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Freedom Caucus starts to turn up the pressure on GOP leaders 

The conservative House Freedom Caucus is turning up the heat on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the rest of his leadership team, setting the stage for what could be a difficult relationship if Republicans take the House majority this fall.  

Past GOP Speakers have struggled to move legislation because of conservatives in their conference, and the management of the Freedom Caucus is widely seen as a huge test for McCarthy if he becomes the Speaker of the House.  

“[Former GOP Speaker] Paul Ryan [Wis.] used to say it’s like keeping frogs in a wheelbarrow,” said one House Republican who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “It’s going to be a great challenge to keep everybody together.”

The confrontational conservative group has already started to poke at leadership with a battle over House rules that would chip away at leadership’s power, releasing this summer a set of rules change requests for the House Republican Conference and the House as a whole that would give more power to individual members.  

The rule changes include restoring the ability of any member to make a “motion to vacate the Chair.” 

This essentially serves as a motion to oust the Speaker. It was last used by the Freedom Caucus against former GOP Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) in 2015, when it helped push Boehner into retirement. 

In House GOP conference meetings, Freedom Caucus members have pressed House leaders to hold a vote on the conference rules before a vote on House GOP leadership to prevent leaders from writing the rules that they want.

That request was tabled, prompting frustration from Freedom Caucus members.

“I thought that was sort of an untoward response to the proposals,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.). Leadership argued that members should keep attention on winning the majority on Nov. 8, he said.

The vote order request has been “essentially dismissed without being defended by leadership,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.). “I don’t understand, you know, why we would be asked to vote on rules that we have not seen a week after the election. That’s what happened two years ago, and I fear it will happen again.”

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said that he had a meeting recently with GOP leaders to discuss the rules change requests. He characterized the meeting as productive, but lacking commitments. 

“I’m disappointed that we’re still not still not really moving the chains, here. We’re not moving the ball down the field,” Perry said. 

The Freedom Caucus could have a lot of leverage on McCarthy if the GOP wins the House majority and the Californian seeks the Speakership, particularly if the size of the majority is slim.

He will first need majority support from an internal conference vote. Then there will later be a vote on the House floor, where Democrats will vote against McCarthy for Speaker. The Californian will need Republicans to stick together to ensure any defections do not jeopardize the Speakership vote.

Current Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) faced a tight situation last year, winning with the smallest majority in decades. She converted five Democrats who did not vote for her in 2019 to vote for her in 2021, and narrowly won the gavel despite some defections. That foreshadowed Democratic divisions later in the year that forced her to delay a major infrastructure bill vote. 

Boehner faced a wave of opposition from the right flank in 2015, when 25 GOP members voted against him for Speaker, setting the tone for the tumultuous final months before his resignation later that year.

There are around three dozen members in the Freedom Caucus now, with some members retiring and other GOP candidates hoping to join the confrontational group.

Asked if he thinks the group would have more power with a smaller majority, Perry said: “It seems to be an arithmetic equation to me.” 

But McCarthy has no challenger to the House Speakership at this point, partly because he has given the caucus a seat at the table. 

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) once challenged McCarthy to be leader of the conference, but the high-profile Freedom Caucus member now has the top GOP spot on the House Judiciary Committee. Jordan supports McCarthy for Speaker. 

The House GOP has whipped against bills that the Freedom Caucus has asked Republicans to oppose, such as bipartisan infrastructure legislation signed into law last year. More recently, the House GOP asked members to oppose a continuing resolution to fund the government following a Freedom Caucus stand. 

In a sign of McCarthy’s efforts to woo conservatives in his conference, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was invited to his rollout of a “Commitment to America” policy platform in June.  

She expressed appreciation for the GOP leader giving a green light to an August push by some Freedom Caucus members to have GOP members vote by proxy for Democrats’ climate, health care and tax reform bill in hopes of spurring a later legal challenge on the legitimacy of the law.    

“I think people read him wrong,” Greene said of McCarthy. “I think that was a good sign to show everyone that he’s really engaged with the entire conference, and that included the Freedom Caucus.” 

But she has declined to commit to supporting him for Speaker. 

One GOP member said McCarthy has done “pretty well, surprisingly,” in managing the Freedom Caucus.

“He’s given him his ear. He’s hearing their concerns,” the Republican said. “It wasn’t a bad move to bring Jim Jordan in close and give Marjorie a voice.” 

But that is subject to change if the conference goes from being united against Democratic proposals in a minority to having differing views on policy focus and tactics in a majority.

“Not sure I would want that job,” quipped Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas).

It is not just the Speakership vote McCarthy would have to carefully manage with the right flank. Measures to raise the debt ceiling and on immigration have been sticking points in the past, and Republicans in the current Congress have split on foreign aid and funding to Ukraine. 

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is predicting the Democrats will keep control of the House in November. But if McCarthy were to take the gavel, Hoyer warned of legislative gridlock as GOP leaders face pressure from conservatives to eschew any compromise with the Biden administration and shift the focus instead to investigations of the president and his family. 

He noted that the last two GOP Speakers — Boehner and Ryan — were both nudged into early retirements by conservatives in their own ranks. 

“Ryan and Boehner got out. Why’d they get out? Because the people who were controlling the party were the Freedom Caucus,” Hoyer said. 

But members of the House Freedom Caucus are not quite ready to forecast challenges the group might make. 

“I’ve been here long enough not to be the optimist I’m being, but I’m hoping that we’re all on the same page going forward,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), a former chairman of the group. 

Mike Lillis contributed. 

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DeSantis takes over the national conversation

No one has been at the forefront of the national conversation more in the last month than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).  

DeSantis, seen as a top contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is firmly at the center of the national news cycle.  

He made headlines initially by choice when he had dozens of migrants flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., in a bid to seize attention in the fight over the border.  

As that controversy continued to unfold, DeSantis found himself at the center over his state’s preparations and then response to Hurricane Ian, which hit Florida hard.  

Since then, DeSantis has remained in the national consciousness with daily news conferences carried live on national news networks, piquing the curiosity of viewers who are not only interested in the aftermath of the storm but also in the governor himself.  

“In politics, you want visibility almost more than anything else,” one Democratic strategist acknowledged of the governor’s constant presence on the political stage in recent weeks. “And it’s safe to say he’s gotten that visibility more than almost any national figure these days.” 

“People know who he is,” the strategist added. “That’s the sweet spot.”  

Brendan Buck, who served as a longtime aide to former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), said that DeSantis’s handling of the aftermath of the hurricane in particular has “gone pretty well” for him.  

“It’s a chance for him to show people that he’s not just someone on Fox News fighting a culture war,” Buck said. “He is actually an intelligent politician who understands the rule of government.” 

And at a moment when some Republicans have moved away from former President Trump and are looking for other options, it places DeSantis’s brash, aggressive, Trumpian-style front and center for prospective voters. 

“It demonstrates broadly that you can have everything you like about Donald Trump and still a competent government,” Buck said. 

One Florida Republican consultant said the attention on DeSantis has put him in a prime position to take on Trump in a primary.  

“Nobody can argue with the fact that Donald Trump is the most popular, the most beloved Republican in the country,” the consultant said. “But when you turn on the news, you see scandals, you see lawsuits. Then you look over and Ron DeSantis is out there talking about hurricane relief and securing the border. I think that’s right where he wants to be.” 

The Martha’s Vineyard migrant move has sparked a legal fight, angering Democrats and perhaps annoying some Republicans, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The Texan was the first GOP governor to really start sending migrants to Democratic enclaves.  

Yet if migration holds some risks for DeSantis, his response to the devastating hurricane is likely more important for his political future. It could also likely do him more harm if voters are unhappy with his actions.  

“In situations like this, you have a lot more to lose from a bad performance,” Buck said. 

DeSantis has already come under criticism on the preparedness of his state and whether officials there made the right evacuation calls.  

In an interview with CNN, he pushed back on questions about whether officials in the state should have evacuated residents in southwest Florida sooner than they had.  

Officials there had first predicted that the hurricane would make landfall around the Tampa Bay area.  

“Were you guys in Lee County? No, you were in Tampa,” DeSantis said to the reporter, after he was asked about not having a mandatory evacuation in the county that saw the most devastation until the day before the hurricane made landfall.  

At the same time, he also made headlines for saying Florida is “a Second Amendment state,” while threatening would-be looters from stealing property from areas hit hardest by the storms.  

“I can tell you, in the state of Florida, you never know what may be lurking behind somebody’s home,” he said at a news conference late last week. “And I would not want to chance that, if I were you, given that we’re a Second Amendment state.” 

Strategists say the tough part for DeSantis, who faces reelection in November, will come in the following weeks and months, when he continues to advocate for his state. And while some political observers say he has demonstrated leadership in the aftermath of the hurricane, others say he’s unrelatable in key moments.  

“He is leadership-by-press conference,” said Susan Del Percio, a longtime Republican consultant. “But the connect has to be, do those press conferences lead to services?”  

“This is the part where it’s important to go to communities and relate to people and show you care,” Del Percio said. “It doesn’t seem like Ron DeSantis has that gene … It doesn’t seem like he’s that warm and fuzzy guy.”  

On Wednesday, DeSantis will once again be in the spotlight when he is expected to appear side-by-side with President Biden, whom he has repeatedly criticized.  

Political observers say his public interactions with Biden will also provide a compare and contrast for voters of the two men, who could be rivals in the 2024 race. 

It will give the viewing public an opportunity to decide whether DeSantis is worthy of taking on the president, one Republican strategist said.  

“These moments matter,” the strategist said.  

Buck said the optics, particularly in the aftermath of the hurricane, have boosted DeSantis’s image and have given him a “level of seriousness that’s not often attributed to him.”  

“He has projected an image of control and that’s he’s on top of this and is able to put politics aside,” he said. “He’s proven he’s not just a caricature … and he can use this down the road.” 

Max Greenwood contributed.

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The Memo: Trump’s death wish attack on McConnell sets alarm bells ringing

Former President Trump’s penchant for violent language has bubbled to the fore again in his feud with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Trump’s latest salvo was the ominous assertion that McConnell must have a “DEATH WISH” merely for supporting some legislation that was backed by Democrats.

The remark, posted on the Truth Social platform Friday, has drawn some degree of condemnation beyond the ranks of liberals and Democrats. 

The comment will also deepen the toxicity of a political atmosphere in which many lawmakers are already taking security measures in response to increased threats of violence.

The editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, which are reliably conservative, condemned the “DEATH WISH” comment as “ugly even by Mr. Trump’s standards.” 

Trump, the Journal’s editors wrote, “always puts himself first, and with this rhetoric, he may put others at genuine risk of harm.”

Other, more predictable voices also blasted Trump.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), speaking at an event at Syracuse University on Monday, called the former president’s remarks an “absolutely despicable, racist attack.” The assertion of racism was in reference to language from Trump in the same post targeting McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who was born in Taiwan.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House select committee on Jan. 6 — on which Cheney also serves — called Trump’s comments “inflammatory and racist.” Thompson, too, warned that they “could incite political violence.”

Those are grimly realistic warnings given that the nation is already seeing an upsurge in threats — and worse — against lawmakers and other political figures.

Within the past few months, one man has been charged with the attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative, and another with felony stalking of Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). Another man attacked Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), a gubernatorial candidate, at a campaign event.

In the Jayapal case, Brett Forsell allegedly showed up at Jayapal’s home armed and shouting obscenities. He has pleaded not guilty.

In the Kavanaugh case, 26-year-old Nicholas Roske was arrested having traveled cross-country to Kavanaugh’s home, allegedly in possession of a pistol and ammunition. He, too, has pleaded not guilty.

A New York Times investigation published Saturday noted that recorded threats against lawmakers had risen about tenfold between 2016 and 2021. 

The Times’s analysis of threats that resulted in indictments found that more than one-third came from GOP or Trump supporters against their ideological opponents, while almost one-quarter came from Democrats and were aimed at Republicans or conservatives. The rest could not be ideologically categorized.

The Times’s report also quoted lawmakers across the political spectrum expressing alarm. 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told the newspaper that her office receives an “astronomical” number of threats and that she worried the broad problem would not get the attention it merits “unless someone gets hurt.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told the Times, “I wouldn’t be surprised if a senator or House member were killed” and lamented that there had been “erosion of any boundaries of what is acceptable behavior.”

McConnell has been a frequent target of Trump’s ire, as the former president has railed against him as an “old crow” and a “hack politician,” among other things. The Senate minority leader and his inner circle almost never respond to Trump’s barbs, believing that doing so only fuels the fires of media outrage upon which the former president thrives.

Republican elected officials have, for the most part, avoided rejecting Trump’s remarks.

Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), the head of the Senate Republicans’ campaign fundraising arm, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday merely that he was going to “try my best to bring people together.” 

Scott also told CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump “likes to give people nicknames,” though he did say that it is “never ever OK to be a racist.”

The extraordinarily mild pushback from the Senate GOP against a former president raising an implicit threat against its leader would have been unthinkable in the pre-Trump era. 

But as with much else over the past six years, everything has now changed.

“It’s just one more example of the belligerent, dangerous language that Trump is willing to use,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “Once again, he is using violent language against other people and it’s appalling.”

Beirich invoked the French concept of a cordon sanitaire — essentially, a consensus that certain ideas, ideologies or threats have to be excluded from the political discourse for the common good — and said that “it has just collapsed, and collapsed mostly on the right.”

Allan Lichtman, a professor of history at American University, asserted, “We have never seen anything like Donald Trump. We have never seen a president or a former president being so willing to threaten and incite violence.”

Lichtman argued that “bothsidesism” was flawed when it comes to the threat of political violence.

Attacks aimed by the left at Republicans, Lichtman argued, “are not instigated by a former president, and I don’t see that they were incited by any major Democratic leader.”

Conservatives contend that the linkage between Trump’s rhetoric and actual violence is exaggerated. They also argue that Democratic leaders have contributed to a coarsening of political debate and dangerous hyperbole, as when President Biden recently equated elements of Trump’s “MAGA” populism to “semi-fascism.”

But however the blame is exactly proportioned, the picture is bleak and getting bleaker.

Beirich asserted that credible threats of political violence “predominate on the far-right extremity to a huge level.”

“But I do think we have normalized … that violence in politics is somehow an OK thing to talk about,” she added.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage. 

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McConnell saw killing Manchin bill as personal

For Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), killing Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) permitting reform bill was personal. 

McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, looked like he’d been hoodwinked when Manchin announced a deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the Inflation Reduction Act.

Sixteen Republicans had just backed a major semiconductor bill — thinking the sweeping tax, climate and health care legislation Democrats had been trying to pass for more than a year was dead. McConnell had vowed to withhold GOP support from the semiconductor legislation, also known as the CHIPS bill, if the larger measure moved forward.   

Instead, just hours after the Senate’s passage of the semiconductor legislation, Manchin and Schumer announced a deal that would pave the way for passage of the Inflation Reduction Act — the biggest legislative agenda item on the Democratic docket.  

It was a political blow to McConnell, and his GOP critics would pounce.

“Mitch McConnell got played like a fiddle with the vote today by Senate Democrats,” former President Trump, McConnell’s biggest critic in the Republican Party, wrote on Truth Social after the bill’s passage.

McConnell, always seen as a savvy Washington insider, had suffered a major strategic defeat.

But he would get his revenge.

GOP senators say McConnell felt Manchin had misled him about the state of Democratic negotiations on the larger measure. He told them that it would be totally inappropriate to reward Manchin by giving him the votes he needed to pass a permitting reform bill.

“[McConnell] said the idea that we would bail him about after he lied to us, he lied to me — he made it very personal — I hope no one is considering that,” one Republican senator told The Hill, referring to a conversation at a GOP senators’ lunch last month.

At the lunch, the senator said McConnell instructed GOP senators not to reward Manchin’s vote.

“He was pretty direct,” the lawmaker added.  

Republican strategists say that McConnell had to hold Manchin accountable if he thought the West Virginia senator had assured him that increasing taxes was off the table before a key vote on the semiconductor bill.

“Manchin is in the wrong here because the Senate is a small, clubby atmosphere. When you give your word to a senator, that’s considered your bond,” said Brian Darling, Republican strategist former Senate aide. “It was a very high-profile non-keeping of commitment.  

“The evidence all points to the fact that Manchin was not honest with McConnell, so McConnell is right to block his bill,” he added. “McConnell is well within his rights to get retribution on Manchin if it’s true that Manchin lied to his face. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.” 

Publicly, many Republicans have pointed to policy reasons for why the Manchin bill failed.

Republican senators and aides said Manchin’s permitting reform bill was too weak and never would have gotten support from a majority of Senate Republicans.  

But it had a good chance of getting the 12 or so Republican votes it needed to pass the Senate if McConnell hadn’t put his thumb on the scale to tip it decisively against Manchin. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a leading business group, had endorsed Manchin’s bill.

McConnell had promised to block the semiconductor bill as long as Manchin and Schumer were working to pass a tax bill through Congress with only Democratic votes. 

“Let me be perfectly clear: there will be no bipartisan USICA as long as Democrats are pursuing a partisan reconciliation bill,” McConnell tweeted on June 30. 

McConnell told Republican senators that Manchin had assured him that tax hikes were off the table before he gave his conference the green light to vote for the semiconductor bill, according to GOP senators and aides.  

“I do know that back during CHIPS that McConnell did say that he had assurances from Manchin” that the tax talks were over, said a Republican aide. “Manchin says what he thinks people want to hear. McConnell heard what he wanted to hear.”  

Manchin unveiled his deal with Schumer only hours after 16 Republican senators, including McConnell, voted to pass the CHIPS bill.  

A key part of the deal was Schumer promised to put Manchin’s permitting reform bill on must-pass legislation coming to the floor before Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. 

McConnell was determined to stop Manchin from getting that pay-off. 

The GOP leader had told his colleagues on several occasions that collaborating with Democrats on a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill in 2021 had taken the political momentum out of President Biden’s tax and climate agenda.  

For much of 2022, it appeared McConnell was right. Talks between the White House and Manchin on the larger legislation fell apart in December. There didn’t appear to be any further negotiation or progress between Schumer and Manchin for the first few months of 2022.  

And the talks that eventually started in the spring appeared to blow up in mid-July, when Schumer accused Manchin of “walking away” after months of negotiation.   

But when Manchin and Schumer suddenly announced their deal on the Inflation Reduction Act at the end of July, it made it clear that GOP senators had received the green light to vote for the CHIPS Act too. 

“He felt he was burned and his credibility was damaged,” the senator said of McConnell’s reaction to Manchin announcing his surprise deal with Schumer. “He was angry about it.”  

The Republican senator who aired those feelings of betrayal publicly was Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who also voted for the CHIPS Act.  

Cornyn said “trust was eviscerated” when Manchin unveiled his deal with Schumer.  

“Sens. Manchin and Schumer did not draft this 725-page bill in the four hours between the passage of the CHIPS Act and Senator Manchin’s press release. They’ve been working on this the entire time when they told us it was off the table,” he fumed on the Senate floor.  

“To look you in the eye and tell you one thing and to do another is absolutely unforgivable,” he said. 

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What happens if Lake Powell runs out of water? 

If Lake Powell recedes much further, one of the nation’s largest reservoirs could be at risk of no longer generating hydropower for the region. 

The lake was just under 24 percent full as of last week, and had lost 16 feet in the last year. Its depth level currently stands at around 3,530 feet. 

How much power does the lake generate? 

Northern Arizona’s Glen Canyon Dam, which creates the lake, has a full capacity of 1,320 megawatts, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. However, the receding water levels have already greatly reduced the reservoir’s generating capacity, to about 800 megawatts—about 60 percent. 

Glen Canyon Dam, Colorado River, Arizona. Getty Images.

How many people rely on it? 

Lake Powell generates power for about 5.8 million households and businesses in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.   

In addition to the power the lake generates directly, it is a major source of grid resilience when full, serving as a quick backup source in cases where solar or wind power can’t meet demand.

The loss of generation from the lake would deprive the grid of about a quarter million households’ worth of power. 

On top of the hydropower the lake generates, it’s the source of drinking water for the 7,500 residents of Page, Az., and the 1,443 members of the LeChee chapter of the Navajo Nation.  

If allocations from the Colorado River dip below the levels necessary for some customers to receive hydropower, “the real question [becomes] what can our grid accommodate from a hydropower perspective in terms of compensating production losses from Glen Canyon?” said Justin Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth College.

“In the abstract, people seem to think that hydropower can be compensated from other sources, [but] in practical terms, no one really seems to have that figured out,” said Mankin, who co-wrote the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Drought Task Force’s annual report in 2021. 

What’s the point of no return? 

“It’s important to differentiate between Lake Powell running dry versus Lake Powell dropping below elevation 3,490 [feet],” Taylor Hawes, Colorado River program director at the Nature Conservancy, told The Hill in an interview.  

Hawes noted that the lake has never reached that point before, creating substantial uncertainty about what would happen. “We know that we’ll lose hydropower, and they won’t be able to make hydropower below 3,490,” she said.

Complicating matters are the ongoing talks on allocation between the seven states on the Colorado River, the source of the lake’s waters.  

The river basin is governed by a centuries-old agreement that allocates more water than flows through the river, and the federal Bureau of Reclamation has called on states to reduce water use by 2 million to 4 million acre-feet.  

What happens if we pass that point, and what can be done? 

Officials have already taken some stopgap measures to avert the lake getting down to the pivotal 3,490-foot mark.

Earlier this year, the Bureau of Reclamation released about 500,000 acre-feet from Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Utah and Wyoming to Lake Powell, increasing its elevation about 16 feet. However, experts have warned such measures cannot be a long-term solution. 

In addition, Mankin said, interventions like the Flaming Gorge release treat the western U.S.’s 20-year drought as a localized phenomenon rather than a regional one. 

“The idea that these smaller upstream reservoirs can continue to compensate Powell’s losses, that’s not the case,” he said. “Powell is not drying out in a vacuum.”  

If the lake’s levels drop below 3,490, Hawes added, the Bureau of Reclamation will have to run water through a series of river outlet tubes, the lowest delivery mechanism in the lake, for the first time since the 1980s, and bureau officials “don’t actually know if they can handle that much water,” she said.  

If the outlet tubes can’t meet the reservoir’s needs, she said, the flow of water in the Grand Canyon itself could be reduced to a trickle.  

The Glen Canyon Institute has advocated for draining Lake Powell, both to replenish Lake Mead and to restore Glen Canyon, which was flooded to create Lake Powell. Institute Executive Director Eric Balken said taking such a step would better position stakeholders to address the drought on their own terms rather than simply running out. 

If the water level continues falling on its own, “below minimum power pool, the dam is physically incapable of releasing a lot of water. And so this creates a lot of potential problems downstream in the Grand Canyon, it creates management problems for the reservoir itself in Glen Canyon, and most importantly, it jeopardizes the upper [Colorado River] basin’s ability to meet its delivery obligation downstream,” Balken said.  

“If it’s done intentionally, the drawbacks of losing the reservoir could be minimized and the benefits could be maximized,” Balken told The Hill. “If decision makers do nothing and take no action and just let the reservoir crash without structurally modifying the dam, there will be a lot of really big problems.” 

Ultimately, experts said the future of the lake must be addressed in a way that creates the certainty it was intended to provide. 

Lake Powell “is supposed to buffer water supply during times of drought [and] it is not performing that function now. It is not creating certainty in the water market,” Mankin said.  

On the contrary, he said, “it’s actually become this locus of huge uncertainty, which doesn’t allow downstream users to make effective plans, because they don’t know what their allocations are going to be. And it doesn’t allow ratepayers who rely on power production from the canyon to be forward-thinking and operate under conditions of certainty.” 

“Cities, farmers and fish all need certainty when it comes to water, and this is the opposite of certainty,” Hawes said.  “This is very unpredictable and these are going to be difficult conversations in the coming years.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

US condemns North Korea ballistic missile launch

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke with his counterparts in Japan and South Korea late Monday following reports that North Korea had launched a ballistic missile that prompted Japanese officials to tell citizens to seek shelter.

The missile test over Japan was North Korea’s most significant since January. Japan hasn’t issued a shelter warning for citizens over such a matter since 2017.

Sullivan spoke with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts in which they “consulted on appropriate and robust joint and international responses,” according to a statement by the White House.

“The United States will continue its efforts to limit the DPRK’s ability to advance its prohibited ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs, including with allies and UN partners,” the statement read.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called the launch “reckless.”

“The firing, which followed a recent series of launches by North Korea, is a reckless act and I strongly condemn it,” Kishida told reporters according to the Associated Press.

The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo responded shortly after the launch of the missile, relaying Japan’s warning of the launch.

The firing of the intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan prompted evacuations and and suspended trains in the country. Japanese officials said they believe the weapons eventually landed in the Pacific Ocean, according to AP.

Updated 11:07 p.m.

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OPEC+ production cut threatens gas price spike ahead of midterms 

OPEC+ is set to hold a critical meeting on Wednesday in Vienna to decide whether to cut production, a move that would drive up the price of oil. 

Energy industry analysts say the cut could be as much as 2 million barrels per day, a move that would likely contribute to higher gas prices in the United States and inflation more generally.  

It would also serve as a diplomatic blow to the White House, which has sought to get Saudi Arabia and other producers to keep production up as sanctions on Russia raise energy prices around the world.  

Over the summer, President Biden encouraged OPEC+ to increase production to bring down prices. Following a visit from Biden to Saudi Arabia in July, the group raised its output levels by a slender margin of 100,000 barrels a day starting in September.  

Other moves by the administration could be irritating OPEC+.

In July, the administration made its fifth emergency sale from the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve since November in a bid to keep energy prices at manageable levels, competing with OPEC+ in the process. 

“This is probably a little bit of payback,” Phil Flynn, an analyst with the Price Futures Group, said in an interview. “The Biden administration early on was saying they were going to use their strategic reserve to teach OPEC a lesson. Back in November they called out OPEC to raise production and OPEC didn’t see it that way. And so the Biden administration released oil from the reserve to try to cool down gasoline prices.” 

“But the strategic reserve isn’t big enough to control prices for an extended period of time,” Flynn said. “And even though it might have had some influence on prices for a little while, now you could see prices getting up higher than they would have been, because there wasn’t a production response from the oil companies. Now OPEC has more control over the market.” 

A White House spokesperson declined to comment on the upcoming decision from OPEC+ but noted the White House objective of keeping energy markets “sufficiently supplied.” 

“We are not a party to OPEC+ and I’m not going to comment on what it may or may not do. Our focus has been on taking every step to ensure markets are sufficiently supplied to meet demand for a growing global economy,” the spokesperson said. “Thanks to the president’s efforts, energy prices have declined sharply from their highs and American consumers are paying far less at the pump.” 

A representative for the Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment for this story. 

Any increase in U.S. gas prices could have an impact on the upcoming midterm elections, which Republicans want focused on inflation and the economy.  

The petroleum reserve has long held geopolitical significance in relations between the U.S. and Arab states. Congress created the strategic reserve in 1975 in response to an oil embargo enacted by Arab members of what would become OPEC against countries that supported Israel in a 1973 Arab-Israeli war. 

Oil prices have been declining since June from above $120 a barrel to just above $80 a barrel. Some economists see this as a sign of declining demand as forecasters fear a global recession.  

One industry source said the OPEC+ announcement is indicative of the worsening relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, the group’s top oil producer. Biden had criticized the Saudi human rights record, and the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi had become a flashpoint in the relationship.  

The industry source suggested Riyadh has seen its energy agenda as conflicting with Washington’s for an extended period of time. 

“The OPEC countries want to wrest [greater] control of the oil production in the world … and I think they tried to utilize this pandemic as a way to increase their market share,” the source said. However, they added that “the United States over the past decade has become a swing producer globally,” due in large part to the explosion of natural gas production.  

Ben Cahill, a senior fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the decreases in demand for energy associated with a slowing global economy were top of mind for OPEC+. 

“I’m not surprised that OPEC+ is contemplating a cut; they’re defending against downside risk,” he said.  

“I think [OPEC+ countries] are signaling to the market that they want to regain control of the narrative,” he added. He pointed to August remarks by Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman complaining about volatility in the market. 

OPEC has said it is also concerned about the strong dollar, which is putting pressure on many world currencies and decreasing revenues for countries that export to the U.S. It blames the dollar’s rising strength on Federal Reserve interest rate hikes. 

“The strong rise of the U.S. dollar … is an outcome of considerable monetary tightening efforts by the US Federal Reserve, in combination with uncertainty in the global economy. The strengthening of the US dollar led to rising import costs in non US-dollar denominated economies” in the first half of 2022, OPEC said in its September report on world oil markets. 

“Oil demand is forecast to remain driven by ongoing global economic growth, especially by the recovery in travel and transportation, which is projected to lead to robust overall growth in oil demand of 3.1 [thousand barrels per day] in 2022 and 2.7 [thousand barrels per day] in 2023,” the report said. 

Meanwhile, the European Union’s sanctions against Russian oil are set to take effect Dec. 5 and discussions of a price cap on the same products are ongoing. 

“It’s pretty clear we’re going to lose some volumes from Russia,” Cahill said. “We don’t know how much [but] that’s going to be a de facto production cut from Russia, whether they like it or not.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden plans 'further costs' for Iran over protests crackdown

President Biden on Monday condemned the violence against protesters in Iran and said the U.S. will be imposing further costs on perpetrators of the violence against demonstrators.

The president in a statement said an announcement on the “further costs” will come this week and that the U.S. plans to hold Iranian officials accountable and support the rights of Iranians to protest freely.

“For decades, Iran’s regime has denied fundamental freedoms to its people and suppressed the aspirations of successive generations through intimidation, coercion, and violence. The United States stands with Iranian women and all the citizens of Iran who are inspiring the world with their bravery,” Biden said.

Iranian women have been protesting the government following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested by the Morality Police two weeks ago. Biden said in his statement that the U.S. is holding accountable Iranian officials and entities like the Morality Police, which are the government’s enforcers of the Islamic code of conduct in Iran.

The president said that the U.S. is also making it easier for Iranians to access the internet, including by facilitating access to secure outside platforms. Biden said he is “gravely concerned” about the “intensifying violent crackdown.”

Earlier on Monday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the White House is “alarmed and appalled” by reports of crackdowns on students’ peaceful protests.

“They are rightly [enraged] by the death of Mahsa Amini, the Iranian government’s treatment of women and girls, and the ongoing violent crackdown on peaceful protests,” she told reporters.

“This weekend’s crackdowns are precisely the sort of behavior that drives Iran’s talented young people to leave a country by the thousands to seek the dignity and opportunity elsewhere,” she added.

Source: TEST FEED1

Cheney rips Trump ‘death wish’ comments against McConnell: ‘Absolutely despicable, racist attack’

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Monday ripped former President Trump’s recent remarks saying that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has a “death wish,” calling the comments against McConnell and his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, an “absolutely despicable, racist attack.”

Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, warned that Trump’s remarks could incite further violence.

“When you see former President Trump just in the last 24 hours suggesting in a pretty thinly veiled way, using words that that could well cause violence against the Republican leader of the Senate, saying he has a death wish and then, you know, launching an absolutely despicable, racist attack against Secretary Chao, Leader McConnell’s wife, and then you watch the fact that nobody in my party will say that’s unacceptable,” Cheney said during an event at Syracuse University.

“And everybody ought to be asked whether or not that’s acceptable, and everybody ought to be able to say no, that is not acceptable. They ought to be required to say that,” she added.

Chao headed the Transportation Department under Trump before resigning one day after the Jan. 6 attack. Prior to the Trump administration, she served as Labor Secretary for eight years under former President George W. Bush.

Trump continued his longtime feud with McConnell on Friday, criticizing the Senate GOP leader in a statement on the former president’s social media platform, Truth Social.

“Is McConnell approving all of these Trillions of Dollars worth of Democrat sponsored Bills, without even the slightest bit of negotiation, because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am strongly opposed to them, or is he doing it because he believes in the Fake and Highly Destructive Green New Deal, and is willing to take the Country down with him? In any event, either reason is unacceptable. He has a DEATH WISH,” Trump wrote.

“Must immediately seek help and advise from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!” he added.

The comments came soon after Congress approved a continuing resolution to fund the government through Dec. 16 and avert a shutdown. The stopgap bill passed with bipartisan support in the House and Senate, including a “yes” vote from McConnell.

In the House, however, GOP leadership urged Republican members to oppose the measure.

Cheney has become a leading GOP critic of Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, frequently taking on the former president and his claims that the election was stolen.

Her work on the Jan. 6 select committee has elevated that role, giving the Wyoming Republican a platform to oppose the ex-president.

After losing her Republican primary to a Trump-endorsed challenger this year, she will be leaving Congress in January.

But Cheney is not the only one to speak out against Trump’s latest comments against McConnell and Chao.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of both the House Homeland Security Committee and the Jan. 6 select committee, called Trump’s rhetoric “inflammatory and racist,” and argued that it could spark violence.

“Former President Trump’s inflammatory and racist attacks directed at Senator McConnell aren’t helpful to the nation or our democracy. Worse yet, they could incite political violence, and the former President knows full well that extremists often view his words as marching orders,” Thompson wrote in a statement.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board called Trump’s latest crusade against McConnell “reckless.”

“We live in a polarized political age when rabid partisans don’t need provocation to resort to violence. This makes Donald Trump’s latest verbal assault against Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell all the more reckless,” the board wrote.

“The ‘death wish’ rhetoric is ugly even by Mr. Trump’s standards and deserves to be condemned,” the board added.

Asked about the comments on Sunday, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told CNN, “I don’t condone violence, and I hope no one else condones violence.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump sues CNN for defamation

Former President Trump has sued CNN in federal court in Florida for defamation.

In the lawsuit filed Monday, Trump’s attorneys claim CNN “has sought to use its massive influence — purportedly as a ‘trusted’ news source — to defame the Plaintiff in the minds of its viewers and readers for the purpose of defeating him politically, culminating in CNN claiming credit for ‘[getting] Trump out’ in the 2020 presidential election.”

The former president is seeking $475 million in punitive damages, according to the lawsuit.

Trump announced his intent to sue the network earlier this summer, saying in a statement he would “also be commencing actions against other media outlets who have defamed me and defrauded the public regarding the overwhelming evidence of fraud throughout the 2020 Election.”

The former president’s attorneys allege in the filing that CNN “has undertaken a smear campaign to malign the Plaintiff with a barrage of negative associations and innuendos, broadcasting commentary that he is like a cult leader,  a Russian lackey, a dog whistler to white supremacists,  and a racist.” 

It also cited anchors, personalities and pundits on CNN using the term “Big Lie” to refer to Trump’s repeated false statements about the 2020 election and voter fraud as evidence of the outlet attempting to associate him with Adolf Hitler. 

In order to prove defamation, public officials and other public figures must prove journalists acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth in their reporting, a high legal bar to clear give First Amendment protections granted to the free press under the constitution. The New York Times, for example, has not lost a defamation case in more than 50 years. 

CNN is a frequent foil of Trump, his followers and allies and conservatives more generally. 

In 2020, the network settled a $275 million lawsuit brought by a high school student in Kentucky who was at the center of a viral video controversy and became a lightning rod for critics of the mainstream media. 

Updated at 5:08 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1