office contained classified documents in what was described by the White House as a locked closet. Biden said he did not know the contents of the papers. News outlets reported this week that some of the recovered materials dealt with other countries, including Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom (CNN).

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Judiciary Committee and ally of former President Trump, urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate how classified documents were handled by Biden and others close to him after he departed the White House as vice president (The Hill). The Justice Department intervened last year with a subpoena and an FBI search to retrieve classified documents Trump moved from the White House to store at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Under the Presidential Records Act, White House documents and communications, including materials marked classified, go to the National Archives as the property of the American people and are not supposed to exit 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. with officials when they leave office.   

“I think if you believe a special counsel is necessary to assure the public about the handling of classified documents by Donald Trump, you should apply a special counsel to the mishandling of classified documents by President Biden when he was vice president,” Graham told Fox News, echoing other GOP lawmakers who accuse the Justice Department of a partisan double standard.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, told The Hill’s Brett Samuels in an exclusive interview on Wednesday that he has not made a decision about whether he will seek the presidency in 2024. 

“Over the coming months, we’re going to continue to travel,” Pence said in his Washington, D.C., office during a national book tour. “We’re going to continue to listen very intently, and we’ll make a decision I’m sure that in the months ahead about what role we might play, whether it be as a national candidate or as a voice for our conservative values.” 

Trump is the sole declared GOP presidential candidate, but his campaign thus far has been low key. Pence said the former president’s decision to jump into the race early will have no bearing on his own plans. “At the end of the day, I think it’s a new day,” he said. “I think it calls for new leadership. And I have every confidence that the American people and Republican voters will have better choices come 2024.”

Pence, who previously served in the House from Indiana, says he supports plans by the new House GOP majority to “deeply examine” Biden’s actions and those of his family, including Hunter Biden.

The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports that Biden this year and next may seize opportunities to triangulate with House Republicans on legislation where compromise is seen as possible, including on reform of federal permitting for petroleum industry projects, increased border security and fiscal policy changes. It’s a model his Democratic predecessors in the White House pursued with some success during periods of divided government.

Related Articles

▪ The New York Times: Here are all the ways Republicans plan to investigate Biden.

▪ The New York Times: Hunter Biden’s tangled tale comes front and center.

▪ The Washington Post: Trump campaign officials subpoenaed with new questions about Jan. 6.

▪ The Hill: Republicans in New York’s Nassau County called on Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) to resign. He says he won’t.

▪ The Hill: Danielle Walker, a Democrat and West Virginia’s sole Black state lawmaker, in an interview shares harrowing accounts of racism.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ ADMINISTRATION

Thousands of flights were delayed or canceled Wednesday after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide pause on domestic flight departures. The agency’s system for alerting pilots and airports of real-time hazards, called NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions), went dark early Wednesday morning, sparking safety concerns and a grounding of most domestic air traffic.

More than 9,000 flights within, into or out of the United States had been delayed on Wednesday, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware. The delays were spread across the country and affected multiple carriers.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that once flights resumed, he “directed an after-action process to determine root causes and recommend next steps.” Biden, meanwhile, told Buttigieg to report directly back to him when he learned the cause of the outage. Later, officials said there was no evidence of a cyberattack and a corrupted computer file was the culprit. 

“We are going to see the ripple effects from that, this morning’s delays, working through the system during the day,” Buttigieg said on CNN. “Now we have to understand how this could have happened in the first place.”

Republicans, meanwhile, blasted the administration for the FAA meltdown, with House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee member Garret Graves (R-La.) tweeting that lawmakers will “aggressively pursue accountability” (The Hill and The New York Times).

CNN reported Wednesday evening that the outage may have been linked to a computer issue in the main NOTAM system and a system reboot to solve said issue that ended up taking longer than expected. Officials decided to perform the reboot early Wednesday before air traffic began flying on the East Coast, to minimize disruption to flights.

“They thought they’d be ahead of the rush,” a source told CNN. The system “did come back up, but it wasn’t completely pushing out the pertinent information that it needed for safe flight, and it appeared that it was taking longer to do that.”

The FAA then opted to issue a nationwide ground stop at around 7:30 a.m. ET, halting all domestic departures, a dramatic and rare occurrence. 

A senior government official said Wednesday evening that a corrupted file affected both the primary and backup systems, adding that officials continue to investigate (NBC News).

“The FAA is continuing a thorough review to determine the root cause of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system outage,” the agency said in a statement. “Our preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) on Wednesday hinted at possible hearings to explore the problem that the FAA experienced with NOTAM, which is located in Virginia (WTOP). NPR reported that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) attacked the nationwide disruption as “completely unacceptable” and “the latest example of dysfunction within the Department of Transportation.”

He also alluded to possible congressional action, saying that “the administration needs to explain to Congress what happened” and that Congress should “enact reforms in this year’s FAA reauthorization.”

▪ The Hill: Five things to know about the system outage at the FAA.

▪ The New York Times: FAA outage highlights the fragility of the aviation system.

▪ Politico: FAA meltdown is Buttigieg’s next political headache.

Further out in the atmosphere, NASA and its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, have hatched a plan to get three astronauts home from the International Space Station after their ride — the Soyuz spacecraft — developed a problem in December. As The Hill’s Amy Thompson reports, the Russian Space Agency explained the problem on Wednesday, announcing it would send an uncrewed replacement craft, Soyuz MS-23, to replace the damaged spacecraft as a crew lifeboat. That craft will launch on Feb. 20. 

“Analysis of the spacecraft, including thermal calculations and technical documentation, shows that the MS-22 must be landed without a crew on board,” Sergei Krikalev, the executive director of Russia’s human spaceflight program, said during a news briefing.

The White House and the chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission are pushing back on the idea of a ban on new gas stoves as tensions over the restrictions boil over in Washington. The clarification came after a commissioner said that a ban was on the table, sparking fury from Republicans and moderate Democrats in Congress.

Meanwhile, some supporters of either a gas stove ban or tougher regulations are eyeing a possible link to childhood asthma cases (The Hill and Roll Call).

▪ The Hill: As Kamala Harris navigates unscripted moments as the nation’s first female vice president, allies say she should show more of her personal, relatable side to boost her political future. 

▪ The Washington Post: On Wednesday, doctors removed two basal cell cancerous lesions from first lady Jill Biden using Mohs surgery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

➤ CONGRESS

House Republicans are divided over proposed cuts to Medicare and Social Security, The Hill’s Mike Lillis and Nathaniel Weixel report. Entitlements have long been a political third rail, but some in the GOP say everything is on the table. They want to use the debt ceiling negotiations to extract promises to reduce government spending even if it means cutting entitlements. But other conservatives insist Medicare and Social Security will be left alone and the cuts will come from elsewhere. 

Lawmakers are sending conflicting messages about the potential cuts, with some, such as Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of the leaders of the conservatives who extracted a promise from Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to put a limit on new discretionary spending, insisting that entitlements are safe.

“It took approximately .2 seconds for everybody to be saying ‘you’re gonna slaughter defense … you’re gonna hurt Social Security and Medicare. Everybody calm down,” Roy said in a radio interview.

Others, such as Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), were striking a different tune.

“We can work on reprioritizing defense spending, but that’s really nibbling around the margins. If we really want to talk about the debt and spending, it’s the entitlements program that’s 70 percent of our entire budget,” Waltz said on Fox Business this week. “That $1.7 trillion, and defense within that, is only 30 percent. So, if we want to talk about big reforms, I look forward to hearing that from those folks who are pushing toward a balanced budget.”

The U.S. by next month may hit the statutory limit on borrowing to meet its obligations, after which the Treasury Department would be forced to use accounting maneuvers to push potential default out until summer (NBC15/AP).

▪ The Wall Street Journal: House lawmakers discuss a discharge petition to force a debt ceiling vote.

▪ The New York Times: The U.S. may breach the debt ceiling. Here’s why that would be very bad.

▪ Forbes: The debt ceiling deadline is not precisely known.

The House on Wednesday passed its first GOP abortion bill days into its new session by a vote of 220-210-1. It would require that all infants born after attempted abortions get medical care. One Democrat voted for the measure, and one voted “present” (The Hill).

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL

Russia claimed Wednesday that its forces had seized control of Soledar, a town in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region that is a gateway to the nearby, fiercely fought-over city of Bakhmut. While Ukraine denied the claims, its troops in the area have been under severe pressure in recent days. If confirmed, Russia’s takeover of Soledar would be the first significant territorial advance for Moscow following months of defeats and retreats (The Washington Post).

▪ Reuters: A Russian reshuffle placed a top general in charge of the faltering Ukraine invasion.

▪ Politico: Russia’s cyberattacks aim to “terrorize” Ukrainians.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine nears the end of its first year, experts say the Kremlin will increasingly become a global menace and expand its provocations beyond Ukraine in an attempt to chip away at international support for Kyiv’s resistance. The Hill’s Ellen Mitchell reports that while experts are less worried about prospects of Moscow using nuclear weapons or attacking Western infrastructure, they warn that Russia may use everything short of nukes to try to exhaust Ukraine and its allies. 

“I just don’t think they have the bandwidth to project power anyplace else right now,” Brian Whitmore, an expert with the Atlantic Council, told The Hill. “They’re clearly diminished by this war. They certainly don’t have the ability to project kinetic power anyplace else.”

Ukrainian defense officials are zeroing in on tank deliveries from the U.S. and European partners, saying the firepower and security provided by the armored artillery vehicles will turn the tide on the battlefield against Russia, write The Hill’s Laura Kelly and Brad Dress. The Biden administration has increased the heavy artillery it has provided Ukraine, but has done so slowly and incrementally to protect against any suggestion that Washington is provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

▪ The New York Times: Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba has been positioning himself as Uganda’s next leader. But his provocative tweets have unnerved Ugandans and put his father in a bind.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: A sacred Jerusalem site becomes a flashpoint with Israel’s rightward shift.

▪ Politico EU: Free flights, a secret deal and a corruption storm: Inside the European Union’s “Qatargate” committee.

▪ Reuters: More than half of German companies report labor shortages.

OPINION

■ The Biden papers and the Mar-a-Lago documents: Apples and oranges?

by James D. Zirin, opinion contributor, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3CCgsjd 

■ The IRS needs money to make money, by Jessica Karl, social media editor, Bloomberg Opinion. https://bloom.bg/3GY9309

WHERE AND WHEN

👉 The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.

The House will meet at 9 a.m.

The Senate will convene Friday at 1:30 p.m. for a pro forma session. 

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 8:30 a.m. At 10 a.m., he will speak about the economy and inflation in the South Court Auditorium, after which he will speak at an 11 a.m. memorial service for former Defense Secretary Ash Carter at the Washington National Cathedral. 

The vice president will fly to Ann Arbor, Mich., for a 2 p.m. moderated conversation about climate change with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Kyle Whyte, professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability. Harris will return to Washington this evening.  

Economic indicators: The Bureau of Labor Statistics at 8:30 a.m. reports on the consumer price index in December and, separately, real earnings in December. The Labor Department at 8:30 a.m. will report on claims for unemployment benefits filed in the week ending Jan. 7.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff will meet at 12:30 p.m. on Capitol Hill with the co-chairs of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism. 

The U.S. Trade and Development Agency today will partner with the Japanese government for the fifth Indo-Pacific Business Forum.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 1:30 p.m.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce leaders, during a 1:30 p.m. ET news conference, will detail the business group’s 2023 agenda. 

ELSEWHERE

➤ GUNS, STATES, COURTS 

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said New York can enforce a tough new law that bans guns from “sensitive places,” such as schools, playgrounds and Times Square, as a lawsuit plays out in an appeals court. The law was enacted in response to a landmark ruling in June that had placed strict limits on guns outside the home.

The court’s brief, unsigned order gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said in a statement that the law “presents novel and serious questions” but added that the appeals court should address those questions first (The New York Times).

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) on Wednesday signed a measure banning the “sale, manufacture and delivery” of semi-automatic, assault-style weapons and the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines. The law, which took effect immediately, is expected to be challenged in court (Chicago Tribune and Reuters).

▪ The 19th: The Supreme Court could consider a charter school’s code requiring skirts or dresses for girls.

▪ CNN: Another “radical” change to the Voting Rights Act could reach the Supreme Court.

▪ Slate: The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority may sabotage unions’ right to strike.

▪ Roll Call: Supreme Court weighs immunity of Puerto Rico oversight board.

➤ HEALTH & PANDEMIC

The Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday officially renewed the ongoing public health emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic amid concerns over a more transmissible viral mutation and broad pandemic fatigue (The Hill). 

The announcement by Secretary Xavier Becerra marks the 12th renewal of the COVID-19 public health emergency since the pandemic began in 2020. Each public health emergency declaration lasts for 90 days before expiring or getting renewed. While it is not required by any laws or department rules, Becerra has publicly committed to giving state governments and health care stakeholders a 60-day notice if there are plans to allow the declaration to expire. A major surge in cases, as seen in past years, has not emerged this winter.

“We have seen COVID infections increase in prior winters, and it does not have to be that way this year,” a department spokesperson told The Hill. “We now have the updated COVID-19 bivalent vaccine to protect against the Omicron strain. Our message is simple: Don’t wait. Get an updated COVID-19 vaccine this winter. It’s safe and effective.”

▪ The Washington Post: Coronavirus “chimera” made in a lab shows what makes omicron seemingly less deadly.

▪ The New York Times: Now that California’s tobacco prohibitions are in place, some Camel and Newport items are billed as newly “fresh” or “crisp” non-menthol versions.

Information about COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot availability can be found at Vaccines.gov.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,098,512. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 2,731 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)

THE CLOSER

Try Our Morning Report Quiz

And finally … It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for this week’s Morning Report Quiz! Inspired by the week of Speakership votes, we’re eager for some smart guesses about the House of Representatives.

Be sure to email your responses to asimendinger@thehill.com and kkarisch@thehill.com — please add “Quiz” to your subject line. Winners who submit correct answers will enjoy some richly deserved newsletter fame on Friday.

It took the 118th Congress 15 ballots to elect a Speaker, but in the 1850s, the House took even longer, setting a record. How many ballots did it take?

1. 44

2. 22

3. 63

4. 133

All bills must pass both the House and Senate to become law with the president’s signature. According to the Constitution, what type of legislation must originate in the House?

1. Appropriations bills

2. Tax bills

3. Defense bills

4. Agriculture bills

Who was the first U.S. House Speaker?

1. Frederick A.C. Muhlenberg

2. Theodore Sedgwick

3. Jeremiah Van Rensselaer

4. Thomas Tudor Tucker

Who was the only Speaker to serve as president?

1. Andew Johnson

2. James Buchanan

3. James K. Polk

4. Millard Fillmore

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GOP divisions over Social Security, Medicare cuts forecast tough fights ahead

House Republicans are divided over cuts to Medicare and Social Security, setting up what could be a fierce internal clash over the future of the nation’s top safety net programs when Congress delves into budget fights later in the year.  

Entitlements have long been a political third rail, but some in the GOP say everything is on the table and are eager to use upcoming debt ceiling negotiations to extract promises to reduce government spending, including entitlement funding.

That could pit the GOP’s staunchest deficit hawks against other conservatives who insist Medicare and Social Security will be left alone and the cuts will come from elsewhere. 

With a narrow GOP majority, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) can lose only four votes on any bill, and will have to find a way to placate the lawmakers calling for hard cuts.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of the conservative leaders who extracted a promise from McCarthy to limit new discretionary spending, insisted entitlements are safe.

“It took approximately .2 seconds for everybody to be saying, ‘You’re gonna slaughter defense … You’re gonna hurt Social Security and Medicare.’ Everybody calm down,” Roy said in an interview with conservative radio host Jesse Kelly. 

“What we have been very clear about is, we’re not going to touch the benefits that are going to people relying on the benefits under Social Security and Medicare,” he said Sunday on CNN’s ‘State of the Union.’

The official rules package Republicans passed earlier this week calls for equal or greater cuts in mandatory spending to offset any new spending, but it did not specify where those cuts needed to come from. 

Yet other Republicans are concerned that excluding the entitlements from the debate creates a greater threat to defense programs, which conservatives are vowing to protect. 

“I’m all for a balanced budget, but we’re not going to do it on the backs of our troops and our military,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) told Fox Business this week. “If we really want to talk about the debt and spending, it’s the entitlement programs.”

The GOP divisions are sure to be a headache for McCarthy and other Republican leaders later in the year when both chambers are expected to consider an increase in the debt ceiling — a routine procedural move allowing the federal government to borrow money to fund obligations Congress has already approved.

Republicans are eyeing the debt ceiling vote and possible government default as a way to force Democrats into concessions.

McCarthy has not weighed in on the issue since Republicans won the House majority in November’s midterms. But he’d indicated heading into the elections that Republicans would use their new power to prioritize cuts in federal spending, and that entitlement cuts were not necessarily off the table. 

The Republicans’ cautious approach to entitlement programs this year represents a sharp contrast to the party’s position over recent decades, when GOP leaders have hammered Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as socialist initiatives — inefficient and anti-American — that threaten individual freedoms.

Ronald Reagan, even before Medicare’s creation in 1965, warned of the existential dangers of “socialized medicine.” Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) wanted Medicare “to wither on the vine.” Former president George W. Bush privatized parts of Medicare, and sought to extend that push to Social Security. And former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who had built his wonky reputation as chair of the Budget Committee, used that perch to propose annual budgets that ended traditional Medicare, turning it into a voucher program, and privatized Social Security.

The arrival of President Trump marked a stark recalibration of those long-held positions, beginning on the very first day of his candidacy in 2015 when he vowed to “save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — without cuts.”

That promise was a head-snapping reversal for the GOP, but it helped the populist Trump build support from working-class voters — who benefit disproportionately from the entitlement programs, and tend to support them as a result — who ultimately ushered him into the White House.

Now, as Republican leaders are facing pressure from their right flank to slash federal spending and rein in deficits, entitlements have emerged as ground zero in that debate. Members are walking a fine line by calling for reforms in the name of keeping entitlement programs solvent, without actually labeling them “cuts.”

Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) said Republicans should “absolutely” make entitlement changes a condition of raising the debt ceiling later in the year. But the goal should be to “secure” those programs, he said, not get rid of them.

“Do you realize that Medicaid and Medicare will be insolvent by 2026? That Social Security will be insolvent by 2033? That’s why we’ve got to act,” he said Wednesday. “But our goal, our charge, should be to save and stabilize, not to cut.”

Democrats and progressive groups, meanwhile, are itching for the opportunity to defend Medicare and Social Security, echoing the final days of the 2022 mid-term election. The White House has warned that they will accept nothing but a “clean” debt-ceiling hike — free of add-ons — and congressional Democrats are already piling on in the first days of the new Congress. 

“The debt ceiling shouldn’t be held hostage to this sort of conversation, particularly when you participated in increased spending,” said Rep. Richard Neal (Mass.), senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare and Social Security. “Better to have the discussion right now. Let’s set the table. Let’s get to the debate over Social Security and Medicare — happy to engage.”

Rep. Drew Ferguson (R-Ga.), another Ways and Means member, acknowledged the political pitfalls surrounding any effort to reform the popular entitlement programs. But he warned that inaction is not an option — and the only solution will require cooperation from both parties. 

“To simply put our heads in the sand is not going to work,” he said. “But what we cannot do — what we cannot do — is weaponize the issue to take down the other party.”

Source: TEST FEED1

GOP House gives Biden opportunities for triangulation

The new House GOP majority is giving President Biden several opportunities to triangulate on high-profile issues — following the model set by former Presidents Clinton and Obama before their successful reelections.

Democratic strategists say Biden has an opportunity over the next year to strike deals with Republicans in Congress on border security and immigration reform, energy permitting reform and fiscal reforms to address the federal deficit.

The president has already signaled his willingness to find common ground with Republicans by announcing new border enforcement actions and striking a deal with centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) last year on permitting reform.

Democratic strategists say Biden could improve his chances of winning a second term by negotiating deals with Republicans to address two of his biggest vulnerabilities: the huge influx of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border and the high cost of energy, which is expected to remain a tough issue for Democrats because of the war in Ukraine.

The biggest question mark, however, is whether Biden can get any bipartisan legislation through the Republican-controlled House, where many lawmakers are closely allied with former President Trump and are gearing up for two years of partisan warfare.

“He does certainly have a strategic challenge. He has to worry that governmental crises could end up being blamed on him and the Democrats, so the obvious strategy is to be reasonable from the start, to advocate for moderate policy proposals and to demand timely action on legislation,” said Steven S. Smith, a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis. “This is largely a public relations challenge for him.”

Striking bipartisan deals with Republicans could also help Manchin and other Democrats facing tough Senate races.

“Joe Biden has tremendous opportunities to reach for the center, and he’s taking them. Border security is certainly one of those areas. There’s a vast ground in the middle where people want to compromise on immigration,” said Jim Kessler, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) who now serves as executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank.

Kessler said many voters want “a secure and humane border” as well as some sort of compromise to provide so-called Dreamers, immigrants who came to the country illegally at a young age, a path to citizenship.

There’s growing momentum in the Senate for an immigration deal after negotiations between Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) fell short in last year’s lame-duck Congress.

Sinema and Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), a leading Senate Republican voice on immigration policy, led a bipartisan delegation to the southern border this week, bringing along Tillis and Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).

Sinema and Tillis circulated a draft proposal last month to provide $25 billion to improve border security, a pathway to citizenship for 2 million Dreamers and an extension of the Title 42 health policy, which has expedited the deportation of migrants making asylum claims.

A deal on border security and immigration reform would be a major boost for Sinema, who left the Democratic Party to register as an Independent and is also up for reelection next year.

Permitting reform is another area where Biden could strike a deal, as many Democrats believe it will be needed to implement the green energy investments made by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Biden, Schumer and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pledged last year to support Manchin’s bill in exchange for his vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, but Senate Republicans blocked the legislation, angered that Manchin had agreed to vote for the Democrats’ reconciliation package.

“One of the ways Biden’s successes from the last Congress get implemented is through permitting reform so that stuff gets built, and it seems that’s what they’re doing,” Kessler said, citing conversations with stakeholders such as labor and environmental groups.

Jonathan Kott, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Manchin, said Biden “absolutely has the opportunity” to add new bipartisan legislative accomplishments to his résumé.

“Biden’s a legislator at heart, he’s reached out to moderates and progressives and gotten things done,” he said. “I would argue there’s probably a better chance to get stuff done this time than in previous presidencies because of who the players are.”

Kott cited permitting reform along with legislation to improve U.S. competitiveness with China, Federal Aviation Administration reform and the farm bill.

Biden has a long track record of cutting major deals with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), with whom he appeared at an event in Covington, Ky., last week to tout new money for the Brent Spence Bridge, a key piece of infrastructure supporting a busy freight route into Ohio.

Biden and McConnell cut three major deals during the Obama administration, when Biden was vice president. One was to temporarily extend the George W. Bush-era tax cuts after the midterm elections; the second was to raise the debt ceiling in 2011 and enact new fiscal reforms; and the third was to make many of the Bush tax cuts permanent and avoid a year-end fiscal cliff in late 2012.

Democratic strategists predict Biden, 80, will lean hard on his record of working with Republicans if he runs for a second term, which he is widely expected to do. He offered a glimpse of his future campaign themes during recent trips to Arizona and Michigan to tout his bipartisan accomplishments, particularly passage of the $280 billion Chips and Science Act, which helped create thousands of new jobs in those battleground states.

Obama and Clinton both pivoted toward the center during their second two years in office after Democrats lost control of the House in midterm elections.

Obama agreed to sign the Budget Control Act of 2011 as part of a deal to raise the debt limit. The deal set new caps on discretionary spending and established automatic cuts to defense and nondefense programs over a period of nine years.

Clinton signed welfare reform into law a few months before the 1996 presidential election after negotiations with then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

Clinton criticized what he called “serious flaws” in the bill, but he decided to sign it anyway because he saw it as a chance to fulfill his promise in the 1992 presidential campaign to “end welfare as we know it.”

The legislative breakthrough helped seal his victory over Republican challenger Bob Dole three months later, while Obama won reelection in 2012 over Republican Mitt Romney — now a senator from Utah.

Source: TEST FEED1

DeSantis fields growing criticism from fellow 2024 Republicans

Potential Republican presidential candidates and their allies are stepping up attacks on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as he emerges as the early front-runner for the GOP’s 2024 nomination.

In recent days, DeSantis has found himself on the receiving end of criticism from fellow GOP heavy hitters, like South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu. He’s also rankled former President Trump, who’s running for the White House once again and sees DeSantis as perhaps his biggest obstacle to securing the GOP nod.

DeSantis hasn’t yet decided on a presidential bid and is still likely months away from making any kind of announcement about his intentions. But the recent criticism underscores the extent to which the Florida governor’s profile has risen and foreshadows a potentially bitter 2024 primary season for the party.

It’s not unusual for prospective candidates to test out attack lines against would-be rivals as they search for a lane in a budding presidential race. But Keith Naughton, a veteran Republican strategist, said that it makes clear who they see as their biggest threat.

“They’re searching for something; just testing things out to see if they can get some traction,” Naughton said. “They want to slow down DeSantis a little bit so that they have a chance. The thing is, I don’t think that’s going to be easy to do.”

Sununu took a swipe at DeSantis last week in an interview with Fox News, saying that while he ultimately agreed with the Florida governor’s effort to target “woke” policies — a term that has become an inseparable part of DeSantis’s political brand — DeSantis’s posture against private businesses that disagree with him crosses a line.

“Look, I come from the ‘Live Free or Die’ state, and private businesses can and should act like private businesses without the fear of being punished by people that might disagree with them,” Sununu, who’s fresh off a successful reelection campaign, told Fox News.

“I agree with a lot of those issues that Ron brings to the table — I think he’s right — but to necessarily punish private businesses because they don’t agree with the policy or whatever it might be, those types of culture wars pushing their way into the private sector, that’s definitely not, I don’t think, where we want to be as Americans.”

The context of Sununu’s remarks is difficult to overlook. In the same interview, he acknowledged that he had been approached about launching a 2024 presidential campaign and was having conversations about the matter.

In another attack that drew headlines, a spokesperson for Noem, another 2024 prospect, let loose on DeSantis last week over the Florida governor’s record on abortion. 

In a statement to the conservative National Review, the spokesperson, Ian Fury, accused DeSantis of doing little to crack down on abortion in Florida despite the Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights case. 

“Where was Gov. DeSantis? Hiding behind a 15-week ban,” Fury said. “Does he believe that 14-week-old babies don’t have a right to live?”

DeSantis signed a bill last year banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, though he has indicated that he is willing to back a stricter prohibition on the procedure. 

While the Iowa caucuses — the first nominating contest of the 2024 primary season — are still more than a year away, DeSantis has emerged as an early favorite, even with Trump in the race. Recent polling matching up DeSantis and Trump shows the Florida governor in the lead, suggesting trouble for the former president. 

DeSantis’s rising popularity within the GOP — as well as his repeated refusal to disclose his political ambitions — has irked Trump, whose endorsement propelled DeSantis to victory in his 2018 gubernatorial bid. After DeSantis scored a staggering 19-point victory in his reelection campaign in November, Trump went on the attack, accusing DeSantis of playing political games and dolling out a nickname: “Ron DeSanctimonious”

“He says, ‘I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the future.’ Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer,” Trump said in a lengthy statement. 

Of course, there’s no guarantee that DeSantis will maintain his apparent front-runner status. Plenty of onetime favorites in presidential races have fallen short of expectations in the past, making way for other candidates. 

In mid-2015, for instance, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush appeared to be the candidate to beat in the race for the 2016 GOP presidential nod. Ultimately, a lackluster campaign combined with bruising attacks from Trump forced him to drop out of the race before Florida ever held its primary.

It’s also not a given that the issues that fueled DeSantis’s rise — his opposition to COVID-19 restrictions and focus on culture war issues — will remain top of mind for voters in the months to come.

“So much of his brand is related to COVID and the culture wars,” said Thomas Kennedy, a Democratic National Committee member from Florida and an ardent DeSantis critic. “I think over time, a lot of that stuff is becoming irrelevant and it’s being replaced by other issues. How much of this stuff is going to be irrelevant or just not going to stick a year from now?”

And while DeSantis may be trouncing Trump in head-to-head polling, several surveys testing a broader field of Republican candidates show him running behind the former president. 

An Emerson College poll fielded in November showed Trump winning 55 percent support in a multiway primary that also included prospective candidates like former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). DeSantis finished in second place with 25 percent in that poll. 

“I think there is a sense that DeSantis isn’t bulletproof and that there’s still room for other people,” said one Republican strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns. “The polling kind of reflects that, you know, sure, if it’s DeSantis and Trump, DeSantis looks really good. But with a bigger field, there’s no guarantees.”

Source: TEST FEED1