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Democrats worry polls showing them as Senate favorites are wrong

Political handicappers are labeling Senate Democrats as the favorites to keep their majority, but Democratic senators themselves are worried the polls may be flawed in their favor just as they were in 2016 and 2020.  

The lawmakers acknowledge the political environment looks much better for their chances than it did on Memorial Day before the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and the right to an abortion.  

While President Biden’s approval rating is still in the low 40s and a president’s party usually loses seats in the midterm elections, many Democrats feel good about their chances of winning the Senate — if those pesky polls are correct.  

“When have the polls been right in our favor in the past?” asked Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) when asked about a projection by FiveThirtyEight.com, the political modeling website, that gives Democrats nearly a 7 in 10 chance of keeping the Senate majority.  

Murphy said he had “very little” confidence in polls after former President Trump and other GOP candidates outperformed polls on Election Day in 2016 and 2020.  

The biggest polling failure in recent years came in the 2016 presidential election, when experts completed failed to gauge the intensity of Trump’s support in battle ground states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, where he stunned even fellow Republicans by beating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.  

But there were also major polling failures in recent high-profile Senate races.  

In 2020, Democratic candidate Sara Gideon led Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a top Democratic target, in multiple polls leading up to Election Day but wound up losing by nearly 10 percentage points.  

In 2018, polls shortly before Election Day showed then-Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) leading Republican candidate Josh Hawley in the Missouri Senate race. FiveThirtyEight.com gave McCaskill a 57 percent chance of winning the race. Hawley won.

Likewise, then-Sen. Joe Donnelly (D) led his Republican challenger Mike Braun in 8 out of 10 public polls in Indiana in the run-up to the 2018 midterm and was given a 72 percent chance of victory.  

Like McCaskill, Donnelly wound up losing by nearly 6 percentage points.

In 2016, a Democratic candidate Katie McGinty appeared to have a solid lead over Republican Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) heading into the election, leading him in 10 out of 10 public polls conducted in the final two weeks of the race. She was given a 61 percent chance of victory but instead lost by a point and a half.

“There’s a lot of historical headwinds coming at us but also some really good news we have to talk about and sell,” Murphy said, referring to the enactment of last year’s $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law and the package of corporate tax reform, climate spending and prescription drug reform that passed last month.     

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said she feels “good” about Democrats’ chances but also acknowledged that polls in the weeks before Election Day can’t be counted on.  

“You never know,” she answered when asked how much confidence she had in the polls, noting that polls in Michigan’s gubernatorial race “are all over the place.” 

“If the election were held today, I believe we would pick up seats,” she said, but cautioned that spending by outside conservative groups in the final weeks of the campaign could change the picture.  

Democrats are feeling rattled by the news of the $1.6 billion donation electronics manufacturing magnate Barre Seid gave to a conservative group controlled by Leonard Leo, the strategist who masterminded the effort to push the federal judiciary further to the right.  

“What’s going to happen, they’re dumping in disclosed and secret money [for] attack ads and it’s bound to make a difference. They’re attacking our people right and left,” Stabenow said. 

OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan website that tracks political spending, projects total spending on the midterm elections to exceed $9.3 billion. More than half of the $4.8 billion already spent has come from Republican candidates and allied groups, according to the site.  

Democratic candidates and party committees have raised more money than their Republican counterparts but Democratic senators expect a wave of dark-money funded ads to help GOP candidates close the gap in October and the first week of November.   

“It’s definitely a huge factor,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said of the huge flows of cash coming from Republican-allied dark-money groups and super PACs. “Republican candidates don’t really feel like they have to fundraise anymore. If you look, our candidates are outraising them but they don’t care because they have the dark money and it’s so massive.”  

Chris Hartline, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm has spent heavily since May to boost GOP candidates and define Democrats.

“With the addition of increased spending by our campaigns and the addition of outside group spending starting in early September, the result is a unified Republican effort that we’re very confident will result in a Republican Senate majority,” he said.  

Recent polls showed Senate Democratic incumbents leading their Republican challengers in several battleground states.  

In Georgia, surveys conducted in September by Beacon Research and Shaw & Company Research and by Marist College showed Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) leading Republican Herschel Walker by 5 points. A Quinnipiac poll showed Warnock up 6 points.  

In Nevada, polls show Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) and former Republican state Attorney General Adam Laxalt essentially tied, with a late September poll from the Republican-leaning Trafalgar Group showing Laxalt ahead by 4 points and a mid-August Suffolk University poll showing Cortez Masto leading by 6 points.  

“Confident would not be word, optimistic is the word,” said Kaine, who predicted that control of the Senate will be decided by only a few points in a handful of races. “I think it’s going to be a late Election Night.” 

“What polling does not necessarily show you is who is like, ‘By God, I’m turning out to vote,’” he said, explaining why polls are not always reliable.  

But Kaine, like many Democrats, is hoping that the Supreme Court’s reversal of abortion rights in will rev up Democratic voters more than they usually are in midterm election, when turnout is much lower than in presidential years.  

David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign, said Republicans “are firmly on defense across the Senate map.”  

He said Democratic “incumbents remain well positioned in their races and we have multiple pickup opportunities that remain strongly in play,” alluding to Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida.  

But he acknowledged the races will likely tighten.  

“All cycle long we’ve been preparing for our battleground races to be extremely competitive, and in the final month we’re going to continue taking nothing for granted,” he said.  

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Trump says McConnell has a ‘death wish’ backing bills sponsored by Democrats

Former President Trump said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has a “death wish” for supporting bills that congressional Democrats have sponsored. 

The former president said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday that any reason McConnell has for supporting the bills — be it that he knows Trump is opposed to them or if he believes in the “Fake and Highly Destructive Green New Deal” — are “unacceptable.” 

Trump’s post comes after McConnell supported a continuing resolution to fund the government through the middle of December and avoid a government shutdown.

President Biden signed the legislation on Friday after the House passed it mostly along party lines. 

Trump and McConnell’s ongoing feud also received some additional fuel recently following news of McConnell’s support for the Electoral Count Reform Act, which senators have advanced in response to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

The legislation would raise the number of members of Congress required to object to a state’s Electoral College votes in order for the body to reanalyze the results when it counts the ballots. Only one senator and one representative need to object under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, but the new legislation would raise the threshold to one-fifth of both chambers. 

McConnell announced his support for the bill that was negotiated by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, but Trump allies like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have said that the legislation has been motivated by anti-Trump sentiment.

Trump also attacked McConnell’s wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who served during the Trump administration, calling her McConnell’s “China loving wife.”

Trump attacked Chao last month in a post on Truth Social, calling her McConnell’s “crazy wife.”

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Russian forces pull out of Lyman, a key city in Ukraine's Donetsk region

Russia has withdrawn troops from the city of Lyman in Ukraine’s Donetsk region Saturday, one day after announcing the annexation of the area and three other regions.

Ukrainian officials said earlier that their soldiers had surrounded the city.

The Russian state-owned news agency RIA reported that the Russian Defense Ministry said its forces retreated to more advantageous lines to avoid the risk of being encircled.

The ministry said Ukraine has a significant advantage in the number of its forces and brought in reserves to continue its counteroffensive retaking territory that has been captured by Russia.

Lyman has been held by Russia since May.

A video posted on Twitter by a reporter for The Kyiv Independent showed two Ukrainian soldiers tying a flag to a sign after retaking the city.

Serhiy Haidai, the regional governor of the Luhansk region, said in a tweet on Saturday that Ukrainian forces had blocked almost all ways for 5,000 Russian troops to leave the city or transport ammunition to other Russian soldiers. He said Ukraine would seek to recapture Luhansk after Lyman is retaken. 

“Near 5,000 russian soldiers ended up in “#Lyman Cauldron”. The AFU blocked almost all the ways of leaving and transporting ammunition to russians. After the de-occupation of Liman, #Luhansk region is the next #UkraineRussiaWar,” he tweeted.

Denis Pushilin, the Russia-backed leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, said in a Telegram post that the city faced a semicircle of Ukrainian forces. He said a road out of the city remained under the control of local separatists and Russian forces, but it was periodically being attacked. 

Pushilin said his forces were fighting against Ukraine and reserves were being called up, but Ukraine had established a serious fight for the city. 

Pushilin said Ukraine is trying to overshadow the Friday announcement of Russia annexing four regions partially controlled by Russia in eastern Ukraine.

The news comes after armed Russian soldiers oversaw referendums in the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia last weekend. These votes are viewed by the majority of the international community as unfree and unfair.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed treaties of annexation for four regions of Ukraine including the Donetsk region during a lavish ceremony in the Kremlin. The move escalated a conflict that is seen by the United States and its allies as illegal.

In response, the U.S. levied additional sanctions on Russian officials and their families.

Before Russian annexation, Ukraine launched a major counteroffensive over the past month that has seen it reclaim thousands of square kilometers that Russia took earlier in the war. 

A spokesperson for Ukraine’s armed forces told The Washington Post that Ukraine has also recaptured four villages near Lyman.

— Updated at 10:36 a.m.

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GOP prospects dim in New Hampshire Senate race

Republicans are facing an increasingly uphill battle in New Hampshire’s Senate race as polls show their chosen candidate, Don Bolduc, losing ground to Sen. Maggie Hassan (D). 

Observers had long seen Hassan as one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents in the upper chamber, but that changed earlier this month when GOP voters chose Bolduc, a hard-right candidate aligned with former President Trump, as the party’s nominee.

Most polls since then have shown Bolduc trailing Hassan by as much as double digits, fueling GOP concerns that the Republican won’t be able to turn his campaign around in time before the Nov. 8 general election.

“The question will be whether Gen. Bolduc can pivot to a general election campaign, mobilize the resources and the organization and message to draw strong contrast with Sen. Hassan,” said Jeff Grappone, a consultant and former aide to two Republican senators from New Hampshire.

Bolduc, a retired Army general, quickly tacked to the center on some issues following the state’s Sept. 13 primary, rejecting a national abortion ban and saying the 2020 election was not stolen after repeatedly declaring Trump the winner during the primary.

But his attempts to broaden his appeal among the purple state’s general electorate so far seem not to have had much effect. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has rated the contest as “lean Democrat” for months, and a slew of polls show Hassan leading him by as much as 13 points. The latest survey, released Thursday, found Bolduc trailing her by 8 points.

Still, Republicans are bullish that they can flip the seat if they manage to tie her to issues that rank highly among the electorate, like the economy and inflation.

“It’s up to Gen. Bolduc to be on offense and to link Sen. Hassan closely with the economic challenges that are facing New Hampshire voters,” Grappone said. 

“And in New Hampshire, energy prices and electricity prices are eye-popping,” he continued. “It’s a topic that voters are really tuning in to now as they start to see their winter heating bills coming along, and it’ll be up to Gen. Bolduc to really focus in like a laser on those kitchen table issues that are really top of mind for New Hampshire voters.”

Inflation isn’t the only problem on voters’ minds, however. Emerson College-WHDH and the University of New Hampshire’s post-primary polls found abortion as the No. 2 issue for voters.

Throughout her campaign, Hassan has latched on to the abortion issue, hoping the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade this summer will motivate Democrats to turn out. She released her first abortion ad within a week of the court’s decision.

Bolduc, meanwhile, said during the primary that he would “always default for a system that protects lives from beginning to end” but told Fox News after winning the nomination that Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) national 15-week abortion ban “makes no sense.”

“Women on both sides of the issue will get a better voice at the state level,” Bolduc told the outlet.

Hassan has since continued tying Bolduc to Graham’s legislation, claiming Bolduc is an “anti-choice extremist” who would still vote for it.

“His dangerous ideas — like a national abortion ban and defunding Social Security — will lead his campaign to defeat,” said Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesperson Amanda Sherman-Baity. “And we agree with the many, many New Hampshire Republicans who said Bolduc has no place representing their state in the Senate.”

Hassan has also attacked Bolduc on abortion for saying she should “get over it” when asked by a WMUR reporter earlier this month about her focus on the issue.

“Bolduc still carries all that same baggage that he had before the primary that appeals to that Republican base, which is that crazy, wacky stuff he does,” said Kathy Sullivan, the former chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.

“I don’t think the Hassan campaign is going to let him make that pivot without a lot of pushback,” Sullivan added.

Bolduc’s campaign did not return a request for comment.

Despite Democrats’ continued attacks on Bolduc for his pre-primary positions, some of his former detractors within the party came to his side once he gained the nomination.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R), who had endorsed Bolduc’s primary challenger last-minute, once labeled Bolduc a “conspiracy theorist-type candidate” who would sink GOP’s chances to flip the seat.

But Sununu, who declined to run for the Senate seat despite urging from Republican leaders in Washington, has since thrown his support behind Bolduc.

“Pre-primary, Sununu was saying he’s not a serious candidate,” Sullivan said. “Now Sununu’s talking like he’s the best thing since sliced bread.”

Sununu told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade last week that there is “no question” Hassan will lose.

“She is one of the most unliked, with the lowest favorability ratings, senators in the country,” Sununu continued. “Gen. Bolduc won a tough-fought primary with very, very little money, virtually no money, and so now he’s raising money, he’s getting some national attention. He’s an amazing individual with this background, this war-hero background, that just wants to stand up and serve.”

Groups on both sides are still pouring money into the race, insisting the contest remains competitive.

The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.), and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) have continued running ads in the state since the primary, not giving up on Bolduc’s chances despite his uphill battle.

“Maggie Hassan and her allies spent mountains of money smearing Gen. Bolduc before the primary even ended and the race remains extremely competitive,” said NRSC spokesperson T.W. Arrighi. “Granite Staters are still getting to know the General, but they do know that Maggie Hassan is a rubber stamp for the Biden Agenda that has left New Hampshire behind.”

The Hassan campaign isn’t letting their guard down, either.

“Maggie Hassan won her last race by 1,017 votes and national Republicans are spending $57 million this cycle to defeat her,” said Hassan campaign spokesperson Sydney Peterson. “We’re not taking anything for granted — and anyone who thinks this race isn’t going to come down to the wire just doesn’t know New Hampshire.”

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Ranking Trump and the top seven GOP White House contenders

Former President Trump is the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, despite facing mounting legal trouble and the recent FBI raid of his Florida home. 

But that doesn’t mean Republicans aren’t considering their options in the event that Trump’s political prospects wane in the coming years. 

Trump has been a political force within the GOP since his rise began in 2015, and he’s been open about running for the White House again in 2024.

He’s likely to face competition, however, especially with polls coming out that suggest Republicans want other contenders in the mix.

A New York Times-Siena poll from July showed nearly half of all Republicans surveyed said they wanted someone other than Trump to be their party’s nominee in 2024. 

Trump’s role in the GOP and likely participation in a GOP primary will set up challenges for anyone hoping to displace him.

“The successful candidate will have to be able to thread the Trump needle, able to take on Trump without alienating the Trump voter,” said John Feehery, a longtime GOP strategist and former congressional aide. “Trump still is the elephant in the race. No candidate can win without successfully dispatching that elephant.” 

Here are The Hill’s rankings on the top GOP prospects for the 2024 race.

Former President Trump

Anyone who thought the raid at Mar-a-lago, Jan. 6 attack hearings or the pending lawsuits against him would change the hearts and minds of Trump supporters was mistaken.

While polls show the former president has lost the support of independent voters, his loyalists have doubled-down. That will make him the favorite to win the GOP primary assuming he enters the race.

One caveat is whether enough Republicans doubt Trump’s ability to win a general election against President Biden or another Democratic nominee. If enough GOP primary voters think making Trump their nominee will cost them the White House, it could cost the former president.

But for now, Trump remains the favorite if he runs — despite the legal battles.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

Whether Trump does or doesn’t run, all eyes will be on DeSantis, who many Republicans see as their strongest candidate in 2024.

The Florida governor, now on the national stage as he deals with the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, has had a meteoric rise in national politics.

Trump helped DeSantis win the governor’s race in Florida in 2018, and the two are now rivals when it comes to leading the party in 2024.

DeSantis has created media opportunities for himself and as a result has been able to raise a lot of money, strategists point out. And some Democrats say he’s a scarier prospect in 2024 than Trump.

“He’s a smarter version of Trump,” one strategist told The Hill in August. “He’s way more strategic and he doesn’t have a hundred lawsuits at his feet.”

DeSantis has made a name for himself by placing himself at the epicenter of the culture wars.

Recently, he made headlines for the controversial decision to fly migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, a move many say was made with a presidential bid in mind.

DeSantis is up for reelection this year. If he wins, expect the presidential talk to only rise.

Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.)

The South Carolina senator made headlines late in the summer for an appearance in Iowa — hardly ever a coincidental trip for a politician with bigger political aspirations.

He traveled to the state to headline a fundraiser for Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa). But Scott, the only Black Republican in the upper chamber, downplayed his political ambitions at the event.

When a supporter in the crowd shouted, “Tim Scott for President,” the senator quickly retorted, “Of my homeowners association, yes,” according to the Des Moines Register. 

It wasn’t the senator’s only trip to the Hawkeye State: He’s been nearly half a dozen times in the past few years and he’s caught the eyes of GOP strategists who say he’s a prolific fundraiser, topping most Republican candidates.

The South Carolina newspaper The Post and Courier reported that Scott brought in more than $46 million for his reelection campaign this year. 

Former Vice President Mike Pence

The former vice president has kept his distance from Trump, his former boss.

Strategists say he’s clearly building his own brand ahead of a White House bid.

Still, it will be tough for Pence to get very far without appealing to Trump voters, and he’s more likely to alienate them, particularly if he continues to make statements separating himself from his former boss. 

“The Republican Party is the party of law and order,” he said, on the heels of the Mar-a-Lago raid in August. “And these attacks on the FBI must stop. Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.”  

If and when he testifies before the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, it could also cost him some support among Trump’s loyalists if he speaks negatively of the former president. 

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin

The Virginia governor caught the eye of Republicans last year after he defeated former Gov. Terry McAuliffe and turned the state red.

And while he keeps dodging questions on a potential run — “There is a long way between here and there,” he said this week — it seems as though he’s been laying the groundwork.

He has formed a couple of political committees and has tried to build his name recognition by hitting the trail for candidates running for governor across the country.

On Thursday and Friday, he also hosted a two-day retreat for top Republican donors, The Washington Post reported. 

Former Gov. Nikki Haley

Trump’s former top diplomat and the former governor of South Carolina hasn’t shied away from talk of a presidential run. Recently, while appearing on Fox News, she dropped a hint that “sometimes it takes a woman.”

“Margaret Thatcher said, ‘If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman,’” she continued.  

Earlier this year during an appearance in Iowa, she said she would run, “if there’s a place for me.” 

Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas)

Almost no one is watching what Trump does more than the Texas senator, who lost to the former president in the 2016 Republican primary.

It’s easy to forget that Cruz finished second to Trump in the contest, and there were moments where he seemed like a possible nominee himself.

Since then, Cruz has continued to build a household name for himself, becoming a vocal critic of the Biden administration while also helping fellow Republicans in the midterm elections — including in key primary states. 

But like everyone else, he is playing the waiting game, as he acknowledged to the Washington Examiner last month: “The whole world will change depending on what Donald Trump decides,” he said.

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Hurricane Ian leads to political whiplash for Ron DeSantis

It’s been a week of political whiplash for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who in a matter of days has gone from top foil to the Biden White House to a willing partner with the president and his team.

It was Sept. 20 when the White House was on alert for the potential that DeSantis was organizing a flight of migrants from Texas to President Biden’s home state of Delaware, his latest move to draw attention to the surge of immigrants at the southern border and what he viewed as the responsibility of blue states to share the burden.

One week later, DeSantis was on the phone with Biden in the first of three calls the two men have held this week to coordinate the response to Hurricane Ian as the storm knocked out power, flooded communities and destroyed homes across the state of Florida.

The seesawing between antagonist and partner comes as DeSantis tries to juggle building up his bona fides among conservatives should he decide to run for president in 2024 — potentially against Biden — and leading his state through what he and others have described as a generational storm.

“DeSantis is showing — though the process is ongoing — that he can play both the political culture warrior and the in-charge governor of the entire state,” former Republican National Committee spokesman Doug Heye said, calling DeSantis a “Trump with substance.”

DeSantis has been a thorn in the side of the Biden administration for the last year-and-a-half, eliciting frequent responses from the White House briefing room podium and at one point last year referring to the Biden administration as the “Brandon administration” in a nod to a popular conservative meme mocking the president.

The White House has sparred with DeSantis over his ban on mask mandates in schools; his support for a law that restricts discussion of sexual orientation in the classroom; and most recently his decision to fly migrants from Texas to Massachusetts.

Those migrant flights were dominating headlines as recently as last week, when DeSantis was arguing the outrage over the flights was disproportionate to the lack of outrage over the millions of migrants who had crossed the border illegally since Biden took office.

When DeSantis was reportedly lining up a flight to take another group of migrants from Texas to Delaware, where Biden regularly spends the weekend, the president responded sarcastically.

“He should come visit. We have a beautiful shoreline,” Biden said.

But much has changed in just over one week, as both men have warned that Hurricane Ian, which made landfall Wednesday as a Category 4 storm, poses a grave threat to the residents of much of Florida and could be the deadliest storm in years.

Biden and DeSantis have spoken on the phone three times this week, with the governor praising the assistance of federal partners in getting resources on the ground to aid those without power and shelter.

The quick transition from foil to friendly is the latest in what some have seen as shifts in positions from DeSantis in recent years.

DeSantis’s 2013 opposition to federal funding for New York in the wake of Hurricane Sandy has come under scrutiny as he presses for federal assistance to aid Florida in its recovery from Ian.

“When people are fighting for their lives, when their whole livelihood is at stake, when they’ve lost everything, if you can’t put politics aside for that, then you’re just not going to be able to,” DeSantis said on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show this week.

CNN published a story this week that noted DeSantis was urging Floridians to heed the warnings and instructions of some of the same local officials whose guidance he said to ignore early on in the coronavirus pandemic as he pushed for the state to reopen businesses and drop mask mandates.

“Of course there’s a difference between heeding local evacuation orders in an emergency and COVID lockdown overreach. The governor has been clear: this storm must be taken seriously and this is no time for politics or pettiness,” Bryan Griffin, a press secretary for DeSantis, tweeted in response to the story.

Hovering over each of DeSantis’s decisions and statements in recent months has been the potential that he will run for president in 2024, with Biden his likeliest opponent should the governor win the GOP nomination.

The two men appeared side-by-side in the aftermath of the condo collapse in Surfside, Fla., last year, and Biden has indicated he would like to travel to Florida to tour storm damage in the coming days when it would not be a burden on emergency responders.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), however, offers something of a cautionary tale at a time when the country is increasingly polarized. The former governor was hounded during the 2016 GOP primary campaign by attacks that he embraced then-President Obama during a visit in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, forcing Christie to address it head on as a liability with voters.

But strategists believe DeSantis will ultimately benefit politically from showing he can be a strong leader at a time of crisis like a major natural disaster, even if it means publicly appearing with and showing appreciating for Biden.

“Voters have a reasonable expectation that in times of crisis, governors and presidents of different parties have to work together,” Heye said. “Should either party fail to do so, it potentially opens them up to criticism of failing to do their job when voters are in real need. That’s a much bigger problem than a criticism essentially of ‘You did the job of representing all voters too well.’”

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Five takeaways from the Abbott-O'Rourke debate showdown in Texas

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Democratic candidate Beto O’Rourke traded barbs and sought to paint each other as inherently out of touch with the state in their first and only televised debate on Friday evening. 

The debate — hosted by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns The Hill — gave the candidates an opportunity to stake out policy positions and address a range of issues from the Uvalde school shooting to teacher retention to border security. While the candidates touched on some policy stances, the one-hour debate was a mostly civil affair while the candidates did open old wounds and tried to paint each other as extremists.

The debate comes at a crucial time for O’Rourke as recent polls show him trailing Abbott, offering him an important opportunity to reach voters in the final stretch of the race. At the same time, the hour discourse comes amid speculation that the Texas governor might seek a presidential bid in 2024.

Here are five takeaways from the Texas gubernatorial debate.

Barbs fly but debate remains a subdued affair

The hourlong debate was a mostly staid affair; there were no outbursts or raised voices. But that doesn’t mean that Abbott and O’Rourke didn’t take opportunities when they could to rehash the past and bring up each other’s shortcomings. 

“Governor Abbott’s grid failure is part of a pattern over these last eight years. Warned about, for example, school violence and gun violence specifically against children, does nothing,” O’Rourke said. “Warned about problems within child protective services, our foster care program, does nothing, and it gets worse. Warned before February 2021 that we had problems in the grid, he did nothing.”

At the same time, Abbott touched on the Democrat’s failed attempts at winning a Senate seat in 2018 and the White House two years later. He also argued that O’Rourke was inconsistent on his positions.

“He’s flip-flopped on the border issue. He’s flip-flopped on the energy issue, such as energy jobs and the Green New Deal. He’s flip-flopped on defunding the police. Whether it’s one issue or another, he keeps changing positions,” Abbott said.

Candidates paint each other as extremists

Both candidates sought to cast each other as extremists, albeit in different ways.

One key policy area in which attacks were leveled was abortion. 

“Beto’s position is the most extreme because he not only supports abortion of a fully developed child to the very last second before birth, he’s even against providing medical care for a baby who survives an abortion. He is for unlimited abortion at taxpayer expense,” Abbott alleged.

“That’s not true. It’s completely a lie,” O’Rourke rebutted. ”I never said that. And no one thinks that in the state of Texas. He’s saying this because he signed the most extreme abortion ban in America. No exception for rape, no exception for incest.” 

Both men also branded each other as wildly out of touch on issues like immigration. Abbott, for example, claimed that O’Rourke said he would decrease immigration enforcement and downplayed the situation at the border. 

Biden emerges as GOP boogeyman

Abbott took multiple opportunities to ding President Biden during the debate as he sought to tie O’Rourke to the president amid Biden’s lagging approval ratings.

“We shouldn’t have to allocate any money for it because this is all because of Joe Biden’s failure to do the president’s job to secure the border,” the governor said in response to a question over whether more money should be given to Operation Lone Star, which was aimed at tackling border crossings between U.S. and Mexico. 

“We’re only having to do that because of Joe Biden’s failure and because it would be the same pathway that Beto would take us down,” he added.

At one point during the debate, O’Rourke pushed back at Abbott’s assertions against the president, arguing that he was blaming people like Biden but that the “buck stops on your desk.”

No mention of Trump

While former President Trump and the multiple state and federal investigations he’s been embroiled in have consistently shadowed the midterm races, the former president was not mentioned once during the debate.

Though references to Trump would likely rouse the GOP base in Texas, the absence of any mention of the former president allowed both Abbott to focus on state-specific issues. 

And it suggested that O’Rourke, too, sees that the key to breaking through with Texas voters is to focus on core issues like immigration, abortion and gun violence — not the former occupant of the White House.

The decision by O’Rourke to eschew mention of Trump also comes after criticism during the last election cycle that Democrats were focused too heavily on trying to tie Republicans to the former president.

Likely not a game changer

Given the civil nature of the debate and the fact that neither candidate demonstrated much of a shift in rhetoric or policy stance, voters are unlikely to have come away from Friday night’s event with changed minds.

That will likely be an asset to Abbott given that he’s leading in the polls, and it’s likely a setback for O’Rourke given there were no clear moments when he was able to successfully land a damaging blow against the governor.

Instead, O’Rourke will have to trust that his casting himself as a foil to the two-term incumbent and a message of change will be enough to sway voters in November. 

Source: TEST FEED1

What happens next after Putin's annexations in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move Friday to annex parts of southern and eastern Ukraine amid Moscow’s war in the country has elevated the stakes of the conflict, threatening to bring the Kremlin’s struggling military campaign closer to the doorsteps of the West.  

The stunning move has prompted a flurry of activity across the globe, including new U.S. and Group of Seven (G7) sanctions targeting Russian government and military officials and their family members, international condemnation, calls for more weapons for Kyiv and a fresh push from Ukraine to join the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO).  

But Putin’s actions — an indication he has dug in his heels in his military campaign against Ukraine — have much broader and longer-term repercussions for the future, experts say. What exactly those will be, however, are hard to discern, with experts expressing a deep uncertainty over where the situation will go from here. 

“I think there will be continued warnings about breaking any of the red lines that have been put down. And there will be, I think, further strengthening of sanctions . . . Beyond that, it’s hard to anticipate exactly what might happen,” said career ambassador Thomas Pickering, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations as well as Russia.  

Putin on Friday signed four “ascension treaties” to annex the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine after holding sham referendums in the areas. 

“This is the will of millions of people,” Putin told hundreds of dignitaries amid a lavish ceremony at the Kremlin in Moscow. 

Much of the world, including members of the G7 and the European Union, have already vowed to never recognize the land grab, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the move a “farce.”  

“The entire territory of our country will be liberated,” Zelensky promised in a pre-recorded video released after Putin’s speech 

The annexations are the biggest territory grab in Europe since World War II and come as Putin has grown increasingly aggressive in his rhetoric due to a markedly successful Ukrainian counteroffensive earlier this month that took back large swaths of ground and forced Moscow’s forces to retreat. 

Putin continued that saber rattling in a speech laden with anti-Western sentiments, pledging to defend the newly claimed regions with “all available means,” a non-veiled threat to use nuclear weapons. 

Russia has dangled the threat of an attack with a nuclear weapon since the start of its invasion of Ukraine, but the new land steal has spiked fears over how Moscow will respond to attacks in these territories now declared part of the Kremlin.

“Would he actually go to the use of nuclear weapons? Nobody knows. But it remains obviously something that he’s unprepared now to take off the table,” Pickering told The Hill. 

Another question raised is whether the Russians will stick to their messaging that taking the eastern-most area of Ukraine known as the Donbass remains the limited objective of their invasion, as suggested in Putin’s speech. The Kremlin has focused on taking the area since its failed campaign to topple Kyiv, but it’s unclear whether Moscow will be open to ending the war should that be achieved.  

“Would that in its own way lead to discussions that could take place diplomatically over next steps that might tone things down? I think that’s a very optimistic view, but a moment not very likely given Mr. Putin’s dug in responses on every development that has taken place of upping the ante,” Pickering noted. 

Also undetermined is the renewed debate over whether NATO should allow Ukraine to join after the country on Friday announced it will file an expedited application to the military alliance, which Kyiv has sought to enter since Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.  

The United States quickly urged that such a process “should be taken up at a different time,” according to national security adviser Jake Sullivan. 

“Right now, our view is that the best way for us to support Ukraine is through practical, on-the-ground support in Ukraine and that the process in Brussels should be taken up at a different time,” Sullivan told reporters Friday.   

But Jonathan Katz, director of Democracy Initiatives and a senior fellow with The German Marshall Fund of the United States, said Ukraine’s NATO bid is a serious application in the wake of Putin’s speech and amid his ongoing desperate bids to make gains in a war that has become bogged down in its seventh month.  

“It is not far-fetched that Ukraine — which will need security guarantees going forward, given Russia’s unrelenting war and Mr. Putin’s unwillingness to end this cycle of violence against Ukraine — they will need to be given some type of security guarantee and NATO is the place to do that,” Katz said.  

“It must be taken seriously. . . . how can anyone think that Ukrainians, or the West, the transatlantic community, can be safe with Mr. Putin doing what he’s doing,” he added.  

The issue will likely come up at a meeting of defense ministers for the North Atlantic Council (NAC) Oct. 12 and 13 at NATO Headquarters in Brussels.  

For now, U.S. and Western officials say they are focusing on crippling Russia through economic means, with the Biden administration on Friday announcing a new round of sanctions. 

The sanctions, which come from the departments of Treasury, Commerce and State and in coordination with members of the G7, are meant to target Moscow’s decisionmakers, Putin’s allies and entities that support Russia’s military-industrial complex. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the sanctions are a clear warning that there will be “costs for any individual, entity, or country that provides political or economic support to Russia as a result of its illegal attempts to change the status of Ukrainian territory.” 

One thing’s certain in the aftermath of Putin’s move: continued U.S. support to Ukraine. 

The House on Friday passed a stopgap spending bill to stave off a government shutdown that included another $12.3 billion in aid for Ukraine.  

News also broke Friday that the Pentagon was preparing to step up efforts to train and equip Ukrainian troops through a proposal to create a new command based in Germany, as The New York Times reported. Such a command, which would be led by a top U.S. general, would streamline the current patchwork of training and assistance given to the Ukrainian military by the U.S. and allies since Russia attacked the country in February, according to the Times. 

And House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Michael McCaul (R-Texas) on Friday called for the U.S. and its allies to send Ukraine weapons it has so far held off from providing over fears doing so could escalate Russia’s ire. 

“I urge the Biden administration to finally provide longer-range artillery, like [Army Tactical Missile System]. And I also urge key allies to immediately transfer much-needed systems, including German Leopard tanks and Marder infantry fighting vehicles,” McCaul said in a statement.  

Earlier this week the administration pledged another $1.1 million in lethal aid to the embattled country, bringing the total Pentagon commitment to Ukraine to more than $16 billion since February.  

The latest dollars will go to contracts for weapons to be delivered over the next several years — a signal that the U.S. believes Russia will continue to threaten Ukraine and the region for years to come.  

Source: TEST FEED1

DOJ requests expedited appeal of Trump special master appointment

The Justice Department (DOJ) filed a motion on Friday to expedite its appeal of the appointment of a special master to review the documents it obtained from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Fla., last month. 

The filing comes after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit sided with the Justice Department in ruling that U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon made a mistake by failing to remove classified documents from the special master so that the DOJ could continue its review.

The DOJ argues in the filing to the federal appeals court that expediting the appeal of the entire appointment of a special master will serve “judicial efficiency” because a ruling in the government’s favor could render further proceedings before the special master unnecessary.

The department also argues that expediting its appeal would serve the interests of justice because the special master appointment restricts the government’s ability to “vindicate the strong public interest” in moving quickly with its criminal and national security investigation.

The DOJ’s proposed timeline would have it submit an opening brief by Oct. 14, Trump respond by Nov. 4 and the DOJ submit a rebuttal by Nov. 11.

The 11th Circuit court had originally set the initial deadline for the government’s brief as Oct. 19, followed by Trump’s no later than Nov. 18. The DOJ would then need to respond by Dec. 9.

But the DOJ notes that any extensions given to either party could require the case to go into 2023.

The DOJ’s motion asserts that the appeal does not require analysis of an extensive factual record as the parties have already been largely briefed. It pointed to the ability of the court’s three-judge panel to issue a ruling regarding the classified documents within six days as evidence of the speed that the process can take.

The motion also states that the government’s arguments over Cannon’s jurisdiction to appoint the special master and the legal viability of Trump’s claims of privilege “substantially” overlap with its arguments regarding the classified documents. The DOJ therefore argues that not as much time is needed for the parties to develop their positions.

— Updated at 9:07 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Most registered voters say Trump shouldn't be allowed to serve a second term, says new poll

Most Americans say that former President Trump should not be allowed to serve another term in the White House in the near future, according to a new Yahoo News-YouGov poll.

With several investigations into Trump’s conduct ramping up, 51 percent of registered voters say that the allegations of wrongdoing are enough to preclude the former president from launching another campaign.

In comparison, just 35 percent of respondents believe that he should be able to run again. 

The poll was conducted immediately after New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) filed a sweeping $250 million lawsuit against Trump, his family business and three of his children, alleging that they used false financial statements to mislead investors. 

That lawsuit was only the latest in a series of mounting legal threats for Trump, who has openly floated the possibility of running for the White House in 2024.

He’s also facing a federal investigation into his removal of sensitive documents from the White House, as well as a criminal investigation in Georgia focusing on his and his allies’ attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state. 

The latest Yahoo News-YouGov poll suggests that Trump’s legal challenges may be catching up to him politically — even if he hasn’t been formally charged or convicted of a crime.

Still, there’s some evidence that he remains a potent political force.

The poll found that, in a hypothetical 2024 matchup against President Biden, Trump trails by only 2 percentage points. That’s down from a 6-point lead for Biden in a previous Yahoo News-YouGov poll. 

But in another sign of potential weakness for Trump, fewer than half of Republican and GOP-leaning voters say they support him for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, while 36 percent say they will back somebody else for the party’s nod. Seventeen percent are unsure.

That could suggest that GOP voters may be beginning to look past the former president as they consider who is best suited to take on Biden or another Democrat in 2024. 

The Yahoo News-YouGov poll surveyed 1,566 registered voters nationwide from Sept. 23-27. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.

Source: TEST FEED1