A lawsuit from the New York attorney general is the latest legal headache for former President Trump and arguably the most personal, as it targets both his business and his image as a skilled dealmaker.
The lawsuit has triggered a furious response from Trump, but many Republicans think it could ultimately solidify Republican support as he mulls whether to run for president in 2024.
“They’ve demeaned me for years with this stuff. And now they find out that I have very little debt — very, very little — a lot of cash,” Trump told Sean Hannity of Fox News this week. “We have a great company, and we have among the best assets anywhere in the world. But I went through, they were demeaning me, you know, constantly these people. There’s something wrong with them. I really believe they hate our country.”
Trump has spent days posting criticisms of New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) on his Truth Social platform, demeaning her as a “racist” and sharing old videos of James pledging to go after him if elected.
The lawsuit is personal for Trump, who built his political brand largely on the image that he is a successful businessman capable of making savvy deals to build a financial empire. Trump has been protective of the details of his finances in recent years, breaking with decades-long tradition by refusing to release his tax records while campaigning for office.
In a civil suit, James alleges Trump, with the help of his adult children and Trump Organization executives, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to secure loans on more favorable terms and to gain tax benefits. The suit alleges Trump and his company “knowingly and intentionally created more than 200 false and misleading valuations of assets” from 2011 to 2021.
As punishment, James is seeking a five-year ban on Trump buying commercial real estate in New York or applying for loans and a lifetime ban on Trump and his three oldest children — Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric — from serving on the board of any New York business.
But the allegations did not appear to bother many Republicans the way recent investigations into Trump’s conduct around the 2020 election or his handling of classified documents have.
Many in the GOP view the suit as a political move, pointing to James’s comments during her 2018 campaign in which she made Trump a focal point and vowed to hold him accountable.
One Republican operative with ties to Trump’s orbit dismissed any potential political fallout.
The operative reasoned that Trump’s base and the GOP as a whole are already inclined to believe Democrats, and James in particular, are out to get the former president. The lawsuit only reinforces that belief.
“The @January6thCmte investigation has stalled. The Mar-a-Lago raid is being exposed as a DOJ/FBI political operation. So now NY AG Letitia James has made a last-ditch effort to salvage attempts to ‘get’ President Trump. It never works,” tweeted Steven Cheung, a former Trump campaign adviser.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), head of the influential House Republican Study Committee, dismissed James’s lawsuit as “illegitimate” while sharing a video compilation of James calling Trump an “illegitimate president.”
Former Attorney General William Barr, a onetime staunch Trump ally who has been more willing to criticize his old boss in recent months, said he viewed James’s lawsuit as “overreach” that “will make people more sympathetic to Trump.”
“It’s hard for me not to conclude that this is a political hit job,” Barr said on Fox News after the lawsuit was publicized. “I’m not even sure that she has a good case against Trump himself, but what ultimately persuades me that this is a political hit job is that she grossly overreaches when she tries to drag the children into this.”
A New York Times poll conducted before news of James’s lawsuit was released found 44 percent of voters viewed Trump favorably, the same number as a poll conducted in July, underscoring his stable support among Republicans in particular.
Still, Trump’s legal troubles are undeniably piling up.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot is resuming its public hearings next week, and the panel may submit a final report before the midterms that contains more damaging information about Trump’s inaction that day.
There’s the ongoing investigation in Georgia into an effort to put forward a slate of alternative electors who would have overturned the state’s election results in 2020, which has drawn in several Trump allies.
And perhaps most seriously, there is the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified materials after leaving office in the wake of an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home last month. A special master appointed to sift through seized materials in the case has pressed Trump’s legal team to back up the former president’s claims that he declassified the documents he took with him.
The various probes pose not just legal threats to Trump, but political ones as well as voters mull whether to move on to a different candidate for the 2024 election.
“Elections are business decisions at the end of the day,” one former Trump campaign aide said, acknowledging that at a certain point the investigations may become too much of a burden for voters to accept.
President Biden’s statement this week that it “remains to be seen” if he’ll run for reelection has prompted more Democratic chatter about whether they’ll have a different candidate for the White House in 2024.
If Biden doesn’t run again, a number of Democrats are expected to wade into the presidential waters. But even Vice President Harris isn’t seen as a definitive leading contender in such a situation, Democrats acknowledge privately.
“There’s not one clear candidate and there’s not a rising star,” said one top Democratic donor.
Here’s who is generating the most talk and the most confidence.
Kamala Harris
While Harris, 57, has seen her own approval ratings fall at times during an up-and-down tenure as vice president, she remains the top non-Biden possibility for 2024.
Strategists say it would be difficult to convince Black women — who helped catapult Biden to the White House — to vote for anyone else as the party’s standard-bearer.
And as one strategist pointed out, “No one is going to win the nomination without winning in the South.”
While Harris had a rocky start during the first year of the administration, generating headlines for both gaffes and a string of staff departures, she has settled into the role.
She has also made women’s rights one of her issues out on the trail, an issue that can only help her political prospects with the Democratic base as the Supreme Court decision overturning the Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion rights continues to reverberate.
Pete Buttigieg
The Transportation secretary has been a popular figure in the Democratic Party since his 2020 presidential run, when he surprised the base with his come-out-of-nowhere ascent.
Buttigieg’s current role has sent him around the country to boast about popular infrastructure projects —something that can only help him down the road.
Just last month, Buttigieg, 40, appeared in the swing states of Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada and Ohio. Buttigieg’s stature with voters could have taken a beating with the railway strike earlier this month but after Biden’s late-hour intervention, it never amounted, solidifying his standing with Democratic voters.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
The two Biden administration fixtures are the top two non-Biden Democrats on our list.
The most likely alternatives after them are two governors.
The first is Michigan’s governor, who came closer than many realize to being Biden’s pick for vice president.
Now Whitmer, 51, is catching the eyes of Democrats as she runs for reelection.
This week, she opened up a 16-point lead over her Republican opponent Tudor Dixon in a Detroit Free Press poll.
Whitmer has made it a point to lean in on abortion rights, in particular. At a recent event she highlighted her role in the fight.
“The only reason Michigan continues to be pro-choice state is because of my veto and my lawsuit,” she said, according to CNN. The remarks refer to a lawsuit Whitmer filed to prevent a Michigan abortion ban from happening.
She often points out she filed the lawsuit even before Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in June, a move that will surely appeal to the base in the coming years.
Gov. Gavin Newsom
At a time when Democrats have been craving a leader who would get in the faces of Republicans, Newsom, the California governor, appeared to do battle.
Newsom, 54, made headlines in July when he took the fight directly to Ron DeSantis (R), running an ad in the Sunshine State blasting the Florida governor and the conservative culture there.
“Freedom, it’s under attack in your state. Republican leaders, they’re banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting speech in classrooms, even criminalizing women and doctors,” he said in the spot, which ran on Fox News programming throughout the state.
Earlier this month, he continued his aggressive stance by paying for billboards in some conservative states including Mississippi, Texas, Indiana and Oklahoma. His message? That abortion is still legal in California.
“He has still got a lot to prove but he has certainly made Democrats pay attention,” one strategist said.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
The one-time presidential hopeful has made it clear she has one race on her mind in 2024: her own reelection to the Senate.
But Democrats say there would be a place for her if Biden decides not to run again.
Warren, 73, has continued to be a top advocate on Capitol Hill for issues important to Democrats including climate change, abortion rights and gun safety.
But when she’s asked about the next presidential election, she consistently punts.
“We’ve got to stop the catnip about 2024,” she told Axios this summer. “If we start getting tangled up on 2024, and fail to pay attention to business in 2022, that is not only going to hurt us in 2022. It is going to bite us on the rear end in 2024.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
It’s tough for some Democrats to see the senator from Vermont launching another presidential campaign.
After all, he is 81 years old and — if elected — would be nearing 90 by the end of his term.
But Sanders has become such a staple of the Democratic Party since his first White House bid in 2016 that it’s hard to rule out a run. And if he did compete, he’d definitely have support.
Whenever there’s a debate that matters to the base — on student loans or climate change — he’s at the heart of it, one strategist pointed out.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.)
Almost no one in the Democratic Party has had the meteoric rise of “AOC,” as she’s known.
And while most strategists doubt that the congresswoman from New York will run for president just yet, her name is constantly bandied about when Democrats complain that their bench is weak.
The number one question strategists ask when they talk about her is whether she’ll even be of age to run for the highest office in the land. The answer is just barely: she turns 35 a month before the 2024 election.
Besides her age, another question that would undoubtedly come up is whether Ocasio-Cortez’s politics are too liberal to win a Democratic primary or general election.
Warren and Sanders, after all, lost to Biden in 2020.
Some Republican senators are privately expressing misgivings over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) provocative decision to ship migrants from Texas to liberal enclaves such as Martha’s Vineyard.
GOP lawmakers acknowledge sending planeloads of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, where former President Obama recently bought a house, plays well on Fox News and will likely ingratiate the Florida governor with Republican primary voters if he runs for president in 2024.
But the idea of shipping migrants thousands of miles across the country to Martha’s Vineyard — an island off of Massachusetts with only 17,000 year-round resident and hardly enough housing even for seasonal summer workers — without any advance notice to local authorities, to make a political point, leaves some GOP lawmakers feeling uncomfortable.
One Senate Republican critic who requested anonymity to comment candidly on DeSantis’s Martha’s Vineyard gambit said it shows how much politics has changed since then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R) made his brand “compassionate conservativism” before the 2000 election.
“It plays well to the base, but I just think of the humanity of it,” said the GOP senator. “It fires up a certain set of voters, but it turns another set of voters off.”
“The immediate media focus is on the shipping of people,” added the senator, referring to the critical media coverage of DeSantis and other Republican governors such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbot and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who have sent migrants to Chicago and Washington, D.C.
A Reuters-Ipsos poll published Friday showed that only a third of Americans think it’s appropriate for Republican governors to fly or bus migrants to other states. Half of the Republicans polled and only 1 in 6 Democrats said it was OK.
Twenty-nine percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats say they opposed the practice, according to the survey of 1,005 adults.
Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), a leading voice in Congress on immigration issues, said DeSantis’s aggressive tack would wind up turning off middle-of-the-road voters.
He said laws may have been broken and that he would monitor how Republican governors are treating the migrants.
“More information is coming out. In fact, a lawsuit has been filed against him for alleged misrepresentations to these people. I’m just going to stay tuned and let the facts develop before making any legal conclusion,” he said.
“This is exploitation at its worse,” he added. “The MAGA Republicans will glory in this kind of outrageous conduct but normal, sensible, independent [people] I’m sure will see through it.”
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), another leader on immigration issues, said there may be cause for Congress to investigate whether DeSantis improperly used federal COVID-19 relief money to fly migrants around the country.
A second Republican senator called DeSantis’s decision to ship migrants from Texas “a little strange” because they were outside his state’s jurisdiction.
The senator added that Abbott, the Texas governor, who is also seen as a potential presidential candidate, “has been more cautious,” because he’s only sent migrants from his own state and hasn’t sent them any of them to Martha’s Vineyard, a destination that seemed designed to provoke liberals.
The discomfort felt by some Senate Republicans was voiced publicly by former Trump White House senior advisor Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law, who said it was “very troubling” to see DeSantis use 48 Venezuelan migrants as “political pawns.”
“I personally watch what’s happening and it’s very hard to see at the southern border. I also — we have to remember these are human beings, they’re people,” Kushner told Fox News. “So seeing them being used as political pawns one way or the other is very troubling to me.”
The growing controversy over whether it’s appropriate to ship migrants to Martha’s Vineyard or to Vice President Harris’s official residence in Northwest Washington, D.C., — as Abbott recently did — is creating some tensions in the Senate Republican Conference.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised the gambit last week as “a good idea.”
The GOP leader seemed pleased that the intense media focus on DeSantis had shifted some public attention to the huge influx of migrants at the southern border, an issue on which Republicans want to focus on ahead of the election, and away from the abortion debate, which has energized Democratic voters.
But other Republicans are stopping short of praising DeSantis, Abbott or Ducey in the same way.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she understands the frustration felt by border-state governors but that she’s proposing to pass legislation to allow migrants seeking asylum to work legally in the United States while their cases make their way through the courts, instead of sending them to states around the country with no clear way of supporting themselves.
“I understand the frustration of border state governors because the border is completely out of control. We have 2 million unauthorized crossings in a year’s time. The administration really needs to take control of this issue and figure out how we can appropriately care for those who are crossing because they are fearing in their own country,” she said.
She said allowing migrants seeking asylum to work while the legal process plays out would ease the burden on nonprofit groups and communities that are now caring for them. It takes nearly five years, on average, for an asylum case to clear the legal backlog.
A third Senate Republican who requested anonymity to discuss how DeSantis’s entry into the Texas border fray might play out politically and legally predicted the Florida governor would wind up with big legal bills.
“Obviously to be in politics today you have to have enough campaign money to pay for lawsuits and lawyers,” the senator noted.
Alianza Americas, a Chicago-based advocacy group representing migrants, this past week filed a lawsuit against DeSantis accusing him of organizing “a premeditated, fraudulent and illegal scheme” to advance his own political interests. The group is seeking to elevate the suit to class-action status.
DeSantis is also facing a criminal investigation by the sheriff of Bexar County, the home of San Antonio, who says the Florida governor’s allies “lured” Venezuelan migrants onto the plane to Martha’s Vineyard “under false pretenses.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is eyeing a potential run for president in 2024, defended DeSantis by accusing Sheriff Javier Salazar, a Democrat who was elected to his office in 2016, of playing politics.
“I think it’s silliness. Sheriffs are elected in Texas. It’s not the first time someone is looking for a headline, but it is not remotely criminal at all for someone to offer a private jet, a flight to fly someone voluntarily to a billionaire’s paradise,” he said, referring to Martha’s Vineyard.
Other Senate Republicans are cheering on DeSantis and Abbott for putting Democrats on the political defensive.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said DeSantis doesn’t face any political risk over his gambit on migrants, even though he is already facing a criminal investigation and a civil suit.
“None, zero,” he said of the chance the politics might backfire on the Florida governor. “There are a bunch of liberals pushing back.”
“It’s good for him. The public’s with him. The public finds this, ‘Everybody, come into the country,’ insane,” he added. “I said in December of 2020 that immigration would be a bigger issue in 2022 than it was in 2020. Why? Because these policies are insane. There is no deterrence to coming by the millions now, with no end in sight. What Ron and Abbott are doing is trying to make this real to the most liberal groups in the country.”
Former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who staffed the Jan. 6 Committee until April, said on Friday that the White House switchboard connected with the phone of a rioter at the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection.
“You get a real ‘a-ha’ moment when you see that the White House switchboard had connected to a rioter’s phone while it’s happening,” said Riggleman, former senior technical adviser for the committee, according to a clip from CBS’s upcoming episode of “60 Minutes.”
When asked by host Bill Whitaker to confirm that someone in the White House was calling an insurrectionist during the riot, Riggleman said: “On January sixth, absolutely.”
Riggleman, author of upcoming book “The Breach,” said that the call raised a red flag from his perspective as a former military intelligence officer working in counterterrorism.
“I only know one end of that call. I don’t know the White House end, which I believe is more important,” he said.
“But the thing is, the American people need to know that there are link connections that need to be explored more.”
Whitaker inquired whether there is a “simple, innocent explanation” for the call, to which Riggleman responded: “Was it an accidental call?”
“When the White House just happened to call numbers, that somebody misdialed a rioter that day, on January sixth? Probably not,” he continued.
Riggleman was ousted from his congressional seat in 2020 after outrage from members of his party that he officiated a same-sex wedding.
The former representative elaborated on his role as an adviser to the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, where he led a digital investigation.
“We were able to do things, I think, in a way that had never been done before with millions of lines of data. And to actually create a graph that shows how these groups actually intermingled,” Riggleman told “60 Minutes.”
Communications have been highly scrutinized following the Capitol riot, including text messages from the phones of top Trump administration officials.
In August, a watchdog group reported that the Department of Defense failed to retain texts from a number of its top officials on Jan. 6. In addition, numerous officials from the Department of Homeland Security also had their messages erased during the transition, including former acting Secretary Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli.
The full episode of “60 Minutes” is set to air Sunday.
The Biden administration is on the verge of a significant breakthrough in Middle East relations as it quietly pursues an agreement between Israel and Lebanon on territorial maritime borders.
The negotiations appear to be closing in on the finish line amid intensive negotiations between U.S., Israeli and Lebanese officials that took place this week on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The administration has taken pains to downplay the significance of the potential agreement — concerned that anything that appears to look like normalization between Israel and Lebanon would set off a catastrophic fight with Hezbollah, which has an estimated 150,000 missiles positioned on Israel’s northern border.
But if successful, an agreement between Lebanon and Israel — with Beirut implicitly recognizing Israel’s legitimacy while the two sides are at war — would mark a tremendous victory for the Biden administration’s use of diplomacy to advance Middle East stability.
“It would be a very significant win for the Biden administration, and frankly it would be a significant win for regional stability and de-escalation of tensions,” said Mona Yacoubian, a senior adviser in the Middle East and North Africa Center at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
The negotiations are being led by Amos Hochstein, special presidential coordinator for international energy. He launched mediations between Israel and Lebanon in mid-October, following up on talks that were initiated during the former Trump administration in 2020.
The talks have gained little attention, in part because of greater world crises such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But this also reflects an effort on the part of the administration to maintain a low profile.
“I think this is being managed quite well on the part of the administration and Amos Hochstein in particular,” Yacoubian said.
“He’s really been very diligent in his shuttle diplomacy. I think he’s demonstrating, really, and he’s embodying what the hard work of diplomacy looks like and, if there is a deal, what it can yield.”
The agreement is expected to draw a border between Israel and Lebanon in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and demarcate claims that both Beirut and Jerusalem identify as their exclusive economic zone. It would sort out how the two nations could benefit from exploration of the Karish natural gas field.
Lebanese officials are signaling major progress in reaching a deal. Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati said during his speech at the General Assembly that “we have achieved tangible progress which we hope will reach its aspired conclusions soon.”
Part of the progress is a consensus between Israel and Lebanon on the benefits of resolving the maritime boundary. Israel wants to avoid conflict with Lebanon and generally advance its relations in the region, and Lebanon is in dire need of any economic benefit that would come from being able to explore gas extraction in this part of the Mediterranean Sea.
While the agreement on the maritime boundary is unlikely to yield immediate economic benefits for Lebanon, which is viewed as being in a crisis economic state, it is viewed as a positive development.
A potential agreement is under a time crunch.
Energean, the Greek-British energy company that holds a license to develop the Karish gas field, said in a September press release it “remains on track to deliver first gas from the Karish development project within weeks.”
The development of the fields could help European countries wean themselves off Russian natural gas.
“As Europeans seek substitutes for Russian energy sources, the eastern Mediterranean is becoming increasingly important in that regard,” Yacoubian said.
But Hezbollah, the U.S.-designated terrorist group that controls southern Lebanon and holds immense power in the country, has over the last few weeks increased the number of its threatening statements against Israel over the border negotiations and gas extraction.
Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah said last week that “we are following up on the negotiations and all our eyes are on Karish and our missiles are locked on Karish.” He warned Israel against extracting gas absent an agreement with Lebanon.
“The red line to us is that there should not be extraction from Karish,” he said, in televised remarks reported by the Naharnet news site.
A spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid responded in a statement Monday that gas extraction is not connected to the U.S.-mediated negotiations.
“Israel believes that it is both possible and necessary to reach an agreement on a maritime line between Lebanon and Israel. … The production of gas from the Karish rig is not connected to these negotiations, and the production of gas from the rig will commence without delay, as soon as it is possible,” the statement read.
And in a briefing with reporters on Wednesday in New York, Lapid said that “Israel is strong and knows how to defend itself” if an agreement is not reached with Lebanon addressing Israel’s “security, diplomatic and economic needs,” Axios reported.
Yacoubian, of the Institute of Peace, said that Nasrallah’s threats appear to be “theater.”
“It’s a lot of saber rattling, but that might be because it’s a prelude to a negotiated agreement,” she said.
“In other words, saber rattling as a way of Hezbollah establishing itself as an actor working towards Lebanon’s benefit — so that when this deal comes, they shape their role in that way, that it was partly their pressure, their strong line on defending Lebanon’s interests that helped get Lebanon a deal.”
Hawkish regional watchers believe Nasrallah’s threats are laying the groundwork for an outbreak of conflict. Israel views Hezbollah as one of its greatest security threats and an arm of Iran’s greater ambitions to attack the Jewish state.
“The Iranians, in their stomach, are trying to [take] revenge against Israel,” said Eitan Dangot, president of the Association of Oil and Gas Exploration Industries in Israel and former chief of the Israel Home Front Command.
“Hezbollah is not working for the defense of Lebanon, Iran is giving it the green light to open its [missile] storage on Israel.”
Hezbollah’s determined threats against Israel is a point the Israel Defense Forces constantly reinforce to the world. The IDF has destroyed, but preserved, at least half a dozen Hezbollah tunnels dug under Israel’s northern border.
They regularly bring international visitors to tour the tunnels, marching them 80 meters, or more than 260 feet, underground to view the sophisticated engineering needed to burrow through solid bedrock and demonstrate what they say is Hezbollah’s determination to wage war on Israel.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield visited the tunnels in November, and the IDF tweeted a photo of a delegation of ambassadors and diplomats visiting the tunnels in March.
”Seeing the tunnel with your own eyes changes your perception completely. Only then can you truly understand the lengths Hezbollah goes to in order to harm Israeli civilians,” Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, IDF international spokesperson, told The Hill.
MONONGAHELA, Pa. — The sprint to Election Day is fully underway, but House Republicans are looking past November and eyeing what they’ll do in the likely event of winning a majority in the upper chamber.
They’ve hinted at parts of their agenda for months, but this week Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other members of House GOP leadership formally unveiled a package of proposed policy and messaging priorities for the next Congress.
McCarthy was joined by more than two dozen House GOP colleagues, with ideologies ranging from firebrand Freedom Caucus Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to moderate Republican Governance Group Chairman David Joyce (R-Ohio), at the rollout event at warehouse for an HVAC company about 45 minutes outside Pittsburgh.
Members answered friendly questions from some in the audience of around 150 parents, business owners, law enforcement officials and activists — with many news cameras and reporters watching.
Dubbed the “Commitment to America,” much of the written plan is vague, vowing to “curb wasteful government spending” and making a passing reference to abortion by saying the GOP will “protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers.”
But the plan broadly lays out Republican priorities less than seven weeks before voters go to the polls. Republicans have also proposed some specifics and say other details would be worked out in committees.
Republicans need a net gain of just six seats to win control of the House in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, an outcome election analysts say is likely.
Here are five things Republicans say they would do with that control:
Take aim at the IRS
House Republicans’ first bill, McCarthy announced at Friday’s rollout event, will aim to reverse the portion of the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law this summer, that provides $80 billion to the IRS and significantly boosts staff. The additional funds are largely to target high-income earner compliance.
“On our very first bill, we’re going to repeal 87,000 IRS agents,” McCarthy said.
Republicans have repeatedly, and falsely, claimed the 87,000 new IRS employees, which would be added over the course of a decade, will be “agents” and raised the specter of an enforcement army banging on voters’ doors. In fact, many will work as support staff, auditors and replacements for those who leave the agency.
Launch a flood of investigations
Perhaps the biggest tool for a GOP-led House with a Democratic president able to veto Republican bills would be the power to direct hearings and demand information and documents.
Republicans promise to “conduct rigorous oversight to rein in government abuse of power and corruption” and flaunted that they have already sent more than 500 requests for information and documents.
They plan to investigate the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the origins of the COVID-19 virus — with several House Republicans pledging to specifically investigate Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to Biden and longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — and policies on the U.S.-Mexico border.
“We will give [Homeland Security] Secretary Mayorkas a reserved parking spot, he will be testifying so much about this,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) also said that he would look into the Department of Justice (DOJ) as chair of the House Judiciary Committee.
“The No. 1 thing is this weaponization of the DOJ against the American people,” Jordan said.
Those actions could also affect the DOJ’s investigation of former President Trump. After the FBI executed a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and seized classified documents, Republicans told Attorney General Merrick Garland to preserve his documents.
Republicans are also planning to probe the business activities of Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, but lawmakers at the rollout event did not put focus on that.
Wade into school culture war issues
McCarthy’s plan calls to “defend fairness by ensuring that only women can compete in women’s sports,” and he has specifically said he would bring up the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.
That bill would to define sex “solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth” for purposes of Title IX in athletics. Support for the legislation ticked up as coverage of transgender athletes succeeding in women’s sports competitions, such as former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, increased.
Republicans also promise to “advance the Parents’ Bill of Rights,” legislation that was released last year in part as a response to frustrations about “woke” curriculum and COVID-19–related school closures that spilled over into heated school board meetings.
The bill would require school districts to post curriculum publicly, have teachers offer two in-person meetings with parents a year, have parents give consent before any medical exam at school and provide notice of any violence at school.
It is unlikely that either bill could pass in the Senate, or that Biden would sign it.
Push domestic energy and gas production
Republicans put a large focus on increasing domestic energy as a means of lowering fuel prices and increasing the number of well-paying jobs.
The platform calls to “cut the permitting process time in half to reduce reliance on foreign countries.” House Republicans unveiled an energy and climate strategy earlier this year that promotes oil and gas, mining for critical minerals and hydropower.
If a GOP bill on climate makes it to Biden’s desk and he vetoes it, that would be future campaign fodder for Republicans.
“What kind of message does it send if it does get through to his desk and he has to veto it?” Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) told The Hill. “If that’s a choice he wants to make, well then he won’t win another term either.”
Scrutinize local crime policies
High crime rates have been a major midterm campaign topic, and an NBC News poll released this week found the GOP with a 23-point edge over Democrats when voters were asked who could better handle the issue.
Republicans promise to bring up legislation to give recruiting and retention bonuses to police departments in hopes of combating national police staffing shortages. They also plan to probe policies of local district attorneys.
“House Republicans will immediately ensure that we hire 200,000 more police officers across this country to make sure that our communities are safe,” said House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (N.Y.). “We will go after the radical leftist prosecutors, DAs, who are refusing to abide by the rule of law, and are prioritizing criminals rather than the law-abiding citizens.”
The House passed four bills on Thursday that addressed policing, despite Democratic division.
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Former President Trump has had one of his worst weeks on the legal front — and it is causing unease even among Republicans.
The most dramatic news was the suit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James that accuses Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization of huge fraud.
The case is civil, not criminal, but James is seeking a judgment of $250 million against the defendants.
Later the same day, a federal appeals court ruled against Trump in the dispute over sensitive documents seized by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago estate in August.
The appellate court’s verdict gives investigators immediate access to around 100 documents that were marked as classified, rather than having to wait for a separate ruling from a court-appointed special master.
Meanwhile, a probe in Georgia is still not getting the level of national attention that its gravity merits.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has told 17 people that they are targets of her investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election result in the state.
Among those facing the possibility of indictment is Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and Trump attorney.
Willis recently told The Washington Post that, if and when indictments are eventually issued, “people are facing prison sentences.”
The political ramifications have begun to worry some Republicans — and not only those within the strident but thin anti-Trump ranks.
“The legal issues are motivating Trump’s base, who believe he’s being targeted by Democrats. But it’s not playing well with swing voters,” Dan Eberhart, a significant GOP donor, told this column.
Eberhart, who donated around $100,000 to Trump’s 2020 reelection effort but has become more critical in the years since, added that the former president’s legal woes are complicating the midterm calculus for GOP candidates.
“Any candidate that tries to distance themselves from him over the legal stuff risks him attacking them and costing them base voters. It’s a mess,” Eberhart complained.
Sam Nunberg, who worked on the early stages of Trump’s 2016 campaign but has had a checkered relationship with him in the years since, viewed the recent developments through the prism of a possible 2024 bid.
Nunberg said Trump appeared to get a “bump” of sympathetic support among some Republicans in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago raid but it appears to have subsided.
“I just can’t see the Republican Party nominating someone who lost the previous election, could only serve one term, and is under multiple investigations and possible indictments — especially when there is an obvious alternative,” Nunberg said, referring to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Trump also deepened GOP dismay when he made the bizarre claim, during a Wednesday evening interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, that a president could declassify secret documents by “thinking about it.”
At least four GOP senators, including Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) dissented from that view in separate comments to CNN reporter Manu Raju.
Trump has responded to his various legal setbacks with rage — often a sign that the former president is feeling the pressure.
Reacting to the suit filed in New York, Trump described James, who is Black, as a “racist” and a “fraud.”
In relation to Georgia, the former president took aim at Willis soon after her comments about “jail sentences.” He complained that Willis was trying to “prosecute a very popular president” and was engaged in “a strictly political Witch Hunt!”
There is no good time for the kind of grim legal news Trump has received this week — but right now is particularly bad.
The former president is edging closer to declaring his 2024 candidacy, holding rallies in recent weeks in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The events were ostensibly to help GOP candidates in those states but, in practice, looked like rallies for a coming Trump campaign.
Trump’s primacy within the GOP is also coming under new challenge, especially from DeSantis.
The Florida governor has been holding public events far from his native state in recent weeks. And the flights of migrants he organized from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts have proven popular with the right-wing populist base that dominates today’s GOP, even though DeSantis’s gambit is deeply contentious with the general public.
In tandem, there is nervousness in Republican circles about the state of the midterms campaign.
A few months back, the GOP was confident of sweeping gains in both chambers of Congress. Now, the battle for the Senate tilts slightly toward Democrats, while expectations for GOP gains in the House have become more modest.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) recent observation about the importance of “candidate quality,” was widely seen as a jab at Trump-endorsed Senate nominees such as Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia.
Trump’s poll ratings rarely shift but they have eroded slightly in some polls amid the blizzard of bad news.
An NBC News survey released last Sunday found just 34 percent of registered voters holding a favorable view of the former president. It was his lowest rating in that poll since April 2021.
Democrats, for their part, can hardly contain their delight.
“Nobody in any sort of swing state is embracing Donald Trump as they would have 12 months ago,” said Dick Harpootlian, a prominent Democrat and state senator in South Carolina who also served on President Biden’s fundraising committee during the 2020 campaign.
“It is not just the legal difficulties, it is the election-denying. Beyond the My Pillow guy, that is not seen as a normal or rational position,” he added, referring to fervent Trump ally Mike Lindell.
“Trump lost the election. He can’t get past that, his people can’t get past that. But the American public has got past that,” Harpootlian said.
Misinformation given to a group of migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., has raised calls for an investigation into whether Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis intentionally misled the asylum seekers, potentially violating the law.
The group of 50 were not only promised housing and employment – immigration law experts say they were given bad advice that could actually jeopardize their immigration status as they seek to remain in the U.S.
Perhaps the most controversial information provided to the migrants came in the form of brochures with information on how to register as refugees in Massachusetts, despite the fact that they’re asylum seekers, and are not eligible to register for that program.
“Refugees are different than asylum seekers. Refugees get benefits; asylum seekers do not. Refugees get approval beforehand; asylum seekers do not. These people have all been processed – they’re not illegal because they’ve been processed by Customs and Border Protection. There’s so much here that’s just full of lies,” Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) told The Hill.
The state of Florida has also called the migrants “illegal immigrants,” but gave them guidance about how to navigate parts of the legal immigration system. This apparent contradiction has spurred questions about whether DeSantis’s operators deliberately misled the migrants, or whether Florida officials misunderstood basic precepts of immigration law.
DeSantis Communications Director Taryn Fenske defended the brochures, saying the information was pulled directly from publicly available Massachusetts government websites.
“I will say that the brochure is legitimate and if you google it, it’ll confirm the information was directly from the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants. So, it’s unclear why many in the media are portraying it as being fraudulent or incorrect,” wrote Fenske in an email to The Hill.
DeSantis and fellow GOP Govs. Greg Abbott (Texas) and Doug Ducey (Ariz.) have continuously defended the migrant transport, arguing that so-called sanctuary jurisdictions are in a better position to attend to migrants than non-sanctuary states.
“Additionally, sanctuary jurisdictions would be best equipped to provide the services they promote and offer, i.e., from their own website – employment, education, etc.,” wrote Fenske.
But Democrats and immigrant advocates say the entire operation is a ploy to create chaos around migration ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
“This is the normal thing that Republicans do every time they start losing campaigns. They scare everybody. And they’re gonna use this to scare everybody. I mean, at the end of the day, most of these people, if they have friends and family in Florida are gonna end up in Florida, even if they do take them to Massachusetts. And it was just kind of a waste of time. It doesn’t really create any solutions,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).
The flights have ignited a firestorm for DeSantis, particularly once migrants who landed on the far-flung New England island detailed how they thought they were going to Boston and relayed the other promises.
An attorney for the group has now sued DeSantis, and the House Homeland Security Committee has asked both the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice to investigate.
The letter from the panel cited concerns that the migrants “were coerced to board the flight through false information” and asks the Justice Department “whether any Federal laws were violated in the coercion and transport of the migrants.”
“One of the things that you’re always concerned about is as a country, we should tell people the truth. They shouldn’t be tricked, shouldn’t be taken advantage of. Most of them have had significant challenges getting to this point. And we still have, as a nation of laws, we have to treat people humanely and obviously we have to treat them with what the law provides,” Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in response to a question from The Hill.
The entire policy of shipping people north has drawn comparisons to “Reverse Freedom Rides,” an early 1960s anti-civil rights counterprotest designed to portray Black southerners as a socioeconomic burden.
In a letter led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) Friday, 27 House Democrats called on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to publicly denounce the migrant dumps, in part because of the similarity to the Reverse Freedom Rides.
“The dishonest relocation programs are acts of gamesmanship rooted in racism and xenophobia. In 1962, southern White Citizen Councils started ‘Reverse Freedom Rides’ to remove Black people from their states based on false promises. 60 years later, Governors Greg Abbott, Doug Ducey, and Ron DeSantis are using the same ploys to remove immigrants,” wrote the lawmakers.
The suit against DeSantis claims his actions constituted false imprisonment, fraud and intentional emotional distress.
“They were lied to again and again and fraudulently induced to board the planes,” said Rachel Self, one of the attorneys now representing the migrants in the case.
She noted that the asylum seekers were told to register their new address once they landed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency that does not oversee the first steps in the asylum process.
“This is especially troubling as anyone with even the most basic understanding of the immigration proceedings knows that USCIS was not the agency with whom the migrants would have to record their addresses and has nothing to do with their cases in any way,” said Self.
“It is clear that this was an intentional attempt to ensure that these migrants were removed in absentia when they failed to change their address with the proper agency. This was a purposeful derailment designed to prevent people from complying with federal immigration policies,” she added.
And many Democrats are not buying the explanation proffered by DeSantis’s office that they were simply relaying information provided by Massachusetts.
Barragán said the governor’s office would have the resources on hand to understand the implications of the instructions it was offering the migrants.
“This is intentional lying. This is not misinformed,” she said.
“There’s no way. You’re the governor of a state. Okay, you’ve got a team. You can figure it out. This is a political ploy.”
Still, Republicans have come to DeSantis’s defense, minimizing the impact of the migrant dumps and focusing on the Biden administration’s asylum policies, which they decry as “open borders.”
“[The migrants] were misled when they heard that the border is open. I mean, it’s really bad,” said Rep. María Eliva Salazar (R-Fla.).
“The problem here is that there is the border that is open. That’s very cruel, too,” said Salazar.
Asked whether the state of Florida reaped any benefits from giving migrants misleading information, Salazar replied, “I don’t know about that. But I still look at the big picture.”
And Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) said the relocations would appeal to Floridians.
“Floridians are sick and tired of this Administration allowing millions of illegal migrants to unlawfully pour into our country with zero repercussions,” said Steube.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday extended proxy voting in the House until Nov. 10, allowing members to vote remotely until after the midterm elections under a pandemic-initiated shift.
The announcement was notable this time coming days after President Biden in an interview declared that “the pandemic is over.”
Republicans have pounced on the remarks, which Biden has since walked back to an extent, to argue that if the pandemic is over, there should be no reason to continue funding for efforts to stop it.
Republicans and Democrats alike have used proxy voting to vote from home, but that didn’t stop several Republicans from criticizing the extension of the process given Biden’s comments.
“The big guy said “C’mon man, pandemic is over,’” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote on Twitter. “Nevertheless, Pelosi extends proxy voting due to ‘novel coronavirus’ until the week of the election.”
Proxy voting — which first took effect in March 2020 — was set to end on Sept. 26, but Pelosi has now kicked that date into November because “the public health emergency due to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 remains in effect.”
She informed lawmakers of the decision in a dear colleague letter.
The speaker has extended proxy voting several times since it was first used at the onset of the pandemic.
Republicans have vowed to end proxy voting if they win control of the House in November, which forecasts predict will happen.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other members of House GOP leadership rolled out their midterm agenda, titled the “Commitment to America,” on Friday, which includes ending proxy voting.
“End the special treatment for Members of Congress by repealing proxy voting,” the agenda reads.
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) slammed Pelosi’s decision and reiterated that Republicans will end remove voting if they win the majority.
“Earlier this week, President Biden claimed that the pandemic was over. It seems everyone but Speaker Pelosi agrees,” he wrote in a statement.
Biden drew heat for his comment, as the U.S. is still recording tens of thousands of COVID-19 cases a day — though that is far less than other points of the pandemic.
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A group of employees who work for the internal watchdog at the Department of Homeland Security are calling on President Biden to remove their boss, saying they’ve lost hope the “ship will right itself.”
The request comes after numerous congressional panels have asked DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to step aside from various investigations after he failed to alert lawmakers in a timely manner that Secret Service text messages for Jan. 6 had been “erased.”
An anonymous letter shared by the Project on Government Oversight was signed by “concerned DHS OIG employees representing every program office at every grade level” who added that “for fear of retaliation, we cannot identify ourselves.”
“Providing effective oversight of the newest and third largest Cabinet department is difficult enough, it should not be made more difficult by our own leadership,” the employees wrote.
“We need help. We can no longer be silent when faced with continuous mismanagement of DHS OIG at its highest levels. IG Cuffari has made clear that he wishes to remain in his position, even in the face of prolonged, deserved criticism in the media, from Congress, from other oversight entities and from his own staff. A true leader would recognize the effect of his actions on his workforce and understand the right thing to do would be to step aside. However, IG Cuffari is not a true leader. He instead acts to weaken and undercut his career staff at every step.”
Cuffari has faced scrutiny nearly his entire tenure as inspector general at DHS since being nominated by former President Trump in 2019, tapped for the role after working as an adviser on military issues for Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R).
In the past he has been accused of removing information from OIG reports, and failing to act on a startling sexual harassment survey at DHS or a request to investigate Secret Service’s role in clearing protesters from Lafayette Park so Trump could take a photo holding a bible.
But the revelation that he failed to alert Congress to missing Jan. 6 texts both from Secret Service agents and two agency leaders has ignited the most recent criticism.
The letter lays out a string of issues, many of which have been laid out in pieces through various congressional letters to Cuffari over the last few years asking him to justify his decisions.
The employee letter says Cuffari has “refus[ed] to move forward with important proposed work without reason,” delayed investigations for months or years, shutting out career staff “so that only he and his inner circle assign most reviews,” “interfering with staff efforts to gather information,” and “significantly editing reports to remove key findings, which weakens the impact of the reports.”
Cuffari’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did the White House.
Cuffari has been asked to step aside from his Jan. 6 investigation by both the House Oversight and Homeland Security committees, “in light of the cascading revelations about your failure to conduct this investigation effectively and communicate truthfully with Congress.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department to instead take over the investigation.
In responding to the committees, Cuffari posted his response publicly and sent it out to all DHS OIG employees, something they said was a warning sign to staffers.
“His actions do not represent this 700-plus workforce. His actions continue to damage his own, and DHS OIG’s, reputation. His actions are not the actions of a true leader. His actions embarrass the entire agency. His actions impede and greatly hinder our mission,” the letter from the employees said.
“You are the only one who can help us before DHS OIG are forever damaged by IG Cuffari,” they said to Biden.
