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If history is our guide, Trump’s chances of returning to the White House are extremely low

Donald Trump is all but certain to announce another run for president to reclaim the White House after his one term in office. He wouldn’t be the first former president to attempt such a political comeback.

If history is our guide, however, Trump’s chances of serving two non-consecutive terms is extremely low. In fact, the record of success by former presidents winning a term after being out of office is limited to just one example in more than 200 years, even though others have tried to return to the presidency.

The closest parallel of what Trump is attempting replicate comes from the career of Democrat Grover Cleveland, our 22nd and 24th president.

Cleveland was first elected in 1884. He won the Electoral College with 219 votes against his Republican opponent James G. Blaine’s 182 electoral votes. Cleveland’s victory, however, was masked by his razor-thin margin of victory in his home state of New York that he won by just over 1,000 votes. Had Cleveland lost New York, Blaine would have won the presidency, and Cleveland would likely have been just a footnote to history.

Just as Cleveland’s 1884 victory hinged on just a few votes in one state, in 2016, Trump’s margin over Hillary Clinton was because of small but significant victories in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He won these three states by a total of less than 78,000 votes, even though he lost the nationwide popular vote by close to 3 million votes.

In 1888, Cleveland ran for a second term — and in 2020, Trump ran for a second term. They both lost. Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote to Benjamin Harrison. Despite Trump’s unfounded protestations to the contrary, he lost the popular vote by more than 7 million votes and lost the Electoral College, relegating him to the status of former president.

By 1892, Cleveland was not content continuing to sit on the political sidelines, and so he made his comeback bid with another run at the presidency. The Democrats renominated him. In the general election, he took the keys to the White House back from Benjamin Harrison with his wins in both the Electoral College and popular vote. Cleveland’s legacy was thus sealed as the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms.

With the 2024 presidential election just a little more than two years away, Trump has made it no secret of his desire to run for president again. Unlike Cleveland who won the popular vote in all three of his presidential bids, Trump has never won the popular vote.

While presidential elections give Republicans an edge in the Electoral College with sparsely populated conservative-leaning states, Trump’s chances of winning in 2024 are tempered by his tumultuous one term as president and by the multiple grand jury and other civil and criminal investigations into his actions both before, during and after his presidency.

For Trump to win, he would need to draw votes from most Republicans and a significant number of independents. The 2024 political landscape is different than it was for Trump in 2016 when many decided to take a chance that a businessman might make a good president. He now has a documented track record of ignoring truth, undermining civility and shaking the foundations of our democracy. Knowing what we know, will voters be convinced to move him back into the White House?

Aside from whether Trump becomes the second president to win a non-consecutive term, Cleveland and Trump lived in vastly different ethical worlds.

Cleveland, sometimes referred to as “Grover the Good,” was a man of principled integrity and honesty. When he was confronted with allegations that he had fathered a child outside of wedlock, he quickly admitted it.

By contrast, Trump’s business, political and personal affairs have been littered with thousands of lawsuits and questionable ethical practices — likely more than all other presidents combined.

Trump still maintains a strong base of enthusiasm within the Republican Party, but current polls indicate an overall weakening of Trump’s support. In one poll, 57 percent of voters thought Trump should not run again.

Trump’s legal exposures, from multiple investigations into the then-president’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, as well as the Justice Department’s review of classified and national intelligence documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago in the FBI’s search, all paint a perilous path for the former president — who could very well be indicted after the upcoming midterm elections.

Cleveland was not the only president to make a comeback bid to the presidency. Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Ulysses Grant and Theodore Roosevelt all attempted to reclaim the presidency after their terms of office. None of them were successful.

Will Trump replicate Cleveland’s return to the White House, or will his third national campaign for the presidency fall short like it has for others? Only time will tell, but the historical odds and the present-day legal threats facing Trump do not bode well for him to be inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025.

Mike Purdy is a presidential historian, the author of the “Presidential Friendships: How They Changed History,” and the founder of PresidentialHistory.com.

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Black Lives Matter exec accused of stealing $10M in lawsuit

Black Lives Matter (BLM) leaders on Friday sued an executive of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (GNF) on charges of syphoning $10 million in donations to the organization for use as his own “personal piggy bank.”

Walter Mosley, an attorney representing BLM Grassroots — a separate entity from GNF — filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court against GNF and GNF board member Shalomyah Bowers, as well as his consulting firm.

The initial complaint, seeking financial relief and a court order halting GNF’s use of the BLM identity, accuses Bowers of becoming a “turned usurper” and charging fees for BLM donors, which he then used for his own personal funds.

“When more than 300 movement leaders, as well as BLM Founders, insisted that he resign from GNF,” the complaint reads, “he continued to betray the public trust by self-dealing and breaching his fiduciary duties.”

Melina Abdullah, a founder of the BLM Los Angeles chapter and a co-director of the BLM Grassroots, held a press conference last week announcing the lawsuit.

“Global Network Foundation has been taken away from the people who built it,” she said. “Global Network Foundation is now led by a highly paid consultant who paid himself upwards of $2 million in a single year.”

Abdullah said Patrisse Cullors, a BLM founder, had created a transition plan to transfer control of GNF over to the grassroots organization, but GNF has locked her out of social media accounts and is amplifying messages she does not agree with.

In a statement following the press conference, the GNF Board of Directors denied the allegations, saying they were “disappointed and dismayed at the false narrative” spread by Abdullah and other BLM leaders, who they accused of taking $10,000 per month in personal stipends.

“We as Black people and Black-led organizations cannot continue spending all of our precious time and energy fighting and tearing each other down,” the statement reads. “We have no desire and little time to put private business out in the street. However, Melina Abdullah, BLMGR, and its leadership seem intent on fighting publicly about their desire to control the entirety of Black Lives Matter.”

The board denied the entirety of the allegations, claiming they have requested meetings with Abdullah and other leaders; have shared social media accounts with BLM Grassroots; and argued there has never been a plan to transition GNF to the BLM Grassroots organization.

The legal battle is the latest controversy within the BLM organization, which began as a movement in 2013 after the death of 17-year-old Travyon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood security guard who fatally shot Martin.

Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Cullors created the original hashtag for BLM, which eventually sprouted into local chapters that make up BLM Grassroots. BLM GNF was incorporated in 2017, primarily to be a fundraising component of the movement.

After the death of George Floyd in 2020, the BLM movement gained renewed national and international attention.

But the organization’s finances since then have come under increased scrutiny, particularly where a large chunk of $90 million raised in donations in 2020 has gone.

And in late 2020, a group of ten original BLM local chapters announced they were severing ties with GNF over a lack of transparency and support.

New York Magazine also reported earlier this year that BLM executives bought a $6 million home with money donated to GNF.

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Spate of violence across US mars Labor Day weekend

At least nine mass shootings have taken place nationwide so far during Labor Day weekend, leaving at least 10 people dead, according to Gun Violence Archive.

The mass shootings, which the organization defines as incidents in which four or more people were shot or killed, not including the shooter, took place in cities including Norfolk, Va., Charleston, S.C., and Chicago, among others.

The deadliest shooting of the weekend so far, according to the group, took place in Saint Paul, Minn., where three people died and two others were injured on Sunday in the city’s Payne-Phalen neighborhood.

The local police department said officers were called at about 4:30 p.m. and found two people outside a home suffering from apparent gunshot wounds, both of whom were sent to the hospital, KARE reported. 

The officers also found three more people, who were later pronounced dead, shot inside the home, the outlet reported.

“This unthinkable crime will not only affect the crime victims and their families, but it will affect the neighborhood where it occurred and our city as a whole,” police spokesperson Sgt. Mike Ernster told KARE, adding that authorities had been called to the house at least 17 times in the last year.

Earlier on Sunday, authorities said a shooting in Norfolk, Va., near the campus of Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University left two people dead and seven others injured.

Authorities identified the victims as Zabre Miller, 25, and Angelia McKnight, 19, later died at the hospital as a result of their injuries, officials said.

Close to the same time, police responded to gunshots in downtown Charleston, S.C.

Five people were injured in that shooting, near the intersection of King and Morris streets, and were sent to hospitals for non-life-threatening injuries, CNN reported. Police arrested two suspects.

In the suburbs of Washington, D.C., on Saturday night, a 16-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy were shot outside an AMC movie theater and were hospitalized, WJLA reported. The shooting came hours after a nearby AMC theater in Alexandria, Va., closed after receiving a threat, according to the outlet.

Also on Saturday, Birmingham, Ala., police officers found three gunshot victims in the 100 Block of 3rd Avenue West. Police said two of the victims died, identified as Jalen Jamarcus Tolbert, 24, and Marquse Terrail Yarbrough, 25.

A shooting at Vick’s Supper Club in Palatka, Fla., on Saturday left two people dead and two others injured, police said. A fifth person was severely hurt after they were beaten with a “blunt object.”

In Canada, a series of stabbings left 10 people dead and 15 others injured. Authorities are searching for two suspects.

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Liz Truss to be UK’s next prime minister

Liz Truss will be the next prime minister of the United Kingdom after winning the race on Monday to lead the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party.

Truss will take over the role from Boris Johnson, who announced his resignation in July as his relationship with Conservative lawmakers soured over his handling of a number of issues. Truss served as foreign secretary under Johnson.

“I am honoured to be elected Leader of the Conservative Party,” Truss said after the announcement.

“Thank you for putting your trust in me to lead and deliver for our great country,” she continued. “I will take bold action to get all of us through these tough times, grow our economy and unleash the United Kingdom’s potential.”

Truss, who promised to increase defense spending and cut taxes during the campaign, will assume the prime minister role as the country faces skyrocketing energy prices and high inflation.

She received 57.4 percent of the vote, beating out rival Rishi Sunak, Britain’s former finance minister, who received 42.6 percent of the vote.

Truss was largely viewed as the frontrunner during the campaign. Roughly 172,000 dues-paying Conservative Party members cast ballots in the election after the party’s lawmakers nominated eight candidates and narrowed the ballot list to Truss and Sunak.

Queen Elizabeth II is scheduled to formally appoint Truss as Britain’s prime minister on Tuesday during a ceremony at her Balmoral estate in Scotland.

In remarks directly following the announcement, Truss doubled down on her plan to grow Britain’s economy by cutting taxes, also emphasizing her belief in “personal responsibility.”

“During this leadership campaign, I campaigned as a conservative, and I will govern as a conservative,” she said.

Truss also vowed to take action on the country’s mounting energy issues, characterizing it as a “crisis.” 

Annual energy bills for the average U.K. household have already risen by 54 percent this year, and consumers will see another hike in October that brings the gain to roughly 80 percent. 

Global oil and gas prices jumped as demand surged from countries recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. Supply strains resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have furthered the imbalance of energy supplies and demand, contributing to price gains and fueling fears of a recession.

Britain’s annual inflation rate hit 10.1 percent in July, a 40-year high that outpaces the U.S. and other places in Europe.

“I will deliver on the energy crisis, dealing with people’s energy bills, but also dealing with the long-term issues we have on energy supply,” Truss said on Monday.

The Conservative Party has maintained a healthy majority since the country’s 2019 elections. Johnson has served atop the party since that year but came under increasing pressure to step aside in recent months over a variety of issues, eventually leading to his resignation announcement in July.

The prime minister attended gatherings in his office and other government buildings in 2020 and 2021 when the country imposed pandemic restrictions on parties, leading Johnson to become the first sitting prime minister to receive fines.

Some in his party later called for Johnson’s resignation over his handling of sexual misconduct allegations against Johnson’s deputy chief whip.

Sunak, Truss’s most formidable opponent in the race, resigned last year amid the scandals, days before Johnson announced he would leave 10 Downing Street. 

Truss remained in Johnson’s cabinet and on Monday called him a “friend.”

“Boris — you got Brexit done, you crushed Jeremy Corbyn, you rolled out the vaccine and you stood up to Vladimir Putin,” she said. “You are admired from Kyiv to Carlisle.”

Keir Starmer, the leader of U.K.’s Labour Party, congratulated Truss on her victory.

“But after 12 years of the Tories all we have to show for it is low wages, high prices and a Tory cost of living crisis,” Starmer tweeted. “Only Labour can deliver the fresh start our country needs.”

Updated at 8:47 a.m.

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Supreme Court strikes out its own team ahead of 2022 elections

Just as the bases were getting loaded for a grand slam homerun for the Republican team in the 2022 general election, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) managed to strike out its own team. Instead of taking control of both Houses of Congress, the GOP will likely end the election cycle with roughly 48 senators and a razor-thin margin, either way, in the House.

Several factors will have played a part in this GOP election debacle, but the major factor will be the SCOTUS majority’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The court’s Dobbs decision, which took away a 50-year federal right to abortion, has energized women voters across the country.

Prior to the leak of the Dobbs draft opinion, new voter registrants in 10 selected states were roughly equal between the sexes. Post-Dobbs, female registrations in those states increased over male registrations by between 0.5 percent and 15.9 percent. Kansas experienced the remarkable 15.9 percent jump, which likely contributed to the resounding defeat of the state’s anti-abortion ballot measure in August.

A Quinnipiac University poll released on Aug. 31, disclosed that 57 percent of male registered voters and 62 percent of female voters thought abortion should be legal in most or all cases. And 64 percent of women thought it “very important” that midterm candidates share their view on abortion, compared to 44 percent of men.

The Dobbs decision caught both parties by surprise. Republicans have long used abortion as a powerful vote-getter, particularly in red states, thinking they would never have to explain how they would protect the health of women who experience life-threatening complications during pregnancy.

With the issue of abortion going back to the states, many extreme anti-abortion legislators were caught in a bind. They are no longer able to gain political points by enacting ever-tougher abortion restrictions into state law, knowing that Roe will be there to prevent those laws from going into effect. Republican candidates in purple states, sensing that draconic restrictions are not favored by a majority of voters, have been furiously scrubbing extreme abortion positions from their campaign websites. Women voters will not be fooled by such chicanery.

It will get worse for those GOP candidates. Most women either have experienced a serious pregnancy complication or know someone who has. They know that any number of dangerous conditions can arise during a pregnancy to threaten the life of the woman or viability of the fetus, or both. Between now and Election Day, there will be many heart-wrenching stories about the consequences of the Dobbs decision.

Most pundits were predicting a Republican wave election this year until the Dobbs opinion was released. Some are now cautiously suggesting that Democrats could salvage the Senate and even retain the House, pointing to recent polls that seem to be moving in that direction. Naysayers claim that the polls are too tight and midterm election history is against the Democrats.

Informed soothsayers can safely predict the election of at least 52 Democratic senators and an almost equal number of each party in the House. While other components will figure into those results (a wretched crop of Senate candidates endorsed by former President Trump and an electorate sick of the culture wars being continually stoked by the GOP), the Dobbs decision will be the primary reason for Republican losses.

It was not just the court’s radical departure from what the Trump appointees had claimed was settled precedent during their respective confirmation proceedings. The in-your-face language of the Dobbs opinion and its tortured recitation of the history of abortion in America were unsettling. When taken in context with other precedent-breaking decisions by the court’s ultra-conservative majority on a variety of issues (voting rights, gun rights, religion in school and administrative rules on climate and work-place safety), one could justifiably conclude that the court’s majority is on a mission to remake America to conform with its political and religious outlook.

The SCOTUS majority may have the raw power to advance its agenda, but it certainly does not have the political power to make it stick. The Dobbs decision is a prime example of a law that has stood the test of time — that is, the law of unintended consequences.

The American public has no way of directly calling the court majority to account for this and its other recent decisions, but the voters can and will take out their disapproval on those in federal and state offices who have supported and campaigned in favor of the outcomes arrived at by the court. The SCOTUS majority has overplayed its hand and set the stage for the Republican team to switch from a grand-slam winner to a strike-out loser in the November elections.

Jim Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran who served eight years as Idaho attorney general (1983-1991) and 12 years as a justice on the Idaho Supreme Court (2005-2017). He is a regular contributor to The Hill.

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Hillary Clinton reveals 'suggestive' photos led to switch to pantsuits

Hillary Clinton told CBS News she began wearing pantsuits after photographers shot “suggestive” photos of her during a trip to Brazil.

“I was sitting on a couch and the press was let in, there were a bunch of them shooting up,” Clinton told CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell.

“All of a sudden, the White House gets alerted to these billboards that show me sitting down with — I thought my legs [were] together, but the way it’s shot, it’s sort of suggestive,” Clinton added.

The photos were used to sell lingerie. Clinton said the incident and the constant photography of her led her to switch to pantsuits, which have become a staple of the ex-first lady’s fashion.

The former Secretary of State and her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, sat down with O’Donnell to promote the pair’s forthcoming Apple TV+ docuseries, “Gutsy.”

“I didn’t know that story,” Chelsea Clinton said. “I didn’t know that story, it’s by far and away the greatest revelation I had.”

Hillary Clinton said the incident in Brazil was the first of many unflattering experiences she had with press photographers as she increasingly became a public figure.

“I also began to have the experience of having photographers all the time,” she told O’Donnell. “I’d be on a stage, I’d be climbing stairs, and they’d be below me. I just couldn’t deal with it.”

Clinton also said during the interview she has “no regrets” about choosing to stay in her marriage to former President Bill Clinton, calling it the gutsiest decision of her private life.

Chelsea Clinton told O’Donnell the goal of the mother-daughter duo’s new series is to provide inspiring stories about women to viewers.

“People hopefully can see part of their own life, whether their own struggles, their own opportunities, in the women’s stories that we’re sharing, so that they hopefully can be a little bit closer to feeling ‘well I can be gutsy, too,’” she said.

More of the interview with the two Clintons is poised to air on Tuesday on “CBS Evening News” and O’Donnell’s new streaming show, “Person to Person.”

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Biden’s student loan bailout treats hard-working Americans as chumps on Labor Day

President Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 of student loans per borrower is bad policy for numerous reasons. It adds nearly $1 trillion to the national debt. It fuels inflation. And it is illegal executive overreach. (The Job Creators Network Foundation’s Legal Action Fund is currently considering legal options to block it.)

The bailout is also fundamentally unfair to most Americans who never earned an associate’s or bachelor’s degree. These hard-working folks are forced to shoulder loan forgiveness for the consultant class through their tax dollars. Biden’s action, therefore, makes for an especially depressing Labor Day for ordinary workers who also face declining real wages and living standards because of historic inflation. 

Over the Labor Day weekend, the media targeted these everyday wage-earners with a heavy dose of pro-union messaging, championing the supposed triumphant return of the labor movement that’s always just around the corner. They ignored how student loan forgiveness is far more unjust to workers than any supposed remaining labor abuses. The bailout’s inequality-inducing wealth transfer from ordinary workers to higher-income households should enrage supposedly pro-worker politicians, union bosses, and journalists who apparently have put partisanship above their ideals. 

More broadly, the student loan bailout doesn’t address the underlying reason why so many Americans have crushing student debt in the first place. Between 2008-09 and 2020-21, tuition increased by 54 percent (26 percent, adjusted for inflation). Some middling private universities, such as Kenyon College in Ohio, Skidmore College in New York, and Bates College in Maine, now cost more than $80,000 a year to attend. 

The bailout does nothing to reverse these runaway college costs, keeping higher education off-limits for many blue-collar families. As a result, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concludes that college debt levels will return to today’s level within five years.

Even some prominent Democrats concede this point. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) said the action “doesn’t address the root problems that make college unaffordable.” Sen. Micahel Bennet (D-Colo.) said, “One-time debt cancellation does not solve the underlying problem.” And the Wall Street Journal quotes one Democratic House member as saying her colleagues are “frustrated that it doesn’t actually solve the college cost issue.”

Unfortunately, government action that merely addresses the effect of a problem, rather than its cause, is standard practice. By only managing symptoms, policymakers allow the underlying disease to fester, exacerbating the problems they’re trying to solve.

Nowhere is this dynamic more apparent than in labor policy, activism for which filled the editorial pages of most major newspapers this weekend. Major Democrat labor policy proposals such as a $15 federal minimum wage, curtailing independent contracting, and forcing unionization through policies like card check attempt to address perceived insufficient workplace pay and benefits. 

Yet they ignore the underlying reasons for this problem. These include reckless spending that’s fueling inflation and reducing real wages, a lack of hard skills among workers, and over-taxation and over-regulation, whose costs are partly paid for in terms of reduced employee compensation. Democrats’ heavy-handed policies to try to address the consequences of these problems would only exacerbate them by reducing economic opportunities. 

The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) also includes examples of this phenomenon. Consider the $7,500 subsidy extension for electric vehicle purchases. These taxpayer funds are intended to make these “green” cars and trucks more affordable. But in reality, they simply enable automakers to raise their prices. Witness how Ford and GM recently increased their sticker prices on some electric vehicles by approximately this subsidy amount. This IRA provision, therefore, effectively subsidizes the automakers’ profits. The action does nothing to actually bring down electric vehicle costs to make them more accessible.

Same story with the IRA’s $64 billion of taxpayer funds to extend the expanded ObamaCare subsidies. History demonstrates that health insurers will use these funds to increase premiums further. Indeed, some health insurers already have announced they are increasing ObamaCare premiums by around 20 percent next year. These subsidies won’t address the underlying reasons for the health care and coverage cost crisis but instead will exacerbate it by facilitating health insurers to charge even more.

The only way to fix American society’s biggest problems — including declining real earnings and college and health care unaffordability — is through economic, not political, solutions. That means the government should do less, not more, and empower the free market to work.

For example, to meaningfully address outrageous college costs, the government should reduce its presence in the student loan market. This would force colleges to lower costs and improve quality to attract students. Colleges would redirect the costs of worthless degree programs, administrative bloat, five-star amenities, and part of their $691 billion collective endowment to reduce tuition and make college more affordable.

Unfortunately, Biden’s plan to throw more money at this problem by bailing out student loans will only make it worse. It treats laborers around the country who chose hard jobs over fancy degrees as chumps on Labor Day.

Alfredo Ortiz is president and CEO of Job Creators Network. 

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Juan Williams: Black votes matter in fight for Senate

Prize-winning author Toni Morrison famously joked that President Clinton’s style and ability to deliver for Black people made him the first Black president. 

By Morrison’s logic, Joe Biden is the third Black president — with President Obama as the second. 

President Biden’s vice president is a Black woman and he put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. 

And as the midterms approach, Biden’s work to reduce student debt and lower drug prices are big wins for Black Americans, especially given the racial wealth gap.  

But Biden’s most potentially enduring political victory for Black people is taking shape in this year’s midterms. 

A record number of Black candidates are in position to win U.S. Senate races. 

Here are four states where Black Senate candidates are playing a key role in Biden’s effort to prevent the GOP taking majority control of the Senate: 

• Florida, where Rep. Val Demings (D) is taking on GOP incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio. 

• Georgia, where incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock, the state’s first Black senator, is facing a Black Republican, Herschel Walker. 

• North Carolina, with former state Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley (D) facing Republican Rep. Ted Budd. 

• Wisconsin, with Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D) running to unseat Sen. Ron Johnson (R). 

As we go into these races, keep in mind that never have more than three Black people been among the nation’s 100 senators. 

Only 11 Black people have ever served in the U.S. Senate. The prospect of six together would be history. 

If the three first-time candidates win and Warnock is reelected, they will double the number of Black people currently in the Senate. Right now, Warnock is joined by Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.). 

But in the possible post-midterms scenario, five of the six would be Democrats serving under Biden, a president with 68 percent approval among Black voters in an August NBC poll. That would be a historic step forward. Black priorities would be better represented than ever before at the highest levels of the national government. 

Going into the final campaign stretch before the midterms, the Georgia race, featuring two Black candidates, is getting the most attention. 

But to my eye the most fascinating race is in Florida. 

Demings, a Black woman and former police chief, is challenging Rubio, a Latino who was once thought of as a future president. 

Several polls show Rubio up by a modest amount. But Demings has the potential to grow her support, in part because many voters across the state don’t know her yet. She has raised more money than Rubio, giving her the ability to launch a strong TV campaign and raise her profile.  

One big surprise is that Demings holds the lead among independent voters. 

North Carolina offers another surprising opportunity. 

Beasley is close to tied in her race against Budd, according to the FiveThirtyEight average of recent polls in the state. 

The race in Georgia is also close. 

An average of polls shows Warnock in the lead, but it is within the margin of error. 

About one-third of eligible voters in Georgia are Black. A recent poll by SurveyUSA for Atlanta TV station WXIA found 85 percent of Black voters in the state back Warnock. Only 5 percent favor Walker, a former football star with no political background. 

Warnock won the seat in an early 2021 runoff election by two percentage points. In November 2020, Biden won the state by less than a percentage point. Trump then pressured Georgia officials to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat. 

In Wisconsin, Barnes holds the lead over Johnson. But it is a close race with an August Fox News poll giving Barnes a 50 percent to 46 percent lead.  

A Marquette University Law School poll had Barnes up on Johnson by 7 percentage points, 51-44, with a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points. 

But “regardless of the specificity of those numbers,” University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee emeritus professor Mordecai Lee told Wisconsin Public Radio, “we should all just agree this is an even race.” 

The bottom line is that there is a real chance for all four of the Black Senate candidates to win and make history. 

But they are also dependent on strong turnout among Black voters to overcome Republicans, who have lots of money and fervent support from conservative media. 

Biden’s push to cut student debt and lower prescription drug prices is likely to raise Black voter enthusiasm this fall. 

Increased turnout among young Black voters, a cohort with a tendency not to vote in midterms, is going to be a factor. They have a reason to vote with Biden’s student loan relief plan. 

When Biden won the 2020 presidential race, he thanked Black voters who, he told the nation, “stood up again for me.” 

“They always have my back, and I’ll have yours,” Biden said in his victory speech. 

Looks like he was serious. 

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel. 

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White House hopes August successes will translate to fall momentum

Democrats think President Biden had a great August and they’re hoping it will translate into momentum for the fall — both legislatively and electorally.

Congress returns next week after a monthlong recess and Labor Day is considered the unofficial kick-off of the general election campaign season. 

Biden in August signed into law a bipartisan semiconductor bill and a sweeping, Democrat-only package to fight climate change and address health care costs. He announced a drone strike that killed the leader of al Qaeda. The White House cheered positive headlines of gasoline prices declining. And Biden’s poll numbers are starting to inch back up. 

“Democrats right now, including Biden, just feel confident. It just feels like a wind-at-your-back environment which was not what was anticipated several months ago,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way.

The president’s approval rating jumped 9 points in a month to 40 percent, according to a new Quinnipiac poll, and a Gallup survey conducted in August found 44 percent of respondents approve of his job as president — the highest figure in a year — after his approval rating hit a record low of 38 percent in July.  

A Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday found Democrats with a 3-point edge over Republicans when voters were asked which party they’d back in their congressional district if the midterms were held today.

Ivan Zapien, a lobbyist and former official with the Democratic National Committee (DNC), said the current momentum on Biden’s agenda is “great timing” ahead of the midterms in November. Democrats’ chances of holding onto the Senate have grown over the summer as Democrats tick up in the polls while Republican candidates struggle to gain traction in some key states.

“History’s against Democrats in this election, poll numbers don’t look great, but momentum is everything in politics. So having some momentum going into the elections, I think it’s certainly within the direction you’re looking to go into,” Zapien said. “Whether or not that’s enough, we’ll find out.”

Republicans are still widely expected to win back control of the House, however. And Republicans point out that the president’s numbers — an often-used barometer to predict midterm election results — may be improving but remain low. 

“It’s a perception of being on a hot streak,” said David Urban, a GOP strategist who served as former President Trump’s 2016 senior adviser in Pennsylvania. “His numbers are still in the low 40s.”

Biden has also endured some criticism from Republicans and moderate Democrats for his decision last month to erase some student loan debt for millions of borrowers, an issue the GOP believes it can use against Biden in the midterms.  

The student loan policy, Urban said, “couldn’t have been more divisive.”

Biden’s decline in the polls had in part been blamed on months of Democratic infighting around a sweeping domestic policy bill. The measure seemed dead before the announcement of a surprise deal between Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on a pared down climate, health and tax package. 

Democrats believe the passage of that bill — formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act — will help convince voters the party is working to address kitchen table concerns.  

“These midterm elections are oftentimes challenging for the party in power, but I have a lot of optimism because we are making tangible progress on issues that really matter,” said Tom Perez, former DNC chairman who is co-chair of the Democratic group American Bridge. 

But communicating that progress to voters is the next pressing challenge facing the White House and its surrogates, said John LaBombard, a former senior aide to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). 

“My view is that my party is traditionally not that great at communicating to the American people in a clear and sustained way what we achieved for them so I would like to see us buck that historic trend to not be distracted by intraparty squabbling or critics who want to focus on what we didn’t get done,” said LaBombard, senior vice president at public affairs agency Rokk.

There is still a long time until the midterm election, he said, and three months in politics can feel like a lifetime.

“I’m hopeful that the momentum is real and it can continue for the next eight or nine weeks, but that’s dependent on Democrats ranging from the progressive left to the moderate middle touting those legislative achievements in a concise and also a sustained way,” LaBombard said.

Nadeam Elshami, former chief of staff to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said voters historically start to pay attention to midterm elections in the fall. But the Supreme Court decision overturning federal abortion protections and the passage of the health care and climate policy bill got people interested over the summer.

“All of a sudden August was kind of a month of action. In September, you’re making the case to voters, vote for me because of x or y. You’re not doing that anymore, you’re simply going into September building on what’s already done,” said Elshami, a policy director at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

The recent survey that put Democrats at a 3-point edge over Republicans also found that abortion was a top issue for voters, ahead of the economy and inflation. 

Democrats also point to signs that the conservative high court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is energizing the Democratic base ahead the midterms and attracting some independents and Republicans, especially in states where strict laws to restrict abortions are now in place.

“I still think one of the biggest factors in this election is the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. “It is a game changer.”

Lake described a recent focus group in which female voters described the abortion ruling as a “deal breaker” and accused Republicans of not caring about women. Democrats have outperformed expectations in every special election held since the ruling, including winning two seats in the House.

But there are several potential pitfalls this fall that could distract from Democratic victories this summer, including debates on the continuing resolution, funding for Ukraine amid its war with Russia and discussions on how much funding should go toward efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Failing to pass a continuing resolution would lead to a government shutdown, which doesn’t bode well for either party in an election year. Meanwhile, the president has been successful in getting funding for Ukraine from Congress but has struggled to get more COVID-19 funding.

LaBombard also noted there is an opportunity for “more surprises” out of Congress in September, such as codifying marriage equality or movement on electoral reform. He said those would “be really important cherries on top” of an already substantive Congress. 

“I think there’s an outside chance that the Electoral Count Act gets done before the midterms. But I think you’re going to see some spending bills and more nuts and bolts over the next month and I expect the president to have a pretty busy travel schedule because he is no longer box office poison,” Kessler said.

Biden has been picking up his travel and turning his focus to the 2022 midterm election. As of Monday, he’ll have traveled three times in one week to Pennsylvania — a pivotal state for his 2020 victory that’s home to key midterm races.

He delivered a prime-time address from Philadelphia on Thursday characterizing former President Trump and Republicans aligned with him as threats to democracy, making clear his message to voters this fall will not solely turn on policy wins. 

“You think that voters in August are not paying attention — that’s always been the political history — but that’s not the case,” Elshami said. “They have been paying attention, and I think that’s why you’re seeing the momentum within the Democratic voters throughout, heading into September.”

Source: TEST FEED1

AP African American studies will be offered for the first time. Here’s what students may expect

For the first time ever, high school students will have the opportunity to take an Advanced Placement course in African American Studies. 

The College Board introduced the pilot program earlier this year and will be implemented in 60 schools across the country for its inaugural run. However, it is unclear in which states the 60 schools are located.

Though students won’t be able to receive college credit for the course this year, the College Board plans to offer the course to all interested high schools for college credit during the 2024-25 school year.  

The class will be interdisciplinary, meaning students won’t just learn history but also geography, literature, art, music, politics and film to provide a comprehensive view of the African American experience. 

For some, like Florida State University Schools teacher Marlon Williams-Clark, that means posing questions like “What does it mean to be Black?” to his class, which consists of mainly Black and brown students.

The exercise “40 million ways to be Black” became an impassioned discussion with his students, culminating in a piece by renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. that declared there is no one way to be Black.

For others, like Texas high school teacher Nelva Williamson, the program means the opportunity to delve deeper into the eras of Reconstruction and the Harlem Renaissance.

“In Texas, the Reconstruction Era is kind of skipped over and it’s looked at through the lens of being a failure,” Williamson said. “But in my own study of Reconstruction, political strength came out of that era of time for African Americans, taking agency over not only their bodies but what they were going to do, and the development of Black towns here in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. I’m really looking forward to teaching that to give it a different spin from what our students have been told about it.”

Williamson, who has been teaching for more than four decades, said she wants the course to show that while the history of Black America isn’t always easy to hear, there was an “ascension” over the horrible things that happened, and it often came in the form of art.

“I really hope [students] are able to take away a deeper understanding of the whole breadth of history that African Americans played in the central part in the development of this country,” she said. “There’s harsh histories, their enslavement is something that really happened. But there is also these other things: people were enslaved or brought here forcefully, and then created a whole wonderful American culture.”

Williams-Clark said the addition of this course was a long time coming. Schools have consistently offered AP European History and AP World History, but adding AP African American Studies gave a level of “confirmation and legitimacy” to the subject, he said. 

“The right time [for this class] was when Black students were first allowed to go to school, so this is well overdue,” said Williams-Clark. “I appreciate a course like this coming into existence to give students a chance to really interact with information that many adults will tell you they never knew, because it wasn’t part of the mainstream curriculum.”

And students have jumped at the chance to take the course.

Williamson said when the class was announced at Young Women’s College Preparatory Academy, her classroom was so full it was standing-room only. 

During a recent class discussion, one student excitedly asked her if these are the experiences they can look forward to in college. Even the parents of her students have become excited, telling her they’re learning at home from their students as the school year gets underway.

Meanwhile, Williams-Clark is already thinking of an assignment that incorporates modern works like the new Black Panther movie to ask his students to identify African cultural representation. 

He’s also considering looking at songs like “Lift Every Voice and Sing” or others from the Civil Rights movement and analyzing the lyrics, conducting lessons on understanding Black feminism and dissecting movies like Sidney Poitier’s “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”

“To bring those ‘old things’ into the classroom and give it some relevance in which [students] can really analyze and connect it to the information that they’re learning in the class as well as connect it to what similarities and differences in today’s society is going to be really exciting for them to do,” said Williams-Clark.

The program comes at a time when education has become increasingly politicized, particularly curriculums that include issues of racial injustice and African American history. 

Some have argued that such a course could become a framework for educators to teach critical race theory, which posits that race and racism have been rooted in American law and institutions since slavery and Jim Crow.

Since early 2021, 137 educational gag order bills have been introduced in 36 states, according to the free speech group PEN America, limiting instruction on race and LGBT history in the U.S.  

Both Florida and Texas have enacted laws limiting how race is taught in schools.

In March, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed FL H.B.7 into law, limiting lessons on topics like “white privilege.”

The law includes language stating that a person should not be instructed to “feel guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” because of their race, color, sex or national origin. 

In Texas, Senate Bill 3 passed last December, instructing teachers to “not be compelled to discuss a widely debated and currently controversial issue of public policy or social affairs.”

Neither the Texas nor Florida departments of education responded when reached for comment by The Hill.

The College Board hasn’t released a syllabus or curriculum for the course, but both Williamson and Williams-Clark said their curricula do not teach critical race theory. 

Trevor Packer, senior vice president of AP and instruction at the College Board, told The Hill’s Changing America that the class will “introduce a new generation of students to the amazingly rich cultural, artistic, and political contributions of African Americans.” 

He added that the College Board hopes “it will inspire students with a fuller appreciation of the American story.”

For Williamson, the debate around how — and if — to teach race is precisely why a course like the AP African American Studies class is so important. 

“This course comes at a time when there’s a lot of pushback against African Americans and in general people of color,” said Williamson. “There’s a lot of hate out there against minority groups and the only way that we could break that cycle of hate is through education.”

Source: TEST FEED1