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Ron DeSantis’s genius plan to solve the teacher shortage crisis

While much of cable news is still fixated on the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, there are two joint crises happening that most journalists are ignoring: the shortages of police officers and teachers, which threaten America’s public safety and education system.

In New York City, for example, more than 1,500 police officers have handed in their resignations or retired, with some leaving the force before being eligible for their full pensions. It’s an unprecedented pace, marking the largest exodus on record, according to the New York Post. Similar percentages are seen in other major U.S. cities.

“A survey of about 200 police departments indicates that retirements were up by 45 percent and resignations by 18 percent in the period between April 2020 and April 2021,” reported the New York Times last summer.

On the teacher front, matters are even more dire. Some Texas school districts have had to shorten their school week to four days a week. The reason? Not enough teachers. In Arizona, college students are now being hired to instruct children.

“I have never seen it this bad. Right now [the teacher shortage] is number one on the list of issues that are concerning school districts,” observed Dan Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association, in an August interview with the Washington Post.

The reflex under the Biden administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress is to throw lots of money at problems to make it appear they’re doing something to address them. Want to lower inflation? Sign a $740 billion spending bill and call it the Inflation Reduction Act. 

But one elected official is taking a proactive approach that won’t break the bank.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) Recently announced a proposal to extend hiring bonuses to retired police officers, firefighters, military veterans, first responders and paramedics to address the teacher shortage crisis in the Sunshine State. The governor also announced an initiative to allow these candidates easier access to teaching certificates. The candidates would be required to hold a bachelor’s degree and must commit to teaching for at least two years. The bonuses can be up to $5,000 per candidate.

“Our veterans have a wealth of knowledge and experience they can bring to bear in the classroom and with this innovative approach they will be able to do so for five years with a temporary certification as they work towards their degree,” DeSantis explained in announcing the program.

“We have people who have served 20 years in law enforcement, who have retired, and some of them are looking for the next chapter in their life,” he also said. 

The state of America’s education system is increasingly a concern for voters. Exit polls showed education was a top voter priority in Glenn Youngkin’s victory last year in the Virginia gubernatorial race.

And why not? Teacher unions are focusing on critical race theory in our schools that teach children as young as five years old to see others through a racial prism and to judge others by the color of one’s skin rather than the content of their character. We’re also teaching kids in elementary school about gender identification and sexual orientation. Most children are not mature enough for these conversations, and parents, not teachers, should be the ones having them anyway. 

The consequences of this focus are clear. Per the Associated Press, citing a study by the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the Education Department: “Reading scores saw their largest decrease in 30 years, while math scores had their first decrease in the history of the testing regimen behind the study.” 

COVID-19 lockdowns and Zoom learning helped drive this number, for sure. But given that the U.S. was already ranked 25th in the world in math, reading and science, this most recent setback is devastating to an already-struggling education system.  

In Florida, the vacancies for teachers in the 2021-22 school year resulted in a shortage of more than 9,000 teachers — that means bigger class sizes and less one-on-one instruction. 

“These three initiatives will build on our efforts to increase recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers,” DeSantis also said in announcing his plan. “Great teachers don’t become great teachers because they are sitting in a university lecture hall. What makes a teacher great is being in the classroom, watching other teachers, and seeing what works,”

As for the Biden administration, it announced on Wednesday a partnership with job search firms to make it easier to fill openings in education. The administration will also work with teacher unions to explore ways to expand teacher apprenticeship programs. 

This is limp window-dressing from Team Biden. More jobs showcased on job portals won’t incentivize those who otherwise aren’t seeking to become teachers to do so. 

Check back in a year to see who had the better solution: DeSantis or Biden. 

Bet your kids’ college education on the former. 

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist.

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Obama wins Emmy for narrating national parks documentary

Former President Obama won an Emmy award on Saturday for his work narrating a national parks documentary series. 

The Television Academy announced that Obama won the “Outstanding Narrator” Emmy for an episode of the Netflix series “Our Great National Parks.”

Other prominent names nominated for the award this year included Basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Actress Lupita Nyong’o, and English broadcaster David Attenborough. 

Obama was nominated for an Emmy in July for his role in the five-part documentary series. 

“Our Great National Parks” promised “wonder, humor, and optimism as each episode tells the story of a national park through the lives of its wildest residents — both big and exceptionally small — and explores our changing relationship with wilderness,” producers said in promoting the series.

Obama and his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama, co-created the series for their production company, Higher Ground Productions, which also won seven Emmy nominations in 2020 for its work on the “American Factory” and “Becoming” documentaries.

The former commander in chief has also received multiple Grammy awards for his audiobook reading work on his two published memoirs.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower won a special Emmy award in 1956. 

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DOD’s toxic liabilities will adversely affect recruiting

A whopping $280 billion over 10 years — that’s the estimated cost of the recent PACT Act legislation addressing the wreckage caused to our service members by toxic exposure and war zone burn pits — the areas for disposing of human, medical, materiel and vehicular waste on the battlefield. This cost does not include potential liability from civil lawsuits for the 1 million people allegedly exposed to toxic water contamination at Camp Lejeune from August 1953 to December 1987, nor does it include the potential liability from lawsuits for the water contamination from the Red Hill fuel farm or the “forever chemical” known as PFAS.

To put this dollar amount into perspective, the PACT Act alone is almost enough to pay for half of the nuclear triad modernization. If an organization was hit with a bill this large, one would expect them to take immediate action to stop further exposures. However, in our system of government, the Department of Defense (DOD) will never see most of these bills. This is because the appropriations do not come out of DOD’s yearly funds, which effectively shields the department from the monetary consequences of its actions. While it is a moral imperative for our government to take care of those suffering from these past poisonings, the larger question is: What will we do to protect our military members and families from being poisoned in the future?

Almost as important for the DOD is assessing the impact on recruiting and current warfighting readiness. The military faces a deep recruiting crisis, and poisoning your employees and their families is not an effective recruiting technique. The DOD’s recent “propensity to serve” survey, which reflects data from the fall of 2021, shows that the propensity to serve by males has hit a low of 11 percent. When asked why they would not serve, the possibility of physical injury or death was in the top 10 reasons for 65 percent of respondents. While many may shrug this off as fear of combat, the number of potential recruits familiar with the long-term health effects of burn pits and other service-related illnesses is rapidly rising.

There are three things that DOD can do immediately to begin to address this ongoing crisis.

First, settle the Lejeune lawsuits quickly. In the PACT Act, Congress authorized over 1 million people to sue the military for the toxic exposure at Camp Lejeune. Litigation lawyers are running ads online, on television, and in print. The bombardment of these ads, along with a long public trial, could cause lasting damage to the entire military recruiting effort. And it is critical that lawmakers be prepared for sticker shock on the bill, which could total over $10 billion, if 10 percent of the affected million people receive $100,000 each.

Next, solve the war zone burn pits issue immediately. Besides the moral imperative of protecting military members, whatever the cost of alternatively disposing of the trash, it will be much less expensive than continued lawsuits and costs from future toxic exposure. It may not be easy to find a better solution for waste disposal on the battlefield, but we now know how deadly the release of burnt toxic gasses is. Investing research and development funding in healthy disposal methods will sustain troops longer, keep them healthier, and save lives and costs.

Lastly, the DOD must confront decades of loose environmental standards on its installations, such as not modernizing Hawaii’s fuel tanks or using PFAS. While the DOD, at this point, is immune from PFAS lawsuits, given that Congress only allowed lawsuits concerning Camp Lejeune, it may be only a matter of time before such lawsuits are authorized as well. How many more problems similar to those with the Red Hill fuel tanks exist within the DOD? And how can the department afford the negative publicity each time it exposes people to toxic chemicals? This will continue to be a slow drip that eats away at the credibility of military readiness.

For decades, the DOD has shielded itself in secrecy and sovereign immunity as a way to claim national security exemptions from ever-more stringent environmental standards. While this may have been expedient and less costly, the American people are no longer tolerant of environmental degradation and, as we are seeing in Hawaii, military families are no longer willing to accept being poisoned without speaking up. Perhaps this is one reason that the recent Military Family Advocacy Network survey showed a steep decline of military and veteran families recommending military life, a drop from 74.5 percent in 2019 to only 62.9 percent in 2021. 

Not being able to recruit military members puts our nation at risk, and if those in service won’t recommend the job, who will? To prevent future health and environmental disasters that harm military recruiting and ruin American lives, the DOD needs to immediately invest in serious research to solve the problem.

Maj. Gen. (Ret.) John Ferrari is the former director of program analysis and evaluation for the U.S. Army and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where James Mismash was a research assistant.

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Why Pennsylvania is so personally, politically important to 'Scranton Joe'

President Biden has spent more time in Pennsylvania during his presidency than any other state besides his home locale of Delaware, and Democratic party operatives and insiders say he’s clung tight to his birth state for good reason. 

Pennsylvania is home to a critical midterm Senate pickup opportunity for Democrats in the race between Lt. Gov John Fetterman (D) and Republican Mehmet Oz. The state was also pivotal to Biden’s presidential win in 2020, as well as Democratic victories in the 2018 midterms and — importantly — losses in the 2016 election that put former President Trump in the White House. 

But more than anything, Democrats say “Scranton Joe” has a special understanding of voters in the Keystone State. 

“Pennsylvania is personal to Joe Biden. It’s not at all a coincidence to me that he spends so much time there,” said Tom Perez, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who is also a co-chairman of the Democratic group American Bridge. “You can take Joe Biden out of Pennsylvania, but you can’t take the Scranton out of Joe.” 

On Monday, Biden will head to Milwaukee and Pittsburgh to attend Labor Day festivities, marking his third stop in Pennsylvania in the course of one week. He spoke about crime prevention and gun safety in Wilkes-Barre on Tuesday and two days later delivered a prime-time address railing against Trump and “MAGA Republicans” at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.  

David Urban, a GOP strategist who served as Trump’s 2016 senior adviser in Pennsylvania, observed that there are a number of Democrat-held House seats in Pennsylvania that the GOP could flip in November and that Biden’s trips signal an understanding among Democrats that they need to “fight back or die.”

Mark Knoller, a veteran White House correspondent who chronicles the details of presidential travel, said Biden has been to Pennsylvania 16 times since taking office, the second-highest number of visits behind Biden’s home state of Delaware, to which he has traveled 50 times during his presidency.

But even those who support Biden say he needs to spend some time going to other key states. Republican strategist Susan Del Percio, who supported Biden in the 2020 presidential race against Trump, said it’s “safe” and “convenient” for the White House to send Biden to the Keystone State.

Still, Del Percio added, “I think they need to diversify.” 

“Three visits in a week? That’s a bit much,” she said. “Joe from Scranton is now the President of the United States, which means he has all the trappings of the Oval Office and the world stage. 

“He can’t revive that like he did in 2020,” Del Percio said. “Frankly he has not been that great speaking off the cuff and while he thinks he has that role to play, it’s not the role he should be playing.” 

Another strategist agreed, saying “the White House should be getting creative” about the optics and where they send Biden. 

“It looks lazy,” the strategist said of the president’s frequent trips to the state. “It’s an easy, convenient place to send him but there are so many other places he can and should be going.”  

But the trips are also important for Biden’s reelection ambitions, given recent polls showing him trailing Trump in Pennsylvania in a hypothetical 2024 rematch between the two men.

An Emerson College poll out late last month showed that Biden had a 39 percent approval rating in the state, while 57 percent disapproved of Biden’s role as president. The survey showed Trump leading Biden among Pennsylvania voters, 47 percent to 42 percent. 

“It is a short term electoral imperative to help us flip that seat, and it is a longer term for 2024 imperative to make sure we are holding the governor’s seat in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin so that we are best positioned for the reelect,” Perez, who served as Democratic National Committee chairman from 2017 to 2021, said of Biden’s Pennsylvania-heavy travel schedule. 

Democrats are increasingly hopeful of the possibility that Fetterman tops Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate race to fill the seat vacated by retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R). Polls have shown Fetterman leading Oz by a handful of points.

Even with Biden’s appearances in the state, Fetterman hasn’t fully embraced the president. He was unable to attend the event in Wilkes-Barre but plans to meet with Biden in Pittsburgh on Labor Day. A Fetterman spokesman said that the Democratic candidate would press Biden on decriminalizing marijuana when the two meet. 

“Fetterman is not glued to Biden, but he’s not avoiding Biden,” said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, describing the Pennsylvania seat as a pickup for Democrats “in the swingiest state you’ll find.”

Polls have also shown Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) leading Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano in the state’s gubernatorial contest. 

Longer term, it’s important for Biden to lay the groundwork for the 2024 presidential race, especially after the last races for the White House, strategists say. Trump won the state narrowly in 2016 and while Biden won the state by more than 80,000 votes, his rival was competitive in Pennsylvania.

Biden delivered a speech from Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on Thursday in which he excoriated Trump and GOP candidates and lawmakers aligned with him as threats to democracy and the country itself, solidifying his midterm messaging but also offering a preview of his 2024 pitch should he follow through with plans to run for a second term.  

Urban, the Republican strategist, called Biden’s speech in Philadelphia “politically tone deaf,” criticizing the content and stagecraft and noting that it took place at the same time as two major college football games in the state. 

“Who’s going to watch the president when these two exciting games are on?” he asked.

Notably, Trump also made an appearance in Pennsylvania this week at a rally on Saturday evening to support Oz and Mastriano, showcasing the attention that the former president is also giving to the Keystone State. 

“The last two elections have shown that it is now a swing state,” said Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau, adding that it’s a must win along with Michigan and Wisconsin. “And I think in some ways, Pennsylvania is the crown jewel of those three.”   

As Biden’s poll numbers rebound, Mollineau added that Pennsylvania is “likely more friendly territory for him than other places in the country right now.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump criticizes FBI at first rally after Mar-a-Lago search

Former President Donald Trump held a rally on Saturday night in Wilkes-Barre, Penn. in support of Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz and gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, where he slammed the FBI in his first public speech after the agency’s search of his Mar-a-Lago home.

“The FBI and the Justice Department have become vicious monsters, controlled by radical left scoundrels, lawyers and the media, who tell them what to do,” said Trump in reference to the search that took place last month.

The warrant that justified the FBI’s search, released in with redactions last week following a court battle, found evidence that classified documents might be illegally stored at Trump’s home despite an order for him to return them after he left office.

“The shameful raid and break-in of my home in Mar-a-Lago was a travesty of justice that made a mockery of America’s laws, traditions and principles,” Trump said at the rally, calling it “one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history.”

Trump also criticized President Joe Biden’s speech on Thursday in Philadelphia, Penn., rejecting Biden’s claim that Trump is “a clear and present danger” to the country and calling Biden “the enemy of the state.”

“As you know, this week Joe Biden came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to give the most vicious, hateful and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president, vilifying 75 million citizens plus another probably 75-150 if we want to be accurate about it, as threats to democracy and as enemies of the state,” he said.

The rally, with attendees including Republican figures Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Maryland gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox and Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky, featured comments by Oz and Mastriano.

Oz criticized the Biden administration’s response to COVID-19, saying that “we saw ideas crushed” during the pandemic.

“We saw science weaponised,” he continued.

Mastriano expressed similar discontentment with Biden and his allies.

“The Democrats are trying to distract us with their dirty stinking laundry list of bad ideas,” he claimed.

“We the people are pissed, I know I am.”

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NASA postpones Artemis I launch after two scrubbed attempts

NASA directors said in a press conference on Saturday that they would postpone the launch of the Artemis I rocket until after the current launch period, which ends on Tuesday, after two scrubbed attempts.

“We will not be launching in this launch period. We are not where we wanted to be,” said Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development Jim Free.

The delay means that Artemis I will not be launched until at least the next launch period, which will occur in late September. However, the duration of repairs may mean that the rocket cannot be launched until October.

NASA planned to launch the rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Fla. on Monday before one of its engines failed to condition to the correct temperature for the journey and a hydrogen leak occurred.

The second launch attempt occurred Saturday morning but was disrupted by a second liquid hydrogen leak.

“​​We’re not going to launch until it’s right,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson at the press conference.

He continued: “We don’t go until then, and we make sure it’s right before we put humans up on the top of it.”

The launch team will decide a third date for the endeavor early next week, according to the conference.

Artemis I is part of a NASA program that aims eventually to send people back to the moon for the first time since 1972.

Free said that the spacecraft would return to the Vehicle Assembly Building before it is approved for launch.

Nelson emphasized that this was the safest decision, saying that NASA would never launch until experts believed that it was the right time.

“These teams have labored over that and that is the conclusion they came to,” Nelson said of the strict launch requirements.

“I look at this as part of our space program, in which safety is the top of the list.”

Source: TEST FEED1

This Labor Day, let’s ensure that individual workers are empowered, too

Ideas never die. If they become unpopular, people forget about them, but then they bounce back when a new generation rediscovers them. And whatever made the ideas unpopular the first time around happens again and the cycle repeats itself.

Collective bargaining in the U.S. is currently on the upswing of that cycle. After decades of unions often being regarded as something in musty history books and nostalgic Bruce Springsteen songs, there are signs that it has caught on with a lot of workers, especially young progressive ones. A recent Gallup poll found that unions had 71 percent approval, the highest since 1965. To young workers, organizing is a fresh, new idea. They haven’t yet learned of the tradeoffs—yet.

The most high-profile recent union victories have been at Starbucks, where more than 200 cafes have organized. A bid to organize Amazon has proven more fitful, but unions have managed some wins. Congressional staffers have begun to organize for the first time ever. Workers in the video game industry have organized too. College athletes are pushing to organize, and the National Labor Relations Board has argued they are in fact employees.

None of these sectors have traditionally been organized. Their workers only know unions from the idealized version presented by labor leaders and progressive pundits.

It is workers’ right to organize if they so choose, of course. Forming a union does give them leverage against their employers, and for many workers that may seal the deal; but that comes at the expense of workers’ autonomy. The organized worker has, in theory, agreed to make certain sacrifices in personal choice in order to empower the union in its dealings with management. Some individual workers may not have agreed to those sacrifices, though. They might have been outvoted. Sometimes they don’t even know that what the union is doing on their behalf. Even when workers back their union, ensuring that the union stays on mission is an ongoing challenge.

Workers have various rights to monitor the union’s activities and even dissent from it. In the 27 states with “right to work” laws, workers can opt out of union membership if they choose. The Supreme Court’s Beckdecision allows workers to refrain from funding the union’s political and non-representational activities. But many workers may not may not know they have this right because it is up to their union to inform them, and unions have a poor track record of doing so. Why is that?

The National Labor Relations Act, the law that ensures collective bargaining rights, doesn’t distinguish between the workers and unions. In theory, those things aren’t in conflict because the union exists to represent the workers. In reality, the union is a legal entity that exists separate from the workers. It can be there before the worker takes the job and long after. Over time, the union becomes less democratic and more about serving the interests of those running the union.

Consider the United Auto Workers (UAW). There isn’t an auto worker alive in Michigan, Ohio, or Wisconsin that voted to join the union. The UAW organized the “Big Three” U.S. automakers—Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler—in the 1940s and has been there ever since. In the last four years, two of the UAW’s recent presidents, Gary Jones and Dennis Williams, along with a dozen other top union officials, were found guilty of embezzlement as part of a scheme to siphon $1.5 million in money away from a worker training center.

A Justice Department plea deal required the UAW to hold a referendum on changing its internal elections to give the members more say in how the union elects its leaders, since the process had long been rigged in favor of the existing leadership. Earlier this year, UAW members voted to amend the process to allow direct elections. That’s a good outcome, but it took the intervention of the Justice Department to make that possible.

Alas, Democrats in Congress and union leaders are pushing for policies that would make unions even less accountable to their members, such as the Protecting the Right to (PRO) Organize Act, which would eliminate all 27 state right to work laws, force employers to give away workers’ private contact information, and seriously limit freelance contract work, which is usually non-union. That’s the wrong way to go.

Unions should be accountable to their members and remain so. Congress should make right to work laws the standard nationally. It should require unions to make their finances public and periodically hold re-certification votes to ensure they retain their members’ support and transparent elections for leadership. If a union and the workers it represents are in harmony, then none of these reforms will hamper the union—and may even help it. They only become a factor if those same workers want to hold their union accountable. Who has a problem with that?

Sean Higgins is a research fellow for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market public policy organization based in Washington, D.C.

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More than 300 US flights canceled, thousands delayed during Labor Day weekend

More than 300 flights into, within or out of the U.S. during Labor Day weekend were canceled as of Saturday, as well as thousands delayed.

Saturday evening found 346 flights canceled from Friday through Monday, in addition to 8,228 flights delayed on Friday and Saturday.

The numbers were larger including international flights, 7,263 canceled across all four days and 35,382 delayed during the weekend.

These figures follow a summer fraught with travel troubles, starting as COVID-19 restrictions lifted during the late spring.

Memorial Day weekend saw thousands of flights canceled or delayed, with more than 1,000 delayed by noon on Memorial Day itself as well as 342 canceled.

Costs skyrocketed in April and May as people began returning to airports, with airfares rising by almost 19 percent between March and April.

In May, 90 percent of U.S. travelers said that they intended to take a trip in the following six months.

A contingent of pilots affiliated with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) picketed ahead of Labor Day weekend, one of the busiest American travel weekends of the year, calling for improved working conditions.

“We’re asking all ALPA pilots to join us for an ALPA-wide informational picket to show the public, our lawmakers and our airlines that all airline pilots stand together in support of the profession-wide goal of improved working conditions and benefits,” wrote the union before the arranged picketing date.

The Senate got involved in airline troubles in August when it introduced the Cash Refunds for Flight Cancellations Act, backed by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

The bill, which was introduced alongside a companion bill in the House, would require airlines to provide passengers with refunds or vouchers within 30 days of a flight cancellation.

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Alaska upset flashes warning signs for GOP

Mary Peltola’s win in the Alaska special election this week became the latest surprise to spark concern for Republicans as it appears that a once presumptive red wave in November is neither definite nor guaranteed.

Peltola, the first Alaska Native and first Democrat in decades to be elected to fill the state’s lone House seat, edged out two formidable Republican challengers on Wednesday, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), to serve the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s (R) term.

The win came about a week after Democrat Pat Ryan prevailed against Republican Marc Molinaro in a New York special election in what was considered a bellwether ahead of the midterms.

While Peltola was likely aided by the state’s newly implemented ranked-choice voting system, her win also fuels further concerns for the GOP about how energized Democratic voters are, as well as the quality of Republican candidates running in critical races.

“First thought was that the Republican Party has some work to do,” said Rick Whitbeck, who previously served as the vice chair for the Alaska Republican Party and now serves as the Alaska State Director for Power the Future, when asked about his reaction following Peltola’s win. 

Whitbeck said he believed Republicans’ underperformance in the special election was in part due to ticket splitting between Palin and fellow Republican contender Nick Begich III competing with Peltola. He said other reasons Peltola might have prevailed could be voters seeing it as a protest vote against the two Republican candidates or the fact that voters might have been uneducated about the candidates.

To be sure, Peltola’s win in Alaska comes with its own caveats that distinguish it from other recent races. For starters, this election cycle marks the first time the state has used ranked-choice to elect its representatives — a system some Republicans have criticized. The Last Frontier is also known for its uniquely independent brand of politics, where ticket splitting is seen as more common than in other states.

But the race also laid bare some of the challenges facing Republicans — including divisions plaguing the party.

One GOP strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, pointed to Palin’s standing in the state as an explanation for this week’s surprise upset.

“I think you got to take into account the fact that Palin is just an extremely controversial brand in her own state, has been for a long time now,” the strategist said. “And so she had a core base of people that were always going to support her, but, you know, even in her own party, there was a lot of dissension and disruption, and you saw that, you know, gravitate towards a Begich, for example.”

Concerns over the quality of the Republican candidates this cycle have become apparent in recent weeks, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) even citing that as a reason why the GOP was more likely to flip the House than the Senate this year. McConnell’s admission provoked a furious response from Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), the head of the Senate campaign arm, who called McConnell’s remarks “a shot at our candidates and the voters.”

Meanwhile, Democratic optimism has only grown over the summer amid a string of victories for the party.

In Kansas, voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have given the state legislature more authority to regulate abortion in the Sunflower State. 

Further emboldening them were special elections in Nebraska, Minnesota and New York earlier this year that saw Democrats lose by smaller-than-expected margins. In another nod to Democrats’ momentum, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report this week shifted their ratings of five House seats toward Democrats.

“I think what’s happening in the Democratic Party right now is, and particularly among the House Democrats, is that the combination of the win in New York last week and Alaska has given Democrats — has changed the Democrats’ understanding of what’s possible in the election,” said Simon Rosenberg, who has served as a senior adviser to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

“And we’re now moving from sort of a defensive stance to a much more offensive stance,” he continued. “And I will tell you, I talked to the DCCC the afternoon of the New York special last week, on Tuesday afternoon, and they thought they were going to lose that race by three to four points, and we won by almost two and a half.”

Peltola, who spoke to The Hill in a phone interview on Thursday, was more circumspect in her analysis of what her victory meant.

“I don’t like to make too many predictions. I’m a pretty superstitious person and feel like making declarative statements tends to jinx things. So I do not want to speculate on national trends,” she said. “I won by a decent margin, but it certainly wasn’t a landslide. I’ll be taking a very careful look at where I need to focus more of my time in terms of outreach to Alaskans and connecting with voters.”

Many Republicans remain confident their party is still in a good position heading into November.

Matt Gorman, a former spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP’s campaign arm, said Peltola’s win was an “aberration thanks to ranked-choice voting.” He also pushed back against the idea that Republicans were performing less competitively than expected, citing Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, which was one of several special elections held this year. He noted the late Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R-Minn.) won the House seat by close margins in 2018 and 2020.

And Democrats clearly still have their work cut out for them. While there are new signs of hope that the party could retain control of the Senate, recent polling shows Republican candidates in states like Ohio and Georgia running closely alongside their Democratic counterparts. 

An Emerson College Polling survey released last month showed 45 percent of somewhat and very likely general election voters backing Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance (R), while 42 percent supported Democratic challenger Tim Ryan, polling that falls just outside the margin of error at plus or minus 3.2 percentage points. 

A separate Emerson survey released earlier this week found 46 percent of very likely general election voters in the state supporting Republican candidate Herschel Walker compared to incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) at 44 percent, falling within the margin of error at plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. 

And while the Cook Report moved some House seat ratings toward Democrats this week, the nonpartisan election handicapper still predicts Republicans will win between 10 and 20 seats in November.

Still, the primary season has at times been a difficult one for the GOP, which has left candidates bruised after some especially brutal primaries.

“I’ve said this for the 30 years I’ve been involved in politics: Republicans don’t always play nice,” said Whitbeck, the former vice chair of the Alaska GOP, when discussing the toll some Republican-on-Republican races have taken on the party.

“Sometimes I wish the Republicans would figure out how to limit the damage, you know, the circular firing squad mentality,” he added.

But with the primary season largely wrapped up and many campaigns shifting into a general election mindset, some say it’s too early to speculate about how both parties will fare in the midterms — after all, there’s still more than two months to go.

“The teams that win are usually the ones that are able to ride out those bumpy rough stretches and regain their footing heading into the fourth quarter,” said the GOP strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity, likening midterm races to NFL games. 

“And in terms of this year, we’re about to, you know, post-Labor Day is the fourth quarter of campaigning, and so even with Republicans having a bit of a bumpy stretch, I actually think Democrats may have hit their peak, you know, during halftime, but in the third quarter, which is just too early.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Zelensky hits Moscow over gas export delay: ‘Russia wants to destroy the normal life of every European’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday accused Russia of cutting off its gas exports in order to increase pressure on Europe amid the war in Ukraine.

The Russian state-run energy company Gazprom said on Friday that it had completely shut down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline while it repairs an oil leak. Nord Stream 1 is the largest pipeline transporting natural gas from Russia to Europe. 

“These days, Russia is trying to increase the energy pressure on Europe even more,” Zelensky said in an address to his country. “Russia wants to destroy the normal life of every European – in all countries of our continent. It wants to weaken and intimidate the entire Europe, every state.

“Where Russia cannot do it by force of conventional weapons, it does so by force of energy weapons,” he continued. “It is trying to attack with poverty and political chaos where it cannot yet attack with missiles.”

Zelensky warned that Moscow is preparing for a “decisive energy attack on all Europeans” this winter and called for increased unity among Europeans and harsher sanctions against Russia.

The decision to shut down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for maintenance came as the Group of Seven (G-7) agreed to a price cap on Russian oil on Friday. Since late July, the pipeline had been functioning at only 20% of its capacity, according to The Associated Press.

Source: TEST FEED1