Categories Uncategorized

The Hill's Morning Report — Feinstein to retire; Haley launches 2024 bid

Editor’s note: The Hill’s Morning Report is our daily newsletter that dives deep into Washington’s agenda. To subscribe, click here or fill out the box below.

Across the partisan divide in politics on Tuesday, one pathbreaking female senator from the largest blue state announced she will retire while another ambitious woman, who once challenged racism as a conservative governor in the South, launched a campaign for the White House.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who will be 90 in June and who encouraged many Democratic women in elective politics, announced that her term, which ends in January 2025, will be her last.

“I will not run for reelection in 2024 but intend to accomplish as much for California as I can through the end of next year when my term ends,” she said in a statement.

Democratic California Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter previously announced Senate campaigns with anticipation that Feinstein, the oldest senator, would retire at the end of her term (The Hill). Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) reportedly plans this month to announce a campaign, which would make her the first Black candidate in the competitive Senate contest (The Washington Post).

In South Carolina, Republican Nikki Haley, 51, launched a bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 in competition with former President Trump, who was her boss when she shifted in 2017 from serving as her state’s governor to U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Haley’s video and Twitter announcement Tuesday, which emphasized her gender and upbringing as a daughter of immigrants from India, will be followed today with a campaign event in Charleston, S.C. (The Hill).

▪ The Hill’s Niall Stanage in his Memo writes, “Haley is in, but can she win?

▪ The Hill’s Al Weaver reports that some analysts are watching the GOP presidential race, wondering if it will be like 2016.

▪ Politico: Haley enters the fray, a female candidate against a man known for mocking them. 

Feinstein’s announcement was met with respectful acknowledgements of an era in liberal politics only dimly remembered by younger lawmakers in the House and Senate. Feinstein’s health and mental sharpness have been topics of speculation and commentary for several years.

The Los Angeles Times: Feinstein retires: Looking back on tragedy, triumph and her contentious perseverance. 

President Biden, who served with Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee and hailed her as “one of the very best” to be elected to the upper chamber, said that “she led the fight to get the assault weapons ban passed” and praised her defense of civil rights, the rule of law after 9/11 and her focus on climate change.  

Meanwhile, another potential GOP presidential contender, former Vice President Mike Pence, says he’ll mount a legal challenge against efforts by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith to obtain his testimony under subpoena regarding events on Jan. 6, 2021, and Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results (The Hill). The former vice president is also embroiled in a public controversy over retention of classified documents at his Indiana residence.

▪ The New York Times: The Justice Department will brief congressional leaders later this month on classified documents mishandled by Trump, Biden and Pence. 

▪ The New York Times: Federal prosecutors overseeing the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents seek to pierce assertions of attorney-client privilege and compel one of his lawyers to answer more questions before a grand jury.

▪ The Hill: Pence plots unusual legal strategy in fight against a special counsel subpoena. He could define the powers of the vice presidency with his resistance and could hobble Smith’s efforts to investigate Trump.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a conservative who is weighing a GOP presidential campaign with plenty of attention from the national media, is seen as having more staying power than other former Republican governors who faded during past primary cycles. The Hill’s Max Greenwood and Amie Parnes offer a handful of reasons DeSantis is seen as a heavier hitter in 2024 than past GOP governors, including Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Florida’s Jeb Bush.

Related Articles

▪ Jezebel: Pence said “we need to” ban abortion pills, which he called “really dangerous,” during comments at a book signing event Monday in Houston. Audio of the exchange was obtained by Jezebel. 

▪ The Hill: Parties face hurdles in retaining young talent for campaigns.

▪ Houston Chronicle: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) will seek reelection next year.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ CONGRESS & ADMINISTRATION  

By the time a Chinese spy balloon crossed into American airspace late last month, U.S. military and intelligence agencies had been tracking it for nearly a week, The Washington Post reports, an earlier sighting of the balloon than has been previously known. U.S. officials watched as the balloon took off from China and settled into a flight path that would appear to have taken it over Guam, but the craft took an unexpected northern turn. Analysts are now examining the possibility that China didn’t intend to penetrate the contiguous United States with the surveillance device.

This new information suggests that the resulting international crisis — which has ramped up tensions between Washington and Beijing — may have been at least partly the result of a mistake (The New York Times). Meanwhile, White House officials on Tuesday said they don’t have an indication that three objects shot down by the U.S. military days after a suspected spy balloon were tied to China.

“While we can’t definitively say, again without analyzing the debris, what these objects were, thus far — and I caveat that by saying thus far — we haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the [China’s] spy balloon program, or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts,” national security spokesman John Kirby said.

But officials have not been able to analyze the debris because locating and retrieving what remains is challenging at remote sites in winter (The Hill). Senators from both parties said the spate of unidentified floating objects shot down by U.S. jets in recent days do not pose an immediate threat to Americans, after a classified briefing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, but many urged the Biden administration to share more information with the public (NPR).

“I have a better understanding, but the American people deserve and need to know more,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “I am not in any way afraid that we are under a threat of attack or physical harm to our homeland. That’s my personal feeling. But the American people need to be reassured with more facts.”

Senior administration officials scrambled to quell frustrations expressed by lawmakers about a lack of timely information, offering an update on the three aerial objects shot down Friday afternoon and last weekend. The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports that senators did not get answers to several questions, including who launched the objects, whether they were military or commercial vehicles and their purpose.   

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after the briefing that Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) will lead an investigation into why the balloons weren’t detected earlier.  

“We still have questions about why they didn’t discover these balloons sooner, these objects sooner,” Schumer told reporters after the weekly Democratic caucus meeting. “Sen. Tester is going to lead our caucus in investigating this. It’s a good question. We need to answer it.” 

▪ The Atlantic: Why is the U.S. shooting down more unidentified objects? American air defense has been looking harder and reacting faster.

▪ Axios: Senators after receiving a classified briefing about the aerial objects demand Biden speak to the public.

▪ The New York Times: China tries to depict furor over spy balloon as a sign of U.S. decline.

▪ USA Today: Unidentified flying objects might have been research or commercial balloons, White House says.

▪ Politico: The truth is out there: UFO fever grips Congress.

Republican leaders vowing to protect Social Security and Medicare benefits as part of the coming budget battles are running into an early obstacle: A lack of trust across the aisle. As The Hill’s Mike Lillis reports, despite Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) promise that entitlement cuts are “off the table” in the debt-ceiling debate, House Democrats simply don’t believe that the same Republican Party that fought for decades to slash those programs has reversed course so drastically. “I don’t trust them on that,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). “Since the 1930s, these folks have been gunning for Social Security.” 

The comments come as a warning to GOP leaders, who want to balance the federal budget within a decade — a feat that’s virtually impossible without touching the entitlements, the Pentagon and taxes. And they also put pressure on Biden — who’s vowing to oppose any entitlement cuts — to make good on that promise as he enters the high-stakes budget negotiations with McCarthy. Liberals were up in arms more than a decade ago when former President Obama proposed entitlement cuts as part of an unsuccessful “grand bargain” with then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to rein in deficit spending and would be equally infuriated if Biden sought something similar. 

The Hill: Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) undergoes surgery for prostate cancer.

➤ ECONOMY

Consumer prices rose 0.5 percent in January and 6.4 percent annually, according to the Labor Department’s consumer price index, a jump in inflation that could encourage the Federal Reserve to further raise interest rates. Earlier this month, the Fed rolled out its smallest rate hike since March 2022 as inflation appeared to ease, but that strategy could change if prices don’t fall fast enough.

Prices continued to increase rapidly on a monthly basis as a broad array of goods and services, including apparel, groceries, hotel rooms and rent, became more expensive. That was true even after stripping out volatile food and fuel costs. Meanwhile, sticky inflation and a stubbornly tight labor market have led some economists to expect that the U.S. central bank could continue hiking rates through summer (The Hill and Reuters).

“Inflation is easing but the path to lower inflation will not likely be smooth,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial in Charlotte, N.C. “The Fed will not make decisions based on just one report but clearly the risks are rising that inflation will not cool fast enough for the Fed’s liking.”

▪ CNBC: Inflation rose 0.5 percent in January, more than expected and up 6.4 percent from a year ago.

▪ The New York Times: Consumer price index inflation has been slowing compared with a year ago, but evidence is mounting that it could be a long road back to normal.

▪ Bloomberg News: Fed officials float even higher rates after brisk inflation data.

▪ Politico: Four of Congress’s farmers weigh in on how to solve high food prices.

▪ Financial Times: Biden names Fed’s Lael Brainard as top economic adviser.

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ STATE WATCH

Biden on Tuesday reacted to a Michigan State University mass shooting Monday night that killed three students, offering a public reminder that it has been five years since a mass shooting killed 17 people at a Florida high school in Parkland. “It’s happening far too often in this country,” the president said during a speech to county officials gathered in Washington.

“We have to do something to stop gun violence ripping apart our communities,” he said while renewing his entreaty to Congress to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition. “There is no rationale for assault rifles and magazines that hold 50 or 70 [rounds],” he said to applause.

Civil rights advocates say dress codes enforced by local school systems discriminate against girls, especially Black and Hispanic girls. The Government Accountability Office released a 2022 report that concluded that traditional dress codes are sexist, racist and demeaning. Three-fifths of dress codes involve measuring students’ bodies and clothing, the GAO found, “which may involve adults touching students.” There is no documented research supporting direct benefits to safety or learning from dress codes, which are a separate issue from private school uniforms (The Hill). 

Ohio: East Palestine residents are trying to recover from a train derailment that resulted in the controlled release of harmful chemicals to avert an explosion in their community. The Hill’s Saul Elbein reports on five lingering questions. Residents will get a chance to ask their own questions this evening at a town hall meeting with officials.

💰 California: Edwin Castro won the $2.04 billion November Powerball jackpot, lottery officials announced on Tuesday. The jackpot ticket was sold at Joe’s Service Center in Altadena, an unincorporated foothill community northeast of Los Angeles. For selling the winning ticket, the business owner received a bonus of $1 million. Castro did not appear at the announcement but in a statement described himself as “shocked and ecstatic” (ABC News).

🏈 Missouri: Along Grand Boulevard, the Kansas City Chiefs, now Super Bowl champs, plan to celebrate with a parade in their honor beginning today at noon in Kansas City (KSHB).

➤ INTERNATIONAL

Western officials said Russia was tightening its noose around the contested city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine as NATO warned the start of a major new Russian offensive was now underway. Defense ministers of the alliance’s member states met Tuesday to discuss the provision of further support for Ukraine, including ramping up production in NATO countries of ammunition and other military aid, as Russia’s invasion nears its one-year mark (The Wall Street Journal).

Russia planned to topple Moldova’s pro-West government by fomenting violence through foreign actors and internal criminal groups, Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, said Monday. She added the attempted plot would have placed the nation at the disposal of the Kremlin for use in its invasion of Ukraine, and prevented its integration into the European Union. Moldovan authorities confirmed the disclosure by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Brussels last week that his intelligence forces had intercepted documents showing “who, when and through what actions” Russia would use to “break the democratic order” of Moldova (The Washington Post).

▪ The Atlantic: How Russian invaders unleashed violence on small-town residents.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Suspected Iranian weapons seized by the U.S. Navy may go to Ukraine.

▪ The Washington Post: What is Transnistria, and will Russia destabilize Moldova?

▪ CNN: NATO allies worry about dwindling ammunition stockpiles as they try to keep Ukraine’s troops firing.

▪ NBC News: Thousands of Ukrainian children forced into vast Russian network of Russian camps, study finds.

Miraculous rescues are serving as rare bright spots in one of the bleakest periods in memory for Turkey, what President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Tuesday could reasonably be called the “disaster of the century.” He reported a new death toll for Turkey, 35,418, and the United Nations said that more than 5,500 Syrians had died as a result of last week’s earthquakes, bringing the total death toll to more than 41,000. Millions more people in both countries have been displaced, with many afraid to return to damaged buildings and struggling to survive in makeshift shelters and extreme cold.

Relief organizations typically scramble to find survivors in the first 72 hours after a natural disaster, as the passing of time exponentially diminishes hope for finding signs of life. In the past week, more than 35,000 Turkish search and rescue teams joined thousands of international workers to dig through the rubble (The New York Times).

▪ The Guardian: Seven more people rescued in Turkey eight days after earthquake.

▪ Vox: Better buildings could have saved lives in Turkey’s earthquakes. Are contractors really to blame?

Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish government and a powerful figure in the drive for Scottish independence, is expected to resign after more than eight years in the role, news outlets report. The announcement, which was unexpected, is to come at a news conference later today (BBC and The New York Times).

▪ The New York Times: The U.S. arrests three Americans in the assassination of Haiti’s president.

▪ Reuters: India, soon to be the world’s most populous nation, doesn’t know how many people it has.

OPINION

■ The junk economics of “junk-fee” politics, by The Wall Street Journal editorial board. https://on.wsj.com/3jXjTL4

■ Who is actually weak on China? The GOP, by Minxin Pei, columnist, Bloomberg Opinion. https://bloom.bg/3I03Rbm

■ Taxpayer swindle: More states should not seek school vouchers, by David DeMatthews and David S. Knight, opinion contributors, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3jW5qz1

WHERE AND WHEN

📲 Ask The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.

The House will convene for a pro forma session at 10 a.m. on Friday.

The Senate meets at 10 a.m. 

The president and Vice President Harris will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 10:15 a.m. in the Oval Office. Biden will travel to an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union hall in Lanham, Md., to speak at 2:30 p.m. about U.S. economic progress and deficit reduction (The Washington Post). He will return to the White House this afternoon. 

The vice president leaves tonight for Germany to participate in the Munich Security Conference.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will host a dinner at the State Department at 6:30 p.m. in honor of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

ELSEWHERE

➤ TECH 

The Supreme Court next week will hear arguments in two cases involving Section 230, a controversial liability shield for online publishers in which Twitter, Google and Facebook are at the center. The Hill’s Zach Schonfeld reports that the dispute may have broader impacts for diplomats and international organizations. 

The cases were brought by two families of terrorist attack victims for pro-ISIS content posted to social media platforms, and the tech companies argue they don’t need Section 230 protections because they were not liable under federal anti-terrorism laws. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and the families’ other supporters argue taking Big Tech’s position would let terrorism sympathizers off the hook, while other foreign policy legal observers contend that holding the companies liable would lead foreign countries to reciprocate in their courts against the United States. 

▪ CNN: “Broken promises.” The tech industry’s real estate pullback leaves communities reeling.

▪ The Verge: These are Microsoft’s Bing AI secret rules and why it says it’s named Sydney.

▪ TechCrunch: Meta is reportedly planning a fresh round of layoffs.

▪ Reuters: Tesla will open its U.S. charging network to rivals in a $7.5 billion federal program, the White House announced.

➤ HEALTH & PANDEMIC 

New lab results showed that a new “on-demand” male birth control drug can temporarily prevent sperm from maturing and swimming in mice. The lab results show promise for a new birth control method made specifically for men, who presently only have two effective methods to prevent pregnancy: vasectomies and condoms. Responsibility for preventing pregnancy largely falls on women.

“This innovative, on-demand, non-hormonal strategy represents a previously untested concept in contraception, which has the potential to provide equity between the sexes and, like the advent of oral birth control for women, revolutionize family planning,” the study, published Tuesday in Nature Communications, said. Even though the lab results in mice show promise for a male birth control pill, the study is still likely years away from conducting human trials (The Hill).

The deadly Marburg virus has surfaced this week for the first time in Equatorial Guinea, causing at least nine deaths, according to the World Health Organization. A handful of Marburg cases were identified in Ghana late last year. Although it remains “a very rare disease in people,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “when it occurs, it has the potential to spread” and can be fatal (The Washington Post).

▪ The New York Times: Binge drinking may be curbed with a pill. A recent study suggested the use of a decades-old medicine taken before imbibing could reduce the amount of alcohol consumed.

▪ CNN: Risk of developing diabetes after COVID-19 continued in Omicron period, study says.

Information about the availability of COVID-19 vaccine and booster shots can be found at Vaccines.gov.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,115,018. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 3,171 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)

THE CLOSER

was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope as it gradually self-destructed.

And finally … ☄️When it comes to asteroids and earthlings, it’s all about the near misses. Tonight, a hunk of rock about half a mile wide known as “199145” or “2005 YY128” will make its closest pass near Earth in more than 400 years — and likely keep on going without an orbital meetup (EarthSky).

💫 ICYM, an asteroid burned up this week with a flashy show over France and England (The Washington Post).

On this date in 2013, a 150-foot-long asteroid passed within 18,000 miles of Earth, and at the same time that day, a small meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, leaving behind much confusion, injuries and some dramatic dash cam video HERE.

Tonight’s asteroid, first discovered in 2005, can be viewed by amateur and expert astronomers as it passes Earth at about 12 times the moon’s distance from the planet.

Stats for the starry-eyed: near-earth asteroids as of February 2023 (NASA).

Stay Engaged

We want to hear from you! Email: Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch. Follow us on Twitter (@asimendinger and @kristinakarisch) and suggest this newsletter to friends!

Super Bowl snub is latest dust-up between White House, Fox News

The White House’s decision not to have President Biden sit down with a Fox News journalist for an interview during the network’s pregame coverage of this year’s Super Bowl signals a potentially frosty road ahead for Biden and the nation’s top cable news company. 

The two sides have given conflicting versions of what went on behind the scenes in the days before the interview, to be aired on Fox, was called off.

While some observers have argued Biden, who is preparing to run for a second term, had little to gain politically from sitting down with Fox, others say the White House made a mistake passing on an opportunity to have the president share his message with millions of Americans before the nationally televised event.

“One of the few remaining ways to reach out beyond your base is to go into the ‘opposition media’, ” said Matthew Baum, professor of public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “We’ve gotten more polarized since 2012 and it’s unclear that Biden would have been treated as gently as Obama was by [Fox host Bill] O’Reilly back then. It could end up being a case that’s more red meat for the Fox News base than a chance for the president to, in his own words, make his case.” 

The White House and Fox Corp. which owns Fox News, gave a series of dueling statements late last week indicating negotiations about a sit-down were not going well. Fox leadership had been lobbying for weeks to have Biden sit with an anchor from its news division, likely Bret Baier or Shannon Bream, which the White House declined to entertain. 

The White House instead said it was interested in giving an interview with Fox Soul, a less-watched and little known streaming service catering to Black Americans, which it said Fox ultimately decided against. 

Presidents have skipped pre-Super Bowl interviews with the network broadcasting the big game in the past, but Biden sat with NBC’s Lester Holt last year and CBS his first year in office. 

Biden also gave two interviews the week of the Super Bowl with PBS NewsHour and Telemundo, two networks with fractional viewership compared to the tens of millions that typically tune into the Super Bowl pregame show.

The snubbing of Fox highlighted the fact that the president still hasn’t sat for an interview with the top-rated network on cable, though a number of White House officials and Cabinet members have appeared on the network’s various programs. 

The president has also answered shouted questions from Fox reporters like Peter Doocy during press conferences and other media availability. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre typically fields questions from Fox News reporters during daily briefings.

“The takeaway is more than just this president and Fox. Biden is hiding from almost all the media,” said Tobe Berkovitz, a communications professor at Boston University who has worked as a political media consultant. “It’s a huge mistake for Biden [to decline a sit-down before the Super Bowl.] We’re talking millions of viewers. This is not the Fox News Channel diehards. This is the broad swath of America.” 

Many of Fox’s top opinion hosts spend each night attacking Biden, his administration and his family. The president’s frustration with Fox and criticism from the media more generally has boiled over several times during his first term.   

Biden lashed out at Doocy last winter when a hot mic caught him calling the White House reporter a “stupid son of a bitch” after he asked a question about inflation. Biden later called Doocy to apologize.

Biden’s defenders on the left said the decision to decline a sit-down with a Fox News journalist was the right one. 

“I just, I have trouble believing that he should sit down even with a Shannon Bream or even with a Bret Baier, because the bottom line is they work for a network that puts forth conspiracy theories,” said Sunny Hostin, a political commentator on ABC’s “The View” who is frequently critical of Fox. 

“They’re not fans of Fox, but I feel like there’s this hunger for Joe Biden to strike a blow against the evil empire but honestly his people go on there with some regularity,” said Ben Smith, a prominent media critic and columnist, during an appearance Monday on CNN. “And I think when they see it to their tactical advantage, he’ll be there immediately. I’m not sure he sees reshaping truth in the media ecosystem as the thing he’s trying to do here.”  

Other observers say the White House could have used momentum gained from last week’s State of the Union address to promote his talking points ahead of an expected run for a second term. 

“If Joe Biden had brought the energy and feistiness of his State of the Union address to that Fox interview, he would have given as good as he got, and might even have picked up a handful of new supporters,” Jeff Greenfield, a former network television analyst and author, wrote in an op-ed published in Politico Magazine this week. “The way our elections have been going recently, that could make all the difference.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Pence plots unusual legal strategy in fight against subpoena

Former Vice President Mike Pence is preparing to fight a subpoena from the special counsel investigating former President Trump, setting up a complex, drawn-out legal fight as the Justice Department ramps up its probe.

Pence’s resistance to the subpoena, which is consistent with his previous reluctance to testify about the events surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, could come to define the powers and privileges that come with the vice presidency. But more immediately, it could throw a wrench into special counsel Jack Smith’s efforts to investigate Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Pence is planning to roll out a novel legal argument — one that hinges on his role on Jan. 6 as the presiding officer of the Senate.

His team is expected to argue that under his former position as president of the Senate, his work technically falls under the legislative branch, and he is therefore protected from the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) subpoena under the “speech and debate” clause of the Constitution, according to a source familiar with the former vice president’s plans.

The clause, which offers protection from being questioned “in any other place” beyond legislative chambers, has traditionally been used by lawmakers.

“I really think that if Vice President Pence is successful in this, it will morph our understanding of separation of powers. I think that success for him is unlikely because the Constitution is very clear about which branch the vice president belongs to,” said Juliet Sorenson, a law professor at Northwestern University.

But some see the vice president’s unique, if only periodic, role in the Senate as affording such protections.

Roy Brownell, an expert in separations of powers who has penned a paper examining the vice president’s role, said courts have generally interpreted the clause broadly, with the protections previously extended to include activities beyond direct lawmaking and in some cases even applying to congressional staff.

“Some constitutional clauses are interpreted very narrowly and some broadly. And speech or debate has been interpreted broadly,” Brownell said.

“The key issue for Pence will be trying to demonstrate that his conversations with Trump constituted legislative activity.”

The vice president may choose “to spend 99 percent of his time not with legislative branch stuff,” Brownell noted, but the role includes unique features that indicate Senate membership. He also pointed to a statute laying out federal government organization that defines “member of Congress” as including the vice president.

“If you figure the fact you can break tie votes and the fact that he gets his paycheck from the Senate, those are pretty clear indications that at least when he’s acting in his legislative capacity in the Senate, that he is part of that branch,” Brownell said.

While Pence wrote at length in his memoir about his conversations with Trump and his interactions with Trump’s legal team leading up to Jan. 6, he has resisted testifying under oath about the events around that day.

While former Pence officials from the White House testified last year to the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 riots, the former vice president said Congress had “no right” to his own testimony.

“We have a separation of powers under the Constitution of the United States,” Pence told CBS News in November. “And I believe it would establish a terrible precedent for the Congress to summon a vice president of the United States to speak about deliberations that took place at the White House.”

The House committee investigating the attack never subpoenaed Pence, however, leaving the question over the compulsory process unconfronted until now. 

Many attorneys, however, said Pence’s argument is a stretch.

They noted his role in the Senate comes with limitations not imposed on the chamber at large — including that the vice president isn’t allowed to speak or debate in the upper chamber without permission from a senator.

“I’m a skeptic,” said Neil Eggleston, who served as White House counsel under President Obama. 

“Although the Constitution gives the vice president a role in vote counting, the Constitution does not make the vice president a senator. Senators are defined in Article One. The vice president is not a senator. And I read the speech and debate clause as only applying to senators and representatives. … I don’t think the language of the Constitution permits any other reading.”

Sorenson, the Northwestern professor, noted that the language of the subpoena itself will be important in determining the strength of Pence’s legal case, particularly if it references his duties in the Senate such as casting tie-breaking votes and certifying the election, or otherwise characterizes him as a legislator.

If Pence’s efforts to resist the subpoena are rebuffed, he could choose to appeal, leading to a drawn-out legal fight that could in turn hamper Smith’s efforts to try to wrap up his investigation.

Smith would then be forced to decide how critical Pence’s testimony is to his probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and what role he had in the violent riots at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.

Attorneys agreed, however, that a speech or debate claim from Pence would only go so far and may not protect him from inquiries Smith may have into Trump’s pressure campaign on the vice president.

“This theory does not keep him from testifying. The most it does is keep him from having to answer some questions,” Eggleston said.

“If you think about what they want to ask him about, it’s all the conversations between the election and Jan. 6 where Trump was leaning on him to declare that Trump had won and not certify the election and that kind of stuff. Those are the questions they really want to ask him about. And if he thought he was a senator that day, I’m not sure it would apply to conversations with Trump before [Jan. 6]. But I don’t think any of this matters because I think this language does not apply to him.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) recently hit a roadblock in his own efforts to claim the privilege, with a judge ordering him to appear before a Georgia grand jury investigating Trump’s interference in the 2020 election.

Brownell said a successful assertion would limit prosecutors to questions outside of Pence’s role in certifying the vote.

“If it involves President Trump’s conversation about Pence’s role in the electoral count as presiding officer, then that clearly has a legislative branch component. If it’s the public campaign Trump was waging or whatever dubious things Trump was doing with respect to state election officials and all that lunacy, that would not seem to have any claim to the electoral count,” he said.

Also looming over any decision to testify about Trump’s efforts to overturn the election are Pence’s own political plans. The former vice president is weighing a 2024 presidential campaign, which would pit him against his former boss in a fight for the GOP nomination.

Any protracted legal fight could keep Pence from testifying against Trump, whose own attorneys have already indicated they will assert executive privilege claims over the former vice president’s possible testimony.

That could be appealing in itself to Trump, who has been known to pursue court challenges that have the potential to outlast the underlying legal issue.

“I think it’s something that if Trump or Pence lose, they will take it to the Supreme Court under this sort of theory that delay is good,” Eggelston said. “And so why not?”

Source: TEST FEED1

Distrust over GOP plans for Social Security, Medicare marks rocky start to budget talks

Republican leaders vowing to protect Social Security and Medicare benefits as part of the coming budget battles are running into a wall of skepticism across the aisle, lending a rocky start to the high-stakes debate over the future of federal spending.

Despite Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) promise that entitlement cuts are “off the table” in the debt-ceiling talks, House Democrats simply don’t believe that the same Republican Party that’s fought for decades to slash those programs has reversed course so drastically this year.  

“I don’t trust them on that,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.). “Since the 1930s these folks have been gunning for Social Security.”

The liberals’ staunch defense of the entitlements stands as a warning to GOP leaders, who want to balance the federal budget within a decade — a feat that’s virtually impossible without touching entitlements, the Pentagon, taxes or all three — and will need Democratic support to adopt any new budget changes. 

It also puts pressure on President Biden — who’s vowing to oppose any entitlement cuts — to make good on that promise as he enters the momentous budget negotiations with McCarthy. 

Liberals were up in arms more than a decade ago when then-President Obama proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare as part of an unsuccessful “grand bargain” with then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and would be equally infuriated if Biden sought something similar this year. 

The president, for his part, has given no indication he’s even considering such a deal. Instead, he used last week’s State of the Union speech — and a more recent visit to Florida, a retirement hub — to portray Republicans as the party hellbent on slashing popular senior benefits that he’s fighting to protect. 

“Republicans don’t like being called out on this,” Biden said Thursday in Tampa. “A lot of Republicans — their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare. Well, let me say this: If that’s your dream, I’m your nightmare.”

Biden’s attacks have infuriated Republicans, who insist they have no designs to cut those programs and are pushing back hard against the Democrats’ characterizations. 

“The Speaker has said they’re not going to be on the table,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.). “So, frankly, it’s a disingenuous argument put forth by the president, when we’re on record saying we’re not doing it.”

Complicating the GOP’s argument, however, is the party’s historic opposition to the major safety net programs, which they’ve portrayed as socialist initiatives that undermine American innovation and free markets — attacks that go back to even before their founding. Prominent critics over the years have included Ronald Reagan, who warned against the adoption of socialized medicine; former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who hoped to see Medicare “wither on the vine;” and former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), whose annual budgets proposed steep cuts.  

The arrival of former President Trump, who pledged no cuts to the major safety net programs, marked a sharp realignment of Republicans’ traditional position. But it remains to be seen if that was a temporary posture. 

More recently, GOP Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.) has been pushing a plan to “sunset” all federal programs after five years, with no exception for the entitlements, while the Republican Study Committee, a group representing more than 75 percent of the House GOP conference, is proposing to raise the eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security as part of their 2023 “Blueprint to Save America.” 

“Why would we trust them, when the Republican Study Committee talks about raising the age of Social Security eligibility to 70?” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said Tuesday by phone. “We’ve seen these tries over and over again.”

Schakowsky, who introduced legislation this week to enhance Social Security benefits by $200 per month, noted that McCarthy is in a tough spot politically, given both the GOP’s narrow House majority and the pressure he’s facing from conservatives to slash federal spending. 

“The reason I don’t trust them is that Kevin McCarthy is often at the mercy of his members. And if you talk about this Republican Study Committee, we’re talking about a large number of his members,” she said. “So does he really run his conference? Can he really stand up to them?

“It is absolutely important for us to stay vigilant.”

Many Republicans, well aware of the popularity of Social Security and Medicare, are racing away from the suggestion that they aim to cut those programs, pointing back to McCarthy’s promise.

“We’ve taken them off the table in the debt-limit negotiations,” said Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.). “And so that’s not going to be anything that we discuss.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has also taken long strides to distance the party from Scott’s sunset proposal, suggesting Scott is an outlier in a conference with no plans to tackle the entitlements in the near term. 

“There is no agenda on the part of Senate Republicans to revisit Medicare or Social Security,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday in the Capitol. “Period.”

Still, House Republicans have some different ideas. And with Medicare expected to undergo a funding shortfall in 2028, and Social Security forecast to follow in 2034, a number of GOP lawmakers are warning that congressional action in some form is inevitable.

“At the end of the day we’re going to have to come together and do something. If we don’t, current law in Medicare and Social Security says that beneficiaries are affected,” said Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), a former physician. “As a Medicare beneficiary, that worries me.”

Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) agreed that Congress must act, warning that the fixes get more expensive with each passing year. But he rejected the GOP proposal to raise eligibility ages, and says he’s not quite ready to take McCarthy at his word that benefit cuts are really off the table in the coming budget fight. He quoted Finley Peter Dunne, a Chicago humorist, who advised more than a century ago to “trust everybody, but cut the cards.” 

“We hope, clearly, that McCarthy and the Republicans have come to their senses, but that’s not what their past history, nor their [RSC] report, nor Mr. Scott … have to say,” Larson said Tuesday. “We have to be skeptical. And I think Dunne had it right: Trust everyone, but we’ll be cutting the cards.”

Alexander Bolton contributed.

Source: TEST FEED1

Senate Republicans fear Trump repeat as 2024 field emerges  

Senate Republicans are growing increasingly worried that a crowded 2024 presidential field could ease the path for former President Trump to once again clinch the party’s nomination.  

The field isn’t crowded yet, but former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s announcement Tuesday that she will run for the GOP nomination is seen as a harbinger of things to come.  

A number of prominent former Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Vice President Mike Pence are seen as likely to run. South Carolina itself may have an additional GOP candidate in Sen. Tim Scott.  

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is seen as a likely candidate, while possible entrants include New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.  

In a typical year there are also presidential candidates from the Senate, though 2024 may be an anomaly in this regard.  

“Look, we were all concerned with the fact that we had 15 or 16 or 17 individuals vying for attention in the last one. We really don’t want to see that happen again,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told The Hill. “We just don’t.” 

Most GOP senators are staying neutral in the race so far and few are offering any public criticisms of Trump, or comments specifically stating that they do not want him as their party’s nominee.  

But Republicans in the Senate are tired of losing, and many blame Trump for the party losing the House in 2018, losing the White House and Senate in 2020 and failing to pick up the Senate in 2022.  

They are now feeling anxious over the possibility that Trump could again steamroll through a crowded field and waltz to the party’s nomination. 

“I do worry about that,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said, adding that “unfortunately, I don’t have any control over that.” 

According to recent polling conducted for the Club for Growth, Trump trails DeSants in a one-on-one matchup – 49 percent to 40 percent. However, when the field expands to include Pence, Haley, Pompeo, Scott and Youngkin, Trump leads the Florida governor with 37 percent to 33 percent, prompting some concern.  

“I think she’s an impressive person,” Cornyn said of Haley. “I don’t envy her [for] all the attacks she’s going to receive, but unfortunately that’s part of the process.”  

Those came swiftly on Tuesday as a spokesperson for the Make America Great Again PAC, dinged her as a “career politician,” while noting all of the contours Haley has made since Trump burst on the scene. That includes her time as an anti-Trump figure to working in his cabinet to giving paid speeches in recent years.  

“Sure just looks like more of the same, a career politician whose only fulfilled commitment is to herself,” said Taylor Budowich, who previously served as Trump’s spokesperson.  

However, a number of Trump-backing senators had kind words to say about the former Palmetto State governor. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told reporters that she would be a “great candidate.” He also noted that he told Trump recently that he hopes “they all get in.” 

“He needs the challenge as well as anybody,” Tuberville said. “They need to work for it. They need to fight for it.”  

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who endorsed Trump at his South Carolina kickoff event recently, hailed her tenures as governor and ambassador, adding that she will “acquit herself well as a candidate for president.”  

“We have an embarrassment of riches on our side,” Graham said of the emerging GOP field.  

In total, five Senate Republicans have thrown their support behind the ex-president: Graham, Tuberville, JD Vance (Ohio), Eric Schmitt (Mo.) and Markwayne Mullin (Okla.).  

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who Haley supported and campaigned for in the 2016 race, predicted that the former governor “will do well” this cycle. However, he dismissed any possibility that the field might be on the smaller side, saying that those days are done with.  

“If people want to run for president, they’re going to run,” Rubio said in a brief interview. “For the foreseeable future, I think presidential races, on both sides, will generally be crowded, especially if there’s not a sitting president of the other party. … I think that’s going to be, for the foreseeable future, just the nature of these races.”  

When asked if he’s still keeping his eye on a 2024 bid, the Florida senator told The Hill that he “doesn’t have any plans to run for anything in the immediate future.”  

According to a number of Senate Republicans, another one of those is Scott, who Haley tapped to replace former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) in 2012.  

“I think Tim has some real potential. I think he could bring the country together,” Rounds said. “My plan right now is to give Tim the first look.”  

Following her official announcement Wednesday morning in Charleston, S.C., Haley will appear in New Hampshire on Thursday and Iowa on Monday and Tuesday in her inaugural swings to the pair of early-voting states.  

At least one lawmaker representing Iowa, and eager to see many candidates coming to the state, said she’s not against a larger field.  

“I’m not worried about too many getting in,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said. “I’m excited to welcome all of them in.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden withdraws nominee who said Dem leader was 'bought' by pro-Israel groups

President Biden on Tuesday dismissed the Ivy League law professor put forth as a candidate for an international human rights organization over comments that appeared to invoke antisemitic tropes in criticizing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).

State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said that the administration was not previously aware of the comments made by James Cavallaro accusing Jeffries of being “Bought. Purchased. Controlled” by pro-Israel lobbying groups.  

“We were not aware of the statements and writings,” Price said in a briefing with reporters, adding that the decision was made Tuesday morning to withdraw Cavallaro’s nomination to serve on the Inter American Commission on Human Rights.

The Algemeiner, a non-profit news outlet covering news related to the Jewish world and the Middle East, first reported on Cavallaro’s tweet, which came in response to an article about pro-Israel groups fundraising for the congressman. 

The language is similar to comments from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) that were viewed as invoking antisemitic tropes accusing pro-Israel or predominantly Jewish groups using money to exercise control over U.S. politics. 

Cavallaro is also reported to have called Israel an apartheid state, a label that is rejected by Biden administration officials. 

“His statements clearly do not reflect U.S. policy, they are not a reflection of what we believe and they are inappropriate to say the least,” Price said.

Cavallaro also reportedly published denigrating statements about Democrats and Republican lawmakers, calling Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) “bought and paid for” and describing Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) as “pedantic, self-righteous and pompous,” urging her to “learn from the Palestinian people,” and to resign over her “repeated moral failings.”

The Algemeiner reported that Cavallaro’s referenced social media posts were deleted after being contacted by the media organization. 

Cavallaro issued a statement on Twitter saying he was informed by the State Department on Tuesday he was being removed “because of my view that the conditions in Israel/Palestine meet the definition of apartheid under international human rights law.”

He added that he removed “many” of his previous tweets because he was “proactively and in good faith addressing concerns the State Department had raised during the vetting process about public expressions of my personal views on U.S. policy.” 

But he said his personal views on U.S. foreign policy would not have come up in a role on the human rights board, which he previously served on. 

“My nomination would not have affected U.S. policy on Israel. What has the withdrawal of my nomination achieved? The removal from the [Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR] of the potential return of a committed, experienced advocate for human rights in the Americas,” he wrote. 

Cavallaro, the founder and Executive Director of the University Network for Human Rights, was announced on Friday as the U.S. candidate for commissioner on the IACHR, an agency within the Organization for American States (OAS), for the 2024-2027 term.

The IACHR is headquartered in Washington D.C. and composed of seven members who serve in a personal capacity but are described as being persons of “high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights.” 

Members are elected by the General Assembly of the Organization of American States from a list of candidates put forth by the governments of member states. 

Cavallaro’s nomination for candidate was for one of four positions to be voted on in June 2023. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Five reasons DeSantis may not be another Jeb Bush

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has become an early favorite to secure the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination. 

But as his name is bandied about as a leading contender, strategists, donors and political observers have thrown out the cautionary tale of another Florida governor who tired to take on former President Trump: Jeb Bush, who despite a famous surname and donor support won little traction in the 2016 GOP primary.

Here are some reasons why DeSantis might be different.

He’s starting from a stronger position

It may be months before DeSantis makes any formal announcement on his 2024 plans, but Republicans say that he’s arguably in a more promising spot than Bush was when he kicked off his presidential bid.

Not only is DeSantis coming off a staggering 19-point reelection win, but early polling of the potential Republican presidential primary field shows him notching nearly a third of the vote. Then there’s the fact that he raised more than $200 million for his 2022 reelection bid, making him one of the country’s most prolific fundraisers.

“DeSantis has a resounding victory in a battleground state on his resume, to go along with a well-funded war chest,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who served as a senior aide to Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential run. “All of that helps. He’s got high levels of curiosity from activist Republican voters in early states.” 

Still, Madden said, “getting these voters to go from curious to converted is a big challenge. Until a candidate puts a campaign together and demonstrates their plan to harness the momentum and manage the day-to-day grind of a campaign, the risk of not meeting expectations is real.” 

He’s owning the news cycle — in some ways more than Trump

DeSantis has a well-known aversion to engaging with the mainstream media. 

His press conferences often end without him taking questions from the press, he lacks the kind of extended network of surrogates that candidates like Bush relied on and what interviews he does grant almost exclusively go to politically friendly outlets, like Fox News.

But the Florida governor has found himself in the headlines almost daily. 

He dominated news cycles throughout the pandemic as a foil to public health officials like Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; picked a highly publicized fight with Disney, one of his state’s largest employers; and raised eyebrows last year by paying to fly migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, the elite Massachusetts resort town.

Some Republicans compared DeSantis’s ability stay in the news to Trump’s made-for-TV persona that drew round-the-clock coverage for years.

“Because Ron DeSantis is currently in office, he’s able to make news. I mean, he’s better at making news than all other 49 governors combined,” Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist and former congressional candidate, said.

He’s more in tune with the GOP base

Despite once holding the reputation as a popular two-term governor of the country’s largest swing state, Bush found himself struggling to resonate with the GOP’s base voters not long after launching his 2016 presidential bid.

By that time, O’Connell said, “the Republican Party had changed exponentially from when Jeb was in his prime.”

“Jeb had trouble connecting with the base,” O’Connell said. “He was high in the polls but nowhere close to where DeSantis is. It’s just a very, very different field this time.” 

Indeed, DeSantis has largely tailored his political brand around the idea of appealing to his party’ most loyal voters. Doug Heye, a Republican strategist, said that DeSantis has a penchant for “picking and choosing battles that get conservatives excited nationally.”

But Susan Del Percio, another Republican strategist, said there may be some risks associated with that strategy, arguing that DeSantis’s intense focus on red-meat issues “isn’t the answer to the party’s problems.”

“DeSantis has no policy. He’s all about the culture wars,” she said, adding that “DeSantis is making the wrong bet that it should all be on culture wars. People should want more.” 

He has a track record of winning in a tough environment

By most measures, 2022 was a rough year for Republicans. They failed to recapture control of the Senate and only narrowly won the House majority, despite having the political winds at their backs.

For DeSantis, last year’s midterms were nothing short of a resounding victory. Not only did he win reelection by the largest margin in a Florida gubernatorial race in four decades, but Republicans also scored supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature.

Republicans say that’s particularly notable, given the outcome for GOP candidates elsewhere in the country.

“He can do two things,” Heye said. “Not only can he say that he won in a year that was somewhat disappointing for Republicans but that he won big. He can also demonstrate to his base that he’s a culture war warrior and that he’s an adult who can govern.”

By comparison, Republicans largely outperformed expectations in 2002 when Bush won reelection to the Florida governor’s mansion by nearly 13 points. The country was little more than a year removed from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and voters rallied around Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush, and his party.

He’s still actively governing

Unlike Bush, who had been out of public office for nearly a decade by the time he announced his 2016 presidential run, DeSantis still has the bully pulpit of the Florida governor’s mansion behind him — and he’s taking full advantage of it.

A special legislative session came together last week to address some of the Florida governor’s highest-profile priorities, including expanding a controversial program to fly migrants between different states.

DeSantis is also expected to use the legislature’s regular session, which begins next month, to advance some of his other top agenda items.

“He’s got resources, he’s got the ability to create buzz, he’s also got the ability as a sitting governor to shape policy,” O’Connell said.

Source: TEST FEED1

US intercepts four Russian war plans near Alaska

The U.S. military said it intercepted four Russian war planes near Alaska on Monday. 

North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said it detected four Russian aircraft including TU-95 BEAR-H bombers and SU-35 fighter aircraft entering and operating within the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), according to a Tuesday statement from the command.  

NORAD officials said they had anticipated the Russian activity and were able to quickly scramble two F-16 fighters to intercept the Kremlin aircraft in the ADIZ, which covers the international airspace outside of the U.S. and Canada near the far northern state. 

Two F-35A fighters, an E-3 Sentry, and two KC-135 Stratotankers were also sent to assist.  

The command noted that the incident is in no way related to recently shot down objects over the United States and Canada this past month, and that the Russian aircraft did not enter the two countries’ sovereign airspace.  

NORAD routinely monitors foreign aircraft in the ADIZ and escorts them out as needed, with the last such occurrence happening in October. In that incident, two Russian bombers entered the airspace.  

Because such Russian activity happens so regularly — an average of six to seven intercepts of Kremlin military aircraft in the ADIZ annually since 2007 — it is “not seen as a threat, nor is the activity seen as provocative,” according to NORAD.  

Tensions between the U.S. and Russia remain high, however, due to Moscow’s war in Ukraine that is nearing the end of its first year.  

Three Russian war planes also were in the skies near Polish airspace on Monday, with two Dutch F-35s intercepting those aircraft.  

The United States is also on high alert after it and Canada shot down three unidentified objects over Alaska, Lake Huron and Canadian territory in the past week, in addition to the massive suspected Chinese spy balloon shot off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4.   

Updated: 4:12 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Feinstein announces retirement at end of term

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Tuesday announced that she will not seek a sixth term in office and will retire from the Senate at the end of 2024, officially creating an open primary battle to replace the trailblazing senator. 

“I am announcing today I will not run for reelection in 2024 but intend to accomplish as much for California as I can through the end of next year when my term ends,” Feinstein said in a statement.

“I campaigned in 2018 on several priorities for California and the nation: preventing and combating wildfires, mitigating the effects of record-setting drought, responding to the homelessness crisis, and ensuring all Americans have access to affordable, high-quality health care. Congress has enacted legislation on all of these topics over the past several years, but more needs to be done – and I will continue these efforts,” she added.

Feinstein, 89, is the oldest sitting senator and has long been expected to depart at the end of her current term, having rolled back her workload and responsibilities in recent years. 

She stepped aside as the leading Democrat atop the Senate Judiciary Committee in late 2020, a move that followed intense criticism over her handling of the confirmations of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

Feinstein also declined to take on the position of Senate president pro tempore, usually reserved for the most senior member of the party in power — Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the second-longest tenured Senate Democrat, filled that role after former Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) retired last year. 

In addition, Feinstein did not show any indication that a reelection bid was in the offing based on her fundraising in recent months. According to her most recent FEC filing, the California Democrat raised $600 in the final three months of 2022 and has only 10,000 in the bank. 

She said late last year that no matter her future plans, she would not resign before the end of her term. If she has a change of heart and decides to do so, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has said that he will appoint a Black woman to fill the seat. 

Feinstein has been subject to critical reports in recent years over her mental acuity, but defended herself against those claims, citing the death of her husband, Richard Blum, last year as a chief distraction.  

However, the five-term senator is a groundbreaking woman in American political history. She, along with former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), was the first woman elected to the Senate from the Golden State. She is also the longest-serving woman in the history of the Senate, having served atop two committees — Intelligence and Rules — and authored the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994. 

Feinstein also holds the distinction of having won the most votes in any single Senate election in history, having raked in 7.8 million votes in 2012.

Prior to her Senate service, she was mayor of San Francisco for a decade. 

A lack of earlier announcements about her future, however, did not stop candidates from launching their own Senate bids in California. Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) announced her official bid in early January, while Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), fresh off being removed from the House Intelligence Committee, joined the race weeks later. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) threw her support behind Schiff, assuming Feinstein sidestepped a campaign of her own. 

The state’s jungle primary, likely to be held in summer of 2024, also means that two Democrats may make it to the general election that November. That was the case when Vice President Harris won her seat in 2016 and Feinstein won reelection in 2018. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Administration scrambles to quell Congress’s frustration over balloon, UFOs 

Senior administration officials updated senators Tuesday on the three unidentified aerial objects shot down over the United States and Canada last weekend in a scramble to quell frustrations expressed by lawmakers about a lack of timely information about the UFOs and a Chinese spy balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month.

Senators say they didn’t get much information from Tuesday morning’s briefing because the U.S. military has yet to recover the vehicles shot down over Alaska, Canada and Lake Huron. But they said they were satisfied the administration didn’t leave them in the dark for days, which several lawmakers complained is what happened as the Chinese spy balloon floated across the country.  

“China sent a spy balloon to America. We had our eyes on it. President Biden had a chance to shoot it down over the Aleutians. He chose not to and it floated all across America and then finally shot it down off the East Coast. He took a lot of criticism from that, including criticism from senators in his own party and therefore I think he didn’t want to suffer that criticism again,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). 

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said administration officials are trying to improve their response time to inquiries from Capitol Hill, but that many of her colleagues on both sides of the aisle still feel frustrated about slow pace of information.  

“I think they know that people are frustrated because we’re not getting much additional information, if any,” she said. “We’re getting questions from people that we’re representing. It’s alarming in some sense.” 

Senators heard from Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command; Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Morgan Muir, deputy Director of National Intelligence for Mission integration; Melissa Dalton, the assistant secretary of Defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs; and Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. 

Capito said the White House and administration have learned from their mistakes in responding to the first Chinese spy balloon and brought lawmakers up to speed more quickly this time after shooting down three unidentified “objects” on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  

“They definitely came back quicker and I think that was helpful. I still think there’s frustration, though,” she said. 

Capito said lawmakers still have questions about which administration officials knew about the first Chinese balloon that floated over Alaska, Montana and other parts of the country.  

“Who knew about it when? That’s still not clear. How long did they really know about this? Why didn’t they know about it sooner? Why didn’t do something sooner? So there’s still a lot of lingering questions about that,” she added.  

Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), a senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the administration can still be more transparent and forthcoming about its handling of balloons and other aerial objects entering U.S. airspace.  

“I think it can be done without compromising, in intelligence lingo, ‘sources and methods,’” he said.  

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), whose home state was under the flight path of the Chinese spy balloon, said he wasn’t happy with the president’s handling of that incident and that it should have been shot down before reaching the continental United States.  

“I think they could have done better on the first incident and I think they’ve, from my perspective, picked up their game a lot,” he said.

Tester, however, noted Biden got briefed by the military before making the decision to shoot down the balloon off the Atlantic coast and had to take into consideration a variety of factors, such as potential collateral damage caused by a shoot-down and different recovery scenarios.  

Senators say they didn’t receive a lot of new information at Tuesday morning’s briefing.  

They say senior administration officials don’t yet know who launched the objects that were shot down in recent days, whether they were military or commercial vehicles and what they were doing in the sky.  

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said the objects “could be commercial” but asked “if it is commercial, why wouldn’t whoever launched it resolve the issue” by “claiming responsibility for it.”  

He said senior administration and military officials “have done a good job of getting our situational awareness to where it is today and we had no situational awareness a month ago.”  

He said there’s little information on the latest objects because “they have not been able to recover anything as they have off the coast of the Carolinas.”  

Defense and intelligence officials also are still not classifying the downed UFOs other than to say they are “objects,” and there are no signs of “aliens or extraterrestrial activity.”

“They’re not at a stage where they’re going to categorically identify them. They’re balloons, blimps, a number of other things. They’re not from outer space,” Tillis said.  

Partisan lines are beginning to emerge in the debate over how to respond to foreign balloons in U.S. airspace, as some Republicans say that Biden’s decision to let the first Chinese spy balloon float over sensitive military installations may have compromised national security.  

Some Republicans are still upset about what they say has been the president’s evasive response to questions about why he waited so long.  

“President Biden owes the American people an explanation. President Biden should speak on camera directly to the American people today,” Cotton said.  

“Americans are worried, they’re concerned, they’re interested and they have a right to know why President Biden directed the action that he did over the last week,” he said. “On the one hand, the administration is saying we don’t yet know what these last three objects are and we don’t want to characterize them until we recover them but on the other hand it wasn’t a threat. 

“Both of those things can’t be true,” he said.  

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the Republican criticism of the president is “premature.” 

“We’re learning more about these objects and our ability to detect them hour by hour,” he said. “Our defense and intelligence agencies are focused like a laser on first gathering the information, assessing the information and coming up with a comprehensive view to what is going on.”

“I think the Biden administration is being very careful and very thoughtful,” he added. “I think some of our Republican colleagues are being at the very minimum premature and often just very political.”

Source: TEST FEED1