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Ohio Senate candidates look to debate to stand out in tight race

Ohio Senate candidates Tim Ryan (D) and J.D. Vance (R) are set to face off in a televised debate on Monday as polls show an increasingly narrow race in a state that has been considered reliably red in recent years.  

While Republicans were seen as having the advantage in Ohio, a number of recent polls show Ryan, a 10-term U.S. representative, closing the gap with Vance, a venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy.” A Marist Poll released on Wednesday showed Vance leading Ryan 46 percent to 45 percent, while a Spectrum News-Sienna College survey released last week showed Ryan leading Vance 46 to 43 percent. 

With the race tight and just a month until Election Day, Monday’s debate will be an opportunity for both candidates to stand out — or land a lasting blow. 

The race has also received notable attention from outside groups from both sides of the aisle. On Thursday, the Trump-sanctioned super PAC MAGA Inc. placed $276,000 in broadcast television reservations in the Columbus and Cleveland media markets, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, Additionally, the Senate Leadership Fund, a group aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) bought $28 million worth of airtime beginning last month, spanning from September 6 to Election Day. 

On the Democratic side, Ryan has flexed his fundraising and spending muscle throughout the course of the campaign. Ryan’s campaign announced on Thursday that it raised a whopping $17.2 million in the third quarter, largely from small donors. The Democrat’s campaign did not say how much money he had in the bank, but his most recent federal filing from July showed him with just under $3.6 million on hand, suggesting a high burn rate. 

The race for the Buckeye State’s Senate seat on Capitol Hill was always going to be a steep climb for Democrats given the state’s Republican tilt. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race as “lean Republican.” Former President Trump handily won the state by 8 points in 2016 and 2020. 

Democrats say they are “cautiously optimistic” about the race, crediting what they say is Ryan’s brand and well-run campaign. 

“To me, it’s more complicated than Trump won by 8 points, so therefore J.D. Vance is going to win,” said Aaron Pickrell, a Columbus-based Democratic strategist. 

“Having been a congressman from Youngstown, Mahoning Valley, he’s represented folks that were sort of that Obama-Trump voter,” Pickrell added. “Tim knows those folks, it’s the voters that he’s represented for years and he knows how to communicate with them.” 

Democrats also say Vance is a flawed candidate. 

“He comes across as somebody that’s very ambitious and wants to do something and will say and do whatever he needs to in order to be successful and voters see that,” Pickrell said. 

Even Republicans credit Ryan with having narrowed the gap between him and Vance. 

“As a former operative, he’s run a very good campaign. His ads have been very good,” said one Ohio-based GOP strategist referring to Ryan. 

“I know the ads are full of shit, but he’s doing what he needs to do and he’s done that from the day after the primary. And that’s why he’s overperforming expectations,” the strategist added. 

However, outside groups like the Senate Leadership Fund have come to Vance’s aid, helping to hit back against Ryan. And GOP strategists said Vance is now on the right track and expect him to pull further ahead in the coming weeks.

“He’s a first-time candidate, so there’s a learning curve, but I think he’s righted the ship,” said the Ohio-based Republican strategist, referring to Vance. 

“I think he’s doing what he needs to do to win,” the GOP strategist said. 

Another strategists pointed to the primaries to explain Vance’s relatively slow start.

“Vance won a very bruising primary and struggled in some ways to find his footing after that,” the Republican operative said. “Ryan had the summer airwaves almost exclusively to himself.”

Much of the campaign has been defined by Ryan and Vance working to paint the other as out of touch with Ohio. 

Last month, Ryan’s campaign rolled out a six-figure ad buy on Facebook and Instagram referring to Vance as a “Silicon Valley J.D.” going up against “Politician J.D.” Just days later, the Vance campaign rolled out an item titled “Two Tims,” juxtaposing what it called “TV Tim” and “DC Tim.” 

Ryan, who represents constituents who voted for Trump, has long walked a line between Washington’s Democratic establishment and appealing to economic populists. Ryan, much like Sen. Sherrod Brown, Ohio’s only statewide election Democrat, has been critical of jobs being shipped overseas to China from parts of the country like the industrial Midwest. 

Republicans say they are zeroing in on debunking that narrative about the Ohio congressman. 

“He’s clearly tried to paint a picture of himself as nonpartisan, certainly not a member of the rank-and-file Democratic Party, and our efforts have largely been to counteract that and demonstrate to voters that he has voted for all of these things that they hate,” said the Republican operative. 

The Vance campaign also indicated it would focus in on that point Monday.

“The upcoming debates will force Tim Ryan to answer for the two faced persona he has been using to trick Ohio voters his entire campaign,” Luke Schroeder, Vance campaign spokesman, said.

However, Democrats are using a similar strategy with Vance, seeking to paint him as a political opportunist and hypocrite. 

“[Voters] see someone portraying themselves in a way that may not be exactly accurate,” Pickrell said. “Vance is trying to be this sort of everyman like I’m off doing these things, and he’s not. Voters see through this facade that he’s been putting on.” 

A person close to the Ryan campaign agreed, saying “People have a lot of intensity positively towards Tim and a lot more negative intensity toward J.D., which makes it a lot harder to sway those folks.” 

The line of insults between the two candidates is likely to take center stage in Monday’s debate. Republicans say Vance will likely work to tie Ryan to the Biden administration and rising gas prices while Ryan will portray Vance as someone who is out of touch on major issues like abortion access in the state. 

Ultimately, it remains to be seen how much the Monday night forum will move the needle in the contest. 

“In my experience these debates like a US Senate race, governor’s race, congressional debates, it’s a very small echo chamber that it affects and those people already know who they’re voting for,” the Ohio-based GOP strategist said. 

“I think probably J.D. wants to have a nice boring debate,” the strategist added. “Tim wants to have a back and-forth.”

Source: TEST FEED1

DeSantis steps up attacks on media

A new political rival is emerging for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: The media. 

DeSantis increasingly is using the press as a foil, a trait he shares with a number of Republicans but particularly with former President Trump, a potential rival for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

The rising Republican star has repeatedly taken punches at the “corporate press” as his national stature has grown but appeared to escalate the attacks in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian’s destruction in the state.  

During an interview this week with the conservative website Florida Voice, DeSantis was asked if the press should be held accountable for reporting the forecasts that projected the storm would hit the Tampa area. 

The storm shifted before it reached Florida, with the Fort Myers area taking the worst hit. This has led to debates over whether different communities, including Lee County, should have issued evacuation orders earlier. DeSantis has defended those local communities.

In the Florida Voice interview, he accused the press of rooting for the hurricane to strike Tampa.

”Quite frankly, you have national regime media that they wanted to see Tampa, because they thought that that’d be worse for Florida. That’s how these people think,” DeSantis said during the interview, held as he toured the devastation. 

“They don’t care about the people of this state. They don’t care about this community. They want to use storms and destruction from storms as a way to advance their agenda,” he said.

“They don’t care about the lives here,” DeSantis added of the media. “If they can use it to pursue their political agenda, they will do it.”

In a statement to The Hill, Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for DeSantis, reaffirmed the governor’s sentiments.  

“Governor DeSantis is absolutely correct in his assertion: many people in the media have shamefully capitalized on the tragedy of Hurricane Ian to push their political agenda,’ Griffin said.  

The comments were among the toughest and most pointed DeSantis has made toward the media, and part of a pattern when it comes to the hurricane and Lee County.

In an interview with CNN last week, DeSantis fired back at a reporter who asked if local officials in Florida waited too long to issue an evacuation order. 

“Well did you, where was your industry stationed when the storm hit? Were you guys in Lee County? No, you were in Tampa,” he said. 

The moment was highlighted on the governor’s rapid response account on Twitter.  

“CNN reporter questions Governor DeSantis, hoping to push a misleading narrative about evacuation in Lee County,” the tweet read. “He shuts that right down.”

Peter Loge, the director of George Washington University’s Project on Ethics in Political Communication, said DeSantis’s media attacks could help him with the Republican base as he inches closer to a potential White House bid.

“I think the calculus is that you blame someone who is easy to blame and everyone doesn’t like,” Loge said. “It’s more at the national view, or even distracting within Florida, where it’s ‘Oh it’s those people again, who don’t trust you, don’t like you, it’s their fault.”  

DeSantis is using a playbook common to GOP stars.

Before Trump, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R) called the press the “lamestream media,” a phrase that stuck with other conservatives. Trump railed over the “fake news” and “crooked” media, and even going as far as labeling the press the “enemy.”

“‘National regime media’ is just fresh nomenclature for an enduring strategy,” Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, said of the governor’s media strategy.

“The difference with the last president — which is now being adopted by others like the Florida governor — was how much more candidly, overtly, obviously and hyperbolically this strategy was enacted and communicated,” he added.

DeSantis has made it a point to go after mainstream news outlets to boost his persona as an aggressive and brash politician who isn’t afraid to defy the establishment. 

Since becoming governor and entering the national spotlight, the governor has continued to escalate the attacks on a number of issues. 

Last year, he blamed media outlets for causing “hysteria” around the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“You try to fearmonger,” he told reporters at the time. “You try to do this stuff.”

GOP strategist John Feehery said DeSantis has figured out a way to drive his message through the press. 

“These days, creating the best-earned media opportunities is the best way to raise money,” Feehery said. “DeSantis is a master at that.” 

The governor has surged in recent national polls, propelled by his willingness to position himself at the epicenter of the culture wars. While Trump is still the favorite in most polls, DeSantis, who is stylistically similar, is the clear runner-up for Republicans. 

“It’s hard not to look at DeSantis as the next in line were Trump not to run again,” said Brendan Buck, who served as a senior aide to former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan. “Being the early front-runner does not always mean success. 

“It’s those who often get excited about that seem to flame out,” Buck added.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Both parties brace for October surprises

Strategists and political observers on both sides of the aisle are bracing for a dreaded October surprise in the final month before Election Day, wary of anything that could upend the political landscape and reshape the outcome of an already volatile midterm cycle.

There have already been a handful of unexpected hiccups. Last week, a news report detailed allegations that Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker paid for his then-girlfriend’s abortion more than a decade ago. That was followed on Wednesday by the news that OPEC and its allies would slash oil production, ushering in an expected rise in gas prices at a critical time for U.S. politics.

And there’s still more uncertainty. Fears of a possible economic recession are on the rise, Russian President Vladimir Putin is dramatically escalating his rhetoric against the West amid his country’s war in Ukraine and the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol could release its highly anticipated final report before Election Day.

All told, the late-breaking developments and potential for more to come have made an already unpredictable midterm election year even less predictable.

“In ’18 – and a lot of other midterm years – you knew what was going to happen. There was a very consistent throughline,” Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist, said. “You knew a wave was coming. Now, we don’t know. And it’s the cause of much heartburn.”

For Republicans — and especially for first-time candidates like Walker — the biggest concern is that any revelation or misstep could sink their prospects in the final weeks before Election Day, Reinish said. Democrats, meanwhile, are at the mercy of an uncertain economic and geopolitical landscape.

“For Democrats, if something happens to affect the national mood or the news cycle, it’s going to be a development outside of their control — gas prices, a foreign policy issue, an economic issue,” Reinish said.

October surprises — last-minute convulsions in the political environment that can change the course of an election — aren’t anything new. 

In 2016, just 11 days before the presidential election, former FBI Director James Comey announced that his agency was reopening its investigation into then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of State. Many Democrats still blame that disclosure, at least in part, for her loss to former President Trump.

And just two years ago, Democrat Cal Cunningham’s Senate campaign in North Carolina was upended by revelations of an extramarital affair. He went on to lose that race to Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) a month later.

David Greenberg, a history professor at Rutgers University, said that the “original October surprise” came just before the 1980 presidential election, when Ronald Reagan’s campaign feared that then-President Jimmy Carter could save his floundering reelection bid by securing the release of American hostages in Iran — though that scenario didn’t play out.

Since then, Greenberg said, October surprises have played out in the media as anything from candidate-related scandals to significant geopolitical events.

“I think over the years, it’s sort of been watered down to refer to any surprising news that comes in October that might affect the outcome,” Greenberg said. “Big news happens in October nowadays and we call it an October surprise. It’s lost a bit of its meaning.”

There’s also some debate about just how meaningful October surprises still are. For one, the political environment is far more polarized and there are fewer swing voters who could be swayed by last-minute revelations about a candidate or major event.

What’s more, Greenberg said, news tends to come and go much faster in 2022 than it did even 20 years ago. What happens in early October, for instance, may not be top of mind for voters a month later.

“It’s a cliché to say that a week is a lifetime in politics, but there’s always time for one more turn of the wheel,” he said. “Since 1980 when the term was coined, a month has come to seem like a longer span of time. So maybe it should be a late-October surprise.”

Nevertheless, with control of both the House and the Senate at stake next month, Democrats and Republicans are wary of anything that could upend the trajectory of the midterms. While strategists from both parties have sought to project optimism, they’ve privately contemplated for months the possibility that late-breaking news could spite them.

That has already happened to some extent. The GOP’s House campaign arm withdrew its advertising for Republican candidate J.R. Majewski late last month after reports that he had misrepresented his military service. And the abortion allegation surrounding Walker has put his campaign on defense at a time when his standing in the Georgia Senate race appeared to be improving. Walker has vehemently denied the allegation and has threatened to sue the news outlet that reported it. 

Meanwhile, gas prices are already beginning to tick upward in the wake of OPEC’s decision to curb oil production, while concerns are growing among policymakers that efforts to tame inflation, which remains near a 40-year high, could push the economy closer to a recession, putting President Biden’s party in a politically precarious position.

“I think the Democrats are more at risk because they’ve got the White House, they’re in power, and when things go wrong, that’s who takes the blame,” said Keith Naughton, a veteran Republican strategist. “For things to go right for the Democrats, it has to be individual things in different races that hurt Republican candidates enough to overcome larger problems that the country is facing. But the bigger issues are probably going to win out.”

But even with the electorate as polarized as it currently is, last-minute scandals and controversies aren’t meaningless, Shana Gadarian, a political science professor at Syracuse University, said in an email. While many of the most partisan voters have been tuned in to the midterm elections for months, there are still other voters who are just starting to pay attention and haven’t yet decided how to cast their ballots.

“There is still some component of the electorate that, as partisan and polarized as we are, doesn’t know who they’re going to vote for until the end and makes up their minds based on what they learn — things that are front of mind in the closing weeks of the campaign.”

Still, she said, “we shouldn’t overstate the effect that scandals can have on voters because there are still a large number of people who don’t pay attention to politics.”

Naughton, the Republican strategist, said that where October surprises could matter the most are in the handful of toss-up races, like the Senate contest in Georgia, where the outcome could ultimately come down to which way moderates and swing voters break in November.

“The list of surprises that could have an impact is getting smaller, because it’s harder to find something that’s a dealbreaker for a party’s core voters,” he said. “But the number of swing voters is shrinking which means they’re more valuable. So in close races, if you have something impactful, it could make a big difference.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Five reasons why the Crimean bridge explosion is significant 

An explosion Saturday caused the partial collapse of Kerch Bridge, which connects Russia to the Crimean Peninsula, an apparent attack that struck both Russia’s supply lines and a symbol of Russian power in the area. 

According to reports and videos of the incident, a truck blew up and ignited fuel tanks on a passing train, cutting off part of the lone bridge passage to Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

The incident comes after Russia made an escalatory move to annex four occupied regions of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine in the bridge explosion, which he called a “a terrorist act,” and is expected to meet with his Security Council Monday. Ukraine has not assumed responsibility.

Here are some of the reasons why the Kerch Bridge explosion is significant in the wider war.

It’s personal for Putin 

The Kerch Bridge incident may affect Russian President Vladimir Putin personally, England’s Ministry of Defense said in an intelligence update Sunday. 

“This incident will likely touch President Putin closely; it came hours after his 70^th birthday, he personally sponsored and opened the bridge, and its construction contractor was his childhood friend,” the update cautioned. 

The bridge is viewed as the Russian leader’s major, concrete manifestation of his stated claims to retake Ukraine. Russia invaded and occupied Crimea in 2014.

Putin celebrated the opening of the nearly $4 billion bridge in 2018 by driving a dump truck across the span as international powers condemned its construction as violation of international law and rejected Russia’s claims to Crimea. 

Russian logistics ‘crippled’

The explosion also dealt a blow to Russia’s war effort, cutting off a crucial avenue for Russian troops and supplies as fighting continues in Ukraine.  

The incident halted train and automobile traffic and has reduced the transit potential of the 12-mile bridge, which bypasses the Kerch Strait.

The bridge is Russia’s most important link to neighboring Ukraine, as the entryways through other recently annexed areas are less established and more difficult to access.

Timothy Snyder, Yale historian of Russia and Ukraine, tweeted on Saturday that the bridge explosion “cripples Russian logistics and dissolves the major symbol of Putin’s power.”

A bridge engineer told the Wall Street Journal that it would take several months to restore damaged sections of the bridge.

Ukraine celebrated the blast

While Kyiv hasn’t claimed responsibility for the explosion, some Ukrainian officials celebrated the incident.

The official Twitter account for Ukraine’s government posted Saturday night, sharing just the English phrase “sick burn.”

While many Russians view the Kerch Bridge as a symbol of Moscow’s influence in the area, many Ukrainians see the bridge as representative of Russian occupation.

“The guided missile cruiser Moskva and the Kerch Bridge – two notorious symbols of russian power in Ukrainian Crimea – have gone down. What’s next in line, russkies?” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry Tweeted Saturday, referencing the bridge collapse and damage earlier this year to an important Russian warship.

Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky responded to the explosion in his address Saturday night, saying the future for Ukraine is “sunny.”

“This is a future without occupiers. Throughout our territory, in particular in the Crimea,” he said.

Heightens nuclear fears 

Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen cited the bridge explosion Sunday as the latest setback for Russia that raises the potential threats of a nuclear attack.

Putin has also put the international community on high alert with his recent rhetoric about nuclear weapons. 

“He’s a cornered … animal and I think he’s [become] more and more dangerous,” Mullen said. “I think we have to take him seriously and think through what the requirements would be to respond to that. It also speaks to the need to get to the table.”

Following a string of Ukraine gains last month, Putin delivered a high-profile speech mobilizing hundreds of thousands of military reservists and warning “we will certainly use all means available to us” to defend Russia, adding, “This is not a bluff.”

A number of U.S. officials, including President Biden, have expressed grave concerns over Putin’s single-handed power over the weapons’ possible deployment, though they have said there are no signs of an imminent attack.

Russia’s deadly response

In the wake of the Kerch Bridge explosion, Ukrainian officials announced Sunday that Russian overnight strikes killed at least 17 in Zaporizhzhia, a Ukrainian city claimed by Moscow in the recent annexations.  

Zelensky called the strikes “merciless” in a post to his Facebook page.

“Absolute meanness. Absolute evil. Savages and terrorists. From the one who gave this order to everyone who fulfilled this order. They will bear responsibility. For sure. Before the law and before people,” he wrote.

Anatoliy Kurtev, secretary of Zaporizhzhia’s city council, wrote on Telegram that 40 people were injured by the blasts, which he said also damaged 50 high-rise buildings, four educational institutions and 20 other private-sector buildings. 

Outside of the city lies Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which Russian military forces have occupied since early in the war.

Zelensky has long condemned Russia’s “nuclear terror” and “nuclear blackmail” at Zaporizhzhia, and warned last week that Russian leaders are beginning to “prepare their society” for the weapons’ use.  

–Updated on Oct. 10 at 7:37 a.m.

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Seven governors’ races to watch this November

While much of the attention this midterm season is directed at who will control the House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats are also eyeing three dozen governors’ mansions.

Twenty governorships currently held by Republicans are up for grabs, in addition to 16 on the Democratic side. However, just a handful have emerged as critical pickup opportunities for either side. Democrats have gone on the offensive in more red-leaning states like Texas and Georgia, while Republicans are fielding contenders of their own in blue-leaning states like Oregon and Nevada.

Unlike congressional elections that tend to be more nationalized, gubernatorial races focus more on state-specific and local issues, with voters often weighing factors like a candidate’s character and charisma more heavily. Yet the races are also affected by national politics, and Democratic candidates will still have to contend with the headwinds their party faces this year.

Here are seven gubernatorial races we’re watching this November.

Arizona

Term limits barred Gov. Doug Ducey (R) from running for another term in office, leaving the seat open. Former local news anchor Kari Lake and state Secretary of State Katie Hobbs emerged as the respective Republican and Democratic nominees following the early August primaries. 

Lake, who received former President Trump’s endorsement, has been scrutinized for her support of hard-right stances on the 2020 election and abortion, though she has attempted to moderate her messaging after the primary. Hobbs made a name for herself after the last election for certifying the state’s results as Trump peddled the baseless claim that he won it, and for her criticism of the former president.

The race proven to be competitive. A CBS News-YouGov Battleground Tracker survey released this week showed the two tied at 49 percent each, well within the margin of error. Phil Cox, former executive director for the Republican Governors Association (RGA) and adviser to numerous Republican candidates across the country, suggested the “issues matrix” in the state was in Lake’s favor.

“It’s the economy, crime and immigration. And that’s what’s unique about Arizona, as opposed to some other states, is that immigration is really a top three issue. And Republicans like Kari Lake have an advantage on that issue,” he said.

Florida

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has earned himself a reputation as a hard-charging culture warrior with national ambitions since taking office in early 2019. And despite his polarizing persona, he’s still considered a heavy favorite to win reelection next month. 

Recent polling shows him leading his Democratic opponent, former Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.), by as much as 11 percentage points. And DeSantis has already raised more than $130 million for his reelection bid — a sum that Crist simply can’t match. 

But that doesn’t mean that victory is a foregone conclusion for DeSantis. 

Florida has a knack for political surprises, and even Republicans expect the race to be closer than some of the forecasts. At the same time, DeSantis has found himself back in the spotlight as the state works to recover from Hurricane Ian, which leveled parts of Florida last week. 

Any misstep or perception that DeSantis isn’t doing enough to aid the recovery could come back to haunt him. What’s more, DeSantis is seen as a potential contender for the 2024 GOP presidential nod, and a lackluster showing in November could be seen as a weakness, even if he ends up winning a second term in the governor’s mansion.

Georgia

The gubernatorial race in Georgia is a rematch of 2018, when now-Gov. Brian Kemp narrowly defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams by only about 55,000 votes. 

Abrams is the Democratic nominee once again, but she may be facing a tougher fight this time around. Not only are Democrats nationwide facing a more challenging political environment than they were four years ago, but Kemp now has the advantage of incumbency and an above-water approval rating.

Kemp also passed a key test of his political staying power this year when he beat former Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) in a bitter primary fight that saw Trump campaign against the incumbent governor. 

Of course, Abrams remains a formidable challenger. She’s a proven fundraiser and her celebrity status among Democrats could help drive turnout in her favor come November.

The outcome of the race could also prove pivotal for Abrams’s political future. 

President Biden considered her as a possible running mate in 2020 before ultimately choosing Vice President Harris, and how Abrams performs in this year’s gubernatorial race could make or break her future prospects on the national stage.

Kansas

Gov. Laura Kelly (D) is fighting for a second term this November as Republicans see the Sunflower State as a critical pickup opportunity, with outside groups like the RGA all in. Kelly won her first term in 2018 by 5 percentage points against Republican Kris Kobach, but the state often leads red, electing Trump by double digits in 2016 and 2020. 

Key groups that either stayed neutral in the last gubernatorial election or endorsed Kelly have backed GOP contender Derek Schmidt this time, including the Fraternal Order of Police, Kansas Farm Bureau and Kansas State Troopers Association. But an unknown factor is how the issue of abortion could play in the race given how it galvanized voters who struck down a restrictive ballot measure earlier this summer. 

“This is the midterm election where, you know, a lot of groups and folks sort of, you know, retreat to their usual political corners,” said Eric Hyers, who’s worked on campaigns for Democratic candidates like Gov. Andy Beshear in Kentucky and former Gov. Steve Bullock in Montana.

“I think the path for Democratic governors, especially in tougher states for Democrats, is to really, really focus on making the lives of their people better and running the state, presiding over the economy and presiding over the state budget in an efficient, pragmatic way. And that’s what Gov. Kelly’s done,” he added.

An Emerson College Polling-The Hill survey released last month showed Kelly receiving 45 percent support among likely voters compared to Schmidt with 43 percent, though it falls within the margin of error. 

Nevada

Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) is also fighting for a second term in office, against Republican candidate and Trump endorsee Joe Lombardo, while also combatting certain headwinds that the party’s facing nationally. 

For one, residents are still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic and the toll it took in Nevada, a tourism-heavy state. A CNN poll released on Thursday showed that the economy was considered the most important issue among likely voters at 44 percent, followed by abortion next at 14 percent. That same poll found Lombardo leading Sisolak by 2 percentage points at 48 percent and 46 percent respectively, though the result falls within the margin of error. 

But some politicos argue that governors might not fall prey to the headwinds Democrats are facing nationwide given they’re running different races than congressional candidates.

“What makes governors races so unique and able to defy national political trends easier than federal races are that people really do have a different process when it comes to making up their minds as to who they’re going to support,” Hyers said. “And for governor, it’s who is going to make my life better, who has the policies that are going to have a tangible impact on my life, and who do I trust to run this state in a competent way that will make things easier for me.”

Oregon

Oregon hasn’t elected a Republican for the governorship since 1982, but given that Gov. Kate Brown (D) has emerged as one of the most unpopular governors in the country — she ranks fifth most unpopular governor, according to Morning Consult — Republicans see the state as a key pickup opportunity.

Brown was criticized for imposing strict COVID-19 lockdown measures and was in office as the state witnessed weeks of protesting in Portland in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. State House Minority Leader Christine Drazan (R), who is running for the governorship, has sought to tie her Democratic opponent, former state House Speaker Tina Kotek (D), to Brown.

“I think she’s got a great chance to win. You know … her message is meeting voters right where their top concerns are on the economy, on crime and on homelessness, which is a huge issue in the state,” said Cox, the former executive director for the RGA.

It’s effectively a three-way race between Kotek, Drazan and former state Sen. Betsy Johnson, a former Democrat who’s running unaffiliated. Johnson, who has polled in third place, has been considered a bit of a disruptor given her financial edge and the fact that she’s polled higher than typical third-party candidates. An Emerson College Polling survey released this week found that Drazan received 36 percent support while Kotek received 34 percent and Johnson received 19 percent, suggesting Johnson could siphon off votes. 

Texas

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) appears on track for an easy win next month over his Democratic rival, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (Texas). If that victory materializes, it will mark the latest disappointment for Democrats in a state that they have long insisted is on the cusp of political change.

Unlike Democratic candidates in other parts of the country, O’Rourke hasn’t seemed to benefit from the burst of momentum that followed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and recent polling has shown Abbott’s lead expanding.

While the Texas governor’s mansion appears unlikely to flip this year, O’Rourke’s campaign marks the latest attempt by the former congressman to stage a comeback following his closely watched — though ultimately unsuccessful — bid to oust Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in 2018. 

That makes the stakes particularly high for O’Rourke. After his 2018 loss to Cruz and his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, another defeat would likely only raise further questions about the former rising star’s future political prospects.

Source: TEST FEED1

US grapples with wrought Russia, global challenges

Foreign policy rose to the forefront of the major Sunday talk shows, with lawmakers and White House officials alike expressing economic and national security concerns emanating from adversaries like Russia and North Korea.

Officials are grappling with North Korea’s recent ballistic missile launches, OPEC+’s announcement it will cut oil production, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats of using nuclear weapons.

After President Biden on Thursday at a Democratic fundraiser described Putin’s threats as “armageddon,” multiple Republicans on the Sunday shows criticized his characterization.

“Those comments were reckless, and I think that even more importantly, they demonstrate maybe one of the greatest foreign policy failures of the last decades, which was failure to deter Vladimir Putin in the same way that the Trump administration did for four years,” said former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on “Fox News Sunday.”

“When you hear a president talking about Armageddon as a random thought, just musing at a fundraiser, that is terrible risk to the American people,” Pompeo told host Shannon Bream. “If he truly believes it, he ought to be talking to us in a serious way.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) on NBC’s “Meet the Press” described Putin as a “cornered animal” as his military continues facing losses in four Ukrainian regions Russia annexed earlier this month. 

But like Pompeo, Bacon also lambasted Biden’s remark at the fundraiser.

“We got to stand firm towards him,” Bacon said. “You can’t let a bully push you around. I also do think President Biden’s got to be more careful though. Throwing down the nuclear Armageddon was a little too flippant. President of France, Macron, chided him on it. I think the president needs to be more cautious.”

The Biden administration has vowed severe consequences for Russia if Putin follows through on his threats, and White House officials have said they laid out more details of the U.S. response privately to the Kremlin.

“The president, I think, was accurately reflecting the fact that the stakes are very high right now,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz. 

Journalists also pressed officials on OPEC+’s announcement on Wednesday to cut daily production of oil by 2 million barrels, which is likely to increase the price of oil and bolster Russia’s exporting revenues to finance its war in Ukraine.

The oil-exporting alliance’s move came as a blow to the Biden administration, which has looked to increase supply levels to combat inflation and gas prices that rose in part after Russia’s invasion.

After saying during his 2020 campaign he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” for the murder of Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, Biden in July traveled the oil-rich country to appeal to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in a controversial visit.

“It didn’t come as a surprise to me,” Allianz Chief Economic Adviser Mohamed El-Erian on CBS’s “Face the Nation” said of the oil cartel’s production cutback.

“OPEC is looking to protect oil prices in the context of declining global demand,” he told guest moderator Major Garrett. “All three major areas in the world — China, Europe and the U.S. — are slowing much faster, which means less demand for oil. So what does OPEC do? They cut back supply.”

The production cutback has also led some lawmakers to reassess the longstanding U.S.-Saudi military alliance.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Middle East subcommittee, on CNN’s “State of the Union” told co-anchor Jake Tapper that the relationship “is broken.”

“We sell massive amounts of arms to the Saudis,” Murphy said on CNN. “I think we need to rethink those sales. I think we need to lift the exemption that we have given this OPEC+ cartel from U.S. price-fixing liability. I think we need to look at our true presence in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia.”

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-N.Y.), a former CIA and Defense Department official, told guest host Kristin Welker that the Saudis will live with the decision “for a long time.”

“At best they made a decision that didn’t help the rest of the world. At worst, they aligned themselves with Putin,” Slotkin said.

Beyond the wide-ranging challenges posed by Russia’s war in Ukraine, federal officials are also raising alarm bells in the Pacific, where North Korea in recent days has repeatedly launched rounds of ballistic missiles, including two more launched on Saturday.

The launches have led to heightened tensions in the region. The U.S. held joint military drills with South Korea and Japan after some of the recent launches.

“We’re working on better trilateral cooperation between all three of our countries,” Kirby, the White House national security spokesman, said on ABC.

“We’re going to make sure that we have the capabilities in place to defend our national security interests if it comes to that, but there’s no reason for it to come to that,” he added. “That’s the point, Martha. We could sit down, again, without preconditions with Kim Jong-un and try to find a diplomatic path forward. That’s what we’re committed to.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Five key issues that could decide the midterms

MILFORD, N.H. — Democrats and Republicans agree the midterm elections will turn on just a few key issues — but they disagree on what those will be.

Democrats believe they can win at least some of the fights in the final stretch over abortion rights and former President Trump. Republicans would rather battle it out on the margins over inflation and crime. And both sides want to claim victory in the immigration debate.

If polls are any indication, all these categories — a mix of economics, culture and personality politics — will help determine control of Congress in November.  

Here are the five issues that could shape the elections’ outcome:

Inflation

Republicans believe inflation will be the issue most top of mind for voters as they head to the ballot box and believe what they call President Biden’s economy gives them the edge.

They see Biden’s lackluster poll numbers and the stubbornly high prices as a sign they can win if they convince voters to trust Republicans to improve their financial situations.

While Biden’s standing has recently improved, many Americans are still wrestling with higher costs for basic daily needs, a reality that has privately worried Democrats who see their opposition making headway. 

Inflation consistently polls as a top issue for Americans. A Reuters-Ipsos poll released Wednesday found that 30 percent named it as their top concern, and the party in power almost always gets the blame for economic woes.

Even more troubling for liberals, the majority of the voters believe the country is heading in the wrong direction — signaling a potential shift to GOP control in some critical places.

In an August speech, Biden said that his nationwide plan to reinvigorate the economy was “working,” a simple line Republicans seized on in campaign materials. 

“As Biden insists his economic plan is ‘working,’ it’s worth asking, did he cause all of this economic pain on purpose?” Tommy Pigott, who runs the Republican National Committee’s rapid response effort, wrote in an email blast. 

Biden is, of course, not on the ballot this year. But as both the leader of the country and chief campaign surrogate for the party in charge of both chambers of Congress, his aligned candidates could end up taking the hit. 

Abortion

Democrats saw the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade as horrible and inhumane, so they got right to work trying to turn that anger into votes.

Democrats are “working to make sure voters hear every horrifying quote, see the antipathy they have for women” on the other side, said Julie McClain Downey, vice president of communications at American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic advocacy and lobbying firm that has focused heavily on reproductive freedom since the ruling in June. 

Democrats like McClain Downey have been pointing out the GOP’s coordinated effort to reverse protections around choice. Her goal is to make sure voters “know exactly who wants to take the freedom to make medical decisions out of their hands and seize it for themselves: Republicans,” she said.

Polls have shown the issue has a strength that surprised many. Democrats have also won every special House election since the court’s ruling, and House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates across the country have centered their campaigns around convincing voters Republicans are working to take away reproductive rights.

At the same time, some polls have shown the issue falling in terms of importance to voters when compared to economic issues.

Republicans have struggled to defend the court’s ruling. Some candidates, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), have taken hard-line positions against abortion, while others have muddled or even softened their stances as they entered general election mode. 

Most recently, one of Republicans’ top Senate candidates, Herschel Walker, a former football star who is running against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), denied paying for an abortion for the mother of one of his children, as alleged in a bombshell series of reports by the Daily Beast. Walker has repeatedly said he is against abortion under any circumstance.

Crime

Republicans have made headway in recent weeks in two Senate battlegrounds by characterizing the Democratic candidates as crime apologists who are closely aligned with a party that wants to “defund the police.”

GOP operatives and national strategists have increased their attacks on Mandela Barnes, the Democratic Senate nominee in Wisconsin and a young Black progressive, and Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman. 

In Wisconsin, Republicans have run ads seeking to tie Barnes to criminal justice reforms they characterize as soft on crime. In Pennsylvania, the GOP has highlighted crimes taking place around Philadelphia. 

The tactic appears to be working. Barnes is now trailing Johnson after holding a lead this summer. And the race between Fetterman and Republican nominee Mehmet Oz has tightened significantly.

Democratic strategists told The Hill that the Wisconsin race is not happening in isolation and that crime will likely be a defining issue for future close contests. 

In many Democrats’ views, the party needs to be on high alert to defend itself against the GOP’s critiques of liberal candidates as soft on crime, which many argue are rooted in racism and old tropes intended to divide regions of the country based on race and class. 

Immigration

If there’s one midterm issue likely to preview a big part of the 2024 presidential primary, it’s immigration. Look no further than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) recent decision to move migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, a wealthy coastal area of Massachusetts. 

DeSantis is one of the leading Republicans trying to make a national platform out of the country’s divided stance on immigration. His approach, which critics say amounts to political theater, shares some of the broad contours of Trump’s own policy platform, which included his signature support for building a wall across the U.S. border with Mexico. 

In Texas, GOP Gov. Greg Abbott similarly ordered a bus filled with migrants from Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba and other countries residing in his state off to Washington, D.C., specifically to Vice President Harris’s residence.

The two Republican governors’ moves came just before a federal appeals court ruled that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was illegal. The decision, which happened this week, allows current recipients of the program to keep their status for now, but sent alarm bells to activist communities who said the move creates yet another uncertain pathway for immigrant children living in the U.S.

“A terrible and deeply disappointing decision,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a pro-immigration advocacy group. “We will almost certainly see nearly 700,000 DACA recipients lose work authorization, lose protection from deportation and have their lives thrown into chaos in the very near future.”

Donald Trump

The Trump effect is arguably both parties’ biggest head scratcher in November. 

Trump saw many of his endorsed candidates win their primaries in key swing states and districts but there’s a debate among Republicans whether contenders who model themselves around his ideology are going to succeed in November.

Democrats have, in some cases, poured money into the candidates they think will be the easier to defeat: far-right Republicans who deny the results of the last presidential election and are sympathetic to conservative fringe groups. 

But there’s a difference of opinion within Democratic circles about whether focusing on Trump is an effective tactic. Biden, for his part, has been highly critical of “ultra-MAGA Republicans,” a group he believes is a small but outspoken and potentially dangerous faction of the GOP. And some Democrats are trying to make the case the former president is a threat to democracy itself.

Others, however, maintain that sticking to policy is how to win the midterms.

Many Republicans, meanwhile, have continued to embrace Trump, appearing at rallies with him and counting on his still-intense popularity with the GOP base.

Trump, meanwhile, is embroiled in his own political woes. He’s up against a barrage of coverage of multiple ongoing investigations into his finances, including from New York’s attorney general, as well as near-daily headlines about the FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

Source: TEST FEED1

Kerch Bridge explosion is personal for Putin: UK intelligence

(VIENNA) — Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely personally affected by the explosion on a crucial bridge linking Russia and the Ukrainian Crimean peninsula it occupies, which occurred hours after his birthday, England’s Ministry of Defense said on Sunday.

The British intelligence report makes a key link between Putin’s emotions and the military setback Russia now faces by damage to the Kerch Strait Bridge, signaling a major blow to both Russian operations and morale further under pressure by the Ukrainian military’s successful, counter-offensive advances. 

“This incident will likely touch President Putin closely; it came hours after his 70th birthday, he personally sponsored and opened the bridge, and its construction contractor was his childhood friend, Arkady Rotenberg,” the U.K. Ministry of Defense tweeted. 

The assessment added that while damage to the rail crossing is uncertain, “any serious disruption to its capacity will highly likely have a significant impact on Russia’s already strained ability to sustain its forces in southern Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s military has not officially claimed responsibility for the explosion on the Kerch Bridge Saturday, which damaged a section of freight railroad and severed a roadway that collapsed into the sea. 

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Saturday tweeted a short, undated video of traffic moving on the bridge with a caption signaling that transit operations were continuing as normal. 

Russian investigators said the explosion occurred from a truck.

Damage to the bridge is interpreted as a personal attack targeting Putin, with the span viewed as the Russian leader’s major, concrete manifestation of his stated claims to retake Ukraine. Russia invaded and occupied Crimea in 2014, imposing a referendum and annexing the territory in a move rejected by the international community at the time.

Putin celebrated the opening of the nearly $4 billion bridge in 2018 by driving a dump truck across a 12-mile section even as international powers condemned its construction as violation of international law and rejected Russia’s claims to Crimea. 

Timothy Snyder, Yale historian of Russia and Ukraine, tweeted on Saturday that the bridge explosion “cripples Russian logistics and dissolves the major symbol of Putin’s power.” 

Michael Kofman, director of the Russia Studies program at the Virginia-based think tank, CNA, said the explosion on the Kerch Bridge was meant to have “real operational effects” by disrupting Russian military supply lines related to its occupation of Ukraine’s Kherson region and efforts to control the region of Zaporizhzhia, with the Russian military occupying the region’s nuclear power plant but not all of the territory.

Kofman on the podcast “Geopolitics Decanted” called the explosion on the bridge “very coordinated” meant “potentially to degrade the supply lines to the south, to Kherson, Zhaporzhzhia, both from Crimea and both from mainland Russia.”

“I don’t think the attack on the Kerch bridge was just meant to be symbolic,” he added. “I think it was also meant to have real operational effects.”

The explosion and damage to the bridge, coupled with growing criticism in Russia of the war in Ukraine, still called a “special military operation,” are raising the possibility that Putin will lash out with nuclear weapons, amid his repeated threats of Moscow’s capabilities. 

Hours after the bridge explosion, Russian missile strikes reportedly hit civilian areas in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, with at least 12 killed and at least 49 injured, including six children. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called it “merciless strikes on peaceful people again.” 

“Absolute meanness. Absolute evil. Savages and terrorists. From the one who gave this order to everyone who fulfilled this order. They will bear responsibility. For sure. Before the law and before people,” Zelensky wrote on his Facebook page. 

Earlier, the Ukrainian president responded to the Kerch Bridge explosion that the future for Ukraine is “sunny.” 

“This is a future without occupiers. Throughout our territory, in particular in the Crimea,” he said in his address Saturday night. 

Mykhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of Ukrainian president, tweeted “Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled.” 

And Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, tweeted that “Israeli Mossad acknowledged today that they are no longer numbers one in the rating of world’s special services.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Vast majority of red-state seniors have been vaccinated, despite GOP vaccine resistance

When the COVID-19 vaccine rolled out, Clyde Muchmore was ready to drive across Oklahoma to get it. 

“At the very, very first, all we knew was that a whole lot of people were dying,” recalled Muchmore, 80, of Oklahoma City. He scheduled a vaccine, he said, “on absolutely the first day I could.” 

Nearly half of Oklahoma’s overall population has declined the COVID-19 vaccine. Yet more than 90 percent of seniors in the state have completed at least one round of inoculations, and almost two-thirds have received at least one booster. Both figures fall close to national averages.  

The same pattern plays out in other Republican-majority states. Public health data suggests red-state resistance to the COVID-19 vaccine is largely the province of the young. Seniors in the reddest states are inoculated and boosted at nearly the same rate as older Americans overall. The trend holds in Wyoming and West Virginia, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Idaho, all states where large majorities of voters cast ballots for former President Trump in 2020.  

Public health experts say older Americans in conservative states have embraced the COVID-19 vaccine as a matter of survival, prioritizing it above partisan politics, libertarian impulses and fears of government overreach.  

“For me, the COVID vaccine was really a no-brainer,” said Massimo Poggio, 75, of St. George, Utah, a solid Trump state in 2020. “It had nothing to do with my political views. It had to do with the feeling that I was at higher risk. I have family and friends who lost people to COVID-19.”  

Poggio scheduled his first COVID-19 vaccine in January 2021. He scheduled his third booster for Friday, in tandem with his seasonal flu shot: “It seemed to be the responsible thing to do.” 

In the five reddest states, as measured in the 2020 election, overall COVID-19 vaccination rates lag well below the national average of 68 percent. But seniors in those states are vaccinated at rates ranging from 86 percent in Wyoming and West Virginia to 91 percent in Oklahoma. In the United States as a whole, 92 percent of seniors have completed at least one round of vaccines. 

“People who are old recognized what was happening, particularly in the earliest stages of the pandemic, and they saw who was dying,” said Susan Hassig, a professor of epidemiology at Tulane University in New Orleans. “They saw their friends getting really, really sick.” 

In Oklahoma City and its surrounding county, seniors have sought out the COVID-19 vaccine in waves, mirroring the peaks and valleys of the disease itself. Sixty-five percent of seniors in Oklahoma County completed vaccinations by May 2021, in the first months when shots were available. By July, at the start of the delta wave, 81 percent of older residents had been vaccinated. The rate climbed to 90 percent in December, early in the omicron wave.  

“A lot of right-leaning seniors realized that the risk of death and hospitalization was high enough that they weren’t really willing to put politics over their health,” said Aaron Wendelboe, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Oklahoma. 

Today, vaccination rates in Oklahoma and Tulsa counties exceed 95 percent among seniors. In the state’s rural Latimer County, by contrast, only 55 percent of seniors are inoculated.  

Rural Oklahomans, Wendelboe said, sometimes see COVID-19 as a problem of the big cities. Some Oklahomans have become swept up in the anti-vaccine movement, campaigning against the vaccine on social media and call-in radio.  

Muchmore, the Oklahoma City senior, said he doesn’t know anyone in that movement. Instead, he sees individual Oklahomans accepting the vaccine or refusing it for myriad reasons, including concerns about side effects, a personal calculus of family health risks and a shared sense of outrage at the government telling people what to do. 

“There is general resentment among people in Oklahoma against the heavy hand,” Muchmore said. “There is irritation that people are forced to give up their jobs or retire from the Army” if they refuse the vaccine. “I hear a lot of complaints about that, and I share them.”  

But that didn’t stop Muchmore from getting vaccinated. He received his third booster shot last week. 

COVID-19 politics have burned hotter in some states than others.  

In West Virginia, “we had a Republican governor,” Jim Justice, “who was out there pushing vaccines,” said Mike Pushkin, chairman of the West Virginia Democratic Party. “When the vaccine was new, it was one of the easiest states to get vaccinated in. We had people showing up from New York, from Connecticut, from the other states because it was easier to get a vaccine here.” 

After a brisk rollout, “I think we hit a wall,” Pushkin said. “Everyone who wanted a vaccine in West Virginia got one, and then it stopped.” The statewide vaccination rate stands at 59 percent overall, 86 percent among seniors.  

In Idaho, activists gathered in the spring of 2021 for mask burnings. The state’s Republican lieutenant governor opposed mask mandates and once suggested, incorrectly, that vaccinated Idahoans were more likely to die.  

The anti-vaccine campaign resonated in Idaho, a state with a history of opting out of childhood immunizations. The statewide immunization rate dipped last year to 80.2 percent, dangerously low for maintaining herd immunity to polio, among other epidemiological horrors.  

“There’s what I could call an overly high value placed on parental control of their kids,” said Melissa Wintrow, a Democrat who serves on the Idaho state Senate. “It’s not very difficult to not be vaccinated in Idaho.” 

Idaho’s overall COVID-19 vaccination rate stands at 55 percent. Among seniors, by contrast, 89 percent have completed at least one round of shots and 71 percent are boosted, near the national averages.  

“When you think of older Idahoans, they’re not plugged into social media,” Wintrow said. “And I think that means they’re not getting the misinformation and conspiracy theories. People in this generation, they lived through other epidemics. They know about polio. They know about smallpox. They trust and believe in science.” 

Jerry Leonard of Moscow, Idaho, is 72 and fully vaccinated. He believes older Idahoans are more likely than the younger generation to heed the advice of public health leaders.  

“We see doctors a lot,” Leonard said. “The medical community in Idaho has been on top of this. And we listen to them. And it’s been a pretty clear message.” 

In the months since the mask burnings, COVID-19 protests in Idaho have died down. People in the state feel less pressure to vaccinate in secret, older Idahoans say. Mask wearing is both less common and more tolerated.  

“I got my booster at a Black Crowes concert right here in town,” said Wintrow, the state senator. “I posted it on social media. I got more likes on that than I did on The Black Crowes.” 

Public health leaders hope older Americans will ultimately settle into an annual routine, receiving a COVID-19 booster along with a seasonal flu shot. Roughly two-thirds of older Americans receive annual flu vaccines.  

Already, more than two-thirds of seniors in most deep-red states have received at least one COVID-19 booster, not far behind the national average of 71 percent for that age group. 

A much smaller share have scheduled second or third boosters. Nationally, 44 percent of seniors have received two or more COVID-19 booster shots.  

“The perception is that the virus isn’t as problematic, even though we’re still losing 300, 400 people a day to something that is almost completely preventable,” said Hassig, the Tulane epidemiologist. “That’s like two airplanes falling out of the sky.” 

President Biden recently declared the pandemic over before walking back the remark. That comment did not sit well with Hassig and many of her peers.  

“This virus has tricked us before,” she said.  

Source: TEST FEED1

New life for Musk-Twitter deal raises the Trump question

Elon Musk’s renewed interest in purchasing Twitter is again raising the prospect that its most famously banned user could be allowed back.

Former President Trump has been adamant that he will stick with Truth Social, the fledgling social media platform he helped found, regardless of whether he is welcomed back to Twitter. But experts and Trump allies believe the allure of the massive Twitter audience would be too great to resist, putting his future there front and center as the Musk deal shows new signs of life.

“It’s coming…” former Trump legal adviser Jenna Ellis tweeted this week, along with an edited video that showed Trump returning to Twitter with a tweet that read: “Your favorite president is back!” as Musk looked on.

Trump has been banned from Twitter since January 2021 in the wake of his tweets around the violence at the Capitol, which followed months of spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election. YouTube and Facebook have both also kicked Trump off their sites.

The ban has deprived him of his preferred megaphone since leaving office, leaving him relegated to posting on Truth Social, sending those posts and other statements as press releases and conducting the occasional interview, typically with friendly conservative hosts.

After a series of snags in negotiations between Musk and Twitter that saw the billionaire try to get out of the deal, Musk on Tuesday said he planned to follow through on his offer to buy the platform on the same terms that were agreed upon in April.

“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was a mistake,” Musk said in May. “It alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”

A final sale to Musk is far from assured. Twitter sued Musk in July to try to force him to go through with the original deal after he attempted to back out, citing the number of spam accounts on the platform. The company has yet to accept the latest proposal, and the litigation between the two sides is ongoing.

The latest developments, however, have rekindled chatter among Trump allies, critics and Democrats about what the purchase could mean for the former president’s future on the platform, as Musk could quickly move to reinstate Trump to signal he is serious about reforms.

Trump has spent much of the last year posting on Truth Social, where he has millions of followers, and his posts often dabble in conspiracy theories and misinformation about the 2020 election and investigations into his conduct.

“I am not going on Twitter. I am going to stay on Truth,” Trump told Fox News after Musk first offered to buy the company. He has also dismissed Twitter as “boring” and unexciting since his forced departure from it.

But experts and Trump allies believe the allure of Twitter’s reach, its familiarity and its legitimacy with members of the media would make it too much to turn down.

“What we know about Trump and his rhetoric and how it connects to his actions, he will want it to look like he would deign to go back to Twitter,” said Brian Monahan, a professor at Baldwin Wallace University who has analyzed Trump’s tweets and their themes.

“I don’t think it would be immediate, but I think it would be really hard to resist because the impact is so much more pronounced and powerful on Twitter than they have been on his other platform,” Monahan added.

Democrats would almost certainly oppose any reinstatement. Lawmakers warned shortly after Musk first tried to buy the company that bringing Trump back online would lead to a flood of outrageous statements that could incite violence.

Seemingly validating those concerns, Trump posted last week on Truth Social that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had a “death wish,” which lawmakers condemned as a call to violence.

While Trump has nearly 4 million followers on Truth Social, it’s a fraction of the nearly 90 million he had on Twitter. 

Multiple outlets have reported on the satisfaction Trump got as he or an aide pressed “tweet” on a message while he was in the White House, then turned on cable news to see coverage quickly pivot to what he had written.

While some of Trump’s posts on Truth Social still get traction with a wider audience, even Musk dismissed it as “essentially a rightwing echo chamber” in an interview with The Financial Times published Friday.

Part of the reason for that, Monahan argued, is that scores of journalists use Twitter regularly as part of their jobs. When Trump would tweet, his message would quickly spread as reporters retweeted and quote tweeted it as news of the day.

A Twitter reinstatement could lead to much greater exposure for Trump’s musings, Monahan said, as journalists who have largely ignored his posts on Truth Social would once again be able to quickly and conveniently highlight his tweets, even if they contained falsehoods or inflammatory rhetoric.

“A return to Twitter reflexively would give him a little bit more attention,” Monahan said.

Trump allies believe a return to Twitter would largely be beneficial, though they pointed to his previous statements as a sign that he would not immediately hop back on the platform without it being on his own terms.

One GOP operative with ties to Trump’s orbit argued access to Twitter could further entrench him as a kingmaker within the GOP at a time when Trump is mulling whether to run for president again in 2024.

But there is a risk that a reinstatement to Twitter could cut both ways for Trump.

The former president’s return to the spotlight in the news cycle after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago home in August was followed by a surge in polling for Democrats as they sought to make the midterms a choice between their party and the Trump wing of the GOP.

And Trump has had a tendency to cause headaches with his own tweets in the past, such as when he appeared to contradict his logic for firing former FBI Director James Comey and when he tweeted out attacks on former Vice President Mike Pence as violence was unfolding on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” tweeted Kurt Bardella, a former GOP staffer turned Democratic strategist. “Elon Musk inviting Trump back to Twitter is the October surprise Kevin McCarthy & Mitch McConnell don’t want to see happen.”

Source: TEST FEED1